OK, so my website (selling an ebook) is only getting 15-25 hits a day, even though I'm writing articles for ArticlesBase and I have it as a signature link in several forums.

I want to stay anonymous as an author of this book, so no Facebook, Twitter or Youtube videos...

Plus how will that work on Facebook? My Ebook is for people with poor social skills, so I can't imagine people seeking to join "Social Skills" groups since they wouldn't be anonymous.

Oh and let's not forget I'm targeting people with a lacking social life, so how likely is it that they're active on FB/Twitter anyway? lol

I can't afford to pay for AdWords, etc.

I keep hearing about SEO, but I know nothing about it. I know nothing about HTML and all that fancy stuff. I made my site using the Host Wizard. SEO seems like a world of complication.

Is SEO that effective? I also hear that it's very tricky and best left to experts and is EXTREMELY expensive, but I hear it being talked about like it's a standard procedure now.

Right now I'm kind of stuck when it comes to promoting my site and getting traffic. All I know of SEO so far is adding keywords to the site content that hopefully the search engines will catch and list in people's search results.

Are there any other methods for technology idiots like me, or will it be necessary to use SEO?

Why not throw it up in ClickBank and see if others will sell it for you? You might need to give out a 50-70% commission (which is normal there), but if you have others doing the push, you have no costs.

Socially awkward people use facebook too. There aren't that many people with literally 0 friends, and one can find a broader range of social interaction online than offline if they fall in that category.

Is SEO necessary? Well, yes, if you would like to get organic search results. What you described a little bit ago is what's known as on-site SEO. Off-site stuff involves getting links from places such as article directories, blogs, and other sites that pick up and link to your site. As a one-page site, you will probably be fairly limited to writing articles, answering peoples questions and hopefully getting reviews at popular places.

You can also manually submit your site to many directories, free or paid, or even pay someone else to do that for you and save time. Directory Critic » Directory Lists, Article Directory Lists, Link Building, Directory Templates & Resources is probably the number one best source for finding directories to submit to. When submitting to a directory, be sure to read the directories submission guides to be sure you get included without wasting the owners' time. Many directories won't include a site such as yours, but I'm sure there are plenty that will.

Places such as yahoo answers may have people with relevant problems you can answer. Give them good advice, and you can source your site.


Learn how to use the google keyword research tool so you can find which types of keywords you want to attack with your links by including them in your anchor text. (the blue text you actually read in a link, instead of the http:// blahblahblah.bleh)

Blitz through the ample knowledge out there on what causes google to ban/penalize your site, for example, paying for inclusion in link farms will do it. Plenty of 'black hat' SEO techniques (masking your site so the spiders have one set of content to crawl through, while people arrive and see something else) will be, or eventually become a problem.

I'm going to tell you right now not to write your site for the spiders... You can alter your words a little here and there to try and tweak it to include keywords, but don't mash them in where they don't fit, and don't just include a list of them on the site somewhere. Always write for the end user.

Hmm... I almost forgot. There are ways to look up who's linking to your competition. I'd have to dig around on my computer to (hopefully!) find the tools for that, but basically when you look up who's linking to other people in your niche, you can find out how/why/and if you can get links there too.

Of course, even the main big search engines need you to show up on their radar. This will happen if you submit to them, or if they find you linked from a popular source.

All of the above is some pretty basic stuff, but what'cha gonna do. I also wonder about the quality of the article site you're using? It won't help much if the article site you post to gets only a handful of visitors, when there are others that get many thousands per day. Some of them even do revenue sharing with adwords and other such things.. I actually have a list of those. From what I read, most of the writers don't make much. And you might want to be careful not to wind up with your own campaign showing up on your articles- Some of them might not appreciate you selling with your article, always good to read the TOS if that route appeals.

Now for the questions I have for you!

Are you sure advertising is too expensive? If you don't have good search rankings, you may have to fall back on ads to get the (genuinely interested) people.

Why anonymity?

Do you have any friends who are knowledgeable, and willing to do this for you for a results-based-commission?

If you follow Bob's advice, just be aware that they have a (think 60) day refund policy, and ebooks are fairly commonly refunded.

Don't think that socially-challenged people aren't using social media. It's quite the opposite actually. By joining groups and forums, reaching out and connecting with your audience, you can make a big impact just on social media platforms like Twitter, etc.

SEO is definitely also something you can learn. Don't be intimidated by it; it's just a tool you can use like anything else. It's worth the learning curve. No, you won't learn everything in a few hours. Learn a little at a time and apply it as you go.

FDJustin has given great advice, I did the same exact thing last year and created an ebook. It seems like you're already to a good start since you're already getting at least some hits. I had no clue how SEO worked when I created mine but I just researched, researched some more, and IMPLEMENTED what I learned right away. A very good starter course is the thirty day challenge, it's completely free and it guarantees that you'll make at least $1 from SEO efforts after the 30 day period.

Also check out the warriorforum.com, that will also have everything you need that the 30 day challenge doesn't cover. SEO can be a completely free process (if you do it yourself) or very expensive if you hire the best to do it for you. It's easy to get screwed over by SEO companies if you don't at least know the basic theory to how SEO/SEM works, it's really not that hard to learn I promise!

I can't offer much help with the SEO stuff, but the first thing that stood out to me was "socially awkward"

Can you reframe this as "networking"

I am sure a lot more people are willing to admit they are working on "expanding their network" or their networking skills" than they are to admit that they are working to become less socially awkward.

It may make it easier to set-up a facebook group that way and get people to join.

Thanks you guys, I've been studying up on SEO today actually. I think I just got thrown off by the fact that there are professionals for SEO, and that they're VERY expensive. So I figured that you had to be a genius Google programmer/engineer to do it. But it's actually a lot more accessible than I thought!

Brootal said:

I can't offer much help with the SEO stuff, but the first thing that stood out to me was "socially awkward"

Can you reframe this as "networking"

I am sure a lot more people are willing to admit they are working on "expanding their network" or their networking skills" than they are to admit that they are working to become less socially awkward.

It may make it easier to set-up a facebook group that way and get people to join.

Click to expand...

lol, excellent point. Especially on a non-anonymous site like Facebook.

Fennec said:

Thanks you guys, I've been studying up on SEO today actually. I think I just got thrown off by the fact that there are professionals for SEO, and that they're VERY expensive. So I figured that you had to be a genius Google programmer/engineer to do it. But it's actually a lot more accessible than I thought!



lol, excellent point. Especially on a non-anonymous site like Facebook.

Click to expand...

Glad to hear it. Basically, you can get very good results with your own work (though those with experience will be able to gain them faster, I'm sure. As with any skill.) ... But for many people, they lack the confidence or time to commit to either learning, implementing or both.

"Networking" is already a well used word on Facebook. Be ready to brainstorm other attractive alternatives if you find something like "networking skills" is too hard to compete with.
What's worse, is I think those who are socially awkward are more apt to use the term they would associate with it; socially awkward. (Or maybe outcasts, or something else?) Networking is almost always associated with business.

Another possible idea is to use Facebook to funnel people off of Facebook, if you're looking to form a group... Where they can be AnonyMouse.

... Of course, you can use a pen-name for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I guess if you really want, you can even have someone else act as a voice actor for your YouTube video, but it will lack a face...

Unrelated note: I love how these forums recognize that Facebook has to be capitalized, YouTube in two places, but not Twitter... Yet.

^ Twitter is *great* if you're good at snappy one-liners, or to make real announcements that lead to more thorough marketing venues. I think people would easily tire of the "Look out! Starbuck's Chilean Dark Roast 50% off!! Bonanza!!" tweets and end up ignoring them.

I think I'm going to start trying out Twitter, though I think people have to follow you in order to actually get your Tweets seen by anyone.

Fennec said:

I think I'm going to start trying out Twitter, though I think people have to follow you in order to actually get your Tweets seen by anyone.

Click to expand...

I hope, you do better than I do. I have about 16,000 followers and get less than 2% of my traffic from twitter. I tweet a couple of times a day but I do not spam.

Facebook is doing much better with approx. 15 % and 1-2 posts in 2 days.

Rick said:

I hope, you do better than I do. I have about 16,000 followers and get less than 2% of my traffic from twitter. I tweet a couple of times a day but I do not spam.

Facebook is doing much better with approx. 15 % and 1-2 posts in 2 days.

Click to expand...

Do you think it's because FB allows you more than 140 characters in your posts? I'd imagine that it would, because with FB you'd have to click on the "read more" button to see a full post if it's long enough...whereas with Tweets, people get their snapshots of the Tweeters they're following in one glance when they log-on, so there's no incentive to actually click on the person's page and read other stuff that might persuade them to visit the website. In fact, even the whole tweet itself might go unnoticed or skimmed, because the person's also glancing at the quick quips made by everyone else they're following.

Not sure if that wall of text made sense, but that's my suspicion.