Make More Money From Your Ideas

"Can the creation of a an E-Book be done by purchasing some "off the shelf" software?"

There are a number of software products available for creating e-books. However, I recommend that you stick with Adobe Acrobat (PDF). If you don't have the full Adobe Acrobat software for creating PDF files, get the free pdf995.com software that does it for you.

Find out more about creation of a an E-Book.

Labels: e-books, pdf

"If I am using an e-book or special report to give away, as an incentive for potential customers to come back to me for further services or advice, how much information should I give them to make the e-book useful, but not too useful? Obviously if I tell them everything they need to know to do the job themselves, they won't need me any more!"

I'll give you a different perspective on this question ... Some people would rather learn how to do something so that they can do it themselves; others would rather have somebody do it for them.

Aim to get your clients from the second group. They don't care how much information you throw at them - they would still rather have you do it for them.

In contrast, people in the first group do resent you holding back information. Even if they do hire you, they will always be thinking of ways to do it themselves, so they will be less loyal.

So, when writing your e-book or special report, focus on the things that will help that second group. Talk about strategic things, and help them make a decision, and help them make a decision to choose you. Don't worry about holding things back - they're not going to do it themselves anyway.

Find out more about marketing on-line.

Labels: e-books, internet marketing

"How do I find the best niche, according to what I know?"

The Overture search engine provides an excellent tool for researching various topics. Use this to type in words related to your topic, and it tells you how many people have searched for those words recently.

Find out more.

Labels: niche marketing

"It is easy to create an ebook from 10 or so articles but does this mean that the ebook lacks the quality of one that is written from start to finish without using previous articles?"

In general, yes, a compiled e-book will have less perceived value, especially if it's a compilation of material that's already available free.

However, that doesn't mean that it has no value at all. This sort of compilation product is an ideal give-away, which you can use to promote your business.

Find out more about creating an e-book.

Labels: e-books, product creation

"At the NSAA convention you said the key to product is to understand your distribution before you produce the product. So, I still don't have a confident plan to sell ebooks."

Plan to sell them to your existing clients first. Here are some ways to do this:

• Send them an e-mail with a "pre-release offer" at a special price, or bundled with something else
• Write a number of e-books and put them on your Web site in a password-protected area for clients
• Write an e-book that's a follow-up to a training program, and make it available at a small additional fee
• When working with corporate clients, sell a "master licence" to the e-book for them to distribute throughout their organisation

Find out more.

Labels: niche marketing

"How do we best integrate a free or nominally priced E-book into a shopping cart / payment gateway on our website at a reasonable cost, and then actually drive traffic to it?"

If you already have a shopping cart on your Web site, it should be reasonably easy to add a new product.

To drive traffic to the Web site, create a single page on the site that promotes the product. Then buy Google advertising to bring people to that particular page.

Labels: traffic generation

"What is the best way to build a large number of affiliates selling your e-book?"

Demonstrate to them that they will make money!

Put yourself in their shoes. If you can prove to them that you've got a great product, strong sales conversion on your Web site, and low returns, they are more likely to promote it for you.

So you must first prove this to yourself. Some businesses try to lure affiliates by offering high commissions and on-going income streams. Sure, this is nice, but it's the icing on the cake. If you can't sell the product yourself, it's highly unlikely that good affiliates will be interested in selling it for you.

Find out more.

Labels: affiliate marketing

"How do I do all that internet marketing stuff? My brain goes into meltdown. I can write, I can edit, I can do layouts, create pdf's - but when it comes to the stuff Corey Rudl's outfit and Tom Antion do - I run away screaming!"

Start by marketing your products to people already in your network - particularly your existing customers. It's far easier to sell more to them than to sell to complete strangers over the Internet.

When you generate enough cash flow from these sales, hire an Internet marketing expert to do the Internet marketing for you!

Find out more about Internet marketing.

Labels: internet marketing

"Distribution of physical products: Where do we get them created, and is it better to drop ship or ship it yourself?"

There are a number of places that create products for you - see GihanToldMe.com for my preferred suppliers.

When you start, be conservative and create products in small quantities, even though it might cost more per item. You might find that you've misjudged the market, and you don't want to be in the position where you have to throw away most of your products!

For a similar reason, you can probably start by doing your own shipping, and switch to drop-shipping if your products really take off.

Find out more about.

Labels: shipping

"What is the most effective way of actually creating an e-book and then selling it? (How to do it simply and effectively?)"

This is a broad question, so here is an overview of the answer:

1. Find out the problems, fears, concerns, questions and challenges in your target market.
2. Determine the solutions to those problems.
3. Write an e-book that provides the solutions.
4. Sell it!

That's just an overview of a more detailed process.

Labels: e-books

"I have just published my first book which sells on Amazon.co.uk for £14.99 and I am thinking of either giving it away as part of a series of bronze, silver and gold programmes (1,2 and 3 months long) or offering the book in e-format. How would you 'value' that ebook? Would it be more than the published actual book? I just want the value they perceive in the programme to be as high as possible."

Because you've already published the book, its value is already established at £14.99. Even if you convert it to e-book format exactly as it is, it's hard to justify any higher value.

However, if you take an extract of the book, and expand it into an e-book, workbook, manual or self-study course, you've got an entirely different product, which doesn't have an established value. In that case, you can put a higher value on it.

Labels: e-books, pricing

"Once I create a product (easy part for me), how can I do some types of joint ventures with internet marketers and companies to market the ebook to their huge lists (hard part for me)."

This is an excellent question, and most businesses under-estimate the effort required to make this work.

The most important thing you should do first is to make sure you can sell the product yourself! Until you've got a provable, reliable and measurable sales process on your Web site, the big list owners won't touch you with a barge pole. After all, why should they? They've invested a lot of time, money and effort building a list, and they probably receive many joint venture requests just like yours. They are far more likely to choose those that are likely to succeed for them.

So first earn the right! Learn how to make your site sell, and then start looking for joint venture partners.

Labels: affiliate marketing

"How do I get maximum return on the investment required to market the items? There's lots of options out there - and some free - but which of the many should I be doing?"

There's no definitive answer to this question, of course, because in many cases you will only know the return on investment after you test the market.

If possible, start by testing a small sample of the market before investing too much in a huge marketing push.

Also make sure that you're marketing to existing customers, not always looking to find new customers. Your existing customers are much more likely to buy again from you.

Finally, look at the many low cost promotion ideas available, both on and off the Internet.

Labels: market research, niche marketing, traffic generation

Market it to your existing customers first. They have already bought from you, so they know you and trust you. Many businesses make the mistake of looking for new customers before they know whether they've got anything to offer to existing customers.

Labels: loyalty, niche marketing

"How can you prevent people distributing e-books or copying sections without crediting the author? I guess the book can be in PDF format - but there are ways around that. My intuition (based on the comments in your email) tells me that perhaps one shouldn't worry about this and use the ebook (free or paid for) as a lever to promote deeper services."

Yes, no matter how hard you try to protect your valuable information, somebody will find a way to rip it off. There are various sophisticated copy-protection schemes available, but they sometimes cause more problems to the reader.

In most markets, most people will do the right thing. So don't let the fear of copying stop you from getting your material out there.

Labels: e-books

"The ebooks that I have read/bought/had seem to be quite thick with good ideas and I doubt that I have enough information to put into them. So how can I ensure that I am giving value for money (even if they are free) so that I expand my list?"

Ask your customers, clients and readers for their most important questions, challenges, problems and issues. Then answer them in your products. That's the best way to ensure you're giving value.

Labels: e-books, free products, providing value, survey