Ebook marketing is a hot topic.
According to some, the low hanging fruit, the “easy pickin’s” have already been picked!
Gone are the days when you just write like crazy and fill the gap … in the long tail (Amazon’s long tail that is) .
Selling ONE book is one thing, but seriously making money is a totally different ballgame.
The short answer?
Your ROI will be directly proportional to the amount you invest in the Marketing of your book.
So how do you make serious money nowadays?
I have summarized the various methods of marketing your ebook below along with the pros and cons of each method.
Indeed it looks like the low hanging fruit is gone and we need to start marketing more towards the tower of the long tail – the PULL system.
That is QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.
We will take a closer look at method 1 and 2 in this post.
The methods:
1. 40 blogs in 40 nights – my own favorite system! Write multiple blogs until one gains traction. Then make that blog your funnel.
Pros - This is a great technique for a brand new writer and you can remain completely ANONYMOUS.
Cons - Takes a lot of writing, but you’re a writer, right?
2. The Funnel - Nick Stephenson — Make 1 book permanently free and a second free only if they subscribe to your Email list.
Pros - Your Email list is Gold - you are not dependent on Amazon
for sales anymore.
Cons - None, really!
3. Beta Readers + mass marketing - Charlie Hoehn — Validate your book in forums and blogs. Then leverage them to launch your book.
Pros - Your Beta readers are like free editors and launch teams!
Cons - Can take a long time to build a team of good Beta readers.
4. Write a Best Seller - T.Ferriss — Through extensive research and contact with bestselling authors, you write a book that is VALIDATED and offers “evergreen” content.
Pros - You make one book that sells forever.
Cons - Easier said than done!
5. Perma Free – Lindsay Buroker — You make one book permanently free on all the platforms and let Amazon and Kobo etc. do the rest.
Pros - Probably the simplest method of all.
Cons - You are totally dependent on someone else’s platform.
(amazon, kobo, nook etc.)
6. Loyalty Transfer Blog - John Locke — You “cross pollinate” from Twitter to your blog and website and other platforms like Facebook with “loyalty transfer blogs”.
Pros - You get a strong fan base that buys!
Cons - You gotta be really internet savvy to build the base through blogging and twitter etc.
7. Contests – Bart Baggett — run a contest for an ipad, in order to enter, they have to buy your book and rate it in Amazon.
Pros - You get quick results and launch your book straight to the top of a given category!
Cons - You gotta give away a prize, no big deal, but are these a solid fan base or just one time buyers?
9. Product Platform – Mike Geary
Pros - Very similar to method 1, your blog/website is your funnel, you are not dependent on anyone (like amazon)
Cons - This takes a long time to set up, and you must have a “hit” product. Therefore VALIDATE!
METHOD 1 - Fourty Blogs in Fourty Nights
This is my own patented favorite method.
Step 1:
What you do is write like crazy!
You are a new author right?
You don’t have much of anything, you’re just starting out and you are totally confused and you have NO CLUE what to do!
So start writing blogs, one for each topic.
You are going to write about things you care about, you are going to write about things you DON’T CARE about.
You are going to write positive blogs, and negative blogs — oh yes! I have had more viral posts with negativity than with positivity, sad but true.
The point is you are going to write about anything and everything, and forcing yourself to write about things you don't think you are interested in, forces you as a writer to be disciplined, AND it gives you an amazing different point of view. You are in the initial phase right now so you have to throw the spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks!
IMPORTANT!!!! Every single blog post you ever write MUST HAVE TAGS! Otherwise Google’s crawler can’t find your blog+posts. And no one finds you :-(
I personally had to write over FIFTY blogs before I got results with this technique. But somewhere along the line it’s going to happen, one of those blogs is going to start getting hits, and if you have written well, one of those blogs is going to start getting a lot of hits, around 200 per day. This is our target — 200 unique visitors per day or more.
This fulfills two important things:
- VALIDATION
- Validating your products and books is a very important step — YOU MAY NOT SKIP IT! You must validate your book BEFORE writing it, otherwise how do you know people will buy it? By making multiple blogs and finding out which blogs resonate with the readers, you have just indirectly validated your product or book. Now all you need to do is give your readers the book they want, and you know what it is because you have been writing a blog about it and the readers are telling you what they want!
-
- TRAFFIC
- You need traffic to move and sell things. Obvious right? Well don’t get too happy about 100 uniques visits per day, nor 150, good results start at 200 and pick up around 300 unique visits per day — and these are relatively LOW figures. But we’re just starting out right? So a solid 200 - 300 uniques per day is a decent start.
-
Step 2:
Take the winning blog and poll the readers.
Maybe you already know what they want because the topic of your blog is so specific? If not, just ask them! There are many ways to do this, directly in a blog post, or if you have been collecting emails — email your readers.
Once you have thought of the perfect Ebook for these readers, make it!
Killer Tip #1: Make an Ebook out of your winning blog! Take the best posts and the best questions from the reader mail and collate it into one slick and good looking Ebook!
Step 3:
Once you have made the book you put it smack dab top and center of your winning blog. Not only that, but you put an affiliate link to your book in Amazon.
Homework:
Go to Amazon RIGHT NOW and set up your affiliate account.
Whenever you launch a book, you will use YOUR AFFILIATE LINK when telling people to go get your book!
That’s it! Keep making books for the readers of this blog and remember to “cross pollinate” to your other books and blogs.
This technique does not rely too much on Email lists but instead on traffic from google. This means your blog must be interesting and your posts must be tagged with a lot of keywords. This is called SEO - Search Engine Optimization, and it is a whopper of a topic in itself. See this article about “good” keywords and SEO for your posts.
METHOD 2 - The funnel + lead magnet
The Email List is the most important online marketing tool of our age. It is THE method nowadays and you if you are not building your Email list right now, you are simply in the stone-age with the fax machines and other anachronisms.
This method is so good I am going to let the master of it - Nick Stephenson - tell you about himself:
I strongly recommend you read everything Nick has to say about marketing.Nick makes a SIX DIGIT INCOME from his Ebooks, employing mainly the method in the pdf above. That’s reason enough to do it, isn’t it?
There is a major lesson to be learned from Nick:
The Email List Building “technique” is the single most powerful “internet technique” out there. You can sell ANYTHING if you have a solid fan base in the form of an Email list — it doesn’t have to be books!
So please give Nick your likes and love by subscribing to his blog, and pick up his free Ebooks and Videos while you’re at it, it’s worth it.
THE SHOWDOWN — A/B TESTING MARKETING METHODS!
Eric vs Nick!
In a matter of weeks now, I am going to launch four books, two with method one — my own method, and two with method two — Nick Stephenson’s. I will be posting the results on my blog, www.zbooks.co — live, in real time:
A.) Fourty Blogs in Fourty Nights (I already have a 200+ unique blog).
B.) Funnel+Lead Magnets (setting it up right now with 2+ books).
Stay tuned my friends, this is going to be fun!
