Did I hear you wince? Nobody likes the "S" word do they. We don't want to be thought of as selling ebooks. We don't want to be thought of as "making money online" or "advertising". Somehow if we're doing "marketing" it's a higher calling. It's not quite like being a doctor or a priest but it's not that nasty "selling".
Well time to get real folks. for more detials:-www.ebook-secrets-revealed.com.You can "market" your little socks off but until you actually sell something, you don't earn any money!
So dress it up as fancy as you like, ebook marketing has one aim - to sell your ebook. Fortunately, for those of us who would rather hide behind our computers (me included), selling your ebook is nothing like going round knocking on doors.
Now before we go any further, and just in case I've put some marketing expert's nose out of joint, I know that marketing and selling aren't quite the same. If you want to be picky you could say that marketing encompasses all the disciplines of advertising your ebook, your ebook cover design, any PR, etc.
If you ask me, it all has just one aim and that's to sell your ebook.
The good news is that you can do almost all of this yourself. The really good news is that with a little research and a little hard work you can do almost all of it for pennies and a lot of ebook marketing for no cost at all.
The one thing I would suggest - unless you're a competent graphic artist - is spending a few dollars on getting a professional cover design. Although an ebook doesn't actually exist as a physical book there are a couple of reasons for this. for visit detials:-www.profit-pulling-ebooks.com.Number one, someone's still going to look at it on a website, and you only get one chance to make a first impression. Number two, using a print-on-demand service like Lulu.com it is now feasible to produce very low volumes of actual hard cover books if you wish.
Other than that, selling your ebook is a mixture of things like knowing what your readers want, where they go online and how to accurately target them. This involves some research and might be time consuming but it doesn't need to be costly.
Some people like to use AdSense and other online advertising methods. These can be very effective but require a financial investment, however modest. There are lots of things you can do for free to promote your ebook when you're just starting out and you have limited resources.
It will depend on your budget and how quickly you want things to happen. I would suggest exhausting the no-cost ebook selling methods first but they do take time to reap rewards. If you have a few dollars and want things to go a bit faster then certainly other options are open to you.
Most authors and entrepreneurs are familiar with tactics.
? Start a Blog site
? Create a Book Trailer
? Run a Virtual Book Tour
And so on . . .
Tactics are action items we write down on lined yellow legal paper and check off as we complete. Strategy, on the other hand, is less straight forward. The dictionary defines strategy as:
"a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world."
Another way of understanding strategy is that strategy bridges the gap between your goals and your tactics. Here are some examples:
? Strategy refers to basic directional decisions, that is, to purposes and missions.
? Strategy consists of the important actions necessary to realize these directions.
? Strategy answers the question: What are the ends we seek and how should we achieve them?
Once your book is written and published or self-published, you will be faced with the question of how to sell your book. If you are working with a publisher, the publisher shoulders the responsibility of inventing a strategy for your book. At least, that is how it should work, but you will soon find out that in many cases, you need to invent your own strategy.
If you are self-publishing, then the entire burden of promoting and selling your book is up to you. While you will find programs that claim they have a guaranteed "system" for selling books, most likely you will need to come up with your own strategy. Every book is different and what worked for The Secret, may not work for your book.
Since every strategy is unique, coming up with a strategy is one of the most difficult tasks author's face. Below is a sample strategy for an author whose primary target audience is female elementary teachers:
Goal
Sell 5,000 books
Target Audience:
2.4 million female elementary teachers in the US (3.1 total teachers x 79%, the percent of teachers who are women.
Strategy
Launch a three-phase rollout plan as outlined below:
Phase One
1. Focus on author's local market first
2. Author's local market has 15,000 female teachers
3. Sell 500 books
Phase Two
1. Launch in the three largest markets in the US (San Francisco, Chicago, New York)
2. These markets have a combined female teacher population of 100,000
3. Sell 1,500 books
Phase Three
1. Launch nationwide
2. Sell 3,000 books
3. Sell rights of book to a mainstream publisher
The definition quoted above says that a strategy is a plan, method or series of maneuvers to achieve a specific goal. This author's "series of maneuvers" is to first get her feet wet in her local market. She will learn how to talk to teachers, she will create and hone her tactics and she will begin creating buzz about her book.
Next, the author will hit the three largest markets. Like any general waging a war, the author has limited resources, namely time and money. By focusing on the largest markets, the author will get the biggest bang for her buck.
The author's Phase Three plan is to launch nationwide. If the author has achieved both her Phase One and Phase Two goals then her book is beginning to show a profit. With these profits, the author can invest in a large-scale plan to sell her books nation-wide. Even more important than the cash flow is that the author now knows how to sell her book and she knows that people want to buy her book. Her confidence is strong and she is willing to invest both her time and her money into selling her book on a larger scale.
The sample strategy presented here is a bridge between the author's goals and the tactics she will use to achieve those goals. Authors are fiercely independent people and when an author is armed with a strategy he or she "invented," the author has a better chance to succeed than by simply "plugging" into a system that worked for someone else.
Both Altok Smith & Philip Davis are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.