Welcome to my Wild West!

How has the first month of the year gone for you?

For me, it seems like we closed up 2023 a long time ago, probably because this month has been really busy.

I spent this last month reading and spending a lot of time on the computer working on marketing. Since social media alone hasn’t been a blowout success, I decided to give email marketing a try. 

I also tried expanding my Amazon advertising efforts. $46 later, I had zero sales. Previously, I had a trickle of sales, but since the reports showed no sales, I’d concluded that Amazon advertising on my budget was a waste of effort. Now, I don’t know if any of it was worthwhile or wasted.

So, going back to the library, so to speak, I decided to try setting up an email advertising program. This meant setting up a Book Funnel account, creating a new homepage on my website, and buying a Mailchimp service.

That took most of a day setting up the system. Then, I went back to improve the look of the homepage. After having no problems with a reassigned page, everything suddenly went haywire, and I ended up with a generic template popping up when people tried checking out my website.

At least the original page got moved to drafts and didn’t get deleted. However, WordPress changed, and there is no simple way to change one page or another to Homepage. Not sure if it has to do with my WordPress service level, but it probably does.

So, I had to rebuild the Homepage from scratch, and it definitely has that amateur look now. Frankly, I’m afraid to try fixing it. So far, every effort has proven the law of progressive entropy and nothing else.

I will have to try again though. Maybe this time I’ll have to force myself to read the WordPress Help section.

Anyway, I got the email newsletter signup working. Anyone who signs up for my biweekly newsletter will receive a link to download a free copy of the first chapter of Ghosts of Texas. 

If you check it out, please sign up, or sign up below! You can unsubscribe at any time through any email sent to your inbox.

I will also be releasing my new books through the newsletter for free in their complete form prior to publication.

More on that next time. Until then, have an awesome couple weeks!