D
DeletedUser397
Guest
A couple people PM'd me asking about how I wrote my ebook(s) and if I could give any tips/recommendations, etc. First off, I'm not a pro at Internet marketing by any means, and there's likely more experienced ones here than me. I have a habit of writing a lot so I've tried to cut it down as best I can. These are all things I learned on my own, from my personal experience, not just regurgitating from books or read somewhere else. More disclosures at the bottom.
Anyway, here is some rough advice.
- Try selling on eBay. Not your own stuff and not a full-blown eBay business either. Go to yard sales and see how much stuff you can buy with $10. Sellin this stuff will give you a feel for how to market products, some sense of copy writing because of descriptions, and some experience dealing with customers. I was selling used electronics on eBay for about 6-7 months before going to ebooks, and it definitely helped me... the first place I sold my ebook was on eBay, and I was averaging $500/wk with 1 fixed listing auction (about $2k/mo).
- Definitely create your own product. Like MJ says, don't be an affiliate and rely on others for revenue. This may sound kind of like a lewd analogy, but I see publishers/affiliates as sort of like pimps/hoes. The pimp (product creator) sits back as the hoes (affiliates) scour the streets (internet) making money for them on auto-pilot pretty much. Everyone is good at something or knows someone who is good at something. My sister did very well on her SATs and got lots of college scholarships ... I helped her write an ebook on that subject. I also helped my musically-inclined cousin write an ebook on 'how to play piano' ...
- More than anything, when it comes to selling, the way you present the product makes an enormous difference, it's even more important than the quality of the product itself. This is something I also picked up from selling on eBay. With physical products, you can't feel or touch the product, or even visually see it in its entirity. This may be a disadvantage for physical products, but it's a HUGE advantage for digital. For example, marketing alone can make or break a product. It can make you believe you are getting the world's greatest digital product ever made, yet the actual product could be a 5 page word document with a bunch of spelling errors - you wouldn't know until you paid for it. I don't encourage unethical business by any means, but what I'm saying is 2 people can be selling the exact same ebook, but get vastly different results, based on how they position and present their product, brand, and image.
- Be able to match your marketing hype with your product... you can do this by being genuine and not selling scammy stuff. I think my second guide (sold $15k in 7-8 months) did so well because it was real. I really sold something I had experience with, which was related to FB social ads... so when people paid for it, they didn't feel ripped off... in fact, I got many rave reviews and personal emails from people who claimed to be making more than I ever had made from the same methods myself! Being genuine and providing real value is something I contribute to my own success (at least so far).. and that's made my products stand out in some regards marketing-wise
- Whatever you create a product about, making it original or ahead of the curve in some way. One of the reasons I think my Myspace ebook sold well right off the bat was because Myspace 'dating' was just getting started and I jumped on it. Same thing with my other product... when Social ads (they're the little side ads on Facebook, that you can use to promote your product or affiliate products and pay per click) came out, I jumped on the opportunity to try them out... then I jumped on showing others how to do it via an ebook. I don't think I'd be far off saying that I was probably the first book on Facebook profits at the time. You can do this by following trends, keeping up with the news, read blogs/magazines in your line of interest, etc. I think what got me to even write about my roommate's Myspace skills were because I started seeing a lot about online dating popping up, and thought hey, rather than pay for a dating site, my roommate was doing the same stuff for free... if I sold the guide for less than a month of the price of a dating site membership, it would be a bargain.
- Don't be stupid like me and use copyrighted phrases in your product name/brand... ClickBank will reject you, and so will a lot of websites you may try to advertise on. You can however use these as squeeze/landing domains... they're actually excellent for organic SEO... just be careful legally. I even got cease/desist letters once for another ebook I'd launched but had to tear down... it's a terrible branding idea ... SEO-wise is the only reason I'd use them now
- Best domain / product-naming route is to pick a made-up, easy-to-remember domain phrase as your brand, then create niche landing pages using keyword phrases that rank well in Google Keyword tool. Use these to funnel traffic to your branded domain. Write and create valuable products that you actually think can help people. Feel free to exaggerate a bit on the sales letter, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, you'll make more money selling something that's actually providing value to people, and you'll feel better as well knowing you're doing that and not ripping people off.
Disclosure:
Again, I'm not a pro, and don't claim to be. But I do feel I have somewhat of a skill, that's been collecting dust lately. All in all I made about $40k with digital products online in the spread of about a year. All of which stupidly went to waste, and then some, with my sidewalk / "income rich" broke mentality. I even had 3 single days where I made about $600, $800, and $1200 respectively, which I completely spent in a matter of days quite stupidly. Then after my sites got hacked, getting banned by PayPal twice, and simultaneously going into a ton of debt (about $12k in credit cards), I decided to take the slow lane route, chalked up my ebook/internet successes as "luck" (and the aftermath as "bad luck") and didn't look back for about 2-3 years. Now looking back, I feel like I somehow was able to pick up on a lot of strategies/techniques easily, which I've been slowly re-learning from myself.
And since starting to read MJ's book, I'm getting back into the internet marketing thing again. I'm planning on launching a new product in about a month, with a couple others partially in the works and planned in the pipeline.
Hope this helps others.
Anyway, here is some rough advice.
- Try selling on eBay. Not your own stuff and not a full-blown eBay business either. Go to yard sales and see how much stuff you can buy with $10. Sellin this stuff will give you a feel for how to market products, some sense of copy writing because of descriptions, and some experience dealing with customers. I was selling used electronics on eBay for about 6-7 months before going to ebooks, and it definitely helped me... the first place I sold my ebook was on eBay, and I was averaging $500/wk with 1 fixed listing auction (about $2k/mo).
- Definitely create your own product. Like MJ says, don't be an affiliate and rely on others for revenue. This may sound kind of like a lewd analogy, but I see publishers/affiliates as sort of like pimps/hoes. The pimp (product creator) sits back as the hoes (affiliates) scour the streets (internet) making money for them on auto-pilot pretty much. Everyone is good at something or knows someone who is good at something. My sister did very well on her SATs and got lots of college scholarships ... I helped her write an ebook on that subject. I also helped my musically-inclined cousin write an ebook on 'how to play piano' ...
- More than anything, when it comes to selling, the way you present the product makes an enormous difference, it's even more important than the quality of the product itself. This is something I also picked up from selling on eBay. With physical products, you can't feel or touch the product, or even visually see it in its entirity. This may be a disadvantage for physical products, but it's a HUGE advantage for digital. For example, marketing alone can make or break a product. It can make you believe you are getting the world's greatest digital product ever made, yet the actual product could be a 5 page word document with a bunch of spelling errors - you wouldn't know until you paid for it. I don't encourage unethical business by any means, but what I'm saying is 2 people can be selling the exact same ebook, but get vastly different results, based on how they position and present their product, brand, and image.
- Be able to match your marketing hype with your product... you can do this by being genuine and not selling scammy stuff. I think my second guide (sold $15k in 7-8 months) did so well because it was real. I really sold something I had experience with, which was related to FB social ads... so when people paid for it, they didn't feel ripped off... in fact, I got many rave reviews and personal emails from people who claimed to be making more than I ever had made from the same methods myself! Being genuine and providing real value is something I contribute to my own success (at least so far).. and that's made my products stand out in some regards marketing-wise
- Whatever you create a product about, making it original or ahead of the curve in some way. One of the reasons I think my Myspace ebook sold well right off the bat was because Myspace 'dating' was just getting started and I jumped on it. Same thing with my other product... when Social ads (they're the little side ads on Facebook, that you can use to promote your product or affiliate products and pay per click) came out, I jumped on the opportunity to try them out... then I jumped on showing others how to do it via an ebook. I don't think I'd be far off saying that I was probably the first book on Facebook profits at the time. You can do this by following trends, keeping up with the news, read blogs/magazines in your line of interest, etc. I think what got me to even write about my roommate's Myspace skills were because I started seeing a lot about online dating popping up, and thought hey, rather than pay for a dating site, my roommate was doing the same stuff for free... if I sold the guide for less than a month of the price of a dating site membership, it would be a bargain.
- Don't be stupid like me and use copyrighted phrases in your product name/brand... ClickBank will reject you, and so will a lot of websites you may try to advertise on. You can however use these as squeeze/landing domains... they're actually excellent for organic SEO... just be careful legally. I even got cease/desist letters once for another ebook I'd launched but had to tear down... it's a terrible branding idea ... SEO-wise is the only reason I'd use them now
- Best domain / product-naming route is to pick a made-up, easy-to-remember domain phrase as your brand, then create niche landing pages using keyword phrases that rank well in Google Keyword tool. Use these to funnel traffic to your branded domain. Write and create valuable products that you actually think can help people. Feel free to exaggerate a bit on the sales letter, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, you'll make more money selling something that's actually providing value to people, and you'll feel better as well knowing you're doing that and not ripping people off.
Disclosure:
Again, I'm not a pro, and don't claim to be. But I do feel I have somewhat of a skill, that's been collecting dust lately. All in all I made about $40k with digital products online in the spread of about a year. All of which stupidly went to waste, and then some, with my sidewalk / "income rich" broke mentality. I even had 3 single days where I made about $600, $800, and $1200 respectively, which I completely spent in a matter of days quite stupidly. Then after my sites got hacked, getting banned by PayPal twice, and simultaneously going into a ton of debt (about $12k in credit cards), I decided to take the slow lane route, chalked up my ebook/internet successes as "luck" (and the aftermath as "bad luck") and didn't look back for about 2-3 years. Now looking back, I feel like I somehow was able to pick up on a lot of strategies/techniques easily, which I've been slowly re-learning from myself.
And since starting to read MJ's book, I'm getting back into the internet marketing thing again. I'm planning on launching a new product in about a month, with a couple others partially in the works and planned in the pipeline.
Hope this helps others.
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