Have you been wondering how to profit from ebooks or use ebooks to promote your business?

There are two basic ways to use an ebook: profiting directly and profiting.

Profiting directly is the easiest in terms of what you can do with an ebook. You write it, you sell it, and then you see profits. However, even here there are some options as to what you can sell:

* You can sell the ebook by itself.

* You can sell the ebook as part of a series.

* You can group ebooks with the same subject together as value packages.

Selling the ebook by itself is an option in which you write the ebook and make it available for purchase to the public. You can either sell it yourself on your website, or use a service such as Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iBooks.

You may be able to do all three if you are ambitious enough to go through the process. The wider variety of places your ebook is available, the more likely it is that someone is going to find your ebook and purchase it.

Writing a series of ebooks is a good idea if you don’t want to publish all of your information at once. Writing a book in installments is a great idea for continued sales. If you leave your customers wanting more, they will want the next book in the series to continue reading where the last ebook left off.

Bundling ebooks on the same general topic is also a great idea. For example, you might have a set of ebooks about dog care, puppy care, and senior dog care. You could bundle the books as a complete dog care package, offering a discount if the ebooks are purchased together. You would want to advertise “sold separately these would cost $X.

Indirect sales are a little more complicated but can serve as a good way to increase your audience or cash flow:

* You can offer the ebook as an add-on for a higher priced item.

* You can offer re-sale rights to your ebook.

* You can use your ebook as a tool to get a list of potential customers.

* You can just give your ebook away for free.

Offering the ebook as an add-on is an offer similar to the television advertisements that tell us  “If you buy today, you also get x for free.”

People love free stuff that is added on to a purchase. If a customer feels that they are getting a good quality item for free, they are more likely to purchase the higher priced item.

Resale rights give the buyer incentive to buy because they can brand the ebook with their own name and information. They can also do pretty much whatever else they want to with it, including re-arranging the text, adding pictures, adding their own material, and selling it as their own product. Resale rights may not be the best solution for companies that are using ebooks specifically related to their own business.

You can also set up an affiliate program. In an affiliate program, your ebook is offered free to your affiliates, and they sell it for all the profit. You can generate leads for your own business when a customer buys from one of your affiliates.

You receive information about who purchased what and then offer other products directly from your business.

I know that giving away your hours of labor spent making an ebook makes you cringe a bit. However, what if giving away your book meant free publicity and more traffic to your site?

You can offer a copy of your ebook as a thank you to people who do things to promote your business. This could be writing a blog about it with a link back to your site, a “like” on Facebook, or a tweet on Twitter.

As you can see, there are many ways to use ebooks to promote your business and generate sales.

Are you interested in publishing an ebook? Get in touch and let’s get started today.

Actionable online marketing advice delivered weekly. 

Join our subscribers who receive our most helpful content first.