Who, with NO business experience became a Super Affiliate earning $500,000+ per year selling other people’s stuff online. Dear Aspiring Affiliate Marketer, Although I hate the term and don’t own a tiara, my colleagues call. User Reviewed How to Write Your First eBook. Three Parts: eBook Help Writing Your eBook Publishing Your eBook Community Q&A. Whether you have useful advice to sell, or just want your voice to be heard, putting your words in an.
Should You Sell Your Ebook on Amazon or Your Own Website? Most of the self- publishing success stories we hear revolve around selling books on Amazon, and for good reason: authors like Steve Scott and Mark Dawson have used the platform to bring home six- figure salaries. But if you’re considering self- publishing, you should know there is another option: selling ebooks on your own site. If you’re able to carve out your own little corner of the Internet, this route, too, can be incredibly lucrative. Each method has its pros and cons, and that’s what I’d like to cover in today’s post.
When does it make sense to sell your self- published book on Amazon, and when should you forego the giant and sell on your own website? Here’s what to consider when making this decision. Sell on Amazon? Or on your own site? Your pricing strategy, and the type of books you write. If you sell on Amazon, you’re expected to price ebooks like everyone else does, generally between $2. But if you sell on your own website, you can set your price however you like, from $2. Of course, you only want to sell at a high price point if potential buyers see that much value in your ebook.
Top Sales Channels. Lulu.com makes your books available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, Nook, iBooks, the Lulu.com bookstore and many other retailers. All for free.
Often this depends on the type of ebook you write. If you’re writing novels, as a lot of self- published authors do, you’re kind of cornered into that less- than- $9. But if you write non- fiction, especially how- to or advice- heavy guides (also known as informational ebooks) readers will typically pay a much higher price. Why? Because they’re accessing your brain, your experience and your guidance, all of which is worth more than a story. And while the help- you- make- money niche has earned a scammy reputation, if your ebook helps people make money, they’ll be even more willing to open their wallets to read it. My ebooks are a good example.
How to Build a Part- Time Social Media Business, the first ebook I ever wrote, sells for $2. How to Create a Freakin’ Fabulous Social Media Strategy sells for $5. And my other two informational ebooks are priced somewhere in between. I could never get away with pricing those ebooks beyond $1.
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I sold on Amazon, because everyone prices their ebooks low on the platform. But readers get tremendous value from these resources, value that helps them quickly earn back what they spent on the guides. Because of that, it’s easy to justify the price when I sell them on my own website. In addition to being able to charge more when I sell on my own site, I also profit more on each sale.
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All of these things are Free: Free Gardening Ebook: The Gardeners Secret Handbook. It's an Ebook: Copyright © 2010 by McGroarty Enterprises Inc. Free Report: 21 Plants that are Easy to Grow and Sell Like. The MoneyMagpie Site is intended for reference purposes only and use of the Site and/or the Content is entirely at your own risk. You should always carry out your own research and/or take specific professional advice before. EBook Software: create your own eBooks. CoverFactory.com Create Your Own eBook Covers EBookApprentice.com Learn How To Create, Publish & Market eBooks EBookPower.com. Do More Than Create Web Pages Do more than 'learn how.' Do more than merely putting up yet another site or blog that 'sits there.' Start and build a real business. The right process, the right tools that remove all the. I have returned from the fiery abyss of writing my first eBook and uploading it on Kindle, and I bring you this message: It’s not that bad. But why write and publish an eBook? If you’re an online marketer, entrepreneur.
When I sell an ebook on Alexis. Grant. com, I keep almost 1. My expenses are minimal: I pay $5 to e- junkie each month to deliver my ebooks — and yes, that’s a static fee no matter how many ebooks I sell — and 2. Pay. Pal for collecting the funds (and slightly more for international purchases), which works out to about $1 for each $2. I also pay one of my team members to answer emails from potential buyers and anyone who has questions after reading the guides, which counts as another expense. Still, earnings from my ebook sales have an amazingly high margin because they require so little maintenance after I publish.
Now look at how much you profit if you sell on Amazon — I do have one ebook on the platform, so I’m speaking from first- hand experience. If you price your ebook between $2. If you price below $2. If I were to sell even my lowest- price informational guide on Amazon, I’d probably need to price it at $9. I’d take home about $7 for each sale. Compare that to the $2. I earn on my own site for the same ebook!
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It sounds like a no- brainer, right? Except… there are other factors at hand too, and some of them favor Amazon. Your reach online. If you’re going to make money from your self- published books, someone has to buy them. This is the tough part for a lot of new authors; they simply don’t know how to get the word out about their book.
That’s where Amazon comes in. If you self- publish on the platform, you can leverage the millions of people who shop there every month. You have a world of potential buyers at your fingertips! A number of factors go into whether Amazon actually shows your book to those potential buyers, but if you learn how to optimize for the Amazon search engine and get good reviews, you’ll likely be able to reach readers outside of your friends and family. If you sell on your own website, however, it’s entirely up to you to drum up buys. If no one reads your blog or visits your website, you’ll never sell a single book.
Interestingly, most of the successful self- published authors we hear about use the same tactic to rally their reader base, regardless of whether they sell on Amazon or their own site: an email list. Email marketing is the best way to grow a loyal following that will buy your books. Amazon also gives you an advantage if you sell more than one book on the platform, as it recommends your subsequent books to buyers who already purchased an item with your byline. This referral engine is gold for cultivating a community of repeat buyers, and it’s one of the big appeals of selling on Amazon.
You can replicate this in some ways on your own site, but likely not at the same scale. For example, readers who purchase my guide on how to build a social media business get funneled onto an email list, where they receive several helpful follow- up emails via a Mail. Chimp autoresponder. In one of those emails, I also let them know about another ebook they might be interested in, one that’s directly related to the guide they already bought: my ebook on how to create a social media strategy. I purposely created the second guide as a spin- off of the first, and beefed the strategy guide up to 9. I could sell it for a higher price than the business guide.
This allows readers to buy the $2. I offer awesome information and gain trust in what I deliver… before purchasing the higher- priced ebook. It took me a while to get that funnel in place; it’s not something I implemented right when the first guide launched. It was only when the first guide did well that I realized there was a need for more information, so I wrote the second, related ebook and set up the funnel to send buyers to it. Now that I have this system in place — it’s all automatic!
Another interesting note that might be helpful if you’re looking to sell via your own website: many of my sales come directly from search, from people who find my ebooks through Google. This is the power of solid SEO, back- links and offering tons of free information through blog posts that show my expertise.)The bottom line: Even if you grow your email list to thousands of people, you’ll still have the potential to reach more people on Amazon. But if you have an engaged and loyal email list (my list for Alexis. Grant. com, for example, is only 6,0.
Your technical know- how. Some writers tell me they sell their ebooks on Amazon because it’s too complicated to sell them on their own site.
This might be true if you’ve never blogged before. But if you know how to blog in Word.
Press, you can easily set up your own shop on your website. Use a combination of e- junkie and Pay. Pal like I do, or check out another platform that sells and delivers ebooks like Gumroad. I’ve heard excellent things about Gumroad, but the downside is they take 5 percent plus 2. Pay. Pal’s fees.)Because I have experience selling digital products, I find it’s much easier to get that set up than to figure out how to format my ebook for Kindle (though to be honest, this is something I’d outsource). On my own site, I typically only sell PDF versions, though I’ll probably introduce Kindle versions in the near future because so many people prefer to read ebooks that way. Whether you crave autonomy.
How important is it to you to have complete control over what you sell? Amazon offers a lot of options for customizing not only your book itself, but the book’s sales page, too. But you still have far more control over the sales process if you sell on your own site. On your own site, you can see who’s buying, information that might help you make decisions on what to create and how to sell in the future.
On Amazon, you have to make do with their limited metrics. On your own site, you can collect buyer’s email addresses and funnel them directly onto your newsletter list, then use those emails to offer another related product or other information that might turn that reader into a loyal fan. With Amazon, you don’t get access to any buyer information, so you have to hope readers will notice a call- to- action for your newsletter inside your ebook and take the time to sign up for your list. I love being able to get my hands dirty in buyer details and metrics and use that information to improve my business.
But if you’re not that kind of geek and would prefer to spend your time writing, Amazon might be a better choice for you. Although I’ll caution that as we discussed above, you’ll need to learn how to market your work to succeed on Amazon.)Questions to help you decide. In summary, if you’re trying to choose where to sell your ebooks, here’s what you should think about: 1.
What type of ebooks do you write? Fiction or memoir: Amazon might be the better choice for you, though it depends on other answers below.
How- to, informational guides: Sell ’em on your own site, and set the price high! Can you build your own loyal community of readers and buyers? Yes: Consider selling on your own site, though you’d likely find success on Amazon, too. No: Sell on Amazon. And start growing your community now, because you’ll still need it! Do you understand the technical side of how to run a blog? Yes: Consider selling on your own site, depending on your other answers here.
No: Might be better off with Amazon (or hire someone to set up an online store for you)4. Do you care about autonomy? Yes: Sell from your own real estate, where you have complete control. No: Don’t worry about handing everything over to the giant!