Do you work for yourself?

You may think you do. As a blogger, you have your own schedules, you write when you feel like it, you write about things you love and so on.

But that’s not what I mean when I ask if you really work for yourself.

Even though you have a blog and you do whatever you want to do with it, you’re still limited by certain choices. Do you rely on Google for traffic? Do you rely on a ad network to monetize your blog? Do you promote others’ products to make small commissions?

In all those situations, you work for others. In particular, you depend on others to monetize your blog, to make it profitable, and to make your efforts worthwhile.

Now, there’s certain trend in the blogosphere about making money from your blog. And it’s mostly made popular by certain lazy bloggers (pardon me but I’m NOT referring to you).

It’s so easy to slap Google AdSense code on your blog and wait for the pennies to trickle in. Most people don’t even think they have any other choice.

The best they do is change the advertising network.

There’s nothing wrong with making money from ads. But what you make with ads is nothing compared to what you can make when you work for yourself.

How do you work for yourself? You sell your own products and services.

The first step involves building a platform that you can use to sell your products.

Build a platform

You don’t just start a new blog. It’s easy to do, and anyone with internet access can do it. You build a platform.

Blogging is not immediately rewarding. It’s only rewarding when you establish yourself as authority in your niche. When you tell people something that’s true, that makes sense to them, and that affects their lives in a positive way.

Building authority and making your audience listen to you can not happen in a few days, or weeks, or even months (unless you have a lot of pals on Digg).

It’s going to take time and consistent posting by you to make your blog stand out.

If you rely solely on ads, your interest in blogging will slowly peter out… leaving you to wonder what did you gain from all the hard work you put into your blog.

When you have a long term goal in your mind, however, you can go on creating content and building authority till you’re ready to sell your expertise.

Sell your expertise

If you blog to build authority, you’ll not only gain more knowledge about your niche, but also establish yourself as a expert in your niche.

Your readers will have certain expectations from you. They’ll read you to gain insight into whatever they want to know.

And this, my friends, is the right time to start charging for your knowledge.

You DON’T have to charge  your readers for reading your blog of course, because frankly, they’re doing you a favor by reading you out of all other bloggers.

You can, however,  use your expertise, skill, and experience to put together a product or service that solves a big problem of your audience.

The product or service can be anything from a ebook, a interactive course, a tool, or just plain your consultation and advice.

Make partnerships

You’ll do just fine on your own. However, if you feel there are certain areas that lie outside your skillset, don’t hesitate to reach out to other people with skillset that fill in that gap for you.

As the saying goes, 1+1 make 11. A joint venture can be profitable for all parties involved, there will be less work, things will get done fast, and there will be better profits.

The web is reaching a critical stage for online publishers and entrepreneurs. People are more interested in buying online than they were ever before. They want to spend their money. So this is the right time for you to start selling and accept the money they are so willingly to put in your pocket.

Work for yourself and stop promoting others’ products. A year or two from now, the Internet is going to be so saturated with online sellers, you’ll have hard time fitting in. And you sure don’t want to be collecting pennies forever.

Act now!

At the end, I’ll ask the same question again: do YOU work for yourself?

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With AdSense for feeds you can run AdSense in your feeds just like you do on your blog/website, with almost as much control over the appearance and position of ads as you are used to having in AdSense for content.

But to use AdSense for feeds, you need to migrate you Feedburner account to your Google account, which is currently a manual process. That is, you have to email Google at adsense-support-aff@google.com and provide following info with the request to migrate your account:

• Your FeedBurner account username
• The Google Account email address you use to sign in to AdSense

Head over to Google help center for more info.

I can see those huge blogs with many thousands of subscribers making even more money with AdSense for feeds.

And hey, I’ve never placed AdSense on Blogging Bits, but I’m considering giving AdSense for feeds a try as it seems less annoying compared to on-site ads. What do you think?

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And no matter how good you are at what you do, if you aren’t passionate about what you sell, your target market will know you aren’t being honest with them.

Who are scammers after all? The fellas who try to sell something to you without respecting your privacy, comfort, and your pocket. The only thing they are passionate about is YOUR money. And then there are hardcore scammers and small time scammers and people who claim and try to be honest with you but smell like scammers.

Fact is that anybody who is trying to sell something is bound to employ selling techniques that will annoy some people. There’s no way you can please everyone. For there are people out there who just don’t want to pay no matter what.

Most bloggers I’ve met or talked to are passionate about what they write. But they are also looking to make some bucks with the knowledge they so generously share and the time and effort they dedicate to blogging.

The problem with most bloggers trying to actually sell something to their readers is that they don’t have enough expertise in the area of selling. So they end up running out of passion as they continuously remain unable to make substantial income from their products.

They are either too mellow to convince their audience that their product is worth buying, or so aggressive that people become wary of them.

So if you are one of those bloggers, here are some basic tips for you to leverage your knowledge in a way that you can sell your products without confusing or scaring your potential customers off.

Know what your audience wants – Your audience has needs that you can satisfy. Creating a generic product isn’t going to be enough for them to make a buying decision. Find that burning need and create a hot product that caters to that particular need.

Don’t underestimate the appearance – If your product has an appearance (for example the UI of a software) don’t keep it too ugly to be worth having a second look. Remember that beautiful things has a way to attract our hearts (or call it irrational desires). When we see a beautiful gadget, we start finding an excuse to buy it and make it ours. And this is where even a slightly useful gadget can push us to go ahead with the purchase.

All of Apple’s products and especially iPhone is a living proof that looks matter. There are many phones better than iPhone but iPhone is simply better looking than most, and that’s what makes many people buy it.

Simplify your message – Don’t consider your audience to be fools, and don’t overhype your product. Write your sales message in simple, to the point and professional language (and by this, I don’t mean that you use tight, formal language. That isn’t professional, that’s just scary).

Be the best in the business – Create the best product you can. Give the best bang for the buck. Provide the best support. And treat your customers as the best people in the world. Do this and your customers will do the best kind of marketing for you free of charge!

Keep improving – You can not create a near perfect product at very first try. It’s bound to have glitches, flaws, and bugs. So don’t be lazy and keep improving your product. Make use of your customers’ feedback and add new features at every update. Don’t let the buzz die. Keep surprising your customers with your ingenuity.

Have you ever sold anything? Please share your experience and tips in comments.

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

AdSense is the choice of many when it comes to monetisation. It’s used by starters and pros alike. While there’s a lot written about it on the net and offline, I’m here today to share a few of my tried and tested tips and help you make the most of your ad space. Since this information comes right off my several years of experience as a professional blogger and web-developer, it would be fair to say that these are the lesser known tips of the trade.

First a little background. Many of us would already be familiar with the Adsense heatmap. It is basically a schematic of the regions of a web page most likely to receive visitor clicks. Essentially, these are the regions which are better suited for placing the ads on a site. So take a good look at the figure and keep it handy for the rest of this article.

The Tools

AdSense heatmap has been created after studying several thousands of web-pages on the net. Thus it is a generalized diagram relevant to the common generic layout. It does not take into account the site layout, theme, or design, the type of audience or the age and popularity of a particular website. So we would first need the tools to create and understand the heatmap of your individual site.

Those who have purchased web hosting can grab this gem called clickheat from labsmedia. Follow their directions to install it on your server. Those on a free hosting or not having access to the server can make use of CrazyEgg which is a paid service and a more polished version of a similar technique. If I were you, I’d choose to pay for the hosting rather than CrazyEgg (for obvious reasons). Both these tools let you generate the heatmap of your site on a periodic basis like daily, monthly or custom defined.

Second tool (as you might have guessed by now) is Google Analytics. While Google Analytics serves a lot of purposes, we have two main intents for its use here. It will help us understand our visitors better. And hidden deep within the various views is the site overlay view under click patterns to help you see the clicks as GA sees it. This does not show the clicks over regions where Adsense is installed. But it is perfectly usable and will work in tandem with the above mentioned tools to point out the anomalies if any.

Questions you need to ask yourself

Now that you have a heatmap of the site, its will guide you in finding the locations which are best suited for ad placement. It is now time to focus on the other aspects of revenue generation. Before you begin, there are several questions you need to answer:

• How old is your site or blog?

If you have a new site that means you may be having less visitors and will also be trying to build a rapport.

• What kind of audience does your site cater to? The average or the ones following your niche?

If you cater to a generic audience, there are higher chances of visitors interacting (read clicking) ads. Visitors following a niche could be too smart to interact with ads against their choice.

• What’s the design or theme and the layout of your site? Is it a dull generic theme or a more polished and professional theme?

If you have a generic theme or less styled HTML, blending the ads is easier and they could very well be taken for content by the casual reader. A professional theme’s elegance will make the ads stand out more (as compared to the unstyled content).

• What would be high on your priority? User-experience or revenue?

This could be a tough one especially if you are starting out. Its an art to make user-experience and revenue go hand in hand.

When to Blend

Most of the publishers who do well with AdSense are those with a generic unpolished theme on their site with ads blended and obfuscated in the content. You may notice that these publishers form a considerable majority of those featured on the “Inside Adsense” blog in the success stories. This is one reason why blended ads work so very well with the unsuspecting visitor and another reason for the high popularity of the large rectangle format – it just looks so much like the actual content. Link ads could go into the site navigation and referrals in the left sidebar top section.
On the flip side, this strategy will certainly cost you the visitors and subscribers while setting an example of bad user experience. So my two cents, balance it out. Leave a generous margin around your ads if you are blending. As you continue to make revenue and draw more visitors on your site, you will transition into the next level (that everyone aspires to).

When to make the ads stand out

Generally speaking, if your site has been around for a while, it must be getting visitors (depending on how much time you spend sharing your passion with them). The majority of the visitors would be the ones following your site on a regular basis. Getting these visitors to interact with blended ads usually doesn’t work since they are familiar with the site and can differentiate between the ads and the content. These visitors are the loyal ones, are the biggest asset of your site and have to be cared for. Its time to evolve your strategy and take a wise decision.

An easier thing would be to just keep changing layouts every once in a while. But a wise decision would be to take your user-experience and monetisation strategy to the next level. Time to give your site a much deserved redesign. Design your site for the smart visitors and target premium advertisers. And while you are doing so, make the ads noticeable (and standout as ads instead of content). This translates into higher user experience and more subscribers while being more appealing to the first-time visitors. Visitors will have a choice to interact with the ads since they recognize them and do so by choice. And this will in-turn mean higher conversion rate for the advertisers. Theme your text ads to compliment the theme. Its a win-win situation for everyone. The big difference now is that you are ready to pitch to advertisers directly.

Mistakes

Both the above strategies worked for me but your mileage may vary. So post regularly and keep your site updated. As a bonus I’d share with you a few mistakes I made to learn things the hard way to help you make a better decision.

I started my site with a polished and elegant theme. Visitors were few and they could make out the ads. Thus there was no revenue at all. I continued to create good content and revenue increased marginally. I then changed over to a minimalist theme with a raw, newspaper like look and feel. It worked like a charm.

Almost six months down the line while the visitors were glued to the content, I redesigned the site and now I have a more professional look to the site. The number of visitors and subscribers has increased substantially and I’m ready to pitch to advertisers directly.

Conclusion

There though are a few things that can’t be left unsaid before we conclude. The only thing that will continue to invite visitors and advertisers is the content and its inflow. Good content once in a blue-moon is not enough and so is average content at regular intervals. In order to make money you need to set out to make meaningas Guy Kawasaki pitches for in The Art Of The Start.

Image Courtesy (Creative Commons) : Akira Ohgaki

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

What sort of ads does your blog have? Let me guess… It’s an odd combination of AdSense, Kontera, AdBrite, and other ad networks, which add clutter to your blog and straddle the border between “tolerable” and “That’s it, I’m installing AdBlock.” Sure, it’s easy to slap some JavaScript snippets into your template and be done with it, but it’s not the best way to handle things. If your blog is new, then you won’t have much choice but to go with AdSense. But as the site grows, you may find it limiting, as you may with most ad networks.

• The ads are often for spammy sites, or of otherwise low quality.
• Ad networks take a cut of the profit. AdSense doesn’t disclose their cut, though most networks range from 25%-50%. (It’s suspected that Google takes roughly a 20% cut.)
• With Pay-Per-Click networks, you’re depending on people clicking on the ads in order to get any money. This often leads to the ads becoming more intrusive than necessary as they must be placed inside content areas in order to achieve a descent click-through rate.
• PPC ad blocks, Kontera links (shudder), and other ad network units get in the way and clutter things up.

In contrast to network-based advertisements, you have what are called “direct-sale” ads. The general idea of direct ads is that you’re cutting the “middleman” out of the equation by selling ads directly to businesses instead of relying on a network.

This isn’t a passive solution, like AdSense, though. You have to actively seek-out businesses and ask them if they would be interested in advertising on your site. You can email companies that fit your blog’s topic, and you can post advertisements that you have ad space available (what a concept! ) on marketplaces such as SitePoint.

After nuking your network ads, you will hopefully have a nice, clean blog. The next step is to decide what ad formats you’ll offer, and where they will be positioned. A popular ad format among tech blogs is the 125×125 ad. It’s compact, it doesn’t look too “ad-like,” and people tend to look at them. You can also fit 4-6 of them in a fairly small space. I have a few on Webmaster-Source, and I like they way they’re noticeable, yet out of the way.

Then you have the classic 468×60 banner, which could be the oldest ad format on the internet. Designers Toolbox has a list of standard banner sizes, or if you have sizable enough traffic levels, you could invent your own custom format, like Smashing Magazine has done.

Put some dummy “Your Ad Here” images up where the ads will be, and link them to a static page with some site statistics (traffic, subscribers, any notes of interest) and contact information. Oh, and your rates, of course. Note how many ad slots are available, what formats they are, etc. How much should you charge? There isn’t a magic formula to calculate that, unfortunately. It depends on your niche, the age and traffic of the blog, the size and position of the ads, and probably other factors as well. You may find it useful to know that

• Bigger = more money. Charge more for a large banner than you would for a 125×125 button ad.
• Position is key. An ad is “better” if it’s above the fold (visible on screen without scrolling) than if it’s lower down.
• Less is more, quality over quantity. The more ads you have, the less they’re probably worth. If you have less ad slots (say four 125×125 ads and a banner rather than two standard banners, a 300 pixel wide square ad, and a “leaderboard” banner) they will have a higher value, theoretically. Also, you want to avoid having too many ads anyway. Otherwise you end up with a cluttered blog.

You’ll have to experiment with pricing. It helps if there are other blogs in your niche direct-selling ads. That way you can check their prices and traffic statistics, and factor them into your fuzzy math as you try to decide how much to charge.

Direct-sale ads aren’t new, as some may suspect. Back in the early days of the web, before there were any ad networks, that was how online advertising was done. Direct sales are a great way to monetize your website without looking like someone who has just discovered the wonders of Google AdSense. I’ve been selling direct ads on my blog for a few months now, and I’m seeing good results. If you want to learn even more about direct ad sales, I encourage you to read my post 125×125 Ads: Monetize Your Blog With the Bloggers’ Ad Format. Consider it your obligatory “further reading” section.

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The reason why many, or should I say most, people don’t make money from blogs is that most of the easy ways to effectively make money from blogging are considered somewhat bad, unethical, user-unfriendly and so on.

So bloggers who have worked hard to build a community around their blog, stay well away from money making practices that may harm their reputation and put off their readers. They happily choose the community over money.

I, too, fall in the same category of bloggers. I could run AdSense and plethora of other types of ads to monetize my blog, but I consider this to be bad from user experience perspective as well as an ineffective monetization strategy.

Ineffective? Sure, in my case, my readership consists mainly of bloggers and web masters who are pretty tech savvy and immune to advertisements. They either ignore the ads, or are turned off by them because they come here for information, not to see ads, especially when they can tell an ad from the real content.

So if you are one of the bloggers who don’t make money blogging, here’s good news for you. You don’t have to monetize your current established blog with evil ads to make money. There are other ways to make money from blogs. Some of these are really tough ones. For example, creating a product and selling it on your blog, or using your blog to promote your expertise a.k.a services.

The good news is that you don’t have to use any of the above methods to make money from blogs. Instead, take a look at the following ways.

Start a blog just for PayPerPost and text link ads

The problem with the easiest money making techniques like selling links and writing sponsored posts is twofold 1) your readers can smell a sponsored post from two miles’ distance, and they don’t really like it 2) you’re always in danger of getting penalized by Google for selling links.

However, you don’t have to endanger your established blog to make money with above mentioned services. What you got to do is: start one or more blogs just for writing sponsored posts and selling links. Trust me, there are countless marketers out there dying to buy links from you if you are willing to sell them.

To add content to your blog, you can post just about anything. Post news, excerpts from other blogs, or republish free articles (of course with proper credit and link to the original source). Once it has been indexed by search engines and is a few months old, you can start writing sponsored posts, selling links, and promoting affiliate products. Possibilities are endless.

Start as many as you want. Domains are cheap, and almost all major hosts allow multiple domain hosting.

Interlink your blogs to increase their pagerank

While you are at it, you can use all your new blogs to link to one another, and most importantly, link to your main sites and blogs. It never hurts to get an extra keyword rich link to your main site to boost its search engine rankings!

Do it with caution. Use different locations for links and different keywords in link text to avoid getting penalized by Google.

Create an aggregator blog for organic traffic and monetize it with AdSense

Whatever people may say about AdSense, it’s still a major player in advertisement industry. And it’s always been one of the biggest earners for me.

The problem with AdSense is that it’s difficult to optimize your content so you can get the most out of every click. You also got to have a lot of traffic to make more than a few pennies a day with AdSense.

Considering this, if you monetize a blog with AdSense, you need to have plenty of consistent traffic, and good amount of fresh content to keep the traffic coming.

Social media is not the answer to the problem of consistent traffic. Social media traffic comes in spurts, and is almost useless when your sole purpose is to get your visitors to click on your AdSense ads.

The answer is organic search traffic. Once search engines start sending you traffic, it invariably builds up, and rarely comes down. Organic traffic is the kind of traffic you should be aiming to get on your AdSense monetized blog.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t run any other ads that compete with AdSense, as it will not perform very well in the presence of competing ads, or sell links or sponsored posts as it will jeopardize your Google rankings.

Now to keep on churning out good content without scraping other blogs, this is where you have to do some research and find the proper niche.

The aggregator blog that I referred to in the heading is the blog that aggregates any and all information in a particular niche. Don’t confuse it with a scraper, as the content is written manually, proper credit is given, and the traffic is actually directed to the original source of information. Think of this blog as a forum where members post news articles with a link to the original source, and no attempt is made to take credit for the article.

For example, your blog could be about Windows Vista sidebar gadgets (here’s a free idea for you!) where you gather all new gadget downloads. What you do here is, copy/paste the widget description by the author, write the author’s name, and give a download link that points to the original widget page. Nothing wrong with that, right?

When choosing the niche for your aggregator blog, try to think outside the box. Don’t go for a usual all things tech blog. You won’t make a penny with that as it’s already an over-over-saturated niche. Go for a smaller niche where there’s less competition but plenty of information to gather.

Again, create as many as you want!

Use a blog + online shop + a forum combo

While blogs always attract more search engine traffic, blogs are not the only way to get good amount of traffic.

Forums, for example, not only grow quickly if you have a few active members, but also attract a lot of long tail search engine traffic. You can’t optimize a forum for a particular keyword, but over time, as the forum grows, you’ll notice that many threads rank top in SERPs for many frequently searched for terms.

Having a forum with your blog is a good way to add more fresh content to your site and get repeat visitors. You can link to your blog from forum threads, and promote your forum in blog posts and share the traffic between the two.

If your niche is such that your visitors are looking for, or are willing to buy something, then it’s not a bad idea to add an online shop to your blog.

Amazon and Chitika offer the publishers customizable online stores that can be integrated with your site. It’s a one-click way to quickly add an online store, but if you want full control over what you want to sell and how, you can manually create a store with your chosen affiliate products. You can get the product link, banners, etc. from Commission Junction.

Did I say start as m any as you want? You can also add more goodies to pimp up your site further!

Well, there’s one more evil way to make money from blogging.. and that is:

Start a make money online blog to loot your audience

Why not? Everyone and their grandpa has a make-money-online these days!

Seriously, that’s how John Chow, his pals, and his followers make money, so why not you! After all we are talking about evil ways to make money online, eh?

And for god’s sake, don’t start as many as you want. There are already too many of them!

So there we are. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible to do with blogs, but I’m sure once you apply all, or any, of above methods, your brain will be teeming with more of our own evil schemes!

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Do you make money blogging? I, for one, don’t.

It may seem like a a strange question, but do you really blog for money? Will you stop blogging if you don’t make money with your blog?

When I started this blog, I wanted to make money from it. But slowly, as time passed, my perspective changed. My blog became my identity, and people who read me (yes, you!) became my friends.

Now I don’t blog for money. I blog just to share my take on different issues in internet marketing, blogging, and web design world. And I really love doing it.

Note: I’m not averse to money. And I certainly wouldn’t reject it if a money making opportunity arises!

In my observation, most bloggers start blogging for money, but as time passes and they don’t make more than a few pennies, they either give up, or persist – just for the fun of it!

Those who persevere, gain new insights into their target market, and actually find out how to monetize their blog, directly or indirectly. Those are the ones who really make money blogging, and become an inspiration for a new generation of bloggers.

Well, see, I’m still here. And I don’t make money from blogging (though in my case, it’s intentional). I’m in the second phase of blogging.

Now the real question (and please answer) Do you make money blogging? What phase are you in? How long have you been blogging? Do you plan to keep on blogging no matter what?

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These little boxes look rad, don’t they?

Well, finally, after keeping Blogging Bits advert-free for four months, I’ve decided to place an advert or two in a bid to monetize my blog – albeit in a very unobtrusive way.

I am not a fan of obtrusive advertising – which is a hallmark of some advertising programs such as AdSense and Kontera – on a blog that is focused on the community aspect of blogging. My first priority, as a result, is to ensure the best possible user/visitor/reader experience.

The best thing about 125×125 banner ads is that they don’t look like ads – at least to me. I think of them as legitimate ads.

So where did I get these ads from?

They are simple affiliate links. Even you can sign up for one of these services and get your own affiliate link/banner.

With affiliate ads, you have complete control over who you want to promote unlike contextual ads where any AdSense arbitrage can misuse advertising space on your blog.

Even though AdSense can give you instant results because it’s a cost-per-click program (you are paid for every click on the AdSense ads), you risk cluttering your blog, and turning off your readers. AdSense ads also don’t perform well if not disguised to look as legitimate content, which, again, is a no-no for community oriented blogs.

There are a number of affiliate networks you can join to get affiliate links.

• Commission Junction
• Linkshare
• Maxbounty
• ShareASale
• WebSponsors
• Azoogle Ads

Apart from above sites, you can also sign up as an affiliate with services such as PayPerPost and BidVertiser.

Direct advertisements are another big money maker

While affiliate programs pay you well if your visitors generate valid sales and leads, you are not paid if the visitors do not make a purchase on the advertiser’s site.

Direct advertisements fill this gap too. You set your own rate and invite advertisers to advertise on your site. Once a deal between you and an advertiser is brokered, you’ll be paid whether the clicks from your blog turn into actionable results or not (though if you generate a lot of clicks, leads, and sales, the advertiser will be happy to renew the contract).

So if you are a potential advertiser looking to advertise on Blogging Bits, contact me!

I’ll keep you updated as I take more steps to monetize Blogging Bits in future, and shall let you know how much I make from these strategies.

Have you monetized your blog yet? How much do you earn from your blog?

Link Code: d1928 - © Blogging Bits | Blog writing, marketing, and design

A mere ebook can make you seriously rich.

Creating and selling a reasonably priced, instantly downloadable ebook is the kind of blog monetization strategy many bloggers have only just come to realize. I usually see it as the next step in blog monetization. The first one being revenue through adverts.

It’s fairly easy to write and create an ebook if you are well-versed in your niche, but the real problem arises when you think of ways to market your ebook. This seemingly daunting problem can delay, or worse, maim your plans.

Many full time bloggers have sold ebooks with such success that even they didn’t expect. It’s time to discard the thinking that people don’t buy information products online, and that bloggers should keep on churning out free high quality content.

Breaking: Those who enjoy reading your free content would not mind paying a few dollars to read your premium content.

It’s not my intention to sell you on the idea of selling ebooks. This post is for the converted who are trying to figure out ways to market their ebook.

I usually don’t go into too much detail, but this post warranted detail. So here are 11 strategies for successfully marketing your ebook.

1. Create hype and anticipation

You know it works. You must have seen the teaser ads on TV where they show a brief intro of a new product or service for weeks before revealing the full commercial. Regular TV users curiously wait for the full commercial that contains more information about the new product. And they become more likely to buy the product when it finally comes out.

To adapt this tactic for your medium, you need to blog about your upcoming ebook project and ask your readers for suggestions. This way, you’ll not only make them a part of your project, but also get their feedback and increase their anticipation.

Since your readers will already have made up half of their mind about buying the ebook, they’ll be more likely to make up the other half after the ebook launch.

2. Use word of mouth marketing

Your readers are your ebook’s first buyers. And they care about you and your efforts. Ask your readers for the following favors:

• Email their friends to urge them to buy the book.
• Tell their colleagues about the ebook.
• Mention and review the ebook on their blog if they have one.
• And promote it on social media.

If you feel shy, you don’t have to ask them directly. Create a list of recommended actions similar to the above list and urge your readers to help you out. What happens is, even if they don’t go out and start promoting your ebook right away, they’ll remember your ebook whenever their friends and colleagues have the needs that your ebook fulfills.

Don’t be surprised if you get overwhelmingly supportive response from your readers. It’s only a teaser of what to expect later in your campaign.

3. Give away free sample chapters

People love to taste the food before deciding that they want to consume it as a meal.

Also, there is a certain charm attached to Free offerings. We are instantly drawn to the things that bear the word free.

If you have a fairly lengthy ebook, it will be a good idea to give away the first few chapters for free. This will not only attract the hesitant buyers to your ebook, but also give your real buyers a taste of what to expect in the full package.

Once your prospective buyers consume the free chapters, they’ll be itching to read the whole ebook. And what other choice do they have than to buy the ebook?

4. Create a landing page for your ebook

A simple page with a photoshopped cover of your ebook, a description, and a ‘buy now’ button is not very appealing.

Spending time on creating a landing page for your ebook is worth the effort.

Create a special page on your blog that is meant to convert the prospects into buyers. A good landing page must contain:

1. A descriptive heading.
2. A hype-less description.
3. A list of chapters from the ebook.
4. An appealing list of practical benefits one can get from reading the ebook.
5. Testimonials from your satisfied readers and well respected bloggers (This is a must have).
6. And of course a buy now button.

Remember, your landing page must not look like an ad. People have grown aversion for ads. Keep your description as friendly and realistic-looking as possible.

5. Keep the price reasonable

Keeping in mind that people are attracted to free offers, they are also more likely to buy cheap products.

Internet is the ultimate treasure chest of free content and information. We expect the information on the internet to be free. If it isn’t free, we expect it to be the closest thing to free. We expect it to be cheap.

An ebook is an information product, so we naturally don’t want to empty our wallet for an ebook.

Keeping your value-packed ebook reasonably priced (or very cheap) is going to make you more money than if you put a high price tag on it. Why? Simply because the number of people buying a cheap ebook will far exceed the number of people who even think of buying an exorbitantly priced ebook.

6. Get other bloggers to review your ebook

Every bloggers has a unique group of readers who trust the blogger’s recommendations and follow his advice.

You can tap into the audience of other bloggers in your niche by getting them to review and recommend your ebook. Leo Babauta, the author of Zen To Done ebook, has successfully used this strategy.

Send the bloggers with large audience personalized emails, and offer them a free copy of your ebook. Ask them to kindly recommend the ebook to their readers. Some might ignore your email, but many will respond positively, and a few will review your ebook on their blog too.

7. Buy reviews from related blogs

Don’t worry if the above strategy does not work as expected. There is still hope for you. You can buy reviews from related blogs through services such as PayPerPost and ReviewMe.

These reviews will cost you money, but if you spend the money wisely, the return on investment will be huge.

If your pocket and conscience allows you (which they should) to pay the bloggers for reviewing your ebook, do it. Otherwise, stick to free and less devious strategies.

8. Share profits with referrers

Sharing is caring. If I refer a buyer to you and make you money, I’ll be more likely to keep sending you new buyers if, as a result of sending buyers to you, I make some money too.

Aaron Wall of SEO Book has made thousands, if not millions, with this strategy. Almost every guy related to SEO and internet marketing is a passionate promoter of SEO Book, simply because he can pocket some cash on referring buyers to Aaron Wall.

By giving your affiliates a share of the profits, you’ll make sure that the stream of buyers never stop, and you make constant profits in the long run.

9. Grab testimonials from the A-list bloggers

I’ve mentioned this strategy before, but I am going to emphasize it again.

People don’t buy on the internet unless they trust you. Internet is a playground of scammers and fraudsters. So it’s only wise to use one’s money with caution.

To get people to trust you and your ebook, you have to get your customers AND the trusted and respected bloggers to recommend your ebook.

If you email the bloggers politely with a free copy of your ebook, and ask for a review, some might think you are demanding too much from them. So if they ever reply back, ask them to give you a short paragraph of feedback. Chances are they won’t disappoint you.

If a kind blogger reviews your ebook, copy a few lines from the review and slap it on your landing page as a testimonial.

Getting testimonials from the customers is slightly easier. Grab their emails before finalizing the purchase, and email them a week later to ask them if they liked the ebook and if they would like to give their feedback. You can automate the whole process, but I’ll leave the details for another post.

If you don’t feel comfortable with the above process, simply put a line on your landing page urging the buyers to give their feedback about the ebook. Many will get back to you with positive reviews.

10. Advertise on online communities

Online communities are great free advertising places. Throngs of people frequent niche specific forums to get help and advice. All you have to do is find the right forums to tap into the forum–loads of prospective buyers.

Some forums such as Authority Blogger Forum and BlogCatalog allow you to announce your unique content in a separate thread. You can take such opportunities to advertise your ebook.

But remember, don’t come across as spammy, and don’t bother creating such a thread if you haven’t been active on the forum before.

You can also place a link to your ebook landing page in your forum signature, and post on the forum often in a hope that people will notice you and trace you back to your blog.

11. Write follow-up posts and talk about your ebook’s success

Your marketing efforts don’t stop with the launch of the ebook. You still have some readers who want more proof that your ebook is worth reading before giving you cash.

What they want to see is a proof that others have bought the ebook. So how are you going to convince them?

You’ll have to write follow-up posts and boast about the huge success you have seen with the ebook sales so far, giving them all kinds of stats and quoting positive reviews from other bloggers. Tell them how surprised you are at the enormous response you have received about your ebook.

To revive the buzz, release ebook updates, and make special offers such as discounted ebook price for a limited period.

Just keep things alive. Don’t let your ebook die in the flood of regular posts.

——————

Making money with an ebook is a hot trend in the blogosphere, so cash in on the opportunity, and make some regular, steady income. The kind you have only dreamed of so far.

Your thoughts?

Will you ever publish an ebook? If so, when will you do it and what will it be about?

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Off the top of my head, here are some of the benefits of WU quick cash:

1. Instant delivery - You can pick up your payment a day after the payment date. Before WU, we had to wait for a whole month before our checks arrived, so this is a welcome improvement.
2. Instant cash – As though a whole month of waiting was not enough, we had to wait a month more for the bank to finish its procedure and convert US dollars to local currency. But no more! Now I can go to local Western Union pick-up center, pocket the cash, and walk back home with a smile on my face.
3. No bank fees – To top it all off, banks would charge about $20 fee for every check I deposited. That would also not be the case anymore.

To change your payment method to Western Union, log in to your AdSense account, click on the ‘My Account’ tab, click on the ‘Payment details’ edit link, and select the ‘Setup Western Union Quick Cash’ option.

It’s strange that this option is available only in 9 countries so far (and my country happens to be one of them!).

1. Argentina
2. China (Mainland)
3. Chile
4. Colombia
5. Malaysia
6. Pakistan
7. Philippines
8. Peru
9. Romania

For more info on how to pick up your Western Union Quick Cash payment, read this topic in Google AdSense Help Center.

Is your country on the list?

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