Quick question about sales, promotions, etc.

[annettemarie]

I told you all I needed a mentor.

OK, I'm planning on running a couple of promotions over the next few days.

1. A blog giveaway for the new book, probably today through Monday, if I can figure out how to do a blog giveaway, LOL! Any resources on that would be welcome.

2. On Black Friday, I was going to say "buy the $50/4 season book set, get the Advent book free"

and

3. On Cyber Monday, I was going to offer the Winter guide ($15) and the Advent guide ($10) in a bundle for $20

My questions:
Are these decent deals? I mean, are they good enough to bother with?

What if someone wins the giveaway but already bought the book? Should I have a contingency plan?

Someone bought the $50 set and Advent book today. Should I refund her the Advent book money? I'm leaning towards yes.

What is the best way to get the word out on all this?

I'm no good at promoting. If I had my way, I'd just give it all away for free because I have no business sense.

[SleeplessMommy]

The first question is how many visitors per day on your web site. You can try to improve search engine placement or you could offer a small number of free down-loadable lesson plans or craft ideas (.pdf format, with your web addy prominently displayed) These would be "samples" to show what great books you have. You have google adds and multiple "out" links on the web site - these may be hurting your conversion rate.

If you are in e-book format, experimenting with discounts to increase the conversion rate of visitors may make sense. If you have to put a book in the mail, maybe not A free extra item is probably better than a discount on the existing item.

Another option is to find a partner(s) with a complementary product (Waldorf toys, for example) Arrange for a coupon code for your product to be given when a sale is made at that site and vice versa. Your partner can use the words "as featured in Season of Joy curriculum."

[annettemarie]

I am in ebook format. When I started 5 years ago, I printed, but the overhead was insane. To print and bind at Staples and then ship just was really too much. Plus, I really do feel like the ebook format is more ecologically sound.

Anyway... I get between 100-200 visits a day my blog, depending on if I post anything new. I know this is something I have to work on. (Boy, this business thing is starting to seem like a work, LOL!) I really don't know how many I get on my website. That's bad, isn't it? I should probably find out.

I do need to get the ads off that web site. I know this. I will try to take care of that today. I'm not sure what a conversion rate is, though. I like the PDF/Sample idea, but again, I don't know how to do that on my website or on my blog. Something else to learn!

I actually did list a bunch of online toy/Waldorf stores in the Appendix of my book, but it never occurred to me to work out any sort of deal. I've done this for all my books, and just list them because I like them. Is that bad?

[SleeplessMommy]

200 visitors per day is GREAT for a blog.

I really like statcounter.com - basic service is free. Put the stats on your blog and on every page of your web site, so you can track the path of visitors through your site. Once you have some data, you can find out what brought the traffic to your site and make more depth in those areas. Google has conversion tracking (if you use Google Adwords) which can be used to adjust ad campaigns.

Another income opportunity with your visitor rate is affiliate marketing.