Search Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Yech – There is An Easier Way to Start!
Search marketing can be exhausting. I understand how a lot of you can be put off by the work that can be involved in doing it. Sure, it’s true you can earn a lot of extra money (even salary-sized money) by being involved in affiliate marketing and search marketing and on-line publishing and…but buying all the tools, eBooks, and putting all that work into it makes it seem far less inviting…
Then here’s another idea for you instant reward eBook publishers…
GO TO EBAY AND SELL IT
That’s right. Sell it directly to people looking for electronic publications on the worlds largest marketplace!
If you put together a small eBook…a few pages…but you’ve done some solid work, you really don’t need a website or hosting provider, autoresponder, and all that other stuff. Try eBay.
Only…you’ll want to try a few little twists…and one BIG one. There’s also this little tip…don’t use the “Buy it Now” function…you want to create demand and I’ll explain why in a bit.
1. Create your ad copy in an HTML editor like Microsoft Frontpage or any number of free ones available. If you have Microsoft Office free with your computer, use Microsoft Word and save your ad copy as an HTML file.
2. Set your price a little lower than you would otherwise on your own website. If you’re selling a $25 dollar eBook, lower the starting price to about $17 dollars. DO NOT SET A RESERVE PRICE…eBay purchasers hate reserve prices and are less likely to re-bid once they find out.
3. Set up your item on eBay. You can include one picture free, but there’s a way around that too. In the HTML editor, host the photos on a free provider or your own webserver…external links and you can include all kinds of photos.
4. Set your auction to end in 5 days. Why 5-days? Well, we’re creating demand…and for an electronic book that might be the key to solving worldly conflicts, people don’t want to watch your auction item for 7 long days. 3-days is also good, but you won’t get many “second chance” purchasers (more about that in a minute).
5. Offer a full money-back guarantee on the functionality of the EXE file you created for your eBook…NOT on the content of your book. I like full refunds after 7-days, but go ahead and play dangerous and offer a full return for 14-days.
If it doesn’t sell, eBay has a second chance re-listing for free. If it DOES sell, your job isn’t over yet!
In the bid history, you’ll see plenty of people who “missed out” on buying your eBook. Offer it to them! With no printing costs, you can offer as many copies as you want!
Contact them and let them know how sorry you are that they lost out on the item…be nice. Ask them if they’d like to purchase it anyway at the final selling price and do it. You may get a few “no thank you’s” but you just might be able to generate a few more sales that way. 3 days later, repeat the process again and start all over again.
What you are doing here is creating demand for your product, making a few bucks, testing the market…and you’re building some confidence in moving ahead to bigger things.
Greg Alan is an expert author and publisher of eBooks. He operates several websites devoted to affiliate marketing and ecommerce. You can see more of this article and others like it at his website, E-Commerce Now.
