“Sell $20,000 Worth of Your Next Ebook” plus 1 more

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 01:09 PM PDT

This guest post is by Sarah Mae of MarketandSellYourEbook.com.

Marketing is the act of buying or selling in a market.

Where is your market?

Do you have one? Do you own one? Do you shop at one? In the new world of invisible wires where connections are made 24/7 all around the world, the starting place for successful marketing begins at your market … your space … your platform.

How is your platform looking?

Once you have established yourself as an influential voice in your market (your blog, other blogs you’ve created, social networking, conferences, meet-ups, etc.), then you can expect to sell at least $20,000 worth of ebooks if you do a few simple but significant things (assuming the ebook has been written, edited, and is ready to go with content people need).

Have a slammin’ cover

People judge a book by its cover, if it weren’t so people wouldn’t be hiring designers to create something magnetic for the cover of our words .. .we want to draw people in. My advice? You must have a professional looking cover, so unless you’re a graphic designer (and a good one), hire someone. I recommend Insight Blog Design (brilliant, easy to work with, affordable).

Involve your community in the ebook process

The more you involve your community, the more your community is going to want to be a part of what you’re doing. Some things you could do to get your community excited about your ebook:

Have them come up with the title or subtitle of the ebook.
Ask for their tips on the subject matter and include the best ones in the ebook.
Ask their opinions on things regarding the ebook.
Have them vote on the cover (two choices).

Get your ebook on Kindle and Nook

Have you read this? Digital sales are dominating—take note and get on the ships that are delivering! If you aren’t tech savvy, hire someone to format your ebook to Kindle and Nook. You have to do this if you want to be a serious contender in the game. Some tips:

Make sure to fill out your author profile with your blog/s and Twitter handle … also, a nice picture.
Before you tell the world that you’re on these platforms, make sure you have reviews (you’ve got to ask!).

To get your book on Kindle, go here For Nook, go here

Send your ebook to your friends and network community

Ask your friends to read your ebook, give you a quote if they like it, and leave a review on Amazon. Also ask if they would be willing to review it on their blog and/or host a giveaway.

Prepare a community … that you’re a part of

You need to set up a website dedicated to your ebook that includes:

a one-liner at the top that effectively describes your ebook and makes it desirable
quotes from people who have read it (try and get quotes from well-known people/bloggers)
a call to action—”Buy the Book!”—with links
pages: about the book, about you, people involved (link love is good), sample chapter, forum, blog, reviews, and anything else you can offer that benefits your community
a video of you talking about your ebook—this is no time to be dull (unless that’s what people like about you)! Also, keep it to two minutes or you’ll lose people!

You also need to set up a Facebook fan page and Twitter hashtag or handle.

Get your Facebook page up and ready with your ebook picture, description, and links—you will need to be involved in the community for it to work—leaving quotes, interacting, starting discussions, etc. Always answer questions!
Have a hashtag ready to go (that isn’t being used at all) and if you will work it consistently, a Twitter handle as well—you need to interact with your community!

Create a video

It’s all about connection. You want to make a connection with your audience, your community. A video allows people to hear and see you, your expressions, your passion, and your heart for what you have written. Creating a thoughtful video (not something just slapped together) will significantly increase your reach and your sales. Tips:

If you’re selling your book using E-junkie, use their YouTube branding to get more traffic to your ebook website.
Make sure to put the whole URL of your ebook website in the description—make it the first thing there.

Price it right

There are tons of opinions on how you should price your ebook, and you can utilize Google to find them all out. My opinion is that you should consider your audience and then make a decision. My audience is made up of mostly stay-at-home moms, so I decided to price my ebook at $4.99 (also, no weird numbers please, like $4.97 or $6.93—simple is always better). My reasoning? Who doesn’t have five bucks?

Build buzz

The minute I decided I was going to put out an ebook, I began to talk about it and get my readers involved. Build excitement. Read Top Things I've Learned in Selling an Ebook, by Tim Ferriss.

Launch!

This is the fun part! You have worked hard and are ready (albeit nervous) to get your book out “there”! Here’s what you need to do:

Have a launch day celebration with giveaways. I contacted companies and had them donate to the release of my ebook. I used both of my blogs to launch, and had different giveaways for each. Giveaways and fun build excitement and spread the word.
Be everywhere. You’ve got to get (and keep) your ebook in front of people. Ask bloggers to do reviews and/or giveaways (get tons of these … and don’t stop). Guest post. Perhaps even pay for advertising on strategic sites—but only if they write a post along with an advertisement. The posts are gold.
Give your ebook away. Free is always good. I gave my ebook away free for one day only to anyone who would spread the work via social media channels. I gave over 2000 away for free, but this proved to be the best decision I could have made. You’ve got to break through your own sphere of influence. Giving away my ebook by having others spread the word everywhere in the online space broke through. I gave away over 2000, but I’ve also sold over 11,000.
More freebies! What can you offer that will reward those who have purchased your ebook? Think “free printables” or “extra chapters”, “bonus material,” etc. Have a readers-only downloads page.
Find a way to keep your ebook fresh. For example, my ebook has challenges in it. I listened to the feedback from readers, and decided I needed to have easier challenges for those in a different stage of life. I created the new challenges and then made them available for free to those who purchased the ebook. Be creative, and listen to your readers.
Find a way to make your ebook work in groups. The power of groups can make your ebook go viral. Can you put together a group challenge of some sort? A book club with questions (that you perhaps put on a reader downloads page)? Again, think creatively.
Pay attention to what bestselling authors do, and then do it. Look at @garyvee and @tferriss—brilliant marketers.

What tips can you add from your experience launching and selling your own ebooks? Add them below!

Sarah Mae is the author of the new Ebook, “How to Market and Sell Your Ebook – Everything You Need to Know to Make Money with ePublishing” and the bestselling ebook "31 Days to Clean—Having a Martha House the Mary Way” You can follow Sarah Mae on Twitter @sarahmaewrites or on her blog, LikeaWarmCupofCoffee.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Sell $20,000 Worth of Your Next Ebook

Lovely Little Leaps of Faith

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 07:02 AM PDT

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who's sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

For most people, spending money isn’t an automatic thing. You’ve worked hard for your money, and when you’re about to part with it, you want to believe your hard work will actually mean something.

This meaning doesn’t need to be a logical thing—it can be completely emotive.

But with the inherent desire for meaning, there's always a little voice inside us looking for a reason not to spend our cash. As bloggers and online marketers, we're often our own worst enemies. With some of the tactics we use, we're basically handing a megaphone to our readers’ little voices, and encouraging them to scream, “Get the heck out of here!”

When I'm evaluating my own work, or that of others, I often refer to these as leaps of faith. The bigger the leaps of faith you expect your customers to make, the less likely they’ll be to make them. Let's look at ten of the most common, and see how you can make them lovelier!

Not making it clear what your blog is about

Some say three seconds, some five, and some ten—but so often to I come across blogs that I can't even figure out in five minutes! If a user’s thinking, “I don't know what this site is about,” how could you expect them to give them your email address, or their money?

Not communicating what's going to happen

Our fear of the unknown is strong. Chances are low that I'll give you my email address or my credit card number if I have no idea what's next in the process. If you’re collecting email subscriptions, make sure your reader knows what they’re singing up for; if it's a ebook download, make sure they know as soon as the payment is made that they'll be emailed instructions on how to download; if it's a physical product, tell them the fulfillment process up-front. This is simple stuff, but it’s important.

Making people feel like you've gone back to 1999

Design isn't that important, right? Wrong. If your website looks like it was built in the 90s, then all I'd say is you'd want to have some pretty awesome content. You're blogging on the web, so it needs to looks like it fits here. I doesn’t need to be a work of art, though—good is enough.

Not showing people how secure you are

If your readers or potential purchasers feel in any way that giving you money is going to compromise their information, they'll scamper. Use PayPal as one payment option—it’s widely regarded as secure. Use Visa and MasterCard logos and “secured by” messaging to show that your site and checkout processes are secure.

Making people jump through hoops

More clicks makes for fewer sales. Equally, the more convoluted you make your sales process, the more clients will drop out. We're busy people with short attention spans, so only ask for the information you need to complete the transaction—ask for all the nice-to-haves later.

Breaking down before their very eyes

If your sales process breaks somehow, only the most motivated buyers will tell you about it. And by the time you realize, customers—and their money—will have left for somewhere else. Make sure your key buying processes are bulletproof from reliability, validation, accessibility, and cross-browser compatibility perspectives.

Not showing safety in numbers

We like to buy in crowds—it makes us feel safe and secure. If 10,000 people purchased your product and they’re all okay, then I’ll see the purchase as low-risk, and I’ll buy. As a matter of authenticity, show real numbers rather than a figure you made up. Users are pretty switched on to those kinds of errors now.

Not showing the past or the future

If you have a lengthy sales process, which for some products is a must, then make sure you show people the journey, so they know where they have come from and how far there is to go. It puts the process (its length and level if intensity) up front, and keeps users motivated, as they know there’s an end in sight.

Asking for too much too soon

Passwords are a common factor in this point. Unfortunately, too many people use the same password for every site and service they use, so asking for a password on a small purchase can be like asking people for access to their bank accounts. On the flip side, people will likely trust you pretty quickly if you ask for a password, but there is a time to do this, and it's after you've proven your worth to them.

Looking, talking, and thinking small

There's nothing wrong about being small, but you can make yourself bigger buy showing you keep pretty good company. It might be mentions in mainstream press or from larger personalities, or perhaps just showing you keep good company. Be small—but only when it works in your favor.

I had a conversation with friend this week about a checkout process that, after three attempts, I simply couldn't figure out. He mentioned that it was complicated because the tax rules in his country were complicated. I responded with the same comment I say to everyone:

Don't make your customers’ lives hard just because yours is

After 30 minutes of exploring different options, we found a way to make it work—you always can.

… and that's the real secret to lovely little leaps of faith.

Stay tuned for more posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja — a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who's sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Lovely Little Leaps of Faith

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