Wednesday, 26 March 2008

How To Sell More of Your Ebooks Online

Have you written an e-book? An e-book is a digital document that can be sold online in a purely digital form. Thus, unlike with selling a physical product, the fulfillment of an e-book is done completely online. This is great for you, the author, since you can completely automate the order taking and fulfillment processes.
Once you have the fulfillment process automated, the question becomes how to market the e-book online in order to get people to buy it. “How do I effectively market my e-books online?” is one of the most common questions I hear from my clients. Here are five tips that will help you sell more of your e-books and generate more revenue:
- Find a target market to sell the e-book to. Many people think that everyone is their target market, and as a result try to sell their e-book to everyone. They usually end up chasing after potential customers who are not in their target market and are not likely to ever purchase the book. Their e-book sales suffer as a result.
Instead of trying to sell your e-book to everyone, concentrate on a smaller group of people who comprise your target market. These people are much more likely to purchase what you have to offer, and as a result you will get many more sales.
- Create an effective sales letter for your e-book. Since you cannot take a picture of your e-book and post it on your web site (unlike a piece of jewelry, for example), your need to use the sales letter to promote the e-book.
Make sure that your sales letter effectively describes your e-book and focuses on the benefits your clients will get by purchasing your e-book. Highlighting the benefits will keep people reading the sales letter, and it will generate more e-book sales.
- Give your customers just a few options on your web site. Sometimes clients tell me that their sales letters don’t sell. When I take a look at the sales letters, they are usually a big mess. Sales letters that do not sell contain too many distractions for the reader: they have links to other web pages and web sites, banners, and text ads for other products.
Make sure that your sales letter provides only a few options to your customers – an option to buy the product and an option to subscribe to your newsletter, and that’s it. The fewer options you give to your web site visitors, the more likely they are to buy your product.
- Have a newsletter subscription on your web site. Sometimes people who come to your web site and see your e-book are not ready to purchase the e-book. However, they are ready to subscribe to your newsletter and learn more about you and your products. These people will be ready to buy your e-book eventually, so make sure that you keep in touch with them through your newsletter.
- Use online marketing techniques to promote your e-book further. Use search engine optimization, business blogging, article publishing and other online marketing techniques to promote your web site and e-book. These methods will bring more visitors to your web site, who are craving the information that you share in your e-book.
You can only make money with your e-book if you sell it. Follow the five tips that we discussed to sell more e-book copies and make more money.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com -By: Biana Babinsky

Monday, 24 March 2008

Creating Additional Value from EBook Sales

Copyright 2006 John Thornhill

The act of selling an eBook can be a profitable experience. When one considers the relatively inexpensive nature of eBooks with resell rights and the ways by which cheap eBay auctions can be constructed, the selling of eBooks at auction can be a wonderful means of creating revenue.

However, it is a mistake to look at a completed eBook transaction as the end of the potential profits. EBooks can be sold in a manner that produces a lingering value for the seller simply via the inclusion of affiliate links either within the eBook or as part of the delivery of the eBook.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to generate an online income. It works quite simply. If someone purchases a product after using your uniquely coded link to get to the sales page, you receive a commission on the sale. Many companies and product manufacturers offer affiliate programs and all eBook sellers should take a close look at their potential.

For instance, if you are selling an eBook about widgets, you may want to consider joining an affiliate program offered by someone in the business of selling widgets. Along with the eBook you have sold, you can include a mailing that includes some additional widget information. This might just be an email to the buyer included with the eBook. It could even be offered in the form of a free “special report” offered along with the eBook.

Regardless of the format, this additional communication would include a link back to your affiliate partner. If your customer decides to make a purchase via the links you provide, you will then receive additional revenue in the form of a sales commission.

Affiliate commissions can be quite high and even if your efforts produce very few conversions, it can still be a profitable exercise and a great way to increase the potential value of the eBook transaction to the seller.

If you are selling an eBook you have self-authored, or one that came with private label rights allowing for full editing and customization, you can include affiliate links within the eBook itself. This is a powerful technique for driving qualified traffic to affiliate sites that can really help improve your bottom line.

One does, of course, risk transforming the sale of an informational product into mere advertisement by overusing affiliate links. This should be avoided, as it generally decreases the likelihood of affiliate sales and also creates a lower perceived value for the eBook itself.

However, judicious use of affiliate links is a great way by which an eBook seller can add an additional profit dimension to the products he or she is selling on eBay. Selling eBooks can, in and of itself, generate some eye-opening profits, but by using affiliate measures one can really supercharge their potential earnings after the eBook sale is already made!

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com-By: John Thornhill

Sunday, 23 March 2008

Please Sir, I Want Some More ... Public Domain Material

Charles Dickens is said to be the world's most prolific novelist, yet most of his works are relatively unknown to the general public, especially those he wrote under the pen name Boz. His most popular titles, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, have been retold countless times in books, scripts, theatre plays and movies, and are all now in the public domain. These works have been so popular that they have been re-published by so many different publishers that they have never been out of print.

As a business owner looking to add new products to your inventory, whether that be online or offline, you can’t go past public domain material. At a cost of ‘nearly free,’ you would be mad to give it a miss.

As with the above example, some stories are timeless classics, classics that will sell year after year, in many different formats and versions. This may be exactly the right type of product for your business. There are so many public domain works out there that you essentially will never run out of material to publish. And you will most likely find many manuscripts that will complement your existing products.

A good rule of thumb to follow is to check that the original manuscript was published before 1923 in the United States of America (other countries may have different copyright laws so you may need to check this with a copyright lawyer). You should always get a certificate of copyright clearance for each public domain document you are going to publish. This may save you many legal hassles later if anyone tries to dispute your right to re-publish the work.

Public domain books and other materials can be found in many places, with the most likely being second-hand book stores. Some people enjoy this process the most; discovering that hidden gem amongst the thousands of tattered old Mills and Boon romance novels.

Though, with the advent of the Internet this process is becoming increasingly more accessible to everyone. There are now many web sites that publish public domain material that can be freely accessed, and even some membership sites that actually find the material for you.

If you make substantial changes to the material, that is, make enough changes that make the new version unrecognisable from the original, you may even claim the new copyright with yourself as the author.

As Dickens made popular the serialised novel, so too can you be publishing serial after serial of public domain material.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com-By: Kristy Taylor

Saturday, 22 March 2008

Making Free eBooks pay.

Copyright 2006 John Thornhill

Selling eBooks on eBay can be a great way of producing an enviable revenue stream. By purchasing the rights to an eBook at the right price and then selling the eBook to many customers, one can generate a great deal of profit. However, there is an interesting way of increasing eBook sales and producing an additional revenue stream simply by giving things away to customers!

As many eBay sellers have noticed, informational products are becoming an increasingly competitive field. More and more people are slowly learning about the profit potential in eBook sales and are joining the fray. The market is nowhere close to being too crowded, and there is still room for a great deal of money to be made. However, those who want to truly prosper by selling eBooks on eBay can improve their odds by giving customers a little something extra.

Offering a free product to any buyers of an eBook can separate one’s auctions from others and make buyers more interested in obtaining a product. If three sellers are offering the same eBook at the same price, the seller who is also willing to include a special free gift will undoubtedly earn the bulk of the sales.

The free gift can be another eBook title on a related subject. You may have another eBook “in inventory” that is an aging title or somehow “past its prime.” Although you may no longer be selling the title as a stand-alone product, it can make a great value-added free gift to your auction and may tempt many buyers to look to you as a source for the primary title being offered.

The free gift could also be a special report or other informational document you have authored yourself. Although writing the additional material may be difficult or time-consuming (ghostwriters, of course, could be hired for this function), the end result could be quite valuable. You will be offering something completely unique and timely. That alone should inspire increased sales. You can also embed affiliate links to products for which you receive a commission within the text of the freebie. This could make your free giveaway item into a sales tool that could generate impressive profits long after the eBook sale is completed.

Including a freebie with your eBook auction may seem counterintuitive at first. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, at face value, to give away anything! Doing something that increases the cost or effort required to conduct an auction also seems almost at odds with increased profitability. However, this is not the case. In reality, using a little added “extra” can increase sales by a margin that more than justifies the gift. Your auction may stand out more, give an additional reason to buyers to make their purchase with you, and even provide additional revenue through the use of affiliate links within the free item.

After considering all of these factors, it is easy to see why many eBay eBook sellers are providing their customers with a little something extra! Freebies can actually be used as a great way to increase profitability.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com-By: John Thornhill

Thursday, 20 March 2008

A Helping Hand to Online Success - the eBook!

If, like me, you’ve tried – and failed – in the past to achieve success online with internet marketing, then rest assured that help is finally at hand. I certainly wish I had had access to such knowledge when I started out three years ago, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed with the practicalities of website design, using autoresponders, joining affiliate programs, writing sales letters, and how to get traffic to my site. I know better now, but more of this in a moment. . . .

The simple fact of the matter is, that to enter the world of internet marketing, you need something to promote and sell (well you want to make money at it don’t you?), whether a physical item, or – information. The very nature of the internet – where knowledge can be shared and exchanged at the click of a button – lends itself perfectly to . . . the eBook!

The advantages of the eBook over selling physical items is that there is no need to buy or store stock, no time and effort incurred in packing anything up and shipping it off in the post – and your customer can pay their money for your product and get immediate access to it from a download page. In an age where demand is for instant gratification, an eBook is ideal – easy and effective! And once written, you can sell unlimited copies of it without having to produce each item – so it’s both time and cost-effective too.

When thinking of a subject to write about for your eBook, the secret to greater success, and finding your ‘niche market’, is very simple. Like they tell all first-time budding authors – write about what you know. Whether it’s a few chapters on ‘How to Stop Smoking’ (if you’ve been successful at this), on the mechanics of owning a motorcycle, how to earn money online, or even ‘Tips on Flower Arranging’, you can bet that someone out there in ‘cyberspace’ wants to know about it. If the subject of your eBook is also your hobby, so much the better. If you’ve got passion for your subject, you’re going to convey that enthusiasm in what you write, and make that eBook even more interesting and useful.

Of course, if you have knowledge or practical experience on a popular subject in which there is a large potential market to sell your eBook, perhaps health and fitness, or food and drink, you could be more likely of success, but remember you’ll also be competing with many others. So choose your subject carefully!

However, in writing your eBook, don’t forget to give your customer value – and they could become customers for your future eBooks too! Make the content and quality of your eBook meaningful – whatever its length, it has to be good, or you’ll leave your customers feeling disenchanted. Give away a few free bonuses – an extra report perhaps, or some free training that they would have to pay for elsewhere. Aim for customer satisfaction!

If you don’t know how to go about creating an eBook (you could always write an eBook explaining how to do it!), then it brings me to the ‘more of this in a moment . . .’ that I mentioned above – the launch of a FREE course in all aspects of internet marketing, including creating eBooks. Visit the website below for what you need to get started online. Good luck!

Penelope Housden.

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com-By: Profitmaker

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