|
||
With millions of websites available on the Internet and more being added almost daily, the only way for people to find what they need online is through the use of search engines. People rely on search engines the way early sailors relied on the stars – they'd literally be lost without them. The good news about this fact is that people's reliance on these tools has made search engine marketing a popular and affordable way to boost traffic to your site and to increase your revenue.
A Couple of Facts
Before you start search engine marketing, you should realize why it works. First, research studies and reports form webmasters have shown that between 80 to 95% of their site's visitors come from search engines. What usually makes the difference is whether or not the owner of the site does any additional marketing, such as direct mail, that might also attract visitors. That says even if you are doing other marketing methods you could be getting a lot more traffic if you concentrated on search engine marketing.
Second, people typically use the same main search engines for all of their efforts. The largest is Google. Nearly one-third of every single person on the Internet uses Google for their searches. That's a lot of people. Yahoo and MSN are, of course, in second and third places with respectable percentages of their own: 29% and 27%, respectively. This information tells you that you absolutely should be doing some type of search engine marketing for your site and that you need to focus your efforts on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
What is Search Engine Marketing?
If you're not familiar with search engine marketing, let's start at the beginning. Basically, you're using search engines for the purpose of driving traffic to your site which is the main idea of the engines. However, you are taking extra steps to ensure that you gain access to the largest audience of potential customers possible. For example, SEO is a huge part of search engine marketing. SEO means developing content around particular keywords which are chosen because they are likely to be ones searched for by possible leads.
Search engine marketing also sometimes involves pay per click marketing. For example, you choose a keyword and agree to pay a set price each time someone clicks on your link when they find your site after searching for that keyword. The more you pay, the higher your site ranks in the results. Because you are paying, you get placed in a more prominent position in the results which gives you an advantage. Plus, you only pay for results which is definitely a good way of doing marketing.
If you're starting off as an Internet marketer or an online business owner, then using search engine marketing is a good choice. It's one of the most affordable types of marketing you can do and it can generate significant increases to your revenue. Plus you don't have to be a search engine marketing expert to get the results you want.
This is a little scary because you just spent time doing research and writing your book. And of course, the main reason for writing an ebook is to make money, so how are you supposed to make money from it if you give it away for free?
The first way to make money if you give your ebook away is to use your ebook to build your marketing list. If you talk to any business person anywhere, they will tell you that the most important thing you can do in marketing is to build a client list. If you have a client list, you can build a rapport with them. Then they will buy things from you over and over again. That client list is worth its weight in gold.
To build your list, you need to have a sales page to advertise your ebook exactly as if you were selling it. Place an opt-in form on your website. The opt-in form would ask people to type in their name and email address. In order to be able to download your ebook, they must agree to receive future emails from you. This process can be simplified by using an autoresponder service like Aweber.
A second way to make money from a free ebook is to use it to market relevant affiliate products. The affiliate links would actually be embedded within the ebook. You could go to Clickbank, Amazon, or another affiliate site and get affiliate links for products that are associated with your topic. Let's say that you are writing an ebook about muscle building. When you get to the chapter where you're writing about improving your abs, you can include an affiliate link to one or more of the products about improving your abs. When someone reads your ebook, they follow the link to the affiliate site. When they purchase that product, you receive a commission from the sale.
If you use this second method and you're able to completely let go, you can allow people to give it to anyone they choose with the stipulation that the affiliate links remain in place. Those people, in turn, can give it to their friends and clients. This allows the book to spread far and wide across the world wide web. It will continue to earn you money for a long time.
The third way to make money by giving away your ebook is to use it as a tool for marketing another product or service. Let's say that you wrote an ebook about Backpacking Locations in California. If you wrote a second ebook about the benefits of various brands of backpacks, you could offer it as a free bonus when someone buys the first book. More people will buy the first book because they are getting the second book free.
Fourth, include links back to your website(s) in several places throughout the book. If people come and visit your websites, you have another opportunity to make money. They might click on the Adsense ads on your site. They could purchase other ebooks you've written. They can also purchase other products through affiliate links on your website.
After reading this article, I hope you aren't so afraid to give your ebook away for free. It might be the best marketing decision you ever make.