Want to write a best-selling novel? Of course you do. So do I. So does everybody with a pulse.

The question is how to do it.

Since today is Valentine’s Day, I don’t plan to blog tonight. So I thought I’d post a quick blog early in the day about something that just came across my radar. We’ve been talking about web sites and blogs for a couple of weeks, but let’s switch gears just for one day.

Mark Joyner, the Simpleology guy, author of four #1 bestsellers, will soon be launching some new courses. I’ve taken several of his courses, and am in the middle of one right now on Viral Marketing which I really like a lot. Mark has a great ability to break things down to simple, simple, simple terms. I’ve read way too many academic journals, so I appreciate simple stuff.

Mark’s new course will be on “How to become a best-selling author.”

Hey, sign me up! That was my first reaction.

Then I saw the cool contest Mark is running right now. Create a 2-minute YouTube video and post it by February 26. The top three videos will win some prizes, INCLUDING a custom-crafted marketing plan created by Mark specifically for each winner.

Just for entering this video contest, you get an e-book valued at $147 on how to write exceptionally fast.

Check out the rules for the contest on Mark’s web site.

I’m going to start writing the script for my 2-minute video this afternoon. Hope you will too!

A reader asked a question a couple of days ago that posed an interesting mystery. I’ll quote it again here, because this is a topic of general interest.

Sylvia wrote:

I just remembered that a friend of mine did her own ministry site. She posted all her articles on it. Later, however, when she did a “search” for it, it wouldn’t come up on Google. I don’t know if she tried some of the other search engines or not. A ministry site that can’t be found is of little value!

She called a tech, and got such an involved answer that she finally thanked him and hung up. What can she do?

Randy sez: Yesterday, I asked Sylvia to email with the URL of this missing web site so I could investigate. She did, and gave me permission to discuss this on the blog here.

Here is the URL of the site: www.ThePathOfFaith.com.

I had a look at the site today. It’s quite “pretty” but it is, apparently, completely ineffective because Google and other search engines seem to be ignoring it. What’s the deal?

The deal is that Google actually does index the site, but it’s lost in the noise. Here are some of the things I did to test that:

1) First, I Googled the actual URL of the site: “www.thepathoffaith.com”. (I didn’t enter the quotes, just what’s inside them.)

The result was one single entry, the home page of the web site. We conclude from this that Google knows this site exists. That’s the first step. The site is not being blackballed for some strange reason. But there are obviously no incoming links to this site, because if there were, the search above would have found them. (As an experiment, Google “www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com” and see how many results you find. It’s about 1950 as of this minute.)

2) There is an “Articles” section on the site. As I understand it, the purpose of the site is to make these articles public. I clicked on the button to take me to the “Articles” section. I was taken to a page that told me to go to the Site Map in order to get to the articles. This is a needless roadblock for site visitors, and it may explain why nobody links to it–the articles are pretty well hidden. It would be far better to put links to all the articles on this page.

3) I went to the Site Map and clicked on the first article. It’s titled “A Barrier to Trusting God” and begins with the phrase “Mandy struggled with trusting the Lord”. I Googled this exact phrase (including the quotes). The reason for using the quotes is that it tells Google you want to find all articles that contain that exact phrase, with all those words in exactly that order.

Google responded with one result, which was in fact the article I was reading. So that’s the second result–Google has indexed the entire site. However, if you Google that phrase in the normal way that people usually do (without the quotes) then that page does not appear on the first three pages of results from Google. The reason is that the site is not considered “important enough” by Google to rate a result near the top.

How does Google decide which sites are “important” and which aren’t? Part of that answer lies with their famous “PageRank” formula, which determines the rank of every page on the web, based on how many incoming links that page has. The formula is not complicated, but solving the formula requires some basic linear algebra methods which I don’t dare go into here.

The owner of the site could help things immensely by getting some incoming links to the site. In fact, she’s already begun, because my blog now links to her site. So within a day or two, if you do a search for her URL, you’ll see that there are now two results. I won’t be surprised if the first result is this blog entry, but we’ll see.

All of this ties in nicely with what I’ve been saying the last couple of days. A “pretty” web site may be completely ineffective. There are many ways to be ineffective:
* Nobody knows about the site
* Nobody links to the site
* Nobody comes to the site
* Nobody “takes action” after visiting the site

“Taking action” is what happens when a site visitor does what you want them to do. That’s up to you to define, which is the whole point of setting the requirements for your web site. You need to know why your site exists so you can guide your visitors to do whatever it is you want them to do. If you don’t know, they won’t know, and so they won’t do it.

If you want people to be inspired by your site, then the bar is pretty low. You just have to have good inspiring content and make sure people arrive at your site.

If you want to sell thousand-dollar widgets on your site, then the bar is a lot higher. You have to get people to your site, make them a sales pitch, close the deal, collect the money, deliver the widget, and do it all well enough to avoid chargebacks. That’s a whole lot harder.

Let me comment a little more on “pretty sites” since that drew some comments today.

Rob wrote:

As humans, we are visual creatures. So, if someone creates a barebones or cheap-looking blog and website, then it can make it hard for customers to take an author seriously. It’s like you’re sending a signal to the world, “I care more about saving money, than investing in myself and looking like a professional.”

Believe me, content always trumps graphics..you must offer real value for any book or message to sell. But, it’s also important to “package” your message professionally, which establishes more credibility with your audience. It’s hard to take someone seriously if they look “homemade.”

There’s nothing wrong with saving money on a website or blog, but make sure that it looks professional enough to save your career.

Randy sez: Folks, Rob is a marketing expert who really knows marketing of books. Check out his blog at http://wildfiremarketing.blogspot.com/. I had a nice chat with Rob a couple of weeks ago on the phone and we’re on the same page on a lot of things.

I think both Rob and I will agree that “prettiness” is not everything, but it counts for something. The question I would urge every web-site owner to ask is this: “How much does prettiness count with me?”

If you are a professional speaker or a high-level author, then you probably need a pretty site, because that’s what’s expected of professional speakers and bigshot writers.

If you aren’t, then you probably need a much lower level of “prettiness”. Now I would never suggest that you intentionally make an ugly web site. But content is king and always will be on the web. Get great content and get the word out well. As your profile rises, make changes to your “prettiness” as appropriate. An unpublished writer simply doesn’t need a $3000 web site with Flash, dazzling graphics, and hard-to-read grayscale fonts. I would argue that a nice template for a blog might be a reasonably “pretty” and yet inexpensive investment for the beginning writer.

I just got home from critique group and answered a billion email messages, so I’m going to just answer some of the comments you posted today. Tomorrow, I’ll continue with our ongoing discussion on web sites and blogs. Yesterday, I posed the question “Are Pretty Web Sites Effective?” A number of you responded. Let’s look at those comments:

M.L. Eqatin wrote:

But one other question on pictures: Dreamweaver lets you put in little alternate text tags for every picture. Don’t the search engines read those? Somebody told me that google will pick up the picture tags first.

Randy sez: Yes, pictures can be tagged with the “alt” tag, and the search engines will notice those. So, if I have a picture of myself, I might add an “alt” tag that says, “Randy Ingermanson, America’s Mad Professor of Fiction Writing.” And the search engines would see that. That would be good.

However, suppose I had a pretty banner with my picture and the words (in graphic format as part of the banner): “Randy Ingermanson, America’s Mad Professor of Fiction Writing.” Would the search engines see those words? The answer is no. The search engines can’t interpret pictures of words. That’s why “alt” tags exist–to let the search engines know what’s in the pictures.

Heather wrote:

Magically, after complaining about not receiving your newsletter for months and months, this past letter came through. It’s like asking the clerk to help you find a book after searching for hours only to discover it’s been in front of your nose the whole time.

Randy sez: If you have either a Comcast or Yahoo email address, odds are high that they’ve been filtering out my e-zines lately. This is an ongoing problem, and I would love to fix it. Today, I changed my e-zine subscription so that all new subscribers receive a confirmation email with a link that they MUST click in order to complete the subscription. I boo-booed and accidentally had my system send out emails asking all my uncomfirmed subscribers to confirm. They can if they want, but I don’t think it’s mandatory. Those who do should get my e-zine more regularly than those who don’t.

Sylvia wrote:

I’ve noticed that your e-zine, and many of the comments that are posted on your blog, fill up only about half of the page. For reading that is great! For printing it out — it takes a lot of paper. I’m sure there must be a reason for that, and I’m not sure it is worth taking up space on your blog to answer it. Just thought I’d ask.

Randy sez:

Email programs break lines in different ways. Some will break an overly long line at 60 characters, some at 80 characters, and some won’t break it at all.

That’s a problem, so the rule for e-zine writers is to manually break all lines at around 55 characters or so. That way, they can be guaranteed not to send emails that some programs will display as horribly jagged looking blocks of text.

That’s a problem for those who print out my e-zines. (A surprising number do–something that I never would have guessed when I launched the e-zine.) A 55-character line only takes up half the page or so on a piece of paper.

For blogs, the main text column needs to be quite narrow for comfortable reading on the screen. If you print out the page, that means it’ll be narrow on paper. There, you have the option of manually stretching the page, but it’s still a bit awkward.

I don’t know what the best answer is. The primary mode of reading both my e-zine and blog is on the screen, so I optimize it for that. But it does mess up things for the paper-lovers. I guess you could cut and paste the text into a text editor and remove all the line-breaks. It’s a hassle, but that would at least work.

Sylvia wrote:

Me, again! I just remembered that a friend of mine did her own ministry site. She posted all her articles on it. Later, however, when she did a “search” for it, it wouldn’t come up on Google. I don’t know if she tried some of the other search engines or not. A ministry site that can’t be found is of little value!

She called a tech, and got such an involved answer that she finally thanked him and hung up. What can she do?

Randy sez: If you email me privately with the URL of the web site, I’ll look into it and see if I can come up with a reason why Google is not indexing it. I have solved puzzles like this before for my friends. There is always a reason.

David wrote:

The local extension of our nearest community college is offering an evening class, about 15 to 18 hours of instruction, on web pages using FrontPage. I’m thinking of taking this. Any thoughts? Is FrontPage good software for a beginner? From your in-post statement, you seem kind of down on it. I just can’t see plunking down a few grand for a professional site during my unpublished phase.

Randy sez: Go fer it! FrontPage is neither awful nor spectacular. It works quite well and I know at least two good internet marketers who use it. It’s easier for a beginner to use than DreamWeaver, but DreamWeaver is more powerful for experts.

Mary wrote:

I think it depends on the person who wants the site. It’s the same with yards. I’m in love with flowers and herbs and garden paths, so I garden a lot. It’s important to me. I also love graphics. It’s important to me that my website reflect my bent toward the aesthetic.

I truly believe you can have both. I have a nice looking website that I can change the content on, the best of both worlds.

Randy sez: I would agree. An effective blog or web site can be extremely beautiful, just like a great car can be beautiful. But it’s possible for an effective blog or web site to be pretty plain, just like a great car can be plain. There are some folks who try to make us believe that “pretty” and “effective” are the same thing, and that we therefore MUST plunk down the big bucks. ‘Tain’t necessarily so. I think public speakers are held to a different standard. A public speaker needs to dress well and have a very professional looking site. But writers? Uh uh on both counts.

Bruce wrote:

You might want to comment, even if ever so briefly, on your definition of “pretty”. I can think of several conflicting definitions, such as:

“Graphic intensive”

“Layout, white space arrangement, readability”

“Artistic color palette”

“Easy to navigate”

Randy sez: All of these are components of “prettiness.” So is the existence of Flash or JavaScript-driven graphics that show a lot of moving parts. (I met one webmaster who insisted that any site without motion on it was useless. He was about 20 years old and was not particularly adept at marketing.)

Please don’t get me wrong. All of these “pretty” things on a site are nice to have. But they’re not essential for a marketing platform. Millions of dollars are earned every year by people with pretty dull sites that are not “pretty” by any definition of the word.

We’ve been discussing web sites and blogs for the last few weeks. Today, I’ll pick up where we left off on Friday. But first, there’s a student in the back of the class waving her hand wanting to ask a question:

Susan asked:

How complicated is updating a blog on a website compared to one on Blogger? Doing it myself is not an option, and since I’m not independently wealthy, neither is hiring a webmaster to add a new post every few days.

Randy sez: It’s just as easy either way. That’s the beauty of blogging — you set it up once, and then when you want to post, you log in to your site and type a blog entry, without having to ask your webmaster to do anything for you. (You have to log in because otherwise, ANYONE could post entries to your blog posing as you, and you don’t want that.) It is a bit more work to set up the blog on your own site to begin with, but the rewards are high.

Last week, I posted a list of 9 questions you should ask yourself (and answer) before you ever start designing a web site or blog. I’m discussing each of these in more detail now, because your answers determine what kind of site you’ll want to create, the technology you’ll use, and how much time, energy, and money you’ll have to expend.

Question #4 is going to generate some controversy, I’m sure. I’ll discuss some possible answers to this question:

4) How “pretty” do you want your site to be?

Answer a) Extremely beautiful and cutting edge, with lots of motion and graphics

Randy sez: If this is your answer, the next question you should ask yourself is “Why?” This kind of site is going to be expensive. It’ll be hard for you to change, unless your webmaster takes care to make it easy for you to change. (For example, if he installs a blog in the site, that part of it will be easy for you to add content to. But the rest of the site may be far beyond the skills of mortals.) If the webmaster does it in Flash, the site may not even be indexed by the search engines. Remember, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but search engines still think in terms of words. I have seen web sites in which all the text was actually a picture of text. Search engines won’t index that, because they can’t see it.

Answer b) Professional looking

Randy sez: Professional looking is good, as long as it doesn’t detract from your goals. It is not my job, of course, to tell you your goals. It may be that your goals are in line with a professional-looking web site. Be sure that they are before you pay for one, because again, it’s going to cost you money if it’s a full-blown site. You can of course get a beautiful looking blog at no cost, because all the blogging sites have great-looking templates.

Answer c) Nice looking

Randy sez: There’s actually a continuum from super-glitzy sites down to professional down to nice looking down to awful. The nicest looking ones generally cost the most. The key thing is to figure out just how “pretty” it needs to be to do the job. Which means you have to define what “the job” actually is.

Answer d) As long as it doesn’t look like the south end of a north-bound rhino, it’s fine

Randy sez: This kind of a site will cost you even less. This is the kind of site you usually do yourself, using FrontPage or DreamWeaver or whatever, including the graphics. Sites like this can look “OK” but they are going to make a statement about you. Be sure that the statement your site makes is the one you want it to make.

Answer e) I don’t care if it’s ugly as sin

Randy sez: We have all seen incredibly ugly sites. The possibilities are endless: Pink text on blue background. Flashing banners. Dancing text. Tiny text that is fixed at fifteen inches wide. Unreadable Olde English fonts (or a handwritten font in gold ink on a white background.)

The question is whether a great-looking site or a horrible monstrous site makes a difference.

Of course, that’s an impossible question to answer. “Makes a difference” in what way?

Let me point you to a few different web sites, all of whom belong to tremendously successful internet marketers.

Tom Antion’s site. This is a pretty primitive site, as Tom himself will tell you. He did it himself in FrontPage, and it looks like it. But Tom’s laughing all the way to the bank, earning millions of dollars from that site and others like it. Tom is one of the best internet marketers I know. He’s not a techie. He’s a marketer. I’ve learned a ton from him.

Alexandria Brown’s site. Ali Brown is the “E-zine Queen” and she does a great job of teaching how do an e-zine. I learned most of what I know about doing e-zines from her. Notice that her site is pretty basic. It’s one page. The movie at the top looks squashed in my browser, though it might look fine in other browsers, I haven’t checked. Ali makes a lot of money from her site also. Why? Because she gives away good solid info and she has a good line of products to sell.

James Brausch’s new blog. This site is just a blog. It’s got a clean, utilitarian design. There are no Flash intros or glitzy graphics. James is a leading expert in such things as traffic, copywriting, and product creation. And if you look at his blog, you’ll see he spells that out: “Traffic + Copywriting + Products = Successful Internet Business”. He also makes a ton of money, and he deserves it, because I don’t know of anyone better at some of the things he does.

Perry Marshall’s web site. This is another small site. Notice that it doesn’t look like Perry spent a ton of money on a webmaster. It looks like it could have been done in FrontPage. Perry, by the way, is one of the world’s leading authorities on using Google AdWords as an advertising service. If found Perry a couple years ago when I wanted to find out more about AdWords. So I checked to see whose ad on AdWords placed highest. I figured those people would be the experts. Perry was right up there among the top 2 or 3.

What’s the moral of the story here? You can have an immensely effective web site or blog without having a “pretty” site. Of course you can an immensely ineffective site or blog that isn’t pretty. From what I can see, there’s not a lot of correlation between “pretty” and effective, at least if you define “effective” to mean “earns money.”

I am sure that many people are now going to tell me that a web site or a blog for a novelist is “different” and that it’s more important for a novelist to have a “pretty” site than for a mere million-dollar earning business mogul. I would be interested to hear why that is so.

Yesterday, I posted a LONG discussion on how to figure out the requirements for your web site. I made a list of 9 questions you should answer before you ever start designing your site. I’d like to discuss those next.

Craig wrote:

I’m teaching a course on web design for homeschooled middle and high schoolers. Could I use your list of questions in this post with them?

Randy sez: Yes, just tell them where you got them. By the way, folks, if you’re finding this discussion useful, go ahead and spread the word.

OK, let’s look at that first question on the list I made yesterday, along with the possible answers. For each answer, I’ll tell you what design constraints that’s going to impose on you.

Question 1) What is the purpose of your web site?

Answer a: To let me express myself

Randy sez: If that’s your only goal, then you may not need more than a blog. If that’s one of your goals, then a blog should probably be part of your site.

Answer b: To let me tell the world about myself

Randy sez: Again, a blog might fill the bill here, depending on how much there is to say about you. Or you might want a small web site with a few pages (unless there is just an awful lot about you that needs saying).

Answer c: To tell the world about my books

Randy sez: A blog could in principle do this, but most authors with a few books want a web site with one page per book. Be aware that the world quite honestly doesn’t CARE that much about your books, so you should think seriously about making your site about more than just your books.

Answer d: To market my books

Randy sez: If you actually want to MARKET your books using your web site, then you’ll be wanting to attract people to your site who never heard of you. That means you need a way to bring in traffic to your site, and it should be free traffic, because you simply can’t afford to pay for traffic on the royalties from your books. Attracting traffic means that your web site needs to be about MORE than just your books. (Otherwise, the only people who come to your site will be people who ALREADY know about your books, and that’s not really marketing, is it?)

Answer e: To market other products or services

Randy sez: The same goes here as for Answer d above. Depending on the profit margins for these products and services, you might be able to pay for traffic using something like Google AdWords. But it’s always better to get free traffic than to pay for it, so it still makes sense to make your site about something that will bring in traffic. More on this later.

Answer f: To give away my ideas for free

Randy sez: That’s very altruistic! Good for you! Giving away ideas for free is a Good Thing To Do, and I highly recommend it. I’ll note that you aren’t required to give away every one of your ideas for free. You can give away some and sell some. I happen to think this is a smart thing to do. You might very well get a lot of free traffic, you’ll definitely do something good for the world, and you will earn enough money so you can afford to come up with more ideas to give away for free. It can turn into a vicious circle of goodness if you don’t watch out!

Answer g: Some other purpose

Randy sez: Oh, that’s helpful. Make sure you know what that purpose is, because it will determine what sort of site you need.

Answer h: Any combination of the above

Randy sez: Figure out which combination it is, and then read my remarks above for each one that applies.

That’s enough for one day. We’ll look at the next couple of questions on my list tomorrow.