Question about selling ebooks

[ifuel]

Hi guys,

First of all, I am sorry if this is posted in the wrong section. Hpefully someone can help me move it, if that is the case.

I was wondering, if any of you guys have actually written an ebook and sold it through clickbank. I am just wondering how many it is possible (or typical, maybe?) to sell. I know there are a lot of variables which should be known, in order to give a correct answer. But maybe someone can just give me a brief idea. Lets say, an ebook about making money, using the typical one-mile-pain-in-the-ass long salesletter. I know it depends on a lot of other things as well, but is it worth the time? Are the affiliate guys, promoting the clickbank stuff, effective? one sale in a week, or 20 in a day? I am not expecting a specific answer, just thoughts

 

[dangregory]

First off, I recommend NOT selling your ebooks through Clickbank. As both a publisher and a long time affiliate for them, their tracking on sales has been hugely inaccurate and you dont' always get the money you've earned.

But selling ebooks can be quite lucrative. I sell some as an affiliate and also create them myself. You have to do careful keyword research and make sure that your subject matter is going to be easy to break into - and the make money niche can be tricky since it's so highly competitive. That said, if you have a specific angle or a subniche within a niche, that can work.

You need to find out how many people are searching for your information (the material you plan to cover in your ebook ) per month. Use Google's free external keyword tool for this. Now type those keywords into Google and look at all the sites that are coming up. Those sites will be your competition. If there are tons of sites, those sites have lots of backlinks, and those sites are over a year old, you could be dealing with stiff competition and unless you plan to use paid advertising to drive traffic, it could be hard getting organic traffic to your site.

Assess your competition very carefully in whichever niche you're going after.

The other place you can sell is on forums. Look at forums in your niche and study them. Is there room for you to establish friendships and a presence on those forums? If so, and you can put a link to your site in your signature file, you could pull some customers that way.

But do a lot of studying first.

When it comes to selling your ebook I recommend using a third party service called e-junkie that costs about $5 a month. You combine this with a paypal button and people will pay via paypal. Ejunkie automatically sends them the download so you don't have as many customer service issues to deal with - although if someone requests a refund, you will need to refund their money through Paypal.

that's about it. I enjoy publishing ebooks and short reports myself and I still think there's tons of money to be made from it. I make anywhere from $50 to $200 with just the ebook part of my business. It's good stuff and lots of fun to see money coming into your account every day.

Dan

 

[Nick Flame]

Simple answer.

Depends if you know how to promote your product. If you don't promote your product, then you won't make any sale. If you promote your product, you can make hundreds of thousands of sales. Affiliates will come after you make your product well known.

 

[gimme4free]

Also, use your own in-house affiliate program, this way you have them on your mailing list to notify if you have any other products that you want promoted by affiliates.

 

[scb335]

I've been working with payloadz more and more lately and would say try there before clickbank to test the waters. You don't have to pay to have your product approved, can build a nice network of affiliates, they handle product delivery for you, and you will only need to upgrade from a free account to paid after you've made some money. Well worth it in my opinion. Just put in some time to find affiliates promoting products in your niche already and getting them to promote yours too, giving free copies to potential affiliates helps a lot.

As for how many copies you could sell, there's no way to answer that at all. Any 2 people promoting the same product are going to sell different amounts of it based on how and where they market it... there's just no way to predict sales on an unknown product like this.

 

[Questionable]

I make anywhere from $50 to $200 with just the ebook part of my business. It's good stuff and lots of fun to see money coming into your account every day.

Dan

Nice to hear the sound advice posted. Research seems to be they key for many things, and many people pass it up to dive right in. How popular of search words do you shoot for before diving into an area with barely any competition for information?

And is that $50 to $200 per day? Great job!

 

[techgeek]

i would recommend do it through clickbank, although i haven't yet but close friends of mine have and are banking big money because of all the affiliate power on clickbank. imagine 1000s of affilaites promoting your ebook and only getting paid when they make a sale... CHA CHING!

 

[ifuel]

i would recommend do it through clickbank, although i haven't yet but close friends of mine have and are banking big money because of all the affiliate power on clickbank. imagine 1000s of affilaites promoting your ebook and only getting paid when they make a sale... CHA CHING!

Thats what I thought. So many people are promoting the stuff on clickbank. So it seems to be a good way to go. But I don't know how effective it is, since I have never tried selling anything through clickbank.
Anyway, thanks everyone, for the input! Useful stuff!

 

[lostkitten]

What traffic should be used for selling ebooks?

 

[koshiro]

Its a myth that you can just make a ton of money by putting up your ebook for sale on Clickbank.

Yes, one advantage is that Clickbank has a big pool of affiliates, hence its a good system to use but you'll only get a lot of affiliates pimping you when you get some decent gravity and popularity.

If you want to go with Clickbank but know how to push for sales at your end. My favorite method is to build a list first so I can instantly move some units. And JV with some other people so you'll get the product selling right from the start. By increasing your popularity/gravity, you'll get more affiliates latching on and pimping your product.

Its important to make sure your ebook is in a niche with a big demand too. It can't be too obscure. And of course, the product must be solid. Not just rewritten PLR crap.