Business Tidbit: Two to Five Percent Advertising

I've been looking into the process of starting up a business, and I came across an interesting fact about advertising.  Start Your Own Business suggests devoting "2 to 5 percent of anticipated gross sales" to advertising (Lesonsky and Entrepreneur Media 493).  And this is annually. 

This might be a good guideline for indie/self-publishers who spend money on advertising.  Actually, it is probably is helpful for any writer with a book out. I suppose if you use free versions of advertising, figuring out the equivalent value would work too.  Two to five percent. That's Entrepreneur Media's guideline.

Cite:  Lesonsky, Rieva, and Entrepreneur Media. Start your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You'll Ever Need. 3rd ed. Entrepreneur Press, 2004. Print.

SEO and the Writer

Interesting site about SEO and businesses at Entrepreneur.com.  This article includes several interesting tips--or rather SEO mistakes to avoid--some I've heard before, but some I haven't.  The two most interesting are "Sin No. 3: Not using descriptive internal anchor text" and "Sin No. 7: Thinking all search traffic will go directly to your home page."  Both made me think more about what I am doing with my webpage. 

For instance, I should be making more descriptive links, for that affects searches.  It's an easy trick, and one I'll try to do more often.

Number seven made me think about what each of my individual pages are showing.  I'm still working on building my webpage, but as I do so, I need to think of what type of message is coming across.  What kind of "branding" as an author am I conveying.

Good stuff.  Well worth the read for authors with websites.

A Writer's Patches

In Three Minutes to Success, I ran across an interesting quote from author Jim Blasingame:

A small business is more like a patchwork quilt than a gilded security blanket. Some patches represent good things and some not so good; some patches are about the business, others are about the owner, and some are hard to tell. The happiest small business owners are those who find a way to feel successful regardless of which patch is before them. (80)

That's a great philosophy to have, especially for a writer.  Maybe sales aren't going well.  Maybe a project is giving you trouble.  Perhaps an agent passed on a partial.  In those cases, it's time to switch to a different patch.  It's time to think: What beyond the obvious are the advantages and values you see in being a writer?

For me, one is the ability to create and share characters or worlds or situations that won't leave me alone.  Another is that this job, being a writer, especially a self-published writer, fits nicely with my other job.

What about you?  What else do you value and appreciate in your chosen occupation?

Cites:  Blasingame, James. Three Minutes to Success: 52 Classic Small Business Lessons You Can Read in 3 Minutes. Aflac Special Edition. Florence: SBN Books, 2006.  Print.