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What's
In
It for You That Isn't In
Your Site
Your
website is basically one type of
marketing tool. An e-book is a different
kind of marketing tool... with
different potentials:
- It can be
advertised where your website
can't... in e-book directories -
and, if it's free, in many freebie
directories. (By the way,
plenty of e-books are listed as
"software" with a "1.0" after the
title!). And this is a way to
attract traffic to your site (or
perhaps just customers for your
business) who you wouldn't otherwise
reach.
- If it's free,
it's viral - others might pass it
on. Plenty of webmarketers are
disposed to recommend or give away
quality e-books - perhaps as bonuses
for purchases or e-zine sign-ups,
perhaps bundled with other
e-books (their own, for instance).
- Even if it's for
sale (we'll talk about that in a
minute), it might be viral... if you
give away or sell resell rights to
it.
- You can
make it rebrandable (more on
that in a bit too) - so that
downloaders of it will be more
interested in (will get more benefit
from) passing it on to others.
- Even if
your website doesn't generate enough
traffic to attract advertisers, you
might be able to sell (or trade) ad
space in your e-book.
And you don't even
have to write anything... it's already
written!
A
Look at the For-Free vs. For-Sale
Issue...
Most website content
is for free... so most e-books
"lifted" from websites will probably
be free. After all, if they can
get it for free in one place, why not
the other?
Hmm...
Actually, I see no reason why some
interested webmarketer might not try
selling an e-book that reproduces his
free website. Marketers of all
sorts try different prices all the
time - often including "free".
And if you can gain access to entirely
different market segments for your
site and your e-book, one might
reasonably be happy to pay for what
the other expects for free.
I can think of one
circumstance where it might make excellent
sense to sell rather than give away
what's free on your site...
Translations. A complete
translation of your site content into
another language certainly sets you up
to approach another market
entirely. If it's one that
doesn't have access to much useful
material on your subject (most of it's
in English?), those folks might be delighted
to pay so that they don't have to wade
through a language they're not
proficient with.
And maybe everything
on your site isn't free. If you
sell access to a "private site"
archive of some sort, selling a
compilation of selections from that
might make sense. Especially if
your private site members could be
persuaded to resell it for
you! - via an affiliate program or
resell rights.
Of course, you can
make an e-book free and for
sale... if you password-lock the
for-sale portion/s. (And if you
aren't a very well-known author, this
is an excellent way to get your book
out there - via free, viral downloads
- and make some money selling
the passworded part. That's kind
of like having a free website that
includes a membership "private site"
as well...)
Also, some authors
choose to sell e-books to the people
who download directly from
them... And let those people
resell or give them away.
Oh, and of course if
you do sell an e-book in some
fashion... You really ought to
consider setting up an affiliate
program for it! If you don't
want to go all out... ClickBank
offers an easy means of doing this
(for a single-tier program) and
for inexpensively taking credit/debit
card orders.
What
Can
You/Should You Reproduce?
In any case, your whole
website might not be needed for an
e-book. (In fact, you'd probably
do well to purposely leave something
out... so the people who have never
visited your site have a reason to go
there also.)
Perhaps you'd be
able to just focus on one type of
content. (You can always allude
to the rest in the book - providing
links, of course!)
Even just one long
article might be something people
would love to read as an e-book. ...No
one says a great book can't be
short! (Another possibility is
to submit just some of that
article to online article directories
and e-zines... Letting readers
know that the rest of it is
available in e-book form.)
Or you might indeed
want to gather together all of, or a
subset of, your own articles into book
form. (You'd need permission to
put someone else's work into an e-book
of your own. That's a
possibility too, though - since it
would mean good exposure for the other
author.)
Nor should we
neglect graphical content...
ArtToday.com could probably make a
bundle selling "e-books" of web
graphics by topic. (An e-book
doesn't have to be
downloadable - it could be on a CD.)
Choose content
that's both of popular/timely interest
and that hangs together well.
That which hangs together well is
almost a book already!
And you should definitely
consider reproducing content that
pre-sells (recommends and adds value
to) one or more affiliate programs.
...Take full advantage of the viral
aspect of e-books, and get your
affiliate links in there! An
e-book can be a wonderful way
to promote affiliate programs (in the
background, most likely).
One
More
Great Reason to Do This...
Turning your website
into an e-book is a wonderful
opportunity to review your
site! ...All kinds of useful
revisions and fruitful ideas can come
out of that.
Gordon
Pioneering - Copyright 10-2001
REPRINTING
THIS ARTICLE:
You are
very welcome to reprint this article in
its entirety, including hyperlinks,
if you'll also put this resource box
at the end:
=======================================
Sherry Gordon is the
learn-it-and-pass-it-on creator of
"The Affiliate Marketing Primer", at http://www.AffiliatePrimer.com/
=======================================
If
you'd like to receive it via
autoresponder, send a blank message
to: mailto:website-ebooks@getresponse.com
Many thanks for your interest!
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