The ability to create ebooks places you in an incredibly powerful position. Ebook selling will allow you to make your own unique product; it will make your business different from any of the thousands of sites on the internet competing for the same customers and selling the same products at the same prices. Your information products will only be available from you and because of this they're easier to market. It'll also be much easier to gain media attention or press coverage if or when you choose to promote your product offline.
Uniqueness aside, ebooks are also the easiest products to deliver to your customer, there are no shipping costs or returns due to damaged or lost deliveries. Ebooks are made of electronic data, simply upload your ebook to your web space and allow customers to download it – your delivery costs are virtually zero. Even better, apart from a couple of minor costs at the outset, your business can be run without cost on a shoestring budget.
Ebooks have become desirable because of their instant nature, you pay your money and tada! Two minutes later all the info you need is downloaded onto your computer (or Iphone, PSP or what-have-you). No hassle, no waiting, no lineups. You begin benefitting from your purchase immediately.
What's An Ebook?
To be thorough, and for those not familiar with an ebook, here's short definition: An ebook is a book that's been published in one electronic format or another, and come in many different electronic formats. Sometimes ebooks are created with ebook compilers. That means that the original writings for the ebook are transformed into another electronic format. This can be done for a variety of reasons. Most of them deal with either protecting the ebook from theft or controlling the presentation of the material.
Originally ebooks were books that were turned into web pages or web sites. Compilers were created to transform those websites into an electronic format that would allow users to read the ebook without being connected to the internet. The compiler would transform the html (hyper text markup language) into an exe (executable) file that could be run on a regular IBM compatible computer. Some people still use this format. Unfortunately with all the security concerns most people are turning away from the exe format. Also, the exe format was only good for IBM compatible computers which limited the market.
Today the most common format used is the PDF (portable document format). A PDF document produced on one operating system can be read on almost any other operating system without having to change anything.
Getting Started
Starting an ebook business isn't going to be a walk in the park, nor is it going to get your rich quick. It'll require hours of research and writing, ebook design and compilation (or design) web design, some knowledge of ecommerce, and marketing. Howver, the payoff can be huge. And unlike many other home based businesses you won’t be limited to your region. The beauty of ebooks is that you can publish them and then distribute them throughout the world. This type of global opportunity doesn’t apply to many other home based businesses.
Another advantage of an ebook business is that you're not tied to the regular 9-5 hours of operation. Once you've written an ebook, you'll sell be able to sell it while you’re awake and while your asleep. Most of the work that goes along with setting up an ebook business is done in the beginning stages. This industry is front heavy, meaning it takes much more effort at the start, but after you set up your infrastructure you can continue to sell with very little daily maintenance.
Unlike traditional hard copy publishing or print on demand publishing, which cost you money either in commissions or printing costs, ebook publishing puts you in charge of your own success, your career, your company and your future. You pay for everything and you run everything and you keep all the money.
In the electronic book industry you'll need some software to create a text document, a PDF creation method, a promotion methodology and a way to automate sales.The word processor and PDF creation capability are available for free with Open Office. The promotion method is free. The sales automation will cost a minimal amount.
What You'll Need: Tools & Equipment
No job can be accomplished without the proper tools. The following is a bare bones list of tools that you'll need. You can expand on this list to customize your own tools but what is presented here are the bare minimums.
Obviously you're going to need a computer and an internet connection.
A word processor. Most people use Microsoft Word but I like Open Office because it has a build in PDF creation feature. There are also a number of templates available to help spruce up your ebook. Once you've written your book, you just click on "convert to PDF" and you're done. You just created your ebook. Open Office comes with an entire suite of office productivity programs... and did I mention it's free!
Website creation software. Each ebook you write should have it's own website that describes its contents, presents the offer, and provides a method to make the purchase. You can use Open Office to crete your webpages, but I prefer a dedicated website creation program such as FrontPage. However, there are a number of freeware and opensource html editors available, so you might want to take a little time and check a few out.
A domain name. You should really register a domain name for each ebook you right. This not only demonstrates your professionalism, but also helps bring in targeted traffic, which equals more sales.
Web hosting. Hosts vary so widely in the features they offer, their operating systems, their prices, and so forth that there is no way I could give you an accurate and detailed enough rundown here. You'll need to evaluate each host and what they offer. You'll also need to compare that to your needs. Hosting can be found as cheaply as $1.50 a year or as expensively as $500 a month. Pretty wide gap there, right? A good price range for a decent service for what you'll need should be between $5 and $25 a month. I actually use 2 different hosting companies; One for my publishing end of the business, the other for my marketing: JustHost and GoDaddy. Both offer unlimeted bandwidth, storage, MySQL databases, email accounts and CPanel.
A RAP Bank affiliate account. The easiest way to automate your sales process is to allow someone else to deal with all the hassles. That's where RAP Bank comes in. Like other affiliate programs such as Clickbank or Commission Junction, you can place your ebook in their marketplace and have other people (affiliates) promote it for you. In return you pay the affiliate and Clickbank or CJ a percentage of the sale. With RAP Bank, they handle paying the affiliates, AND you get paid immediately as soon as you or one of your affiliates makes a sale. There's no 60 - 90 day waiting period, and you get paid directly into your PayPal account.
An autoresponder. An autoresponder is similar to an email program. It resides on a computer that is connected full time to the internet. Your hosting account usually comes with an autoresponder feature, but for marketing, it's much better to use an autoresponder service. The autoresponders we're talking about will allow us to set up multiple emails and schedule them to be sent at specific times and dates. They will also allow us to send out one email to everyone on our list. So, if you have 10,000 people on your list you write one email and everyone gets one copy of that email.
There are also many ways to personalize that one email so that it will have each person's information in their email. It's quite easy, actually. As simple as clicking on a personalization item in a list to be inserted at a specific point in your email.
Due to the rampant spamming that occurs on the internet it's vital that you have an autoresponder service provider that knows what they're doing. The best and ONLY autoresponder service provider that I recommend is Aweber. They're well known in the industry and handle things superbly.
Get Ready To Accept Credit Cards
By and large, your ebook buyers will want to pay by credit card. After all, the benefit of ebooks is that they are terribly easy to get. Just type in your credit card number and in a few moments you're reading through a great book!
You should also provide a mail box where visitors can send a check for your ebook, but this is only to show them that you have an address. It adds to your credibility, but don't expect many orders, if any, through this channel. In fact, if you only provide a postal mail box address and do not provide your customers with the ability to click and pay by credit card, you can expect to lose 95 percent of your buyers. However, put the address on the site, and do process orders that come in that way. Use a box that is not your personal residence for reasons of personal security.
Writing Ebooks That Sell
When most people decide to write a book or an ebook they think of an idea, research the idea, write the ebook, and then try to sell it. That's actually the worst way in the world to approach the ebook business. The best way to approach writing an ebook is to find out what people want or need and create it for them. They'll appreciate you and the ebook should sell quite well.
If we take this approach we'll have to find a niche. This word is pronounce two different ways by all kinds of marketers. Some pronounce it neesh and others pronounce it nitch. Whichever pronunciation works best for you is okay.
A niche is a specialized area of interest. It's a collection of people that have a highly specific interest. For instance instead of writing about cars you might want to write about model cars. You could "drill down" even further into the niche and write about radio controlled model cars or how to build a model car race track. The primary rule about niches is the nichier it is the better it is. Of course, there are some other features that should be present as well.
- It needs to be something that people spend money on. Lots of people like jokes and search for jokes every day online. Not too many of them buy joke books, though.
- The people who hold this niche interest also have to be irrational spenders. They have to be the kind of people who whip out their wallet and buy stuff even if they don't really need it.
- The most valuable information is the information that sells. We live in the information age. Creation of information products is a natural result. You'll find that a lot of the information products you'll create contain information that can be freely found online.
So why would people buy your ebook if they can find it for free? The same reason people buy newspapers when they could just run around finding out what's going on. Convenience.
You're spending your time researching their topic of interest and compiling the most relevant information into your ebook. Yes, they're buying free information but more than that they're buying your time.
There are tons of ways to search for niches on the internet. Everyone has their own pet theories as to what makes a niche and what doesn't. Finding a profitable niche is part science and part art.
Profitable niches are a combination of searches and specialized areas of interest. You can drill down (find smaller and smaller niches) until you don't really have a viable market to profit from unless you raise the price of your ebook more and more.
On the other hand if you have too many searches you'll find that you have too much competition. So you drop the price lower and lower until it's no longer profitable to make a sale.
You'll want some competition because if nobody is selling in your niche it very likely the reason is because nobody buys in that niche. Let's face it if you're going to open a restaurant you will probably have a higher chance of success building it next to one or more overcrowded restaurants. Too many places to eat will bring failure to someone, though.
One quick way to find out if there is any competition is to do a search for your niche on Google. Look at the sponsored ads on the right. Check and see how many of them are selling ebooks or information related products.
- Nobody selling = nobody buying
- A few selling = profit zone
- Everybody selling = low profit margin
Here are a few links to help you get started finding your niche:
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/
Popularity research sites:
http://50.lycos.com/
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.
When it comes to pricing their ebooks, most inexperienced people just seem to slap a price on their products with little time spent thinking about it, why they've priced it like that, and what factors are going to contribute to whether it's a successful decision. But there's a much more to pricing your product than simply making an estimated guess or checking out what other ebooks are selling for.
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.
Pricing with Regard to Competition
Let's look at how you should price your products with regard to competition. The reason I want to talk about this first, is simple. When you're looking at pricing, the very first thing you're likely to do is say, hey, so what is everyone else charging for similar products? And you may go from there.
Now there's nothing wrong with doing this at all, but there's more to think about, and a lot more questions to ask than a simple can I beat what this guy is charging for his service?
Your price doesn't have to beat everyone else’s out there for you to get sales. This is something that I learned a long time ago. ou really need to be aware of what other people are charging for their products, but that doesn't by any means signal that you have to go out there and beat them. If you have a superiour product then you should sell it at a premium price.
Premium Products Sell at Premium Prices
Wowing Through Price Is a Bad Move
The fact is, if your price is too low, people look at you and wonder why the heck you're charging that tiny oamount. Never price yourself so low that you think people will look and think wow that’s a quality sounding product, look how little it costs! That's not what they're saying at all. They're saying, “Wow, look at how little that costs. There can't be that much to it.” So in effect, all you're doing here is adding even more value to your product through a higher price. It might be the same product, but I tell you now, it's much more likely to sell more copies at a price that someone might look at and think that it's reasonable, or average than something someone might look at and fall off their chair at how cheap you are.
Offer Different Price Plans
Here's a strategy that's rarely used, especially in the world of online marketing and info products, and that's offering different price plans from the word go. Sure people might change their price, put it up and down to experiment, put on offers and so on, but that's not doing much if your original plan isn't well thought out. You iocould offer scaled down versions of your ebook for a lower price; provide an audio version with your ebook for a premium price; add private messaging options for a different price, etc. I'm sure you can come up with other ideas to enable different pricing options for your ebooks.
Don't be afraid to experiment with pricing strategies. I can understand how you might be worried that customers, who bought your ebook costing $79, would be annoyed that they receive an email for a special seasonal offer cutting that cost in half, but it seriously doesn't work that way. You're not offending anyone by doing this, and it's the only way you'll come up with new techniques and tactics yourself, through testing.
Increase Your Profits From Each Ebook
Insert Affiliate Links - This is probably the other and most commonly tapped profit center used by many ebook publishers, aside from making money from the sale. You can make even more money from your ebook readers/customers by recommending a related or follow-up product or service that's closely related to the topic of your ebook. And, of course, you'll be an affiliate for that product and earn a commission if your reader decides to buy the affiliate product.
Sell Advertising Space - Like the newspapers and magazines, you can include a space in one or some parts of your ebook that's available for advertisements. In this blank space, you include something like “this advertising space can be yours!” and then include a link or a way for the potential advertiser to contact you. You can then charge a rate of your choice and the advertiser sends his or her advertisement to you. Then, not only do you provide him or her with a new copy of the ebook that has the ad in it, you also help spread and circulate the “branded” ebook around.
Upsell Other Ebooks In Your Collection - You can see this profit center being used by big time book publishers offline such as The Dummies Series®, Rich Dad Series®, Goosebumps®, and many others. If you're planning to author a collection of books, all housed under your brand, you can’t do any better than this kind of cross-promotion.
Offer the Exclusive Resell Rights - If you have a proven, hot selling product that is currently being sold to your customers for personal use only, selling its Resell Rights would be a HUGE plus. For instance, if you have a proven hot seller that sells at $9.95, you can probably offer limited Resell Rights to your product for 5 to 10 times the price, possibly $97.00 - $197.00! You would be targeting resellers who are established in the same niche as you are. These resellers are good targets if they want to get their hands on an instant product that they can legally resell and pocket 100% of the sales without having to develop their own product.
Ebooks Aren't Just For Authors
Ebook authorship is not just for authors. Anyone who has an interest in anything could write about their interest and convert in into an ebook. Some of the best ebooks are actually from unknown authors and some of the highest selling ebooks have been written by unknown authors who have a knack for online promotion. Your ebook doesn't have to be of epic proportions, volume doesn't always equate to value. Give your readers the facts, present them well, educate them and enrich their lives. If you can do this in say five or ten pages you'll achieve the same result as if you did it in two or three hundred pages - your customers will still be happy and they'll buy from you again. Your ebook(s) don't even have to be entirely original or groundbreaking either. Just as long as you deliver what your reader is expecting... good, solid educational information.
Selling Strategies
Get your ebook listed in online bookstores such as Amazon.com and Half.com. The fee may be worth it to make many more potential readers aware of your book.
Here are a few more shameless promotion techniques you can use:
- Add a link to your ebook web site at the bottom of every email you send for any reason
- Pay for clicks from pay-per-click search engines, so people will more readily see your ebook. In this way, you buy traffic to your site
- Buy ad space in e-zines or newsletters that are reaching your target readers
- Create a monthly newsletter, and tout your book in it every month
- As you build your library, provide links to your other ebooks in each of your ebooks
- Use your ebook as a business card. Send it to organizations or businesses where you'd like to be hired as a speaker or teacher
Final Word
Additional Resources
Whether I recommend a site or not, I'd like to let you know that I am in no way affiliated with these companies or individuals. I will not be making money if you visit these sites, and they have not paid for advertising in this post. Therefore, as you bounce around the net, check references where necessary, and feel free to use other services that you may discover along the way.
Ebook ghostwriters:
http://www.elance.com/ - As discussed at length in Chapter 1, this site has a large bank, or database, of ghostwriters looking for work. You can place an ad here and wait for offers to come in.
http://www.guru.com/ - Like Elance only bigger by almost a factor of ten, Guru also has a database of ghostwriters
looking for work.
http://www.truetalentmedia.com/ - This is a writing service I myself have used.
http://www.allfreelance.com/ - This site contains a catalog of writers too that are available to ghostwrite ebooks
(beware popups).
Templates for creating your own ebook covers:
www.marketbymouse.com/ebooks/ebook_templates.php - This site has free, basic ebook cover templates you can copy and add title text to.
www.freeebookcovers.homestead.com/covers1.html - Here you can also find free, simple ebook cover templates you can copy and add title text to. Template designer requests a web link in lieu of compensation.
www.onlinewebcreations.com/ebooks.html - Like the other template sites, this one sports free ebook cover
templates. The template designer requests a web link in lieu of compensation.
Free graphics software:
http://www.irfanview.com/ - Because it's free, I thought it worthy of mention. This program is not specifically for ebook covers, but it contains all the tools you would need to custom-design your own cover. And it doesn't cost a thing.
Third party payment processors
Use a third party payment processor that has a recognizable name or is a large, popular organization. This will make potential customers feel secure and therefore more likely to give their credit card numbers in exchange for your ebook. Here are a few.
https://www.paypal.com/
Here's a place where you can hook up with other people who are in the ebook business. You an ask questions, help others, or just lurk.
www.ebook88.com/forum.htm
Free FTP program:
http://www.ipswitch.com/ - If FTP service does not come with your web hosting service, here's a free program you can use.
Free ebook listing sites:
Things change quickly on the web, so if any of these links don't work at some times, just move on and try another from the list.
http://www.thefreesite.com/
XXX
That's today's home business idea. I hope it gave you some ideas and inspiration.
Until tomorrow,
Terry
