Trafficking in Numbers

Four antihistamines, two steroids, three trips to the emergency room and--still--innumerable hives. But that's not actually what I meant.

It used to be that when authors talked about numbers, they meant the number of books they've sold, or the size of their first print run, or how much their advance was.

But, increasingly, what you'll hear is people talking about "website traffic." The old saw about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing applies very well here. Authors are told they should have web presences. They are told that they should use those presences to connect with readers, for marketing and publicity, etc. And that's all true. A website can be a powerful tool.

All too often, however, people (and this isn't just authors, it's anyone who's new to website management) believe that the number of "hits", the amount of traffic, on their site is important. They go out aggressively searching for people to link back and forth with because that way they can move up in the google rankings. But does that really matter? Not so much, as it turns out.

I have an online store. It's a vital part of my business so I have to check out both 1) how people find me and 2) how long they stay on the site. I do check on whether they buy anything, but it's very rare that people find me through google or links from other sites and buy things. Usually, my buyers are people who have met me at a trade show or know me from the several online forums I post to. That being the case, why do I care about the stats at all? Because they help me get a handle on what people are looking for, what I need to produce more of, what they find interesting. They may not buy anything from me online, but many of them will be my trade show customers down the line. (I don't have a blog or forum on my site because I maintain my community contacts in more general settings.)

I know why the numbers are important for my business. But those reasons just aren't valid for authors. Here are the last 5 ways people found us:
1) Linked from Marijke's latest blog post
2) Google search on "4 mystery addicts"
3) Google image search on "toadstool"
4) Google search on "short short fifties teens"
5) Google search on "rich women 1800s"

Does that help me particularly? Nope. Interesting, curious even, but not particularly helpful. We average 35 visitors a day, so for grins I checked the last 35 entries. In addition to the above 5:
16 "unknowns"--people who didn't follow a link, just came directly to us
Another Google.uk image search on "toadstool"
2 Google searches on Meg Ruley
1 Google search on Stephanie Kip Rostan
1 link from my.yahoo.com
3 links from blogger profiles
1 Google search on "what woman wrote the first mystery story"
1 Google search on "why are women late to dates"
1 link from http://seanachi.wordpress.com/
1 Google search on "descriptive passages on anger"
1 link from an email
1 link from The Cozy Chicks
1 self-referential link (they came to the front page via an older blog post)

Marijke, Sean and the Cozy Chicks all have links to us in their sidebars. But as you can see, the vast majority of our visitors come either out of the blue or from Google searches that don't much relate to our content. If I were using this blog as a tool to try to sell books, I might be worried about those numbers. But I don't post here in the hope that someone will buy my book. After all, I don't have a book to sell.

Writers will often buy a book even if it's not to their taste, just because they want to support the book's author. That's not true of the general public, though, so I wouldn't expect a reader of this blog to run out and buy my book just because I seemed like a good person. In fact, chances are better that I might offend someone, thereby causing them not to buy my book. (I try not to offend people, but it does happen.)

A while back, the Smart Bitches had a discussion of what works and what doesn't for promotion. Some promos were deemed more useful than others--canvas totes and nice pens being more useful than bookmarks--but no matter how useful the item was, it would never actually prompt someone to go out and buy a book they would not otherwise have bought. The same, I think, is true of a website.

Why, then bother having a website at all? I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, I like to connect with people. It's the same thing I enjoyed about working retail, the same thing I still enjoy about trade shows, and part of the reason I became a teacher. I got a lovely email yesterday from a woman who read an article I wrote for Art Jewelry Magazine. She had, as it turns out, not found me through the magazine at all, but through one of the online communities to which I belong, where I'd gone over some of the details that got lost in editorial translation for the original article and answered more complicated questions about the process I'd described. If I'd just had a stable website, my storefront, she might never have found me "approachable" enough to email.

I expect that several of the people in the community of beaders, beadmakers and jewelers to which I contribute will buy A Snake in the Glass when--yes, when, not if--it gets published, but that's not why I "hang out" there. If it were, pretty soon people would figure out what I was up to and I'd be cast out on my keister.

So what does all this rambling on mean for authors trying to figure out what their agents, editors, etc, mean when they say "you need a web presence?" It means "think before you act." Before you go out and put up a website, think about what you want from it and what kind of "internet person" you are. Do you enjoy going online? Are you the type to frequently update your own site? Can you commit to posting in a blog once a week--or more often? Do you want to hear from your readers, or would you rather they looked to your site for information rather than communication? Will you be posting excerpts from your books? Will you have contests?

There are an infinite number of ways in which you can use your web presence. Before you create your new "home", consider why you're moving.