Been busy lately - just been awarded Silver Powerseller Status on eBay

It's been a while since my last post on this blog, I have been busy with the day job (just returned from a 3 day conference in London) and very busy with the ebooks too.

I got an email from eBay yesterday congratulating me on my success and advising me that I have now reached the status of Silver Powerseller. This means I am doing a lot right, still maintaining my 100% feedback score, still selling over 500 ebooks per month and still keeping my customers happy.

I mentioned in the last posting about how important it is to select the right ebooks to sell. It is also important to create a great advert which will sell the ebook over and over again.

I decided to create a professional looking header/logo which I use on all of my website pages and on all of my eBay adverts and also my eBay store. It is even used on all of the emails my customers receive from me or eBay. It is important to create a professional look and consistant image with which the customer can associate. Just ask COKE or PEPSI!

In addition to the consistant header I decided to make the eBay adverts and the website ads almost exactly the same. Again using familiarity to maybe create more sales, but also for my ease/speed of creating them.

I use the same formula for each advert. What is the problem/need? How can my product solve it? What does the ebook contain? What do others who have bought it have to say about it? How much does it cost?

The most important part is the Customer Feedback. This takes time to achieve but it is priceless when convincing potential customers to buy. We are a naturally sceptical breed so when there is evidence that the product is for real and that others have been happy with their purchase we are comforted.

I am not suggesting that the format of my ads is perfect, I am constantly tweaking them, but they seem to work OK for me. Feel free to have a look at the items in my eBay store http://stores.ebay.co.uk/infoebookstore and on my website http://www.infoebookstore.co.uk

Next time, I will talk about the automation of ebook delivery.

James
www.infoebookstore.co.uk
www.altrinchamlife.co.uk
www.halelife.co.uk

Which ebooks to sell.....

or should it be which ebooks WILL sell?

The ebook I bought from Tina at infotech, link below, contains over 40 ebooks which can be sold on as they contain re-sell rights. This means the writer has given permission to sell the item (no copyright issues).

Why do ebook writers let them be re-sold or given away? Most ebooks contain hyperlinks to websites, pay per click advertising or affiliate links which all have the potential to earn the writer money.

Selecting which ebooks to sell on eBay is critical to success. There is a listing fee for eBay sales which means you need to offer ebooks which people want to buy and at the right price. It really is worth spending a few hours researching what sells and for how much. What is the competition like and can you afford to sell for the same price or less?

You can use eBay advanced search to browse live ebook listing and also check completed listings to find out which are actually selling and for how much. You can get a feel for popular titles.

In addition to offering the ebooks that came free with Tina's ebook, I purchased a few specialist titles including "How to claim free UK land and property" and "10 steps to a Google Friendly Page". These are both of interest to me personally and once I had read them I decided that they would be of interest to others. This turned out to be very true as Claim Land ebook is by far the most popular title.

I also purchased 15000 ebooks on a DVD for a small sum, many of which turned out to be duplicates and not much use, but I have a lot more to get through!!

It is very important you read the ebooks yourself before you sell them. IF you sell rubbish you WILL get no or bad feedback and grief, it really isn't worth it.

I am currently considering which titles to add to my inventory but due to the effort and listing fees required, I am selecting which ones will give me the greatest return.

In the next installment I will talk a bit about the importance of creating a good eBay advert and eBay / website identity.

James

www.infoebookstore.co.uk
www.halelife.co.uk
www.altrinchamlife.co.uk

Website and domain name required - apply within!

It was clear from the ebook I bought that if I was going to make a serious effort at selling ebooks I needed a website. Not only to sell ebooks from but also to store ebooks on, which could then be downloaded by buyers from ebay. I had no idea about affiliate marketing or Pay Per Click advertising at this point so that was not a consideration.

I had previously purchased a hosting package from 1and1.co.uk which came with 3 free .co.uk domains. I had used two, www.halelife.co.uk and www.altrinchamlife.co.uk , which are live but currently not being updated. I had lost interest once I had done some research into my competition.

1and1.co.uk offer a wide range of hosting solutions and I had gone for the business solution which at the time was 8.99/month (probably cheaper now!) This gave me a very good sized hosting package and decent bandwidth. Along with the free domain names, 1and1.co.uk offer a big selection of free add ons including live feeds (e.g. localised weather, specific news etc), a huge photo library, free forms (how I created the "submit your email address" form on my site) and they also provide an excellent statistics tool which gives you a much information as you could ever need about your site visitors, how they found you, what pages they viewed, most popular pages etc. This isn't meant to be an advert for 1and1.co.uk it just turned out that way!

This is an advert!

1and1.co.uk have a great affiliate program too. :-)

So I already had the hosting and one spare free .co.uk domain name. Next dilema is what to call my new ebook business! 1and1.co.uk have a handy tool for checking whether the domain name you want is available and if it isn't they offer other options, firstly the same domain with a different end, i.e. .com, .net, .info etc and if they don't meet your requirements they also offer similar alternatives based on keywords.

The choice of infoebookstore took a short while to materialise, ebooks, ebookstore and ebookshop were all obviously taken, I also did a few searches on Google to get a feel for the competition. I plumped for www.infoebookstore.co.uk in the end as I felt it summed up very well what I was selling, ebooks being predominately information based rather than Fiction.

Luckily the name infoebookstore was also available on eBay. I have had an eBay account since 2000, but used it very little in 6 years. I changed my username to infoebookstore, retaining my existing feedback and history.

Next - which ebooks should I sell? where do I get them from? what are resell rights?

Thanks for reading

James

www.infoebookstore.co.uk