Lateral thinking, radical and unexpected ways to sell

They say someone has to see a link seven times before they even consider clicking on it. After seven times they take notice.

Yesterday I donated some change to Pages to Docx software online. It was overdue given that I've used them free for years. They gave the option to use your Twitter name or link. I took the plunge and entered my website, knowing I couldn't change it easily in the future. It might also dilute my brand if placed pointlessly everywhere.

I've also added my website as my last name on Amazon where I frequently review, as well as in my gmail, which I use to review on Youtube.

That's about it. I do not like traditional marketing, find it goes against my nature, so perhaps we could think of things never tried before, that cost nothing and might actually work. It would benefit us all.

It's not easy to keep up with new marketing techniques. Apparently Tik Tok is now used a lot. Plus Influencers. Blogs. Podcasts. Etc., etc.,

When I had a website it had hidden tools on it that logged peoples' actions on the site. Which pages visited, how long they were on each page and the site, and whatnot, including browser type, ISP, and country. It's said that if people have not visited before it will only take them 15 secs to decide to stay and look around. But I think that comes from the days of dialup, where if people had to wait too long for a page to load, they would shut it and look elsewhere.
I would not worry about using sites that are on the surface free, because little on line is actually free. No doubt most drop tracking cookies etc., to gather information they can sell.

Many places on line that say they have radical ideas, may not be recent, but once they may have been radical!

There's a sort of rule of thumb when it comes to advertising. Out of a 100 that sees it, only around 5 may be interested, and only 1 of those may buy anything. So advertising is a matter of mass. If 250,000 see it then ... but then of course the cost of that has to be paid out of the sales. (Further sales to the same people can make on-going money though, so the cost of advertising is eventually covered).
But there are now so many avenues one can advertise on, worldwide, it's possible that millions could see an advert. But that's a double edged sword. The effort could be spread so thinly it's ineffective. Most people have adblock software running anyway!
Massive companies who have millions to chuck at advertising often use saturation marketing. Perpetual marketing, not always expecting to see instant results, but burning a brand name in to peoples' minds, so that when they do want that product, that brand name is the first thought of. It's often why brand named products cost more, because 30% of what you pay for it, goes on advertising. You are paying them to advertise to you!
We don't have the marketing clout, dosh or contacts of the big publishing houses (or sale or return) and POD is expensive, so can we afford to add 30% to the price of our books to pay for adverts? I doubt it!
There's also the problem of who may be interested? 99% of people don't seem to read anything anyway! And even to cater for the readers' needs, there are 1000s of books published each day, often with the clout of big publishing houses behind them. We are competing with all of them, no matter what many self-publishers think. On price and on interest.
And it's not easy getting coverage for peanuts or free. I once contacted many people who seem to review books on Weread. Free books. Read and review please. Most replied "but we are not book reviewers " Huh?

Anyway, there's 100s if not 1000s of places on like who will "market your book to millions" for a big fee. (That's about all that comes up in a search). I guess the trick is to see if they say how and where, and cut them out and do it direct.

And my browser has gone a bit strange! The task bar keeps vanishing! And I cannot find the setting that stops that!

I will relate an experiment that more-or-less failed.

Have you heard of "Little Free Libraries"? These are small wooden boxes large enough to hold perhaps 30 to 60 books that people mount on posts in their yard along the public sidewalks or in alleys in downtown areas. Passersby are encouraged to "take a book, leave a book". This a great idea for a neighborhood's readers to anonymously trade books at leisure. I like it!

Anyway, as a promotion for my first book I chose two nearby geographical areas and canvased the LFL's in them with initial copies thinking that word-of-mouth from hands-on recipients might generate sales. I then randomly monitored the LFL's over two or three years and provided subsequent replacement copies. I then did the same experiment with later books, but only at the high-traffic LFL's.

I got good news and bad news from this experiment:

1. The GOOD news: On only ONE occasion did I ever see a copy returned to a LFL (although I did see a copy of one book migrate to a different LFL about a mile away from it's original LFL). So either A) Readers loved the book and kept it without returning it, or B) the owners of the LFL's hated it and burned the copies. I tend to think they loved it. This was encouraging.

2. The BAD news: NEVER over that or subsequent time periods did I detect a single sale from either of those small geographic areas (each about 35 square miles and about 50 miles apart).

My marketing department (me) thought it was a good idea, but it had no detectable effect on that small region's sales.

Oh, some wise chap once said, "only half of my marketing works, but I have no idea which half!" but lucky him that any worked. But I do often wonder if a publication that does not at least have the name of some huge publishing house on it, is mostly ignored.

Hmm... a good idea. At least it made people read.