Your goal in asking this question is to determine if you need to work on the quality of the decisions you make or the way you communicate your decisions. These are two different things. You need to determine if people don’t understand why a decision was made or find out if the way you delivered your decision was flawed. A review of the emotional reactions that decisions often evoke is seldom made before the decision is delivered.

Let’s deal with the emotions first. Employee survey after employee survey reports that one of the greatest motivators in the workplace is the connected feeling employees get when they understand what’s going on in their organization. If you need convincing, walk through a workplace after a news item that reveals a change in their organization appears in the media. Nothing makes people feel more like pawns in a grand chess game than being blindsided by company information from a source outside the organization. Trust me, no matter how logical the decision might have been or how practical the change is, when a decision or a change is announced in this fashion, people react badly, and the organization suffers. Hearing things from the newspaper is an extreme example, but many big decisions are delivered to employees without a well-thought-out internal communication plan, and most day-to-day decisions are delivered without any explanations at all. Underestimating the emotional reaction to a decision, based on its mode of delivery, is risky business.

How about the content of the decision? When leaders take the time to do a good job explaining their decisions, they have accepted the critical leader role of educator. No one in their right mind would empower a young teenager to jump into a car and drive alone before they were properly trained, had plenty of practice, and had passed the test. Yet very few of the organizations that preach empowerment take the necessary steps to make sure their people have a broad understanding of how their organization works, establish levels of learning that correspond to levels of decision making authority, and deliver a constant stream of usable feedback for all employees. A leader who helps people understand the process behind a decision is educating them for the time when they will have to make decisions on their own.

Did you realize that thousands of people are reading their eBooks on dedicated eBook reading devices? These devices simulate the traditional book reading environment and allow the reader an enhanced experience.

The reader can download several eBooks to a book reader, make notes in margins and read from a back lit screen while in bed at night.

In addition, eBook readers allow you to change the print fonts and character size, allowing you to facilitate the reading experience.

I am only going to mention the top three eBook reading devices but will include more in updates when I find it necessary.

The three dedicated eBook-reading devices are the Rocketbook, Everybook and the Softbook.

Note: Update: September 26, 2000 The Rocketbook and Softbook are combining forces and will look different then the specifications given in this chapter. I am still including this chapter to give you a little historical perspective on eBooks and eBook readers.

Rocketbook:

Rocketbook by NuvoMedia is fantastic!

A Rocket Book is an eBook-reading device that can hold 40 or more complete books. It is available now and you can order a Rocketbook from Barnes & Noble and Powells.com Internet bookstores.

The Rocketbook is the true leader in the industry.

Rocketbook by NuvoMedia is very user friendly for the eBook publisher.

For example, as soon as I complete writing an eBook and send the files to the NuvoMedia’s Rocket Press, my book will be ready for international distribution within 24-48 hours!

I can update my books as often as I wish enabling the Rocketbook customer a rich and new reading experience. Currently an author must have an established relationship as a “publisher” with NuvoMedia to take advantage of selling eBooks as Rocket Editions. There are many eBook publishers, however, that will take your eBook, format it for the Rocketbook eBook Reader, and then send you the royalties when your Rocket Editions are downloaded from eBook sellers.

1stbooks.com is a great company that will format your eBook for a Rocket Edition and make it available to sell on
Barnes & Noble and Powells.com.

1stbooks is located at:

www.1stbooks.com

I personally sell more Rocket Editions of my eBooks than with any other eBook seller or publisher.

If you are a single title author, you will need to contact a publisher that will format the Rocket Editions for you. I
have indicated publishers that will do that for you in other articles.

If you have published 10 titles or more and issue your own ISBN numbers, you can contact the Director of Content of NuvoMedia at:

www.nuvomedia.com

NuvoMedia’s address is:

310 Villa Street
Mt. View, CA 94041
(650) 314-1200
(650) 314-1201 (fax)

Everybook:

Everybook represents the future of eBook reading devices. It has everything!

The Everybook can hold 260 Megabytes of storage on a single card. Since most books you find at the bookstore translate into less than one Megabyte, you can see that each Everybook eBook Reader can hold hundreds of books.

Each Everybook eBook Reader includes two full color screens that simulate an 8 1/2 by 11-inch book.

Turning of pages is also simulated to remind the user of a traditional book reading experience.

Both screens are in full color!

My personal feeling is that the Everybook will be a wonderful asset for college students.

Imagine registering for college courses. Your advisor gives you a class schedule for your freshman year.

You go to the college bookstore where you pay for your Everybook and then download all of your textbooks. You will also download monographs and required readings for those courses at kiosks located in the bookstore.

During the school year you will be able to read your assignments and print out questions and answers at the end of each chapter. You will have room to store additional books and documents as well.

College textbooks will be priced much cheaper because of the savings over traditional print runs, storage and distribution costs.

Professors will be encouraged to write updated books and will be able to have a shorter turnaround time in book production.

Full motion audio and video will be included which will make this eBook-reading device a fantastic reading experience.

Everybook may become a top player in the eBook market.

Contact them and see if they want to include your eBook in their catalog.

Everybook is located out of Middletown, PA which is near the state capital of Pennsylvania.

Everybook’s Internet address is:

www.everybook.net

Softbook:

The Softbook eBook Reader is one of the pioneers in the industry.

All you need is a telephone line to hook up as each device includes a modem to download books directly into the reader.

Currently thousands of eBook as well as magazines are included for the Softbook eBook Reader.

Each device includes sophisticated searching, bookmarking, hyperlinking, text markup and a stylus for marking and highlighting.

Contact the director of content and find out how you can include your new eBook in their bookstore.

Softbook Press is located at:

www.softbook.com

Headquarters

Softbook Press
900 Island Drive
Redwood City, California
94065-5150
(650) 620-4100 telephone
(650) 632-1807 fax

What is an eBook?

An eBook or electronic book, or virtual book or digital book is simply a digital text file or group of files that when put together can be read on computers or dedicated eBook reading devices.

eBooks may include text, sound, photographs, illustrations and video. eBooks may contain “hot links” that allow the reader immediate access to web sites referred in the text.

eBooks can be published in a variety of ways:

1. eBooks can be published as digital files that are downloaded and read on laptop or desktop computers. This is the primary type of eBook media discussed in this book.

2. eBooks can be created as digital files that are downloaded and read on palm-top or handheld computers.

3. eBooks can be published as digital files that are downloaded and read on dedicated eBook reader devices such as the Rocketbook eBook Reader or Softbook eBook Reader or the Everybook eBook Reader.

4. eBooks can be digital files that are copied onto floppy disks or a CD-ROMs.

By the time you are read this book, other forms of electronic books may have already appeared. I will keep you up- to-date with eBook updates when you register this book.

Give Me Examples of eBooks

Examples of an eBook would be a 400-page novel, complete with any illustrations or photographs.

An eBook could also be a training manual. A Reiki eBook is one of the best selling eBooks and sells for $20.00 a copy.

An eBook is a 5 page specialized report that focuses on solving a specific problem.

eBooks can be short stories. Instead of buying a collection of short stories by an author you are unfamiliar with, you can now purchase one or two short stories at a time for only a couple of bucks each!

eBooks may be multimedia CD-ROMs with sound, video and text just like all the new encyclopedias that are published today.

Many authors in the main stream are now publishing their books as eBooks. Stephen King and Oprah publish eBooks

Why don’t you?

Advantages of Purchasing and Reading eBooks

The eBook serves customers in the following ways:

1. The international customer who does not want to wait a month or longer for the information can now have it shortly after credit card payment is made.

2. The college student who has limited funds for purchasing books can access a computer and can quickly download, print and read information at a very low cost. eBooks generally save the student at least 20% of traditional books.

3. The travelling executive who doesn’t want to carry around heavy books in her luggage but wants access to reading a variety of topics can pack a light load.

4. Conservationists love reading this way. eBooks save not only trees in the process, but the associated inks and chemicals as well as oil production in moving those trees to the mills and books into traditional bookstores.

5. Many people want privacy. There are eBooks available that focus on religious, personal hygiene or sexual topics that can be easily downloaded and read without the reader going to a store and bringing an embarrassing title to the attention of the bookstore clerk.

6. Some readers love to use their computers. Even a slower speed, cheaper computer can hold thousands of books on the hard disk. Since there are many titles that can be downloaded for free, many readers can now have a library that competes with their local library.

7. People that have poor eyesight now have the ability of changing the size and shape of all the characters they view on the computer screen. They are not fixed into one font size like a typical paper book.

Once you start publishing your own eBooks you will be more apt to download and purchase them for yourself.

Don’t you agree?

What do I write about?

What do you write about? What are your interests in life? What do you do for a living? What lessons in life did you learn that would have value to your fellow man? What are readers interested in reading about?

Take some time and write down answers to these questions. Remember that an eBook can be only 5 pages long or it can be 400 pages long. Whether you are finding solutions to problems, writing a great short story or even a complete novel, you will find a market for that eBook if you follow the easy steps presented in this book.

You can always change content and edit your book. This means that you can keep adding and changing to meet your readers’ needs. It is impossible to do that in a cost-effective way when you march down to your local bookstore and buy a printed and bound version. You will earn money as you perfect your eBook products and become a better writer. Did you ever think you would get a lifetime scholarship or grant to write books?

Let’s get some of that scholarship or grant money right now!

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Self-publishing eBooks)

1Q. Do I need to copyright my work?
1A. Yes, you should copyright your work. In the United States, where I live, copyright law automatically protects any document you create. The reason you file papers with the U.S Copyright Office is so that the U.S. government has a record of when, where and by whom this specific document was created.

2Q. Where do I go to copyright my work?
2A. Once you have completed your eBook, you can obtain the copyright forms from the United States Copyright Office on the Library of Congress Website. A “Cheap and Easy” way to getting the job done is by going to the United States Copyright Office located at:

www.loc.gov/copyright/

3Q. What is an ISBN number and do I need one?
3A. The ISBN number is a number that you will need for each binding of your eBook. For the two eBooks and marketing plans that I am including in this book, you can get by without an ISBN number. However, in order to present your eBook to traditional bookstores that will be selling eBooks, you will need an ISBN number. I will advise you how to get ISBN numbers later in the book. You can let your sales from publishing with the two basic publishing plans I offer pay for the cost of obtaining ISBN numbers.

Here is the address of RR Bowker, the company that issues the ISBN numbers. When applying for a number, always remember that even if you have just one book to publish, you will need many additional numbers.

For example, if you publish your book on a CD-ROM you will need a number. If you publish your eBook as a digital file to download off the Internet, you will need another ISBN number.

If you decide to publish the same book in printed form you need another number. You must have separate ISBN numbers for hardbound, softcover, trade paperback, audio books, and any other potential binding you can think of. You will need at least five ISBN numbers for every eBook you publish.

In order to make the eBook strategy work for you; consider publishing a series of three to five new books.

If you publish at least three versions or bindings on each book you will need at least 15 ISBN numbers to assign.

Read the specifications and directions at:

www.bowker.com/main/home/index.html

4Q. How do I keep someone from stealing my eBook and passing it out to everyone for free?
4A. If a person wants to steal your material, what prevents him from buying your bound version from a local bookstore, ripping the pages out of the book, scanning the pages into his computer, and selling your brilliance? Theft can happen, but if you are making more money than you can spend and becoming very popular, maybe it will actually be a good thing for you in the final tally. After all, just recently Stephen King the great American author gave out free copies of his newest eBook over the Internet. Over 400000 people responded and overloaded the network servers of major Internet booksellers. Even if a few free copies were pirated, don’t you think Stephen King benefited by the publicity associated with those kinds of sales figures?

5Q. Can I publish an eBook and then publish a bound version of the same book?
5A. Yes, you can! In fact you may find you have a much better product to sell as you receive feedback from people that have spent money on your eBook and basically perform a job of editing for you at the same time. Your success in publishing in this fashion will give you new insights and new markets to explore using traditional print publishers. Make sure you study each eBook-publishing contract. Some publishers will want exclusive rights to publish your work in electronic format. Some publishers will even ask for exclusive print rights. When you see the word “exclusive” in a contract, run away. Just because print publishers may have a handle on the print world, they may have no clue on how to reach the book buyers of the electronic world.

Electronic book publishers have no lock on the Internet buying market either. The eBook publishing business changes daily. You need to keep up with what is going on. You need to educate yourself and stay ahead of the curve. You can accomplish this feat by selling your eBooks through many different eBook sellers.

6Q. Can I include pictures or video in my eBooks?
6A. Yes, you can. However, it may be best to offer text only eBooks with links that take the reader to the Internet to view full color illustrations and video. If you keep the file size small by including just a few pictures, it will be easier to deliver to your buyers’ e-mail. Generally you want to keep the file size under one megabyte so you can deliver your eBooks easily over the Internet. Hyperlinks also add to the size of the document. For example I have a 186-page eBook that is all text. The file size is 200k. When created hyperlinks and bookmarks from the table of contents to the chapter headings, the size of the document grew to 640k.

If you want to e-publish and want tons of graphics, links, sound and video then you need to purchase a CD Re- Writer. Good ones cost around $300.

Many CD-ROMs hold 600 megabytes of information. Reference books and mailing lists are published on CD-ROM.

7Q. How much money can I earn selling my eBooks?
7A. That is a hard question to answer. There is no guarantee that you will sell anything. However, if you use the techniques outlined in this book, your chances of earning book royalties are fantastic!

You will be more profitable at selling eBooks than many other Internet products.

Why? Because of the instant gratification and privacy it offers the reader and the wonderful value inherent associated with books.

8Q. How long does it take me to get my finished eBook uploaded and actually have it selling on the
Internet?
8A. With some servers it may take a week or two, with other’s including your own, it may take 15 minutes!
Yes, in 15 minutes you will start showing off your book to the entire world!

9Q. What subjects are hot right now?
9A. The best selling subjects right now seem to be how to, romance, erotica, health, and non-fiction.
Go to barnesandnoble.com and borders.com and look at the book titles they are marketing. This will give you a good idea of what is hot and what is not.

10Q. How can I sell my eBooks in traditional bookstores?
10A. Both Barnes & Noble and Borders are planning to sell eBooks out of their traditional stores. Amazon.com will be selling eBooks by the time this book is in printed form.

By the time mainstream book publishing gets involved selling eBooks, your popularity and sales figures may get the attention of store managers when the time comes to include eBooks in their business plans. Now, many independent storeowners sell eBooks in the form of floppy disks and CD-ROMs.

At this very moment, two of the major traditional book wholesalers, Ingram and Baker & Taylor are considering offering eBooks to their customers. Their customers include traditional bookstores and libraries.

11Q. Where Can I find eBooks?
11A. The cheap and easy way to get familiar with eBooks is to locate and read the many free eBooks located on-line. The largest resource is a website called Project Gutenberg, located at:

www.gutenberg.net

There you will find around 10,000 free eBooks. These will be easy to read because they are formatted in straight ASCII text, just like all of your e-mail messages. This way they can be easily downloaded on 99% of the computers in existence.

You will find eBooks that are in “public domain.” This means that anyone can distribute these eBooks without worrying about violating copyright.

Another great source of free eBooks and book samplers is called the Rocket Library. It is located at:

www.rocket-library.com

You will be able to download and read these books in the new Rocketbook eBook format and you can contribute to the Rocketbook Library.

Since many eBook-publishing houses distribute their own free eBooks to the Rocketbook Library, your free eBook may get the attention of eBook publishers.

12Q. Where Can I purchase new eBooks?
12A. Here are some wonderful places to purchase eBooks.

1stbooks Library:
www.1stbooks.com

The Booklocker:
www.booklocker.com

Fatbrain:
www.fatbrain.com

Mightywords:
www.mightywords.com

Rocket Edition Books by NuvoMedia available at Barnes & Noble and Powells.com:
www.bn.com
www.powells.com

Softbook Editions by the Softbook Press:
www.softbook.com

Softlock:
www.softlock.com

The NetLibrary:
www.netlibrary.com

To get a more complete and up to date list, go to major search engine directories like Yahoo, altavista, excite, etc, and search on the words, “eBooks” or “electronic books.”

Are you excited? The list gets bigger every day. Good luck! Your first eBook will soon be listed and sold by many of the above eBook sellers!

The search engines love content!

Another important strategy in creating a site the search engines will love is adding new content on a regular basis.

The more keyword rich pages you have on your site, the more for the search engines to feed on.

As I mentioned earlier, each page on your website is one more way that surfers can find your site. Basically you want to have as many different ways to get into your site as possible.

Get busy and write some articles

As mentioned in the previous article “Prepare The Pages”, the best way to add new, fresh content to your website is to write articles.

When you write an article, use the steps in the previous article, “Choose Your Keywords Wisely” to prepare the page, and then submit that page to the search engines.

Each time you do this you are adding more content, and more ways for searchers to find your website.

If you do this on a frequent basis, you’ll have plenty of content on your site in no time at all.

If you feel that you just can’t write articles, then consider using other author’s articles and put them on your site.

Make sure you include the information that the author requests, then optimize the page using the steps in the previous article, and post them on your site.

Do this for 10 - 15 articles and you’ve just added some great search engine bait to your site!

Publish a newsletter

Another great way to add content to your site is through publishing a newsletter.

Not only do you get to reuse the articles you write for your newsletter, but you can also create a Newsletter Archives section of your website.

For example, let’s say you write 2 articles for each issue of your newsletter.

After you send out your newsletter you put that issue in the Archives section of your website, then separate the 2 articles out into their own pages and put them in the Articles section of your site.

You’ve now added 3 additional pages to your website by simply reusing your newsletter content.

Don’t forget to submit each of these pages to the search engines after you have them on your website.

For even more exposure, you will then take each article and submit it to the various article submission services and article directories.

After you have a dozen or so articles, put them into an ebook and give it away to your visitors, and let them give it away to their visitors.

This will get you some viral exposure and get even more mileage out of your time.

I won’t go into the power of viral exposure for your website, but basically this means that you are able to get others to spread the word about your site.

They tell 10 people, then those 10 people tell another 10, etc. If done properly, this can snowball and create a ton of free exposure for your website.

Multiply your efforts

Try to use methods that enable you to multiply your efforts. I’ve given you some great examples of this in the last section on using your articles and working on viral strategies.

You can also take audio products such as interviews and seminar recordings and have them transcribed. Add the finished product to your website, use it in your newsletter, create an email course or ebook, etc.

A very powerful example of multiplying your efforts in website promotion is creating an affiliate program. Affiliate programs can very quickly build large numbers of quality links to your site, in addition to the tremendous traffic sent in by your affiliates.

This requires you to have your own product, but the massive rewards offered by affiliate programs should give you the incentive required to create your own product.

Make it easy for your website visitors and partners to tell others about your site and your products and let them lend a hand in promoting your site.

There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many hours that you’ll be able to dedicate to promoting your site. Finding ways to multiply your efforts makes it so you don’t have to be glued to your computer so often.

In this section I discuss the 6 steps you will take to quickly, easily and inexpensively get started in your affiliate marketing business.

Quickly & Easily find High Demand Topics

The topic you choose should both interest you and have high consumer demand. You already know what interests you, but how do you find out whether a topic has high demand?

Well, the first place I check is a free tool call the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool. It is located at:

inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

At Overture Search Term Suggestion tool, you simply enter a term related to your site and it will show you:

• Related searches that include your term
• How many times that term was searched in the previous month

So, let’s assume for a moment that you are a mortgage and insurance broker who suspects that insurance might be a good service to sell online.

To find out how many people are looking for insurance online, I typed in the word ‘insurance’ and discovered that the keyword ‘insurance’ had been searched for 971,914 times at Overture and its search partners in just one month!

That’s almost a million people! Wow!

As I consider any term that receives 50,000 or more searches in a month a subject with good demand and potentially viable, insurance looks like it might just be a winning topic for an affiliate web site.

Find High-Profit Potential Products & Services

Once you’ve determined that your topic is in high demand, you need to find out now is whether there are merchants selling related products and services online, AND how much commission they pay.

For that, I go first to Commission Junction.

Commission Junction is an ‘affiliate network’ that puts merchants and affiliates together. They refer to merchants as ‘advertisers’ and the affiliates are called ‘publishers’.

To see all the merchants with products and services at Commission Junction, you’ll need to set up a free account.

To do that, go to Commission Junction, then click on ‘Solutions’ near the top right- hand portion of the page, then go to the left side of the Solutions page and click on ‘CJ Marketplace’.

At the very bottom of that page and you’ll find a link for the application process. Where it asks you to supply a URL, just enter yahoo.com or geocities.com if you don’t already have a web site.

Once your account is set up and you’ve logged into the Commission Junction interface, click on ‘Get Links’, and select ‘Advertisers’ in the drop-down box beside the word ‘Search’ near the top of the page. Next, type in the word ‘insurance’.

My search came up with 51 merchants. Your results may be more or less depending on whether merchants have been added to, or dropped from the network.

In choosing merchants, you want to select those with the highest EPC ratings and commissions.

What is an EPC Rating?

3-month EPC: 3-month EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) shows how well an advertiser converts Web site visitors into commissions, over a three-month period.

7-day EPC: 7-day EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) shows the average commissions paid to publishers for every 100 clicks, over the past seven days. Use this number to see the most recent EPC trend for advertisers.

So how well did our insurance merchants do?

Zurich insurance had a 7-day EPC rating of $250.88. That means that affiliates are earning an average 250.88 for every 100 visitors they send to Zurich Insurance.

Wow!

Now what about those commission rates?

Well, at the Good Sam Club, if the customer completes a form and becomes a member, Good Sam will pay you $5.00. That’s JUST to fill out a form.

And if they purchase an Emergency Road Service package, you’ll get paid $15.00.

Not bad!

You can find even MORE merchants at the following affiliate networks:

„ Linkshare
linkshare.com

„ BeFree
affiliates.befree.com

„ Clickbank
clickbank.com

Cheap Sources of Site Content

Because we want to leave the selling job up to the merchant, an affiliate’s job is to ‘pre-sell’ their merchants’ products.

To pre-sell, you need site content.

Content consists of articles and endorsements that explains how your visitors problems can be solved by using the products you promote. In most cases, webmasters write their own endorsements for the products they promote.

However, if you aren’t inclined to write product endorsements, you can:

„ Find Free Content
„ Use Merchants’ Ad Copy
„ Pay for Content

I like looking for free content first.

Staying with our ‘insurance’ topic, I searched Google for the terms “Free Articles”+ “Insurance” and found the following articles listed at legalwhiz.com:

• “How to Save on Title Insurance Costs”
• “Understanding the Terms of Your New Loan”
• “Common Sense Mortgage Tips!”

In many cases, the author will allow you to use his work on your site if you include credit to the author and a link back to his site.

This is even MORE effective when the author has an affiliate program and you can make money from that link.

To get approval to use the article, you’d simply email the author a request, and they will usually be very happy to have you use their articles on your site.

Another way to get free content is to use what the merchant makes available to their affiliates.

For example, here is an email promotion that Corey Rudl gives his affiliates to promote his very popular ‘Insiders Secrets to Internet Marketing’ course.

Dear Friend,

This e-mail is extremely urgent so please read the entire thing… I would feel terrible if you missed out on this because you did not get my e-mail in time.

I just got an e-mail from Corey Rudl and he said there were only 150 copies left of the new version of his best-selling Internet marketing course, The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet, that includes the $952 in FREE bonuses!

Chances are, as you read this, a lot of those 150 copies are already gone.

Just to recap my last e-mail, Corey Rudl is literally “the” guru of Internet marketing… he’s grown his online businesses to over $7.6 million in online sales last year and he gets over 1.8 million visitors to his web sites every month!

And in the new version of his best selling course he is going to show everything from step-by-step instructions you can use to start your very own Internet business in as little as 48 hours to how to build a top-selling web site… for less than $100!

No matter how small your budget is, Corey shows you the cheapest ways to build a web site that sells!

He is going to show you where to find hot products (in 20 minutes or LESS!) that you can start selling TODAY! These in-demand products will sell like hot cakes, no matter what your experience!

Corey will even reveal his personal rolodex with 100s of FREE and cheap online tools, resources, and software that you can use to automate your web site (and save yourself at least 35 hours every week)!

And if that’s not enough, he is going to even reveal, for the first time, some of his most advanced strategies like how to get #1 rankings in the search engines and get tons of free traffic from the “Big Guys” like Google… and his secret to writing sales copy that increases sales by 400% (or MORE)!

Like I said before, I know these strategies are going to make my business tons of extra money in 2004 and as my subscriber I want to make sure you experience the same rewards, so go to…

www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/3885

… if the page is still there, this means you made
it in time and he still has some copies of his course with the additional $952 worth of FREE bonuses!

So please hurry! And if you have any questions, just let me know.

All the best…

As you can see, that copy is written in the first-person, so it looks like it is coming directly from you. Use merchant copy judiciously however, as your credibility will take a beating if your subscribers and visitors have seen the exact same copy in other newsletters and on other affiliate sites.

Lastly, you can have articles written for you, sometimes very inexpensively.

To find ghost writers on the net, check out some of these sites:

• Guru.com
• FreelanceWriters.com
• Elance.com

Once you have organized your content, it’s time to start putting you’re your site together.

The Fastest Way to Build Your WebSite

There are 3 steps to quickly build your website. They are:

1. Register a Domain
2. Domain Hosting
3. Buy Template

Domain registration is painless, and CHEAP. Go to Godaddy.com where it will cost you 8.95/year for each domain. You can get them even cheaper when you register for more than one year.

Here are two good, yet inexpensive, hosting services that I recommend.

• GoDaddy.com - $8.95/mo.
• HostRocket - $9.95/mo.

The quickest way to build a website is to buy a template. Here is a list of some of the best template sites I’ve found to date:

o 4Templates.com
o BigWebmaster.com
o BoxedArt.com
o DollarTemplates.com

My personal favorite is BoxedArt.com. You can download as many templates as you want from Boxed Art, all for only $49.96 for six months access.

Once you’ve placed your content in your template and sent it to your web host, it’s time to join affiliate programs.

Sign-Up for Affiliate Programs

Go back to Commission Junction or the site where you found products you want to promote and sign up for the merchants’ affiliate programs.

The reason you build your site before joining the programs, is to have a site to show the merchant. This demonstrates that you are indeed serious about selling their product, and will almost guarantee your acceptance into their program.

Get Oodles of Traffic Today!

After placing merchant links on your site, it’s time to let the world know about your site.

Although I discuss ‘29 Ways to Market Your Site’ in the Super Affiliate Handbook, my favorite way to bring visitors to my sites is by using cheap Pay- Per-Click search engine advertising.

The primary benefit of PPC’s is that you can drive targeted traffic to your site quickly, instead of waiting months for the search engines to list your site… if they ever do.

Just a few of these include:

• Google.com
• Overture.com
• Enhance Interactive
• Findwhat.com
• Kanoodle.com

Pay-per-clicks allow you to bid on terms or keywords that are relevant to your site. In our insurance site example, the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool produced a list that included terms like:

car insurance
insurance
health insurance
life insurance
home insurance
affordable health insurance
travel insurance
renters insurance
insurance quote
car insurance quote
insurance lead

You should be able to find and bid on HUNDREDS, if not thousands, of terms in any category you choose. The more keywords you list your site under, the more exposure your site will get.

I HIGHLY recommend that you use PPC’s to advertise your site. I get returns of 2, 3, 4, and sometimes even FIVE dollars for every dollar I spend advertising my site.

So, let’s summarize again the steps that it takes to build an affiliate site…

„ Find a HUGE Market
„ Find Products & Services
„ Collect/Create Web Content
„ Build Site
„ Market Site
„ and… Enjoy the BIG Kachings!

I just told you why it’s good to own a high end resale rights product.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Some products that come bundled with low end resell packages can be just as good.

But then there are others that are nothing but a waste of your hard disk space.

When I buy products that I want to resell I follow these criteria:

1. A minimum suggested resale price.

Time after time I notice products that originally sold well for $97 up to $150, which are rendered totally worthless because the authors didn’t set a minimum price on their product.

For example the “Confidential Internet Intelligence
Manuscript” by Mark Joyner.

One reseller gives this product away for free as a bonus for whatever reason, then other resellers get discouraged because they think; “how can I sell mine for $200 when this guy is giving it away?”.

2. The product must be sold as a stand alone product.

This is only to protect the value of the product with resell rights. If a reseller is including it in an Ebook package, I won’t be able to easily sell it for a high profit.

3. I must be able to change the Mini Site or/and Sales Page.

I always want to be in control of changing the graphics and add my own personality into the sales page.

I don’t want to be restricted to using the same sales page as everyone else.

The more you can separate yourself from the crowd, the better.

Bringing a unique offer increases sales. Period.

I also like to test and improve the response of a sales page, and that can only be done if I can change it.

To be honest… I prefer buying products that don’t include a sales page.

I know that my competitors are just too lazy to come up with a sales page, so when I create another order-pulling sales page, and add an exclusive graphic to the product, I’m a winner already

I guess I don’t need to tell you about the importance of an appealing eCover.

However… an eCover alone will not sell your product, but it can make your product look more valuable.

When it comes to giving your Ebook the best eCover treatment, you have many options. There are many software tools, as well as a number of designers you can contract to design your cover for you.

Here’s a list of some of the best eCover services:
www.ebooks-made-easy.com/ebookcovers.htm

4. The product must be fresh.

I would never recommend you to promote an outdated product. The newer the product, the less people have seen it.

There are exceptions of course. You can bring an old product to life by giving it a new sales page and add a new graphic.

But there’s also some good news…

Some older products may not be promoted anymore online because they have dropped out of the spotlight.

You can often get the resell rights much cheaper for an older product, if you kindly ask the author/pubisher.

5. The product must offer value.

There are products that seem to be no more than just expanded sales letters for an affiliate program, making their profits mainly on the resale rights.

Surprising but true… people who buy resale rights to a product will not do anything with it. They just want to have the ability to resell it when they want to.

The resale rights owner is the one who wins, because if his customers aren’t trying to sell the product then he doesn’t have to deal with complaints too.

TIP: If you plan to buy a product, go for the master resell rights when available. This way you can sell the product and sell the resell rights as an upsell.

Example: I recently bought the Master Resell License to Niche Factors

This is a niche product about “niche products”. The resell rights for “Niche Factors” was only $97.00, so I ordered the rights instantly.

I knew that Niche Marketing is a hot market and the suggested retail price is very affordable for people at only $27.

I also knew that I would sell many copies of the book because my niche is about Ebooks, and how people can sell information products about any subject online, so I couldn’t go wrong here.

One other important thing…

I want you to take a minute to visit the website and carefully study the sales page.

You’ll notice that the product focuses on selling based on the content.

That in contrast with products in reseller packages that solely rely on their sales by the simple fact that they have resell rights included.

Here’s a lesson learned…

You will only create a proper interest in your product and make sales with it if you can convince people that your product offers unique and valuable content that can not be found anywhere else.

Never forget… it’s not about “quantity”, but “quality”.