How to Develop a Marketing Plan to Sell Your E-Book

This isn't the place to provide full instructions on how to market an e-book, but to suggest directions you should explore. Details about each of these strategies can be found in articles in or linked to by my website.

1. E-book marketplaces

See "Internet Marketplaces Where You Can Sell Your E-Book," Web Commerce Today, 1/15/03 written for my paid subscribers (www.wilsonweb.com/wct6/ebook_marketplaces.cfm). In this article I survey some of the leading marketplaces to give you ideas of where you might place your e-books to increase your net income. This is not a comprehensive list, but suggestive.

2. Search engine positioning

Of course, you'll want to construct your webpages with search engines in mind. But you'll also want to go after keywords and keyphrases that will put you at the top of each of the major search engines in your region of the world. Since search engines have different algorithms to determine ranking, you'll need to have a several webpages for each keyword or keyphrase -- for example, one tuned to score high in Google, another for AltaVista, another for Inktomi, etc. You can get excellent technical information on this approach from Mike Grenham's Search Engine Marketing, Second Edition (updated through November 2002, www.wilsonweb.com/afd/se_report.htm). The software tool you'll need is WebPosition Gold 2.0 (http://www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm). Its Page Critic feature gives you constantly updated information on how to tune for particular search engines, and allows you to analyze your webpage against the top pages on a particular search engine for your keyword, so you can see what makes them tick and move up in your own rankings. There's nothing I know of that is as good. You can get a free trial, if you like (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm). Be aware, however, that search engine positioning done right is time-consuming. You may want to outsource this to a firm that does this day in and day out.

3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising

Overture (www.overture.com) and Google AdWords Select (https://adwords.google.com/select/main) drive a lot of small business ad traffic these days. PPC ads appear as sponsored ads at the top of searches for the keywords you select. You pay 5¢ to several dollars a click-through, depending upon the popularity and competition for the keyword or keyphrase you select. When that keyword is searched on with the major search engines, you can pay to have your ad appear near the top. Google AdWords Select places its sponsored ads in boxes to the right of the search results. The top three bids at Overture.com are carried by many search engines as featured or sponsored links. If you can afford one of these top three positions, you can get a large amount of traffic quickly.

The big question, of course, is whether PPC advertising is cost-effective for your e-book. This depends entirely upon the sales price of your e-book and conversion rate at your website, that is, the percentage of site visitors that end up making a purchase. You'll need to work hard on your landing page -- the page that the PPC ad points to on your site. You'll find the important principles laid out in my 24-page e-book Developing a Landing Page that Closes the Sale (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/landing.htm).

Spend some money with PPC to drive enough traffic so you can make successive improvements in your landing page and then test them. Once your conversion rate seems fairly stable, then you need to calculate the average cost per sale -- a factor of your average PPC ad costs and your conversion rate. You may find that PPC ads make you money if your average cost per sale is 20% to 40% of your sales price. If you're spending more than that, you'll probably have to find another approach -- or raise your price. :-)

A short list of top resources I've found on PPC advertising include PayPerClickAnalyst.com (http://www.payperclickanalyst.com) and Andrew Goodman's excellent e-book 21 Ways to Maximize Profits on Google AdWords Select, newly revised for 2003 (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/pagezero.htm).

4. E-zine advertising

Try advertising in e-mail newsletters targeted to potential readers. If you know enough to write an e-book, you probably have become aware of the leading e-mail newsletters in your field. These are likely to reach the best prospects to purchase your e-book. Call or e-mail the editor to inquire about placing a small ad. Two factors work in your favor: (1) Editors tend to be unsophisticated when it comes to selling advertising, so prices may be modest. (2) Internet advertising prices have been depressed for the last two years, so it's an advertiser's market. Make an offer and see if the editor will bite. You can see how I sell ads in the Web marketing and e-commerce fields on my website (www.wilsonweb.com/ads/).

5. Affiliate programs and CPA Advertising

To supplement other forms of advertising, consider developing an affiliate program through which to sell your e-book. Since you have no printing and distribution costs, you can afford a fairly attractive commission which is paid only when a sale is made through one of your affiliates' links. I pay a 20% commission on my e-books and Web Commerce Today newsletter (www.wilsonweb.com/affiliate), but e-book authors often offer 30% to 40% commission on sales. Don't look at a large commission as losing money. The chances are very good that you would never have sold that e-book at all without the help of your affiliate. View paying affiliate commissions as rewarding your partners for helping you sell. And when they receive your check, they'll be motivated to sell more.

Affiliate programs aren't that expensive to set up these days. Several shopping carts that cater to digital sales include built-in affiliate programs.. For a list, see my companion article "E-Commerce Programs to Sell E-Books and other Digital Downloads," Web Commerce Today, 1/15/03 (www.wilsonweb.com/wct6/ebooks_carts.cfm).

I use Ultimate Affiliate Package (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/groundbreak.htm), by Steve Miles, $199 as my affiliate management system. Unless you're a techie, you'll need help installing it to work with your shopping cart program, but that true of nearly every program. MyAffiliateProgram (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/myaffiliateprogram.htm) is a hosted service that charges a monthly fee, but they do an excellent job -- though probably a bit too expensive for a single product unless your e-book is doing well. However, MyAffiliateProgram can also double as a fine ad tracking system.

Perhaps the most common affiliate program -- and most accessible to e-book authors who already have a website -- is ClickBank (www.clickbank.com), which is also an e-commerce platform that requires neither a merchant account nor a payment gateway. ClickBank charges a one-time $49.95 activation fee and then $1 transaction fee and 7.5% of the sales price, with no monthly fees. They claim 100,000 affiliates -- and I don't doubt it. But you'll need to recruit site visitors to join your affiliate program. ClickBank won't get you many affiliates without your own efforts. That's true, of course, with any affiliate program you use. You'll need some important third-party add-on programs if you decide to be a ClickBank merchant. (See the companion article "Tools for E-Book Authors who Sell via ClickBank and PayPal," Web Commerce Today, 1/15/03 (www.wilsonweb.com/wct6/ebooks_clickbank_paypal.htm).

Marketing e-books isn't easy -- no matter what anyone claims with their "too-good-to-be-true" marketing hype. However, many authors have found e-books to be excellent products with sales that help supplement other income. And many find them valuable as marketing tools, pure and simple, whether or not they ever earn a dime from selling one. Happy marketing!