Make More Money From Your Ideas

"How do I create a catalogue of my books and e-books on my site? I've looked around at various book store Web sites like Dymocks and Amazon.com. Is that a good model to follow?"

No! Book shops are one of the worst examples to model. In fact, I would almost go as far as to say it's worth looking at what they do, and then do the exact opposite!

Now, before I get sued by Amazon.com, I'll emphasise that I am not criticising book shop Web sites. Not at all. They are exactly right for the book shops. But they are terrible for you.

The reason for this is the customer's mindset. People go into a book shop looking to BUY a book. They go to your Web site looking for INFORMATION about [whatever your expertise is]. They might find this in the form of an article, a seminar, a book, an e-book, etc.

So it's better to organise your Web site around TOPICS, not product types. For example, on my Web site GihanPerera.com, you will see that I have three main topic areas:

1. Creating Products
   
2. Internet Marketing
   
3. Your Web Site
   

Each of these clicks through to a page of resources about that topic. Some of the resources are free; the others come at a price. For the paid products, there's a "sales letter" for that particular product. So what I'm doing is mirroring the customer's mindset of looking for ANSWERS, not necessarily looking to buy a product.

That said, SOME people do visit my Web site and are curious about what products I've got. So I do have a Products link that lists all the products on one page, with a link to the individual sales letter pages.

I suggest you do something similar. First write a separate sales letter (or flyer) for each product. Then list all the products on the Products page, but grouped by topic (NOT product type - e.g. Printed Books, E-books, CD sets). Just provide a brief summary of the product on the Products page, and they can click through to the more detailed sales letter.

Finally, think about how you can take each of your main topic areas and give people a path through the Web site for that topic. This is in fact the most important thing, but it can take some time. That's why I suggested setting up the Products page first.

Labels: copywriting, sales letter