As writers, we despise marketing. Show me a writer who enjoys it, and I’ll show you a successful writer. For the rest of us lot we have to do it ourselves. Or do we…?

Here are some cheats you can use to drive more traffic to you story and ring up potential sales.

Pay Someone

The website Fiverr lets you pay people the paltry sum of $5 to do all sorts of things. You could pay to have someone tweet your story. Maybe hire someone to convince others to read your story. You might ask for Facebook likes or retweets of your tweet. Whatever you want, there’s someone out there willing to do it. For five bucks.

Pay Someone Important

What if you want more? Wouldn’t it be great if a celebrity of some status told everyone to read your story. Impossible? No way. This happens all the time in the book industry. Ever pick up a book and see a recommendation from Stephen King or J. K. Rowling? Don’t kid yourself, those authors were paid (whether they liked the book or not). Why not do the same thing yourself?

The site BuySellAds has all sorts of services for hire. The most interesting is the sponsored tweets. Here you can hire someone popular to tweet for you. Paris Hilton costs $4,600. Pricey, but I bet a lot of people would see it. However, Makobi Scribe (with 65 thousand followers) will tweet for you for $15. She specializes in product reviews and kids’s fashion. You get the idea.

I’m not saying I’m going to rush out to do this right now. Mostly, I don’t have a product I need to promote. Yet if I did, I would strongly consider this as one possible avenue for spreading the word.

Tim Kane