This is a reprinting of my first Online 411 email newsletter. Today I want to talk about a website that got me over 1,000 impressions within 4 days. The website: http://www.Quora.com.
Quora.com is a question-and-answer website. And, to my mind, the most useful for both asking and answering questions - much better than Yahoo Answers. I just joined on August 8th and answered nine questions in the first two days.
The first question I answered was: Would self-publishing a novel as an eBook affect the likelihood of it getting published in print by a publisher? That question had been viewed 148 times between July 6th when it was asked and August 12th when I checked.
My answer to that question was viewed 167 times within the first 8 hours! And 186 times in the first four days.
Here was my answer: Self-publishing a novel will not turn off publishers - IF you sell a lot of books via great book promotion. Of course, if you don't sell any copies of your novel, then no publisher will be interested.
Self-publishing offers many rewards if done right. Need some inspiration? See the Self-Publishing Hall of Fame at http://www.bookmarket.com/selfpublish.html. That hall of fame features 400 authors who have successfully self-published, including many novelists.
In 3 to 4 days, my other answers were viewed 125 times, 134 times, 133 times, 126 times, 149 times, 143 times, and 124 times.
In the first two days on Quora, I answered 9 questions. So far, that's created 1,120 impressions in less than 4 days - and that doesn't count one answer I can't track.
While links on Quora.com are no-follow (meaning the search engines don't give them any value), users can and do click through on the links you shared. In my first 9 answers, I shared links to my websites at least 3 times - all resulting in more traffic to my websites.
If you feel comfortable answering questions on your specialty (the topic of your book or website), you should start answering questions on Quora.
My first 9 answers took me about 20 minutes total to find questions and respond to them.
I'll be sharing more online marketing tips in the next issue.
John Kremer
http://www.askjohnkremer.com
