Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Work Together to Cross Promote

The concept of cross-promotion is pretty simple: You give somebody a link and they post it on their site. They then give you their link and you post it on your site. Really simple and it gives you a lot more fresh views and a lot more sales, at least in theory. As such, it is definitely worth engaging in. 

However, you might want to keep in mind that there are three basic rules. First, quid pro quo: Both of you have to do it. A lot of times you have a situation where you're just not going to want to do it, you're going to lie and say you'll do it. But the other person posting didn't. Yeah, that's what we call not good juju. You're going to lose a lot of respect and people are not going to want to do business with you; if you can't come through on something simple what happens when it gets more complex? So any time you enter into an agreement, you need to value that agreement as well as you possibly can. Otherwise, well, bad reputation bad sales. 

Two, make sure the sites are compatible. For the cross-promotion to be effective the sites need to have something in common; their mature project on your all ages comic just isn't going to work. In fact, just having a mature book on your site may stop sales. The two projects must be complementary or there's no real  cross-promotion potential between the two. So, try to make sure that there's something there before you start getting into the cross promotion.

Three, don't sweat the numbers. Almost invariably, one of the two is doing a lot more business than the other and therefore it's going to contribute to the other person's success a lot more. That's fine. The little person is going to be thankful to the other person and the big person gets credit for building the other up. You know, Yes, just straight up. This is one time you do not want to sweat the numbers. 

When it comes down to it, working together to cross-promote your projects is definitely going to help both of you in the end. So find a partner and go for it!

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