This problem has consumed my thinking for ~six months.

Not to put Randy on the spot, but I wonder what the conversion rate of readers of Randy’s blog (RORBs) or non-fiction products buy his fiction?

Not that there should be any percentage as Randy’s blog/website are not setup to do this converting but how would one go about getting non-fiction writing to sell one’s fiction books?

I would like to get it rolling strong one day, but obviously that needs to wait until I have something important to offer. I’m in no hurry to add another blog on writing to the gobs that already exist. And to be honest…I haven’t found a large number of blogs that I can’t live without.

My focus right now is on writing a novel, so the only blogs I have time for are those that will help improve my writing. Guess what the number one blog on writing fiction is???? Take a guess. I also subscribe to feeds on a couple of other must-read blogs that are giving me plenty to chew, more than I can digest, actually.

But to be very honest, there are tons of writing blogs that review books and interview authors, and while I’m interested in hearing and learning about them, there is a glut of the same info out there. I don’t want to glut, so I’ll keep marinading until I come up with that special something that will make a must read for someone besides my mother.

If this isn’t a scam it’s utterly deceptive. I put it on my blog in good faith, but when I went to the site I couldn’t find a “multimedia course on blogging” so I deleted it off my blog. I’ll look over their materials but with such a dishonest beginning I don’t think I’m going to trust them for anything.

I’ve just started blogging as a part-time job/small business and am looking forward to any wisdom I can glean.

It’s nothing earth-shattering, but I like having the platform to share insights. One reader friend got really turned on to writing from following the link to the Snowflake article and hearing about Nanowrimo from my blog. That’s just cool.

The way I see it, having some presence online is better than having no presence. Even if it doesn’t develop into something huge on my own, future publishers will see that I am interested in promoting myself and have at least half a clue about how to go about it. I’m content to begin small, and grow gradually.

I can see that blogging could be a good way to market. This blog, for instance, shows me how much worth I would get out of your workshops. A lot of writer’s blogs seem to be filled with posts about characters I don’t really care about and fictional situations I’m not yet interested in. Maybe after you have published something a blog would be more interesting.

cheers,

Andie

Here is a lesson I learned from my old business of selling llamas and wilderness packtrips. The internet is a very broad brush. We were one of three websites on our topic in the ’90′s and I wasted a lot of time educating people from Maine to China on my field of expertise. That was why I wrote my first book. (But, on another topic, it had too many personal stories about people who were easy to identify, tho I did not use names, some of which were very true but unavoidably non-complimentary since I was talking about real problems in real genetic lines.)
I did not make one sale of a packtrip or a llama from all that activity. Fortunately for me, I yanked the book after a few people gave me grief. Thank God I didn’t post it; that stuff hangs around forever to haunt you.

When we stopped breeding and focused mostly on wilderness trips, our contacts with other llama folks outside of our area didn’t do a thing to sell our product. They didn’t want our product; they had lots of it themselves. And this is the problem with writer’s blogs from a marketing standpoint: they are all frequented by other writers or would-be writers. That’s great if you are Randy Ingermanson, who sells products to writers. But if I blog, I want to reach readers.

So offering insights on how I write will not interest 90% of the readers I have not yet reached. My blog has to offer content that has value to the people who would enjoy my books. So I am gathering stuff to post on working animals, the renaissance,trade, and the history of religions of the time, especially Christian-Muslim relations. Writers who don’t write that period won’t be interested, but hopefully people who read my ‘brand’ will be.
Now how do I attract them to my blog once I get around to setting it up?

I’m waiting with bated breath for what you have to say on this, Randy.

You can find more discussion about this on his blog

Cheers,

Andie

I am a fairly new blogger, less than two years, and have gone from blogger to wordpress, and now am reading that web based blogs generate more traffic than the free blogging sites.

I feel that I am still learning and growing in the blogging arena, and enjoy it very much. I have met wonderful people like yourself on the internet. If it were not for blogs, all that I plan to do and desire to do would take much longer.

Yes, blogging can take time, but it boils down to discipline. At the beginning I read every blog I can find, and then narrowed it down to just a few that I read.

I would like to know if web based blogs do generate more traffic, and I would like to learn how to make money from your blog.

Thanks, again!