It’s not true that everything that has been said has already been written. Since that unfortunate axiom came into use, the whole universe has changed. Technology has changed, ideas have changed, and the mindsets of entire nations have changed.

The fact is that this is the perfect time to write an ebook. What the publishing industry needs are people who can tap into the world as it is today - innovative thinkers who can make the leap into the new millennium and figure out how to solve old problems in a new way. Ebooks are a new and powerful tool for original thinkers with fresh ideas to disseminate information to the millions of people who are struggling to figure out how to do a plethora of different things.

Let’s say you already have a brilliant idea, and the knowledge to back it up that will enable you to write an exceptional ebook. You may be sitting at your computer staring at a blank screen wondering, “Why? Why should I go through all the trouble of writing my ebook when it’s so impossible to get anything published these days?

Well, let me assure you that publishing an ebook is entirely different than publishing a book in print. Let’s look at the specifics of how the print and cyber publishing industry differ, and the many reasons why you should take the plunge and get your fingers tapping across those keyboards!

Submitting a print book to conventional publishing houses or to agents is similar to wearing a hair shirt 24/7. No matter how good your book actually is, or how many critique services and mentor writers have told you that “you’ve got what it takes,” your submitted manuscript keeps coming back to you as if it is a boomerang instead of a valuable mine of information.

Perhaps, in desperation, you’ve checked out self-publishing and found out just how expensive a venture it can be. Most “vanity presses” require minimal print runs of at least 500 copies, and even that amount will cost you thousands of dollars. Some presses’ minimal run starts at 1,000 to 2,000 copies. And that’s just for the printing and binding. Add in distribution, shipping, and promotional costs and - well, you do the math. Even if you wanted to go this route, you may not have that kind of money to risk.

Let’s say you already have an Internet business with a quality website and a quality product. An ebook is one of the most powerful ways to promote your business while educating people with the knowledge you already possess as a business owner of a specific product or service.

For example, let’s say that you’ve spent the last twenty-five years growing and training bonsai trees, and now you’re ready to share your knowledge and experience. An ebook is the perfect way to reach the largest audience of bonsai enthusiasts.

Ebooks will not only promote your business - they will help you make a name for yourself and your company, and establish you as an expert in your field. You may even find that you have enough to say to warrant a series of ebooks. Specific businesses are complicated and often require the different aspects to be divided in order for the reader to get the full story.

Perhaps your goals are more finely tuned in terms of the ebook scene. You may want to build a whole business around writing and publishing ebooks. Essentially, you want to start an e-business. You are thinking of setting up a website to promote and market your ebooks. Maybe you’re even thinking of producing an ezine.

One of the most prevalent reasons people read ebooks is to find information about how to turn their Internet businesses into a profit-making machine. And these people are looking to the writers of ebooks to provide them with new ideas and strategies because writers of ebooks are usually people who understand the new cyberspace world we now live in. Ebook writers are experts in Internet marketing campaigns and the strategies of promoting and distributing ebooks. The cyberspace community needs its ebooks to be successful so that more and more ebooks will be written.

You may want to create affiliate programs that will also market your ebook. Affiliates can be people or businesses worldwide that will all be working to sell your ebooks. Think about this? Do you see a formula for success here?

Figure out what your subject matter is, and then narrow it down. Your goal is to aim for specificity. Research what’s out there already, and try to find a void that your ebook might fill.

What about an ebook about a wedding cake business? Or an ebook about caring for elderly pets? How about the fine points of collecting ancient pottery?

You don’t have to have three masters degrees to write about your subject. People need advice that is easy to read and easily understood. Parents need advice for dealing with their teenagers. College students need to learn good study skills - quickly. The possibilities are endless.

After you’ve writtten your ebook

Getting your ebook out is going to be your focus once you’ve finished writing it, just as it is with print books. People will hesitate to buy any book from an author they’ve never heard of. Wouldn’t you?

The answer is simple: give it away! You will see profits in the form of promoting your own business and getting your name out. You will find affiliates who will ask you to place their links within your ebook, and these affiliates will in turn go out and make your name known. Almost every single famous ebook author has started out this way.

Another powerful tool to attract people to your ebook is to make it interactive. Invent something for them to do within the book rather than just producing pages that contain static text. Let your readers fill out questionnaires, forms, even crossword puzzles geared to testing their knowledge on a particular subject. Have your readers hit a link that will allow them to recommend your book to their friends and associates. Or include an actual order form so at the end of their reading journey, they can eagerly buy your product.

When people interact with books, they become a part of the world of that book. The fact is just as true for books in print as it is for ebooks.

That’s why ebooks are so essential. Not only do they provide a forum for people to learn and make sense of their own thoughts, but they can also serve to promote your business at the same time.

Ebooks are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They are an entirely new medium for sharing marketing information, ideas, techniques, and expert knowledge.
Each day the number of people accessing the Internet grows, causing the exposure of your ebook to increase incrementally. It’s obvious why electronic
self-publishing has become so popular so quickly.

The publishing industry, I hope, does not intend toforever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. Books in print have their own special qualities and merits, and the world would be diminished by their disappearance.

Having said that, let’s look at what makes ebooks so important and so unique. Ebooks have certain abilities and qualities that other mediums do not possess.

For example, ebooks are fairly easy to produce, and their production cost is inexpensive. Just think about it: you don’t need a publisher, an agent, a printing
press, offset film, ink, paper, or even a distributor. You just need a great concept, the ability to write it or to hire a writer, and the right software.

Additionally, ebooks are easily and rapidly distributed online. They are also easily updated; they do not require a second print run. All you need is to go into your original creation and modify the text or graphics. Because of this flexibility, ebooks can change and grow as fast as you can type.

Ebooks are also immediately obtainable. You don’t have to go to a bookstore or search through endless titles at an online bookstore. All you have to do is download it from a website, and presto! It’s on your computer, ready to be read.

Ebooks are interactive. This is one of the most unique and specific qualities that ebooks offer. You can add surveys that need to be filled out, order forms for customers to purchase your products or goods, sound and video that draw your reader into the virtual world of your ebook, even direct links to relevant sites that will expand your ebook outward. The potential is
virtually limitless.

Ebooks have a particular kind of permanence that other mediums do not possess. Television shows and radio shows air once, and then may rerun a few times. Ebooks
remain on your computer for as long as your choose, and they can be read and reread whenever you choose to. They can even be printed out and stored on the shelves of your traditional home library.

Another wonderful quality is that ebooks have no barriers in terms of publishing. You don’t need to go through the endless process of submitting your manuscript over and over again, and then once you land an agent, having the agent submit your manuscript over and over again. Nor do you have to shell out thousands of dollars for printing a self-published book. All ebooks require is a writer and appropriate software.
Figure out your market, write your book, post it on your website, and with the right business savvy, your audience will come to you.

Finally, you have creative control over your ebook. You don?t have to compromise with an editor or the publishing trends of the time. You don’t have to haggle with a designer or wait for copyedited galleys to arrive by snail mail. You are in complete control of the design and the text.

How to Use ebooks for Marketing and Promotion

There are innumerable ways to use ebooks to promote your business and drive quality traffic to your website. Once posted on your site, you can turn them into a daily course, which brings your customer back to read the next chapter. You can use them as a free
gift for making a purchase or for filling out a survey. Put your ebook on a disc, and you will have an innovative brochure. Blow your competition away by inserting the disc into your sales packages.

The most effective marketing products are those that are unique. Copyright your ebook, and immediately, you have a powerful tool that you, and you alone, can offer to the public. People will have to visit your site to acquire your ebook, which increases the flow of quality traffic and the potential of sales and affiliate contacts.

Make sure that you keep your ebook current. Update it frequently as the market and trends change. Add new advice and techniques to show your prospects how your goods or services can enrich their lives. By constantly keeping abreast of new trends and techniques, you can continue to see profits from your ebook for years after your original creation.

Another phenomenal advantage of ebooks is that you can test their marketing potential without putting out hardly any cash at all. You can even produce an ebook one copy at a time, each time you receive an order, eliminating the need for storage and inventory. By this method, you can gauge the saleablity of your ebook, and make adjustments as necessary until the orders start pouring in. Ebooks allow you to learn about your market and customer habits and motivation over a period of time, without risking your precious financial resources. They also provide you with an invaluable way to gather marketing information, which you can use in many different facets of your business.

Use your ebook to discover what the specific goals and problems are in your specific industry. Then figure out how to solve these problems, and publish an ebook with this invaluable information. This will increasethe value of your business, upgrade your reputation, and get you known as an expert in your field.

You can extend the value of single ebook by breaking the book down into chapters for a serial course, into special reports available on your website, or into audio or visual tapes. Ebooks can be broken down into several different promotional materials by excepting some of the articles and using them to promote your product. You can include a catalog in your ebook to promote all the products or services you sell. You can include a thank-you note for reading your book and an invitation to download a trial version of your
product. Or you can include a form for your audience to contact you for further information or with questions, thereby building your business relationships and your mailing list.

Using ebooks in this manner helps to cut the cost of individually producing separate promotional materials. You can use a single ebook to entice new prospects and to sell new products to your current customers.

No other medium has this kind of flexibility and ability for expansion. Think of your ebook like a spider spinning a beautiful and intricate web. Now go and create that web, and see how many customers and
prospects you can catch!

     I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t really buy into article marketing. But..i can honestly say that now I am a believer. I run a little niche site, its only 2 months old but is already making progress. The site doesnt sell anyting (yet) so the only real income is google adsense. The site came online on October 31st. It took about a week or so to get the site all lined out with the proper widgets, code and signing up to the right sites for marketing. The first traffic showed up on november 8th. 4 whole people visited the site, and I believe they were just some people i sent out there directly. Traffic then flattened out for about 10 days, then started to pick up…i believe a whole 10 showed up.

Then i found 2 things: Craigslist and Ezinearticles.

 While these are both two different kinds of traffic, they do have similarities and differences. Craiglist is a pretty solid traffic source, however you have to constantly fight with the craiglist morons who flag everything they find. I have spend entire days throwing unique articles out on CL only to have them all flagged and deleted. However when they stick…wow what traffic.

Ezinearticles is THE place for article marketing. And while it may not be a traffic explosion, it does send regular visitors and the articles are always active. Plus the people are usually quality visitors.  So how have these two things helped the site?

Now, average unique vistors to the niche site/day - 61.9
Adsense revenue November: $12.03
Adsense Revenue December - $32.56

So its coming along, just taking a little time. I think a lot of the slow response time is because of the holiday season. So yes, article marketing works, so does advertising, but both of them have their own caveats and need to be tailored to your needs.

I’m hoping for a much better ‘08 year!

Driving traffic into your landing page – it sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. And no

matter how great your landing page is, it wont matter if no one ever reads it. Furthermore, if everyone in the world other than your target audience reads it, it also wont matter. This is why you need to find media through which you can drive targeted visitors to your landing page.One way in which you can drive traffic to your landing page is through natural search engine optimization. This is the slowest process, but it is also one of the best ways to ensure a continually-increasing stream of traffic over time.

Another way in which to get natural search engine traffic is by optimization your website for certain keyphrases. You can do this by creating pages that specifically focus on one keyword on your given niche. You can then set the page extension to that keyword and optimize the content at a 1.5% density for that keyword. You will also want to use it in header and title tags.

Now, in addition building natural search engine traffic, you will want to consider using pay per click advertising. You can do this by opening an account with Google Adwords.

As mentioned earlier, successful Google Adwords campaigns do two things: they group keywords into multiple, small, related groups – and they send leads to multiple, tweaked landing pages.

This means you will have to start with some careful keyword research; and you will then have to alter your landing pages to match that research.

These are some of the most commonly used tools for driving traffic to a landing page; however, they are not always the most effective.

Anyone that has used craigslist.org in their marketing efforts knows the power of CL. If you have a site you want exposure for, it’s hard to be the traffic that CL has on it. There are are a few things that some may not think about when using Craigslist.

1) Don’t keep using the same ad. CL won’t let you post the exact same ad anyway, butt people will get tired of that ad if you just repost it after the original expiration date. Mix it up a bit.

2) Sell to your crowd. If you have a site that sells thermal underwear, throwing your ad into the Florida>Miami directory of Craigslist will probably not get the response that putting it into the Montana directory will.

3) Don’t waste money on the autosubmitters. They have been pretty much all played out and CL usually won’t let them post.

 Also, I’ve found that if you post an affiliate link, you will get an email saying your posted, and it will have a link back to your post, but if you go into the directory and look for your post, it wont be found. I suspect that while it doesnt get deleted, it also doesnt hit the public directory. I havent found anything in CL’s FAQ that confirms or denies that.

If you use it as another tool in your marketing toolbox, CL is a good source of traffic

Article Marketing is becoming a very popular way to drive traffic to your system. With a little bit of quality writing, you can pull traffic into your site with just one article.

      Bum Marketing is actually a simple idea, though it does take a bit of work to use this method effectively. Bum Marketing is a way to write articles, and submit them to ezines to generate traffic. The trick is you have to write a good, well researched and more importantly, keyword laden article. Having heavy keywords in your articles that are relevant to the topic is how bum marketing is used to pull in people. Also, writing a quality article will bring in traffic. People who search for your topic will find you via search engines that look at these article submission sites favorably.

     A little bit of research is required before you start pumping out articles though. First you need to do a keyword search to see where to start. Google Trends also will tell you what people are searching for. The keyword tool will show give you an expanded view of what a particular search term is doign at any given moment. Personally, i like the keywords that are being searched more than 200-300 times a day, with those, you know there is a LOT of interest which means a lot of traffic.

Once you find your hot area (also known as a niche) then you decide on an article, reasearch and submit to the various ezine spots. Just 1 well written article can start an avalance of traffic to your site.

Check out the attatched article for a more indepth look at Bum marketing

Bum marketing How to superglue your articles to the top of listings   

Tips on Increasing Your Landing Page Conversion Rate 

There are three major ways in which you can create your landing page conversion rate. All landing pages created by professionals usually include these three elements at a few others.

The first way in which you can increase your conversion rate is through personalization. This is usually done in two ways: the first way is by providing a photo of yourself. The second way is by adding your signature to the bottom of your landing page. This radically increases visitors’ trust. Most people who resist buying products online do so because they’re weary of getting scammed by a faceless liar, who wont be around when they need help or when they need to return the product. By adding your picture and signature, you can gain visitors’ trust.

Another way in which you can increase your landing page conversion rate is by using black text or a white layout. Regardless of what anyone tells you, this is one of the easiest ways in which to make your page look professional, rather than pathetic or desperate.

The third way in which you can gain trust is by offering something for free. This is generally what you will do if you’re using a squeeze page to generate leads: you’ll offer a free report or five-day course – and then use that to generate leads, which you will later upsell or generate revenue from via affiliate sales. Why is this technique so effective? Quite simply because it allows them to judge your work and ideas before they actually have to pay for them. Additionally, it builds trust.

In addition to these three general ways in which to increase your conversion rate, you should always guarantee a product. If you sell through Click Bank, you actually wont have a choice. But if you’re using Paypal or some other check out program, you will want to make sure you clearly state that customers can return your product for any reason within a given period of time after the purchase.

Follow all of these steps and you will significantly increase your landing page conversion rate.

In addition to careful copywriting, there are other important things you must take into consideration when writing a landing page that converts. For instance, it is important to build a compelling case for a time-bound offer.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to invent fake deadlines and constantly revise them each week. This is a good way to guarantee your complete loss of credibility in the shortest amount of time possible.

However, when planning your copy, you will want to make sure that you constantly urge the reader to act immediately by inserting a number of “calls to action,” as I’ve mentioned previously.

You may want to consider using fly-ins or pop-ups to create more urgency – or to make a time-bound offer. Perhaps you can use a countdown to build urgency (i.e., when someone arrives at your landing page, they have five minutes to purchase the product at the lowest price).

Now, if you’re creating a squeeze page, you might want to employ slightly different tactics. Rather than building a compelling case with multiple triggers and calls to action over the course of 1000 words, you may want to simply condense that all into a compelling headline and one paragraph of “benefits.”

For a completely free-to-join squeeze page, you more than likely wont have a considerable amount of resistance to joining, unless the visitor a) doesn’t see any benefits; and b) suspects that you will sell their email address to spammers.

Both of these problems are relatively easy to overcome. In your headline, simply state the exact benefits they will receive for joining – as always, mixing in psychological triggers. In your first paragraph of copy, give them a compelling reason to join now (i.e., the price might go up, the list might become private, you’ll get this amazing report).

Now, to overcome the second problems, simply include a short line under your opt-in form that explains that you will not – under any circumstances – spam them or sell or give away their email address and name.

Most people have no idea how to write a landing page that converts. Instead, they slop together elements that they have seen used in other landing pages – but usually do not put them together in the same way the owner of the successful landing page did.

One major problem is copy. And that’s fine. Not everyone is going to be an excellent writer – nevermind a copywriter. But as someone selling a product or trying to build a list, it is important that you know your strengths and weaknesses – and that you either spend the time to overcome them or hire someone else to do it for you.

With copywriting, for instance, it is important to use a mix of compelling sales points with powerful psychological triggers. Most people who create a salespage miss either one or both of those elements.

For instance, they might concentrate so much on building hype that they don’t actually explain what solution they are providing – and for whom they are providing it. If I don’t have a specific problem that your product solves, why would I buy it? I wouldn’t.

Now, if they fail to sprinkle in psychological triggers, such as “scientifically proven,” “guaranteed,” and “shocking,” no one will feel compelled to continue reading, as the benefits will have a low or average perceived value.

In addition to these two problems, some salespages lack coherency and direction. The copy looks amateurish and it doesn’t slowly grind forward, breaking down the visitor’s resistance to the sale – and compelling him or her to buy more and more at each sales point.

Additionally, if there aren’t multiple calls to action – another form of psychological trigger – then a potential visitor might never feel compelled enough to pull out his or her credit card on the spot and make the purchase.

Perhaps the most important part of creating a landing page is planning your landing page theme. How you select your theme, of course, will all depend on how you plan to generate traffic.

If you decide to generate traffic through search engine optimization, planning your landing page theme will entail finding phrases within your niche which have a high demand (aggregate search value) and a low supply (small amount of competing sites) and then creating multiple landing pages, each which is optimized around a different phrase.

If, on the other hand, you decide to generate traffic through pay per click (PPC) programs, such as Adwords, planning your landing page theme will again entail tuning a number of different pages to fit the keywords you are purchasing.

This is actually where most people fail when they create a landing page: they don’t tune it to fit a specific audience. For instance, in the case of a squeeze page for a newsletter, they might start a newsletter about toys, but they only create one landing page and send all traffic to it. This is a big mistake.

Chances are, if you create a quality product or newsletter, it can benefit a number of people. So why not communicate the exact benefits they will derive from subscribing or buying? If, for instance, you have a newsletter about legos and toy blocks, so you group it under the loose heading of “toys,” a visitor who is looking specifically for information about either legos or toy blocks will click off your page if they don’t see the direct connection to the exact topic for which they were searching.

Instead, you will want to setup a page centered around legos and a page centered around toy blocks. On each page, you will want to communicate the specific benefits to joining the list for each of those groups of visitors.

Going one step further, in addition to planning your landing page theme, if you are creating a landing page for a newsletter, you may also want to segment your list, so you can send information specifically about legos to those who request it – and information about blocks to those who request it.