Chocolate

I want to talk about teasers. They irritate me. I suppose they are a terrific marketing ploy, but once I start clicking and find myself needing to read just why somebody wants me to spend $39.95 to finish the story or find out why this is the best recipe my bile backs up.

Maybe I’m old fashioned. I don’t know. Maybe I’m cheap. But, I feel like I’ve just wasted my time. To my way of thinking, if you’re going to use a teaser to sell something you should at least give the folks more than just a whiff of the product. You need to extend something substantial. Like a recipe. A real recipe. Or, a story. Or something.

I realize that with a product you’d eat the shipping and handling costs for the first 50 thingies you give away, but hey, for 50 people they did get something for nothing. And, that is the real attraction. I think. Something for nothing. Or, you could give away your free sample product if they paid the shipping and handling. That would at least get some people interested. And, even if they didn’t bite, the word “Free” floated past their eyes. They spent time at your site.

How many times does it take for a person to be exposed to a product before they actually go out there and buy the ding donged thing? I’m sure it’s more than once.

Which raises the next question. How do you get them to come back to your site? In my own surfing experience once I get on a roll I could not tell you where I came from or how I got there. It’s just a wonderful clicking experience where I land like a bird every once in awhile and high tail it out of there when I see a cat watching me. Or, when I see another tree to go to.

One way I’ve got for folks to return to my site are my newsletters. I offer them in an archived collection at Talking to Spirit, but I also pound one out new each month. This weekend is my weekend for cranking out three articles. And, I’ve sort of been mulling over what to write about. I trust inspiration to hit me when I’m ready to do it, but I also like to be semi-prepared and to that end it occurred to me that maybe I was going to be writing about something I’d already written about and shouldn’t I go culling through my archives to refresh my memory? That’s when the guides stepped in with a, “Nope” for me. They said people write about things they’d already written about all the time. Maybe I’d come up with a new angle on something I’d already explored a while ago. And, if I didn’t remember I’d written it what are the chances somebody else would too? So, I thought that was good advice and I wouldn’t worry about it.

Something else I want to begin work on is the rest of my book. I’ve got all the archived readings sorted into groups and all they were waiting for was for me to make a pdf file and send it off to http://www.lulu.com/ for publication. Except I kept dragging my feet. And, I didn’t know why. Hey, this would actually allow me to offer something for sale at my site. Seeing as how I don’t do readings anymore (except in dire circumstances and only in real quick answers for folks…and for free). I believe I need to offer the public something of substance. Who needs to go blind at their computers reading all my stuff? Books are much nicer. Anyway, last weekend I finally realized what I needed to do. Each of the chapters needs an intro. Or, more than an intro. I need to just sit there and see what the guides can come up with. Or, the both of us. Anyway, the way the project sits now is it’s just random chocolate chips sprinkled around. We need some cookie dough to bind it all together. Then I’ll bake it in a pdf file.