A Helping Hand To Online Sucess: 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.
Ebook Power
An ebook is one of the most powerful ways to promote your business, while educating people with the knowledge you already posses as a business owner of a specific product or service. An ebook is the easiest way to reach any large niche audience of any type. Ebooks will not only promote your business, but will establish you as an expert in your field.
The largest reason people read books is to answer some type of question, or questions about a specific topic, or niche. You as the author are now in a position to establish yourself as an expert about your topic or niche. Your readers diligently read to answer their questions, success means delivering solid content about your topic or niche to your readers. Don’t guess about how much information to write into your book just over deliver the content to your readers. You will develop a reputation for writing books with solid content that is a value at any price. But, where to start as a writer? As a novice writer with an overflowing base of knowledge, short books are a great way to get your feet wet!
Write a short book first.
If you have a topic or information you want to sell, than just write a small ebook to start out with. Write 10 to 20 pages of your book and than ad some graphics. If your book is packed with good content, people will not mind paying 20 bucks for a 20 page book; quality. Once you have your feet wet with a short book, than plan your next book. You can than plan and organize your next book, after all, you have gained a wealth of experience from writing your small book.
Create Volumes Of Information
One effective tactic is to write a series of books, and label them as volumes, and promote as Volume One, Volume Two, etc. . Create a buzz about your next volume in the current volume you are writing. Offer incentives to the readers for example; a discount, or special bonuses for purchasing the next volume of your book.
Organizing Your Ebook
Organizing your ebook is not as difficult as you may think. If you can write a grocery list, than organizing an ebook will be simple.
1. Start out with writing on paper or computer 1- 10. Write the topic you want to cover next to each digit on your paper. You now have outlined your chapters
2. Write capital A, B, C, under each topic (Chapter). These will be your chapter sub headings.
3. Below the capital letters (subheading) write lower case letters a b c. By writing a, b, c, you now can write one or two keywords or phrases to be anchors to remember what information you will put in you subheadings. You are now ready to write your book.
When you use this format on paper or computer, and you read the text laid out in an organized manor, your mind will automatically want to fill in the gaps. The human brain just will not tolerate gaps in anything. Your thoughts will compel you to finish the job. By using this technique you will accomplish an amazing amount of work. After all your hard work how will you tell the world about your ebook?
ADVERTISING METHODS
1. Articles
You can write articles to brand your work in the minds of readers. Write your articles relevant to the topic of your book, but don’t give away the farm. The articles are also making quality content for your website. Remember search engines love quality content.
2. Blogs/RSS
Blogging is another way to create content for your website, and by using RSS, you can easily distribute your content. Most don't understand what RSS really is, or how it can most effectively be used to drive traffic to their sites. Basically, RSS is a form of code that's very search engine friendly. With RSS feeds, which you can add to your website or
blog, you can create content that updates itself. Because of this self-updating, the search engines will spider your site more often, raising your rankings. But, the primary reason is you are reaching a larger, and more specific audience. Blogs and RSS readers are choosing the content they wish to read. Always remember your target audience is attempting to answer their questions.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Optimizing your site for the search engines means creating keyword rich content, exchanging links with other sites, submitting your site to directories, which create back links pointing to your site.
5. Distribute a Free Chapter to Your Readers
One of the best ways to advertise is give away a free chapter of your ebook away. Place links in the book where your readers can purchase your ebook. Giving away chapter one is the best because you are telling the reader what they are going to learn; but not in any detail. The readers grow hungry for more information and want to buy.
Make It Viral
If you make your ebook brandable, which means others can place their links, and affiiate id inside your ebook, your ebook becomes viral. You give others an incentive to share your ebook and spread it across the internet. Once you implement these content strategies on your site, add streams of revenue to your site like Adsense and Virtual Portals. These sites will allow you to monetize your site.
Don’t be afraid of writing ebooks it is a great way to build your expertise and credibility with the internet community. You also will bring a lot of customers to your website. Implement these strategies and you will be successful. Remember, your reputation depends on the quality of the product you produce.
How DO You Price Your eBook?
If you price it too high when compared with your competition, you will find yourself steadily lowering the price, which will cause you all kinds of new problems in the future. For example, if you sell your ebook at first for $49.99, and later reduce it to $29.95, don't you think the people who bought it for $49.99 are going to be a little bit un-happy?
Choosing the right price for your ebook is one of the most critical parts of the marketing process. The first rule of pricing ebooks is to never under price. Determine the highest price your audience can afford, and then if you find your book isn’t selling, you can always reduce the price. Before you take that step, make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on the Internet and on websites. The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your ebook, before they buy it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a mega-marketing campaign.
Pricing an ebook is particularly difficult because ebooks are a fairly new commodity. Since they are digital, the value of an ebook is as confusing as the understanding of what digital actually is to the average layperson. This means that we must look at ebooks in a different light in order to determine their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.
Let's look at the difference between a book in print and an ebook. A printed book is an object you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production costs, and marketing.
But the fact that unites ebooks and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have the ability to change, or possibly transform, people's lives.
What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink?
It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you determine the cost of your ebook.
What should I charge for my ideas?
There are all different formulas and methods for determining the correct price for your ebook. Let's begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.
Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing customers to your business or service, or to establishing the credibility of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price on the low side. Some authors have even priced their ebooks at a profit loss to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes your profits and the number of books you sell.
This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you again and again ? as long as the first ebook they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.
However, if your book contains valuable, and more importantly NEW information, references, or techniques, then you should aim to price it on the high end.
After you figure out your goal, you must figure out what your audience's need is for your ebook. For example, does your book solve a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn't been written about in one hundred other ebooks, you will be able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your book.
Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer your ebook at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing strategy.
If you want to see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.
Marketing Strategies
The key that unlocks the sales potential of your ebook is to find a single sentence that becomes your selling handle. This sentence states what question or problem your book answers and the benefits your ebook can provide. Then be sure to use that sentence in every piece of sales and promotional material, and every time anyone asks you about your ebook.
Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help you sell more books.
One is to give something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several ebooks under one price, which lowers the price for each ebook if they were sold separately.
An effective technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current customers. If these customers have already bought an ebook from you, ask for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new book, but don't include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to your ebook.
Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.
Ultimately, if you've written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch your market come to you!
