Once you’ve finalized your eBook you can now move on to sharing and marketing your new creation. The sad fact is that many people spend a lot of time creating amazing content that they fail to share with their audience. They feel as if promoting is somehow bad. But the truth is if you create something that solves problems and you’re not marketing it, you’re doing your audience a disservice.
There are numerous ways to share and market your eBook, let’s look at some of the ways.
Setting Up Your eBook as a Paid Product
After the creation and editing process is done it’s time to set up your eBook as a paid product. To accomplish this, you’ll need to invest in shopping cart technology, create a sales page, and a thank you/download page. In addition, you’ll want to create a special segment of your list for people who purchased the eBook so that you can market to them later.
Shopping Cart Technology
Today, there are numerous shopping cart technologies that you can use to help boost sales. One of the best to use is Amember.com. Amember.com is not just a membership software, it is also a shopping cart, plus an affiliate manager. With Amember you get everything you need in one software but you may need help from someone who understands the software to get it set up.
But, there are others that you can use if you don’t want to invest in that yet. You can use software like Zaxaa.com free. They don’t advertise their free version anymore so the best way to discover this is to sign in for an account as an affiliate.
Once you have the account setup, you will see on the dashboard an option to sell your own products. The free version is limited and they will charge a processing fee per sale. But it’s a good program to use to get started and still allows people to sign up to sell your product as an affiliate.
If you upgrade, Zaxaa.com has features such as landing pages, a beta email marketing software autoresponder system, and more. As a hosted system it’s more expensive than Amember.com but you may be able to figure it out on your own without hiring someone.
These are only two software ideas but there are much more such as clickbank.net, JVZOO.com, and others. Look at a few ideas to find one with the features you know that you need. Regardless of which technology you use, you’ll need to create at least two pages to lead your buyers through the buying process. A sales page, and a thank you / download page.
Creating a Sales page
A sales page doesn’t have to be super fancy. You can use landing page software such as leadpages.net, Clickfunnels.com, or Instapage.com (or what is inside Amember and/or Zaxxa) but you can also use your website software such as WordPress to make a perfectly good landing page.
To make a good sales page it should include the following information:
- A great headline – Every sales page needs a telling headline that draws attention to what’s in store. To create an effective headline for your sales page ask yourself what the benefits are to the buyer. Those benefits are likely also great keywords to use for your headline.
- Subheads and whitespace – As you write the copy for the sales page, remember to allow plenty of whitespace. Remember that your audience is either looking at the sales page on their mobile device or their personal computer. You want it to be easy to scan and read the vital information. A bolded list of benefits is a terrific way to go.
- Persuasive copy – A sales page is supposed to persuade your audience to buy or convert in the way that you want them to. Use words that trigger them to feel emotions. If you know your audience well, you’ll know just what to say to get their attention.
- Success stories – If you have a success story you can share, whether yours or someone else’s, this is also an effective way to design your sales page. People love stories because it helps them relate better to the information. You can even use your own success story to tell the story of your eBook.
- Foster rapport – The sales page offers ample opportunity to foster rapport with your audience if you speak directly to them in the most personal way that you can on a sales page. Including your picture, including your story, including a video that helps them get to know you all will help build rapport with your audience.
- Develop credibility – Adding information that develops your credibility as the right author for this eBook will also help build trust. For example, have you been in business successfully for several years making mistakes that you can prevent others from making?
- Testimonials – Even if you don’t have testimonials for this exact product, you can use testimonials about your work in general. Otherwise, ask some of your better-known colleagues, affiliates, and customers to please provide testimonials as soon as possible that you can include in your sales page later.
- Proof – People want to know that something works. If you have proof that your methods work, show that proof. Whether it’s a screenshot of your shopping cart, bank account, or case studies of others show the proof so that you can build trust and reduce risk.
- A great offer – Of course, your most essential element is your awesome offer. Once they read the sales page they likely have an idea in mind of how much your product should cost them. Make the offer shocking and surprising. Not by being cheap but by explaining the worth of the offer within the sales copy.
- Risk reduction – Remember to help your audience feel less risky by offering a great return policy. It might seem unfair to have to return money to people who can keep your hard work, but it will be worth it to maintain your reputation to simply return money to people and state so on your sales page.
- A clear and solid CTA – Of course, the call to action is imperative. You want to use beautiful graphics, fonts, and images that help direct your viewer's eye toward the buy button so that they know exactly what to do and how to do it. Instead of putting “buy now” on your button, why not say something like “Yes! I want to be Free!” or whatever one of your most important benefits are?
When you include these elements in your sales page you can be certain that your audience will take notice and make the choice to purchase your new eBook. But, your relationship with your audience doesn’t end at the buy button.
Creating Thank You / Download Page
The thank you page, which is also the download page is an essential element of selling your eBook too. There are numerous rules of thought on this topic but a thank you / download page is such a wonderful opportunity that you probably don’t want to skip it.
You could attach some of your eBooks to deliver directly to email, and you could offer direct access to the delivery within a membership area, but a download page also offers extra opportunities to create an upsell or another offer.
Some components you may want to include on a download page include:
Say Thank You
Of course, you want to tell the buyer thank you for their purchase. A good practice is to congratulate them on being so smart to make their purchase, giving them an overview again of the benefits of their purchase. That way, they feel like they’re a member of a private club.
Give them the File
Even if their file is included in their member's area, the thank you / download page is a good place to include a link to their member's area, plus a way to click on and download the file directly.
Provide Clear Directions
Many people buy items online and simply do not understand how it all works. Including very specific instructions such as “to get Name of eBook right now click this link” might not even be enough.
You may need to explain that a file will pop up and to click OK to download. You may, depending upon your audience, need to explain how their purchase is also part of their membership and where that sign on is, and where the file may download to their computer.
Upsell Something
A download / thank you page is also prime real-estate to offer another product that is complementary to the one they bought. For example, if you offered an eBook on how to eat healthy based on a particular diet, you could upsell them a monthly done-for-you, meal plan on that thank you / download page.
Simply point out on the thank you / download page the item. For example, “Wow, Congratulations for your purchase, if you follow the information in this book, you’re sure to be healthier in just 30 days from now. Why not make it easier by getting our 30-day menu and shopping list?”
Cross Promote
Another thing you can do on a thank you / download page is to cross-promote your other resources and social media. You can do that simply by making a list of “Other Things That May Help You” at the bottom of the download page. Remember to keep the information above the fold easy to understand so that they can get their product easily.
Even if you don’t have your own product to recommend you may know of an affiliate offer that will work great as a complementary resource to your eBook that you can upsell to them. The thank you / download page is an important part of making your buyers feel special, plus, encouraging them to buy more product from you.
Creating Autoresponder Messages
When your audience buys from you it’s important that you’ve set up your autoresponder software properly so that they are put on the right email list or tagged in a segment depending on which autoresponder software you use.
Each is slightly different but you should be able to use the technology to segment your list so that only buyers who got the eBook are on the list, and only buyers who took advantage of the upsell are on a different list or different segment of your complete list.
With that in mind, you’ll need to create specific autoresponder messages based on the segment they’re going to be in. A good course of practice is to create 7 to 10 autoresponder messages for each purchase or download.
An autoresponder series might look like this:
- Congratulations on your smart purchase with directions
- Tips for getting the most out of name of eBook
- Let me know what you think of name of eBook
- Blog broadcast from a related blog post you created
- Email recommending the upsell if they did not take it
- Email recommending complementary affiliate products
- Invitation to your Facebook Group
- Email educating about a problem related to the first problem
- Email asking for testimonials
- Email sharing success stories
As you can see, you can keep adding to this autoresponder by offering help, advice, and information about the problem they purchased the eBook to solve while also offering other related products and information.
Whatever you include in the autoresponder series you want to say thank you, give them directions to the download page, follow up with their purchase to ensure they’re having satisfactory results, poll them about satisfaction, and encourage them to submit testimonials. In addition, you’ll want to start encouraging them to buy the next related item you’re offering.
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