***Make Your Book-Selling Website an Information Hub

Make your book-selling website operate like a busy international airport.

Fly-in traffic arrives through hyperlinks. An example of a hyperlink is the name of your web domain. My writing services domain name is Write to Publish for Profit and the hyperlink is http://www.write-to-publish-for-profit.com" target="_blank". A hyperlink can also be a content-rich web page that has attracted a browser’s attention. For example, if a person is searching for information about writing ebooks, they may find in the search engines one of the web pages on my Write to Publish for Profit website titled “How to Write an Ebook.”

Possibly they’re looking for books about UFOs, specifically “Exopolitics,” which relates to political issues concerning the disclosure of extraterrestrial information. My publishing company, Dandelion Books, published a book titled Exopolitics,by Michael E. Salla. The search engines may bring up: Dandelion Books Non-Fiction or ET Disclosure Time.

Other “fly-in” traffic can come from:

**Your newsletters that are sent to a list of people who have opted-in to subscribe and confirmed their subscription

**Articles you’ve posted on other websites such as my “Publishing Expert” link on the SelfGrowth website.

**Blogs you may have developed and update regularly (check out the number of free blogs you can develop)

**“Squidoo” lenses that you’ve developed (SEE Squidoo for learning how to create lenses (it’s free!)

**Social networking sites where you’ve posted your profile and your URL

**Inbound links placed on other people’s websites. Link exchanges are a popular way to create inbound links. For example, your website may promote your landscaping business.

Real estate developers, builders and community planners may be interested in placing your home page link on their site because you provide a wealth of information about landscaping.

Much of your material is original, based on your 20 years of experience in working with hundreds of clients and also developing residential communities. You have a special section for environmentally conscious visitors; this section has become extremely popular, since you’ve had first-hand experience working with homeowners to help them integrate aesthetic and functional gardens and orchards.

Fly-out traffic is created by developing keyword specific web pages that the search engines and indexes will pick up. This is how you will make your published book the hub of your online business. Each page is strategically constructed; if you work with SBI they will show you how. As Ken Evoy, the founder of Sitesell (SBI) jokes: “In order to drive a car, you don’t have to know anything about what’s under the hood!”

That’s the beauty of SBI. I still consider myself an IT newbie and yet I built two beautiful websites with only minimal initial help.

The SBI philosophy is built on a 4-word concept that describes the four areas and chronological order in which a website must be built:

**Content (Create pages with content)

**Traffic (Create fly-in and fly-out traffic; make it into a traffic hub or magnet)

**Pre-Sell – Offer your visitors with free samples of your books and other products; if they like what they read, listen to and view, they may buy the products and keep returning for more.

If you are practitioner or coach, you may wish to offer an initial free consultation. As a writing coach and editor, for example, I offer free consultation to anyone who visits my website and wishes to discuss their project with me.

**Monetize - Finally, after your traffic is snowballing, you can start to make your book-selling website into an information hub for learning about your products and reading free downloadable excerpts.

By this time you may be already communicating with a number of websites for link exchange and referrals for related services and products.

“CTPM” is a magical formula for building a loyal online customer base. Just as in any business environment, it is certainly possible to “get rich quick” on the internet. However, most success models require “PTIP” (my own acronym): Patience, Tenacity, Integrity and Perseverance.

SBI calls this the “tortoise model” of building a business. Each step is carefully and deliberately worked out, and when traffic starts to snowball, the online business owner is prepared. By that time, the website is rich with content and large numbers of people regularly visit the site for information updates. These content-rich pages also promote new products and services that visitors are ready to buy.

Write Articles to Promote Your Books

You can write articles and place them for free reading on a number of websites. Free article websites attract tremendous traffic. This is an excellent way to become recognized as an expert in your field. Readers will be eager to visit your website for even more information.

Web builders who are creating content rich websites will be more than happy to use your material and give you credit. Make sure your own website link or contact information is embedded in the article. Often this reference can lead to another inbound link or “fly in” back to your website.

When you’ve collected several articles on one topic, you can compile them into an ebook. Two or three articles may be perfect for a short ebook and 10-15 articles may create either a longer electronic or hard copy book product for sale.

Place your articles on your blogs and other spots where you’ve created a presence, and collect comments from your readers. This feedback is invaluable for making revisions and additions to your material, and also for learning what people want to know about.

The internet, like all businesses, thrives on collecting supply and demand statistics. Once you learn what people are looking for, you can then start to feed their needs.

Ebooks are hot

I’ve written and posted several free articles about ebooks at my SelfGrowth Publishing Expert spot.

You can create ebooks to give away (free download) or sell. You can use ebooks to promote your products and services, or they can be stand-alone products. On the Dandelion Books Website, I offer free ebook downloadable excerpts of our hard copy and ebooks. After reading the excerpt, visitors often choose to buy the book.

Often an online business owner will joint venture with other internet entrepreneurs to create buying campaigns. The sales promotion for buying a book or other product will include a number of free bonuses. Ebooks are often used as joint venture bonus items.

Ebooks are also stand-alone products that have recently received a tremendous boost from the arrival of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reading device and the Sony Reader. Click on these two hyperlinks for more information about Ebook Reading Devices and Amazon's Kindle.

I’m personally convinced that ebooks are not only here to stay; I believe that soon ebook sales will catch up with hard copy book sales and eventually supersede them.

Ebooks are green (they require no paper to produce), easier to produce than hard copy books, require no storage or inventory, and can be sold directly from any website that installs a simple shopping cart with an auto-responder page for downloading.

Most of Dandelion’s titles are available both in hard copy and a number of different electronic formats. We are now in the process of making all of them available on Amazon Kindle. Also, one of our ebook distributors has just signed a contract with Sony Reader.

Feel free to contact me for more information about creating Amazon Kindle ebooks.

Monetizing at last

When it’s finally time to either add your shopping cart, you can sign up, free of charge with Payloadz to develop an off line shopping cart. Or for a small monthly fee you can sign up with Clickbank. Both of these shopping carts provide:

**A landing page for visitors to purchase products from your website

**A place for capturing the money either through credit cards, PayPal, bank transfer, check or money order, etc.

**An auto-responder informing your customers that their transaction was processed, and a downloading link if the product is an ebook, MP3 or other virtual item.

In my next article in this series, we’ll discuss marketing and selling hard copy books online.