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Newsletter October12

Greetings from Mel Keegan and the team at GLBT Bookshelf!

So … how would you like to have Amazon fund our ad campaigns?!

A light bulb went off over my head a couple of days ago. The “duh” factor of this one is stratospheric. Why I didn’t think of this before, I have no idea. But – better late than never …!

As you probably know, we have an Amazon affiliate account. You see our carousels and so forth, liberally scattered throughout the bookshelf. Sales made through these ads earn around 5%, give or take. It’s not a fortune, but eventually it mounts up to useful funding. So far so good.

What you might *not* know is that ANY shopping done by anyone entering Amazon.com from one of these links, results in a referral fee of around 5% being paid by the Big A. Did your antennae go up? They should have! Here’s how it works:

As we roll into Christmas, 450+ wiki members will be doing some serious shopping at Amazon. If you want to support the wiki without having to make a donation … and if you’d just love it, if Amazon would support us by literally paying for our ad campaigns --! … then, when you do your holiday shopping at Amazon, START from any of the carousels on the Bookshelf. Click a title. Any title in a carousel. The Amazon site will pop open in a new window, and from that page, search on what you need, do your shopping. Ignore the title you clicked on to get there. It never went into your shopping cart. However, the rest of your purchases are stamped “referred by The Bookshelf,” and Amazon rewards us with about 5%.

Now, 5% isn’t a lot, but let’s say 200 of us were spending $10 each. That’s a couple of grand, or which 5% is $100. And *that* is a hundred-dollar ad campaign for the wiki, courtesy of Amazon.com!

Please do keep this in mind when your Christmas shopping comes around … I’ll remind you!

Speaking of Christmas: our Christmas Campaign page is looking wonderful. We have 8 banners up so far (and 8 festive pages behind them); I’m waiting on three more banners at this time, which takes us to 11 – and the decision has been made to “cap” the page at 16, which means there are FIVE spaces left. Just five.

If you’re interested in participating, it’s time to make a move. The five last spots are on a “first come, first served” basis. Please DON’T just send the money. Email first to make a reservation, because when these five spots are gone, they’re gone. The first five takers (via email queries please) will secure these spots.

Here’s the page: http://bookworld.editme.com/GLBT-Bookshelf-Christmas-2009

I’m tremendously gratified by the interest and creativity that’s been displayed since the last newsletter, and I want to thank everyone who’s been involved. I’m grateful, guys: thanks from the whole community.

We didn’t get quite so enthusiastic a response to my call for volunteers for a Wiki Patrol, so I’m going to send it out again here: people, HELP! Our Book Category pages are inclined to go a little “wonky” at times, what with everyone editing them and no guarantee about where the pasted-in code will have come from. We actually do need a number of members to “adopt a page” and keep an eye on it. So –

Is there a category in which you have a vested interest? Are you mostly a historical author? Do you write a hell of a lot of vampire stories? If so, you have a very definite interest in keeping these pages in good order. Several times a week, scroll through them. Make sure nothing has gone haywire since the last time you looked, and -- if something has, pop off an email to Admin and tell us what to fix and where to fix it!

We need your help here. Seriously. The following pages have been adopted, but all others need a good home: Romance (both pages); Erotica (both pages); Science Fiction; Fantasy; Mystery; Thrillers; Paranormal and Occult. We have 10 pages covered, and 16 in need:

Contemporary (both pages); Historical; Maritime; Military; Graphic Novels; Vampires; Werewolves; Horror; Comedy; Westerns/Cowboys; BDSM; Gay Classics; Anthology; Young Adult; Non-Fiction.

A couple of items of business now:

Advertising *on* the wiki as well as off has been going ballistic … and our traffic has tripled since we began. The ‘downside” to this is that more traffic uses more bandwidth, which costs more … and to *score* that extra traffic you need an advertising budget. When you stop advertising, you tend to settle back 90% of the way … you do keep a little of what you had during advertising, but the bulk of visitors keep on surfin’ and don’t look back. So –

We’ve increased the advertising costs a little. Not huge leaps. Nothing over $7, and a lot still around $3 even on the homepage. Still $2.50 on the core pages. The biggest increase has been ad space in the left-side column … the ads which load along with the whole wiki, on every pageload. These are top-demand because of the fact they’re loaded every time, and with anything up to 15,000 pageloads daily, they’re great spots. They’re well worth $5 per month! Be aware that three of them are unavailable for the foreseeable future: booked out for up to 22 months in advance!

Here’s the new schematic:

http://bookworld.editme.com/AdvertisingBookings

Last topic for this newsletter: I have a pet project. I’d love to get together enough funds to do a real, serious promotion for the wiki’s Christmas hub for the 7 week run-in till Christmas. I’d like to do $15/week for the four weeks of November, then $30/week for the last two weeks right before the holidays. That’s $140 … and the good news is that between donations and banners, we’re $100 of the way there already. Six more spots are available on the Christmas hub, and with these places, we’ll be so close to target, I’ll kick in the difference myself:

http://bookworld.editme.com/GLBT-Bookshelf-Christmas-2009

So – if you *are* interested in participating in the drive up to the holidays, now’s the time to grab one of those last five places.

Lastly: an official Welcome Aboard to Alex Draven, who is taking over the duties of wiki page construction for members who’re ready to admit defeat. Many thanks to Alex for doing this! And if you’ve been hesitant about getting involved in the Bookshelf because you’re somewhat daunted by the process … don’t be deterred. Contact Alex soon, and see how easy it can be.

Here’s the link:

http://bookworld.editme.com/AlexDraven-webservices

And on that note, I’ll close this newsletter!

Cheers,

Mel Keegan

Admin-in-Chief