Pen2Paper Logo Competition

Pen2Paper has a new logo in the form of a colourful stripey Bookworm. We'd like your help giving him or her a name.

We hope you'll have lots of fun ideas coming up with a great name. Perhaps you could involve your own kids or children you work with. At the moment there's no closing date for sending in your ideas for a name - we'd like to give you lots of time. When we've received some good suggestions, we'll advertise the deadline to make sure you get those last minute names sent in. So, start sending your ideas in now.

When he or she has a name, we're going to launch a new fun idea for you to test your writing skills. Once again it will be a 'micro' story but this time only 50 words! Now that's going to be a real challenge.

Visit Pen2Paper.co to find out more about where to send your Bookworm names.

Looking forward to receiving your ideas.

BiziLizi

SEO Professional Assistance

In an attempt to give my business a kick start I'm going to invest in the help of some SEO expertise and see if we can move Pen2Paper.co up the Google rankings. I'll report our progress on this Blog and we'll see if this is worth the investment. The more I learn about SEO, the more I realise there is to it. Together with the SEO company, we've researched some of the key phrases that people use to search for help with writing for children, so I plan to select a few of those phrases and see if they can help me raise the profile of Pen2Paper.co for those key phrases.

I always knew this would be a long term project, so let's hope this is the start of the next phase.

BiziLizi

Competitions - writing for children

Thanks for the entries so far received for my 100 word micro-story writing competition. I'm loving reading your imaginative ideas and how you incorporate the 3 keywords into your stories.

Don't forget the closing date of 30th June is fast approaching, so hurry up and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and send in your entries.

We are arranging for some very special young judges for the first competition.

Micro story writing competition

I've just launched a new story writing competition. Anyone can enter and it's totally free. If you think you can write a 100 word 'micro' story for children containing 3 key words, then take a look at Pen2Paper.CO to find out more.

A 100 word story is difficult to write, and even harder to write well, but if you think you're up to the challenge take a look now,  put pen to paper and start creating.

The winner will have the choice of either receiving a free book, written by the world's number one storyteller, or a free download of one of the lessons from the Pen2Paper writing course. The winning 'micro' story will be published on the Pen2Paper website.

Closing date for entries is the end of June.

Good luck and have fun writing your 'micro' story.

Bizi Lizi

New domain names

I'm not sure if the name I'm using for my website might not be helping my search engine optimisation. Initially I thought Pen2Paper was quite a catchy name but apparently you'll help your rankings if some of your keywords are also in your domain name. I'm also using a .CO extension too which, according to Google, shouldn't hinder rankings, but it does seem to confuse people.

So I've purchased 3 additional domain names and redirected these to all point to Pen2Paper.CO for the time being.  I believe any ranking points achieved by these domains (none at the moment) would be passed on to the main hosting domain Pen2Paper.co.

The 3 additional domains are www.write4kids.co.uk, www.writeforkids.co.uk and www.writechildrensbooks.co.uk. So they're all .co.uk domains and have a mixture of the keywords I'd like my website to be indexed for.

I'm planning on using one of these new domains to host a variation on my Pen2Paper website. I understand that I shouldn't just reuse the Pen2Paper site as the search engines don't like this. Only time will tell if working on these additional domains will help my rankings.

Let me know what you think.

BiziLizi

Creating Links

Following on from the findings in my previous post, I'm investigating some more useful tools I've found on the web to help me build links to Pen2Paper.co. I'm doing this in a couple of stages:
1. Identify the backlinks (inbound links) to websites that rank highly for a few key search words I would like Pen2Paper.co to be associated with.
2. This should help identify sites that might provide a link to Pen2Paper.co. After all, if they're linking to one of my competitor's sites  I hope they'll be happy to also provide a link to Pen2Paper.co. Some of these sites are quite possibly directories and providing links is their business.

Just to get started here's the first backlink checker I used - www.backlinkwatch.com
And here's a website I found that I added a link to Pen2Paper.co from - www.Allthewebsites.org

As I find backlink checkers and suitable sites that will link to Pen2Paper.co I'll post updates here on this Blog.

BiziLizi

Improving website ratings with the Search Engines

Whilst browsing the web looking for tools to help me improve the search engine ratings of my website Pen2Paper.co, I came across a really handy tool that provides you with a free assessment of the performance of a website and how it compares with the competition. The tool can be found at http://www.creatorseo.com/seo/SEOQuickReport.php I ran Pen2Paper.co through the tool and was provided with a summary of the overall performance of the website followed by an explanation of the results based on 3 criteria:
1. On page assessment - the site was analysed against 73 different criteria. Pen2Paper score was 64.7% (where 100% is the top score).
2. Keyword assessment - Based on the keyword phrase 'learn how to write books for children' - Pen2Paper.co score was 55.8%
3. Link assessment - uses incoming and outgoing links. Pen2Paper.co scored a tiny 3.5% and most of this score came from the 9 outgoing links on the home page. The 0.5% was associated with the small number (94) of inbound links.
Te overall assessment percentage for Pen2Paper.co was 48.9%

All the results are presented in an easy to understand graphical form.

This was really useful feedback on where I should concentrate my efforts in order to improve the ranking of my website with the search engines. From now on I plan to concentrate my efforts getting inbound links. I'll submit Pen2Paper.co to some of these and re-run the tool in a couple of weeks to see if I have managed to improve my website rating.

Please help me by suggesting possible sites that might provide suitable links.

BiziLizi

Search Engine Optimisation

As part of my mission to raise the profile of my online business www.Pen2Paper.co with search engines I have decided to first work on this Blog. I plan to research as much as I can on search engine optimisation (SEO) and will be updating this Blog with my findings. You'll notice a new section called Topics on the right hand side bar. The first topic I've added is SEO and I'll group all my SEO findings under this topic. By clicking a topic you should be able to read all the related posts.

It seems there is much I can do to improve the SEO of this Blog as well as my business website. I'm hoping that by optimising this Blog it will have a knock-on effect on the website as the blog links to the website. Only time will tell.

Attracting Visitors to Pen2Paper.CO

Despite all the hard work I've put into learning how to create my website, making it search engine friendly, creating an easy to use shopping cart and finding out how to provide links that can be used to download my lessons, Pen2Paper.CO still hasn't made it to the BIG time with the search engines. I can see this is going to be a long hard slog. I've printed some leaflets and displayed some posters on my travels around the country but more research and patience is needed.

I've just submitted the site to DMOZ under the category Arts - Writer's Resources - Children's Writing and also plan to try to update this BLOG more frequently. So look forward to some shorter, more regular posts containing updates on my progress as I try to attract more visitors to Pen2Paper.CO.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I could do I'd love to hear from you. Also, I'd be really grateful for any links for suitable sites to Pen2Paper.CO.  I really need some help getting my business off the ground and selling my first lesson.

Social Networking

With the aim of promoting my new business, I've signed up for Twitter and posted a few tweets. Take a look and follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/LizCranfield

I've submitted www.Pen2Paper.CO and www.Systemology.CO to the search engines and have started to use Google Analytics to see who's looking at my websites. It's amazing how quickly people find the sites - yesterday someone visited from Australia! No purchases of my children's book writing course yet though, so I really need some help with publicity.

I'm going to send out some invitations to friends to follow this Blog. I'd really appreciate it if you could accept the invitation. Then, if you feel you can, invite others to follow me. Hopefully with a few followers on these social networking sites, I might improve the visibility of my business.

If anyone has any other suggestions as to how I could improve the rating of my websites with the search engines I'd love to hear. And don't forget lesson 1 of my course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children' is available for download for only £1.00 at http://www.pen2paper.co/shop/ 

Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you join my social networking sites.

BiziLizi

www.Pen2paper.CO
www.BiziLizi.co.uk
https://twitter.com/#!/LizCranfield
http://bizi-lizi.blogspot.com/

Pen2Paper.CO is launched and ready for business

Hurray! I've done it. I've put into practice all I've been learning and telling you about on my BiziLizi website and created the start of my online business.

www.Pen2Paper.co has been launched and is ready and waiting for customers.

Visit Pen2Paper and learn 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'. You can order the course or just a single lesson. Look inside lesson 1 and flip through the pages from the comfort of your own computer. Start learning immediately by ordering a digital download or have the lessons printed for you and sent in the post. There's some special offers for the launch of the course. Just £1 will buy you a download of the first lesson. You can also pay for 10 parts and receive all 12 lessons of the course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'.

But this is only the beginning. I need to promote my online business. So please, tell your friends to visit the site. Add links to www.Pen2Paper.co wherever you can. Add links to your website and email me if you would like to do a link exchange. All of this will help get Pen2Paper found by the search engines.

And don't forget - it's Pen2Paper.CO NOT .co.uk or .com

Until next time.

BiziLizi
www.Pen2Paper.co

Page flip through lesson 1 of my course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'

Look inside the first lesson of my course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'. Browse the lesson and flip through the pages as if it were a physical document.

Read how I created the page-flip effect on my first lesson and it didn't cost me a penny.

Now it's time to put into practice all I have learnt so far creating my BiziLizi website and start to build the website for my online business. My next post will be all about the new website.

Thanks for your feedback.

BiziLizi

BiziLizi's been very busy ...

It's been a busy few days since my last post. I've learnt some really useful things that I've added to the BiziLizi website  that will really make a difference when I start work on my business website. It won't be long before I start work on the new site.

Read more about what I've been up to via the following links.

• I've added a physical product (that would normally be shipped) to my shopping cart page. This will be used for paper copies of the lessons in my 'How to Make Money Writing for Children' course.
• The email and webpage that the customer receives when completing a purchase have been customised. These are both managed by the Vibralogix script that is called following PayPal payment. The confirmation webpage has been built using the same style as the rest of the BiziLizi website and I'm pleased with the results. See what it looks like by making a purchase using one of the buttons provided for test purposes. You can use the physical product at the bottom of the shopping cart page and it will only cost £0.01 and will help me enormously with my testing.
• A SQL database has been created on my webserver that is updated with orders from the Secure Download and Shopping Cart pages. Once again I've used Vibralogix scripts to create the orders table and added some code they provide to the script that is run following payment.

I'd like to experiment with some page turning software to make it easy for potential customers to view extracts from my course prior to purchase. Hopefully, this will be the subject of my next post.

Then it will be time to put into practice what I have learnt and create my business website. 

Until next time, thanks for following my progress.

BiziLizi

New Shopping Cart

The payment part of my website is really taking shape. With the help of another product from Vibralogix called Vibracart, I've managed to integrate a shopping cart/trolley into the BiziLizi website to replace the Paypal one. I find this less confusing to use and it keeps potential customers on my site for longer before proceeding straight to the PayPal login and payment screen.

I've added a few payment buttons so that people can see how the new trolley works. For just £0.10 you can purchase extracts from my course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'. When you've completed the transaction via PayPal you'll be provided with a link to download the lesson extract. The link will also be emailed to you. For a limited time, whilst I'm developing the BiziLizi website, you can also purchase the COMPLETE LESSON 1 from the course for a BARGAIN PRICE of JUST £1.00. THis would normally retail at £18.00 so it's a great opportunity to get started with the course before my business website is launched. Lessons 2 and 3 are available for download from the shopping trolley page for the normal price of £18.00 and more lessons from the 12-part course will be available soon.

Hope you like how the trolley works. Many thanks if you make a purchase. It will really help my testing and get some money into my business.

BiziLizi

Secure links to my downloadable products

Last post I was working on reducing the size of my downloadable products. I've now updated the downloads so that after a customer pays via PayPal they receive a link to securely download the file. I've used some software from Vibralogix called Linklok and this has made the task quite straightforward. Following payment, the customer is redirected to a page where they can immediately download the product. They'll also be sent an email with a secure link that they can use for the download. I've explained how I implemented this on my BiziLizi website and also provided a button that can be used to purchase an extract of the first lesson in my course 'How to Make Money Writing for Children'. The download only costs £0.10 and it shows how the secure links integrate with PayPal.

It would be great if you could test this for me. I'll receive an email when you make the purchase. It will only cost you a few pennies and will help me if some real customers test the links. Let me know what you think.

Many thanks for your help.

BiziLizi

Creating Downloadable Products

I've taken a brief break from the payment aspect of my business to look at how to convert the lessons in my  'How to Make Money Writing Books for Children' course to a downloadable format.

I had some pretty large files (over 30MB just for the front cover of 1 lesson!). With a little trial and error and experimentation, I have managed to reduce these down to less than 0.5MB for an entire lesson, including the front cover. I've also found a great tool to merge a number of PDF files together.

At the moment I'm working on a way to secure the downloadable lessons to block the free distribution of links to my products. After all, I don't want to give my products away after all this hard work! The secure links will integrate with PayPal. As soon as I've worked out how to set this up, I'll return to this Blog and provide a link to a demonstration where you'll be able to securely download a file from my BiziLizi website and read about how I developed the solution.

Thanks for following my Blog.

BiziLizi

PayPal Buttons and Testing Payments

It's taken a bit more than the 'few days' I thought it would to update my Blog but I guess that's the nature of this work. As planned I've investigated using PayPal as a payment mechanism for my online business. There's so much to read but when I got started it wasn't so bad.

I've started a new part of the BiziLizi website for the extra things I'll need to be able to do for my online business and that includes a page on how to set up a PayPal business account and add some simple buttons to a website. There are some buttons on my PayPal page that you can use. They are actually connected to my PayPal business account and will accept payments. I've even created a 'Donate' button for anyone to use if they're finding the site helpful or just want to give me a bit of financial encouragement. It would be absolutely great if I were to receive some donations.

I've also learnt about and put into practice a tool that PayPal provides to help test the whole PayPal purchasing process. It lets you set up test accounts for buyers and sellers. You can create buttons, add these to a website and simulate transactions without any money actually changing hands. You can also see the emails that are created for both buyers and sellers. This tool is called Sandbox and I have added a page to the BiziLizi website that explains how to set it up and how to create buttons. It all looked a bit daunting at first but made sense after spending some time on it.

Having created some PayPal hosted buttons, my next move is to look at what's involved with non-hosted buttons. Apparently this is the sort I will need to use with the software I have decided to use to secure links to the digital downloads of my 'Writing books for children' course.

My next post to this Blog will look at how I use this software with PayPal to create my own shopping cart and link this to providing customers with digital downloads.

It will definitely be more than a 'few days' before I figure out how to do all of this and can update this Blog. But until then, please keep checking my BiziLizi website for updates.

BiziLizi

Search Engines and Website Analysis

Phew, that was a bit of a marathon update to my BiziLizi website. I've tidied up the site organisation and carried out research into the most suitable search engines to use for URL (web address) submission. It was quite interesting work and I've updated my site with the findings. I've also followed my own advice and submitted BiziLizi.co.uk to the recommended search engines. It's now a bit of a waiting game to see how long it takes for my pages to start getting noticed.

In the meantime, I've also started work on the tools you can use to analyse a website to help improve it for both human visitors and search engines. Most of my site has now been checked for errors and broken links, so if you find something that doesn't work please email me and let me know.

It's now time to refocus on some of the essential aspects required by my new business website. How to handle online payments is the next big subject to investigate.

I'll update this Blog with progress in a few days.

Hope you're enjoying my Blog.

BiziLizi