One of the most exciting things that has happened in my little business lately is going viral on Instagram. Well, viral by children's book author standards. I had a reel with 45K views (63K views now), which showcased a special piece of art rather than any of my books. In one month, I've gone from 518 followers to nearly 3,500, which has meant 4-5 windfall sales and a LOT of excitement. I created a similar reel the following week and had excellent numbers with that as well. The problem is, my successful reels are "follow for follows." While I had many gratuitous followers, I now am following 1,175 people - which means my feed is packed with people I barely know, and I'm missing posts from accounts I value. Do you filter who you follow on Instagram, and how? Would you recommend against "follow for follow," even when it's a successful strategy? What happens when an account pops up that I don't like (they are AI-generated, occult, creepy, crude, or just really negative)? Do I follow them out of fairness, but scroll past their content? I really want to get to 10K, but keeping my word to others AND discerning what content to consume is challenging.

@Harleigh Manske If this isn't allowed, please delete it. I had a thought last night, guys. In view of Dolly's death yesterday, I feel we, as writers, should do something in her memory and we can! I feel we should all donate to her Imagination Library. I donated about 20 books when my first book came out, and the feeling that you're giving a child a chance to read is unbelievable! I feel we should do this when we all individually can to give the children a good start and in Dolly's memory. I realize that even authors copies aren't cheap right now, but I hope we all will do what we can to donate to the library. If anyone is interested in doing this, please contact me. I have the address.

Well, it's good to be back. This is going to be a longish post sharing my successes (and a few failures) since publishing my America 250 book back in July. Sales were amazing for the first three weeks, then trailed off predictably as excitement over the holiday died down and everybody left on vacation. I optimistically ordered 500 copies for the release, and currently have 359, which is a success by any self-published author's standards. For comparison, 141 copies is what my first book (The Story of Marlin, the Cat) sold in a full year! The problem is what to do with whatever is left after the year elapses. Stores have not been really keen on the book post-4th of July, but I also haven't opened my Faire store yet, so we shall see. I may be stuck with a "lifetime supply" of copies. I ran a little sale for Patriot Day yesterday, and will run another for Veterans' Day (part of the profit supports homeless veterans, so fitting), and a storewide sale for Thanksgiving weekend. I want to thank Harleigh again for getting me on to Shopify. I had an 8-year-old greeting card business that needed a new home. In addition to my books, I've uploaded about half of 100+ designs to the site, and the format is BEAUTIFUL. It's a work in progress but completely shop-able meantime: https://illustrationsbyacb.com And the customers have been coming! Counting my book launch, I've had 20 sales off that site since I opened it in late June. Everything from a free coloring page download to nearly $100 worth of gift books. Shopify's high fees are fully justified because they do drive traffic to your store, and the 3-month fee waiver allows you to build, test, and open the site before they actually start to charge. I would recommend it to anyone! However, the success has created three dilemmas: 1. I have an Etsy shop. I started it back when I had a WooCommerce site that wasn't getting sales and I thought diversification would be my strength. But in the past calendar year, Etsy has had only 7 orders. I've hesitated to close it because I got a windfall order for 215 personalized greeting cards last Christmas. Also, my best performing item, an Advent calendar, has 19 favorites (but only 1 sale). I copy every new product I list on Shopify onto Etsy, which is time consuming. Do you think I would be better served (and less hassled) by closing the Etsy shop and making my Shopify the best it can be? Will my old Etsy prospects be able to find me? 2. What do you think of connecting Instagram to Shopify? Shopify recommends it, and almost half my sales are coming from Instagram anyway. I start to sound like a parrot repeating "link in bio." On the other hand, when I see a lot of Instagram posts that say "shop now," I tend to see them as less genuine and click away. 3. I bill myself as a top-tier, hand-drawn illustrator. My graphic designer created coloring pages for my site using AI renderings of my watercolors, because I didn't have time to draw with a pen. I've thought of taking them down, but people from my email list are starting to download them, and kids at craft shows love them. Is it inconsistent to keep them up?

I find that even when I take an intentional day off from creating I still end up wanting to create something, but in a different way. When I take a take off from my regular creating it seems like it allows me to make room in my brain to clean or organize different areas of my life...I also create more in the kitchen (which is an area I struggle with so much). But every time I take the pressure off of writing it seems to help me hit the reset button and when I come back I feel more ready to create from a space of excitement rather then obligation...does that make sense? Anyway I hope yall have a great day and are able to do what you set out to do today. :)

Hi everybody! In addition to my free coloring pages, I have about 120 greeting card designs that I think would really benefit from a Keywords Everywhere optimization. How much do people spend per month to use this tool? As far as I can tell, you have to pay the base subscription of $7 to access any of the features, but some of those require payment per use on top of the subscription. I am most interested in the keyword traffic ranking feature discussed in the Free Traffic Formula course. I just don't want to break the bank.