Why do I Need More Than One Web Site?

LinkTiles is a catchy little site where you are able to create a "tile" (a little square) that represents whatever you want to be promoting and then it links to ALL of your web sites. If you just have one site, you may soon have more. I would have laughed had I heard that a few years ago, but I have about 12 web sites hosted and about 5 other networks like Ning and MySpace. This one is a blog, and it's my entire site so far.

Others are more extensive like Rest Ministries, which also has Rest Ministries Publishers, HopeKeepers Magazine, National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week and soon-to-be Hope Endures Podcast. Each of these have their very own web site design and are individual sites.

Why so many? As you are marketing you will find that your niche area can be broken down into even smaller niche areas, and then you are able to target those keywords for that individual site, hence, more people will be able to find you on the world wide web.

You should also purchase the URL (the www.___________) for your book titles. If the name is already taken just use MyBooksNameBOOK.com. You may have noticed that movies often do this; when the URL is taken they just buy one and put "movie.com" at the end of it.

This gives you the chance to increase people being able to find the book (and you, the author, for those guest appearances!) but also is an easy way to give your web site on the radio. When I've done radio shows talking about my book, Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend, the host will say, "Where can people find that on your web site, Lisa?" and I say, "Beyondcasseroles.com" and the host says, "Oh! Wow! Great!"

(Remember the other golden rule to always make other people's lives easier! That's a few phone calls the radio station won't have to take because people driving around will actually remember the URL. If it had been www.restministries.org/comfortzone/item3.htm they would not have remembered that and I would have felt pretty silly giving that URL.)

But what happens when your web sites start to multiply and you don't know exactly where to send people? That's where LinkTiles can come in handy. Check it out and see if it's for you. So far, I've not used it extensively, like putting it in my email signatures and all of that. But today's exposure alone being featured in the Concentration Game was worth the 15 minutes it took for me to set up the page.

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!