Marketing eBooks on the Internet
Good Bets for eBooks
Are you thinking of marketing eBooks on the Internet? Do you know that some types of material are better suited to eBook format than others, and that successful marketing depends on knowing the difference? Read on to find out when some types of material are well suited to eBook format?
When Order Isn't Beneficial
An eBook can fit the bill when the subject matter lends itself to the reader deciding on the sequence that they want to read information in. For example, you don't need to read a book on gardening in any particular order. If it's information on plants for a garden pond you want, then an ebook makes it easy to jump to that information.
When Multimedia Adds Value to the Book
If the addition of music or sound benefits the user, then an eBook is the perfect medium. For example, interactive books can teach children to read by presenting the words visually and then sounding out the words for the child to hear. In this case, the element of sound makes an eBook more valuable than a print book.
When A Search Capability Improves Usability
If giving the user the ability to search through content and find a specific bit of information enhances the usability of the information, then you have an excellent candidate for an eBook.
When Huge Amounts of Data are Involved
Whenever masses of information in print format means that portability and cost is prohibitive, then the answer is an eBook. For example any kind of encyclopedia is a good eBook candidate. With eBooks storage isn't an issue, portability is easy and the eBook format can decrease costs.
So if you haven't considered using an eBook in your marketing strategy, think again!
20 Ways To Profit With Free eBooks
My habit of collecting every free eBook I could lay my hands proved very profitable to me while building my business.
Here are 20 ways that you can use free eBooks to boost your profits.
1. Build Your List
Use free eBooks as an incentive to get more people to join your list.
2. Keep Your Subscribers
Give away a new free eBook every time you mail your list or at least every month, so they have a reason to stay subscribed. Create a subscribers-only eBook library and keep adding new ones often.
3. Get More Affiliates to Promote Your Product
Offer free eBooks and free brandable eBooks as an incentive for join your affiliate program.
4. Sell Customization Rights to Your Own eBooks
If you've written an eBook and have a number of affiliate links in it, you can make more money by selling the customization rights.
5. Back-End Profits
Purchase customization rights to others' eBooks and give them away free to your list. Profit when they purchase something through your links.
6. Become an Instant 'Expert'
Write an eBook on a topic that you know well and give it away to a target market. Once people know you as an expert on your subject, they will be more willing to spend money with you.
7. Grow Your Downline
Offer free eBooks as an incentive to join a program under you. Allow your downline to give away the eBooks as well so they can build their (and your) downline.
8. Become a Leader
Train your team by giving away free eBooks that help them learn how to build their business. eBooks help you save on the cost of ordering printed copies and shipping them to your distributors.
9. Boost Your Website Traffic
Write an eBook yourself and insert your website links in a way that gives your readers a compelling reason to visit your website, either for the resources you offer or an invitation to download more eBooks.
10. Survey Your List
Have a great idea for a new product or eBook, but need to find out if there's a market for it? Create a survey and use free eBooks to entice people to respond. To ensure a good response to your survey, offer two or more eBooks, or a product that you own, or even a download of the product you plan to create as a result of the survey.
11. Get Viral
Give away a free eBook that others can brand with their own links so they will give it away eagerly to their own lists. Include your own affiliate program, or traffic exchange programs, or two-tier or multi-tier affiliate programs that readers can join through your links, to get most from this strategy.
12. Get Free Advertising
Give away a free eBook that hasn't been circulated much or one of your own products or eBooks to ezine editors in exchange for free ads in their ezine.
13. Get Joint Venture Partners
Make your JV offer more attractive by offering your partners a valuable or unique eBook that you own or have the right to give away.
14. Build Link Popularity
Get others to link to your website by offering them free eBooks or one of your own products. The more links you have pointing to your website, the higher you will rank on search engines and the more traffic you will get.
15. Promote Your Own Products
Offer free preview versions (say, the first few chapters) of an eBook that you wrote to promote it and get more people to buy it from you. Combine this with a rebrander to get a viral effect and increase downloads of your preview version. If you are selling a software product, give away a free report that explains why your software solves your target market's problem and how it will benefit them.
16. Enhance the Value of Your Product
Give away free eBooks as Bonus Products along with your own product to enhance its value. This works best if the bonuses are related to the topic of the product you are selling.
17. Keep in Touch with Your Customers
Send your customers free eBooks often to show them you value their business and remind them of your products in a way they won't object to.
18. Get Testimonials
Offer free eBooks or bonuses to existing customers in exchange for testimonials that you can put up on your sales page.
19. Boost Flagging Sales
When sales are low, create an eBook with discount coupons or special offers and give them away to your customers. You can also use this strategy to boost holiday sales.
20. Revive Your Old Articles
Update or rewrite old articles or sections of your ezine archives and compile them into an eBook to give them a new lease of life.
Five Tips For Designing A Successful eBook
Writing an ebook is only your first step on the journey to success. Once you've written it you have to design it and sell it. While there's plenty of information on how to write ebooks and how to sell them, there's very little about how to design them properly.
Yet the design of your book is crucial to its success.
It may be bursting with invaluable information, but if your book's not easy on the eye and easy to access, then your readers will feel dissatisfied. They may have purchased this book from you but they may not buy another one.
Good design can make the difference between a best-seller and a bomb. Here are five tips to help you produce a better ebook:
1: Your ebook should be easy to read.
Poorly designed ebooks are often difficult to read and can cause eye-strain, headaches and fatigue - not the effects you want when trying to build a relationship with your readers.
Frequently, the culprit is the feature-laden word-processor that confuses authors with a bewildering range of options - fonts, colors, formatting, borders, rules, clip art and more. The results? The 'Kitchen Sink' school of ebook design.
The solution? K.I.S.S! Keep it simple, scribe!
- Use only one or two classic fonts in sizes that are easy to read.
- Use dark text on a light background.
- Allow plenty of 'white space' in page margins and between lines of text.
- Don't try and shoe-horn it all in.
- Use graphics sparingly, if appropriate.
2: Your ebook should look like it's worth a million bucks!
Don't skimp on the production of your ebook - it should look as though it's worth at least three times the price you're asking.
Even if you're giving it away, its presentation directly reflects your professionalism. With so many freebies already available, good presentation is the one quality that will make your ebook stand out from the crowd.
Unless you're trained or gifted, don't be tempted to do your own book cover. There are free ecover sites and free software but their output often looks cheap and unprofessional and can drive visitors away from your web site before they've even read your sales letter.
People don't buy shoddy-looking products!
3: Your ebook should be easy to navigate.
- Your text should be organized into manageable chunks. People 'scan' the information and get bogged down in big blocks of text.
- Present your information in logical sub-divisions with chapters or sections, then paragraphs or sub-sections.
- Use titles and sub-headings to signpost the way.
- Provide contents pages and indexes.
- Offer clickable links to take them to the correct pages or web sites quickly.
4: Your ebook should be a properly constructed book.
An ebook should not just be a collection of pages. It should have the same structure as a hard-copy book, with a cover, title page, copyright page, contents page, an index, and page numbers that match those on the contents/index page.
5: Your ebook should be quick to download.
Most people still use 56k dial-up connections. A big file means a slow download and that can cause customer frustration!
Use images sparingly, keep them a reasonable size and optimize them. Trim the fat from your ebook before making it available for download. Zip the finished file to make it as small as possible.
Some of these measures mean extra work, but attention to detail is the mark of a professional presentation!
To recap the 5 tips for designing a successful ebook:
K.I.S.S! Make sure your book is easy to read with a simple layout, few fonts and plenty of white space. Don't skimp on production, aim for a thoroughly professional presentation. Make your ebook easy to navigate. Make sure it's a proper book with all the necessary part. Keep the final file size as small as possible for a quick download.
If you're still baffled by the whole concept of ebook design, don't know where to start, or just want to save yourself some time then hire a professional designer to do it for you. It's money well spent because good design SELLS!
Do You Use Viral Ebooks Marketing? Viral marketing is an extremely powerful and effective form of Internet marketing. It is the online digital equivalent of the offline word of mouth advertising. In viral marketing, one person passes on a marketing message to another person and so on. The message spreads in a viral form in a manner similar to the spreading of a common cold virus from person to person. It is a great way to market your product or service and increase your opt^in subscriber list. If you are not using viral marketing then you need to seriously consider it in your online business.
It combines advertising and the leverage of duplication to spread your marketing message to an untold number of persons on the Internet. You reap the benefits of viral marketing by attracting more customers to your product or service and increasing the number of subscribers to your opt-in mailing list. It enables you to advertise your business without spending huge amounts on advertising campaigns.
There are many forms of viral marketing. Some examples of viral marketing include fr^ee products or services such as: ebooks, web sites, e-mail service, classified advertising, links, traffic exchanges, banners, greeting cards and refer a friend.
You are in complete control of which method of viral marketing is right for your business. In order to promote viral marketing you need to create an incentive or reason for your customers, subscribers or website visitors to duplicate or pass on your advertisement to other individuals. This incentive is usually in the form of fr^ee valuable information.
For most online business owners, the viral ebook is probably the easiest and most effective form of viral marketing. Your viral ebook must have links back to your website, products and affiliate programs in order to successfully promote your business. Viral marketing is a great way to get your ebook recipients to promote you to their customers, friends and acquaintances. These recipients will then promote you to their customers and the promoting cycle continues to grow. It is a very effective method of marketing.
The viral ebook can be created using special software that is relatively inexpensive. Ebooks can include different types of media including text, html, graphic images, animation and video. The media information is inserted into a compiler that produces an ebook in an "exe" or "pdf" file. Once created, a viral ebook can be easily distributed by downloading from any website.
The original author has ultimate control over what information in the viral ebook can be changed. The ebook should include an opt^in subscription form that canХt be changed by the ebook recipients. You can earn money from the affiliate links in your ebook up until the time they are changed. Most important, you can continue to build your mailing list due to the newsletter or mini-course opt^in subscriber form in the ebook.
The ebook compiler enables the ebook recipient to edit specific information as allowed by the author. The recipient needs to be able to change the affiliate links to their affiliate links and add their name and URL link as a distributor in the ebook. This enables them to earn money from the affiliate links and get marketing exposure because their name and link is in the ebook.
This will give them incentive to market the ebook to their customers or e-mail list. These next level individuals can then download the ebook and add their name and URL link and change the affiliate links to their links. The net result is your business gets promoted many times over without additional involvement on your part.
Your viral ebook can be distributed in many different ways to promote your name and business. Some of the common methods of distribution include giving the ebook away as:
- An incentive to individuals to join your opt-in mailing list
- A bonus to get individuals to buy your product or service
- An inventive to get other websites to link to your website
The free viral ebook is a very effective way to market your website, products or services and affiliate programs. People love free things. Many of your website visitors will download your free ebook if it contains information that is valuable and useful to them.
The key to creating a successful viral ebook is to make certain the information in the ebook appeals to your niche market. In order to draw traffic your ebook must have a killer topic and meet the needs or solve a problem of your targeted audience. A viral ebook on a topic that has been beat to death will not get you a lot of viral advertising.
There must be quality information in the ebook that meets the wants and needs of your audience or addresses a problem of your niche market. Your free exposure and the number of visitors to your website will be affected by the number of visitors that download your free viral ebook. Make certain your ebook contains the message that it can be freely given away and the affiliate links changed to the recipientХs links. Your positive marketing exposure increases with each download.
Viral marketing can be a huge advantage in your business advertising. Is it the right choice for you? Your response should be a definite "yes." It is not difficult to set up and the results could be well worth the effort. It is free advertising that works if done properly. Give it a try and you may be very surprised at the results.
Write Your eBook Fast Viral marketing is probably the number one method for generating traffic and sales - IF it is set up properly.
Take the case of a viral ebook - which means a book that can be passed from one person to another bringing benefits (profits) for each party in turn.
How is this achieved ?
The basic concept is that the book contains links to affiliate products. When a reader of the book makes a purchase from a link then the affiliate receives the commission.
The creator of such a book will allow some of the links to be 'rebranded' which means a person (who we will refer to as the rebrander) can replace them with his own affiliate codes thus collecting commission. This is the obvious incentive for him to pass the book around and begin the viral progression.
If we want to maximize the benefits for everyone and create the perfect viral ebook we need to have THREE key factors in place.
1) Wide Distribution
There are many permutations in the ways that you can offer an ebook. It can be free or paid, and for either option you can charge for rebranding or offer it free; plus you can have part customization or full customization. On top of that, for a paid book you can offer resale rights and even the right to grant resale rights.
Let's keep it simple. What we want is the widest possible distribution so that we get the most commission from the affiliate links.
So we will have a FREE book and FREE rebranding rights.
2) Quality Affiliate Links
It goes without saying that your book should contain good content on a topic of interest.
But will readers click on those affiliate links ?
The answer is 'NO' if you copy the poor example of many authors, for instance:
- have you ever opened an ebook and been faced with a barrage of affiliate links?
- or seen affiliate products which have nothing to do with the theme of the book? For example in a book about hypnotism you get a link to a web hosting company.
So what is the best way?
The secret is to have highly relevant links and weave them naturally into the content in a low key style without appearing to push for a sale. So when you discuss a particular topic and want to show where more detail can be found, or how a particular problem can be solved, that's where you can mention the affiliate product as a source of further information. If you want to see really good examples of how to do this read the free book at the end of this article.
See - that last sentence was an ACTUAL working example of how to weave in a link.
3) Maximum Return For Both Parties
You need to get the rebranding balance right.
If you give away an ebook and allow all the affiliate links to be rebranded that is a great deal for the rebrander - but what do you get out of it ? No affiliate commission, just subscribers maybe for your mailing list if you have a sign-up form in the book.
Conversely if you hand out only a few affiliate links for rebranding then that provides little incentive for the rebrander to distribute the book.
Ideally what you want is the maximum motivation for your rebrander which would be
* to allow free rebranding * to allow ALL the links to be rebranded but in a way that you can still benefit.
Can that be possible ?
Fortunately it is, using any of 3 different methods:
- If the links in the book are for your own products
- If the links are for products for which you have resale rights
- If the links are for 2-tier affiliate programs so that you collect the 2nd tier commission when a rebrander, who has signed up under you, makes a sale
And so, if you use these techniques you can begin a viral marketing campaign which will continue to generate traffic and sales with little on-going effort on your part.
EXCEPT for two issues we need to resolve
1) What happens if everyone rebrands the book and only makes purchases from their own copy?
Well, I have found that in practise only a minority (say 10%) will take the time to rebrand a book which means that the majority (90%) will be reading your book and purchasing from YOUR links.
So there's no problem here.
2) Suppose you plan to produce a viral book. It's about a popular topic - so it's bound to have a wide circulation - but you can't find any of the three types of suitable links to put in the book, i.e. links to a product of your own, to products with resale rights or for 2-tier affiliate programs.
Is there a solution?
There is and you can find out the answer in my book "101 SuperTips" - it's actually tip 100.
As you might expect this book is free, with valuable information linking to highly relevant products, and you can rebrand it, again for free.
By all the rules above it's a candidate, I hope you agree, for 'the perfect viral ebook' and a profitable source of revenue for you.
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