Slogging On

Apparently, some people, other than Kaye, are reading this. What a pleasant surprise! Please spread the word that http://www.vietnam-air-rescues.com/ exists and encourage others to buy the book.

As I told in my initial blog, I named this “Up in the Air, Depending on Prayer” after a title a former Pastor used when referring to my story. Things certainly are “up in the air” as I wait for the site to be discovered. I am resorting to a lot of prayer also as I know that getting to the point where people know you are there is a difficult trip. Patience, Dave, patience.

The ‘Tell a Friend’ recommendations are coming in. Kenny Richardson, my nephew, is the first to send them out, followed by Mark. Now, at last, others are hearing about the site. No sales yet, however.

Kaye thinks I should add the sound of helicopter rotors to the main page. I had vaguely thought about that some time ago, but have no idea how to do it. David says he will send a link by email to get that along with instructions on how to add it. He also thinks I could solve my button problem by placing them in an invisible table. I will have to give it a try.

I am almost caught up to real time in these musings. The columns are still jumping up and covering the title. What to do? Sometimes, they work OK, other times not. I try resizing them. That seems to help, but the problem continues. How embarrassing!

David suggests tables. (Actually, he has been suggesting tables all along) So—I give tables a try. Also, go from a 3 column to a 2 column format. Allows the pictures to be larger. Look much nicer. Another learning curve. The tables work superbly. Now the pictures don’t jump around anymore. They just don’t load. Worse yet, the failure to load is random. Sometimes a given picture will load, sometime it won’t.

Ugh! What to do? I replace three of them that seem to be the chief culprits. That does and does not fix the problem. I will try resizing them to a slightly smaller size. Hope that takes care of things.

Kaye finds the helicopter sounds (or is it David? I can’t remember.) I may or may not try them. Too many other problems to fix right now.

Three sales so far. Praise the Lord! Wish they were 300, though. I have decided the main page (although I like it) doesn’t convey the sales pitch I need to sell books, so I have junked it and replaced it with the Sample page. Work, work, work, redoing everything.

Don't seem to be getting many visits from the 'tell a friend' emails. Mark feels that is because I did not allow personal comments to be added. He thinks others will not open an email unless they recognize it as being from a known person. He is probably right. I have changed that.

One of Craig’s friends, who bought the book, says he sent in a comment. Haven’t seen it. By the by, I have renamed the Testimony page ‘What Others are Saying’. I like that better. Now, after some complaints about the missing original main page, I have decided to reinvent it and move the sample page back to sample status. Good grief! I am running around in circles!

Check back in a day or two for more of the travails of

Dave

Time Rolls By

Today is Kaye’s birthday. Happy birthday, Sweetheart, you are the love of my life. My wish is for you to have a pleasant day and a satisfying year to come.

Back to the website—I am just about up to ‘blogging’ in real time. The website, http://www.vietnam-air-rescues.com/ has grown unbelievably beyond what I had envisioned when I started this whole thing. If you haven’t visited there recently, I suggest you go and take a look.

I pretty much solved the jumping text box problem on the ‘Main’ page through a combination of changing the width of the columns, shrinking the photos and moving the text boxes down the page. The problem still crops up occasionally, but not as much as before and can be cured by clicking the refresh button. Not the best of solutions, but I am fresh out of ideas.

Now, my buttons began to give me fits. I would enter the html code to center them, but, inexplicably, the centering code would disappear and they would stubbornly pop back to the far left. I thought of replacing them with hyperlinks, but couldn’t get the ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Blog’ links to work there.

Finally, I declared victory and announced to the world the job was done. Of course, the response was a deafening silence. Now it is time to put my master plan for advertising this thing into place.

What is the master plan? Well, I don’t have any money to advertise with, so I am counting on the ‘Tell a Friend’ concept to get the ball rolling.

I have picked out 15 friends and family to receive a complimentary unlock key with a request they read the book and, providing they liked it, recommend it to at least three friends and write a short comment I can include on the ‘Testimonial’ page I have started. In return, they (and anyone else who participates) will get a free gift and an entry into a contest to win a free copy of Kenny Fields' book, "The Rescue of Streetcar 304".

The idea is that this will start a chain that will ‘viral’ out further and further as people recommend others to get their free gift and chances in the contest. Talk about leaning on a slender reed! We will see.

The ‘Testimonial’ page is Kaye’s idea. She likes to read testimonials. I thought it was a good idea, but we have a disagreement about the identification of the people who do the submission. I thought first name and last initial would work, she thinks that makes it sound like it is a phony.

I have also added a ‘Blog’. Good grief! This is another idea from Kaye, who has heard that people like blogs and will return to see what is new. Sounds good, except I want them to buy the book, not linger at the blog site. Obviously, this is what you are reading. Kaye thinks it is interesting. I think no one else is reading it.

As the days pass, I make little improvements here and there. I have added a counter. So far, most of the traffic is me, playing with the pages.

More to come!

Dave