For example, when you buy something at the Dollar Store, you don t assume it s going to be high quality. In fact, if you re like me, you kind of assume it s going to be low quality. For that reason, the Dollar Store is not a store I generally go out of my way to visit; I just stop in when it s convenient. The same goes here. You don t want to give the impression that your ebook is so low-quality that it s not even worth going through the purchasing process. Price it in a way that represents the value accurately and fairly but gives the impression that it s worth the money your buyer will part with. What s your rock bottom price. Remember that you will have expenses associated with your ebook so make sure you price it high enough to cover those expenses and hopefully make a bit of a profit as well. This might be considered your rock bottom price the lowest you can go and still cover at least your expenses. Your goal is to leave enough wiggle room around this price to be flexible with sales too. Set a price with sales as in On Sale. It s easy to come down in price and it s virtually impossible to go up in price. Also, if you re going to have sales, make the sale significant. 10 off is okay, but 50 off. will get a lot more attention and hopefully translate into more sales. Another great benefit of having a sale is that it provides a great excuse for promotion. In other words, having a sale gives you the opportunity to alert your readers and affiliates, get a little buzz going about your ebook again and help people to remember that it exists. However, I recommend you keep your sales to a minimum. Too many sales can lower the perceived value of your ebook as well. After all, why should someone buy your ebook at a higher price since they know they don t have to wait long before the next sale will roll around. So the ebook is done and now it s time to sell it. You ll need a way to distribute your digital product in a way that s easy for you and for those buying it. I highly recommend you use a service which automates the process as much as possible. As I mentioned, in this tutorial, we are mainly covering the steps to selling a PDF copy of your ebook. However, with some formatting adjustments, you can sell your ebook on Kindle get started and here s another resource , Nook get started and many other sites too. If you use WordPress, there are a lot of plugins you can use to do this. Easy Digital Downloads is a popular example. I ve always steered clear of plugins because I don t want the responsibility of handling all that sensitive information credit card numbers, etc. directly on my site. Also, plugins are notoriously glitchy and must be updated continuously. I don t like the idea of a plugin being abandoned and I m left holding the bag. I d much rather pay a company a small amount to handle all that for me. Services that handle digital purchases and allow for affiliate programs as well. SendOwl referral link is also a very simple service. You are charged on a monthly basis. E-junkie isn t as pretty as the other two, but it s reasonably priced 5 month for up to 10 digital products , familiar to many and has been in the business a long time. Here s how to get started with E-junkie. Gumroad is a beautiful service and super easy to use. There are no monthly fees, you re just charged per transaction. Update After hearing about unacceptable customer service experiences at Gumroad, I no longer recommend Gumroad. SendOwl is my top choice and a product I personally pay for and use . At the very least, you will want a dedicated page or post on your existing blog or website which will serve as the main sales page landing page for your ebook. However, you might also want a dedicated website for your ebook. Hopefully you were able to register the domain name which matches the title of your ebook as mentioned above. This is just a good marketing move in general, but if you have the domain, you could easily set up an entirely separate website for your ebook even if your site is just one page for now . Why would you want a separate site for your ebook. If your ebook is somewhat unrelated to your existing site. If that s the case, a dedicated site might be a good idea. It helps keep things more clear and it keeps your existing readers from getting confused. To give you the option of building a new site around your ebook. Is the topic of your ebook a new one for you. Are you branching out and contemplating turning it into an entirely new venture. If so, starting out with a brand new site leaves you the possibility of exploring other related projects or streams of income in the future. To make things more clean and straightforward for the search engines. This is particularly the case if your domain name contains strong keywords. In my case, I had and still have an idea for a unique website experience, but haven t made it a priority, so my sales page currently resides on my main site. So, if someone types in TellYourTime. com they ll still get there, just not directly. How to set up a separate site for your ebook. If you want a unique site for your ebook, setting up a new site is easy. I explain how to do that here. Once you ve set it up, you ll simply want to make your homepage static that is, not a blog . Here s how to do that. My tips for writing a sales page. Whether your ebook sales page is housed on a site all its own, or it s a post or a page on your existing blog, there are a few things to remember. This is not an exhaustive list. Indeed, writing an effective sales page has become an art, and for those who do it well, a nice way to earn a hefty income. Start with something that immediately draws people in. Initially I had a boring Tell Your Time is about paragraph at the top of my sales page. Now I ve changed it and in bold it reads, What if you could change your life in 30 pages. My goal is to pique interest and get people to keep reading. Be bold but don t lie. I thought about saying Change your life in 30 pages. but nixed that idea. First, I certainly can t guarantee my little ebook will change anyone s life though the feedback has been very encouraging . Second, a What if statement makes people stop and think more than a late night infomercial-type Lose 40 pounds by morning claim in my opinion. Include your Buy button several times throughout the page. Give people the opportunity to buy at several points, especially when there s a natural break in your copy. Don t miss the opportunity for a call to action. Give an idea of what they ll get. An ebook is tricky in that a it s a bit of a novelty for many people and b you can t page through it like you would a book in a bookstore. So, providing your Table of Contents or a synopsis is a good idea. Sidenote If you do use your Table of Contents here, make sure the topics in your Table of Contents sound interesting. For example, Envelopes of Time is more intriguing than A helpful time management principle don t you think. Add testimonials. If others have offered feedback or have said nice things about your ebook, ask them if you can include them on your sales page. A link back to their site is good too, so be sure to ask them if there s a particular page they d like you to link to. Look at other sales pages for inspiration. If you re a bit stumped and aren t sure how to craft your own sales page, a good way to get some ideas is by looking at the sales pages of others. Use your Amazon Associates link. If you are also selling your ebook on Amazon and are including a link on your sales page, be sure to use your Amazon Associates link to make a bit more money. See the terms of service explaining this is acceptable here. If you re like me, affiliates will play a huge role in your sales. I highly recommend running an affiliate program. Sure, you won t get to keep as much money per sale, but your reach will be much wider. Selling is the hardest part in the process, so if you can enlist the help of others to promote your ebook, all the better. What exactly is an affiliate. An affiliate is someone who likes your ebook or product and wants to tell others about it. They sign up as an affiliate and after doing so, receive a unique affiliate link which they use when mentioning promoting your ebook. If someone clicks through that link and purchases the ebook, the affiliate receives whatever commission you have set. Create a page where affiliates can sign up. In addition to your sales page, you ve got to have a place where someone can sign up to become an affiliate of your ebook. Make it easily accessible on your site. Link to it within your ebook at least once or twice. Link to it at the bottom of your product sales page as well. Make the affiliate sign-up process enticing. Why should someone sign up to be an affiliate for you. What s in it for them. Remember, they re putting their name behind your product, so they ll want to make sure it s worth it. How much affiliate commission should you offer. Opinions vary on this point and it also depends on the product. Personally, I think digital products, such as ebooks, should have a higher commission since they are much easier to produce and distribute. Physical products are likely to have a lower commission rate. For ebooks and other digital products, I recommend a rate in the range of 35-50 of the purchase price. Make the affiliate sign-up process easy. Provide clear instructions explaining how to sign up, how to use their affiliate code and how they can put it on their site. I also provide my email address on my affiliate page in case they have questions or need help. Make buttons and banners. Provide graphics your affiliates can use to promote your ebook. You can either make these graphics yourself or have someone do it for you. Tip Whether you make them yourself or hire someone else to do them for you, I do recommend you stick to standard ad sizes. Choose a service to run your affiliate program. By this point, hopefully you have settled on how much your affiliates will receive in commission. There are numerous services you can use to run an affiliate program. There are expensive options and simple ones. The service you choose will depend on your needs. For most, a simple solution to start is sufficient. As I mentioned above, I use SendOwl referral link to sell my digital products like my Knowtbook . They make it easy to run your affiliate program right within the service. Communicating with affiliates. There may be times when you want to contact your affiliates. I wouldn t suggest you inundate your affiliates with emails, but if there s a sale coming up for example, you might want to send out a quick heads-up email to let your affiliates know. Another time I ve wanted to contact all my affiliates is when I did a giveaway among them. Sidenote As of this writing, E-junkie does not have a quick email all affiliates option. So, I have downloaded my list of affiliates Manage Affiliates View Edit Affiliates Download List and uploaded it into my email service provider Mad Mimi. referral link as a separate list and emailed them from there. Note that if anyone happens to unsubscribe, you have to manually delete them from E-junkie . If you don t use an email service provider, never paste all the email addresses into the To field when you are composing your email message. When you do this, all those email addresses are visible to everyone else and that s not good for privacy. Instead, paste the list of emails in the BCC field. More tips for managing affiliates. As I mentioned earlier, don t be spammy. Only email your affiliates when it s necessary and appropriate. Keep your emails short and to the point. I like to use numbered items which makes extracting information they need easier. I simply don t want to bog them down with lengthy emails they deal with that enough. Include all vital information. If you re announcing an upcoming sale, for example, be sure to tell them when it will be, how long it will run, the day and time the sale will end and according to what timezone , the appropriate coupon code if there is one, as well as any other pertinent information. Ask yourself what you would need to know if you were an affiliate and were going to be writing a post alerting your readers to the sale. You might want to mention helpful tips for promoting your ebook or product . If I know of a promotion technique that has worked well for me or for another affiliate, I ll mention that. For example, I ve encouraged my affiliates to highlight the percentage markdown during a sale because it seems to convert better. So, I will suggest that instead of using verbiage like Tell Your Time is on sale this week. a more effective way to say it is, Tell Your Time is 50 off this week. Indicating something is 50 off tends to get more attention since it s a significant discount. Thank them for their support and or throw in some goodies. I am genuinely grateful for my affiliates and I do my best to make that clear. To show my appreciation I upped the commission for one sale to 60 and I gave away gift cards to two affiliates who sold the most during another sale. It s fun and it want them to feel valued. Paying your affiliates. Paying your affiliates is easy and takes only a few minutes each a month if you use the Mass Payment feature in PayPal. Here are some tips for setting up your affiliate payment process . Choose a payment date. Consider paying your affiliates between the 7th and the 15th of the month for the previous month s sales. The reason for the delay is because some transactions like eChecks take a few days to clear. By holding off mass payment a week or so, you can be sure any outstanding transactions made at the end of the month have cleared. Make sure you have enough cash in your PayPal account to make the payment. On the first of the month log in to your payment service and see what your total affiliate payout will be. Then check to see you have enough in your PayPal account to cover it. Otherwise you ll need to transfer some money in which takes a few days. Sidenote I don t keep funds in my PayPal account except for a very minimal cushion amount usually between 50- 100 . PayPal has been known to freeze funds and so I prefer to keep control over them by transferring them to my business checking account immediately. Download the TXT or CSV file generated by your payment service. This is what you will upload into PayPal s Mass Payment feature. Pay your affiliates. After logging into PayPal, go to Tools top of screen Send Money Make a Mass Payment. Follow the prompts to upload the TXT or CSV file. Choose to identify recipients by email address. Customize the accompanying email if you wish. Be sure to enter the payment into your financial records. There is no shortage of marketing tips available online. I certainly won t attempt to cover everything nor could I but here are some things I did to get the word out. First though, some explanations so we re all on the same page . Marketing and Advertising. What s the difference. I like this explanation . The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. There s a lot of stuff in there, but for our purposes, let s just say marketing is how you re going to spread the word about your ebook. Give your ebook away in a pre-release. Consider giving a way a free copy of your ebook to a handful of people. The key here is to be selective and strategic. Don t be stingy and definitely don t be spammy. The people I would recommend you give it to are people who have some influence in your niche, have a good, solid following although not necessarily a large following or would make a good affiliate. The best people are the ones with whom you already have an established relationship. A brief, to-the-point email asking them if they d like to take a peek at your soon-to-be-released ebook is sufficient. Let them contact you if they are interested. If you don t hear back from them, just move on. Gather testimonials. To those who take advantage of the pre-release, give them a week or two to read it and then shoot them a personalized email providing affiliate information if they are interested and ask them if they d like to submit a testimonial to be included on your sales page. We all know and understand the importance of word-of-mouth and the power of personal recommendations, so having testimonials about your ebook can be very helpful. Great testimonials are those that pack a quantitative punch. For example, instead of a testimonial that says, This is a great ebook. choose one that says, Wow. After reading this ebook, I saved 50 on shopping over the course of a month. Guest post or be a guest on a podcast. Guest posting is a good way to get your name out there and tell em about your ebook in your bio. And oftentimes, podcasters are looking for relevant and interesting people to interview. Social media forums. Take part in discussions in forums, comments on blogs and social media. Create a steady stream of promotional content that gets pushed out to all your social media channels. Leaving the link to your ebook sales page in your email signature is helpful too. Plan a sale or sales or event. Look at the calendar and figure out when you could have a few sales on your ebook. Sales generally create some buzz. Perhaps you d like to ramp things up and create an online event related to your launch. Once your ebook is launched, host a giveaway on your blog. Get your affiliates involved too. Brainstorm continuously. Keep a running list of ways you might be able to get the word out about your ebook. Take advantage of calendar events, seasons and other similar ebbs and flows. Watch what others do and see how you can adapt their strategies and tactics. Did you find this post helpful. I d love it if you shared it with your readers and followers. Originally published January 18, 2011. This is awesome, but what website did you use to publish your ebook. I m almost done with my book, but I don t know where to post publish it. Thanks for the great article. I m going to sit down and read all the posts I ll put it on my to-do list . I m just tossing around the idea of putting my paperback Crime Beat, Murder, Mayhem and the Mundane in an ebook format. My e-book is 90 written and I needed just one last inspirational push to get it done. I think I found it here. Thank you for sharing. Way to go Adriana. Thank you very amy for sharing this. Writing an ebook is always tough but once you had finished writing it then it can be a source of passive income. After reading this post am inspired a bit for writing my first ebook. Hope it will also turn into a great source of income for me. Nice content, Amy I was thinking of writing an ebook for another site I have in mind and was looking for a few pointers and your site popped up, so here I am. I scanned your posts and found some great value in them. I will definitely be back to move through the stages as I begin writing my first ebook. You may have answered this in one of the posts already, but I m wondering if 1 page in a word doc equals the same as 1 page in an ebook. This information is perfect for someone like me. The first time I wrote an eBook, it was challenging. Of course, new experiences are. I have written so many, that I can almost write an eBook in my sleep. The real challenge is getting it to the people who you want to read it. Great article. Thank you, Amy. Hi Amy I stumbled on this part of your website from a twitter link to a post on customising a WordPress theme. I am currently writing an eBook under Liam Naden s eBook Mastery course which I recommend . So far I have only read your intro post on eBook writing I hope to view the other parts later. Great to hear you got the success the work deserved for your eBook-making a quality eBook is not a trivial process. I hope to emulate this with my eBook Programming for success for non-programmers which I m also hoping will be finished within the next week. Keep enjoying the blogging writing . This is a fantastic website Amy-Lynn. I am just starting my Blog and really like all your help. This is exactly what I have been looking for. Glad it helped. Great stuff. I got here looking for information, for my father, 88, on how to publish an ebook and saw all the stuff you have on blogging, particularly on gaining traffic. My business and blog are dead in the the water but I m continuing, hoping to gain traffic and get the business moving. AwareNewJersey is intended to be a directory of unique, small, local independent businesses in New Jersey in a handful of niche markets wellness, spirituality, wildlife and animal welfare, natural and artisan foods, and more. Stuff that s not mainstream. I love all the great little businesses I ve found but haven t had any traffic. I m hoping your tips will help. So glad you stopped by, Lorraine. You know, when I filled in the form, I assumed that my website url would appear in the comment. It wasn t until I d hit the post button that I realized that I missed the opportunity you d mentioned in your blogs on site traffic to link back to my site, so I m leaving this comment as well to do that. com and hope and intend to use the tips you ve given here to try to increase traffic to my site. Amy, thank you for your information. I have finally stumbled upon a website that I believe is truly honest about writing ebooks and blogging. I am in the process of writing an ebook. I was not sure about its publication, but since I came across your site by accident, I believe I will go forth with the ebook. I have read so much about ebooks and blogging and finally I found your website that I believe will be able to help me with my endeavors. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your helpful guidance about ebooks. I may just give it a try. I have been itching to go to the next step, after writing a blog for over a year. This is just the encouragement I need. You re welcome, Maureen. All the best. Can a person make money from an e-book without doing a blog. I want to write anonymously and am not savvy enough to try blogging anonymously so I thought I would just do an e-book alone. Just create your ebook and put them on Amazon, BN. com and anywhere else ebooks are sold. Writing ebook is really important. Lot of bloggers are making huge money by selling e-books. This post will help me lot in writing e-book. Thank you for sharing this, l am now motivated to take a step, fear of the unknown has been holding me back but if you did it, l can do it. God bless you . This is fantastic. Writing an e-book is one of my 1-2 year goals. Thank you for your excellent and comprehensive guidelines. I have bookmarked this post to come back to again and again as I set out to achieve my goal. I lvoe your site it is very visually attractive and clean. Recently started blogging and constantly looking for ways to improve. Decided today that an ebook is something I d like to look into writing. Thanks for sharing your advice. I have been writing a book over the past few months, and using your guide.
пятница, 22 июня 2018 г.
For example, when you buy something at the Dollar Store, you don t assume it s going to be high quality. In fact, if you re like me, you kind of assume it s going to be low quality. For that reason, the Dollar Store is not a store I generally go out of my way to visit; I just stop in when it s convenient. The same goes here. You don t want to give the impression that your ebook is so low-quality that it s not even worth going through the purchasing process. Price it in a way that represents the value accurately and fairly but gives the impression that it s worth the money your buyer will part with. What s your rock bottom price. Remember that you will have expenses associated with your ebook so make sure you price it high enough to cover those expenses and hopefully make a bit of a profit as well. This might be considered your rock bottom price the lowest you can go and still cover at least your expenses. Your goal is to leave enough wiggle room around this price to be flexible with sales too. Set a price with sales as in On Sale. It s easy to come down in price and it s virtually impossible to go up in price. Also, if you re going to have sales, make the sale significant. 10 off is okay, but 50 off. will get a lot more attention and hopefully translate into more sales. Another great benefit of having a sale is that it provides a great excuse for promotion. In other words, having a sale gives you the opportunity to alert your readers and affiliates, get a little buzz going about your ebook again and help people to remember that it exists. However, I recommend you keep your sales to a minimum. Too many sales can lower the perceived value of your ebook as well. After all, why should someone buy your ebook at a higher price since they know they don t have to wait long before the next sale will roll around. So the ebook is done and now it s time to sell it. You ll need a way to distribute your digital product in a way that s easy for you and for those buying it. I highly recommend you use a service which automates the process as much as possible. As I mentioned, in this tutorial, we are mainly covering the steps to selling a PDF copy of your ebook. However, with some formatting adjustments, you can sell your ebook on Kindle get started and here s another resource , Nook get started and many other sites too. If you use WordPress, there are a lot of plugins you can use to do this. Easy Digital Downloads is a popular example. I ve always steered clear of plugins because I don t want the responsibility of handling all that sensitive information credit card numbers, etc. directly on my site. Also, plugins are notoriously glitchy and must be updated continuously. I don t like the idea of a plugin being abandoned and I m left holding the bag. I d much rather pay a company a small amount to handle all that for me. Services that handle digital purchases and allow for affiliate programs as well. SendOwl referral link is also a very simple service. You are charged on a monthly basis. E-junkie isn t as pretty as the other two, but it s reasonably priced 5 month for up to 10 digital products , familiar to many and has been in the business a long time. Here s how to get started with E-junkie. Gumroad is a beautiful service and super easy to use. There are no monthly fees, you re just charged per transaction. Update After hearing about unacceptable customer service experiences at Gumroad, I no longer recommend Gumroad. SendOwl is my top choice and a product I personally pay for and use . At the very least, you will want a dedicated page or post on your existing blog or website which will serve as the main sales page landing page for your ebook. However, you might also want a dedicated website for your ebook. Hopefully you were able to register the domain name which matches the title of your ebook as mentioned above. This is just a good marketing move in general, but if you have the domain, you could easily set up an entirely separate website for your ebook even if your site is just one page for now . Why would you want a separate site for your ebook. If your ebook is somewhat unrelated to your existing site. If that s the case, a dedicated site might be a good idea. It helps keep things more clear and it keeps your existing readers from getting confused. To give you the option of building a new site around your ebook. Is the topic of your ebook a new one for you. Are you branching out and contemplating turning it into an entirely new venture. If so, starting out with a brand new site leaves you the possibility of exploring other related projects or streams of income in the future. To make things more clean and straightforward for the search engines. This is particularly the case if your domain name contains strong keywords. In my case, I had and still have an idea for a unique website experience, but haven t made it a priority, so my sales page currently resides on my main site. So, if someone types in TellYourTime. com they ll still get there, just not directly. How to set up a separate site for your ebook. If you want a unique site for your ebook, setting up a new site is easy. I explain how to do that here. Once you ve set it up, you ll simply want to make your homepage static that is, not a blog . Here s how to do that. My tips for writing a sales page. Whether your ebook sales page is housed on a site all its own, or it s a post or a page on your existing blog, there are a few things to remember. This is not an exhaustive list. Indeed, writing an effective sales page has become an art, and for those who do it well, a nice way to earn a hefty income. Start with something that immediately draws people in. Initially I had a boring Tell Your Time is about paragraph at the top of my sales page. Now I ve changed it and in bold it reads, What if you could change your life in 30 pages. My goal is to pique interest and get people to keep reading. Be bold but don t lie. I thought about saying Change your life in 30 pages. but nixed that idea. First, I certainly can t guarantee my little ebook will change anyone s life though the feedback has been very encouraging . Second, a What if statement makes people stop and think more than a late night infomercial-type Lose 40 pounds by morning claim in my opinion. Include your Buy button several times throughout the page. Give people the opportunity to buy at several points, especially when there s a natural break in your copy. Don t miss the opportunity for a call to action. Give an idea of what they ll get. An ebook is tricky in that a it s a bit of a novelty for many people and b you can t page through it like you would a book in a bookstore. So, providing your Table of Contents or a synopsis is a good idea. Sidenote If you do use your Table of Contents here, make sure the topics in your Table of Contents sound interesting. For example, Envelopes of Time is more intriguing than A helpful time management principle don t you think. Add testimonials. If others have offered feedback or have said nice things about your ebook, ask them if you can include them on your sales page. A link back to their site is good too, so be sure to ask them if there s a particular page they d like you to link to. Look at other sales pages for inspiration. If you re a bit stumped and aren t sure how to craft your own sales page, a good way to get some ideas is by looking at the sales pages of others. Use your Amazon Associates link. If you are also selling your ebook on Amazon and are including a link on your sales page, be sure to use your Amazon Associates link to make a bit more money. See the terms of service explaining this is acceptable here. If you re like me, affiliates will play a huge role in your sales. I highly recommend running an affiliate program. Sure, you won t get to keep as much money per sale, but your reach will be much wider. Selling is the hardest part in the process, so if you can enlist the help of others to promote your ebook, all the better. What exactly is an affiliate. An affiliate is someone who likes your ebook or product and wants to tell others about it. They sign up as an affiliate and after doing so, receive a unique affiliate link which they use when mentioning promoting your ebook. If someone clicks through that link and purchases the ebook, the affiliate receives whatever commission you have set. Create a page where affiliates can sign up. In addition to your sales page, you ve got to have a place where someone can sign up to become an affiliate of your ebook. Make it easily accessible on your site. Link to it within your ebook at least once or twice. Link to it at the bottom of your product sales page as well. Make the affiliate sign-up process enticing. Why should someone sign up to be an affiliate for you. What s in it for them. Remember, they re putting their name behind your product, so they ll want to make sure it s worth it. How much affiliate commission should you offer. Opinions vary on this point and it also depends on the product. Personally, I think digital products, such as ebooks, should have a higher commission since they are much easier to produce and distribute. Physical products are likely to have a lower commission rate. For ebooks and other digital products, I recommend a rate in the range of 35-50 of the purchase price. Make the affiliate sign-up process easy. Provide clear instructions explaining how to sign up, how to use their affiliate code and how they can put it on their site. I also provide my email address on my affiliate page in case they have questions or need help. Make buttons and banners. Provide graphics your affiliates can use to promote your ebook. You can either make these graphics yourself or have someone do it for you. Tip Whether you make them yourself or hire someone else to do them for you, I do recommend you stick to standard ad sizes. Choose a service to run your affiliate program. By this point, hopefully you have settled on how much your affiliates will receive in commission. There are numerous services you can use to run an affiliate program. There are expensive options and simple ones. The service you choose will depend on your needs. For most, a simple solution to start is sufficient. As I mentioned above, I use SendOwl referral link to sell my digital products like my Knowtbook . They make it easy to run your affiliate program right within the service. Communicating with affiliates. There may be times when you want to contact your affiliates. I wouldn t suggest you inundate your affiliates with emails, but if there s a sale coming up for example, you might want to send out a quick heads-up email to let your affiliates know. Another time I ve wanted to contact all my affiliates is when I did a giveaway among them. Sidenote As of this writing, E-junkie does not have a quick email all affiliates option. So, I have downloaded my list of affiliates Manage Affiliates View Edit Affiliates Download List and uploaded it into my email service provider Mad Mimi. referral link as a separate list and emailed them from there. Note that if anyone happens to unsubscribe, you have to manually delete them from E-junkie . If you don t use an email service provider, never paste all the email addresses into the To field when you are composing your email message. When you do this, all those email addresses are visible to everyone else and that s not good for privacy. Instead, paste the list of emails in the BCC field. More tips for managing affiliates. As I mentioned earlier, don t be spammy. Only email your affiliates when it s necessary and appropriate. Keep your emails short and to the point. I like to use numbered items which makes extracting information they need easier. I simply don t want to bog them down with lengthy emails they deal with that enough. Include all vital information. If you re announcing an upcoming sale, for example, be sure to tell them when it will be, how long it will run, the day and time the sale will end and according to what timezone , the appropriate coupon code if there is one, as well as any other pertinent information. Ask yourself what you would need to know if you were an affiliate and were going to be writing a post alerting your readers to the sale. You might want to mention helpful tips for promoting your ebook or product . If I know of a promotion technique that has worked well for me or for another affiliate, I ll mention that. For example, I ve encouraged my affiliates to highlight the percentage markdown during a sale because it seems to convert better. So, I will suggest that instead of using verbiage like Tell Your Time is on sale this week. a more effective way to say it is, Tell Your Time is 50 off this week. Indicating something is 50 off tends to get more attention since it s a significant discount. Thank them for their support and or throw in some goodies. I am genuinely grateful for my affiliates and I do my best to make that clear. To show my appreciation I upped the commission for one sale to 60 and I gave away gift cards to two affiliates who sold the most during another sale. It s fun and it want them to feel valued. Paying your affiliates. Paying your affiliates is easy and takes only a few minutes each a month if you use the Mass Payment feature in PayPal. Here are some tips for setting up your affiliate payment process . Choose a payment date. Consider paying your affiliates between the 7th and the 15th of the month for the previous month s sales. The reason for the delay is because some transactions like eChecks take a few days to clear. By holding off mass payment a week or so, you can be sure any outstanding transactions made at the end of the month have cleared. Make sure you have enough cash in your PayPal account to make the payment. On the first of the month log in to your payment service and see what your total affiliate payout will be. Then check to see you have enough in your PayPal account to cover it. Otherwise you ll need to transfer some money in which takes a few days. Sidenote I don t keep funds in my PayPal account except for a very minimal cushion amount usually between 50- 100 . PayPal has been known to freeze funds and so I prefer to keep control over them by transferring them to my business checking account immediately. Download the TXT or CSV file generated by your payment service. This is what you will upload into PayPal s Mass Payment feature. Pay your affiliates. After logging into PayPal, go to Tools top of screen Send Money Make a Mass Payment. Follow the prompts to upload the TXT or CSV file. Choose to identify recipients by email address. Customize the accompanying email if you wish. Be sure to enter the payment into your financial records. There is no shortage of marketing tips available online. I certainly won t attempt to cover everything nor could I but here are some things I did to get the word out. First though, some explanations so we re all on the same page . Marketing and Advertising. What s the difference. I like this explanation . The best way to distinguish between advertising and marketing is to think of marketing as a pie, inside that pie you have slices of advertising, market research, media planning, public relations, product pricing, distribution, customer support, sales strategy, and community involvement. Advertising only equals one piece of the pie in the strategy. There s a lot of stuff in there, but for our purposes, let s just say marketing is how you re going to spread the word about your ebook. Give your ebook away in a pre-release. Consider giving a way a free copy of your ebook to a handful of people. The key here is to be selective and strategic. Don t be stingy and definitely don t be spammy. The people I would recommend you give it to are people who have some influence in your niche, have a good, solid following although not necessarily a large following or would make a good affiliate. The best people are the ones with whom you already have an established relationship. A brief, to-the-point email asking them if they d like to take a peek at your soon-to-be-released ebook is sufficient. Let them contact you if they are interested. If you don t hear back from them, just move on. Gather testimonials. To those who take advantage of the pre-release, give them a week or two to read it and then shoot them a personalized email providing affiliate information if they are interested and ask them if they d like to submit a testimonial to be included on your sales page. We all know and understand the importance of word-of-mouth and the power of personal recommendations, so having testimonials about your ebook can be very helpful. Great testimonials are those that pack a quantitative punch. For example, instead of a testimonial that says, This is a great ebook. choose one that says, Wow. After reading this ebook, I saved 50 on shopping over the course of a month. Guest post or be a guest on a podcast. Guest posting is a good way to get your name out there and tell em about your ebook in your bio. And oftentimes, podcasters are looking for relevant and interesting people to interview. Social media forums. Take part in discussions in forums, comments on blogs and social media. Create a steady stream of promotional content that gets pushed out to all your social media channels. Leaving the link to your ebook sales page in your email signature is helpful too. Plan a sale or sales or event. Look at the calendar and figure out when you could have a few sales on your ebook. Sales generally create some buzz. Perhaps you d like to ramp things up and create an online event related to your launch. Once your ebook is launched, host a giveaway on your blog. Get your affiliates involved too. Brainstorm continuously. Keep a running list of ways you might be able to get the word out about your ebook. Take advantage of calendar events, seasons and other similar ebbs and flows. Watch what others do and see how you can adapt their strategies and tactics. Did you find this post helpful. I d love it if you shared it with your readers and followers. Originally published January 18, 2011. This is awesome, but what website did you use to publish your ebook. I m almost done with my book, but I don t know where to post publish it. Thanks for the great article. I m going to sit down and read all the posts I ll put it on my to-do list . I m just tossing around the idea of putting my paperback Crime Beat, Murder, Mayhem and the Mundane in an ebook format. My e-book is 90 written and I needed just one last inspirational push to get it done. I think I found it here. Thank you for sharing. Way to go Adriana. Thank you very amy for sharing this. Writing an ebook is always tough but once you had finished writing it then it can be a source of passive income. After reading this post am inspired a bit for writing my first ebook. Hope it will also turn into a great source of income for me. Nice content, Amy I was thinking of writing an ebook for another site I have in mind and was looking for a few pointers and your site popped up, so here I am. I scanned your posts and found some great value in them. I will definitely be back to move through the stages as I begin writing my first ebook. You may have answered this in one of the posts already, but I m wondering if 1 page in a word doc equals the same as 1 page in an ebook. This information is perfect for someone like me. The first time I wrote an eBook, it was challenging. Of course, new experiences are. I have written so many, that I can almost write an eBook in my sleep. The real challenge is getting it to the people who you want to read it. Great article. Thank you, Amy. Hi Amy I stumbled on this part of your website from a twitter link to a post on customising a WordPress theme. I am currently writing an eBook under Liam Naden s eBook Mastery course which I recommend . So far I have only read your intro post on eBook writing I hope to view the other parts later. Great to hear you got the success the work deserved for your eBook-making a quality eBook is not a trivial process. I hope to emulate this with my eBook Programming for success for non-programmers which I m also hoping will be finished within the next week. Keep enjoying the blogging writing . This is a fantastic website Amy-Lynn. I am just starting my Blog and really like all your help. This is exactly what I have been looking for. Glad it helped. Great stuff. I got here looking for information, for my father, 88, on how to publish an ebook and saw all the stuff you have on blogging, particularly on gaining traffic. My business and blog are dead in the the water but I m continuing, hoping to gain traffic and get the business moving. AwareNewJersey is intended to be a directory of unique, small, local independent businesses in New Jersey in a handful of niche markets wellness, spirituality, wildlife and animal welfare, natural and artisan foods, and more. Stuff that s not mainstream. I love all the great little businesses I ve found but haven t had any traffic. I m hoping your tips will help. So glad you stopped by, Lorraine. You know, when I filled in the form, I assumed that my website url would appear in the comment. It wasn t until I d hit the post button that I realized that I missed the opportunity you d mentioned in your blogs on site traffic to link back to my site, so I m leaving this comment as well to do that. com and hope and intend to use the tips you ve given here to try to increase traffic to my site. Amy, thank you for your information. I have finally stumbled upon a website that I believe is truly honest about writing ebooks and blogging. I am in the process of writing an ebook. I was not sure about its publication, but since I came across your site by accident, I believe I will go forth with the ebook. I have read so much about ebooks and blogging and finally I found your website that I believe will be able to help me with my endeavors. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your helpful guidance about ebooks. I may just give it a try. I have been itching to go to the next step, after writing a blog for over a year. This is just the encouragement I need. You re welcome, Maureen. All the best. Can a person make money from an e-book without doing a blog. I want to write anonymously and am not savvy enough to try blogging anonymously so I thought I would just do an e-book alone. Just create your ebook and put them on Amazon, BN. com and anywhere else ebooks are sold. Writing ebook is really important. Lot of bloggers are making huge money by selling e-books. This post will help me lot in writing e-book. Thank you for sharing this, l am now motivated to take a step, fear of the unknown has been holding me back but if you did it, l can do it. God bless you . This is fantastic. Writing an e-book is one of my 1-2 year goals. Thank you for your excellent and comprehensive guidelines. I have bookmarked this post to come back to again and again as I set out to achieve my goal. I lvoe your site it is very visually attractive and clean. Recently started blogging and constantly looking for ways to improve. Decided today that an ebook is something I d like to look into writing. Thanks for sharing your advice. I have been writing a book over the past few months, and using your guide.
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