Do you sell e-books?

I have been talking about publishing and writing books a lot on this site lately.  Why?  Because I think it is going to be my next step in making money online.  I have some subjects that I have some authority on, and I feel that I have some books inside me just waiting to get out too, so why not write some books and earn a little money from them?  Frankly, a lot of the subjects that I want to write on are based on e-mail questions that I get almost every day anyway, so why not expand on my answers, and also make a little money from answering these questions for people.

One of the discussions that we have been having on this site lately is whether to go for printed books or electronic books (e-books).  I have decided to do both.  One question, though, that several people have asked me via e-mail is this:

How will you deliver those e-books?  Do you need to get an account with Clickbank or some other provider who can ensure delivery as soon as the customer pays?

Well, to be honest… no.  The more different companies that you use in the delivery, payment and such, the more people who are going to take a percentage of your earnings!  I don’t mind paying for services when people can offer value.  I mean, if there is a company that can do a premium job at delivering an electronic product, I honestly don’t mind giving them a percentage of the money.  However, when it comes to delivering the e-book, I already have a solution.

For my e-commerce sites, I use OSCommerce (OSC) for the shopping cart software.  OSC has a built in e-book (or other electronic item) delivery system as a standard part of the shopping cart software!  That’s right, when a customer pays, the software instantly gives him a link where he can download the book!  So, the customer shops the site, checks out through the checkout, makes payment, and instantly has a link where he can download the book!  It doesn’t get any easier than that, and I don’t have to pay anybody to handle the downloads.

So, if you are looking for a perfect solution for delivering digital downloadable items, give OSCommerce a look!  The learning curve is rather steep for the software, but I think that you’ll find that it is well worth it!

Is it really possible to make money online?

I hear a lot of people say that making money online is virtually impossible. Just yesterday, I was at a meeting of ex-pats living here in Davao, and I heard three different people there say that they have given up with trying to make money online. While these people are friends, I must say that I have to disagree with them strongly on this.

A month or so ago, I had an idea for a new product that I could sell online. There was a problem, though, this particular product was not approved by the company that I was using for credit card processing. They did not allow the selling of this particular product through their system. So, what could I do? Well, as I wrote about last week, I recently got a Paypal account all set up and working for me here in the Philippines. I checked with Paypal and found that they do not restrict the selling of this particular product. So, I decided to set up a store to sell the product, and to use Paypal as the payment provider.

I just set up the store yesterday. It was completed around 4pm last evening. As I write this post, it is 1:00pm on the day after completion, so about 21 hours after the store was made public. The only thing I did to marketing this store was to send an e-mail to all of my customers from one of my other online stores (which has products that are related). I have a mailing list for that store of about 7,000 people. So, an e-mail announcing this new store was sent to 7,000 previous customers.

In 21 hours since the launch, how have my results been? Well, I have made 11 sales of the product, resulting in $408 in sales. My profit from those sales amounts to $187 after all of my costs are accounted for. Not bad for 21 hours worth of “work.” But, did I really work for 21 hours? Not really, I must admit. I worked for about 4 hours setting up the e-commerce site, and after that I had my employees take care of the rest. They probably put in a total of about 1 hour (maybe less) handling these 11 sales. And, my employee costs are included in the profit calculations.

So, as you can see, for just a few hours work, the money is already rolling in. And, I probably won’t have to work on this site any more, at least not much if any. Let’s say that I keep up the same rate of sales day in and day out (it is a consumable product, the same people will come back and buy again and again). If I do $408 per day in sales, that is equivalent to $12,240 per month, or $146,880 per year. Honestly, I think that sales will be more than that from this site after it is better established. But, even if it remains just at the level where it has been today, that is a nice amount of profit for 4 hours work. Let’s say that I work 1 extra hour per week on the site (I don’t think I will work that much on it), that means that the payoff for my work is $935 per hour in the first month, which includes my initial 4 hours of work in setting up the site.

So what do you think? Is it possible to make money online?

Keeping it fresh!

When you run a website, especially an e-commerce site where you want people to spend money, you need some degree of continuity on the site.  You want to keep things the same as much as possible.  The longer that you are in business on the site, the more loyal customers you will attract, and the more they will come back again and again.  If you have a site that is selling ladies clothing, and you suddenly change and your product line is books, you will confuse your customers, and also the ladies who have been buying clothing will mostly not buy from you anymore.

That said, you also need some changes to keep the site fresh and interesting!  I know, I know… this seems to be in conflict with the previous paragraph, but in my experience it is very true.

Think about this.  If you went to a site a year ago and just looked at their goods, or even bought something, and then you went back again today and it was EXACTLY the same, how would you feel?  Well, if it were me, I might wonder if the site was still in business.  If you drive up to a store, you can look with your eyes and see if the doors are open, if there are customers inside, or if the lights are on in the store.  On a website, you can’t be 100% certain that they are even still in business, unless you see that the site is dynamic, that it changes and gets updated, etc.  For example, if you go to the site on December 17 and it has a Christmas theme to the site, that would indicate that things are being updated and kept current.  Somebody is keeping the site running.  If you went there on January 19 and found a Christmas theme, you would probably wonder if the owner of the site is even still alive.  If it were me, I probably would find another site to purchase from.

Because of this, I like to keep my sites fresh and keep them changing in subtle ways.  I change the theme of my sites to fit in with current holidays.  I change the colors of the site to a certain degree with the seasons.  I keep new products coming on the site to show that new activity is ongoing on the site.  This gives my customers confidence that I am open for business, the lights are on, and there are probably some other customers roaming the aisles in my virtual stores.

See what I mean?  Don’t make massive or drastic changes suddenly, but make subtle changes that show activity.  I know that whenever I make an update to the look on the site, I see a little bump in business on the site.  It’s the smart way to do business!