Okay, It’s Done How Do I Make The Money?
Yep … you're finally done! It’s ready to go to market and make you some money.
Marketing an e-book is an entire book all in itself, so I won't even attempt to do all of that in just one chapter. I WILL, however, give you a quick list of what’s worked for me over the last few years and let you decide what’s best for you.
First of all, if you don’t have web hosting, you need to get signed up with someone. You HAVE to have your own PAID hosting … no two ways about it! When you’re looking at hosting, you don’t have to worry so much about the storage space … at least for a while … or the bandwidth. What you DO have to look at is the types of scripts that will run on the hosting companies servers…PHP, CGI, that sort of thing. You also DO have to look at any extra scripts the hosting includes.
Even if you have your own paid hosting now, it’s worth it to take a look at hosting companies that have a built-in affiliate management script. You’re going to be using one here very shortly and if you have one built in you’re way ahead of the game in time, support and money.
You need to have a good … no, very good … website to sell your book from. Just some basics here: (These have all been tested thoroughly, by the way.) You need to have either a very unobtrusive header or no header at all. That varies with your target market and is something you’ll have to test for yourself.
Your sales page must be very focused on your product…no other distractions, no AdSense, no extra links…just the product.
You must have a good headline…one that immediately tells the visitor what your book will do for them.
You must have a list of benefits that the visitor will reap if they buy your book. 7-10 bullet points seems to be the consistent winner in testing. Make each bullet point answer the question “What’s In It For Me?” WIIFM.
This is important! You already have quite a leg up on others since you’ve just learned how to write effectively … communicate effectively … during the process of working with this book! Keep that conversational tone … keep using those contractions … talk WITH the reader, not TO them!
Get a professional e-book cover done for you! Please, unless you’re an e-cover pro, don’t try to make your own! You’ve worked too hard on your book to ruin it with a cheesy looking e-cover.
Your sales copy needs to be written in Verdana font. Break up the copy with relevant sub headlines.
There are a TON of other things you can do to a website to make it sell better for you. The absolute most important thing you have to do is…GET THE WEBSITE UP AND OUT THERE! You won’t make a dime unless the website is live and trying to attract visitors, so don’t study it to death or design it to death…just put it out there and THEN work on it. Most people don’t do this. You need to be different than most people!
Here are the EXACT steps I take to market a new e-book :
1 1. Write the sales copy while the book is still fresh in my mind. I even start on the copy while I’m writing sometimes, especially if I’m really in to the topic right then.
2 2. Make a sample chapter…the introduction that you did as a separate PDF…and publish it to my server. I’ll use that as a free sample of the book … of course, I try to get a name and email address for the privilege of downloading it…but I DON’T require it! I always give them a small link somewhere at the bottom of the signup form that will take them directly to the download. My main objective is to sell an e-book…the sample chapter will do that for me. So I want as many people as possible to download it. It’s a lot like seeing people in Barnes and Noble skimming through the books before they buy.
3 3. I always put the Table Of Contents on the sales page. Tests show that this action alone can boost sales as much as 28%! I also offer the TOC as a download as well.
4 4. I always have a professional e-cover done for the book. I’m very picky about this and only use the best e-cover creators.
5 5. I always use a “buy” button, that says something like…” Grab Your Copy Right Now! ” … or … ” get Your Copy Today! ” instead of “Click Here To Buy”
6 6. I always use a 30-day money-back guarantee, worded as strongly as I can to put all of the risk of buying the book on my shoulders and NOT the customers.
7 7. I usually don’t offer bonuses…but in the rare cases that I have, I made sure that the bonuses were relevant to the topic of my book…not just a bunch of junk!
I ALWAYS offer an affiliate program! I started out using ClickBank to gather affiliates, but have since moved to using my own affiliate manager. That’s where selecting the right web host makes all of the difference … my affiliate manager is built in!
I always make sure the affiliates make more money than I do! I always set the commission level at 50% or above and MAKE SURE that those affiliates get paid on time, every time! I rarely but do send FREE copies of the book to friends for their testimonials … and I always use 5-7 testimonials on every sales page.
As I said before, this has all been well tested and continues to be tested periodically to make sure the techniques are still working.
All of this should give you some good ideas for your first sales site. The KEY is to get the site up and running! Don't hesitate! Go ahead and do it…right now! If you wait until it’s perfect in