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If you don’t know how to build an ebook selling website, and don’t want to learn, you can use the easy software from Knowledge Download. Go to the section on Publishing Your eBook to learn more
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In this issue:
Commentary
Writing Tutorial
Favorite Web Site of The Week
Links
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One of the questions I often receive is about Affiliate Programs. I’ve had several inquiries recently asking why Knowledge Download does not yet have an Affiliate Program.
If you are planning to Self-Publish your own book, ebook or other infoproduct, this may be of great help to you.
I’ve spent over a hundred hours studying vendors in the Affiliate provider game. Additionally, I’ve exchanged emails with over two-dozen web site owners about their experiences with vendors.
Using Affiliate networks (service providers) or buying your own Affiliate software package is not a simple job.
What are Affiliates and why should you consider them?
Affiliates are simply promoters and "sellers" of your product or service. You should consider adding them to your marketing lineup because they promote your website, products and services via their own website, ezine and newsletters at their cost and effort.
One of the first things you must do when you launch a web site where you will be selling any original software, ebook or other infoproduct, is to decide what vendor you will use for electronic commerce transactions.
Depending on your strategic goals, this can be a simple answer or a challenging one!
If you write and/or sell ebooks or other infoproducts, you have a defined product you are selling. They are sold one at a time to as many people who will buy it once.
If on the other hand, you have, or can make your offering into a service, then you may opt for a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription. This is a recurring residual model. It is also the model of my web business
Once you have made your product/service delivery decisions and established your pricing and billing practices, then you can decide on your Affiliate strategy, software and/or service partners.
In my case, I was more interested in building a user base, gaining solid search engine rankings and some brand loyalty from our launch. I also chose to sell our service as a monthly subscription.
With this model, there are a narrowed field of players, with widely varying price points and service and support options. It is not easy!
Go it alone and buy my own package? Nope. Too much tedious work is involved, such as running reports, writing checks, transferring cash into the right accounts, etc.
Play with the big boys such as Commission Junction or Linkshare? Sure, but I’d rather build the fundamentals of my business in the first year before I dole out $5k to $10k. Although their affiliate networks are powerful and can move large volumes of your products.
If you are selling an ebook, there is really only one choice: Clickbank. They have an ecommerce AND affiliate system wrapped in one.
I have chosen to start my Affiliate program with a "second tier" company, but one who has excellent chances of breaking into that top tier. They will have a great online system, handle reporting, tracking and payments for me and will help promote my web business to thousands of their affiliates worldwide on my behalf. I’ve narrowed my choices down to three companies and in a future newsletter, I’ll share that experience with you.
For now, please realize that I hope to have the decision made by the end of September and begin implementation soon thereafter.
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TUTORIAL
In this week's issue, we give you Part 4 of our professional author tutorial series. This series is in 5 parts and has been written by Michael LaRocca, an English teacher, writer, teacher of Advanced Writing in China and consultant. Michael has a lot to say to you in his Writing Tutorials.
About Writing
Lesson Four -- Promoting Your Published Writing
It doesn’t matter how you publish your book. Self-published, epublished, POD, or traditional print publishing from an absolute powerhouse. Marketing falls largely on you, and the same things always work. Book signings, interviews in the local newspapers and on radio.
Start with Kidon. It will allow you to look up all the local media outlets in your area that have websites.
If you write to them all, you’re a spammer. Plus, it’ll take ages. Look for the ones with a legitimate interest and fire away.
If you find a state URL, and I think you will, look for the name of that media outlet at some place like Google. Spend some time looking for the right press contacts, spend some time writing your Press Release, and do what you can.
Most of these sites list email, snail mail, and phone calls. Since I live in China, I’ve only used email, and I can’t do interviews. But, I do what I can.
Book reviews, author interviews, book listing sites, and book contests are something we can all do, regardless of where we live. Again, I’m going to give you some web pages to visit. Pages where I keep my resources, so I don’t lose them.
Some of the sites I mention do ebooks, and some do not. The POD option can help e-authors here, but balance cost vs. likelihood of gaining enough readers to offset that.
Some are ezines and some are websites. Some are printed newsletters, some are printed magazines, and some are newspapers. Again, it’s just a starting point. If you can visit them all, and still have time left for promotion, you can find many more.
Okay, let’s get back to my overseas angle.
Aside from two radio interviews and a seminar in Hong Kong,
and some emailed press releases to the LOCAL media back in the
US which may or may not have succeeded in anything, my marketing
has come from the Internet.
I have a website. I have a newsletter. I’m giving away a free ebook, the essence of which I’m giving you in these lessons. And I have these lessons, which you’re reading. You found me somehow, right?
Here’s the type of message I receive often in email. To be more precise, in spam.
If a million people see your ad, and you get 1% of them, that’s 10,000 readers and therefore $15,000 profit and you only paid $1000 for those million addresses.
NO!! It doesn’t work that way. Need I use the words dot-com bust?
My website is free. My newsletter is free. I don’t buy mailing lists, I don’t harvest email addresses, and I don’t spam. I want interested traffic, not just sheer numbers.
Do you think the Phoenicians tried to sell sails to people a thousand miles from the water?
As a result of my Internet marketing, here you are, reading my fourth lesson. Internet marketing isn’t a replacement for the methods I mentioned above, but a complement to them. And by using it, I got you here.
Your goal in marketing is this. There are certainly people in the world who like what you like. And since you like your book, they probably will too. (As discussed when you were seeking a publisher.)
But you have to find those readers and make them interested, without spamming them and without just "playing the numbers game."
If you’re an e-author, let me state the obvious. Nobody buys ebooks who doesn’t have Internet access. Do they? So you definitely need a website.
Traditional print authors need websites too. Even blockbuster authors like J.R. Rowling and Stephen King, who I doubt could garner any more name recognition, have websites. So does every long-established inescapable monstro-business like McDonalds and Coke.
Okay, those folks pay web designers. I’m not doing that. I can’t generate those kinds of sales figures. And yes, I’ve formerly been employed as an HTML programmer. But you can write your own website without even learning HTML if you want. It’s no harder than writing a manuscript with a word processor.
It won’t be super-flashy like the big boys, but it’ll communicate the information. Remember, you can communicate. You’re an author! And that’s what keeps people coming back to a website after the thrill of the flash wears off. Information. Content. Your specialty.
I consider my website and my newsletter to be successful, and I’ve created a free email course to analyze how they got that way. Yes, there are legitimate ways to bring traffic to your website and your newsletter. Not massive numbers overnight, but slow steady growth over the long term.
To sign up for the free email course, HOW TO CREATE A USEFUL, POPULAR WEBSITE, send a blank email to picasso@sendfree.com (Picasso is my cat.)
In next week's lesson, I’ll share some closing thoughts with you. It won’t mean nearly as much work for you as what’s gone before, and then you’ll be done!
Thanks for reading. (I always say that, don’t I?)
Michael LaRocca
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Web Site of The Week
There is little that can compare to receiving volumes of targeted Search Engine referred traffic. I know quite a bit on this topic, as it is one area that my colleagues and I have focused on for over a year.
By now, you know that Knowledge Download launched in late May '02. Before we launched, we spent considerable time doing all the key things needed to gain top search engine rankings. Our first month out of the gate, our web site gained a Google Page Rank of 5, which is nearly unheard of for a first month site.
All that effort up front yielded what is now nearly one hundred unique visitors per day from Google alone. Was it worth it? Based on our growing subscriber list to this ezine, and orders for our easy to use software to build ebook websites, the answer is a resounding YES!
How did we do that?
We followed the principles and use the tool offered from this company.
They have an excellent ebook that was extremely well researched. That ebook alone is worth its weight in gold.
They also have a dynamite award winning software tool that allows you to input your competitors and sites similar to yours. The software then automatically discovers what sites link to them and offers huge assortments of options for requesting links to your site catalog those sites for later review and even manage link exchanges. They also have a free trial download, which I highly suggest you try.
Now, is that all we did? Nope. Aside from testing dozens of search engine strategies on our own web sites, we also subscribe to search engine newsletters and participate in search engine message boards.
But, our partner has all the key information and an awesome tool to drive link popularity that we wouldn’t be without!
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FEEDBACK:
"Skip: I can say that Knowledge Downloads software has everything an
Author would want. It's easy to use and intuitive. It is impressive."
Michael LaRocca, author, consultant and book coach.
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That’s it for this week. I hope you are enjoying Author Tips. With our tutorials, the newsletter is quite a bit longer than usual. If you have any feedback, suggestions or would like some free publicity, send it to me and we’ll print your question or comment and website or email address.
My best regards,
Skip
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Links
The main web site at knowledge-download
Our e-book writing articles
Learn about producing your ebook
Learn about publishing your ebook
Order your ebook website software and service
If you have any feedback for us, please send to
. Send me feedback and I’ll publish it along with your URL in the next edition. (Can you say - free publicity?)
See you next week!
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Knowledge Download Author Tips copyright - all rights reserved.
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