5 Easy Ways to Ramp Up Your E-Book Sales

5 Easy Ways to Ramp Up Your E-Book Sales: "

Once you’ve written your E-Book, got your Website up and integrated your shopping cart, you can sit back and start waiting for the money to come rolling in, right?

WRONG!

These days it’s getting harder than ever before to be able to get people to notice you – and just because “you build it” doesn’t mean they’re going to come.

So what’s an author to do?

Actually, thanks to all the tools that are available to you – including Web 2.0 – marketing your book – and ramping up your sales – is not as hard as you might think.

In fact, here are a few ideas to get your juices flowing. Add them to your sales plan, and use them as a jumping off place to help you make even more sales.

Create a long-term plan before you write even one word of your first book. The truth of the matter is that you’re probably never going to get rich from writing one E-book. So before you start writing your first book, start thinking about your second book. And the first product that will tie into your first book. And the second. And then the third.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Come up with as many different income streams as you can and plan to build them into your plan. For example, can you create a workbook from your E-book? What about recording some audio files that go into further details or give more information. What about doing a joint venture with other experts in your industry?

Sell more books at one time. If your book covers any one of a number of popular subjects – self-help or development, home improvement, business, religion – there are probably corporations, organizations or niche markets that are always on the look-out for inexpensive gifts or bonuses for their employees, clients or associates. Your book could be just the ticket. Although you might have to go down in price – what do you think sounds better? Selling one or two books at a time or selling box loads of them?

http://4u2bn.com/lh79

Once you’ve built up your credibility as a published author, it’s time to take things to the next level. Have you ever dreamed of attending seminars or workshops as a presenter? What about having a speaking career and being flown all over the world speaking to people in your niche market? If you don’t like traveling or crowds, consider putting together teleseminars or holding intimate bootcamps.

Create joint ventures. This is the fastest and easiest way to leverage your expertise and start raking in the cash. Find people who are in similar – but not competing industries as yours. Explore ways for you to provide value to both of your customers while you’re cross-selling or upselling.

For example, if you own a restaurant, what about creating a special Valentine’s Day promotion with the local florist. Offer free drinks or desserts to any of the florist’s customers who bring in a special card (that you’ve provided to them) when they come to your restaurant. And your joint venture partner (the florist) gives you roses or carnations that can be given out to any women when their companion gives you the special dessert card.

See how simple that is? Real value that makes your customers happy, and builds loyalty and trust – and positions both of you as the first people your customers think of when they need flowers or want a romantic restaurant or a place to eat during a special occasion

http://4u2bn.com/lh79

Thanks
Joseph Vaughn

Want To Make Passive Income While You Sleep?
Discover How You Can Now Quickly Create Your Own
Branded Cash Producing Viral Ebooks With Just A Few
Clicks That Spread All Over The Web
http://4u2bn.com/lh79

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4 Ways To Package Your Content For High Sales

4 Ways To Package Your Content For High Sales: "

Experienced information marketers know that creating the product is only half the process. Learning how to effectively package your content so that it is attractive to buyers is just as important as finding your niche. It doesn’t matter how good your product is if no one wants to buy it. The same pages of information can be packaged in many different ways. Look over the following options and determine which method would be right for your niche and their needs.

Remember the acronym P.E.R.M.

P – Physical Products

E – Ebooks

R – Reports

M – Membership Sites

Physical products: Physical products offer you the ability to put something real and tangible in the hands of your buyers. Physical products are often marketed as “home study courses” which can be set at a higher price point than an eBook or a set of online videos. Although you will have to pay for the production of the book, the videos or the audio CDs, you can more than make up for those costs with your price point. With certain topics, physical products just make more sense.

eBooks: Can be anywhere from 30 to 200 pages long. They normally offer a more widespread look at a topic than a short report, but they have the potential for covering a lot more topic areas in the niche. The advantage of eBooks is that they can be priced at higher rates than short reports. They are automatically delivered to your customers so they get the instant gratification of having the product immediately. eBooks can be paired with supplemental reports, audios or videos depending on the niche and how many resources you want to offer your customers.

Reports: Short reports are typically between 5 and 20 pages. They go in depth on a small part of a topic instead of giving a general overview like most large eBooks do. With a short report, you’re normally giving someone an actionable plan that they can use to fix an aspect of their life. “How to Calm a Colicky Baby”, “How to Improve Your Golf Slice” and “How to Lose 5 Lbs this Weekend” are all examples of the narrow focus of short reports. If you have a larger topic, sometimes breaking it down into short reports and offering them separately is a great way to make more money and establish your authority in the niche.

Membership sites: If you have a lot of information on a niche and feel that you can provide month after month of content, you can create a membership site. The benefit of making a membership site with your content is that you earn money each month from multiple members. Instead of having a one time sale for your content, you can earn from it continuously. Your membership site can take many different forms. You can offer weekly or monthly reports delivered to your members’ inboxes. You can host a forum where members can meet and discuss the niche. You can also offer training through a private blog. The options are endless!

Before you decide on your product delivery system, make sure to research your niche to see what the norm is. Figure out what would be best for your niche and proceed accordingly.

If you need some more guidance or you’re just getting started, be sure to pick up your copy of: Information Product Sweetie. You’ll learn everything from how to conduct market research, how to create awesome products and how to follow it up with a great marketing campaign.

"

Market Research in 5 Simple Steps

Market Research in 5 Simple Steps: "

Ready to conquer a new niche, but want to make sure you’re on the right track? You can’t just build a site on underwater basket weaving – you’ve got to make sure that:

1. People are looking for information on the topic


2. That there are buyers (not just freebie seekers)


3. There are actual products you can sell or affiliate with

1. KEYWORD RESEARCH

Initially, you’ll do your keyword research. That is, identifying a possible niche and running it through Market Samurai to see if it’s got potential. You want a keyword that has a decent number of people searching for it (so your new site gets traffic) but also doesn’t have too much competition.

I’ve put together a series of videos to show you how to use Market Samurai to dig out profitable keywords quickly, the most recent one is below:

For all the videos in this series (and more free niches you can steal) check out the Steal This Niche page.

2. MONETIZATION

Next, we ensure that the niche can be properly monetized. Are there products you can create and sell, or simply affiliate with, within the niche? If not, the niche is dead and we should move on to another.

To check that a niche can be monetized, we can use the “Monetization” Module inside Market Samurai.

We can also do a Google search and see if any of the top results or Adwords ads displayed on the right have affiliate programs.

Checking sources like Clickbank, Datafeedr, Ebay, Amazon, Commission Junction and ShareASale can identify further affiliate opportunities.

You want to have a laundry list of products you can sell on your site, so when it’s time to build, you know you have an offer for site visitors.

Also, make sure the products you’re identifying are a tight match for the keyword you identified with Market Samurai. If you identify people as searching for “How to make your own soap,” you don’t want attempt to sell them a candle making kit. Yes, people interested in making their own soap might well be interested in making their own candles too, but it’s not a perfect message-to-market match. You need a perfect match from what your users are searching for and what you’re selling to encourage sales.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA BUZZ

Checking the social media buzz for a niche serves two purposes:

1. Ensuring that people are talking about your niche. If they’re not, it’s dead. People must be interested enough in it to talk about it, otherwise they’re probably not buying.


2. Give you a point of entry to use social media marketing in your campaign. Checking the buzz allows you to identify the social media sites, forums, blogs etc. that are most active within your niche. When it’s time to promote and build links, you’ll already know the hotspots for your niche.

You can go to each social media site individually and use the search function to check if there’ buzz, but that’s tedious. Plus, it leaves out blogs and forums, which can be a huge source of conversation and potential traffic.

Instead, use the service WhosTalkin. You simply search for your keyword and you’ll get a look across all kinds of social media platforms where people are sharing images, articles, thoughts, videos and chatter. Plus, it gives you an RSS feed for your search so you can subscribe to it in Google Reader and catch everything people are saying within the niche and respond to it once your site is up.

Another place to check is SocialMention. While this service isn’t as comprehensive as WhosTalkin, it gives you a look, in the sidebar, of the reach, passion, positive & negative percentages and top users talking about your topic.

4. TOPIC TRENDING

You don’t want to climb on a niche bandwagon when it’s just about to die. So check with Google Trends and Google Insights to identify any patterns in your niche. Does it peak at certain times? Is it generally climbing upwards or downwards? Where is it right now in relation to where it’s been in the past?

Don’t beat a dead horse (or niche). If it’s time in the spotlight has ended, take a pass on it and find another niche with a longer lifespan.

5. VERTICALS & RELATED MARKETS

You may have identified other related markets (that may be more profitable, or could provide you with other categories, topics or subtopics for your site). We’ll investigate those further to ensure we’ve covered all our bases in our keyword research. Simply follow the tips above for any related markets, keywords, niches or sub-niches you’ve found.

To identify additional related markets, check with the following sites:

• Keyword Spy


• SpyFu


• SEMRush

With each of the above resources, you’ll be able to get an idea of the advertising spend in the market, as well as other, related keywords you can look into further.

CrowdMountain members, check your members area over the next few days – we’ve got some pre-made markets ready for you so you can just jump right in to site building!

Related posts:

1. Steal This Niche – For the Shortys
2. Steal This Niche – Intro
3. The difference between #1 and #2 is HUGE!

"

Telecommuting in the 21st Century: How to Implement or Improve Virtual Teams and Flexible Work in Your Organization (Part 7: Where Do We Start?)

Telecommuting in the 21st Century: How to Implement or Improve Virtual Teams and Flexible Work in Your Organization (Part 7: Where Do We Start?): "

Welcome to Part 7 of our 13 part audio series on Flexible Work and Telecommuting - Telecommuting in the 21st Century: How to Implement or Improve Virtual Teams and Flexible Work in Your Organization“.

When looking to roll out telework or flexwork in your organization it often helps to start with a pilot program. This can help you gather important feedback, make sure you have the right technology in place, and help you recognize any speed bumps that might arise when expanding your program throughout the rest of your company. The size of your company will dictate how formal and involved this process needs to be. However having some type of trial period is always a good way to start.

In part 7 of our podcast we look at steps for successful telework implementation and how to get started.

So listen in to Part 7: Where Do We Start?

.

OUR PANEL OF EXPERTS:

Jeff Zbar : Founder of ChiefHomeOfficer.com (and faciliator for our discussion on telecommuting).

Rachel Hastings: Vice President of WFC Resources Inc.

Phil Montero: CEO of Montero Consulting and Founder of YouCanWorkFromAnywhere.com and TheAnywhereOffice.com.

Want the whole story?

Listen to all 13 parts of Telecommuting in the 21st Century.

We hope you find this audio series useful – please take a moment to post a comment and share your thoughts and feedback with us below!

Subscribe (in the right hand column) to be sure you don’t miss anything!

What to Look for in a Telework Candidate?

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Beyond Articles: 10 Creative Ways to Distribute Your Content

Beyond Articles: 10 Creative Ways to Distribute Your Content: "So you’ve got a great article written. You’ve done your keyword research and placed it in strategic but natural places throughout your article. The article is informative and engaging, and it has a compelling call to sign up for your newsletter.
What next? Put your article to work – again and again. Of course, you would [...]"

Beyond Articles Part 2: 10 More Creative Ways to Distribute Your Content

Beyond Articles Part 2: 10 More Creative Ways to Distribute Your Content: "Last week, I gave you 10 ideas for spreading one single article all over the Internet without having to rewrite or spinning it.
If you take the extra time and effort to rewrite, you’ll get even more content out there to promote your business. It’s much easier to create new content when you already have something [...]"

3 Ways To Find Ideas For Your Next Information Product

3 Ways To Find Ideas For Your Next Information Product: "

Once you’ve written a successful information product, you should follow up on your success with another product. Whether you write a product in the same niche or go on to conquer another niche, it’s important that you use the momentum from your first product to fuel your second, and so on. If you’re stuck for ideas on where to find and idea for your product, you’ll find that creating a new eBook is as easy as A.B.C.

A – ASK your list members

If you’ve built a list from selling your first information product (and you should have!) the keys to creating your next product are just a few e-mails away. Your list can be a goldmine when it comes to product ideas. Create a survey using a free online survey program (like SurveyMonkey.com) and ask your customers what topic they are most interested in learning about next. You can make the questions multiple choice and give them a few different options. Add the link to the survey in your autoresponder program and then gather the results from your previous buyers.

This product idea method works really well because not only have you already established yourself in the niche, but you know that you have ready made buyers if you can create a product your list is looking for. Since surveys are so easy to set up, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using this for product creation.

B – BROWSE through the product affiliate networks.

A great way to find a surefire product idea is to look at the product affiliate networks, like Clickbank, Ejunkie or Paydotcom. I’m not talking about ripping off ideas. I’m talking about finding existing gaps in the market and filling those needs. For example, if you’re looking through Clickbank and notice a lot of products on growing your own organic garden you know that those sellers are tapping into a profitable market. However, you also notice that not one of these books talks about how to store the abundance from your organic garden. This is an important part of making the most out of your garden. Since so many people are growing organic gardens these days, it’s going to be a profitable niche. On top of that, you can contact one of the people who have a gardening eBook and do a joint venture.

C – CHECK out peaking trends.

Tools like Google Trends can help you find out what topics are growing in popularity. By jumping on a rising topic, you can be the first to the market with a topic. Being the first product in a particular niche can secure your dominance in that niche, even after other people jump on the bandwagon. Keep an eye on peaking trends and see how you can create a product to meet the needs of those in on that trend.

Any one of these methods could give you enough topics for your next ten products. Don’t sit on your laurels after you’ve created your first product. Use that momentum to jump on the next product idea and you’ll be able to build a long term infomarketing business.

If you need some more guidance or you’re just getting started, be sure to pick up your copy of: Information Product Sweetie. You’ll learn everything from how to conduct market research, how to create awesome products and how to follow it up with a great marketing campaign. Comes with training guide, checklists, bonus audio on info product creation, website templates. PLUS, you’ll also get a cool bonus report, audio, and checklist on generating more product launch sales.

"

Business Plan Mistakes

Business Plan Mistakes: "

Affiliate Post of the Week: Business Plan Mistakes

By Palo Alto Software, Inc.

Often you may hear about what a business plan consists of. While including the necessary items is very important, you also want to make sure you don’t commit any of the following common business plan mistakes:

1. Putting it off: Don’t wait to write a plan until you absolutely have to. Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless the bank or the investors want a plan, there is no plan.

Don’t wait to write your plan until you think you’ll have enough time. “There’s not enough time for a plan,” business people say. “I can’t plan. I’m too busy getting things done.” The busier you are, the more you need to plan. If you are always putting out fires, you should build firebreaks or a sprinkler system. You can lose the whole forest for paying too much attention to the individual burning trees.

2. Cash flow casualness: Cash flow is more important than sales, profits, or anything else in the business plan, but most people think in terms of profits instead of cash. When you and your friends imagine a new business, you think of what it would cost to make the product, what you could sell it for, and what the profits per unit might be. We are trained to think of business as sales minus costs and expenses, which equal profits. Unfortunately, we don’t spend the profits in a business. We spend cash. So understanding cash flow is critical. If you have only one table in your business plan, make it the cash flow table.

3. Idea inflation: Plans don’t sell new business ideas to investors. People do. The plan, though necessary, is only a way to present information. Investors invest in people, not ideas.

Don’t overestimate the importance of the idea, particularly the importance of the uniqueness of the idea. You don’t need a great idea to start a business; you need time, money, perseverance, common sense, and so forth. Very few successful businesses are based entirely on new ideas. A new idea is much harder to sell than an existing one, because people don’t understand a new idea and they are often unsure if it will work.

4. Fear and dread.

Doing a business plan isn’t as hard as you think. You don’t have to write a doctoral thesis or a novel. There are good books to help, many advisors among the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), business schools, and there is software available to help you (such as Business Plan Pro, and others).

5. Spongy, vague goals: Leave out the vague and the meaningless babble of business phrases (such as “being the best”) because they are simply hype. Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, and for results, you need tracking and follow up. You need specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and milestones. Then you can follow up. No matter how well thought out or brilliantly presented, it means nothing unless it produces results.

6. One size fits all: Tailor your business plan to its real business purpose. Business plans can be different things: they are often just sales documents to sell an idea for a new business. They can be detailed action plans, financial plans, marketing plans, and even personnel plans. They can be used to start a business, or just run a business better.

7. Diluted priorities: Remember, strategy is focus. A priority list with 3-4 items is focus. A priority list with 20 items is something else, certainly not strategic, and rarely if ever effective. The more items on the list, the less the importance of each.

8. Hockey-stick shaped growth projections: Have projections that are conservative so you can defend them. When in doubt, be less optimistic.

Source: bplans.com

Technorati : Business Plan, Marketing, Marketing Plan, Palo Alto Software, Planning

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