avatarRené Junge

Summary

The website content discusses strategies for authors to build their mailing lists by offering free content, such as a free book, without relying on personal blogs or Amazon's limited free promotion days, through platforms like Noisetrade.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of building a mailing list for authors, particularly those new to the field, by providing free content to attract subscribers. It suggests that while Amazon's free promotions were once effective, they have become less so, and authors should consider alternative methods. The platform Noisetrade is highlighted as a tool that allows authors to offer free ebooks in exchange for readers' email addresses, ensuring that the authors can maintain direct contact with their audience. The author of the article shares personal experience using Noisetrade to grow their newsletter subscribers, noting that while the number of downloads may not be as high as on Amazon, the quality of contacts is better due to the targeted approach. The article concludes by encouraging authors to leverage social media to promote their free offerings and to start building a mailing list early on, as it provides a significant advantage in the competitive field of authorship.

Opinions

  • The traditional method of using Amazon's free promotion days is deemed less effective now, as it often fails to result in meaningful engagement or sales for authors.
  • Direct contact with readers is invaluable, and obtaining their email addresses is crucial for ongoing marketing efforts.
  • Noisetrade is considered one of the best methods for new authors to gain subscribers without a large marketing budget.
  • The quality of subscribers obtained through targeted social media promotion is believed to be higher than those gained through mass free downloads on Amazon.
  • Building a mailing list is presented as a clear advantage for authors, setting them apart from many others who do not have such a list.
  • The author personally endorses Noisetrade as an effective tool for promoting a newsletter and gaining subscribers, despite having moved on to other marketing strategies.

Marketing for authors who are still in their infancy: Build your mailing list with free content, without having your own blog.

In the blogger scene, it has long been the case that small gifts maintain friendship — or even bring friends in the first place. They should offer free downloads to lure readers to their blogs. What authors can learn from this, I’ll tell you in this article

Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

Gaining subscribers through a free Amazon promotion?

These readers should then subscribe to the blog, which increases its reach.

But what do I offer as a book author to attract e-mail subscribers? The answer is straightforward: a free book.

For a long time, the implementation of a free campaign at Amazon was considered a good way for ebook authors to make their work better known and at the same time, gain visibility in the ranking. But the effect has worn off.

The book is downloaded many thousands of times, but in the end, the author hardly gets anything out of it.

The idea of making a name for oneself as an author through controlled, free distribution of one’s works is nevertheless not wrong.

But the possibilities to do that are sparse. Amazon only allows five free days per quarter. If you manage to sell more than 10,000 books for free during this time, you have a real chance of moving up days later to the visible areas of the popularity ranking, where potential customers perceive the book and in the best case buy it as soon as the book has a price again.

If the book doesn’t take this hurdle (and most people don’t), it will fall back into invisibility.

Also, one wonders: What if I had the e-mail addresses of all those readers who downloaded my book? I could just send them a message at my next new release and see if they wouldn’t want to buy my latest work.

A beautiful dream. But dreams don’t fill you up. What remains is the realization that direct contact with interested readers would be worth its weight in gold.

And here we remember the bloggers: If they manage to bind readers by offering downloads, why not us authors too? But we don’t want to be dependent on Amazon. The question remains how this can be done technically.

So far, the answer has mostly been: Open a blog yourself. There you can offer your stuff for download. Or simply via your homepage.

But who wants to seriously start building a blog if you don’t have one yet? You don’t? No, neither do I.

Outsourcing the technical implementation with Noisetrade

This platform formerly only allowed musicians to present their works and offer them for free download. Noisetrade provides a beautiful presentation page and also the free hosting of the downloadable files.

The clue about this is that every interested party first has to give their e-mail address to get to the download link of the desired file.

Everyone must agree that his address is passed on to the author of the file and that he may contact them by mail. Noisetrade will then make the e-mail addresses collected in this way available to the musician for his own advertising purposes.

But in the meantime, also authors can make direct reader contacts via this platform. Noisetrade allows us to make ebooks available for free download. In return, we receive the e-mail addresses of the downloaders.

This is A win-win situation for the reader and the author.

Of course, thousands of downloads are not realized in this way in a few days, but one can be relatively sure that only interested readers download the books. Why? Because they are readers who we direct to this download page through advertising on our own social media channels.

Today I don’t use Noisetrade anymore because I use other possibilities to promote my newsletter. However, I still consider Noisetrade to be one of the best ways to get new subscribers for authors who are just starting and don’t have a big marketing budget.

I used to draw attention to my free book via Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. On some days, I receive up to six new e-mail addresses for my newsletter. Unfortunately, I then stopped promoting my Noisetrade page.

In the end, I still had over 200 subscribers. Most of them are still on my list today.

Once you have built up a list with a few hundred subscribers, you already have a clear advantage over many other authors.

There are not so many authors with such an extensive mailing list. Most of them don’t have a mailing list at all. That’s reason enough to build one yourself.

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Self Publishing
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