New year, new beginning

This year is gonna be GOOD!

A new family member, a new book, and many new adventures.

Last year was a rather icky year, for me at least. For the first time EVER, I was scammed out of money. Not something I want to admit, but there it is.

It all started because my book sales were steady, but on the low side. As much as I believed in the books, I simply didn’t know how to get them noticed. So I decided to hire a marketer. Someone who knew how to place the books in the public eye.  Make them more visible, easier to discover.

Me being me, I took several months to research marketing companies. The expensive ones were knocked out right away. I knew I would need to spend money, but my budget was rather limited. So I finally settled on a mid-range priced company that ‘guaranteed satisfaction or your money back’.

In March, after several email exchanges and a couple of phone calls, I signed up and paid for six months of marketing. I was told that the first thing I needed to do was move my website from Blogger to Word Press, because Blogger would not be able to handle the traffic.

So I moved my site. It took about a month and was much messier than I thought it would be. I did not enjoy it and the immediate result was that the number of hits to my site plummeted. Dramatically.

As did my sales. All of a sudden no one was buying my books.

I contacted the marketer and was assured the drop in sales was temporary. She had set up a campaign that would put my books in front of the very people who were sure to be interested in them. But the timing was not yet right. The campaign couldn’t start until September.

I checked in with her several times over the summer and was assured everything was good to go.

In September I sent an email asking if I needed to do anything else. I got no response. I waited a week and sent another email. Still nothing. A week later I sent a third one, and this one came back undeliverable.

So I went to the website. It was gone. Over the next two months I must have looked for the website a hundred times and sent numerous emails.

The company had closed up shop and vanished. It was gone, and so was my money.

Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Right.

Icky. Very icky.

Time to shake it off and move on. New year, new beginning.

I plan to do everything I can to make it a fantastic one! Which includes letting go of past mistakes so I can focus on the future.

Forward! Ever forward!