Apr
7th
2018
Shadow, Ads, and Other News · 8:58pm Apr 7th, 2018
Hey guys, Max here with a couple of noteworthy news updates!
I’ll get to the first and most exciting one first. Shadow of an Empireis now in Beta! The Beta Readers invites have been sent out, several readers have already responded and received their links to the Master Beta Read document, and things are in motion!
Which, if you’re not a Beta Reader, is still pretty cool. After all, a Beta Read is one step closer to Shadow of an Empirebeing out.We’ve got the Beta Reads, the copy-edit … and then publication.
Whoa. Yeah, it’s getting close. Which means you can probably start looking for a cover preview popping up here before long.
I'd noticed the domain change, but couldn't pinpoint exactly when it'd happened. Pretty cool that you're able to run that without ads for now.
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It is, though hopefully it being without ads inspires more people to make use of the site.
Oddly enough, views have dropped sharply since I switched it over to its own domain. Not sure why.
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Does Wordpress cross-promote at all? Is MaxOnWriting less searchable?
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I have no idea. Right now I'm hoping it's just a slump. Maybe they expect that since I'm on my own domain, they don't need to do the cross-promotion anymore, but I'm sure I've seen other sites using their interface and on their own domain plugged anyway.
Maybe I've just not had anything groundbreaking that's attracted a lot of eyes lately.
EDIT: Looks like jumping to a domain may have reset my Google search rankings. Searching "Being a Better Writer" used to bring my site up on the first or second page ... but now I'm not even in the top five. And "Max on Writing" brought up nothing. That could certainly be part of the problem. maxviking.wordpress.com had five years of links to rise it up pretty high in the search rankings. Maxonwriting.com is new and doesn't have all those links giving it Google traffic.
That's certainly part of the problem, I suspect. Groan ...