Brad Callen's Search Engine Optimization and Beyond!

“How To Radically Increase The Value Of Your E-book…”

Today I want to start by asking you a (seemingly) off-topic question:

Do you know what the difference is between a shirt made in the sweatshops of a third world country and a shirt made in the good ol’ U.S.A?

It’s not the quality folks – in fact, over 90% of the time, the same cloth, machinery and processes are being used in both places. Usually, the laborers outside the United States are more skilled than domestic workers.

Now you must be thinking – there has to be something different – after all, those shirts made in sweatshops are a whole lot cheaper. Isn’t that because they are inferior somehow?

In reality…the difference is in our values. Because we automatically equate quality with economic and technological development, products made inside our country seem much more valuable than those made in poorer countries.

In other words – the difference is in our perception and our beliefs, not in quality.

Why is this so important?

This same example applies to info products, albeit in a slightly different way. You see, there’s no set method to package and promote an ebook – some people throw together badly-formatted texts and still make 5 figures in a month, whereas others bust their chops trying to create the perfect book but can’t even buy sales.

The key to selling is not putting your product in front of as many prospects as possible – if that was all that was needed, you could simply setup an AdWords account and forget about it.

The real key to making sales is to position your product so that your prospect is completely convinced that they need this book, otherwise terrible things may happen to them (they could always stay fat, their marriage will dissolve, they could be stuck in a low-paying job for the rest of their lives – worst case scenarios change with your niche).

The product must be valuable in their eyes.

There’s not enough space in today’s lesson to talk about this topic in too much detail, but if you are serious about making a living online then you must remember these 3 points:

3 keys to creating value

One – you must identify a core need of your prospect, and focus your product’s full attention towards satisfying that need.

Two – Don’t hold back in your knowledge. Build up a reputation (through your website, your blog and/or your previous products) of being an expert who is ready to share all his secrets. The more you tell and the more you are willing to share…it will increase the interest level of your prospects dramatically. People have a strong urge for wanting to know more, and if it relates to them personally and can help them improve their lives, they will pay out of their noses for the secrets of an expert.

Third – Two words: social proof. Nothing screams “value!” like acceptance of your expert status by other experts (either in your niche or in related niches). Testimonials in your sales page are the obvious incarnation of social proof, but more sophisticated techniques allow you to enlist the help of experts to sell your e-book.

Believe it or not, but the “packaging” – preparation and presentation – of your info product goes a long way towards creating a strong perception of value in your customers minds. Some of the things that you have to look after are:

• Make sure nothing is missing and that everything is in order.

• Eliminate spelling, factual and grammatical mistakes.

• Actual publishing (from word processor to pdf (or from paper to word processer to pdf)).

These details can seem like a chore but if they are done right you can not only save a lot of time but you can also improve your product’s appeal.

Here’s what you need to look after:

Proof Reading

Get your book proof-read by multiple sources – your friends, your family, even people in your industry. This is the easiest way to get those embarrassing mistakes out of your book without spending too much time or money on it.

E-book Publishing

You have several options when it comes to e-book publishing. I would strongly recommend that you go with PDFs instead of creating special password-protected .exe or .html files. Why? Because you have to make things easy for your customers, not harder. PDFs have become the standard for professionalism in document publishing and most people are very comfortable using them. Work that to your advantage.

If you’re using OpenOffice (free word processing software), you can publish your documents as PDFs in it. Otherwise, use a service like PDF995 to create PDF e-books out of your documents. I personally use a combination of Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat for writing and publishing PDFs, but as both packages can cost a lot (especially if you’re just starting out), OpenOffice is a good free alternative.

Pricing

Generally I don’t include pricing as part of the packaging, but since I will be discussing it in much more detail in the next lesson, here are a few points to remember about pricing:

• Do not assume that you know what the right price is. The right price is set by the market (i.e. your customers) and depends on a variety of factors.

• There are two factors in pricing that you can control – the market itself (whether the target market is affluent / your info-product is about an expensive skill or topic) and the perceived value of your product.

• Keep testing your price, and do not be afraid to push it higher.

• Monitor the progress of your sales, conversion rate and pricing over time. This should not only give you the optimum price range for your product but it will also give you a benchmark price in case you ever want to introduce another info-product in the same niche (or a closely related one).
  

We’re almost out of time today, but I wanted to run this last topic by you as I know many marketers who face this problem – e-books that just won’t sell.

Your first reflex in this situation might be that you are in the wrong market or maybe your product isn’t good. That’s not necessarily true. What I would recommend is that you follow this simple 4-step analysis of your situation and evaluate where you might have gone wrong.

Topic

If you’ve researched your market, this is usually not the problem (or why would you step into a non-profitable niche in the first place?). Try to refine your focus and sharpen your product’s core strengths – that is, clearly define what need your e-book provides an answer to. If there is money to be made here, this will show up in your research (refer to the first two lessons of this topic for more on selecting niches).

E-book content quality

This is where peer-review comes in very handy. Does your e-book lack enough meaty content? Are you selling your readers short? Is your e-book riddled with errors (typos or factual)? Is your language too boring or full of difficult terms?Are you writing like an amazing teacher would teach? Or are you writing like a confused scientist would mumble and grumble?

Sales Copy

How bad is your sales copy, honestly? One of the best ways to test your conversion rate is to setup an AdWords campaign (on a strictly limited budget, of course), drive several hundred visitors to your sales page and see the results. If you’re not achieving a +1% conversion rate, then you need to work on that sales copy a LOT more.

Once again you have two options – if you want to do the rewrite yourself, read up on sales letter writing and make sure you observe the masters – John Carlton, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy and even the new gurus like Perry Marshall and John Reese. These guys are very, very good at what they do.

If you have the cash, outsource the writing to a copywriter, but make sure you see some samples first. Your sales copy can make or break your online business, and you shouldn’t take it lightly.

Marketing

How effective is your marketing strategy? Are you collaborating with others in your niche (joint ventures), or going on your own? Are you generating any buzz for your product?

The best marketing plans start even before you start writing the book. Building momentum is an important part of launching an e-book, and by giving yourself a headstart you will not only be able to reach more people but you will also learn what works best in your niche by the time you put the book up for sale and really start cranking up the advertising.

To tell you the truth, reviving “failed” ebooks is simply another term for inject value into a product. The four steps mentioned above do exactly that – they pass through each and every component of your info-product strategy (from idea to marketing) and force you to constantly improve your efforts.

That’s all the space we have for today. If you have any questions on the topic “Launching an Infoproduct Business” and especially on today’s lesson (creating value), write to me at infoproduct@seoelite.com.

n the next lesson, I’ll walk you through a series of high-powered techniques that will guarantee you info-product profits (and yes, this will include strategies on how to promote your e-book as well). It will be the last lesson in the infoproduct series, so make sure that you read it next week.

All the best,

Brad Callen
Professional SEO
http://www.seoelite.com