Ebook Marketing Ideas

Selling ebooks is one of the most lucrative on-line businesses. Electronic delivery means zero logistics costs.  Furthermore, tools like autoresponders, shopping cart software, merchant or third party payment services, and pay-per-click advertising allow you to put operations, marketing and sales on autopilot.

If you have already done the hard work and developed an ebook, here are a few tips on how to market it:

Build a mini-website or sales page

The best conversion rates are achieved through a mini-website having only one purpose: to sell your ebook. This mini-website should be a long, persuasive sales letter, with few graphics and no outbound links.  At the end of the sales letter you must place a "Buy Now" button or link.  Alternatively, you can also provide an input box where visitors can leave their email address to subscribe to your free newsletter. Through this vehicle, you will have more opportunities to promote your ebook, especially among those visitors that need to "warm-up" to your offer before they buy.  Also, this mini-website should have its own domain name, and that domain should include keywords that describe your ebook's topic.

Offer unlimited free updates

With knowledge changing so quickly, people are reluctant to pay for information that may become obsolete in a short period of time. This is especially true, for example, in areas like internet marketing or search engine optimization. A great way to offer long lasting value and increase your conversion rate is to offer free updates of your ebook, so that every time you make a significant revision your customers receive the updated version for free.

Provide samples of your work

Prospective buyers will like to know if your product if right for them before they buy. You can help them by:

-Writing and posting free articles on your main website, to give them a taste of your work. You can also license these articles so that they can be posted on other websites for free, provided that they include your resource box with a link to your sales page.

-Post a sample chapter of your ebook (this is a very successful technique used, among others, by Amazon.com).

You can also eliminate risk by offering a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Drive traffic to your mini-website

An excellent strategy is to drive traffic to your site with Google Adwords or other pay per click search engine.   An ebook will give you a very good gross profit margin. You should invest part of your profits in buying targeted, well written ads to drive traffic to your site.

Use testimonials

Visitors will be more inclined to buy if they see that other people just like them have benefited from your product.  The one million dollar question is: how do I get testimonials before I start selling my book?  Aside from the obviously simplistic tactic of getting people you know to give you some feedback, an effective way to get testimonials is to offer a free beta or trial version of your ebook to a very selective group of people.  If you run an ezine you could send that free trial version to your subscribers, although I do not recommend this strategy, since your own subscribers are your best prospects for the paid final version.  What you can do is contact another ezine publisher and ask them to place a link to the free trial version of your ebook on their next mailing.  You should keep that link active for a limited time only. This will create a win/win situation, where the email publisher will give their subscribers something valuable for free, and you will most likely receive plenty of testimonials that you can later use on your sales site.

List your ebook with Clickbank

Clickbank is an excellent online distribution service of digital products that allows you to set up an affiliate program easily and with no hassle. You just have to give Clickbank access to your product, and they will give you an HTML snippet for a "Buy It At Clickbank" button that you will place on your sales site.  Clickbank will then promote your product to their network of over 100,000 affiliates, the affiliates will refer traffic to your site, visitors will buy your ebook by clicking your "Buy It" button, and Clickbank will then pay you and your affiliate. It's that simple.

You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:

Mario Sanchez is a Miami based freelance writer who focuses on Internet marketing and web design topics.  He publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of web design and Internet marketing articles, tips and resources.  You can freely reprint his weekly articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.

Recommended Resources:

Ebook Starter: (by Shelley Lowery) Do-It-Yourself ebook design kit.  Ebooks are the perfect online product, as they provide your customers with instant gratification and can be downloaded right over the Internet.  Not only does this package include a complete ebook tutorial, but it also provides you with professionally designed templates that will give your ebooks the look and feel of a real book (including a page turning effect).

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