When it comes to promotion, whether we’re talking books or blogs, there are some tedious chores that sometimes don’t get done just because they are so tedious.
For example, there are dozens (hundreds!) of blog directories where you can submit your site. You provide the title, link, and a description, and eventually they add you to their listings.
These directories occasionally deliver traffic, and they also offer up back-links for your blog (as we’ve discussed before, the more links pointing to your site, the more “votes” it’s getting in the eyes of the search engines; that means you’re more likely to appear near the top of the results when people search for things related to your blog). While these links from blog directories aren’t worth a lot, every little bit can help, so submitting your site can be useful. But tedious.
Here’s where Fiverr.com comes in. This is a site where people list all the crazy (and, in some cases, I do mean crazy!) things they’re willing to do for $5. As I write this post, someone on the front page promises, “I will play bluesy Happy Birthday on guitar and harmonica wearing personalized name card and upload video… for $5.” Okay, then.
If you search around, though, you might be able to find some tasks that are useful. I hired someone to submit my blog to 130 directories. Unlike me, these folks have tools for automating a lot of this, so it makes sense to hoist this unpleasant task off on someone else.
Something else I’ve used Fiverr for is having someone upload articles to syndication sites, such as EzineArticles.com, for me. (This is where you write an article, include a bio with a link back to your site, and post it to various sites). There are a lot of sites that accept articles, and creating accounts and uploading them can be time consuming.
Other examples of uses for Fiverr? Fellow indie, Reena Jacobs, once mentioned that she hired someone to do the voice-over for her book trailer there. I’ve also seen folks offering to perform various advertising duties (i.e. hand out flyers on a college campus) for $5.
It probably goes without saying, but I’d avoid the people offering to leave 5-star book reviews and the like. Ethics aside, it probably doesn’t take Amazon long to wise up to that sort of thing!
That said, you can probably think of a few legitimate tasks that it might be useful to outsource to folks via Fiverr. If there are any you’ve done that have turned out well, let us know.
Sounds like an interesting site and $5 isn’t too much to shell out for some tasks. Bookmark! =)
That does sound useful. Especially that backlink thing. I’m just now starting to understand that stuff.
Love Fiverr. I’ve ordered a half dozen or more services through them, and every one had some degree of success, given the price. I’ve ordered 250,000 Facebook links, some Twitter stuff, flyer distribution, stuff like that. My favorite thing: During those periods where you really don’t have much going by way of promotions, you can feel like you’re doing something for just five bucks. A remarkably efficient site.
Incidentally, I was a seller there, too. I put out a shingle offering to name a character for the buyer in my next book. Sold right away. That book is being released with the new name in a couple weeks. Fun stuff.
Hey, there’s money to be made as a writer one way or another. Just think if you sold 20 characters names… or 1000! Hm. Maybe one is good. 🙂
I’ve been happy with the tasks I’ve had done at Fiverr. You have to be realistic with your expectations of what you are going to get for five bucks though.
Have you actually used Fiverr for backlinking? I’ve thought about that but was worried it might cause me to get penalized by Google.
Yeah, I’m not sure where those links might come from if people did backlinks for you. Probably blog comment spam or some such.
When I do the article submissions, it’s essentially for link building, but you know those are mostly coming from reputable sites (Ezineartices.com, goarticles.com, articlesbase.com, etc.).
I’ll have to bookmark that site. 🙂
Here’s another take on the Fivrr approach that was in the NY Times this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html?_r=1&hpw