Uncategorized

I first started hosting websties on what would later be called “ModFarm” in Summer 2018, when a few of the author members of ThirdScribe asked if they could keep a website with me. Things were pretty stripped down – and fairly chaotic – then and I didn’t give much thought to constructing another network or starting a formal website company.

Fast forward to 2023 and not only are there nearly 100 websites, but we are also powering an email newsletter service that pushes nearly 1 million emails a month.

Lot has changed, for sure.

The original plan for ModFarm was to make it a large multisite network, which made sense from a logistical and financial standpoint because the sites we build are all for the book community and all use the same plugins. However, as time has gone by a lot of changes have happened and many of the services we have come to rely on don’t support multisite as well as they used to. In August 2021, ModFarm started spinning new sites onto their own individual hosting. Stability, speed, and security have all improved and it’s been a win-win all around.

But, one thing we’ve noticed, especially as newsletter and ecommerce use has grown, is that resource usage has grown far beyond just serving page views, and that not all sites are the same, despite their common components.

When the ModFarm Newsletter service was first integrated into the system, we had very small usage. A few authors were around 2,000 subscribers, others well under 1,000 (or even 500). When newsletters went out they were infrequent and the distribution was small. The servers barely felt them. Now we send about 100,000 newsletters every day and we can clearly see the impact of that on our server resource structure.

Likewise, our book pages also started out as fairly stripped down pages – cover art, description, and a couple of buttons. As improvements and additions have been made, those pages have gotten more complex with a higher need for resources – video teaser trailers, audio samples, newsletter signups, recommended books, translations, extras – the more capability we have, the more the need expands to fill it. As book page views increase (always a good thing!), the corresponding server load increases. And, despite what many of our clients initially believed, book pages are the defining driver of an author website, accounting for 70% of views or more. Their design and performance are essential.

Author sites are also not as similar as I had first theorized when laying out the initial digital bricks of ModFarm. Not only are authors needs and preferences a little less “standard” than anticipated, but the needs and tastes of readers has evolved as well. When we launched, Kindle Unlimited and audiobooks were fairly low need – now they are both a significant sales driver. Ecommerce was an afterthought, and now it’s a staple for the more commercially successful authors – expanding even into direct ebook and audiobook sales, as well as unique “direct only” works and pre-sales.

Even the sizes of our websites varies wildly, with sites ranging from 3 books to over 700! ModFarm has become a “go-to” platform for larger authors, but we still have a number of smaller authors and those just starting out, and I feel it is very important to foster that and have a place for new authors to build from. And, for those authors who have grown their audience and continue to expand, a path to ensure their needs are being met. Our “flat” build pricing came out of this concept, and I see no reason to change.

Similarly, we need to adopt a variation of “flat” pricing for hosting and support, something that is standard and predictable, but still flexible enough to meet an author or publisher’s needs.

ModFarm is now offering multiple hosting levels to better align with our clients’ specific needs, which you can see HERE. These levels address actual resource needs and ensure that every site we provide will always deliver and never slow.

So, How’s This Gonna Work?

I wish we could continue to “grandfather” all sites and keep our existing hosting prices eternal, but we are not able to do that. However, I am very adamant about keeping this as close to original charges and affordable to all users at all levels.

To do this, we need to look at how each individual site fits into the resource matrix and see how they fall out. I will then send an email out to each person and let them know where their sites fall and what the corresponding charge is.

Starting September 2023, the new prices will take effect. For most users, this will be pretty seamless. For a few who are doing something unusual: combining multiple sites, significant change in tier, etc, I will confirm plans and then their current subscription will be cancelled and a new one issued.

I get asked a lot about author websites.

What they should look like, what information they should have. What newsletter is best, what type of pop-up to use. Should there be an online store?

And then I get the real doozy: why should I have one at all?

Industry clients and colleagues – people with businesses, especially online businesses – get the value of their website. For them, it’s the most important asset they have, outside of their actual product or IP. But for authors… they rarely feel the same way.

Many would prefer not to have one. They almost never update it, don’t use any type of blog or post news. More than half I see don’t even have book pages, just cover art that often links to nothing.

I always figured I’d write some big book about author websites and their role in an author or publisher’s marketing, but that’s a lot of work 😉

Instead, I’ll write a few articles here to share what data I have on author websites and newsletters, what I think it means, and what lessons we’re applying here at ModFarm.

What Readers Are Looking For

To put it bluntly, they are looking for your books.

Anything and everything about your books.

Books, books, books, books, and books.

Seriously, book traffic makes up a significant part of viewed content, and that can be clearly shown in the graph below:

Authors promote the heck out of their newsletter sign up pages. Online ads, pop-ups, special marks and buttons – it’s a primary driver for many authors and publishers ModFarm services. But, even with that, you can see that across nearly a hundred sites over an entire year, with ALL that promotion, it still only accounted for 3.8% of total traffic.

But website book pages, which almost no author ever promotes and to which visitors arrive almost entirely on their own by search traffic, took 50% of website traffic. And, since most Home pages have a lot of books on them, one could arguably count those as “book” pages as well (though we won’t here).

And we’re not talking about 20 page views here. Most of our sites average 1500+ page views a week, with several bringing in 20,000 page views a month.

And the ratios are the same. Sometimes even more. For publisher sites, its more like 75%.

And as traffic increases, you can see the trend line stays very much the same.

What do we mean when we say “Book Pages”? It means pages that present specific books or indexes (book series, genre, etc). And, just to paint the full picture, here’s how readers visit those types of pages:

You can see that individual Book Pages and Book Series Pages are almost identical in their views. That’s largely because there is a huge cross-view between these page types. As most of our authors write in series, when a reader hits an individual book page, they’ll click on the “See The Full Series” button just to make sure they’re current – often times visiting an earlier book in that series as well.

And, yes, that also generates a fair amount of “trickle down” sales – when a new book in a series is released, we notice a spike in the back list of that series, and that trend is consistent among every site we manage.

If it isn’t plain by now, readers are primarily interested in your books.

Your books are why they are looking for you. Your books are your brand. Your books are what makes them want to seek you out, subscribe to your newsletter, and follow you on social.

It starts and ends with your books.

Author websites without books are like car dealership sites without cars.

If your author website isn’t presenting, organizing, promoting, and providing your books – then it is not doing what readers want it to do.

Your Author Website Is Your Home Turf

I’ll save the details on this for another article, but in closing I just want to put it out there that your website is YOURS. There is nothing on it that distracts the reader with other things. It is solely designed and built to promote your books and series.

Amazon is a book selling machine. It is incredibly effective. BUT, it doesn’t care about selling YOUR books. Only about selling books.

Look at a book listing for one of your books on Amazon. Take notice of how much of the screen is taken up by advertisements for books that aren’t yours. How much for Amazon Prime TV shows?

Scroll down a bit farther. Does Amazon show more information about your book or about other books? How many sponsored ads for other books are on your book listing?

How about the book listing for your books on Amazon? Search or click on your name on Amazon and see the list of books that comes up. Scroll down that list and see how often a “sponsored” book is included in your book list.

Amazon isn’t interested in selling YOUR book – only in selling A book.

Best to always keep that in mind.