(The Walking The Talk series was created to show an ebook launch from idea to salesletter to marketing.)

In my last segment I left a couple of issues up in the air.

1) Should I use the NoMoreSmellyHouse.com domain for the blog, AND to sell the ebook. Or get a separate domain for each project.

Thanks to the advice from Sherman Hu at WordpressTutorials.com – (see the comments from my last post) – I decided to use the same domain for both.

This way I’m building up my search engine strength, and not dividing my energies trying to get traffic to 2 different sites.

2) As much as I’m a “I-don’t-care-if-my-site-is-ugly” advocate, I did decide to go ahead and have a header designed for the blog.

Here’s the project description I’m using to attract a designer from one of the freelance sites I mentioned in DBO:

“SUBJECT: Header needed for Wordpress blog

I need a header designed for my Wordpress blog.

I’m using the default Kubrick template. So the header must be sized 740×192.

The name of the blog is No More Smelly House. The graphic (photographic, not cartoonish) must match with the theme of a good smelling home. Although the one thing I don’t want is flowers.

Here’s the color scheme I’m looking for:
#D4E6B0
#B1BF93
#E6D4B1
#BFB193
#998D76
#1A1A1A
#E5E5E5

The project must be completed within 3 days of choosing the winner.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.”

Normally I go to IStockPhoto.com and download the graphic I want the designer to use.

But after a brief search, I couldn’t find anything exciting. So I decided to let the creative chips fall where they may.

BTW, if you’re looking for color scheme ideas for your site, go to the Website Color Match Generator.

3) There are some parts of the blog that still need some customization.

But I’ll wait till I have some posts to see what needs to be tweaked.

Tomorrow I’ll start blogging. Oh boy!

Alexis Dawes

(The Walking The Talk series was created to show an ebook launch from idea to salesletter to marketing.)

I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I don’t have insecurity issues just like every other ebook writer out there.

I worry about marketing. I worry about what’s going to happen if a project doesn’t work out as planned.

Indeed I work within a set of guidelines (DBO) that significantly increase my chances for success.

But let’s be realistic… until you get out there and start selling, there’s nothing written in stone saying how much you’ll make from any project.

And I’m not exempt from that rule just because I’ve had some success stories.

So I’m always looking to play the game a little better than I did before.

On my bulletin board at home I’ve got a handmade poster that says, “Evolve or become a dinosaur. And we all see where the dinosaurs are.”

Evolving means experimenting. Leaving room for growth, whether it’s through success or failure. Because either way, you will evolve. You just have to get your butt out there.

For example, before I came out with DBO, I never blogged to sell an ebook.

And now I blog here for that very reason. And I find blogging to be an awesome salestool for DBO, as well as The Book is in the Buzz.

But the thing is, I’ve never blogged in the hopes of selling an ebook based on the DBO strategy.

So I figured that this would be a good opportunity to try that out.

My plan is to create a blog at NoMoreSmellyHouse.com (or possibly another domain, I haven’t made up my mind yet).

This new blog will contain reviews of different types of air fresheners, air purifiers and the such. (Remember I was thinking about including product reviews in the actual ebook. But I thought this strategy would be more efficient from a marketing standpoint.)

In this way I’m building up an audience of potential buyers. And I can use affiliate links in the blog to sell the products I review.

Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t going to be a great big love fest for every product I try.

Part of the Alexis Dawes allure is that I’m pretty straightfoward about what works.

I don’t pour sugar on shit, and tell you to take a bite. That’s just not my style. 

I’m just hoping to build a loyal audience as I’ve done here. Using honest reviews from myself, and other fresh air avengers. And I hope to get it started within the next 4 days.

For this task I’ll need to customize my blog. And I don’t do that kind of stuff.

So tomorrow I’ll show you the project description that I’m going to use to get a freelancer.

And then later in the week I’ll show you the progress I’ve made with writing the actual ebook.

So far I’ve done 11 full pages with 12 point font. Woo-hoo! It’s coming along.

Alexis Dawes

P.S.- Comments on this strategy? Ideas for me? Share and share alike.

(The Walking The Talk series was created to show an ebook launch from idea to salesletter to marketing.)

With the outline filling out nicely, it’s just about time for me to start writing the actual ebook.

But I have one last step to perform before going into blast off mode. I have to get all of my research material into an organized work pile.

Perhaps some of you prefer to have all of your research material in print format. I don’t.

After hours I like to bring the laptop in the bed with me. So there’s me… my 4-year old… some dolls… the laptop… comforters… pillows… you get the message.

The last thing I want to do is bring a folder full of paperwork to my nightly slumber party.

So now that I’ve collected links for the material I’m going to use, I’ll take a day to go through it, and organize it with Diigo.

Diigo is a social annotation tool that allows you to collect and compile web pages.

So let’s say you’ve found a paragraph of information on a web page that spans a total of 10 pages. You can use Diigo to highlight and/or sticky note that paragraph.

Then you tag that page with a specific keyword, write a comment of what you wanted to gather from that page, and Diigo saves it.

It’s far more research-friendly than regular bookmarking.

This screenshot shows a list of some of my collected links in Diigo.

The blue title is the title of the web page. By default Diigo uses the sites title. But you can change it before saving the link.

The black text shows my comments. With the outline completed, I use the comments section to remind myself where I want the information to go in the ebook.

For example, with Bad Smell in House – Fishy!!!!, I’ve made the comment: “REASON for smelly house.”

If you look at my outline, you’ll see that in the Introduction I’ll have The Top 10 Causes of Smelly Houses. This link will help me in that department.

Quite a few of my DBO readers say they prefer to let ghostwriters handle the actual ebook.

But I think if more people got into the habit of organizing their material in an efficient manner, they would be able to sit down and find the writing process easier.

So give Diigo a try. It’s free, and quite easy to use.

Until we meet again,

Alexis Dawes