January 20, 2009 By

How to Create Your Own Ebook Covers

I’ve just uploaded a video on creating your own e-book covers. A lot of people know that I generally design all my ebook covers, not because I’m cheap but because I want to create some sort of branding effect. But of course, it IS much cheaper than to pay someone else to do it.

You can get the same scripts I am using, called “action scripts” for Photoshop at www.OneClickEcovers.com – just enter the coupon code GKDOTCOM to get $10 off. Here’s the video:

If that version is not clear enough, you can also watch the ones I have on Vimeo or the Daily Motion version.

Of course, just because you have the scripts don’t mean that you can create good looking covers – you need some basic tactics as well. The One Click Ecovers package also comes with it’s own tutorials, but let me explain briefly here how to do it:

  1. Decide what cover you want – ebook, reports, ezine, software box or DVD box?
  2. Get a good background image from www.istockphoto.com or other free stock photos sites
  3. Keep your designs simple if you’re not that good in Photoshop
  4. Make 3 different sizes of your e-cover to make sure you can use it anywhere
  5. I prefer to save the images as PNG for better quality but you can save it as JPG if you want

Related tools: create PDF ebooks, video mass-submission software

Filed Under: Ebook Marketing Tagged With: , , ,
August 6, 2008 By

Why Are You Only Selling To Malaysians?

One thing I noticed about a lot of people selling information products in Malaysia; they design and create a product for the Malaysian market. This is ok if the topic applies only to the Malaysian market (for example what I did with Chapter-M or like Steven Wong’s Credit Card Solution), but if the topic is universal you should really consider designing it for the international market.

The reason is pretty obvious:

  • A much bigger market - Sometimes there just isn’t a big enough market online for the topic of your e-book, if it’s just focused on Malaysians. However when you make it global, the size of the market and hence your potential customers increase dramatically.
  • Higher income per sale - If you sell an ebook for RM20, just change it to the dollar sign (USD) and I’m pretty sure the global market would be stepping on each other to buy it. Sometimes just by making small changes to your existing e-book, you can easily earn 3 times more per sale and triple your yearly income.
  • Longer product life - You have to understand that for every product, only 1-4 people out of every hundred people who visit your site ends up buying your product. So if your product is targeted at a Malaysian market only for which there is less than 1,000 potential buyers online, after a few weeks your product is as good as dead.

Here’s what I recommend you do.

  • If your product is about making money online, make it relevant to the international market. My product WordPress Adsense System has been producing about 18-30 sales a month, every month, since August 2006. If I wrote this in BM it would have already reached every potential buyer in a few months, after which it would have been considered old. Sure, there are new people coming online every day who may be interested, but in Malaysia alone the market is too small.
  • If your product is Islamic in nature, why not target other Islamic countries as well. Our neighbor Indonesia has about 10 times the population of Malaysia and it wouldn’t be too hard to get someone to create a version for them, would it?
  • If your product is only for Malaysians, at least have 2 versions,one in English and another in BM. Don’t just create a BM version and lose the opportunity to sell to those who would not want to read it in BM.

Make no mistake about it.

Selling to an all-Malaysian crowd will make you money. It’s not wrong to do it, just don’t do it at the expense of earning a better income is USD from a bigger market,especially when the possibility is just a few clicks away!

At the Internet Millionaires Bootcamp, I teach you how to do both. I have experience creating information products both for the local market, and for an international audience. I know based on my success (and failures) exactly how to design for each market, and address each differently.

At the bootcamp, we’ll go through some examples from my own products, and a step-by-step guideline on creating popular, profitable information products. Make sure you attend it.

Filed Under: make money online Tagged With: , , , ,
January 6, 2008 By

Make $30,000 Selling Digital Products From Your Blog

If I can show you how to make $10,000 – $30,000 per year from your blog selling ebooks and digital products, would you be interested to learn?

clickbank

In 2007, I made more than $30,715 selling digital products from ProfitBlogger.com, mostly from a single ebook called WordPress Adsense System and other related ebooks and themes.

I say “more” because the screenshot above represents only about 65% of the income made from selling digital products – the rest are scattered in my Paypal and 2CheckOut accounts, and I’m too lazy to go printing out screenshots of individual transactions.

For those of you who may be unclear on what a “digital product” is, it usually falls into the following categories:

  1. Ebooks - E-books are easy to create and great to sell. In fact, in most markets you can easily create an ebook based on what your readers are looking for, plug a link to the salespage on your blog, and make residual income. One of the best guides on this is “Desperate Buyers” by Alexis Dawes. That ebook shows you how to turn people’s desperate situations into ebooks that sell like hot cakes.
  2. Reports - Similar to ebooks, but much shorter and focus on much smaller topics
  3. Audio / Video – Create multimedia products, similar to ebooks or report but just in a different medium. Also includes audio interviews, which I talk about in my Easy Audio Products guide.
  4. Software - Any software than can be downloaded digitally on the web, that fits the need of your market. When developing a software, think “What are my readers doing now that can be automated with a software” and you have the winning formula
  5. Membership Sites - If your readers are in constant need of information or resources, build a membership site and charge for monthly access like Yaro Starak did with Blog Mastermind, and as I plan to do on this blog in the near future..
  6. Templates – Usually in the blogging / site building / graphic design markets. This includes themes, fonts, Photoshop scripts and ready-made templates. If it requires you to work on it it’s not a product, it’s a service. (So if you design themes for others it’s not a product, but if you sell unique themes then it is.)

Another way of classifying and segmenting digital products:

  • Information Products - Any digital product that teaches some “How To” do something, may it be getting traffic to your blogs, cooking Chinese food or even hot to build your own PC – whatever it is that your market is looking for. Information products usually consist of
  • Automation Products - Anything that automates a process or at least makes it simpler. Usually consist of software, but can even be a simple script or an online web tool. If you can help people save their time, they just might be willing to pay your for it.

Information products, contrary to what some bloggers may tell you, is big money and it’s still alive and kicking.

But, I Hate Salesletters!

The long salesletter format is most often used to sell digital products, and most bloggers seem to despise it. Then again, most bloggers never had any success selling digital products and all they do is web advertising or Adsense, so of course they will tell your THEIR reality. It doesn’t make it YOUR reality though :)

I’ve had success selling products with salesletters even before I started blogging, so I can tell you that it works. People think of salesletters as hyped-up crap but in my salesletters I focus less on hype and more on the time-tested buying process:

  • Get the reader’s attention ASAP
  • Sell them the benefits, not the features
  • Explain how your product is unique
  • Present them with an “irresistible offer”
  • Ask then to take action now (buy or join)

However long copy salesletters don’t work in ALL situations so you can experiment on doing it differently.

For example if you’re selling a software, what’s really important is some sort of trial version or demo of how it works, as most people rather experience software than read about it. How many times did you read the Microsoft Windows Vista help files? In these cases your salesletters can be shorter and more to the point, but nevertheless you still need a salesletter if you want to sell a digital product from your blog.

For example, for the Synonymizer WordPress Plugin, Anthony Ellis sells his product mostly with a simple video explaining how it works, but still has the 5 important point I mentioned above. Read the salespage to see what I mean.

Take My Survey

I can go on and on for days about this topic but my question for you is:

[poll=7]

Take my simple survey and let me know. Choose YES or NO because that’s all I need to know at this point.

A typical blogger’s world revolves around selling banner ads, Adsense or other types of advertising. So if this topic does not interest you, I see no reason to go on talking about it. If you rather just get more information on Adsense and selling ads, I’ll bury this topic and keep it a secret of mine.

All I can say that just because this is “Web 2.0″, it doesn’t mean that classic, time-tested sales methods and processes don’t work anymore. They’ve just evolved, that’s all. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise!

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , ,
May 19, 2006 By

Understanding Resell Rights Terminology

Offering Resell Rights or Master Resell Rights is a trend in Internet marketing today. However, just because you bought a product with resell rights included may not always mean you can sell the rights as part of the product.

Here are the basics of resell rights:

resell rights diagram

Here’s the explanation:

  1. Owner / publisher – Creator of the product, who can choose to give away rights to customers. The owner may also choose to sell directly from his website.
  2. Resell Rights - If you secured the resell rights from the owner, you may sell the product to an end customer only.
  3. Master Resell Rights – If you secured the master resell rights from the owner, you may (1) sell the product only (2) sell the Resale Rights only (3) sell both. You cannot, however, sell the Master Resell Rights to anyone..
  4. Generic Resell Rights – Anyone who buys the product directly from the owner can choose resell the product. In this case, the rights are usually inseperable from the product itself.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Ebook Marketing, Home Business Tagged With: , , , , ,