Meet Paulo Sousa, Web Developer and Publisher

Paulo Sousa moved from Brazil to America in 1995. He has always been passionate about computers and technology, and around the same time that he came to the US, he began researching the workings of the internet. Soon he discovered the secret to ranking at the top of search engine results. This discovery made him one of the pioneers on SEO field, when this word still did not exist.

Over time, he became interested in e-commerce and attended Boston University to study web development. In 2010 he started a self-publishing website, www.e-selfpress.com. Since late 2015, he has been revamping and updating this site to provide more resources for customers. Learn more by following e-selfpress on Facebook. You can also learn more about Paulo and his work on http://www.askpaulo.com/.

1. How was SEO changed since you first began learning about it and using it?

When we look back 20 years ago, we did not have the idea of how SEO would change the way to do business online. SEO in those old days was a very simple thing to do, since the search engines then did not have enough technology to evaluate all aspects of the site. Today, the engines acts like a very smart human being, looking at every aspect of the site in order to deliver the best results for the searchers. Today, we have many more areas to work on each site to achieve a good recognition on the engines.

The engines are getting smarter and smarter, acting like a human. But 20 years ago, if you just created a good title for your site, it would be enough. Today, titles still remain as important as before, but they're just a fraction of the game. The engine needs to read your site, and follow the links from and towards to the site in order to understand what is the site is about. It's very easy for a person who does not know SEO but understands HTML to make a web site and fail to please the search engines with information in the source code of the page.

To succeed today, you have to start with a domain where you have keywords on it, instead of choosing a URL that does not tell anything to the search engine. We always have a solution when we talk to our clients. Of course you can always work on names that do not have keywords in them. If you sell, for instance, mattresses, the ideal URL should have mattress in it. This factor increases your relevance to the engines, and a website with this behavior gets some consideration of the engine doing that.

In short, each business website is evaluated differently, but the evolution has been huge.

2. What interests you most about doing web development work?

First of all, I love to see the happiness of my clients at the delivery of the work. The second beauty of this work is to perform a search and see your results in the top results of search engines. This is a priceless reward.

3. Would you tell us a little more about how you and your wife got into writing and publishing e-books and how you found success in that project?

Before I had even thought about starting my self-publishing website www.e-selfpress.com, I wrote a book about Secrets of the iPad, since Apple did not sell the iPad with a manual. This book became a bestselling book in Brazil. After that success, I decided to create my own publishing platform to help people in Brazil.

With my knowledge on SEO, I received over 70K "likes" on my Facebook page ( www.fb.com/eselfpress) in just one year, and then I knew I was on the right path.

Last December (2015), I decided to invest $96K to rebuild the platform which will be done at the end of September (2016) when I will re-launch the platform with a wide advertising campaign on the internet.

The success came because people were looking for such services in Brazil. I had an entrepreneur here in USA and also in Brazil who came after me offering an investment in my eSelfPress project. I did not accept by that time, since I could handle financially the initial expenses of the project. So I declined, but now, after the new version been made available, I can talk with potential investors about it.

4. Why did you decide to start e-SelfPress, and what are the services you provide?

The decision to start e-SelfPress came after the success of my book "Segredos e Atalhos do iPad" when I discovered that the world was changing the way to buy, sell, write, and read books.

We provide a friendly environment where people can easily understand the concept of how to use our platform. We offer services such as cover design, proof writing, and a free ISBN for those who also buy our services for wide distribution on stores such as Barnes & Noble, Apple Store and more.

The list of services is available in Brazilian currency at http://e-selfpress.com/services.

5. As someone who provides services to people in many different countries, what would you like people all over the world to know about you and your business?

We are very serious about business, and our goal is always make people happy by giving then the best option to write and sell their books. I know that writing a book is only part of the process: writers need to learn how to market their book.

We have a blog that we will teach writers how to succeed like I did with my book Segredos e Atalhos do iPad. That is going to be a big difference between e-SelfPress and the other guys. We are also going to help people who want to write a book and do not have an idea. We will help them to create content.

Please feel free to contact me at paulo@askpaulo.com. Thanks, Paulo!

Meet Marcelo Henrique Almeida, Writer and Entrepreneur

Marcelo Henrique Almeida is the owner of World Wide Publishing International. He is also the author of a number of articles, including many law articles for the site, caderno de direito. He has several books forthcoming in Kindle format. Based in Sao Paulo, World Wide Publishing specializes in the Latin American market, publishing materials in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

For more about World Wide Publishing International, Marcelo maintains a Facebook page and has uploaded a video about the company's mission on YouTube.

1. What inspired you to start WWP International?

What inspired me to start WWP is the monopoly that physical books still have over information. If you need specialized information, searching online won't do much for you. If you take a step back and analyze the way that written information is organized on the internet, you'll see that everybody writes in the form of articles. The internet is like a big newspaper that allows you to scratch the surface on subjects that you didn't even know existed, but if you want to go deep, you have to pay sometimes a lot for a good book. This was my main inspiration for WWP, the price of high-level information. I think it should be cheap and available to everyone who wishes to learn. Price shouldn't be a barrier for education.

2. What are some of the ebooks you'll be releasing in 2013?

We'll be releasing 2 books in 2013.

One is called An Atheist God where we try to answer some philosophical questions: Does destiny follow rules? If we knew these rules, how would our life be? Would I be able to control it or predict? Why do some people with the most difficult childhood experiences have more success that other people? What is it that they know?

The other one is called The Fat Trap. I'm really excited about this book, because I've struggled with weight for a good part of my life and as I was trying to lose it, I clearly saw that something else was going on.

All the standard answers were not enough to explain why everybody was gaining weight, including myself. It wasn't a generalized lack of will; it wasn't lifestyle or the lack or exercises. It was the kind of food we were eating and the effects of that food on our brain. The food industry puts you in a trap by offering you cheap, engineered food and the diet industry charges you a lot of money to fill you with advice that we all know doesn't work as it should. And both industries work to convince that this is all your fault so you should pay them without even questioning what's going on.

3. How do you see the role of ebooks expanding in the South American market in particular over the next few years?

I think that e-books will expand exponentially over South America; they have a huge potential, but only if companies understand how this market works, and at the moment they don't. The key to spread e-books is the tablet. People won't read an e-book on their computer screen or mobile phone. In that aspect, Amazon and Steve Jobs saved the e-book from being a media format that wasn't going anywhere. But in South America, tablets are expensive, costing twice or three times what you pay on US and it's not unusual to see magazine publishers or book publishers charging a lot more for e-books than the physical version of their product. There's no reason for this. They are not paying for paper or distribution. Amazon spent a lot of money to spread e-books and the Kindle, but now some publishers are trying to do things their own way and think it will work. If they don't adapt fast, they will fail and blame the internet as they always do.

4. As an author and publisher, why have you chosen to emphasize digital modes of publication for your work?

I love physical books, but we are living in an age when information gets old really fast. A sixty dollar book today can worth nothing tomorrow because it's outdated. It's a high-risk investment. Digital formats are cheaper, easy to distribute, and can be updated in real time. You pay us once, but you'll have the best and newest information forever with you. No more feeling bad about the release of a newly updated edition of a book you love.

5. What advice would you give to authors who want to get their work out to an international market?

It all comes down to one question: What's your passion? What's that thing that you always want to talk about even when people don't ask? Write about it. There's no good book without passion. It doesn't matter if you'll charge one dollar or ten dollars: write a book, not just a Word document with your ideas. Always check your spelling and grammar, and you are set.

Never in human history was it so easy to distribute your thoughts and ideas for all the world to see, but the flip side of this is that you'll find a lot of easy-money garbage out there. People write something in one afternoon and put it up for sale on Amazon for a dollar. If you have written a book with passion and taken the time to create an excellent final product, everyone everywhere will read it.

Thanks, Marcelo!