6 Ways To Start Selling E-Books

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6 Ways To Start Selling E-Books

Your infopreneuring efforts begin often by writing and then selling e-books. Most writers are comfortable creating e-books, but when it comes to selling them, they get nervous and unsure.

Here are 6 ways you can start selling e-books. Most of them are free and easy to follow. Some will require expertise or a modest investment. In any case, the benefits and profit from selling e-books make it worthwhile to try them all.

Selling e-Books On Your Blog

Writing comes natural to ebook authors. Blogging is an easy way to turn your writing skills into a traffic magnet, attracting prospects to your website where they can get your ebook.

Blogger.com offers a simple blogging system that is easy to learn and effective at pulling readers to your blog. Write about topics related to your ebook, include a ’soft sell’ pitch for your ebook, and then provide a link selling e-books on your blog.

Selling e-Books To Your List

If you already have a mailing list of subscribers, previous buyers or prospects, you can start selling e-books to your list. Just a simple email or letter mailed to them can result in a fair number of them buying your e-books.

Start building your list today. When you write articles, invite readers to join your list. When you create special reports, ask for contact details before handing over the report. Offer to mail out a sample chapter of your ebook to anyone who gives you their mailing address.

Selling e-Books Through Joint Ventures

Even if you’re starting out with no list, no contacts and no marketing budget, you can leverage your relationship with other ‘players’ in your niche by selling e-books to their contacts.

Approach the top names in your niche. Offer to help them out. Write an article for their website. Create a report they can give away. Proof read their writing. Do anything else that builds rapport. Then ask if they will help in selling e-books to their list, even share in the profits.

Selling e-Books Via Classified Ads

Not easy to do, but could work in some markets. A lot depends on the content of your ebook, the nature of your audience and the power of your ad copy.

Place your classified ad on websites, in newsletters, ezines, even print them in your local newspaper or run cable TV and radio ads. Well targeted audiences will buy in large numbers through such exposure.

Selling e-Books On Forums

Online communities are good places for advertising and selling e-books – though you’ll have to be smart about doing it. You can’t walk into a discussion group and blatantly pitch your ebook.

Instead, participate meaningfully in discussions. Share your expertise and insight into topics being debated. Casually, even ‘accidentally’, slip in a mention of the ebook you’ve just written on the topic. Then, offer a way for readers to buy it if they like – most often by including a link to your sales website in your signature link.

Selling e-Books By Direct Mail

Expensive, if you don’t know what you’re doing – but potentially very profitable if you do. The advantage is you can target your audience by interest, and avoid the clutter of web-based or email advertising. The drawback is the cost of printing and mailing out advertising copy, and the expertise needed to convert a meaningful number into buyers.

The Fastest, Easiest Way For Creating E-Books

The Fastest, Easiest Way For Creating E-Books

I have written over 75 ebooks. Some of them are 300 pages long, others under 30 pages. Some sell for $197, others for $5. Some took me several months to write, others just a few hours.

I’m about to share with you the quickest, easiest way to create an ebook that you can master and then put into action to build your own empire of ebooks within a few short months.

Ready to learn the ’secret’?

Do Your Research Online

If you don’t have Internet access, go to a Net cafe or public library that lets you use the Web. Look on the big search engines for information on your topic. Go to Amazon.com and search for titles on the subject you are going to write.

Keep a text file open. Whenever you come across interesting or useful snippets of data related to your topic, copy-and-paste them into your text file.

Amazon.com allows you to look at the table of contents and sometimes a sample chapter of books in the database. When you find popular titles on your topic, scan the contents – and make a note of the topics they cover. It is a good idea to also record the chapter titles and sub-titles, for future reference.

Study Your Target Market

Thanks to the miracle that’s the World Wide Web, it’s possible to do this extensive research right from your arm-chair!

Look for places where your target prospects hang out online. It may be forums and discussion groups, or popular blogs and newsletters. Study them to see what excites and interests your audience, what problems bother them the most, what solutions they are seeking – and what they find and get from what’s available.

Draw Up Your Blueprint

With an idea now of what your audience wants, and what is currently out there, you are ready to start creating e-books by drafting out your own ebook outline.

Make each chapter meaningful. Try and address one specific problem faced by your prospects in each. Offer the solution along with it.

For example, if you are creating e-books about building a website, your outline may look like this:

- Building your website: Your options – Do it yourself, hire it out, buy sites
- Tools to build websites: What you need to get the job done
- Learn to build websites: Useful principles and basics of website design
- Step by step guide: A connect-the-dots plan to build your first website
- Troubleshooting HTML: What to do when your code won’t work
- Graphics Minefields: How to navigate them safely and get lovely web graphics
- Testing your website: Essentials of making your site accessible to everyone

You get the idea. Each chapter heading addresses one specific area of the complete problem – and offers solutions a reader can take and put to use right away.

Write

There’s no way to get around this – unless if you prefer to speak into a recording machine and then have the content transcribed.

Package and Distribute

Sounds blatantly obvious, but you’d be surprised at just how many people get excited about creating e-books – but will then slack off and let it lie idle on their hard drives.

It is important to know when your e-book is done – and needs to just get out there and get read. Surely some people will be critical. But that feedback will only let you make it better in the next version or edition. Don’t fear critics, make use of them.

Start creating e-books quickly and easily following this simple plan. You could do one or two a week, if you’re willing to invest the time and effort involved in creating e-books.

How To Write eBooks – Without Being An Expert

How To Write eBooks – Without Being An Expert

So you’ve heard about many infopreneurs doing well, generating a steady income and building successful businesses writing e-books. And you wonder if you can begin without knowing the first thing about how to write ebooks.

More to the point, you’re doubtful about it being possible – unless you’re an expert at the topic of your ebook.

Read this article carefully – because I’m about to share with you a technique to writing e-books… without being an expert!

Step #1 – Pick Your Topic

The first step to writing e-books is to select a topic. Since you’re going to learn how about writing e-books without being an expert, there is very little restriction on your field of choice. If you plan to sell it for profit, pick the most lucrative topics or fields. If you want mass-market reach, go for a popular theme.

In any case, make sure the topic or niche you are going into has a suitable audience for e-books. If your target audience is people who are not technologically advanced or cannot use computers or don’t have Internet access, it would be hard to justify writing e-books for their needs.

Step #2 – Research Your Niche

No, I don’t mean researching for information or knowledge. You are not going to become an ‘instant expert’ or anything like that. Instead, you are going to locate the best information resources in the subject on the Web.

Look for authority websites that are quoted and referenced often as sources of quality information. Search for authors of various articles who seem to know what they are talking about. Find experts or celebrities on the subject you plan on writing e-books.

Step #3 – Contact Them To Write Your e-Book

Shocked? Don’t be. I’m not saying you’ll just walk up or call and ask them: “Hey, want to help me writing e-books?” No, you’d just get laughed at!

You now have to make them an irresistible offer. Let’s say you found a top expert who writes lovely content – but hasn’t yet written or sold an ebook. You can contact this person, by phone, email or in person, and make an offer.

You could say:

“I’m planning on writing e-books about _____ to help people who are seeking the solution to specific problems. While researching on the Web, I found your site and notice you are an expert in this area.

Would you be interested in helping me in writing e-books, so we can sell it to my audience of eager buyers and share in profits? It will make you some extra money, plus you will get added exposure as a specialist to a crowd of prospects in your area of expertise. If this is of interest, please let me know.”

Make it sound attractive, appealing and profitable to the expert – in terms of both money and fame.

Not everyone will be eager to help you or write ebooks for you. But some of them will, especially if they see it as extra income or increased exposure in their niche.

A quicker and easier way to do this is offer to interview the expert – in person or over the phone – and then transcribe the interview as an ebook.

Writing e-books does not require knowledge about how to write ebooks, or even expert status in your area. Being an infopreneur goes deeper, and involves seeking and identifying opportunities that you can exploit and explore – with the aid of technical experts, and using your own marketing knowledge and reach.

All you need is the ability to identify experts, convince them to work with you, and deliver on your side of the bargain. The larger your network, the easier you’ll be able do this – which is another reason to learn more about being an infopreneur and growing your range of contacts and friends all the time.

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