Ebook marketing can be a challenge to anyone new to internet marketing. I am sure you have read countless stories online how the latest internet marketer has become rich off of selling his ebook. So you go out and create your own ebook, thinking it will be the next big thing. They either create a small website in an attempt to promote the ebook, or they try and sell it on their blog that receives little traffic. Getting discouraged, they give up the idea of that ebook making them any money online and wonder what other people are doing to sell their ebooks.
Like I have said before in the past, it is all about the internet hustle and making it work for you. Unless you have a subscriber list of thousands of people all ready to buy your latest and greatest product, you are going to have to work to get your ebook sold. Let me run you through some things you can do that will help you in your efforts.
1. Word Of Mouth Marketing
Using places like facebook, twitter or even myspace is a great way for word of mouth marketing to take over for you. Interact with people, respond to their questions and build a relationship with them. This will not happen overnight, but in the long run you will be glad you did this. When it comes time to release your next great idea, you will already have a good list of friends to easily advertise it to with a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse button.
2. Give The Ebook Away For A Free Review
Contact other bloggers and see if they would be interested in reading over your ebook and offering a free review of the product. Many people would gladly do a free review since you are giving them the ebook to begin with. Use their reader base to help promote your ebook, it only thing you are doing is contacting these blog owners via email, instant message or even twitter. I would not contact any of the bigger bloggers unless you already are on speaking terms with them. They do not like to be bothered with emails pitching a product to them as they get so many each week. They will do nothing but delete that email and move on to the next in line.
3. Paid Review Of Your Ebook
If offering a free copy of your ebook for a review does not work, you can always purchase a review from sites. Some SEO’s will argue that this is link buying and will suggest in not doing this. Buying links is against Google’s rules, however with a paid review you can always have the link go to a separate site if you are worried about it. If you do not care, then simply have the review link right to your landing page or purchase page. If the ebook has good information and not just full of fluff, you can see a good increase in sales from larger sites who offer paid reviews.
4. Create And Utilize A Good Landing Page
This landing page can be used in conjunction with several of the tips throughout this article. You want the landing page for your ebook to look professional and not give away to much information to the viewer. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a landing page for your ebook.
- Create an attractive header with the product name and even a catch phrase if you have one for the ebook.
- Have your call to action above the fold, this will allow the viewer to see what they need to do next to buy your ebook or view any free chapters.
- Show the cover on your ebook above the fold, this will allow the viewer to see what it is they are purchasing.
- Be descriptive in the first paragraph, but do not make it sound like a sales pitch.
- Use bullet points to show the reader what your ebook has to offer and why they should buy it.
- Try and get testimonials from people who have reviewed your ebook, if you do not have any, make sure to get them and add them as soon as possible. You need to establish trust with your landing page, solid testimonials only help build that trust with the viewer.
- Refund and Privacy Policy information should be shown to the viewer, they want reassurance that you are not going to just steal their money or information.
- Make sure that not matter where they are on your landing page, the option to buy the product is one click away.
5. Create Teaser Chapters
Take pieces from your ebook and offer them to be read right on your site, this is just like giving someone a piece of candy with the hopes they can buy the whole bag from you. After the teaser excerpts, give the viewer the option to buy your ebook to read it in full. You can include one teaser on your landing page, or several teasers from multiple chapters if you have a multi page website.
6. Forum Marketing
Join forums that are related to what your ebook is about, add that link in your signature if the forum allows it. Interact with the members of any forum you join, this can take some time as with using social media, but it can work. You will not sell hundreds of copies of your ebook, but if you do sell it to the right person they can tell their friends or leave positive feedback on the forum for others to potentially buy. This can be slow going, so do not expect any great results right away.
7. Article Marketing
You can write articles related to your ebook and submit to places like Ezinearticles. Remember the article is about your niche or related to it, do not make it sound like a sales pitch to sell your product. Use the bio box to tell the reader about you and link to your site using keyword phrases you are trying to target. All it takes is one article a day and over time they will bring you traffic and sales if the articles contain good information. If you are not comfortable writing articles, you could always outsource this for just a few dollars per article. Make sure to proof read any articles before submitting and double check with a service like Copyscape to make sure it is not just a copied article.
8. Offer Your Ebook on Clickbank
With Clickbank you can post your ebook in their system for other website owners to market and sell for you. You will have to give out a % of each sale to those website owners, but they are doing all of the work for you. Keep your eyes out for a full post regarding Clickbank, how it works and what you can do to use it to your advantage.
9. Do Not Over Price Your Ebook
This is where a lot of people go wrong, they price their ebook well over what people will actually pay for it thinking they are going to get rich. Think if you were the buyer, would you spend $80 for an ebook? How about $70? I didn’t think so, unless your ebook is always being updated and well known, you will not see that much money. Then again, if your ebook is already well known, why would you be reading this? Keep your price range between $10 and $40, depending on how many pages your ebook contains and how good the information is in it.
10. Run A PPC Campaign
When thinking starting a PPC campaign for your ebook, look to see how much the keywords you want to target is going to cost you. If they are running $3/click and your ebook is only $15 you might want to either find other keywords or just forget about running a PPC. However if the keyword is only $1/click and your ebook is $30 then I would be using PPC to your advantage. This is one of the quickest ways to see sales come in for your ebook.
Remember your ebook will not sell itself, you need to do the leg work to get the ball rolling. Do not expect to sell hundreds of books right away, the reality is their are so many ebooks online. What makes your ebook better? Patience is key for anyone new to marketing, you need to keep your patience when marketing your ebook. If you lose your patience right away for whatever reason, you are hurting your own efforts to make this work for you. Stay focused and work hard, you will see results if the niche is not over saturated and you have a good product. Make sure you keep a list of every person who has bought your ebook, you can offer them new products in the future or even offer an updated ebook with more information for a discounted price. Selling a new item to your previous buyers is a great way to take your next ebook sales to a higher level.
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For your lading page you could also make a short video of yourself discussing your ebook and its benefits. This is great for sales and is easy!