with your Own Web Site
Judy Cullins c. 2003 All Rights Reserved
Do you need your own Book Web site?
It's great to have multiple sales going for you at Amazon and other
book-selling sites, but you, the hardworking author will receive only $5.50
on a $12.00 book on Amazon. And, you will have to spend time and money to
ship it. Other book-selling sites will send you 20-30% royalties for print
books, and possibly 50% from eBooks, but won't promote it much. With your
own Web site you reap the 100% harvest!
What's stopping you from getting your own site?
One teleclass participant told our group she wanted a site, but thought it
too expensive.
My comment? You can now put up a three-five page web site for $600 or less,
because you use the book's title or facsimile as the domain name, and only
include the sales letter, and the ordering and fulfillment pages. One site:
www.stopyourdivorce sold 150 thousand books with this method in just months.
Another author said it would take too much work to market the web site.
My comment? While you may already do traditional marketing such as speaking,
submitting press releases and book signings, these take a lot of work for a
small payoff. Your coach says investigate an ebook, teleclass or coaching on
internet marketing.
My favorite way is to submit weekly short articles to opt-in ezines and web
sites. Known on 950 other web sites with a link back to my site and in the
top 5 names in most search engines including google, you can imagine how
books sales have soared.
After learning the game, I now spend only six hours a week on this task.
Remember Some Other Benefits
Naturally the best one is that you receive all of the profits. Think of the
huge numbers of people you reach Online with internet marketing--from 15,000
to 100,000 each week or more! When these prospective buyers show up at your
site, you will have a way to collect their email addresses, which allows you
to follow up and contact them about future books, products or services.
Appreciate your visitors because they bring you worldwide publicity at
almost no cost to you, and they bring it 24/7. You can sleep while you sell
books.
With your own site, your promotion opportunities open up. One client was
pointed out as the expert on publicity. She became a guest on big name
teleclasses. Not only are you more accessible to your readers by offering a
few excerpts or tips related to your book, you also establish yourself as
the expert. A web site says that you are a business and you are here to
stay. That does a lot to gain your visitor's trust. And, if you happen to
offer a service, you can link to that web site through your book site.
How can I set up an author's Web site?
1. Get Organized.
Just like anything else, you need to build a foundation, so
all of your efforts are not wasted. When you design your site to titillate
and inspire your visitor and make it easy to buy, you can focus on what you
want--sales.
Start a new folder called "Web Site To Do's." Keep information about what
you need to learn to put up an order-pulling site. Some of the files I
built: 1. how to plan the home page by asking questions: What is the site's
purpose? What is the # 1, 2, or 3 product or service I want to sell? What is
my potential buyer's challenge? Who is my targeted market? What benefits
does my book offer? and at the end of four months, what money should
I achieve? 2. What benefit-driven headlines I would use to compel visitors
to click to the sales message and become buyers. 3. What testimonials to
include on home page. 4. How to capture the visitors' email address.
2. Write a Home Page with Marketing Pizzazz.
You will use benefit-driven headlines on your home page to direct your
visitor to your sales letter, or if you choose to only include a sales
letter as your home page, you will place headlines throughout to guide
people to make that decision you pray for--to click to the order page and
buy! Without professional sales copy, you will not get the book profits you
want. Until I tweaked my home page headlines, my first Web sales were $75 in
a month. After four months, they quadrupled. Within five months,
I sold 30 times as much as my first effort. Now, my book income is more than
one-third my total web site income.
3. Link your Headlines to your Sales Letter.
Your visitors will want more benefits than just one line. Provide these and
a little success story to motivate them to keep on reading. In one client's
web site, she made her sales copy convincing by asking a question. She even
used a strong testimonial as a headline. Her product was aimed at companies
who wanted to build employee morale. "Fire up Your Staff on a Shoestring
Budget!" led her visitor to the feature: low-cost ways to raise morale fast.
She build interest when she talked about her customer's problems leading
them to more power headlines such as "Stop Doing Nothing," letting the
reader know the consequences of not taking action. Needless to say how
excited she was when she made $200 in sales the day after she posted her
sales piece.
4. Link your Sales Letter to your Order Page.
You always have to ask for the sale. You may write along the
way "Are you a skimmer, and ready to buy now? Click here.
You will offer again at the end of your copy. This copy can be
short and sweet using bullets for your top five benefits. Or, you
can write longer sales copy for another audience who loves a story. Remember
benefits and features are different. Features explain what's in your product
such as the tips, charts or client success stories. Potential buyers want
solutions, not features.
Without your book Web site, you will not attract the kind of
buyer you wan and will not treat your book as a business. Over 95% of
authors don't make enough money on their book. . Up level your business by
creating a Web site that gives not only useful information, but organizes
and writes it in such a way that you will profit handsomely.
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Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach
Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams
eBk: "Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Online"
http://www.bookcoaching.com/teleclasses.shtml
To receive FREE "The Book Coach Says..."
go to http://www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml
Judy@...
Ph:619/466/0622
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