eBook Marketing With A Twist

You've published your web site, written your e-book, joined a PPC network and still no appreciable sales. Does this sound familiar? It's not just you but thousands of eager entrepreneurs who have jumped on the proverbial eBook bandwagon and have experienced the pain of Internet marketing. Unless you have unlimited funds to play the "Pay Per Click" game it takes a long time of trial by error marketing on the Internet to become profitable.

What Are The Alternatives?

You could pack up and leave town, with your tail between your legs or think about how to better position your literary masterpiece. Your purpose was not to give the eBook away but to sell it at a fair price and make a profit. In this article I'm suggesting a twist to the traditional marketing of your information product. Give it away! No I haven't lost my mind. Giving your Book away can take a number of interesting turns and in fact is a common Internet marketing tactic.

Giveaway marketing is nothing new on the Internet yet many individuals haven't used it to any great extent. In the physical retail product world it is sometimes referred to as a "loss leader" a cheap item sold at near cost to bring buyers into the store. It's been working for many years and it's no different on the Internet.

1. Resale Rights: Sell the re-sale rights of your eBook individually. Let the reseller charge their own price with your specified minimum floor, which only you set. Selling the re-sale rights will allow you to give more value to your offering and at the same time provide you with a co-branded e-Book. This is a great affiliate strategy!

2. Embedded Links: Give the book away with all of your own affiliate links embedded in the eBook. Each affiliate link will still have your specific coding. Each time the eBook is passed on to another individual your coding will remain intact and each time a product or service is purchased, with your link, you will receive the appropriate commission.

3. Teaser Software: Another idea is to give a partial eBook away as a teaser. This is done by creating your eBook and distributing the first one or two chapters for free. If your customer likes what they read they have the option of unlocking the entire ebook upon payment. To date you are unable to do this with simple .pdf software. (Although you can lock your pdf with a password you can't issue different passwords to each customer.) You can however invest in ebook software that will allow you to provide a specific number of pages or chapters to be viewed. If the customer wants more they will be brought to a payment page to buy the book. In this way if your ebook is pirated off of your site they will not be able to unlock it. There is available ebook software that allows you to do this for a nominal fee.

4. eBook Branding: If you don't sell ebooks and want to get and edge you can write an ebook extolling the benefits of your product with brandable links within. This is a great way to attract affiliates to sell your products. They can brand the ebook with their own affiliate links and distribute them to their customers. You provide the ebook and the branding software to your affiliates. It's very easy and cost effective to implement.

5) eBook Compilers: A good eBook compiler can also issue individual passwords to each customer to unlock the ebook once it's been downloaded. If the customer wants a refund after your initial guarantee period you can easily issue the refund and discontinue the password making it impossible to open after you have refunded the money. A top rate compiler is expensive though.

The main point is that you shouldn't be confined by one way of doing things. You could spend a lot of money attempting to sell your eBook through PPC or eZine advertising yet it may not appeal to your target audience as a stand alone product. But when you offer the same book as a product and not an end sale you open the field up for potential buyers.

Although the Internet is not known for random acts of philanthropy, it is still considered one of the last places to get free information. It's therefore natural to give information away freely and not draw undue concern from potential customers.