SPQ 017: URL Forwarding – The #1 Way Readers Can Find Your Author Page

SPQ017: URL Forwarding – The #1 Way Readers Can Find Your Author Page

It’s not easy to get readers to check out your author page, especially when the Web address is full of letters, numbers, and assorted characters. In this episode, Steve details his URL forwarding strategy to kick off a new series called Simple Book Marketing.

The Question…

Instead of answering a question today, Steve is introducing his Simple Book Marketing segment. He’ll discuss an actionable strategy you can immediately apply to your book-based business.

Biggest Takeaway…

[Tweet “Create some simple URLs to help people find your books. Use URL forwarding.”]

Simple Book Marketing: URL Forwarding

Your Amazon author page is a landing page. It is used to promote all of your books and show your authority in a particular niche. Your author page even pulls up content from Twitter and your blog. When people land on your author page, they see a lot of information that can help you sell more books.

Unfortunately, your author page isn’t very easy to find on Amazon. One option is to give people your URL. The Amazon URL has a lot of numbers, dashes, and special characters in it, making it impossible to remember.

You could also tell people to go to Amazon and search for your name, but if your name is similar to another author’s, this might cause some confusion. When Steve picked his S.J. Scott pen name, he didn’t realize Amazon also sold books by an author named J.S. Scott. Because J.S. Scott writes erotica, Steve’s customers might experience some brand confusion if they ever come across the other author’s page when they are searching for habit books.

Steve finally created some simple URLs to help people find his books: HabitBooks.com and HabitBooks.net. He did this with a technique called URL forwarding, which is easy and takes less than five minutes.

The process has four steps:

  1. Go to a domain registration site. Steve prefers com.
  2. Register the domain. Use your name, a word from your niche, or descriptive words to create a URL that explains what you do. An example would be DavidsExerciseBooks.net.
  3. Set up URL forwarding. Go to the show notes for this episode to see images that will help you complete this process.
  4. Use the URL everywhere.

Here is what you need to do to set up URL forwarding:

  • Log in to your domain registration account and find your new domain.
  • Click on the URL Forwarding button.
  • Copy your author link and paste it under the “Forwards to” box; select the Add Forwarding section.
  • Wait 10 to 15 minutes.

Here’s how this looks in Name.com:
url-forwarding-name-com

If you use a registrar other than Name.com, the process may be a little different for you.

Once you set up URL forwarding, put your URL everywhere. Steve recommends using it in your books, podcast interviews, and YouTube interviews.

There are several other ways to use URL forwarding:

  • Major affiliate promotions
  • Perma-free book promotions on Amazon
  • Tracking

Steve uses two URLs, HabitBooks.com and HabitBooks.net, to make it easier to track clicks.

Did you enjoy this new segment? If you enjoyed it or found it useful, please add a comment on the blog or leave a rating and review on Stitcher or iTunes.

Resource Links

Name.com: Register a domain to set up URL forwarding for your author page

9 thoughts on “SPQ 017: URL Forwarding – The #1 Way Readers Can Find Your Author Page”

  1. Steve, liking the podcasts. The URL forwarding episode had some helpful info. Like the mix of publishing and marketing info.

    Reply
    • Glad you like Douglas! I’m trying to blend a little bit of both throughout the podcast. I think it’s important that all (authors) know how to best market our work. Because, frankly, nobody else is going to tell us what to do.

      Reply
  2. Thanks Douglas. Appreciate the feedback…I’m trying to figure out if people really enjoy a daily podcast or if I should slow the schedule a bit. Glad to see you like the mix of info!

    Reply
  3. I’m also enjoying your new podcasts. I often listen in the morning as I’m feeding the pets and preparing my coffee. I want to also offer another simple and cost effective way to perform URL forwarding. Consider it the thrifty workaround. I’ve found it works well, but it does require that you have a WordPress type website/blog. If you do, then you can use a free plugin called Redirection to create simple to remember URLs that redirects to specific pages. For example, my easy, to remember url for my Amazon Author page, is http://www.wbradfordswift.com/amazon.
    Using this also makes it easy to track to what degree people are clicking on the URL. Just go to the Redirection page where your redirections are listed to see how many click-throughs you’re getting.
    Keep up the good work. I like the question format as well as the new ‘actionable step’ approach.

    Reply
  4. This podcast is great! Thank you so much. I understand tracking clicks with bitly or pretty link but how do YOU do it when you create a url and forward it to your author page. You said you have two, one for the podcast and one for the books, that both go to your author page so you can track? How do you track those? Thanks again Steve.

    Reply
    • I do use Pretty Link. What I meant by tracking is to go through the Amazon Associates program and use a special link to track the sales/downloads of your perma-free book. I do that for my book on various platforms.

      Reply
      • Yes, I have a pretty link with smart url on my blog but when I submit to sites they don’t want an affiliate link and not even pretty link which seems suspicious to them.

        Reply

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