Dungeon Legacy Page 1 – Bored

This is the first page of my new webcomic, Dungeon Legacy. This is a fantasy based on the new Dungeon and Dragons Forth Edition that will be released today (June 6, 2008). It is the story of a group of six adventures who help people in need and try to tame the wilderness. The elf on this page is Ersaor Stoneleaf, a ranger who lives in the area.

More Social Marketing Goodness

I took this information from a private list I belong to at undergroundtraininglab.com.

Warning: The information at the end suggests ways of fooling the search engines. Use this information with caution. I do think the idea of using video to promote your site is a good one.

Introduction to Social Bookmarking:

According to Wikipedia.com “Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, but depending on the service’s features, may be saved privately, shared only with specific people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.”

Here’s How You Can Use Social Bookmarking To Grab Free Traffic From The Search Engines:

Social Bookmarking helps create incoming links, and multiplies the possible number of results you have in the search engines. For example; submit one of your pages or blog posts to the 29 social bookmarking sites listed below and that one post can now show up as 29 “unique” results in the search engines. So now instead of having that one page/blog post rank just once in the top 10, it is possible for that “one” page to actually rank 29 times… you could literally own the first 29 results in google for your search term when you use Social Bookmarking as part of your promotions.

It all comes down to proper keyword selection. The more targeted the keyword phrase the better your chances of ranking high.

For example, I use this technique for promoting highly competitive products like plasma tvs and digital cameras and do quite well with it. But I use specific model numbers like “casio exilim ex-z1080 10.1mp …” for my keyword phrase rather than “casio digital camera”.

Real Life Example:

Social Bookmarking is the technique we used live at the November 2007 Get More Traffic Blueprint workshop for getting the term “casio ex-z1080 10.1 mp digital camera” ranked; we were able to get 6 out of the top 10 spots in google within 24 hours.

Here’s how we did it:

1. My assistant shot a quick video of me with the new casio exilim ex-z1080 digital camera.

2. He loaded the video to youtube and ten other video sites

3. He posted the youtube video to my blog

4. He took the blog post url and submitted it to 10 or 20 Social Bookmarking sites using http://socialmarker.com/

5. He took the video page itself at youtube and myspace and submitted the video page to 10 or 20 SB sites using http://socialmarker.com/

(once you load a video to a video sharing site like youtube… simply bookmark the video page.)

That’s it. And within hours we controlled 6 out of the top 10 search results for the term “casio exilim ex-z1080 10.1 mp digital camera”.

It’s important to note that the video on sites such as youtube.com, myspace, gofish, etc. are still ranking in the top 10 on google 30 days later, but the blog post listings on the social bookmarking sites such as propeller.com are no longer in the top 10.

That means you should use video whenever possible and bookmark the video page at the video sites themselves in addition to your blog post. You should keep adding your important pages/videos/posts to new SB sites every week or two after the initial SB promotion; the new ones will “replace” the old ones and you’ll keep your rankings in google long term.

Note: The whole SB promotion for the casio took less than 15 minutes; including shooting the video itself. We didn’t add a watermark to our video for time’s sake but You Should Always add the URL of the site you are promoting to your videos (as watermarks) before distributing them.

Using Social Marker for Your Social Bookmarking Promotions:

When you visit http://socialmarker.com/ you’ll see a list of several dozen of the top Social Bookmarking sites such as propeller.com, technorati.com, twitter.com, etc.

The object is to submit the page or blog post you wish to “rank high in the engines” to as many of the social bookmarking sites as possible. If you have an entire site you wish to rank well, then submit each page/post to the Social Bookmarking sites (be sure to use the “Ranking Higher Tips” below).

Ranking Higher Tips:

The key is to make your Social Bookmarking (SB) promotions seem “natural” to the search engines. You accomplish this by setting up multiple SB accounts, and by running your promotions slowly, over time… a few today, a few next week, and a few next month, etc.

If you only have one SB account set up (1 propeller.com, 1 twitter.com, etc) the engine will eventually catch on that the account is simply being used to “influence” the search engines… and eventually they’ll stop indexing and ranking your personal SB accounts.

1. Register multiple accounts for each of the Social Bookmarking sites listed at Social Marker (see “e” below). I suggest starting out with at least 10 unique accounts for each Social Bookmarking (SB) sites.

a. For example, visit propeller.com and open up 10 unique accounts using different usernames, etc.

b. Use free email accounts from yahoo, gmail, etc. to open up the accounts.

c. Repeat the process for each of the 29 Social Bookmarking sites listed at Social Marker.

d. My guys tell me that it only takes them 15 minutes to sign up for all 29 Social Bookmarking sites. So creating 10 accounts for each of the Social Bookmarking sites should only take you or your staff a few hours to complete.

e. Use Social Maker itself when signing up for your new accounts; when it takes you to each of the 29 sites don’t enter your existing passwords, simply sign up for a new one and move on to the next.

f. Use roboform.com to organize the passwords; it’s a great time saver.

2. Rotate the SB accounts you use for each page/post/video you submit with Social Marker.

a. For example, if you have 10 propeller.com accounts then randomly choose 3 of them to submit each unique page/post to this time, and the next time randomly choose 3 more.

b. Do NOT submit the same page to all 10 of your propeller.com accounts at the same time.

3. Add new SB accounts to use in your promotions on a regular basis.

a. For example, start by setting up 10 accounts for each SB site, and then each week or two add a few new ones so you eventually get up to 40 or 50 accounts for each SB site.

4. Mix it up a bit; If you are promoting your page/post/video about Jessica Alba, you should also Social bookmark items you find about her from various sites (youtube.com, myspace.com, digg.com, etc.) that are not yours (they weren’t created or posted by you). This helps give the appearance of randomness to your promotions.

5. Social Bookmark the Social Bookmarking pages, too. For example, I created a video, loaded it to youtube, and then posted the youtube video on my blog. I then ran a SB promotion for my new video blog post. Then I took the video’s page at youtube and promoted that page with http://socialmarker.com/, too.

1. Do your SB promotions for each page/post/video slowly over time. Do a few today, a few more next week, a few more a month from now, etc.

2. “Tags” are your primary keywords so choose highly specific “long tail” ones whenever possible. For example, if you are promoting a “casio exilim ex-z1080 digital camera” one of your “tags” should be “casio exilim ex-z1080 digital camera”. And then includes general tags like “digital camera”, “casio camera”, “casio exilim”, etc.

3. Create videos whenever possible and promote them with social bookmarking. Videos tend to stay in the rankings longer than the Social Bookmarks themselves. Don’t forget to SB the pages that your video is hosted on.

4. Social Bookmarking should not be the only technique you use to promote your page/post/video. Use other techniques such as incoming links, articles, press releases, on page optimization, etc.

5. Don’t SB every single little page/post/video you create. Social Bookmarking can cause a lot of “spam” so use it wisely.

Social Marketing Websites

Social marketing involves getting as many people on the Internet to find out about you possible This relies on two factors. 1. Making yourself highly visible so that it’s easier for people to find you and 2. Increasing your search engine rankings so that you’ll appear near the top of any lists related to your market.

Once people start finding your site you need to keep them around so that they will buy something. You do this by:

1. Give away something valuable to the people coming to visit you. This doesn’t need to be something that costs you anything. Information can be just as valuable as things with a market price. What you give should be related to why people have come to visit your site in the first place. All that research you did to write your book could be of great value to someone else.

Remember, you want to give away something of high perceived value. It might be worth giving away one of your books (your best seller) if it means people will buy everything else you write. You need to think about the long term benefits over the short term costs. A loyal fan is far more valuable then a one time buyer.

2. Be friendly and open. People should get to know you as someone that is both knowledgeable in your field and a person they would want to know. You need to be professional so that people trust that your books are of high quality and you need to be friendly so they will want to buy a book from you.

3. Don’t over sell your products. Often a short message saying something like “oh, by the way I have a new book coming out if you’re interested” is better then posting a long message about how great your book is. Link to the site where they can buy the book and allow them to decide for themselves if they want to check it out.

Only sell one thing per post. People get confused if they are offered too many choices. Link to the page they can buy that specific book and let them search the site for other books written by you if they want to. If you cycle through everything you have to sell every time you post you’ll be more likely to sell everything then if you try to sell everything at once.

Holly Jahangiri had some more information to add about Social Marketing.

First of all, you can sign up on every social networking site in the world, and shoot yourself in the foot by not understanding or respecting the community there.

Read these:

How to be as famous as a porn star (Without taking off your clothes)

Rebranding yourself

The Brand Called You

Ask yourself – when it comes to those social networking sites, web sites, and blogs – “Would anyone in my industry actually pay money to sponsor this?” (Maybe you don’t want sponsorship, and that’s fine – but are you offering anything of enough value that someone might WANT to sponsor it and consider it a worthwhile investment?)

Now, go read this:

Confidence…The Root of Success

Resolve never to complain or worry in public, ever again (or start an anonymous blog, or a restricted access blog, where you can vent and whine and moan to your heart’s content – we all need that outlet, from time to time, and I figure it’s better to inflict it on the blog and a few close friends than on the spouse).

It’s all a conscious focused effort (I think my biggest downfall is lack of focus), but it must be sincere and authentic (maybe “loves to dabble and explore like an Internet magpie” could be part of my personal brand…), too.

Whatever you do, don’t forget that everything you post on the Internet is public. Hello, World…

Social Networks

A social network is a place where you can post lots of different things and invite others to view what you have to offer. The sites are designed so that you can socialize with others easily.

http://www.authorsden.com/ NEW

http://bebo.com

http://cre8buzz.com/ NEW

http://www.danogo.com

http://facebook.com

http://friendfeed.com/

http://www.goodreads.com/ NEW

http://groups.yahoo.com

http://www.jacketflap.com/ NEW

http://linkedin.com

http://mashable.com/ NEW

http://myspace.com

http://ning.com

http://www.ojeez.com/ NEW

http://opcot.com

http://orkut.com

http://secondlife.com

http://www.shelfari.com/ NEW

http://www.shoutlife.com/ NEW

http://www.writing.com NEW

Social Bookmarks

These are sites that allow you to bookmark websites and news posts. Usually these sites will rank sites based on how often they are bookmarked. Having lots of bookmarks from different sources will help increase your rankings in the search engines.

http://socialmarker.com

Social Marker is not a social book marketing site, it is a site that allows you to post to dozens of social bookmarker sites at one time. First you’ll need to sign up to every site separately. Sign up to as many as you’d like. You don’t need to sign up to them all to use Social Marker.

http://www.addthis.com/

http://www.addtoany.com/

Add This and Add to Any are free button services that allow you to put all your social bookmarking links into one convenient button.

http://del.icio.us

http://digg.com

http://slashdot.org

http://technorati.com

http://www.stumbleupon.com

http://reddit.com

http://www.fark.com

http://www.newsvine.com

http://swik.net

http://furl.net/

http://www.connotea.org

http://sphinn.com

http://www.blinklist.com

http://faves.com

http://www.mister-wong.com

http://spurl.net

http://netvouz.com

http://www.diigo.com

http://www.backflip.com

http://www.rawsugar.com

http://bibsonomy.org

http://www.folkd.com

http://linkagogo.com

http://myjeeves.ask.com

http://www.indianpad.com

http://www.plugim.com

http://buddymarks.com

http://google.com/bookmarks

http://www.connectedy.com

http://www.mylinkvault.com

http://www.jumptags.com

http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com

http://www.oyax.com

http://www.a1-webmarks.com

http://www.bookmarktracker.com

http://www.myvmarks.com

http://www.mixx.com

http://wirefan.com

http://www.danogo.com/bookmarks

http://www.linksmarker.com

http://www.symbaloo.com

http://ximmy.com

http://www.healthranker.com

http://ka-boom-it.com

http://feedmelinks.com

http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com

http://ekstreme.com

http://ma.gnolia.com

http://blinkbits.com

http://www.rojo.com

http://blogmarks.net

http://co.mments.com

http://sourceforge.net/projects/scuttle

http://www.bloglines.com

http://tailrank.com

http://de.lirio.us

http://favorites.live.com

http://www.valent-blog.eu/social-bookmarking-reloaded

Content Sharing

These are sites where you can post your research and other information that people might be interested in reading. Add links to a lot of different websites that will add to the information you have posted and then slip your own website in there as well. Most of these sites don’t like blatant advertising so make sure the information has some true social value.

http://brightkite.com/ NEW

http://www.craigslist.org

http://www.gather.com

http://hubpages.com

http://www.propeller.com

http://www.squidoo.com

http://www.scribd.com/

http://twitter.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

Creation Sharing

Videos, pictures, and audio files can add an extra dimension to your books. Use these sites to add multimedia to your blogs and websites. Search engines love video sites so pass the links around as much as you can. Make sure you website appears in your video. You should make sure you mention your site in your audio files as well. Large images, like book covers, should also have a link to your site somewhere. Again, don’t over market yourself. Just let people know where they can find you and leave the decision to them.

Videos

http://www.tubemogul.com/

Tube Mogul is not a video site, it is a site that allows you to upload your video to several websites at once.

http://blip.tv

http://www.brightcove.tv

http://www.dailymotion.com

http://eyespot.com

http://freeiq.com

http://www.gofish.com (child friendly site)

http://video.google.com

http://www.howcast.com

http://jumpcut.com

http://crackle.com

http://www.ourmedia.org

http://vids.myspace.com

http://www.revver.com/

http://sclipo.com

http://www.stupidvideos.com

http://www.vimeo.com

http://www.metacafe.com

http://www.youtube.com

http://video.yahoo.com

http://uncutvideo.aol.com

http://www.veoh.com

http://www.viddler.com

http://www.5min.com

Videocast

http://www.ustream.tv/

Images

http://www.deviantart.com

http://www.flickr.com

http://www.image4host.com/

http://www.photobucket.com

Audio and Podcasts

http://www.last.fm

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ NEW

http://jott.com/

http://www.talkshoe.com

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html

http://www.podcastpickle.com

http://www.podfeed.net

Blogging

Blogging sites are great places to link to everything else you post on the net. As blogging sites tend to have a higher ranking in the search engines then your own site, it is well worth opening several blog sites and passing links around.

http://blogger.com

http://www.blogcatalog.com/ NEW

http://www.blogher.com/ NEW

http://movabletype.org

http://wordpress.com

http://livejournal.com

Articles

If you write non-fiction, these are great sites to get information about a lot of different subjects. While you’re there, post a few articles of your own. These sites don’t usually allow direct links, but you can post your information at the end of the article and let people find you that way.

http://ezinearticles.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.articlecity.com

New website and name

Bookmark the following site:  DungeonLegacy.com

That’s a link to my new webcomic website, which is now called Dungeon Legacy.

Dungeon Legacy is the story of six misfit characters that have joined together temporally to fight a common threat.  However, in the process they uncover a much greater threat that threatens there whole world.  Can they work together to save the world or will their different personalities and believes pull them apart?

Dungeon Legacy is based on the new Forth Edition Dungeons and Dragons game.  The world the characters live in will be one of my own design but will follow closely to the designs of the 4ed rule books.  As such, I will post character sheets and notes related to D&D so that people can actually use the characters and items from my comic in their game.

The RPG will not be released  until June 6, 2008 and so my webcomic will not start until that date as well.  I have put up some design images on the site  so you can have something to look at between then and now.

This is a fantasy story so expect lots of battles and dungeon exploration; Lots of strange monsters and powerful magic; many unusual characters and different cultures.

This is also a drama.  The characters have well developed personalities and these personalities are designed to drive a wedge between the characters.  There are also things that will pull the characters together.  This dramatic push and pull will make the characters act more like real people.  This will also allow me to discuss a lot of ideas.  I’m pretty diplomatic in nature and so I’ll present several ideas in as unbiased a format as possible.  I want to look at some ideas that we take for granted that other cultures – especially those from another world – may not believe.

This webcomic will be a comic.  That is, it will have comedic elements.  I can’t promise  the comic will be funny.  Everyone has different things they find funny.  What I laugh at might make you angry.  I can’t control that, but I can control the pacing of the story.  As such, there are high and low places in the plot line so that it isn’t all action or all talking.  The characters will act and interact with each other.  Sometimes that interaction will be funny and some times it will be thought provoking.  I will also have one page joke pages between episodes.

The story will be episodic.  This means that you can read any episode and enjoy the story without reading anything else.  You will get more out of reading the story from beginning to end but I don’t want people to feel they have to read my whole archive (once I have a few episodes published) to understand what is happening in the current story.  I also want to be able to sell each episode as a Graphic Novel print format that I can sell at conventions, comic shops and book stores.

Some people reading this will likely question whether I’m able to pull something like this off.  Let me point you to my other webcomic, Alternate Reality Worlds.  I’ve made a few mistakes with this comic and learned a lot from them.  The biggest mistake is trying to create a 500 page graphic novel in webcomic form.  The story starts very poorly but you need to know what happens at the beginning to follow what happens at the end.  However, if you go to the New Reader page you will find a summery of the whole story so that you don’t need to read the early pages.  The story is divided onto chapters so you can skip the early ones to get to the better stuff in the later chapters.

I’ll post here again closer to the release date.  I hope your join me over at Dungeon Legacy.  While there, please leave some comments.

scan of mock-up cover

EDIT: Here is the inked version of the cover.  I’ve redesigned Zetork’s look based on concept drawings of the Dragonborn.

I scanned the cover I sketched for the new webcomic, Dungeon Warden and Dragon Lady. I’ll call it DWnDL for short. I’m sorry that the scan is so poor, but it was just a quick pencil sketch so the lines weren’t very dark. I’ll ink the drawing later so you can see it clearer. I can’t draw a dragonborn character to match Zetork’s personality so the middle image was very lightly done as a place holder. I’ll reveal what he looks like when I figure it out. For now, you can see the basic concepts of what the other characters might look like.

The characters are, from left to right, Taddin (halfling), Nogi (dwarf), Ersaor (elf), Zetork (dragonborn), Arlina (Eldin), and Karlaia (Tiefling).

DW&DL characters

Here is a list of possible characters for the new webcomic. This is the main party of adventures as they stand right now. These may change in the future.

Arlina Drakeclaw – Female Eldin Warlock – A noble lady with a cruel side.

Ersaor Stoneleaf – Male Elf Ranger – wild, restless warden

Nogi Macecrusher – Female Dwarf Cleric – cute religious zelot

Karlaia Hope – Female Tiefling Wizard – street-smart tough girl

Taddin Fusopa – Male Halfling Warlord – Stiff, by-the-book strategist

Zetork Metalmaw – Male Dragonborn rogue – fun-loving doofus

This eclectic group will be fighting amongst themselves as much as they are fighting the enemy, but when the going gets tough they will work together to survive.

Ersaor and Arlina will have a love hate relationship throughout most of the series as they have different world views that often conflict. They are the Dungeon Warden and Dragon Lady of the title.

There are several new classes and races in the new forth edition Dungeons and Dragons game, so some of the class and race names may be unfamiliar to you, namely:

Eldin – this is a high elf from the land of the fey

Warlock – this is a spell caster who gains spells by making a pact with a powerful outer-worldly being.

Tiefling – a humanoid with goat horns and a long tail.

Warlord – a strategist and battle tactician.

Dragonborn – a mixture between a human and a dragon, but not a member of either race.

Welcome to my new Blog

I plan to create a new webcomic under the working title of “Dungeon Warden and Dragon Lady,” which will be based on the new Dungeons and Dragons forth Edition Role Playing Game (RPG). This blog will document the process and offer information about the story as it develops. There will be many spoilers in these posts (which will be labeled as such), but keep in mind that many things could change before the comic starts production.

I hope you will come back daily and see the process of developing a story from start to finish.