The concept was simple: I would start a website of self-published books, make a ton of money, and retire on a hot beach somewhere far away. I would schedule regular visits to see my husband, son, and dog. Life would be perfect. My plans changed, however, once I actually started the site, www.spbroundup.com. Who knew that it would be such a huge undertaking? I guess many of you knew that, but I didn’t. I mean I have a full-time job and my spare time is filled with watching the Twilight Saga movies,  re-reading the four books, and stalking Robert Pattinson, so when was I supposed to build this site? It turns out that the middle of the night was available, but working then sure cuts into my sleep.

The site is now a month-and-a-half old and it’s growing steadily. I think it fills a need, too, so interest in it should grow as its existence becomes known. Self-published authors seem to love the idea. I even enjoy editing their content and posting their jacket covers. What is proving to be vexing is SEO. Those three letters have turned my hobby into a continuing struggle. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is king when it comes to having people visit your site. It involves begging everyone you know to link to your site from their sites, and finding the perfect keywords so that when people search for what you’re offering, they’ll get to you. As everyone who has ever used a search engine knows, when you get the results of your search, you rarely look past the first two or three results. So, if you have a website, you need to get your site ranked high, high, high up on the list. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time. There’s so much to learn about how to accomplish this, which is what I didn’t count on. I guess I’m going to have to give up my job as well as sleep, because I’m not giving up Edward and Bella. In fact, last night I saw Breaking Dawn, Part 1 twice, back-to-back. Then I had to stay up all night to think up keywords to improve my web-page ranking. All the words that came to mind were vampire-related. Fortunately, some of the books on my site are also vampire-related. Sometimes things just work out.

Check out what indie authors have to offer at www.spbroundup.com.