Got an ebook to sell? Good! But before you go head-over-heals chasing customers down on line, you might want to consider a somewhat different approach to marketing your publication. In this article we will look at a technique that greatly enhances your likelihood of success.

Whether you are writing an eBook or a traditional paper-and-ink type book, you should know that most people go about the process entirely wrong. Here is a typical scenario.

A person writes a book; let's say it is an eBook. They then set up a web page and hope that through some miracle potential customers find that site and make some purchases. Gads that is one scary scenario. The whole thing is completely wrong.

Let's try something a little different.

Let's begin by designing a web page (before we write our book). We check out competitors sites and make a list of the very best features we find on each one. What kinds of headlines catch our attention? What colors for text look best? What artwork and graphics look the best? How many images do they use (graphics take time to load and you don't want your site laden with huge graphics or visitors will leave waiting for them to load).

What kind of guarantee to them gives? What is their price? What kinds of buzz-words do they incorporate into their sales page? What width do they set their pages up for? (You don't want to have visitors having to scroll from left to right to view your page.) What fonts do they use?

Now you sit down with a pencil and paper and make a rough outline of your web page. While you don't copy anyone else's web site, you do incorporate general ideas you pick up from each one.

You must write the very best sales letter for your site that you can. You must ask yourself, not what do you want to see on your site--but what do your visitors want to see. What benefits are they looking for? What skills or knowledge will they hope to obtain from purchasing your product? What are their hopes and dreams related to the topic of the book you are writing?

You make promises for your product that you think your visitors will want to find in your product, your eBook. (And remember, you haven't even written the book yet!) And then, and only after you have developed what you consider to be the perfect pitch page for your eBook--you go ahead and write your book.

You see, your pitch page becomes a blueprint telling you exactly what content you must pour into your book to give readers what you promised them on your site. I call this my "reverse engineering" technique, because you essentially work in exactly the reverse manner most writers do. You design your sales page first--and then you write your book using that sales page as a guide telling you what your book must contain.

This works; I've used it over fifty times myself.

Mike McMillan is a former inner-city teacher who left teaching in 1989 to devote full time to writing over 40 nonfiction books and eBooks. He has been interviewed on over 80 radio stations and televisions programs including ABC World News on the topic of self publishing. Mike's on-line self publishing course is offered through over 1,400 colleges and universities across the U.S.

His newest eBooks include Big Money Writing Little Books, and Cleaning Out The Vault: Secrets of the eBook Power Sellers Exposed.