Share the darkness

My first experiment was using Stumbleupon as an avenue for social media advertising. I’d count that one as a success-in-progress. All I need is money to pay for a full-scale assault, but that’s pretty much up to you guys at this point.

Now For My NEXT Trick!

The target: The untapped masses of file sharers using bittorrent to…umm… share!
I know its hard to imagine, but there are still a few people out there who have never heard of Dark Icon. Some of those people are seeking their entertainment using bittorrent. Let’s go get those people!

Okay, enough with the happy-hype, I’m starting to feel ill. Seriously, here’s the latest thing:

I’ve taken my short story, Crimes of Personality, and packaged it in a PDF file. I created a torrent, submitted it to Mininova.org, and now I’m seeding it so that people can download it on bittorrent.

Now why would I go and do a fool thing like that? Don’t I know that if people can download and read my stories on bittorrent I can kiss my advertising revenue goodbye?

Maybe. Maybe not. That’s debatable, and it doesn’t matter. Remember, I wasn’t counting on advertising revenue ANYWAY. And inside each PDF is a link (or two or three) back to darkicon.com. If people read the story, they might check out the rest of the site. If they check out the rest of the site, they might do any number of other cool things that would help me out… like link me on Digg or stumbleupon or delicious, or donate money, or participate the Asylum Walls… stuff like that. Once I get more people (by at least a factor of 10, preferably 1000) doing that, then I can start worrying about ad revenue.

Results so far? Too early to tell. Two people have downloaded the pdf, and one of them was still seeding it the last time I checked. That’s a good sign. I need more people to seed, because once enough people start sharing the file, I can turn off MY bittorrent client and start using my internet connection for other things *cough*porn*cough* without a performance hit.

That brings me to this: The link to the torrent file for Crimes of Personality. Click here.. If you use bittorrent, you know what to do without me asking. YOU can download and seed the file. Meanwhile, I will submit the torrent to other trackers and get more people interested in it.

You DO want more playmates over at the Asylum Walls, don’t you?

Social Media Traffic

For those of you who actually care about my efforts to earn some bill-paying money here and what I’ve been doing to make that happen, here’s the latest:

My experimental attempt at social-media marketing (i.e., paid clicks on StumbleUpon is paying off. Big Time.

Of course “Big Time” is relative, but basically here’s what’s happening: So far I’ve paid for about 1000 visitors on that service, at a cost of 5 cents per visitor. These aren’t ad impressions that somebody may or may not click on, these are people who click on the “Stumble” button on their toolbar and ended up on my site, either on the Library page or on the short story Crimes of Personality. If visitors like what they see, they can “thumbs up” or “approve of” the page. Thats where things get interesting. Realize that the first big rush of people are all paid traffic. I pay money and they show up. I stop paying money, they stop showing up. That’s pretty much what you’d expect, right?

But if somebody gives me a thumbs-up, this site goes into rotation with all the others that they have approved of… thus the site continues to pop up randomly every time somebody clicks the “Stumble” button, even AFTER I stop paying money. The more people approve of a page, the more likely it is to show up when somebody clicks that magic “stumble” button. So far, of the two pages I have paid advertising for, 17 people have approved of “Crimes of Personality” and about 12 have approved of The Library. These are in the categories of “Science fiction” and “Fantasy books”, respectively, so yes we are talking about targeted traffic here.

Seventeen and twelve are pitifully small numbers, but guess what? They’re working. People are starting to show up from stumbleupon even WITHOUT me paying money. It is currently my largest source of traffic even AFTER I subtract the paid visitors. People are finding this site randomly without me paying for the privilege, and some of those people are giving me the golden “Thumbs-up”, thus making it more likely that others will do the same. Now don’t get excited… we’re only talking 100 to 300 visitors a day here. But no, DO get excited… because if the current trend holds, this number will keep growing BY ITSELF without me spending another dime. And that is exactly what’s happening. Also get excited because my expenditure to get to this point has been extremely low… and if I had the money (hint, hint), I could open up the floodgates and REALLY put this place on the map for very little cost. The 100 to 300 visitors a day is the result of random advertising efforts done over the period of a month… whenever I had $5.00 to spare to buy 100 visitors. With sufficient funding I COULD have done that all of that in a day… every day… for a month.

Think of where I’d be THEN, eh?

First donation

I got my first donation yesterday. It was from one of the *former* regulars over at the Asylum Walls who has rediscovered the site. He’s glad that I’m writing again, and decided to support the effort. Thanks.

I’m sure a year from now I’ll look back and think how silly I am making an entire blog post about ONE donation, but it’s the first one so it’s kinda special.

What am I gonna do with the $25?
Part of it is going to fund more advertising efforts, and the rest I am putting aside to help pay my web hosting fee.

Spreading the word

I guess I haven’t been doing a very good job of documenting my attempt to turn this website into a bill-paying venture. So here’s the latest:

I need to build a LOT more traffic if I’m going to make any non-trivial amount of money. Fortunately, I’m in a good position as far as having something to offer new visitors. I’ve got enough existing content to keep a new fan busy for literally months without me having to write another word. I just need to GET them here.

To that end, I’m running two advertising campaigns. One is on ProjectWonderful, a nice new ad network that’s primarily used for webcomics. It’s cheap, and the audience is *close* to what I need to target. I’m also throwing some money at StumpleUpon for paid traffic. The two are both giving me good results as far as percentages go, but the raw numbers are somewhat disappointing. ProjectWonderful is NOT a pay-per-click network, but if I crunch the numbers I’m essentially paying $.01 per visitor. That’s cheap. StumbleUpon is costing me a flat $.05 per visitor. Five times more expensive, but the traffic is more targeted. My campaign at StumbleUpon is bringing me people who are interested in Fantasy Books, whereas the traffic from PW is…well… folks who like webcomics. You tell ME which group is worth paying more for.

Both of these campaigns are extremely cheap, but unfortunately I still can’t afford to keep them going much longer. I’ll keep them going as long as I can, and throw some money in their direction whenever I get some to throw.

That’s pretty much it for this status report. Like anybody cares.

You know what I hate?

People who hate money.
People who think that money automatically “poisons” anything worthwhile.
People who hate rich people simply because they’re rich (or are trying to become rich).
People who think there’s something WRONG with wanting to get paid.
People who think they actually have some kind of INPUT into how much money another person should have or make.

Money is not the root of all evil. The actual quote says that LOVE of money is the root of all evil. But you know what… even the actual quote is wrong. (I don’t care where it came from, it’s still WRONG). The real root of all evil is ENVY.

All the people on my list above don’t really hate money. They hate fact that someone ELSE has more of it than they do. THAT’S the root of all evil. The world would be a lot better off if paid less attention to the contents of other peoples’ pockets and more attention to the contents their own minds and hearts.

“Yeah, eat the rich but PAY ME, MOTHERFUCKER!” – (hed)PE.

More on donations

I’ve changed the donation links so that instead of going straight to PayPal, they point to an an on-site page where I beg for money explain what the donations are for. I think that will work out better.

In the near future (i.e., before the end of the month) I will have some kind of donation reward that will (hopefully) change every month. I haven’t quite figured out the logistics of how that will work yet, though. Those who donate NOW, before I get a chance to put the reward up, will not miss anything. I’ll keep track of who/what/when/where, and you’ll be notified if you’ve got something coming. As for what the rewards will be… right now, I’m thinking either:

1. stories that are (and will forever be) unavailable in the library
2. early access to stories that will EVENTUALLY be available in the library
3. sneak peaks/chapters of upcoming longer works
4. other materials, such as artwork, story outlines, scripts, etc
5. all of the above

I’m leaning toward item #5.

I’m ALSO considering starting a new serial fiction project what will be distributed on a monthly basis, but ONLY to people who donate during that month. That would be evil, wouldn’t it? …and the more evil it is, the more likely I am to do it. But logistics plays a part in that; I’ll need to see what’s possible as far as minimum donations, etc.

Keep watching this blog for more information.

The donation system

I had planned to make a long, rambling post about donations and what I thought about the concept.

Somebody over at the The Asylum Walls suggested it first, and my rather succinct response actually covers the same ground in a lot less time, so here it is:

“A donation system is probably what I’m going to try first, with selling books (of the electronic and physical variety) coming a bit later, and some kind of “subscription” service as another alternative. There’s also a couple of different variations of the “donation” system that I’m thinking over. Refusing to let people read my stories unless they pay money is not the FIRST thing I want to try, but I might get there eventually if the first things don’t work. The donation banners are already going up in the new library.”

More later.

How much is a good story worth?

If it’s in paperback, less than $10.00.
If it’s hardback (and new, and not on sale), around $30 to $40.
And if it’s been out a while, you might be able to take your pick.

…umm, wait. Isn’t the same story in BOTH books? Word-for-word identical? So when you buy a hardback book you’re essentially paying a 300% markup just for a format that lasts longer and has a better cover. Or maybe you’re paying for the privilege of reading it sooner rather than later.

But how much is the actual STORY worth, separate from the format? You can assume that the cost of a paperback is closer to the cost of the actual content, but how “close” is “closer”? I’d need somebody in the publishing industry to tell me that, and I’d be really interested in the answer.

But there’s another way of looking at it. Maybe a story (independent of format) is worth five bucks to you. That’s just an “out of my ass” ballpark figure. How much do you think it’s worth to the author, though? You BUY a story for five bucks (plus anywhere from 5 to 35 EXTRA dollars for presentation and format)… how much did the author sell it for? A HELL of a lot more than five bucks, I’ll tell you that. From the author’s point of view, that story may be worth anything from a few car payments to a new car. Sure, you don’t pay that much individually, but collected revenue from all the people who buy those $5 stories adds up quick.

So how much is a story worth to ME? $100 a month? $1000? I’m not really sure… but whatever figure I come up with can’t POSSIBLY be the same amount I ask from an individual before he reads it. That doesn’t make sense, even on the internet. We… you and me… need to come up with some kind of middle ground.

So tell me… how much is a good story worth to you REGARDLESS of physical format?

The best way to build an audience

Serial fiction.

If you know how to write a fucking awesome ending… to every chapter.

If you know how to create characters that people give a damn about.

If you’re not afraid to put those characters into situations that even YOU don’t know how they’ll get out of…

Then serial fiction is the way to go. But then, I’m biased. Pretty much everything I’ve ever written was presented serially, one chapter at a time. I’m not sure I know how to write any other way. What… write a novel that nobody actually reads until you’re DONE!? Oh HELL no…

But serialized fiction has been good to me. I’m hoping it will be good to me again. My mission here is to rebuild my audience, and I can’t really say I know any other way to do it than the way I did it the first time: One. Chapter. At. A. Time.

Damn, those where the days

What does this mean to you, though? Will I be starting on some new serial fiction project in the near future? Probably. Right now there are three ideas jumping up and down, demanding to be written. And they’re multiplying… there used to be only two! The one thing I have to watch out for is that I have time and attention constraints. I can’t dive right into three different simultaneous stories like I did in the past. There’s too much real-life crap going on, and that shit is multiplying just as fast. So I need to decide on ONE story to write, and I probably don’t need to start with a novel-length work right off the bat. I’ll let those ideas marinate (and multiply) for a while while I chew on a few smaller projects. Like finishing off a certain Dragon’s Inn flashback story, perhaps. Then maybe I’ll have a clearer idea of what I want to do and how I want to do it.

The whole “making money” thing will have to be factored in, of course, but I’ve got some ideas on that, too.

Hell, why not just go for it:

Anybody got $30,000 they can give me? I won’t pay it back, but I promise I’ll write a lot of stories. Good ones, too.
How about $15,000? I’ll only write half as many stories, but that’s still a lot.

Anybody?

….hello?