Pictures

ALWAYS use pictures to help sell your goods. There are many online sources for images (always check you have copyright permission to use them!), or you can take your own. Folk often pass articles with no image!

Free Image editor

If you don’t have an image editor then GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. I’ve seen a report that rates it alongside PhotoShop!

Free trial ($24 to buy) GIF editor (Moving images)

GIF Construction Set Professional represents the state of the art in GIF animation software. It will assemble your original animations effortlessly through its Animation Wizard; squeeze them down to as close to nothing as possible with its Super compressor; create eye catching banners and animated transitions; manage your GIF files; add transparency to existing graphics and a lot more.

Free online picture space

Upload all your photos, videos, and images to Photobucket for free. Make slideshows and remixes. Link your media to your social network profile, auction sites, web sites and blogs. Share by email, IM, or mobile phone. Give it a try! The real benefit with PhotoBucket (apart from being free) is they provide you with the URL’s (universal resource locator, a fancy way of saying links) to the individual pictures so you can just copy/paste to your advert.

Two ways to produce covers for E-books.

There are two ways to produce E-book covers, design the cover yourself or get a program to do the bulk of the work for you. The former gives a higher quality product (and, usually, bigger files = longer downloads), the latter is a lot quicker, and produces acceptable results.

To Instantly Create Simple e-book covers in only 3 easy steps you will need to buy this program ~ I do not know of another product with similar capabilities.

A graphics tutorial is well beyond this article, however an overview of the process is;

Take a picture of a book, ideally using a digital camera so you do not have to scan the results.

Remove the background and the words

The image is still recognisable, so you’ll need to blur it (you have the copyright to your image, but not to the image on the book. NB to save the above stages you could simply reverse the dust cover)

Add your own exciting text

Of course, its always better to use your own image, especially if it has proved popular on the Internet, but this is a time consuming way to add a book cover!

Next Article: Basic HTML (The Internet language)

This article assumes you have bought an on-line store, for example e-books, although the principles are good for any market. A later blog assumes you are simply intending to enter affiliate marketing and give some different (more advanced) triacks for getting customers to those sites. Does it work? As I said before you are reading this so something must be working!

Your now in the catch 22 that we have all seen. You cannot attract customers without good links to other sites (and some good advertising). You can’t get good links unless you have a good site with high “footfall” ( = customers ) Also, if you followed the above recomendations, although you have a stock of 50 book they are all a bit tired, have been round the block several times and are generally for sale at around £0.99p.

You have spent some cash getting to here, and really want to break even before investing in more stock, however if you have a tired site you will not get repeat business, which is one of the keys to your success.

You need a plan ~ I suggest this is it;

Stock

You have to face the situation and get some stock ~ this does not have to be a lot, initially, but you must have something new to attract and retain, purchasers. Search e-bay for stock you do not have. (Check their feedback, if they are selling loads go for that one, if they are not selling any take the hint. Always check if you have resell rights.)

You can also search any search engine for e-books (or ebooks, or E-Books etc). Take care with “free” offers ~ sign our newsletter list and we will send you 30 free e-books”. Some are good offers, some are real junk. If you can look at the free list and search for a few on E-bay. Once you find a good source, e.g. www.paulscorner.co.uk , bookmark them and return from time to time to see what they have recently bought.

A modest target is to add one item of stock every day ~ 7/week, 365/year. If you want a stock that will last you a lifetime try my warehouse store ~ I’ve listed every title you get, cracking value at £50GBP. Gotto be a proffit here.

Affiliate links

Lots of opportunity exists for selling product not owned by you. For example you may find your host is good (as mine is) and want to help by driving traffic their way. Many such product owners are happy to pay you a (small) percentage of the sale for this trade (which they would not otherwise get). You sign up with the provider as an affiliate and receive a link that recognises you, and pays you every time a sale is confirmed. Hover your mouse over “as mine is” and you can see my link for this affiliate is http://www.bigfatwebhosting.co.uk/?ref=BigPaul

This can be as profitable as selling e-books, indeed using my hints and tips it can be easier.

There are some affiliate links in both the shop and the direct seller programs recommended above. You can also search any search engine for affiliate links or affiliate resellers.

Some people like to hide their links (to stop them being disassembled). This piece of software creates cloaked affiliate link redirects with a few clicks. Allows you to create as many redirect pages as you like, with no coding required, because it generates the redirect page instantly in HTML or PHP format.

Reverse links to your site

When you create new web site in any niche, you face one BIG problem. It’s not your design, not your hosting, not shopping cart or affiliate program software. This problem is how to get targeted traffic for your web site.

The most effective links are hand-crafted links to complementary sites of slightly better standing than you own. E.g. a towel manufacturer might want links to towel rail manufacturers sites. Both sell things that complement the other without clashing.

You can also buy programs to create links based on things like keywords etc ~ better than nothing (and certainly much much quicker) but you ought to invest some time in hand crafting links. (Take care, the Internet is packed with tons of fantastic solutions that promise to handle this problem for you: different submitters, million times re-written e-books, traffic exchanges, primitive list builders – best to go with a recommended tool than strike out on your own).

Write an e-book yourself on a topic you know.

Depending on the content you can a) make a little money of the sale of each book and b) create some links to your site which drives potential customers towards you. This blog is an example, it could easily be an e-book.

There are some really shoddy e-books out there, with E-bay Feedback being a good example. Is a three page book which does show a working process, good value for money, or should you go for something like this blog with fact-pack content mostly containing hyperlinks to useful sites? If your hoping to build a loyal customer base I suggest you a) add relevant content b) add relevant images and c) add relevant hyperlinks. (Did you spot the word relevant?)

The usual format for an e-book is .PDF (Portable Document Format is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world), originally designed by Adobe who will happily sell you a PDF writer. Fortunately there are free alternatives.

Free PDF writer

CutePDF Writer (formerly CutePDF Printer) is the free version of commercial PDF creation software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a “printer subsystem”. This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to create professional quality PDF documents – with just a push of a button!

FREE for personal and commercial use! No watermarks! No Popup Web Ads!

Installation Requirements

Supports Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (x64)/2003 (x64)/Vista (x64).
Requires PS2PDF converter such as Ghostscript (recommended).
You can get the free GPL Ghostscript 8.15 here.

Advertise (e.g. by selling on an Auction site)

Creating your own auctions selling digital goods on popular auction sites is a great way to market your product to a purchase-minded audience. Digital goods provide the added benefit of instant satisfaction through immediate product delivery making them very attractive to consumers. (you did read the blog on automatic delivery didn’t you?)

E-bay is used here, as a working example, but do not limit yourself to one auction site. In just the same way that different search engine turn up difference results, different on-line auctions have different customers. eBay, Yahoo! Auctions, uBid.com, Amazon Auctions, MSN Auctions, BidVille ~ the list is almost endless. My advice is to get your feet wet with a few of the bigger sites, but be willing to try some others.

If you buy anything be sure to use a link to your website in your feedback ~ load of folk read this. Use the same link in your e-mail signature, any blog accounts your raise, any profiles you write. The key is consistance, and exposure!

Keep your URL’s (Internet addresses) SHORT

A good way to get a short URL is www.tinyurl.com. Take my blog http://www.paulscorner.co.uk/blog/ becomes http://tinyurl.com/lsxm2a. Nice and neat and doesn’t take up much real estate (Screen).

E-bay basic rules (Valid for most auction sites)

The policy eBay has towards the sale of digital goods is confusing to say the least. Their Downloadable Media Policy can be seen here. You should review the selling digital items FAQ before listing your item. This advice applies to all sites ~ check the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) before listing.

One particular thing to note. E-bay appears to be very strict on the category where you sell digital items. Choose somewhere in this area Everything Else > Information Products. E.g. Everything Else > Information Products > How-To Guides

Free E-bay submission tool

Turbo Lister is an easy-to-use software program that helps you create item listings in bulk on your computer and upload them to sell at eBay.

Create professional-looking listings easily using a design editor and templates (no HTML knowledge needed).

List multiple items all at once and save listings to re-use again and again.

Add photos and preview your listings without being connected to the Internet.

Insert payment terms, tax, shipping and any messages you want to include.

List faster by duplicating your primary listings and editing those copies to create new listings.

Phew ~ nearly 1,400 words in this artilce, time to pause for breath …..

Next article: Some (often free) tools you will need

Not essential, but automatic delivery is a bonus.

Allow 1 day installation if this stage is needed. Also allow at least 2 hours customisation time, perhaps a little longer if you are a total newbie. Must have bought some land before you start this section.

You can skip this step, however many folk who buy electronic books expect delivery to be near instant. The traditional way is to get home from work, see what has been sold, and manually dispatch the orders. I’m suggesting you invest in a process which automates that, checking the right money has been paid, then sending the goods, perhaps even while you sleep.

Again there are many such programs, however this one integrates with both the above shop, the suggested host and E-Bay (one of the UK’s largest auction sites). Set-up instructions are clear and the whole site is easy to use.

< < OK STOP HERE > >

Well, perhaps not. This has a basic infrastructure in place, some basic stock and a basic route for money to bank. However there are no customers! Damn. This is where you start to work

Next Article: Getting some customers

The shop infrastructure

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS STEP. This article series assumes you want to sell something electronic (e-books). It may be you simply want to sell affiliate links (more later). If you don’t need an online shop skip the next two articles.

Allow 1 day installation if this stage is needed. Also allow at least 10 hours customisation time, perhaps a little longer if you are a total newbie. Must have “bought some land” before you start this section.

As always there are a number of folk out there who sell e-book shops. If your searching the technical term is turnkey business. (All you have to do is turn the key and start). www.paulscorner.co.uk uses a store called DownLoad Shop which provides 50 e-books to get you started.

You will need to heavily customise the site before you trade (for example the prices are a bit inflated, and the currency converter is not set to today’s rates) however everything is very straight forward, and you simply have to work methodically down the list of options on the left, making the style choices you like.

The owner has heavily customised the program with help text and it is all fairly straightforward.

[IMG]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y130/s21023/onlineebooks.png[/IMG]

Next article: Automatic delivery

Next you have to buy the land you want to build on

Allow 15 minutes set-up if this stage is needed. Must have completed the article on signposts before you start this section. c£6/month

The Internet is a vast digital plain ~ fortunately there is lots of land available for all, and lots of people willing to sell it to you. There are also “free” areas, but there is no such thing as a free lunch and you ‘pay’ by having their adverts in your space. Price of space is low so it is better to buy ad-free server space.

The usual term for these sellers is “Host”. There are really two things to consider, how much space is available, and how much traffic the host will allow on their roads. You measure space in Megabytes (Mb). To give you an idea, at the time of writing www.paulscorner.co.uk takes about 50Mb. The host (Estate agent) I use allows 500Mb so I have some room for expansion!

Traffic (how much data is sent back and forth to the site, including sales downloads) is known as bandwidth and is measured in Gigabytes (Gb). (there are 100Mb in a Gb). My host allows 20Gb/month so I can sell the whole contents of my site 400 times a month ~ don’t I wish business was that good?

Who to pick? It is really a price/size/traffic balance, and 1&1 (mentioned above) are good and fairly priced. If you are planning to follow this guide and install the programs below then I recommend this host as they were VERY helpful in setting things up for me (they did it all really, I just went in and set up my bank account details etc).

Next Article: The shop infrastructure