How to Promote and Sell Your Ebooks

Congratulations, you’ve written an ebook (or you’re planning to, or in the midst of it, or you’re cleaning your desk off in anticipation of considering starting). Whatever your situation, writing an ebook is a great way to make money sharing the stuff you know that will help other people—andto reach a large number of people doing so. You can make a nice supplemental income with your ebooks. Your ebooks can also lead to more opportunities to work one on one with ideal clients.

Most of your ebook promotion will be on the web. That way, ebook sales are just one click away. But don’t limit yourself to web promotion. Below is a sampling of ways to promote your ebooks on and off the web.

1. Create an affiliate program: Get other people to sell your ebooks and give them a generous commission for doing so. Since your cost per book is nothing and they’re making a sale you would not have made, you can pay them generously without eating into your bottom line. Ebook commissions can be anywhere from 20 – 40% or even more. How do you create an affiliate program? Most good shopping carts support affiliate programs. If you include anecdotes and stories about other people, you can invite them to become affiliates. You can also list your affiliate program with sites that support affiliate programs, such as Clickbank, to let the masses know about the potential to become your affiliate and sell ebooks for you.
2. Offer a free five day course: Let people sample a bit of what you have to offer. You can use autoresponders (most shopping carts have them) to deliver your course each day. Deliver value, but don’t give everything away for free. Remind them at the bottom of the day’s lesson that they can get more of this by purchasing your e-book. Help them see that they need more information to have a powerful impact—and they can get that in the ebook.
3. Write hubpages! What a great way to reach a new audience and find people who are interested in articles related to your area of expertise. Provide tip lists, step-by-step guides, video, photos, a link to your ebook sales letter, supporting links and you may find yourself some fans eager to learn more from you.
4. Start a related blog or promote your book on an existing blog: A good blog can get you attention on search engines and through word of mouth. If you enjoy writing about your topic and can commit to posting two or three times a week minimum, a blog may be a great vehicle for selling your e-book. Just be clear what’s in the ebook that they can’t get on the blog.
5. Advertise: Do your keyword research and write ads to appeal to the right target audience, and you could sell quite a few books by advertising through AdWords, on targeted websites in your field, even in newsletters. You probably want to pay per click, unless you’re fairly certain an advertising opportunity will provide a good return on your investment.
6. Sell your product directly on retail sites: This includes Amazon, Clickbank, eBookMall, Ebay and other sites.
7. Set up events and/or workshops and publicize them. This option can enhance ebook sales in several ways:

• If you write a good press release that offers something newsworthy in the main body (such as a tip list about something readers are interested in or statistics, or a story that pertains to hot news, trends or issues that the publication’s readers tend to respond to), local papers are likely to use your release and build a story or article around it. Having a local event at the end of the release, clinches the deal and makes it newsworthy. A plug in the local paper can bring people to your event and to your website, where they can buy your ebook.
• You can make hard copies of your ebook to sell at the event by printing the pages and putting into a three ring binder or other format, or you can take orders and e-mail the book to buyers after the event.
• You can even use your ebook as required reading for the workshop, if it’s appropriate.