Chapter Five
What You Need To Sell eBooks From Your Website
Advantages of Selling from Your Website
1. You get to improve your daily business cash flow. The Booklocker for example, pays royalties every month. When you receive royalties from Mightywords and most of the other eBook sellers, you usually get paid quarterly. Some eBook sellers only pay you semiannually. I like instant gratification, don't you?
After all, that is why your readers are downloading your eBooks. They want instant gratification, too. By having your credit card processor deposit money into your business bank account every day, you get instant gratification with each and every sale. This is a great motivator.
2. Your personal website allows you to collect address information of each customer. Once you sell your customer their first eBooks, they are more apt to purchase more eBooks. You collect their e-mail addresses and send them updates. If you are a public speaker as well as an author, you can invite them to hear you speak when you are in their area. You are a celebrity.
3. Collecting data on which kinds of eBooks are of interest to your website visitors will increase your income. I found that by tracking my page hits, I could find out what information my web visitors were interested in and what kinds of eBooks they would actually purchase.
You can set up on-line forms, messages boards, and forums that allow your visitors many reasons to go back to your website. As your web visitors develop confidence in you, they will be more encouraged in placing orders with you.
4. You can offer free updates and information to your readers and distribute that information inexpensively with a website. Having a website is a very low cost proposition. I spend less than $100.00 per month when I include my website costs as well as having two different credit card processors. (I will explain more in Chapter Six: Setting Up Back-up Systems)
When I had an office in Scottsdale, Arizona my costs were almost $1200.00 per month. Now I get so much more for 10 % of what I use to pay and never have to leave my home.
5. You can set up "secret" places on your site that you charge a subscription fee for people to enter. You can have levels of newsletters for example. You can send out a free one and offer a more advanced newsletter or content site on your website that give the reader a great deal more.
You can set up this area to be password protected. Once the reader pays you the subscription fee, permission is granted to enter and download your unique information.
6. Offer free classes and fee classes to your readers. This is a variation of the above point number five. Free classes will allow the reader to get to know your style. Web visitors will be more apt to buy from you or take additional on-line classes, training or telephone consulting.
7. You can offer virtually unlimited text and graphics in describing your eBooks. You can record your voice and give author readings from your website. Many times I have found that the author reading was the key factor in getting the eBook sale.
8. You Can Realize A Greater Return on Investment. Even during the best of economic times, no one eBook seller or eBook publisher will be able to reach all of the eBook buying markets. When you offer eBook selling from your site you get instant feedback on what is working and what is not. You can experiment with offering "specials" that will instantly affect your bottom line sales and profits. Even though operating your own site can be a great deal of work, you can sell a ton of eBooks and keep a bigger chunk of each and every sale.
9. You can react quicker in the Market Place. For example, let's say a new company called YouandI eBooks comes out with a new software program that compresses video, sound files, and graphics in such a way that your file size never gets over 200k. That will allow you to create eBooks that are full multi-media productions. File size will not be an issue. You will be able to instantly offer a tremendous product to your all of your readers. Maybe the other booksellers and eBook publishers that are selling your eBook have no interest in formatting and using that product. So you can generate a large number of sales by offering it through your newsletters and your website.
I personally sell more eBooks from my site than any combination of all of the other eBook sellers I use put together. People want to obtain their material right from the source if they can. You are the source.
10. You can offer your own affiliate program. With your own website you can offer your own sales affiliate program. Affiliate programs are the reason why Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com do so well selling on the Internet. For more information about offering Affiliate Programs, go to: