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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/
- and the websites http://www.ThinkJointVenture.com/ and http://www.KeywordBrainstorming.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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