4. Attend a Free Workshop
 
Attend a training workshop. Find a one day training workshop on any subject that interests you. Attend and pay attention to how the workshop is organized.
 
Take photos of the stage, the registration desk, any signs, serving tables, product displays… remember it’s always easier to say sorry than ask permission! Collect copies of all the hand-outs, registration, and marketing materials used to promote and manage the event.
 
We regularly book ourselves onto coaching and training events in a wide variety of subjects because you can always pick up some new ideas.
 
Keep a dossier of all that you collect, you may need this material at a later date as reference when you eventually produce your own training workshops.
 
5. Go to your local Borders or WH Smith
 
You want a place with an extensive magazine collection. Spend some time looking at the number of magazines that cover specific niches.
 
Look for trends of increasing or decreasing magazine covering specific topics. Find and buy magazines on subjects you know nothing about, but seem interesting to you.  
 
As you know, if you’ve attend a workshop with us, Neil & I regularly haunt our local Borders store and purchase all kinds of magazines.  We’ll be taking some of our collection to the New Rules Seminar to help attendees get some fresh ideas.
 
Read the magazines you buy, especially the letters to the editor and the ads. Look for opportunities to solve problems. Look for interesting technologies and topics that might be your future niche.
 
6. Take lots of photographs
 
Go to your nearest big tourist destination. Visit the nearest large tourist town and take your camera.
 
Make it your goal to pick up all the free brochures, flyers, maps, free newspapers, and other marketing material you can find for businesses and activities in the area. File these for later use as reference material for product ideas, business examples, and marketing materials.
 
Take photos of interesting businesses, signs, promotions, exhibits.  Sign up for a iStockphoto account as a contributor and upload some of your photo’s to be used.  You can earn some dollars/pounds for your photos!
 
7. Make A Video
 
Spend an afternoon shooting a video, then edit it and burn it to DVD.  Start with a topic that interests you and make a mini documentary about it.  Have an objective for the documentary, then structure it so it has a beginning, middle and end.
 
Shoot some video footage, import it, edit it, add titles and background music, and burn the results to a menu driven DVD.
 
Learn what tools you need to get the job completed, and get it done. Learning to produce interesting videos is a strong path to profitable product development.
 
You can get ahead start on this by getting our Video Profit Secrets Resource.
 
Once you’ve undertaken all these tasks you will have a good grasp on where you can source inspiration, you’ll have conducted some market research, discovered that there are people all over the planet who are interested in buying and learning a whole bunch of stuff .
 
But more importantly, you’ll have built a great resource of images, documents and material to help you get started.
 
Further, you’ll have also practiced your skills in product development by making a short movie.
 
Now all you need to do is chose a topic that is interesting to you (and has market potential too) that can hold your interest for at least 12 months and then become a prolific product producer!

Want Your Own Ebook Empire

Idea Generation Techniques For Your Ebook Business Part 2

Start Your Own Ebook Business Today

Another important feature that you should add on your landing page is pictures.
 
Never forget that people learn in three different styles, in words, in pictures and in sound.  Where possible on you landing page appeal to all these modalities.  But be careful not to make your landing page look like a dogs dinner, with text, images, flash animations and play     buttons everywhere.

Again Ted Nicholas gave advice on the use of images, he said… “never put a picture on a page without having a caption underneath it.”  The space below the picture is good “real estate” and you should treat it as such.

Pictures should be relevant and support your copy. Ted Nicholas is the grand father of copywriting… having him as someone we can call on for copywriting secrets is a real kudos.
 
The placement of images is also important as there are some hot spaces on the first fold of your landing page, typically the hot spots are the top left and right hand corners, middle & centre of first fold and to the bottom right.

Take a look at the top corners of our home pages and you’ll find a tip box and join today!

In previous issues of your Internet Marketing Review we’ve discussed eye tracking analysis of web pages and where your visitors eye looks when visiting a site… it’s probably worth going over this again.

The Visitor Experience

Just as important as your copy is your customer journey.  Your landing page should be easy to navigate and shouldn’t require your visitor to click lots of buttons or go through a convoluted process to get to the order page!

In an ideal situation, your landing page will be shown after one click (the visitor clicking the PPC ad), within the landing page you should be able to collect name and email address information without having to leave the page or break the flow of your copy.

The next click, which is the second click should take the visitor to the order page and then the last click the third… is submit order!

We live in an instant society, and that is all the more  relevant online, where visitors want their information served up in nano seconds!  So, ensure that you give your visitors what they want with as little effort on their part as possible.

Most Wanted Response

If you are spending money on PPC campaigns then there must be a most wanted response from your visitors. If its to get a sale, then your copy needs to be very good.

It needs to inform, educate, persuade, heighten desire and motivate to purchase.  At some point on your landing page, if your most wanted response is to sell then you will need to ask for the order.

You cannot close early enough on your landing page!  Let me repeat that… You cannot close early enough on your landing page.

If a visitor has read your headline, understands the benefits and connects with your product in the first fold of your landing page then there is no reason why you can’t have a button, that says… “OK I’ve read enough & know this product is for me, let me order!”

When the visitor clicks on this or any other order related button they must be taken immediately to the order page.  Not to another selling page.  Remember make life simple and uncomplicated for your visitors.

A confused mind says “NO” and that’s not a situation that you want to have on your landing page or order click through.

Learn more about selling ebooks

Early this year Staff’s gave a brilliant presentation on the three key “R”s that you need to get right with your landing pages and PPC ad’s and campaigns. We’ll be publishing that presentation soon in the members only area of Internet Marketing Review.

On a regular basis I click on Google Ad campaigns to see where I end up, sometimes there is a terrific landing page, but more often than not I end up at a home page.

So why is a good landing page so important?

Well, by creating an effective landing page you can get more bang for your buck on a number of different fronts. This means that any money that you spend on ad campaigns must produce results.

The first principle of creating your landing page is to make it specific to the ad that is sending the traffic. That means it must be instantly recognisable from the description in the ad.  The 3 second rule applies to landing pages as much as home pages
.
Very quickly, a visitor must know and connect with why they’ve been directed to the landing page and be anticipating the information that is suddenly presented.

If the role of your PPC ad is to attract clicks and therefore drive traffic, then the primary role of your landing page is to capture that traffic and guide the visitor through a journey that eventually results in them doing one of a couple of things…

1. Leave their name and email address; or
2. Buy your product.

But how do you keep the visitors interest and make them stay on your landing page?
 
Well, this is where your copy writing skills come in.

Your PPC ad did its job by generating traffic but now you need to kick on and start selling, you need to hook your visitor and leave them wanting to read more and more, eventually leading them to your ultimate goal, the Most Wanted Response.

Your landing page needs to have a striking, attention grabbing headline that delivers a promise or benefit that just cannot be ignored.
 
Then you need your sub heads and copy to heighten the want and explain all the benefits that your visitor will gain by using your service or product.

Continue to expand on your headline in your copy with more credible benefits for the visitor.  When we were talking to Ted Nicholas a few years back, he said “your next line of copy must always leave your visitor wanting to read the next line.”
 
To help keep the attention of your visitor, use  subheadings and bullets. Visitors don’t have hours and hours to spend reading every inch of your copy so make it as easy for them as possible, using lists, bullets, checklists will help raise a problem, provide a solution, cement understanding and drive desire.

Using PPC To Drive Traffic To Your Ebook Sales Page Part 2

Learn how to sell ebooks on the internet

Let me tell you “No they’re not” if you know what you’re doing.

For example I have an ebook that sells for $19.99 and in May sold 36 copies of it. A friend of mine sells an ebook about tennis ($24.97) that sold over 217 copies in one month alone!

So, ebooks aren’t dead if you get the topic right.

If you choose the business opportunity world or an Internet marketing topic you’ll find yourself competing with the big boys.

Along with the competition I guarantee you’ll see your ebook ripped off and sold on someone else’s site or EBay. I’m sorry if this sounds negative but many people want something for nothing in this world and aren’t prepared to work themselves.

In fact if you’re thinking of publishing an ebook I’d tell you to keep away from the following topics.

- Business Opportunities
- Legal Advice (Unless you’re a Lawyer)
- Medical Advice (Unless you’re a Doctor)
- Financial Advice (Unless you’re a Financial Advisor, Accountant, etc)

So what’s left?

Everything else!

If you’re looking for a topic I suggest you start with your own hobbies, interests, work experiences, and then move onto subjects you’d like to know about.

If a subject appeals to you you’re more likely to enjoy publishing an ebook about it.

For example you may know I have an ebook about Bonsai trees. When I first started looking into this market I knew nothing about Bonsai trees but always wanted one.

So the research and compiling of the ebook was enjoyable to me as I learnt more about the topic of Bonsai’s.

Formats To Use

There are a number of different ways you can publish your niche market ebook online. The first way is to use an ebook compiler such as active ebook, ebook generator or ebook pro.

These ebook compilers take your book that has been put together using HTML and turn it into an ebook. This way has both pros and cons to it however I prefer to use the Adobe PDF format.

By using Adobe I know that this format will work on 99.99% of computers, including Mac’s.

Many of the ebook compilers aren’t compatible with Mac’s therefore you will be cutting out a proportion of your market…..not good!

PDF’s are easy to set up and very to easy to use from both yours and your customers view. However, they do have a perceived downside.

With some of the ebook compilers you can control who views your ebook and therefore you’ll cut down on the possibility of people selling your ebook on their website or eBay.

With a PDF file although you can stop people cutting and pasting your text and printing if you wish, you can’t stop people passing your ebook around.

Copyright issues

I believe there are 2 forms of copyright that you will come across. One is more serious than the other.

1)  If you buy a book from a bookstore and after you’ve read it you pass it to a friend because you liked it and think they would…this is technically an infringement of copyright. Now, everybody does this and it’s an accepted practice

2) The more serious matter is what I call the wholesale sale and distribution of your ebook either on or offline for profit.

If number 2 happens to you then I recommend that you pursue the matter firmly until the offending party ceases selling your book.

There are various methods to see if anyone has ripped off your website, one such way is to use the advanced search function at Google. Copy and paste some unique text from your website and Google will tell you if it’s indexed any sites that contain your text.

How to gain from the ‘pass around’ of your ebook

If your ebook does get passed around you can build in processes to enable you to at least profit from the people your book has been passed to.

Here’s a couple ways you can profit from pass around:

a) Build in relevant and subtle affiliate links that you can refer people to in your ebook. DO NOT fill your book with links, your customers have bought your book for the information inside and don’t want to feel that you’re pushing a further sale down their throats.

b) Inside your book you can offer a special gift to the person who has bought your book. For example I have given free consulting, another ebook, special software and more.

I’ve had people email and explain they were given my ebook by a friend and they’d like the free gift! At this point I explain that if they buy the book I will send them the free gift!

How to market your ebook

Here’s where many people fall down and if the correct steps are followed marketing your ebook can be a simple process.

Here are three simple methods you can use:

1) Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising. – Using the likes of Google, Overture, E-Spotting and FindWhat you can start driving qualified traffic to your site within 15 minutes.
2) Pick a sub topic from your book and write a 500 – 900 word article about that topic. Then submit these articles to related sites with your resource box and link back to your site at the end of the article.
3) Approach other website owners and offer them a JV deal to sell your book on their site for a percentage of the profits.
Now, and here’s something you won’t want to hear…..you WON’T get rich selling just one ebook.

I don’t care how many times you’ve read about a so called Guru selling 1000’s of copies of an ebook in one week……it won’t happen to you with your first ebook.

However, there are a number of things you can do to up your ebook profits.

1)Launch several ebooks. Let’s say you launch your first book and sell just 5 copies a week — less than one a day.

1 ebook (5 sales per week x $19.99) x 52 weeks = $5197.40

Not bad for one site….Now imagine you have 5 sites or 10 sites. You’d be looking at over $25,000 or $50,000 per year from selling simple ebooks! You can also charge more for some ebooks so your earnings are limited by your own imagination for creating ebooks!

2)To increase your profits from each ebook sale you can use up sell pages at point of sale. This is where your customers, when offered an additional product to buy, agree to purchase the additional product as well as the ebook.

Good upsell products are ‘Gold’ versions of your ebook with extra chapters/information, Audio interviews or recordings of the information in the book, CD Rom copies, consulting via email, the options are limited by your imagination only.

3)The third simple way to increase profits from the sale of your ebook is repeat or backend sales. The easiest sale is always to your existing satisfied clients.

And what do you offer them??? How about Volume 2, then Volume 3? Or another related ebook on a similar topic. For example if someone has bought a book on Garden Roses they may be interested in your next book on Daffodils and other easy to grow garden plants. Hey I’m not a gardener!
Once you have launched your first ebook move onto the next and then the next and the next!

 I Like to quote – “Wash, Rinse, Repeat”

Your first book will take longer than the second, your third will be quicker than your second and so on!

I can now start an ebook project from concept to selling on the net within 7days and you can to………

How?

Just start!

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