Howdy, folks!
It’s time for the August edition of the Smart Bitches Business Update, wherein I fling myself with giddy abandon into the behind the scenes details of the Hot Pink Palace of Bitchery.
As I discussed in an upcoming podcast interview with Leah and Bea Koch from The Ripped Bodice, small business ownership in a very-rapidly-holy-crap-what-the-hell changing marketplace and environment is challenging, to say the least. So this column is partly answering questions some of you have asked about how the site works, and how you can support it (Thank You for asking!) and partly me doing my nerdy dive into the kiddie pool of nerdy details.
It’s August, which means gold evenings, lightning bugs, sometimes more jellyfish if you’re in the Atlantic, and… back to school, for some of us. DUN DUN DUNNNNN.
It also means that it’s time to look ahead to 2018, which is what I’m doing this month. In Publishing Land, I think they’ve been looking at 2018 since mid-1995 perhaps, but in my yearly to-do schedule, August means I start shaping the advertisement packages and rates for the coming year.
I’ve been doing a lot of research about the rising costs of publishing, including those for self-published authors and small presses, and about how the marketplace online is pivoting towards advertisement forms that I don’t find compatible with what we do here at SBTB. I think if I started using video overlay ads or auto-play sound ads, the upset and outrage would be equal to the times I’ve tried threaded comments (I’m only half-kidding).
So while advertisement elsewhere seems to be trending toward loud and blinky, with overlays difficult to avoid, I know that many of y’all are at work or in places where you’re in public, so I don’t want our advertisements to be intrusive. And since I know you pay attention to the ads and have whitelisted our site in your adblockers since I run the server personally (thank you for that), I don’t want to betray your trust with anything that would get you in trouble. Evolving marketplaces and changing trends in web ads are difficult to navigate, but I like what we have here, and I think y’all find it useful, too.
So right now I’m working on 2018, and I do know one thing for certain: I’ll be dropping prices in 2018 for advertisement packages. Promoting books is hard, and entrepreneurship is a challenge no matter what shape your business takes, so I’m going to be reducing our prices across the board.
If you like those words in that order (I do!) please consider joining the Smart Bitch Insider newsletter, so you can be the first to hear about the 2018 rate schedule. I will never share your info, nor will I email you overly-frequently. This list is only for updates on advertising on the site, and opportunities for promotion.
If you’re thinking about this year, as there are a few more months in 2017, please feel free to email me about what you have coming up that you’d like to advertise or promote, and what your budget is. I can do custom proposals, and I have references from many happy advertisers.
Since one of the most obvious questions I’m asked is about statistics and audience reach, here are some of our most-recent stats:
In July 2017, SBTB had over 566,000 pageviews, with an average visit lasting well over 3 minutes each (YES – that’s my favorite stat).
Our pageviews are up, too! Our pageviews for July were up over 5% over last month, and over 21% over this time last year. So our audience continues to grow – yay! Welcome, welcome!
Finally, new visitors make up just over 36% of our community, and returning visitors are just under 64% – welcome and welcome back, y’all!
If I can answer any other questions, please let me know – I’m happy to explain all the things.
And if you’re not personally advertising anything, and want to support the site, you are lovely and thank you. Shopping through our affiliate links, which are always in the welcome box at the top, and in each of our reviews, helps enormously, as do pledges to the podcast Patreon campaign.
OH! Almost forgot! We have a new affiliate account with The Ripped Bodice, and they sent us an adorable button to use. Isn’t it cute? So, should you wish to shop for print books and support a terrific romance-friendly independent bookstore you can use that button right there, which is also in the Welcome box at the top of the site. (Seriously, isn’t that button adorable? Leah designed it – and I really dig it.)
Above all, your being here to hang out with us is always an honor, so if you stop by to see what’s going on, we are always, always delighted you’re here.
And now, fun stuff!
I used to be afraid to look at the site stats because it would intimidate me, especially when I was going to write a review or write pretty much anything. But now I love looking at all the different places where you are and thinking how incredible it is that the topic we have in common (and a few thousand others) bring us together each day. Hello, friends all over the planet!
Our top 10 countries in the past month in terms of visitor numbers are the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, India, Germany, Philippines, New Zealand, South Africa, and Finland. Hi, Suomi!
Our longest visits in terms of duration this past month were again from St. Helena, and I am telling you I’m a little worried that Napoleon might be UP TO SOMETHING. Right behind St. Helena were visitors from Seychelles and the Faroe Islands – which is very cool!
I’ll be back next month with more small business nerdery, but in the meantime, if you have questions, please do ask them in the comments or email me if you prefer!
And always, always, always, thank you for being part of Smart Bitches.
I avoid sites using overlay ads because I’m using my phone to browse and it’s super annoying. So a huge thank you for deciding against that!!
Autoplay anything results in me turning off sound and updating my ad blocker. (Or avoiding the site completely. I’ll get my news somewhere else, thank you very much.) Which would be a shame here because I’ve found some new reads from the ads here.
Love the site stats! Thanks for sharing!!
Hei! *waves from Finland*
Adding to what Chelle said, I go out of my way to avoid the PRODUCTS in audio/video ads. So the obnoxious ads are costing them a customer.
Many thanks for respecting your visitors.
Another thank you for your consideration over the ads since I often check the site at work. Granted, it’s usually when I’m the only one there, but still.
I was born with marketing fatigue, and it seems like the general population is finally catching up with me. Thank you for not joining the advertising cult that believes the best approach when the old ways become less effective is to make ads MORE!OBNOXIOUS!
As a person with Sensory issues, I really appreciate the lack of overlay ads and noise playing ads.
I had a nasty experience when a piece of advertising for cosmetics gave me a migraine headache. It had glitter and some kind of weird music.
With my headache, I had reported the ads to the website advertisers.
I appreciate all the things you aren’t doing, SB Sarah, huge thanks for that. I use the affiliate links as often as possible, but will double my efforts.
Can you offer an Amazon UK affiliation? I ask because I know of other US-based (I think) bloggers who do and your readership certainly could support it. I’ve been wondering about this for awhile.
Bless you for not using annoying ads, truly. I’ve noticed that trend of “interactive” books happening, where you get to a certain point in the book and you can play some kind of short music or video clip (or maybe it plays automatically, I don’t know) and it honestly sounds horrifying. I like looking at headcasts and playlists and all but like, on my own time after I’ve finished reading. I don’t want to be bombarded with it in the middle of a chapter.
@Darlynne: Amazon recently enabled a US/Canada/UK affiliate 3-way. There’s some fussing with site code involved, but Sarah’s so on top of things, I would imagine she had it done 5 minutes after they sent the email. (Assuming she uses Amazon Associates and not some rock star upgrade to which hoi polloi don’t have access…)
LOL – a rock star upgrade would be very cool, but no, not so much. I do have the US/Canada/UK affiliate options enabled, so UK and Canadian purchases generate affiliate income.
And I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to use our links and to ask if your purchases support the site. Thank you so, so much for that.
And OH MY GOSH speaking of annoying ads! I was researching video game news for my kids (they’re at camp, away from news about key developments in their favorite games) and there was an ad playing but I couldn’t FIND IT. I could tell it was the active tab, and I could tell it was loud, but I could not find it on the page to turn it off. I have not been that annoyed at an ad in ages. So believe me, I dislike the intrusion, too.
I am so sorry, Nicolette, that an ad somewhere gave you a migraine. That is ghastly. If anything here at SBTB ever bothers anyone like that, please, please let me know.
And thank you again for being a wonderful and terrific group of humans. Cheers to you!
Don’t worry about Napoleon, it’s boring in that cell, and reading romance is a great way to pass the time. He’s probably just one-clicking all your recs.
Or he may be writing a romance novel about himself and Josephine. You never know.
EC Suprlock, if Boney is writing a romance about the two of them, it will be FILTHY. 😉
You are an angel for deciding against autoplay and overlay. Like others have already said, I deliberately choose not to buy products marketed that way. Unless they can give me an overlay ad where a romance!hero actually falls off the screen and onto my couch, I’m not interested.
@SB Sarah: I must be particularly dense because I’ve never seen Amazon UK affiliate links. What am I missing? Do the links require that my IP address reflects a UK location?
Chrome will start automatically blocking annoying ads in early 2018
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/01/google-chrome-ad-blocking-baked-in-2018/
That includes autoplay sound and video, and some cases of “loud and blinky” as defined here:
https://www.betterads.org/standards
I think the ads here are fine and fit with the standard, so good for you and thanks from everyone visiting the site.
Maybe I’m opening a can of worms from before my time here, but… why is there strong feelings against threaded comments? I personally would love threaded comments- so much easier to follow a conversation. OK, I’ll slowly back away now…
@Darlynne: The new “OneLink” thing is supposed to redirect you to the appropriate Amazon store (for US, UK, and CAN) from one Amazon link without requiring the site to provide a separate button for each country. Any old Amazon link here should direct you to your store with “trashybooks” somewhere in the url as the affiliate code.
I don’t know why this is, but when I read comments on your website. The like button is inaccessible for me. I can see where people have plus oned a comment, but I can never do it. Can you look into other things for that. I have liked Disqus on other sites, but I’m guessing others didn’t from your mention of threaded comments. Everything else, such as the edit fields where I type in my name, email, and comment, has been accessible. I am blind so you can take that into as much consideration as you want to.
Of course Napoleon reads this site. If he had a spy for every British/andtheirAllies spy during the Napoleonic wars in historical romance, we’d all be speaking French right now. It must kill him seeing his enemies getting their HEAs. And help him identify those who brought his downfall!
@Stefanie:
Thank you for letting me know the “like” button isn’t accessible to you – and I am very sorry that it isn’t! I try very hard to make all parts of the site accessible to everyone, and I’m not sure why that one isn’t, but I’ll find out and see what I can do to fix it.
As for threaded comments and Disqus, those are separate issues. I had Disqus for a long time, and then they upgraded. Included in the update was a “feature” to allow readers to see all the other comments an individual had made everywhere else, tying individual comment history across the web to a single location (iirc). The response was not positive, so I took Disqus out.
Threaded comments have been introduced twice, I think, with the same results: cries of horror. I think that because this is a discussion-focused community, threaded comments can diverge wildly and for many readers, it’s difficult to read and follow. But if the overwhelming negative has shifted to a positive, I’m open to adjustment. I want everyone to feel comfortable, safe, and able to comment if they wish!
NO, please God NO, to threaded comments!
Thank you for the buy link to The Ripped Bodice! Happy to support women owned and women empowered businesses!
Thank you for your reply. I wasn’t sure how and where to bring this up about the like button, but I knew that once I did that you would be as prompt as you just were. I have liked Disqus and would be OK with threaded comments, but I think I can get why others would have issues.
@SB Sarah,
Maybe a poll on threaded comments for the next business update would be a way to gauge interest? I certainly would love threaded comments (though I agree on not going the Disqus route), but if there’s still a general consensus that people don’t want that, then fair enough. It is nice having one big conversation, but it’s also sometimes hard to follow a sub conversation, especially if people don’t “@”
@Jean Russell, hey, they don’t call him Boney for nothing 😉 He will put all our modern erotica writers to shame!
His sister Paulina was a treat too. Maybe she can be next in the series.
I’m from Chicago and will happily vote early and often against threaded comments. Obviously, YMMV and you be you, but I will cheat, just to be clear.
And for my sins, the like buttons have disappeared. That has never happened before.
My like buttons are gone on my Fire and in IE, too, but I know other people can see them because the +’s have been going up on comments since they disappeared for me.
So it looks like I can click the like button in Chrome. Since I couldn’t do it in Firefox a problem shared by other commenters apparently, I didn’t think to check in any other browsers. Thank you everybody for that unexpected tip. I guess I should check in IE. P.S. This is a late comment so I doubt people will see it.
And it looks like I can’t do it in IE either. I will keep seeing if Chrome still works. I’m actually relieved to know that this doesn’t seem to be specifically a blindness issue and more of a Browser issue.
It’s never too late for comment updates on tech problems – thank you for the info!
@Mara, I vote the same for liking threaded comments but not liking Disqus. I spend a lot of time on Go Fug Yourself and find that the threaded comments help me keep *better* track of varying conversations. I certainly understand other people’s preference for non-threaded comments, but I find it to be the web equivalent of standing in the middle of multiple conversations at a party.
My like button has vanished on Chrome–both on my laptop and my mobile device. 🙁 I just want to give everyone hearts!
Weirdly, when I was first reading this page the like button was not visible, and it usually is for me (using Chrome on an iPad), but I refreshed the page and there they were again.
@SBSarah:
It’s part of my job to run usability tests such as this. In fact, I’m waiting for an actual job to come through but that’s a different story. Anyway, when others said they were having success in Chrome, I thought I would go back and test since I had only done Firefox. It’s the first time I’ve done it on a thing I’ve used frequently, except for the time I did a usability on the mobile website for Facebook for computer users, which is the way I would go for Facebook if somebody is blind btw.