Posted by Daniel on November 14, 2008 under Ebook Business | 
By Daniel Moro
If you are setting up an online business then sooner or later you will wonder whether you should be writing and selling your own ebook. Here are 8 reasons why you should do it.
1. Brand Awareness
When you write your own ebook and publish it online, not only is there the prestige of being able to call yourself a book author, there is also an increase in brand awareness.
Your audience will grow to recognize and trust your name, they will perceive you as more of an expert in your topic, and they will be more likely to purchase something from you in the future.
2. Good Prices
If you believe that electronic books always sell for less than their paper counterparts, think again! Ebooks are regularly selling for remarkably high prices.
If you don’t believe me, have a browse at the ebook marketplace at ClickBank. In this marketplace alone there are over 10,000 products for sale and many of them are ebooks priced between $20 and $50.
3. Low Production Cost
Ebooks take an investment of time during the development stage, but once they are finished they don’t cost anything to produce. There is no manufacturing process required.
You simply place the file on a web server so that your customers can download it.
4. Low Delivery Cost
Ebooks are almost free to store and deliver. Have you ever worked in retail? Then you may know what is involved in maintaining a storeroom, making deliveries to customers, handling returns, and keeping track of all the stock.
When you sell ebooks you need not worry about all of that. You don’t need any special storage space in your office. You only need a few megabytes on your hardrive. And you don’t have to worry about any product returns!
5. Instant Delivery
Ebook delivery is instant and, like production and storage, delivery of ebooks costs virtually nothing. Most customers download their ebook from the Internet immediately after completing their payment.
6. High Profit Margins
After reading the reasons given above, you should not be at all surprised to learn that ebooks have very high profit margins. Once the ebook is written the only real cost you will have is a small percentage for payment processing fees.
7. Never Run Out of Stock
You will never run out of stock. That is, unless you accidentally delete your final copy of the ebook… in which case you better talk very nicely indeed to one of the customers who already purchased your ebook.
8. Instant Gratification
Customers love to buy products that they can receive immediately and selling ebooks is a way of providing this instant gratification. They allow you to provide instant information, instant advice and instant solutions to your readers.
As you can see, ebooks are truly a wonderful tool for online businesses. Get started on your own ebook right away.
Posted by Daniel on November 6, 2008 under Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, Web Traffic |
by Daniel Moro
Many affiliate marketers become caught up with identifying and testing new affiliate products and sometimes miss out on the opportunity to maximize profits products which they are already successfully advertising.
A few hours spent optimizing pay per click advertising campaigns can sometimes be a wiser investment of time than continually chasing after new products. There is a time and place for doing that, but my advice to affiliates is to make the most of the good products you have already identified and ‘milk them’ for every dollar that you can.
Recently I went through some of my own ‘successful’ campaigns and I was quite surprised to learn how easily I could increase the performance of each campaign. Almost every campaign became more profitable as I employed a combination of the following techniques. I suggest that you check if any of these might lead to improving the profitability of your advertising campaigns.
1. Increase Your Campaign’s Click-Through Ratio by Split Testing Ads
If other affiliates are promoting the same product at the same pay per click network, then you must make every effort to capture as high a percentage of the available traffic as possible. One of the best ways to get your ad showing instead of your competitors’ ads is to increase the CTR or click-through ratio of your ads. The reason for this is that major advertising networks usually prefer to show ads with good click-through rates.
So how can you increase your click-through ratio? The simplest way is to split test your ad. Always be running at least two versions of each ad. After you see the click-through rates for each version, discard the worst performing ad and write a new one. Keep repeating this process over and over again, improving each time.
A good shortcut is to study your competitor’s ads. Why pay for all the research and testing of ads when other affiliates are doing it already? It is a good idea to monitor other affiliates’ ads for a week or two and note any changes that they make. To see their ads either do a search at Google or use Google’s free AdSense Preview Tool. There are also a number of great competitor analysis tools available on the market.
2. Add Additional Keywords to Increase Traffic
Another way to maximize the revenue from your PPC advertising campaign is to increase your keywords. You can quickly generate large keyword lists using software such as Good Keywords, which is free, or even better, Keyword Elite if you can afford it.
One word of caution. If you add too many keyword phrases that are broadly related to your product, then even though your ad impressions and overall clicks may increase, your sales and commission conversion rates could fall. Take care when adding keywords to add only those keyword phrases that will result in targeted visitors who might purchase the product you are advertising.
3. Consider Targeting Your Successful Campaign to Additional Countries
When you created your original campaign, which geographical settings did you specify? For example, you may have targeted USA only, or North America. Now that your product is proven to be successful in the original region, consider whether people might purchase the product in additional countries. How about United Kingdom and Australia? Depending upon the product you might also discover a good response from Europe, Asia, or even the Middle East.
The key to success here is to test the new market independently, so be sure you have a way to track which countries your commissions are coming from.
4. Replicate Your Successful Campaign on Other Advertising Networks
You have already found a product that converts well when promoting it through one pay per click advertising network. Now replicate that success at the other major advertising networks. I try to replicate every successful campaign at Google AdWords, MSN Adcenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing. Due to differences in visitor demographics, traffic quality and editorial policies it is not always possible to get every campaign working successfully at all three networks, but that is always my goal.
These four techniques will make a big difference to the profitability of your affiliate pay per click advertising campaigns, and that’s all without going out and finding another product.
Posted by Daniel on October 4, 2008 under Affiliate Marketing, Pay-Per-Click |
by Daniel Moro
Are you relying too heavily on one Pay-Per-Click advertising network for your affiliate marketing? Some affiliates rely on Google AdWords only, and they are losing out on a great deal of revenue.
Many affiliates get into affiliate marketing after reading one of the popular ebooks on the topic that are sold online. But most of these ebooks concentrate on training people to use Google AdWords. I figure that is because Google has higher traffic volumes and because it is very easy to quickly set up your first affiliate campaigns. Many affiliates never get past AdWords, though, and that is where they are losing out.
You should already know that it’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Particularly when that one basket has seen better days. I can assure you that relying heavily on one advertising network, particularly Google AdWords, is not a smart strategy for growing your affiliate marketing business.
For some affiliate products advertising at the other networks will be even more profitable. In fact you should be using all of the three major pay-per-click networks. They are Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Adcenter, and Google Adwords.
Here are five reasons why you should consider using a different Pay-Per-Click advertising network.
Reason One – You Receive No Traffic
Sometimes when you set up a campaign at one of the advertising networks, you don’t receive any traffic. This can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes you can change something in your campaign to get your ads running, but other times nothing seems to help. So switch advertising network. You could be up and running in no time.
Reason Two – Because of Editorial Policy
Sometimes you cannot get certain ad campaigns to be accepted due to the particular network’s editorial and content policies.
For example, Google has recently been rejecting campaigns that promote sites for music and movie file-sharing. I’ve been trying to run a legitimate campaign for one of the major legal music downloading services, and it’s just taking too much effort to get Google to look closer and recognize that my campaign is legitimate. I have more or less given up and the campaign is now running at Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter instead.
Reason Three – For Price of Traffic
Sometimes the price at which you can get traffic on a given keyword phrase will vary widely from one network to another. So if you are not getting traffic at a price you are willing to pay, try switching to another advertising network.
Reason Four – To Replicate Your Campaigns
What do you usually do after you find a successful affiliate product? Do you improve your ads, add more keywords, add more countries, and increase your investment? Well, don’t forget to add more advertising networks.
For every successful affiliate campaign you identify, you should be trying to get it running profitably at all three major Pay-Per-Click networks, if at all possible.
Reason Five – To Test New Products and Retest Old Ones
Too many affiliate marketers are only testing out new affiliate marketing campaigns at Google AdWords. The, if the affiliate product is successful at Google AdWords they might roll out the campaign on the other networks. This strategy is seriously flawed.
The problem with this is that there are so many affiliate marketers using Google AdWords compared with a few years ago. They have pushed up the price of traffic on many of the popular keywords and it is much harder to get low-priced clicks now in many topic areas. An affiliate product that was once very good may no longer be profitable using AdWords because of the rising price of traffic.
And that right there is why many affiliates give up. I recommend that affiliates break out of the habit of only using Google Adwords to test new affiliate products. Try some products first at Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN Adcenter. Remember that traffic may or may not be cheaper than AdWords. That is not critical either way, because you will quickly discover that conversion ratios are different too.
I have given you five reasons to take your advertising dollars and spend them somewhere else. Your affiliate marketing business will be better off if you do.
Perhaps you should go back to some of the affiliate products you tested and threw away at AdWords. You just might identify some affiliate products that are actually profitable using another pay-per-click network.
