In part 1 I offered some of the requirements to promoting a digital product online. If you didn’t take those steps, revisit Promoting Your Digital Products: 5 Best Practices for Content Creators to take advantage of low or no-cost means of getting your product visible. Now that the basics are out of the way, here are 5 more practices to not only get noticed, but convert prospects to revenue.
1. Samples & Evaluations
Locate outlets for articles you can write to provide help and advice while stealthily promoting the eBook. You can use article directories like Ezine Articles or Articles Base, but you can also search Technorati for related blog sites online to your topic that have tons of traffic and accept submitted material from writers. Your submissions may contain text hyperlinks or an author’s box that links to your eBook landing page (s).
You have a couple of techniques here:
- Submit articles that are free segments from the eBook. Never give away the entire book, but a great chapter that offers value and teases the reader for more.
- Write a review about your book using an author alias, so it isn’t you reviewing your own work in the view of the online world. You can find 3rd party reviewers for your book by Google searching or visiting gig-oriented sites like Fiverr.com.
2. Purchase Traffic Directly
Using Google Adwords or any other online ad forum, advertise your eBook within your permitted daily budget to guide people to your sales page. Facebook Ads, for instance, can be very targeted based upon attributes of the members in their data source, segmented by age, location, language and interests. Now your ad is only served up to those who match the criteria, enhancing the chances that any visitors are really interested in your eBook and not simply money-wasting tire kickers.
3. Joint Venture Relationships
If you don’t already have a large subscriber list, it will take a while before you have any scale to make any headway with email marketing. That’s all right. Take advantage of business newsletters (start with the ones you subscribe to) that complement your subject to use their already large circulation.
How?
Contact the publisher or author and provide a commission for the good will of that person or company to promote and provide an ad about your eBook. Discover how big the list is. You can rent the list as well, but may be able to get free access to it using the commission system. Don’t be pennywise; give the list operator 50-75 %. It’s a digital book! Your cost of delivery once created and online, is zero.
4. The Amazon Marketplace
Exploit the ridiculous amount of traffic that Amazon.com has of folks interested in discovering books and sign up as an author. Amazon has a thorough policy for getting your eBooks on the web and priced on their website, and for this approach you don’t even have to handle the ecommerce. They do. As an Amazon.com partner, you can list your eBook beside any others you are interested in on your website and earn commissions when your eBook is clicked through and purchased.
5. Affiliate Promotion
Just like the JV illustration above, offer your book with similar commissions to partners who can sell it on their own web pages. Google search “affiliate marketplaces” or simply go to Clickbank, the biggest affiliate marketplace for digitally downloadable items, and follow their set-up process to get your eBook listed and accessible for internet marketers, most of whom you will never meet. Make the sales commissions appealing to get affiliates that will get results. To use this process like a pro, you ‘ll want to make several static and/or dynamic banner ads in typical sizes that your affiliate prospects can retrieve and use on their websites to market your eBook.
About the Author
Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms builds competitive advantage in an online world of sameness. He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in theSmartShop. Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.