Day: October 6, 2013

Superblog!

UK research company Netcraft estimates the global number of active websites sites is 187 million. Alexa is the leading provider of free, global web metrics. As I write this, the Alexa global rank of Indies Unlimited is 66,349. That number is a little meaningless without some context. Imagine a bar that shows the total number of websites, ranked in order of their page views and visitors. At the very top of the bar would be Google, in the number one spot. Indies Unlimited would appear in a position 99.96% of the distance from the bottom of the bar and 0.04% away from Google.

We are in the top 1% of websites worldwide. In fact, we are within the top one-half percent of websites worldwide. Visitors to Indies Unlimited spend an average of 17:55 minutes daily here and view an average of 10.70 pages. On Amazon, people spend 6.26 minutes on site and view an average of 8.25 pages.

Two years ago I launched Indies Unlimited into this cyber-ocean. We have come a long way in a short time, and we did it by providing quality content. No smoke and mirrors. No fancy SEO tricks. No marketing budget.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the readers of Indies Unlimited, not only for spending part of your precious time with us, but also for helping spread the word.

I also want to thank the scrappy band of lovable rebels who are responsible for the excellent content that has helped make this site a valuable resource and a real global presence:

K.S. Brooks, co-administrator
Laurie Boris, associate editor
And evil minions: A.C. Flory, Big Al, Carol Wyer, Carolyn Steele, Cathy Speight, Chris James, D.V. Berkom, Dick C. Waters, Jim Devitt, Kathy Rowe, Krista Tibbs, L. A. Lewandowski, Lynne Cantwell, Mark Jacobs, Martin Crosbie, Melissa Bowersock, Melissa Pearl, Rich Meyer, T.D. McKinnon, and Yvonne Hertzberger.

Indies Unlimited Anniversary Singalong

Well, here we are again – another anniversary for the nuclear-powered deathstar superblog we all know and love – Indies Unlimited. Please join me in singing a little tune in celebration of this joyous occasion. Don’t worry, I’ve included the lyrics. Think of it as Indie Author Karaoke.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to the Evil Mastermind, all the minions, and to all our subscribers, readers, and commenters. It’s a pleasure being here with you.

Happy Anniversary Indies Unlimited – and may you have many, many more!

The Changing Face of Writing

One or two fairly recent posts at Indies Unlimited prompted me to look at this particular subject.

“Wow!” is my first reaction as I look around. There is so much software out there to ‘help you organise your writing skills’, as they put it. I really did try to view it all with an open mind.

After all, did I not move on from my original method of production: writing it in long hand (à la Will Shakespeare), reading into a Dictaphone and then transcribing my work using an old manual, clunk-a-clunk typewriter, which was then superseded by the latest electrical variety; and then the ultimate magical world of PC’s came along and voila! The wonders of Word processing and the capacity to process words in any old fashion that takes your fancy… brilliant! But apparently that too is old hat now! Continue reading “The Changing Face of Writing”