via Flickr courtesy of Sarah Reid
I’ve wanted to do something for a while, especially after reading about a vanilla freelance writer who shares her weekly freelance earnings in a blog post. It was a comment from my friend Sheri Savill (a fellow kinkster and BDSM writer with a biting sense of humor) about the secrecy of authors and our sales that solidified it for me. Each month, I’m going to give a recap of the month before in terms of sales, views, and followers to show you that there’s nothing to be ashamed about and that I’m not living the high life as a writer.
Are some authors and bloggers doing better than I am? Sure.
Are some doing worse? Uh-huh.
I’ll go through the numbers with you, and then share a tip for what works for me when it comes to promotion.
I hope that I can shed some light on what works and what doesn’t – and help out fellow bloggers and writers along the way. So let’s get to it.
Sex Blogging
- 30 posts
- 10,028 views
- 9 new subscribers (this doesn’t include “followers” on WordPress only those who entered their email address in the subscribe bar)
- 5,270 views
- 11 new subscribers (again this doesn’t include followers on WordPress)
- 53 posts shared by various bloggers – 10/13 had the highest amount of entries with 16
Sex Bloggers Unite Triberr Group
- 10 members
- social reach of 14,000
Erotic Book Sales
Paid – this includes The Adventures of Sir and Babygirl, Sir and Babygirl: Bound by Love, and on Amazon only, The Visitor and The Big Game
- Amazon – 71
- iBooks – 7
- Smashwords – 6
- Barnes & Noble – 5
- Kobo – 2
- All Romance – 2
Free – the only free titles I have are The Visitor and The Big Game
- Smashwords – 75
- iBooks – 16
- Barnes & Noble – 12
- All Romance – 169
I have stories in two anthologies – Erotic Fantasies and (just released on 11/2) Masquerade. I don’t have access to those numbers at my fingertips so I’m not including them.
Let’s recap. In October, I sold 93 books and gave away 272. No, I’m not making a living as an erotic author, but that’s ok. The sales numbers for October are some of the best I’ve ever had.
Just an extra tidbit, I increased my social media followers in October as well
- 13 new Facebook page likes
- 282 new Twitter followers
- 165 new Tumblr followers
My Two Cents
My two cents, for what it’s worth, is that you have to produce quality content for your website/blog on a consistent basis. The more you write, the more views you get. The more you share, the more views you get – and the more followers you achieve. For writers, my advice is this – don’t be afraid to give content away. Write stories on your blog – try out new characters for your readers. For sex bloggers – don’t be afraid to use social media to share your posts. Using the auto-share features in WordPress is wonderful, but it’s okay to share the links multiple times. You can also use free tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule posts. FYI: Tweetdeck only works with Twitter and Hootsuite works with several social media platforms.
I don’t share any of these numbers to brag or earn sympathy (depending on your perspective). I simply want to show the reality of sex blogging and erotic writing. Marketing and promotion as an author is nearly a part-time job in and of itself. That being said, I’m a big believer in content marketing – the idea that if I provide good content (blogs, videos, etc.) that readers want and enjoy, the sales will follow. As an author, I post one, maybe two salesy tweets or Facebook posts a day – if that. As a blogger, I uses tools like Triberr to get my content in front of new people in hopes that they’ll click and read, become new followers, and maybe buy a book or two.
And for the record, it’s perfectly okay if you have zero interest in promoting yourself or your blog. If you enjoy writing and connecting with whoever might read your posts, that’s all that really matters.
OH! And, in October something else amazing happened as well! I was named one of Kinkly’s Top 100 Sex Blogging Superheroes for 2014 – #74 to be exact!
You are certainly building an internet presence! Congrats on your numbers.
Thank you! It requires effort and time, but I believe it will be worth it in the end.
The Triberr thing shot my views up a ton in October so that seemed to work well for me. You’ve definitely figured it out.
I’m so glad Triberr is helping!
I’m not so sure I have it completely figured out – I learn something new all the time. I have a definite opinion on effective marketing, and it requires patience (weird for me, lol). I get overwhelmed sometimes by all the things I could be doing but don’t seem to have time to do.
Congrats!
Thanks!
Your blog is doing so well. Have you thought of monetizing it? Through either affiliate links or ads? When I was blogging in my last career the ads were super successful money-makers for me.
Thanks you. I figured the numbers were pretty good, even though I know there are plenty who have better.
I’m not a big fan of ads – and the latest data shows they don’t work (meaning, people don’t click on them) – but I have some things in the works to monetize the blog, including an affiliate partnership that will debut this week. The problem I’m having now is connecting with the businesses who would want to have sponsored posts or partner.
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