At least, I hope so. 'Cause most of such plans don't go anywhere for me, even though I have tons of fun setting them up. It kinda reminds me of the days when my sisters and I would spend literally hours setting up our Playmobil figurines for a game, and then the actual game play lasted, like, fifteen minutes before Mom called us to dinner. Some things don't change, but at least I'm not wasting my siblings' afternoons this time.
Yes, I said "kinda" and I inserted the word "like." Get over it, Writer's Brain! (Why, yes, yes, I am speaking to myself. Got a problem with that?)
The plan? Create incentive to join my e-mail list, by distinguishing between members and non-members. For every three stories I release on my website, one is available to EVERYONE and two more are available only to the people who check off the little box thingy on my Mailchimp form that says, "Yep, I want to be a member and access more free fiction," or something like that. |
The importance of an e-mail list has been drummed into my head over and over by people like Jeff Walker and Ryan Deiss. Get an e-mail list and you have prior permission to engage with people and, hopefully, to sell them your stuff. Ryan Deiss especially drilled that into me when he showed how his company distinguishes what e-mails people receive based on what level of response they show to the first few e-mails of an engagement series. A little light bulb lit up over my head and I realized: Yeah, people deserve to get more attention from me if they show more interest in what I offer!
Okay, stop laughing. I'm not always bright, but at least I take action once I know how dumb I've been.
I wasn't sure about this idea of distinguishing the levels of engagement at first, but I asked a few of my friends what they thought and so far, the response has been positive.
So I just spent a good part of today spiffing up my Member Site so that it would look inviting to the people who decide they want to sign up on my form. I would like to design a more eye-catching opt-in page than this one, but it'll do for now:
Note: If you don't care about the new changes, just skip this part. I'm writing it all down because I started this website to keep track of what I do and why I do it, so I won't forget how far I've come. If you learn from it, great. If it bores you to tears, by all means, read something else!
- Instead of having pages for Short Stories, Novelettes, Novellas, and Novels, I just lumped my stories into catch-all categories: Five-Minute Fiction (microfiction/short stories), Episodic Fiction (could be anything from a short story to a novella, broken up into episodes), and New Novellas & Novels (just what it says).
- I changed my home page from my blog to more of an "about" page. I previously used my blog as my home page because that's what Michael Hyatt does, and it seems to be a good way of showing quickly what kind of content you provide. However, now I've decided on a different home page because it will be easier to include a short introduction to me and my fiction at a point that's "above the fold."
- I added a "What's Going On Now?" page to showcase the latest story, reveal the cover of the upcoming story for #FictionFriday, and give a sneak-peek of what the Review Team is reading.
- I gave "Member Site" and "Review Team" their own tabs on the navigation bar, instead of hiding them behind the "Login" tab, and I made the titles of member site pages viewable, so non-members can drool about the stories they can't read until they become members. Ha!
Well, that's enough changes for one day. I better look like I've spent today on the couch. See, my chronic illness flared up bad last Monday and has been rotten ever since then (Day 6, everyone!), to the point where I stayed home from a party today in order to get some rest. Martian Kitty (first introduced here) told me she would be mad if she came home and I told her, "I got so much work done today!" instead of resting.
Whoops.