Promoting My Own Product (14)
Hi All,
Not sure if this is the right forum to post this but constructive feedback would be welcomed.
I spent two years successfully helping self-published authors with their book marketing and consequentaly have a pile of white papers and documents.
So with all this information laying around I decided to create my own product to sell and setup a landing page and an up-sell page for more eBooks.
The site is live and offers a free detailed eBook on author marketing, when they download the Free eBook they get taken to an up-sell page with 9 additional ebooks and 3 complimentary files to help with their marketing efforts.
I've set up an affiliate account with JVZoo so i can use it as an order page and promote the offer to affiliates who what to promote it.
Traffic Source
I'm ready to press the button and set this in motion and was going to use my own landing page link in Decisive to generate traffic.
My question is - will using Decisive as a traffic source and using my own URL be OK.
This is a first for me and affiliate marketing is new also - so if anyone has any advice on selling their own prodcuts it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks to you all in advance.
Michael
P.S. - I haven't added the URL to this thread as i wasnt sure it would be allowed, but if you want to see it message me if that's OK with STM
Are you sure decisive is the right traffic source choice? I imagine Facebook would be better. I see
My guess is that a lot of authors don't finish their book because they don't know how to sell it / get published. Try to make them believe your ebook will help them self publish and market the book just fine. Also try to target the 'one day I will write a book' type with a unique angle.
And don't forget, build a mailing list and then shove success stories up their asses until they buy all your ebooks.
Good luck!
Thanks nilskarla - I'm going to look into Facebook Ads as an option.
Yeah I would also question Decisive, seems too vague a source for what you're doing, might be wrong! Fair play on creation of the product though, that's a huge step in the right direction and one that most can't get past.
I'm working on an information product right now and have spent a lot of time reading up on this recently, I think your best bet would be the likes of:
http://www.clickbank.com/ as well as JV Zoo
One video that you should watch is linked below, from John Chow and goes into how he gets info products like your ebook to be huge sellers (he talks about other products and services that sit around this project and how he uses them)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq4gcoV_oPE
Have a read of my journey so far too as I'm documenting most of it as I go:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...t%85and-beyond!
Hey Tim, Thank you for your reply - I've been thinking of setting the product on ClickBank too but not sure about haveing duplicate sales pages - I'll work on this though.
Off to read your journey now - thank sagain mate.
Originally Posted by thesussexfox
I’ve been in the Info Marketing business since 1998, so here are a few things to consider. First off this IS a viable market for information products—Dan Poynter (you may or may not be familiar with him) has been selling to it since before there was an internet, so following him is a very good idea. A quick google search on his name shows him to still be quite active.
While others have covered this to a degree, I’ll elaborate on it a bit more since it is crucial to your success in direct marketing: if you run a general traffic source like Decisive for what is a niche market, you will get hammered (especially on a CPM basis). The magic of direct response is the ability to target your message specifically to the right market, which allows you to spend your marketing dollars effectively.
If, for example, you were to run an ad for your book in the general newspaper, you’d be getting it in front of thousands of people who have zero interest in your topic- this is called “waste circulation.” If, however, you were to run in Writer’s Digest, you’d be getting your ad in front of people you already know are interested because not only are they reading Writer’s Digest, they read enough of that issue to get to your ad. Writer’s Digest, by the way, DOES sell email broadcasts to their opt in list (and probably banner space on their site).
If you can target people who are interested in self publishing on Facebook, that is certainly worth a test (see if Writer’s Digest has a fan page, and target that). Another interesting test would be to compile a list of all the websites authors frequent, and run on the Google Display Network, targeting those specific placements (and see if they have fan pages on Facebook). You’d be shocked at how many web publishers put Adsense Code on their websites, usually to compensate for unsold space. Since GDN is PPC, you only pay for people who click on your ad, and if you’re targeting sites authors frequent, you have a very qualified prospect clicking on your banner.
The other thing I would highly recommend is putting your books on Amazon Kindle, if you haven’t already. Clearly many authors go there, and clearly they are interested in self publishing since that’s what Kindle is all about. I’ve got about 40 “books” (written by others, mostly) collecting digital dust on there, but whenever I’ve actively promoted them, they’ve done well. My topic (dating advice for men) doesn’t really lend itself to a wide Kindle audience, but your book in the right category might do well—and Amazon customers are buyers, much more valuable than prospects from other sites.
The next thing to keep in mind is (no pun intended at all), “What’s next?” What that means is, what are you going to do with the customer once they buy your ebook? The odds of making substantial money selling an ebook alone are remote (and most people who claim otherwise are making money on “how to sell ebook” products to wide eyed new internet marketers), but if you treat the buyer of that ebook as a lead for a much higher dollar coaching program ($10k) or so, then you can do well. Definitely something to start thinking about now, and if you’ve done it before, it’d be easy for you to put a pitch together for it.
If you have any more questions about info marketing, post them to this thread and I’ll answer them…I do need to get back to posting a lot more, got a lot of new and exciting stuff to share with you guys.
-John Alanis
I think you just saved yourself a couple thousand GBP with the advice here.
What is the link to your product?
Firstly - Thank you John for taking the time to write a lengthy and informative response, it's been very helpful. Secondly, Sadly Dan Poynter passed on November 1, 2015 according to his website, so a great loss to the community.
I am working on GDN this weekend and and also exploring marketing to Facebook, there are a gazillion self-published authors on there and so I'll post my activity update.
Thanks again for your help - I look forward to more or your updates.
- Michael
Originally Posted by cmdeal
The link to the free product is here http://www.authormarketingcookbook.com/ - The additional books and files are on the up-sell page. And I have added the Author Marketing Cookbook to JVZoo.com - Not sure i was allowed to add products details on here, but anyway there it is.
Originally Posted by thesussexfox
Secondly, your market is very clearly defined and as such perfect for a channel like Facebook. Almost all the independent writers have large FB presences. I would definitely start a campaign targeted at those people who are interested in self publishing and who are fans of some of these authors (eg JA Konrath, Amanda Hocking, etc).
Thirdly, I think your sales page definitely needs some more social proof. Whether testimonials from best selling authors or at least a cheeky promise that you will reveal some of the marketing techniques used by bestselling authors like EL James.
Good luck to you!
Originally Posted by thesussexfox
I think by targeting sites on GDN and Facebook fan pages of authors and groups where they hang out (as others have mentioned) you should do well-- and cmdeal is quite right, in this market the more "known author" testimonials you have, the better, especially since most authors want to "be like" their hero, whether it is Amanda Hocking or James Redfield ( if you want to date yourself) or another self published legend.
Kindle is an amazing place to get free traffic in the form of leads. I have pretty much given up on Kindle as a source of income - I have around 90 books out now in both NF and Fiction. I put blood sweat and tears or so it seemed like writing a Sci Fi one and it hardly ever sells.
However if you permafree a book it doesn't seem to matter what the niche is or how good/bad the writing is...people join your mailing list from it!
For NF it is even better, write a brilliant 15kword+ book on a subject. Don't make it too detailed. Then tell the reader if they join your list you will unlock all the secrets. Blah blah. They will come! You don't want to tell the secret in your free book because your competitors will literally copy, paste into their own, publish it and then try and DCMA yours. The Kindle game is full of not-nice-people now. You want to tell that promised secret down in your 5th or 6th autoresponder...where you sell something alongside it 
Oh and FB will work great for you...targeting wise:
Lots of great advice here!
One more suggestion - you might want to try some Reddit ads too. There are a few active communities on there that focus on self-publishing writers, and whilst Reddit ads can be a bit of a bitch to get the hang of, they're generally good quality. Obviously niche target like crazy!
It would be worth using Google Display Network (GDN) to place ads on websites already ranking for "self publishing".
It's even worth running pop ads from a network like 50onRed on all the domains to do with self publishing. The pop ad should be for an opt-in, for you to grow that list.
You have about 17 million pageviews worth of potential business just from the top 3 sites:
https://www.createspace.com/
https://www.lulu.com/
http://www.moreofit.com/similar-to/w...ike_Booksurge/
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