Marketing Your Ebook Web Site
In order to generate sales of your ebook, you’ve got to continually work on attracting new visitors to your web site.
What we’ll cover many different options for you to utilize in order to attract new visitors. Due to the fact that each technique covered could be an entire ebook in itself, I’ll touch on a each topic rather quickly and then you can add them to your marketing plan.
There is more information on the internet today to market and promote and sell products from your web site than you can imagine and you can find that information on several thousand different web sites, in several thousand different newsletters, and numerous other resources as long as you do one thing. Search for it correctly. If you don’t know what you’re searching for, how can you possibly find what you are looking for?
I speak from experience. I have spent years scouring the 3 major search engines (MSN, Yahoo and Google) for the right and wrong ways to make more sales, become more popular with the search engines, get listed faster, link my site, use the right meta tags, submit articles, place banner ads, etc., etc., etc., flipping my search words one way and then another. It can be very defeating and frustrating.
So, what’s taken me the past three years of repeated searching, saving to my favorites, and subscribing to ezines, I will now share with you in a short period of time, which will in turn save you hundreds, possibly thousands of man-hours.
Before we take a peek at these marketing techniques, I’d like to highly recommend
Small Business Guide To Search Engine Marketing ebook. It’s the – “I don’t even know where to begin” guide to search engine marketing. Yes, it costs a few bucks, but you can invest in it and reap the rewards of this proven information. Believe me, I wish this ebook had been available when I first got started!
On to marketing your site so you can sell boatloads of your ebook.
1). Links- A link is a connection to your site from another site. For example this – http://www.ebay.com - is a link to eBay. Next, if you click on this link - http://www.fishforfree2.com/other.html you’ll see words and images which will take you to somewhere else on the Internet if you click on them. Those are links that connect the visitor to other sites.
Without going into great detail, I’ll say this; links are like a popularity contest - the more links you have pointed at your site, the more popular you become in the World Wide Web, thus increasing your possibilities for new visitors.
Links pointed to your site from other sites mutually help those who are and who aren’t searching for you; With more links, you stand to increase your chances of people finding you who are searching on search engines (MSN, Yahoo, Google) for what you are selling With more links, people who are visiting other sites who aren’t searching for you may discover a link to your site and click on it.
So, getting inbound (pointing to you) links is very important and helps you become more popular – sorry the techniques you used in high school won’t work in this case.
To start accumulating inbound links do the following:
1). Ask – Send an email asking for a link to your site (helps if you already know the Webmaster of the site you are asking for the link). In most cases the Webmaster will give you a link on their site if you place a link to them on your site. There are times when you may not be required to place a return link. Make a list of the people you know who have web sites and ask for a link.
2). Donate your ebook to the Webmaster in exchange for a link to your site. Since your product is digital (electronic download) you have no production costs if you donate it, so you are losing no money.
3). Submit to topic specific search engines or directories. I am not referring to sumitting your site to major search engine rather ones that are search engines for your venue. For instance, I submitted my How To Get Sponsored For Tournaments web sites to FISHING SEARCH ENGINES and FISHING DIRECTORIES. How did I find those type of sites? I went on http://www.msn.com , http://www.yahoo.com and http://www.google.com and typed in – submit fishing url, submit fishing site, add fishing url, add fishing site. The results will generally be search engines and directories that are specific to my search. After a while you just learn how to search and get the results you want. You do the same thing, except not for fishing – unless you’re selling a new fishing ebook.
Outside of following the steps recommended in The Small Business Guide To Search Engine Marketing those a re a few steps you can take to get the ball rolling.
As you work on getting inbound links, you’ll be able to track your success. You can log on to http://www.linkpopularity.com , insert your web address and it’ll give you a report of how many links there are to you on the three major search engines. For example log on to that site and type in my web address – www.fishforfree.com and it’ll show you how many links are pointing to my site.
You can also tell how popular someone else’s site is by typing in their web address. What the heck does that have to do with the price of onions you ask? Well, the way I look at it is if someone else has a lot of links pointing to their site they must receive a lot of traffic and if they receive a lot of traffic I’d like to stick my site in front of some of their visitors. Make sense? One thing most people overlook that doesn’t help you with links but definitely helps in your marketing. When you send out an email always include your web address so others can click on it and visit your side.
As your eBay listings are cooking, as you’re reading the SMGTSEM, and as you’re developing your web site you should also sign up for these FREE newsletters.
Site Pro News - http://www.sitepronews.com/
Small Business Brief - http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/
Web Pro World - http://www.webproworld.com/
Participating on Message Boards
For over a year I had been selling two of my e-books before it hit me: the realization that participating on message boards was another selling avenue. Man, am I slow sometimes. Oh well, maybe it’ll help you as much as it has me since I began participating in forums.
Message boards are also referred to as discussion boards and or forums. Different folks refer to them as different things. Personally, I call them “forums.”
What do people do on forums? And why do they join them? To ask questions and find answers to those questions. Also, some post just for the pleasure of mingling with others who are like-minded. One site I belong to is full of the friendliest anglers in the world who are very helpful and simply enjoy each other’s online camaraderie. If you can find a site that has a forum like that - it’s a winner!
Participating on forums can be very, very beneficial for two reasons:
1) It’s free!
2) In most cases, you can add a link to your website in your signature, allowing other members and forum visitors to see the link to your site.
** One word of caution: Some sites do not allow you to post a direct link to your website in your signature for everyone to see. The reason for this is, if there are paid advertisers—those that use banners, buttons, etc—they are paying to get exposure to their product and/or services and it’s a slap in the face for you and me to come in and promote our wares for free. Just make sure adding a link to your site in your signature is allowed before you join. You’ll be able to see if this is approved by viewing others signatures in their posts or reading forum rules. As you look at the topics you’ll see that many different people have answered (posted) questions posted by others. A signature is appended to the post and it usually links to that individual’s products or services. In other words, their signature will take you to their site if you click on it. **
How cool is that?
Your objective is to find a handful of winning forums by first visiting numerous ones, investigating the topics, viewing questions and answers, numbers of members, and total post count. Finding large forums that have numerous posts and members tells you it’s an active forum. I’ll state the obvious, just to be safe – the more posts, members, and topics the forum or message board has, the more people visit the site and the more exposures your web site will receive. And exposure is the name of the game.
I’ll let you in on something… A list of the biggest forums on the Internet can be found at http://www.big-boards.com
To find forums that are specific to the subject of your e-book, you’ll want to do a search on all 3 major search engines:
MSN (http://www.msn.com )
Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com )
Google (http://www.google.com )
Let’s say you’ve written your e-book on home schooling. You’ll want to log onto each major search engine and search for home school forums. You’ll search using the same words on each search engine and come up with different results.
Next, change your search to home school message boards. Then conduct a search for home school discussion boards.
Complicating your search is not my intention, but you may want to change the word school to schooling in your searches to produce even more results. You should end up with more than enough different websites to investigate and find a few that you can use to your advantage.
Carefully select some forums, join and begin posting with not only questions, but also answers to others questions. This will show that you are interested in helping others get what they want – answers. After all, that’s what most of them are there for!
As you post and contribute regularly to forums, a mysterious thing begins to develop. You create an identity. Posters begin to respect you for your contribution, and those who frequent the board will begin to value your opinion and recommend your products to others. That’s when your hard work starts to pay off.
Here’s a story for you: A while back I had joined a particular bass fishing forum. One day, a relatively new member came on and posted some not-so-positive remarks about my e-book. I had been a member for a handful of months and also was participating as an advertiser and as an angler. Anyhow, when the not-so-positive remarks were posted, what seemed to be an army of friends came out of the Internet hollows and quickly and repeatedly defended my product and ME. There were sooooooooo many posts made in my defense that I didn’t see the need to join in on the topic. And all because I was an advertiser and frequent—very frequent—contributor to the site. So participating on forums can be very, very powerful.
Now, there are a couple of things you can do on forums that will almost assuredly get your web site link posted in your signature, get you some extra publicity, and sales.
1) You may want to consider donating your e-book in monthly contests if the site you participate on has them. This has turned out to be a good advertising avenue for me because I received extra exposure on the forums. It is especially helpful if the site asks the winners to provide reviews in exchange for winning.
2) Become an advertiser on the site you select. Check the advertising rates available and determine if advertising with a banner ad would increase sales. It will, without a doubt, increase awareness of your product. Also, when you are an advertiser you can pretty much post whatever you want – ethically.
Before I completely leave this subject, there’s one little detail that you should know. In every forum that you sign up for you have the ability to create your own profile when you register. In a member’s profile, generally you are asked questions about you, followed by empty spaces where you can fill in the required information – IF YOU WANT! I usually will leave out the personal info: birthdates, hobbies, etc. but will always fill in my e-mail address and my home page. Yes, you can put your website in your profile, so if someone clicks on your user name, your information – website and e-mail address will be accessible. That is another way to get visitors to your website.
As a side benefit, you’ll gain more insight into your particular field – no charge! I’d like to recommend a great site filled with useful information and extremely helpful people – check out Small Business Brief located at: http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum
All in all, the Internet exudes information and anyone can get answers to their questions on a forum, so if you’re there when they stop by, it certainly won’t hurt any. And you may find it actually helps drive more business to your website!
