Sell Ebooks Online

Yes, you can sell ebooks online – this article will tell you how!

The usual mistake when people want to sell ebooks, is to assume that all they have to do is create the ebook and list it somewhere and they will get lots of sales. Unfortunately, that will rarely get many sales.

In reality, creating and listing the ebook(s) is only a small part of what’s needed. After that (or sometimes before), what makes the real difference to sales, is effective marketing and promotion. This article will tell you how to do that, so your ebook really sells.

While ebooks can certainly sell well if everything is done effectively, sometimes the same content can sell even more effectively, for ten times the price in another format such as an online course of video modules. See my article “How to Write an Ebook and Make Money” for details.

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Optimise your ebook for more sales

There are many things you can do to improve your ebook before you begin other marketing activities. It is worth doing the best you can at this stage, else your other marketing and promotions won’t work as well as they could.

For it to be worth promoting your ebook, you need to do very best you can in terms of quality. This applies to the writing, but also to many other aspects of your ebook.

Understand that your book title is a headline. On the average, five times as many people read the title as read the sub-title. So learn about writing the most effective headline you can and test different options, since the title can be the single biggest factor in selling your ebook effectively.

A simple Google Ads test can easily tell you which potential book title is actually more popular with people. For example, Tim Ferriss, the author of “Four Hour Work Week”, spent $200 and found a much better book title than the one he was planning to use, (and started building a mailing-list at the same time).

Or for free, ask people on a suitable forum or FaceBook Group which title they’d be most likely to buy.

Your book cover is also a vital element of marketing. It should be clear, professional and outstanding. For selling on Amazon, it is one of the most important factors, since it is the only thing people will see when they are skimming through the listings.

Editing is also vital, especially if your book is going to be listed on Amazon or other book selling platforms. To get good reviews, everything must be correctly edited, and good reviews are a very important factor for sales.

Pricing is also an important factor in ebook sales.

A general guide is to look at what others are doing in the same genre and format, and do something similar. If you are unknown, it can sometimes help to start at a slightly lower price than others, then increase your prices as you get known.

If your ebook is about practical information, and is high quality, it can often work well to price yourself higher than most competitors, as that will suggest that your information is of more value (especially if you can help suggest that with your book title).

When people are looking for a real solution to their problems, or a real method of getting what they really want, they are motivated to choose whatever seems most likely to help them for real, and higher price suggests better value.

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General points on marketing and promoting your ebook

In general, for all promotional efforts, make sure you use a call to action wherever suitable (don’t just assume that people will know what to do and choose to do it. TELL them what to do, specifically).

Make sure you create a marketing plan, think through the ramifications of each step you are doing so you do things in the right order, get the timing right (for something like a book launch, for example) and prioritise what’s likely to be most effective.

A targeted, niche approach to promotion will see better results than a traditional “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” campaign.

This article covers a lot of different things, and it’s unrealistic to go into lots more detail about each of them here, so if you have any questions, download my more detailed guide below and . . . I can give you more details on any topic from this article on my FaceBook Group. Join me for high quality discussion about all aspects of online business. Posts on that group include useful tips on how to promote ebooks more effectively.

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Where to sell your ebook

There are a lot of places where ebooks can be sold. As with other methods, it will usually work better to focus on a few platforms and do them well (with effective marketing and promotion etc.), than to just list the ebook everywhere you can find and hope for the best.

Amazon is an obvious option for selling ebooks. For selling on Amazon, the cover (make sure it stands out and looks high quality) and choice of categories (choose at least one which has low competition) are important, as is your product rating by buyers who leave reviews. If you get enough good reviews then Amazon will promote your book more, for free.

The number of reviews during the initial week or so is very important, so it’s worth building a mailing-list (see below) and doing an effective book launch if you can. This can include booking professional reviewers (from websites, blogs etc. who review books like yours) beforehand to leave their review during the launch period, and doing a podcast tour, social-media promotions and other promotional activities before the launch, to build your mailing-list and make the launch as big as you can.

A launch is one time when lowering the price can be a good idea. List it on Amazon at the full price first, then once that is accepted, you can temporarily lower the price during a short launch period.

You can also sell ebooks on eBay, although there are strict limitations, so make sure you understand how it works before you make any mistakes.

For optimum results, plan your back-end (things you sell to the same people later) . . . for an effective info-product seller on Ebay, 80% of the profit might come from the back-end (i.e. things you sell to them later), so it can still work if your front-end product (what you sell on Ebay) is only breaking-even, or maybe even losing money, because what you are really doing is building a mailing-list of subscribers who you know are interested in a specific type of info-product.

The price-point on Ebay might be around a quarter of what you’d usually sell the ebook at elsewhere, but if your back-end works well, profit on the front-end doesn’t really matter. Research the typical sell-through percentage (the percentage of sales vs. no-sales, for completed listings) for similar ebooks, so you can estimate your profit or loss (knowing the listing cost). See what is working for others there, and do something similar.

Other places to sell ebooks include JVZoo and ClickBank, both of which have a lot of ebooks about online business, but plenty in other categories too. On those platforms, you can set an affiliate commission so that other people will sell your ebook for you, and you can announce the launch on places like MunchEye, and suitable FaceBook Groups.

Selling ebooks from your own website

The basic elements of a website are :-

• domain name (i.e. Yourwebsite.com)
• hosting (a location for the files which contain the data of your website, such as the text, images, videos etc.)
• an optional content management system (which makes it easy for you to make changes, add links, blog posts, images videos etc. I recommend WordPress)

I won’t go into details about all those here . . . if you want my recommendations, my guide “Easy Website Creation with WordPress.– Domain, hosting, & WordPress installation, optimization, and customization” is here (for only $1).

Think whether you should create your website focusing on “you the author”, about an ebook or ebook series, or focusing on the subject which your ebook or series is about.

The style and “look” of the website should fit the with your books are about. The easiest way to get some ideas on that is . . .

. . . have a look at top websites on the same topic (do a Google search and look at each relevant website from the results), and then do something similar. When you’ve created an initial version, ask experienced people for their opinions . . . for example ask on my FaceBook Group.

You can sell on your own site using PayPal or alternatives such as Stripe, Payoneer etc.

Look at some of the leading websites in your subject (Google your niche, and look at the websites on the top page), and take note of what they are selling and how they are doing it.

To sell products on your website, you will need sales-pages. You might also need one or more squeeze-pages (to build a mailing-list), and probably some blog article content for SEO.

Long sales-copy can often work well for selling information products to new visitors. See what other people are doing to sell similar products to yours, and do something similar (but never an exact copy of someone else’s content).

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SEO

Whether you are selling your ebook(s) from your own website, or from another platform, the more visitors you get, the more likely you are to make sales. Yes, SEO can be applied to your listing on Amazon and on most other platforms.

“SEO” means “Search Engine Optimization”. Which means doing things so that Google (and other search engines) give you more free visitors (known as “organic traffic”) to your content.

SEO has the advantages of often being free, and producing increasing results over time from a constant amount of work. The disadvantages are that it can take a lot of work, and a lot of time (weeks at least) before you get significant results.

The #1 most important factor for SEO in 2020 is consistently posting high quality, relevant content. Although the number of words is not actually factor (despite many SEO “experts” claiming that it is), what matters is having a lot of relevant expert phrases and related context on your web-page, and a lot of words are likely to be necessary to achieve that. Most of your pages should have at least 500 words, and your in-depth articles should have typically over 2,000 words on a page.

Your articles can talk about the problems your services solve, or other content which someone who needs your ebooks would be interested in.

The most important factor for off-page SEO (things you do outside your website) is to only build high Domain-authority links to your site from related topics, and make them look as natural as possible in terms of how quickly you build them, which pages they link to etc.

For a comprehensive course on SEO, my free guide (worth $27): “Effective SEO Secrets for More Targeted Traffic in 2020” is available here:

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Social-media marketing

Effective social-media activity is a must for anyone who wants to sell more ebooks.

Remember that people go to social media to be entertained and find interesting content, they don’t usually go there to buy things (although Pinterest can be an exception). So give them what they are looking for . . . interesting content that they will want to Share, such as your blog posts, videos, etc.

You should create your own FaceBook Page for either yourself as an author, or for a specific ebook series or collection of related ebooks, whichever makes most sense (you can have multiple Pages).

You could also create and grow your own FaceBook Group for people who are likely to want to read your ebook. One way of getting members to your Group is to post high-quality informative content on relevant, but non-competitive Groups, with a link there to your own Group.

Other social-media includes Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. Each has different demographics, so do some research to see which is the best fit for your ebook topic. See how similar ebooks are being promoted on your chosen platforms, and do something like that (but better!).

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Other ebook sales, marketing and promotion approaches

Selling on forums and discussion boards can be effective, but only if done correctly. Do your research, have a look at what other people are doing successfully to sell on each specific forum, and be willing to take your time and do your ground-work before trying to sell anything.

One common way to sell, which is allowed on most forums (although there are various rules you need to check, on each) is including a link in your signature on that forum.

Paid ads can be used to promote an ebook. If you are considering paid ads (such as Google ads, FaceBook ads etc.) it might be better to use them to build a mailing-list by giving them something of value first, then posting information so they know, like and trust you, before you tell them where they can buy your ebook. That is likely to be a more cost-effective strategy, long-term.

Paid Memberships.

This can be a great way to obtain a recurring income (i.e. you get paid every month) from a bunch of related ebooks (or other content).

A membership site might have a subscription fee of $19.95 or $29.95 per month.

These can be hugely profitable if done well, for example Lynda.com made 3 million a month and sold for over a billion dollars.

To keep members eager to continue paying the subscription fee, you need to add new content regularly (you can help this process by announcing up-coming content before it is ready).

Do some research on what other similar paid memberships are charging, so you know what to charge. Make sure you add a decent amount of content before you start selling the membership, so that initial members will be happy to continue to pay their membership.

For more details on paid memberships, including platforms to implement your membership on (as well as lots more details on every aspect of selling ebooks and other formats) , get my free guide (below).

Building a mailing-list

A great way you can promote your ebooks more effectively is to build a mailing-list of people who might be interested in buying them. Offer them something of value for free, in exchange for their email address.

A “Squeeze-page” is the page, or area on a web-page, where you have your list sign-up Form. It is also known as an opt-in form.

There are many different mailing-list management systems you can choose from. At the time of writing MailChimp, one of the best known mailing-list management systems, and is free for up to 2000 list members. An alternative is BuilderAll, which also gives you web-hosting, design, plus a lot of other tools, all for a small monthly payment.

Post interesting information to your mailing-list regularly, so your subscribers know, like and trust you, which makes them much more likely to buy your ebooks when you promote them to your list.

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This article has taken a brief look at some ways to sell ebooks online, but there is SO more more information available for free . . . for LOTS more details on all aspects of selling ebooks (and selling the same information in other formats), get my free guide (worth $27): “How To Build An Information Product Empire You Can Be Proud Of“:

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