Make Money Online- the baby steps part 36

Welcome back to “Make Money Online- the baby steps part 36″. As time passes on you might start thinking about writing an e-book. And why shouldn´t you? By now you have certainly become aware of the extreme growth taking place in the e-book segment of digital publishing. Well, in all honesty the growth is taking place in ALL segments of digital publishing. And you should probably be part of that boom. Now, there are several ways to take the plunge into the e-book race. Also, there are many different reasons you might want to take this step.

In general there are several possible strategies you could pursue with your e-book. Let´s have a quick look at some of the most important and common ways:

1. Amazon e-publishing. Getting your e-book out there is a lot easier, faster and less expensive than ever before. The ability to employ competitive pricing strategies as well as having a direct impact on almost all areas of the business side and creative process of your book makes self-publishing a compelling road for those of you who feel you have a great story to tell. The rags-to-riches stories in this segment have been around for quite a while and we are absolutely convinced we ain´t seen nothing yet. Wherever we see grand opportunity, we can almost feel the hard work and sweat going on behind the scenes. Coupled with a bit of luck, and some talent, hard work could make you a winner in this new fast and exciting market.

2. Sell it on your website. Providing you have what publishing giants call a “platform”, you could probably sell the book yourself. If you were to approach one of the publishing giants today with a book idea, one of the first (and most important) questions they would send your way is whether or not you have any “platform” available in order to promote and sell your work. For instance, in the old days having a platform used to mean that you traveled around and did lots of presentations. or perhaps you appeared on TV or radio. Or you were a star, in which case YOU were the actual platform. While all these ways of getting your work across to your audience have stood the test of time, the internet is really the name of the game. You have a popular blog? You´re in. You operate a well-trafficked website? You´re in. You own and operate a string of authority niche websites covering your topic? You´re in, and b t w pardon us for drooling.

What these publishing giants won´t tell you of course, but many of you will figure it out anyway, is that you don´t really need them if you have any of these “platforms” in place. As we have stated before, if you have the traffic it´s not really that difficult to turn that traffic into money. And by doing that you could be keeping 100 % of it. So what value does the publishing house bring to the table, you might ask yourself? Well, it turns out you are not the only one asking that question, and the name of the publishing game is changing even as we speak. They are looking at new ways to operate, and new strategies in order to stay ahead of the technical revolution, that is rocking their world.

3. Use it as incentive for signup. By now you probably heard a million times that a solid e-mail-list is what makes money in this game. This is partially true. And while we don´t advocate going down this road purely for the money, it certainly represents a great marketing opportunity regardless of your underlying intentions. We believe it is one of the best ways to provide value and good-will to your visitors, and in the end we know that it is one of the best ways to build traffic. This may sound a bit counter-intuitive, since you are actually driving people away from your site by allowing them to leave the site with your content, instead of keeping them on your site by presenting the content there. We are not big fans of this line of thinking. We believe that ultimately information wants to be free, and the sooner you let it out the door the better. This one is not really as hard as it sounds. There are a lot of people out there getting heaps of e-mails to add to their lists by simply offering 5-50 pages of relevant material to their audience. Another way to go about it is to offer parts of your archives up as e-books. We´re sure you´ve experienced this line of action lots of times on the internet, and yes it does bring in the e-mail adresses very well indeed.

Your willingness to share, help and promote other people´s lives and ambitions will not go unnoticed. You will receive good-will, word-of-mouth recommendations, awareness, frequent visitors and traffic. At least that is what we believe. Anyway that´s what we are hoping for will be the outcome of the Richopedia.com experiment. We thought about using the guides we have created for building e-mail lists. But that would have tarnished some of the core ideas we brought to the table when we initiated this idea. We wanted a website that distanced itself from the “get rich quick”-crowd. Something reliable. No hype. No BS. No empty promises. With that setting trying to get hold of your e-mail adress felt uncool. So we just published it on the site instead. We are likely to offer the e-books later on as well, but that will only be an alternative to reading about it here. Whatever suits or readers the best. If you are happy, it makes us happy. This has been our choice, for this particular website. You are of course free to do what you want. If you want to monetize, an e-book with a corresponding e-mail requirement might be the best way to go about it.

4. Use it as viral marketing. We are great believers in karma. What goes around tends to come around. While there is little empirical evidence in the world to support our beliefs, we believe a lot of events that keep this hidden “equation” in balance is happening on an invisible level. Another, more cynical, way of putting it is that there are no free lunches in this world. Any army is only as strong as its wekest link. You strengthen the front, and your rear will be weak. You strengthen your rear and your resources will have to be taken from the front. And so on. By giving away your content for free you might not be making a whole lot of money short-term. But there is always that chance that your content will go viral. if your content is helping people solve a need or educating people in a good way, word tends to spread. And nowhere else can words be spread faster and more exponentially than on the internet. If you give away value, there is a chance that value will spread a lot further than you initially intended it to. And once that happens you have a unintended viral marketing campaign going for you.

It didn´t really cost you anything. Except for time. And the choice not to go for the easy lower-hanging apples and instead wait for the opportunity to clean up the entire apple tree garden. There is so much power in a viral campaign since most of the work is done for free by volunteers. In fact, the people singing your praise and “selling” your product and brand name are spreading the word to their friends. You are not only getting free promotion. The promotion is done by one friend to another. That´s the kind of marketing you can´t really buy for money. No wonder the advertising firms of the world are all trying to come up with the next great viral campaign. Something that will make them and their key accounts stars and leave the competition in the dust. Going viral is about doing something that is really great. Something that is so good it really stands out. Do good, be great,and hope that the world will return the favour someday.

So we have covered some of the most important strategic ways in which to use your e-book. Now it may be time to take a closer look at soem other questions that always arise once you begin going down this road. How long sholud the book be? What should it be about? What software is needed, and how do I really go about it? Well, join us in “Make Money Online- the baby steps part 37″ and we will uncover all the other parts of the mystery as we try to answer those questions and provide you with even more useful information.