Will It Hit The Spot?

The first paid advertising I'm going to try is with a website called OurMomSpot.net.

This will be an interesting experiment as a way to get word of the Sir Nathan book series out there.  The Our Mom Spot website is one I came upon when looking for places to spread word of a children's book.  The site is a comprehensive collection of a wide variety of topics, all obviously aimed at moms and parents in general.

You can see the site's submission guidelines here.

It's tough to tell where to throw money in the interest of marketing a self-published book.  The possibilities are endless.  Online marketing is a part of my normal career and a path I've trod many times in the past.  An author can contemplate everything from Facebook ads to Google ads to subscribing to a wide variety of websites out there that claim they'll market your work.

I'm not keen on Facebook ads, as I feel they're often ignored as just junk that pops up on the screen.  I certainly never look at them.  Google pay-per-click ads, on the right side of the screen of any search result, used to be considered that way, too.  People just tuned them out like they do car commercials on the radio.  But now, those Google ads have become very relevant.  Other than those few ads that are set up to appear no matter what the user is searching for, the vast majority of them are very specifically targeted.  Looking for pet supplies?  The ads are going to be all about dog brushes and cat toys.  They're actually a great way to find what you're looking for and I've used them very effectively for clients in the past.

But how many people are just entering a bland Google search for "children's books"?  Not many, I would suspect.  They might get a recommendation off a blog, but it's more likely they're coming from friends.  For my son, a lot of the times it's just a case of going to the book store and seeing what looks good.

So why tried a paid ad with Our Mom Spot?  Mainly because the focus of the website towards parents, coupled with an inexpensive and organized ad process, seems like a wonderful place to give it a try.  Will I have any way of measuring the effectiveness of the ad?  None that I can think of.  Not unless I demand that everyone who buys the book lets me know how they heard about it.  Good luck with that.

I plan on setting up an ad on their website just as soon as my book is available in print, which will be in less than a week.  Let's keep our fingers crossed.