Selling with Free E-Books

Here's a trick that works to drive traffic and generate better profits.

Simply create or obtain the rights to an e-book that you can give away. Make sure you have the right to give it away. Then embed links to your website on which you have more related items, either e-books or sales offers. Note: it is important to have related sales offers as you are working on converting an intersted reader to buy the related product. This is called an up sell or cross sale depending if it is the same type of product or something related to the original e-book content.

Now you may want to give a couple of e-books just in case they are interested in reading your material but not sure about your products yet. After a few of these helpful books they will be much more trusting and willing to consider your other offers. Respect their interest and they will return.

Let's look at a simple example;

Let's say you supply an E-Book on introductory to digital photography. In it you give the basics about what photography is about. Information on; lighting, tricks to frame pictures, stop action vs. blur action, etc. Now your free market offering is about ready. Set up a good web site with affiliate offers for cameras and books on photography (Especially gorgeous coffee table books.)

Now you set another related article or two in short e-book form on the site and viola! The site should have some unique quality camera work of you own or get someone to supply you with it. That adds a unique touch and shows that you (or someone you are working with) know your stuff. Now let the email marketing and web links to free info on photography begin!

Now the E-book may extoll the virtues of some piece of camera gear or a camera you like and you have a built in pitch. Not too much sales pitch though, try to supply more help than pressure. Think of how you would like to be treated. A good book or series of articles are worth the time spent. If I learn valuable insight I will come back for more.

Learn from Experience

As you practice new marketing methods you must track traffic and sales performance so you can learn what works and what doesn't. As you gain an undersanding of the market and your customer you will get much better conversion rates. The market demographics may change with time and you will need to change tactics to match.

For example through use of daily traffic & sales data you can track small differences made in your A-B test cases that yeild the best conversion rate. This best conversion rate will yeild the highest quality buying traffic and most satisfied customers too. That brings 'em back for more and gets you points with the search engines.

Another benefit of tracking data analysis is your understanding of just what is attracting the customer to buy in the first place. That can lead to many new sales options, if you just think about what the data is telling about the customer's buying habits. Are there other products or better matched products that you could offer? Are there similar products that may appeal to a broader audience? Or can you make your new customers buy more often?

By the way the best converting advertising will often be using different ad copy than the ad with the best CTR. Think about an ad that says you can look here for more "Information on a new Laptop" vs Look here for a "Sale on the Latest Laptop." There are likely far more lookers interested in the more general "Laptop info" hence higher CTR than those whose interest is to buy a real "Laptop on Sale."

This is why it is so important to always end your ad copy with a simple pitch or offer. What do you want them to do? You really want to attract people who are thinking about a purchase. Of course there's always the cross or up-sell, but that's another topic...

Remember your traffic costs you money, time and effort. You want the best customers your ad can buy so plan your copy accordingly. Your profits are the difference between ad costs and sales income. More profit is better, so watch that traffic data closely.