Getting into the weeds

It's been a bit since the last issue. I've been dealing with the fact that I am an author of "graphic violence" and how that changes the marketing calculus.

For one thing, there are chapters of the audiobook that I can't publish on TikTok or advertise on YouTube. I can publish them on YouTube, but I cannot promote them.

This has thrown a wrench in the original plan. I'm censored because my main character undergoes involuntary surgery without anasthesia and I write about it in detail. He's in a hospital in HELL, people. It HAS to be painful and frightening. It's Hell.

But that doesn't make it any more palatable to YouTube or the people it triggers.

What little I could advertise generated channel subscribers, but next to zero sales and I'm finding channel subscribers to be a negligible source of repeat viewership.

So I've been thinking about how to drive more eyeballs without running afoul of the censors.

Short Clips

Short Clips are useful. It allows me to skip over the most troublesome bits. That said, this one (with a promotion) got 8,213 views, 17 likes, 3 dislikes, zero comments, and a handful of subscribers. It drove around 130 more "direct" visits to the bulmash.com homepage than in January. There were minimal conversions to sales, though.

It's worth continuing, though, as it sometimes takes multiple touches with a retail customer to generate a sale. There's a reason why you see multiple McDonald's ads in your daily travels.

Book Reviews

How do I connect with my target audience in a more organic way, I asked myself. There are book reviewers on all the major video services... Booktokkers, Bookstagrammers, Booktubers. I figured I could start building a following as a book reviewer, reviewing books in or close to my genre. It would build an audience of likeminded readers who I could gently steer to my other content over time.

These have had some mild success in getting likes and subscribes, but in thousands of views have only generated a handful of people using the URL advertised in the video. I have only done 2, but they've mopstly been promoted on TikTok. With the 3rd, I'll be experimenting with YouTube promo, a more intentional thumbnail, and a little more overt self-promo.

Other Stats

Visits to the bulmash.com homepage have been generating about 3-4% CTR over to Amazon, but the clicks are in the low double digits. If clicks to Amazon generate a 1% conversion rate, I have a long way to go in generating traffic to my content to generate sales.

That's okay. With a larger push on vertical snippets and more book reviews this month, I'm hoping I'll have some little wins to share in a few weeks. Then I'll build on them. One of the reasons I was such a serial starter in my 2005-2007 entrepreneurial phase was a combination of always being more interested in the new shiny and being disappointed if the last project wasn't immediately successful.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm still sort of training for it. The real marathon hits when the next book drops in August (hopefully). I'm still learning.

But if you're reached this far in and you're willing, please do one or more of the following three things:

1: Buy the book - bounce.ws/hell

2: Share one of my videos from https://www.youtube.com/@NewHeroesOfOld or https://www.youtube.com/@gbulmash to your socials.

3: Like one of my videos from https://www.youtube.com/@NewHeroesOfOld or https://www.youtube.com/@gbulmash to your socials.

Thanks for reading. I'll be back in April to discuss how March went!