How To Sell Your eBook – Marketing An eBook

Tips & Ideas from a Successful eBook Author – Me!

I’ve got a number of “brand new to having their own website” clients who are starting to get the hang of making money online. They are experiencing the power of being online, and are seeing their visitor traffic rise each week. They are getting more requests for their services or products … yes, they are happy and thrilled at the potential that lies in store for them as far as online marketing is concerned.

They were smart enough to hire my company to provide them with a professionally designed and search engine optimized website. These clients knew they needed to put their best foot forward in order to properly promote themselves. My partner and I provided them with a user-friendly, W3C compliant website, and because I did my SEO job well, they are getting good visitor traffic from organic search results.

In addition, these clients have listened carefully to the marketing suggestions that Damian and I have given them, and these clients do truly understand the need to market their services and products in other ways. They understand they cannot solely depend upon their website to do all the work for them.

Learn About Publishing Your Own Electronic Book or “eBook”

So, in my continual efforts to nurture and coach all my clients on ways to make additional money online, I often suggest they bundle up some of their expertise and write an eBook. Most clients really haven’t a clue as to the potential profitability of providing information in an electronic book format.

Many of us, especially those of us who are a bit “older” than a 20 or 30-year old, are still not familiar at all with the eBook concept, and more importantly just how darn popular the eBook format really is!

I launched my first eBook, The Hypertufa How-To Manual over one-and-a-half years ago. At that time, I will admit … I was not very familiar with the advantages of publishing one’s transcript in an eBook format versus the traditional hard cover format. I had downloaded a few free ones, and as a matter of fact, decided to purchase an eBook about how to go about putting together an eBook in order to learn how to produce and successfully market one. (I had no clue about how to go about selling an eBook nor if it would be something profitable for me to do.)

You’re probably saying “Claudia … what the heck is hypertufa and why’d you write about it?” Well, my eBook came about because of the popularity and success of my very first website. And like many of my clients … I too was very interested in not too long of a time in making some more money online from that site! (I firmly believe in having many money making financial eggs in my basket!)

If you’re so inclined, you can visit The-Artistic-Garden.com and learn about a whole ‘nother side of me.

I must say that though I have not become a millionaire via the sale of my eBook, due to the fact it is in a rather obscure niche of interest … I will tell you it produces, week in and week out, a very nice stream of passive income. I sure like seeing those checks deposited in my checking account every two weeks!

I Speak from Personal Experience as a Successful eBook Author

OK … let me get right down to what you came here to learn, and that is “how to sell your eBook”.  I’m going to share a number of basic ideas. I believe these will help you put on your thinking cap and get you pointed in the right direction(s). One, or a combination of these marketing venues can prove successful for you. Here goes:

• Sell your eBook via your own website. That’s right … what better way to place it in front of a targeted audience! I will assume your eBook’s topic is related to the niche of your website, thusly it would make total sense to let your visitors know you’ve compiled information NOT FOUND on your site into a downloadable electronic book.

  You can easily set yourself up with a payment processing company such as PayPal.com. There is no cost to have an account with PayPal – but they do charge/deduct a very small percentage of each sale to cover their service. For the small business person, it is a darn good deal. I have had no problems using them.

• Want to have other people promoting your eBook, too? Then sign-up with a trusted online affiliate marketing company such as ClickBank.com. I decided to try out ClickBank in order to promote my eBook because of their strong affiliate marketing program and I’m pleased with the results. I am still using them today.

  There is a nominal fee as part of the acceptance process in order to be able to sell via ClickBank, but it is not very much and for most of us, the sale of one, two or three products will cover the “publisher fee”.

  ClickBank is a third party that handles online payments. They also bring affiliates and vendors together so that affiliates can make money promoting the vendors’ digital products and e-goods.

  I do not have to worry about paying the affiliates who promote and sell my eBook, and I don’t have any messy bookkeeping to keep track of at the end of the year (all I’ve got to report to the IRS are my earnings – I don’t have to do any reporting on the affiliate sales).

  Please go to their website to read about all the ins and outs of getting your eBook or other digital product handled by them, but I will mention now that you ought to buy a unique domain name and build out a mini-site in order to properly promote your eBook. (That’s another blog post for another day!)

• You could buddy-up with another online marketer who has a good sized mailing list of names that are targeted to your eBook’s topic. In other words … if your topic is about building blue bird houses, I don’t think you’d be very successful sending out an email broadcast announcing your eBook to a mailing list that is comprised of antique sword collectors!

  Many successful people have done just this – buddying up or properly referred to as a “joint venture” or “JV”. You offer a very nice commission rate to the person who is allowing you to promote your eBook via their mailing list of prospects.

  Though this is really a bit more of an advanced marketing technique, I do want to mention it to you, as even brand new online marketers may have a friend or two with websites in a similar themed niche that just might be willing and happy to make some extra income by sending out one simple email to their private mailing list, promoting your eBook.

• Try out free article submission websites, such as EzineArticles.com. You can submit a short overview article of what your eBook is about, and are able to insert a hyperlink to your sales page.

• Visit a forum(s) in a niche related to your eBook’s topic. Some forums allow a short commercial plug, with a hyperlink in the sig line. That’s what you’re looking for. **Read their terms before you join – many forums will ban you for any attempt at self-advertising!

  Don’t try this eBook marketing technique unless you plan on becoming a regular and valuable contributor to that forum. It makes NO SENSE to plaster one comment in lots and lots of forums, hoping lots of people are going to pay attention to your once (and only) comment! Your self-marketing effort will most likely be ignored.

• Utilize Snail Mail!  Yup … do NOT ignore the effectiveness of marketing your eBook via the good old postal service! As example, you could make up postcards or flyers. Check out online printing companies or local office supply or printing people to see where you might get the best price for your snail mail blitz.

  But remember that you do need to mail to a targeted audience. Maybe you only have 50 people who might be interested in your eBook, as example. That’s OK. A mailing list of 50 targeted people is much better than some list you’ve bought that has 500 names interested in who-knows-what subject matter!

Don’t hesitate to try one or more of these avenues when trying to sell your eBook. You never know which approach might work best for you. Look at your marketing efforts as a long term endeavor.

In addition in many cases, once you’ve gotten all your accounts and such set-up and approved, it’s basically pretty smooth sailing from that point forward. Though you will always want to keep an eye on things, when it comes to selling your electronic book with a company like ClickBank, or having a “Buy Now” button sitting on your website, everything will pretty much run on auto pilot thereafter.

Because it is an electronic product … there’s no handling, packaging nor shipping of a physical product! Your customer pays for it, they click the “Download Here” button and voila! They’ve got your eBook sitting on their computer and you’ve just made another sale. (Great concept, eh?  )

There are many more ways to market and/or sell your eBook. I have geared this article for someone just starting out. I hope this information has helped give you a starting point and that you’ve already got some great ideas about how you want to sell your soon-to-be-written eBook.

Good luck!