Rumors of the orphanage of Jer’s Novel Writer are justified but premature. Just last night I was composing a long message to the community about what is going on with it. What it boils down to is that I’m broke and Jer’s Novel Writer doesn’t pay the bills. As I spend less time on it, the income drops off even more, causing a vicious cycle.

I will definitely keep the software alive, however, as I use it every day. I have a big list of improvements I’d like to make if I can just figure out how to get someone to pay me to do them.

I’ll put up a longer message at the forums, but that’s essentially where things stand. I’ll still happily accept money, and I do get all software keys out eventually. The payment button is at http://jerssoftwarehut.com/download.shtml

Thanks for your support!

I don’t use the services as much as I should, but this will give you advice on keywords and whatnot. Also consider all the different phrases that searchers might use (always a surprising number) and make sure those words are all covered on your site (with relevance – Google is pretty good at detecting a pile of keywords).

Other things you can do: Make sure the key words are in the title of the page, and are in larger text near the top. (Google doesn’t mention the meta tags, but other systems might still use them.) Another thing to do is to change your page regularly (‘freshness’ counts).

Google is happy to tell you how to improve your ranking as well. Go to http://google.com/webmasters and sign up (not as big a hassle as it first appears), then start clicking around. It will tell you exactly where you rank with common search phrases. Google analytics is all about helping people who really deserve higher matches to get them.

Finally, it’s worth dropping a polite letter to that other company, asking them if they would kindly put a little note on their page redirecting your colleagues.