1000 True Fans – Mission 3: Bribery!

It’s week three already. For the previous two posts in this series, see WEEK 1 or WEEK 2.

Review of Past Week (Social Media): Success!

In my quest to achieve 1000 True Fans, this week was easy. Ask people to join my mailing list, using my active social media accounts. I posted on twitter a few times (no success, like always for me, even with a pinned tweet) and then on Facebook. Facebook’s a little tricky. I first posted on my Author Page and obtained a handful of signups. (I do have that button activated “Sign Up” right on top, but nobody clicks it.)

Also, if/when somebody clicks my header, I wrote a comment with the newsletter sign up link. (I have the following text: Click Here to Sign Up for an AWESOME Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ccWKDn)

The problem with the author page is not everyone that likes it, see’s my posts. So, I then posted to my personal page and received some more subscribers. Then there is this blog. A big THANK YOU to those who signed up. I truly appreciate it.

I updated the signature in my email to say the following: (I’ve been wanting to do this a long time already)

• Follow me on Twitter
• Stalk me on Facebook
• Hang out with me on my Mailing List
• Then there’s always my Blog
• (And now, you’re overwhelmed. Don’t worry, I am too!)
• Debut Novel: Love, Lies & Clones on Amazon

I think this already got me one sign up.

I post on KBoards and I updated my signature to have an “newsletter signup link.” I don’t think this has done much yet, but I haven’t been very active this week.

All in all, not only did these changes obtain some new subscribers, but they were all really good changes that I wanted to make.

Drum Roll…Ready?

Current Subscriptions: 26 fans / 1000 true fans (I’m up 15 people. Yay! Another win form me—doubling my subscriptions for the second week in a row.)

This Weeks Mission: Bribery! Last week, I hinted that we needed to create some type of freebie we can giveaway to attract subscribers (or at least to say, “thank you” to those who have signed up.) I’ve been wanting to get a small collection of my short stories together anyway…so, this challenge gave me the motivation I needed. I spent my entire evening last night editing the three stories I selected, creating the cover design, uploading the product to instafreebies, and figuring out a way to give the story away without having to pay for the mailchimp integration.

Whola! Here’s my giveaway available exclusively to mailing list subscribers:

Enjoy a taste of another world with these three fantasy stories.

• Bitten: A desperate mother struggles to protect her son.
• The Fairy Flu: A sick fairy confronts a childhood rival who threatens the kingdom.
• The Enchanted Apothecary: A grieving shopkeeper becomes suspicious of a mysterious man who keeps visiting her apothecary shop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re a loyal blog follower of mine, you’ll realize I have “The Fairy Flu” and “The Enchanted Apothecary” available for free already—no signup needed. Oh well. Bitten is never been published though, and perhaps that’ll be a little incentive. All in all, it’s a short collection, totaling only 5000 words.

The other thing I did was create two giveaways showcasing the first three chapters of my unpublished novel, Blood & Holy Water. In the beginning and the end of the sample, it urges the reader to sign up for the mailing list if they want to be on top of the rest of the novel being released. (As an added bonus, I uploaded it twice, once with each of my covers, to see which one draws more interest since I’m still deciding between them. Both covers are “clickable” if you want to be taken over to the instafreebies site.)

  Blood & Holy Water

Ava’s sick of mundane angel duties. She wants a promotion to finally earn her wings. A promotion takes more than hard work, it takes a miracle – literally. Unfortunately, her miracle’s impossible, as it involves a vampire.

Fin doesn’t deserve a miracle and can’t be bothered helping a naïve angel. He’s busy keeping the Blood Board off his back. For years he’s avoided his own kind, but now his secret has surfaced. Nothing can help him except a miracle. Too bad he scared the angel away.

As a reminder, for the first month of growing my mailing list, I’m loosely following the program outlined in Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing 101’s Webinar: “30 Days to 100 Fans: Mailing Lists 101,” and this concept of “bribing” someone to join my mailing list is a little unsettling. Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing it anyway, but my goal is really NOT to have a huge mailing list, rather it’s to grow a group of interested readers. I worry, with giving away a freebie, if I’m attracting a “fan” or is someone just downloading the story because it’s free. Will they even read it? Am I wasting my breath? I’m approaching this giveaway more as a “thank you for subscribing” bonus. It probably isn’t as useful of a tool when looked at that way and will probably only have a modest impact on my newsletter subscribers.

Oh, and if you already subscribed, I’ll be sending out the link to my freebie in the first edition of my newsletter, due out in a few weeks.I’m a little nervous on content for that too, and will be blogging about it in the near future.

Now, I just need to go out and promote this freebie. Sigh. What to do.

Promotion Ideas:

• Pinned Facebook & Twitter Post
• “Get Free Book” on left side of Facebook home page?
• Use app called “CoPromote” to spread the word.
• Sign-up link in the front and back of the novel I have for sale
• Notify people of the giveaway using the hashtag #instafreebie
• Spread the message in Facebook groups and other message boards I’m on.
• Link to it on my blog’s “freebies & publications” page
• (Warning, I’ll be making a purely marketing blog post this week, promoting this.)
• Other ideas? Please share them in the comments section.

If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter/mailing list yet, here’s the link. No pressure, but now you can get a FREEBIE with signup. Ha Ha. Bribery. 😉

Are you following this program with me? How did last week go for you?

Any other ideas for promoting?