Roger Manke
Systems Engineer, former owner Practical Computers, Springfield, OR
Melissa went above and beyond to produce such a good website for us, and make sure we were happy. She also integrated it with social media and set up a MailerLite account for us with a website pop up and free lead magnet to get more customers into our business and build our e-mail list. She is very professional and we really enjoyed working with her.
Sally Cole-Misch
Author of The Best of Us: A Novel
Just when I thought it was time to stop marketing my multiple award-winning novel, that it had run its course after 2 1/2 years, I met Melissa — and I’m so glad that I did! Her expertise in creating social media ads, YouTube pages and providing guidance and advice to garner new interest has been rejuvenating and productive for the book and for me. Her knowledge of what works best and her ability to create high quality products quickly has been impressive and reassuring to this debut author, that a novel’s themes and messages can continue to resonate no matter how long it’s been out in the world. Thank you, Melissa!
Linda Stewart Henley
Award-winning author of Estelle and Waterbury Winter
Like many writers, I like writing. Not marketing. Not technology. But these two are essential in the competitive writing market these days. It’s enormously helpful when a helpful, tech-savvy, person can make it all easy. That’s what Melissa did for me. She explained what she needed from me, then went to work. She handled giveaways, redesigned my newsletter header image, and made a video ad. She gave me progress reports of results. My newsletter grew by almost 600 subscribers, and sales jumped. Melissa is easy to work with. I can’t say enough about her services.
Jody Hadlock
Award-winning Author of The Lives of Diamond Bessie
“A few months before my first novel was published, I was researching Facebook advertising and came across Universal By Design. I had a consultation with Melissa and was immediately impressed with her knowledge of the Facebook advertising landscape. Her expertise has helped me tremendously, not just with Facebook, but also Instagram and Amazon advertising. And her skills extend beyond social media ads. Melissa created a mini-trailer for my book that’s visual, concise, and didn’t cost me an arm and a leg.
She helped set up a YouTube channel for the trailer and also for my media appearances, something I hadn’t even thought about doing. I was also seriously lacking in my email list. Melissa helped me increase my newsletter subscribers from almost nothing to more than 1,000, with sign up forms, giveaways and promotions, and she makes my newsletters look professional. She always has great advice and is a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend Melissa!”
Diane McPhail
Author of The Abolitionist’s Daughter
“I was delighted to have Melissa create a media kit for me and definitely pleased at her skill in doing so. It has made much of my work in planning so much easier. I was honored to be featured as Writer of the Week. Working with Melissa on that feature could not have been more of a pleasure. She was adept at both pre-interview preparation, skilled at the interview itself, and wonderful in editing the finished product.
In addition, Melissa is doing one-on-one coaching with me to optimize my YouTube channel and turn it into a showcase of my media appearances. Her knowledge and skill in handling the tech difficulties is stellar. She has been a pleasure to work with, extremely knowledgeable, and always timely. I highly recommend her for a wide variety of promotional work for all authors.”
Michael Devendorf
Author of Deciduous
The customized ads Universal by Design produced to market my book have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times all across the world helping generate sales and quickly build a respectable following for this previously unpublished author. And giveaway promotions and email list campaigns developed and managed by UBD have yielded numerous Amazon reviews and over one thousand new subscribers in just a couple of months.
Anna Penenberg – She Writes Press Author
Author of Dancing in the Narrows
“I found Melissa to be extremely helpful in my process of publishing my first book. I took the Media Training she offers and was well supported in learning how to be interviewed, formulate good questions about myself as an author and regarding my book. We identified fantastic talking points that I have used ever since. I appreciated the care and time Melissa took to allow me to learn and feel comfortable speaking. I have a wonderful first interview on my YouTube channel called Writer of the Week, where Melissa interviews me.
In addition, I have been on two of her panel discussions with other authors, that is fun, engaging and helps me get the word out about my book. Topics that relate to my book and experience were discussed on the Mother’s Day Panel and Serenity Panel. Melissa also made a header image for my YouTube channel and did a coaching session, walking me through how to set it up correctly as an author showcase. It looks great and is easy to use for those looking for my work.
I highly recommend Melissa to guide you, offer training in new skills for online social media marketing and speaking. There is a lot to learn and Melissa greatly enhanced my campaign.”
Dr. Gayle Woodson – She Writes Press Author
Award Winning Author of After Kilimanjaro
“Melissa has been a tremendous asset to me. I first became aware of her work when she made a wonderful trailer for one of my colleagues. She did not just create a great trailer for me, she involved me in the process so that it reflected just what I want to project.
She also showed me how to set up my Youtube channel and helped me build my email list, through a pop-up on my website, and taught me how to create a newsletter. I have participated in a fun holiday online discussion panel, an International Women’s Day six-author discussion panel, as well as two multi-author book giveaways that garnered hundreds of emails for my list.
I have learned so much from Melissa. She is a wonderful teacher and has great insight into what works in marketing. I am so glad that I found her!”
Dr. Veronica Slaughter – She Writes Press Author
Author of Have You Seen These Children?
“As a new writer, having my book published was a dream come true! After my initial excitement subsided, reality set in. No one told me that writing a book was the easy part, getting it out into the public was where the real work began. I was panicking and didn’t know where to turn; then I met Melissa.
She was the answer to my prayers. I’m so proud of the way my book launch looks. There is no way my social media would look anything near what it does now. She set up my YouTube and Twitter header images, created a FB page and video header promoting my book, did the most amazing book trailer, set up my Goodreads account, and coached me on how to use my new social media platform. Technology is foreign to me but she made it easy as she walked me though the process one step at a time.
When Melissa told me, I should do a few interviews, I froze; Melissa made it easy. I did a Writer of the Week interview with her and participated in a Mother’s Day discussion panel. She knew how to make me look good.
Melissa set up my MailerLite account to send out newsletters, created a collaboration giveaway with five other authors to build my e-mail list, as well as a giveaway for me to further build my list and celebrate my launch.
Lastly, how do you get followers on your social media? Melissa took charge of that too. She advised me on how to build my followers and participated in building my followers as well. I’m so proud of my digital footprint. Melissa gave me much more than I would have ever expected. Take a look and see some of her beautiful work on my YouTube channel.
All I can say is, “Thank you Melissa, I couldn’t have done any of this without you!”
Elizabeth Silva
Author of Another Cheesy Family Newsletter
“As a writer new to the complicated world of marketing, I don’t know how I could have managed without Melissa. She has created landing page funnels for book and holiday goody bag giveaways to build my e-mail list, as well as coached me one-on-one on how to do them myself.
She created audience targeted Facebook ads for the giveaways, including ad images, that have increased my following dramatically. She also created newsletters and coached me on sending newsletters to my subscribers.
She helped me in making my social media presence stand out, including creating social media header images. She also produced a beautiful media kit that I’ll be using often to promote by book to indie book stores and publications. What I like most about Melissa is that she consults me about my preferences every step of the way, resulting in marketing tools that reflect what I’m all about.”
Renee Ryan
Bestselling author
As a multi-published author of over thirty books, I’ve worked with a wide variety of talented marketing and promotional specialists. Melissa of Universal By Design sits at the very top of that list. Her guidance is always sharp and spot-on.
She’s quick and professional. Her mockups are beautiful and eye-catching. Within a very short time she has helped me grow my newsletter subscribers by 200%. I highly recommend her services.
Janine Kovac
Author of Spinning: Choreography for Coming Home, semifinalist for Publishers Weekly’s BookLife award
“The hardest part about being a self-published author is the self-promotion. Melissa’s guidance, expertise, and strong support helped me hone the message behind my book and find the audience who will want to read it.
Melissa created a book giveaway for me, taught me how to navigate Facebook’s ad manger and utilize its powerful algorithms to target my readers. She created an eye-catching ad for my giveaway and showed me how to reach the most number of people while staying within my modest budget. With her tools and personalized help, I greatly increased built my e-mail list in just 10 days!
I learned so much from this process and I’m excited about my newsletter and engaging more actively with the readers out there!”
Cat Jordan
Author of Eight Days on Planet Earth
“Melissa was tremendously helpful to me, helped me put together a book giveaway (and taught me how to design it myself, which was really empowering)! and got a terrific voice-over actor to read an excerpt, which I put on my website.
She also talked me through a lot of the marketing process, which is not something I shine at. If anyone has any questions about working with her, I’m happy to give you my feedback! It has been, and continues to be, a really positive experience for me.”
Jack Huber
Author of the Pat Ruger Mystery Series, Photographer, Poet
“I have been self-publishing and self-marketing my writing for several years. After completing my 5th novel, I found myself having great difficulty keeping up with my social media design and marketing tasks, and I was floundering with decisions about what to do and when. Although I’ve had experience with website design, I am not an expert in SEO, optimizing my announcements or managing giveaways. At about that time I happened to meet Melissa, who interviewed me for Writer of the Week.
When I researched further, I found she had excellent author and social media contacts and seemed to be achieving impressive success for her customers. I quickly found that she knew the market well and how best to utilize social media, including consolidating all my domains, websites and blog sites to take more advantage of traffic.
Since signing up as a client, I am extremely satisfied with her services. She sincerely cares about my success and about making ours a long-term relationship. In fact, I sometime feel guilty with the amount of time she sometimes spends on my business efforts for her very reasonable fees.
I couldn’t recommend Melissa more highly.”
To see examples of each project done for each client, please click on the links in each review.
