My ebook is ready to go. however where do i go to advertise it

[JOHNKR66]

my name is john im 44 years old from telford shropshire. about a few years ago now i suffered a mild stroke so was off work for a few months. i started to write a book on my chosen field which is hard selling in the home improvement field. this industry is currently worth about two billion sterling each year. as a result of my stroke i havent been able to return to work and now find myself sat at home looking at various web sites on ideas of how to make a living working from hom. that's when i found your site.

ive been hard, pressure selling for over 22 years now so you can say a very experienced salesman. starting off at a really high price then droping the price if the customer bought off me on the night and all that...

now to cut along storey short my book is now complete and has been re written for me in ebook form. so saving you the trouble and me the cost. the problem i have now is how do i get it to market, where do i sell it and what price should i ask for it.

Also i will add further information to any buyer. informing them how easy it is to get between 20/30 percent knocked off any item bought from a builders yard period. this in itself would get them there money back for my ebook. I would welcome any offers or advice you may have. ive done a little research and some of the sites that sell ebooks want a registration fee or a fee to join which i think is expensive. Is this the norm
thank yu john

[midascode]

Hello John,

Once upon a time I was in direct sales and sold double glazing - a lot of it!

I read your post with interest (and please forgive me if I have wrong angle) - but I was wondering if you are 'real'. I mean, it sounds genuine enough but I don't ever think I have met a Direct sales person refer to their form of selling as "hard, pressure selling' -- even when it was!

So my question is -- is this book to help sales people? (to sell more?) or is it for consumers so they are more aware of the 'tricks of the trade' so to speak? I think it is for the consumer - so if your story that of a 'poacher turned gamekeeper'?

I have seen a number of attempts made to launch books like this before but I don't know anyone who ever made a lot of money at it.

One angle you could consider is "lead generation website' - were you put all your information up on a website to help the consumer get the best deal and then offer a "contractor matching service" for your readers -- i.e you offer to put them in contact with reputable companies in their area who will not rip them off. There are plenty of Lead Generation companies who will buy the leads your generate of you.

Of course this depends on making your website popular and getting lots of visitors which is another subject altogether.

For what it is worth, this is partly the strategy I followed when I got out of Direct Sales and it ended up making me a lot of money.

best wishes

Barry

[JOHNKR66]

Hello barry i can cofirm im real. i have to admit it was high pressure when you start off at a very high price lets say £10,000 for a house full of windows then proceed to drop the price to try and close the sale on the night but you can only do the job at this special price tonight so putting pressure on your prospective customers to sign the order. knowing full well there is no special sale on or promotion. you know the script barry aswell as i do.
yes i suppose im now running with the hounds rather than the dogs however the knowledge i have got over the last 20 plus years is invaluble to a prospective customer and will save them a lot of money.
thanks

[Clinton]

John, there is a lot of good free information online on how to market ebooks. It's obviously a lot different to the sales you may have acquired experience with and is, I feel, a field where you would probably be best placed taking on a JV partner. You will share the profits, but given the right partner, you'll still make more that way than by going it alone. I'm sorry I don't have any immediate recommendations for you, but this page may eventually flesh out to include potential partners on projects like this.

If I ever do write an ebook I've already booked Barry to be my JV partner (remember our last meeting, Barry?)

[midascode]

Clinton -- I have not forgotten our meeting - hope to meet up again soon.

Barry

[meathead1234]

Hi John,

Product launches are very hit and miss, especially when starting out (I just launched my first a few months back and made mid XX,XXX which would be considered decent, but nowhere near the big boys in my niche) and I've got a decent level of experience. With little experience, I fear it would be nearly (not totally) impossible to make a big success of the ebook on your own. As Clinton already mentioned, a JV would probably be your best bet. If you don't want to JV, I'd say you'd need at least a few thousand to get a good sales letter, mini-site, listing on Clickbank (have a look) and a few listings in affiliate directories. For JV opportunities you should take Clinton up on his offer of the service section and see if you can get a JV partner there.

Good luck!

Thomas

[Andy]

Barry... is that YOU?

You scoundrel. I can't remember how it all came about but I clearly remember you are the person to blame for my finding this forum. In case you're wondering, we've never met. I think I came across a post of yours someplace referencing this forum. Thanks for the tip.

Andy

John,

Along with Barry, I know of at least one other person in the UK with like experience. He actually has written a couple of books. One of them talks about his experience with direct sales to a great extent. The gentleman's name is Paul Hancox and the book is "Secrets of a 10% Conversion Rate" You can download a sample here.

I agree with what you're hearing in this thread - if you want to do well with your book, your best bet is to invest in a proper product launch. Jeff Walker sells a pricey "Product Launch Formula" but I"m not sure if it's even available at this time. You can check out Jeff's blog here

One place where I've seen Jeff's students offer help with launches as well as a possible place to find a project manager for your launch is JV Notify Pro - it's a small forum and like this - not a place to jump in to broadcast your new product hoping for JV partners. You can find help but don't try to "hard sell" it. :-)

Andy

[JasonMatthews]

John, you want to make an ebook available everywhere online as possible. Smashwords.com will convert formats and get you into all the major retailers like Amazon, B&N, Apple, etc. You can also go directly to Amazon via dtpamazon.com (true in the states so probably true in UK) and soon B&N through Pubit. You'll want to offer it for sale from your own sites or blog as well with PayPal buttons, a nice way to sell in an automated fashion. There's also need to utilize Social Media like Facebook and Youtube to get your message out there. A blog that gets updated frequently helps a lot. The best thing is that you can do all of these things at no cost. Here's a site with plenty of free advice for the subject. I'm also an author and highly recommend doing everything for free first before spending money on this.
Making money from ebooks is not easy, despite what some will tell you. You need to have a great product and persistence online. Good luck.

[[Edit - The author is connected with or owns this site, it's not a "neutral" recommendation - Admin, July 29th]]

[[Edit - This poster hasn't returned and hasn't replied to my PM, so I've deleted his link. Just can't seem to trust first time posters with links! Bye JasonMatthews - Clinton, Aug 5th, 2010]]

[beyondsunny]

John, how about finding the high traffic relevant blogs and offer to do guest post for them in return of an author profile link to your salespage?

[jamesuk]

Hi John. There are many things you could do with this. Firstly though, I would always advise against simply producing a product without actually knowing whether or not there is a market for it. Have you done any keyword research to see if anybody is actually looking for the information that you wish to sell? Do you know what keywords you are targeting? How many people a day search on them? Assuming that you are standing in the midst of a raging torrent of eager buyers, then a basic process for selling your information would be to set up a small website (with a blog would be good), set up a squeeze page, get traffic, convert traffic (good sales copy), test. One ebook is not a business though. You need to start thinking how you can get potential customers into a sales funnel and so you need to develop some back end products which have a higher perceived value than a simple ebook. For example, you could record video training, you could record audio interviews with other experts in your field (or indeed be interviewed yourself). Then you need to start building a list. Give the ebook away free to get potential customer's email addresses. Market yours and other people's products that you recommend to that list.

One tip I have for you - never call anything you sell an ebook! Ebooks are found littered all around the Web these days and have very low perceived value. Call it a "Special Report", "manifesto", "Missing Chapter", "system" or something like that.... in my experience that works much better.

Being lazy, I hardly ever try to sell my own ebooks. I find other people who sell the same type of information and sell mine to them with PLR rights (If you don't know what PLR is, you can google it). Basically, that means that the purchaser can edit your material and put their own name on it. They then sell that to their customers. For example, say you know lots about sales techniques, you could sell 500 copies to 500 marketers who are in the Sales niche - you have to limit PLR sales otherwise people won't buy. Because you are giving other people the right to use the material as their own, you generally charge a higher price than if you were just selling the ebook normally. There are a couple of interesting things with this method - 1. You can build a list of marketers who are interested in buying PLR on your topic 2. You can then write new material and market that to them too 3. You have bona fide scarcity built into this model - ie only 500 copies available or whatever. You don't have to limit yourself to writing either, you could sell them videos, tools, systems, audios etc etc. If you build a nice list, you could even think about getting some nice recurring income by offering a membership site where you produce x amount of new articles per month. You would be surprised what people will pay for PLR as savvy marketers know that they are paying for somebody else's research and knowledge when they buy it. But it has to be good quality and has to have a good keyword density.