Hi. The question below is typical of one that I get asked quite a lot, so I figured it would make a nice topic for an Ebook Times Q & A.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions of your own, don’t hesitate to use the comment box at the bottom of the page. (If nothing else, at least you’ll get a nice backlink to your website.)

Okay, here we go…

Q. I have a domain name lying idle. Any idea what I should do to make some income from it?

A. My first suggestion for your domain name is to just go ahead and set it up with something — anything. Just get it moving so that the search engines pick up on it and start paying occasional visits.

As long as it lays idle, it’s not benefiting you at all. (The longer a site is online — and evolving — the better the search engines like it.)

Of course there are a thousand different things you could do with your domain name.

Here are a few suggestions…

You could use some of that PLR content your have on your PC to create a themed website — and use it generate income through Adsense, affiliate programs etc.

You could do this in the form of a blog or you could create a standard website — either manually (using WYSIWYG software like Microsoft’s FrontPage or the one available for free here) or by using one of the many content site software programs available. (One such program is Fast Content Producer which you’re welcome to download by clicking here.)

Another approach might be to set up a blog and use it to point to individual products you’re selling. Then, start setting up sales pages for some of the ebooks you already have on your PC. Put a new blog entry pointing to the sales page once you’ve set it up. At least that way, you’ll have links that will point your visitors AND the search engines to your product sales pages.

Of course you could add other content to your blog as well — whether using articles of your own or PLR articles. (If you need PLR content, you’ll get plenty of it for free at PLR Wholesaler.)

Again, you could also integrate Adsense, affiliate programs etc. to your blog.

If you’re not sure how to set up a blog, please download Blogging Made Easy With WordPress (video tutorials) with my compliments.

—– SIDNOTE —–
If you’re not sure how to go about setting your resale rights ebooks up for sale/delivery, this blog entry might help:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=37
—– END SIDNOTE —–

Another option would be to set up a store (with a shopping cart system) containing a range of your (resale rights) products. I don’t know of a particular script you could use to run the store, but if you search for something like ‘paypal shopping cart script’ then you should find what you need.

This would enable you to begin selling multiple products in one go.

Having said that, in my experience this type of approach is less effective that the mini-site approach which is where you focus on selling one particular product (or collection of products).

I’m certain, for example that sites like my own TotalResale.com or Private-Label-Content.net wouldn’t be nearly as effective if I were selling multiple products — rather than focusing on selling ONE product (even if it contains multiple items).

There are no shortage of resale rights products and product collections that you could use. You could even look through the products you currently have on your PC and compile them into a collection of your own.

—– SIDNOTE —–
You could consider taking it a step further by using a ‘Butterfly Marketing’ type script. You can find out more about this here:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=66
—– END SIDNOTE —–

Another option would be to use the domain as a way of building your subscriber list. Create a ‘squeeze’ page offering one or more free ebooks in exchange for people subscribing to your list. You can then promote other products and ebooks to your subscribers and begin building a real income that will serve you in the long term.

During the sign-up process, you can introduce your new subscribers to a special One-Time-offer (OTO) private page so you can make some sales at the same time as building your list. If you’re not sure what a OTO is, you’ll find more details here:
http://ebooktimes.com/blog/?p=82

—– SIDNOTE —–
For a complete introduction to starting and building your list, please download List Building Video Tutorials for Newbies with my compliments. (Be warned, that’s a 94Mb file).
—– END SIDNOTE —–

Yet another approach might be to try a ready-to-go website like the ClickBank Store-in-a-Box. This wouldn’t result in direct sales to you, but might bring in some commissions. At the very least, it would be some content to get things moving. (Again, you can introduce Adsense, affiliate links, list building and so on to a site like this to get additional benefit from it.)

Okay, those are some ideas to give you food for thought.

As I said at the beginning, the important thing is to do SOMETHING with the site in order to get the ball rolling. Later, as you increase your understanding of how your chosen approach is working, you can tweak it (or change it altogether).

If you have specific questions about any of the topics mentioned above, just leave a comment below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll probably know someone who does — or I’ll be able to give you an ebook that covers the subject well. (By the way, whether your website is brand new or not, you can include your URL with your comment and you’ll have Google round to visit in no time.)

One final thing… don’t forget to watch out for my email on Friday. It’s gonna be a BIGGIE!

Talk to you then.

Michael

Hi. When you sell downloadable products online, there are basically two ways those products can be stolen from you…

1) They can be stolen by people who access your download pages without paying.

2) They can be stolen by people who use your content without your permission — thus violating your copyright.

In the pre-blog days I wrote two articles that examined how you can protect your online business from both copyright theft and download theft.

You can read those articles here…

• How to Prevent Theft of Your Ebooks – Part 1 (Ebook Copyright)
• How to Prevent Theft of Your Ebooks – Part 2 (Stop Illegal Downloads)

If you have any specific questions regarding these issues — or if you have some additional tips to offer — don't hesitate to leave a comment below.

Also, you can still grab a that provides a very quick and very easy way to protect your download pages.

Alternatively, if you don't want to spend anything just yet, you could grab a free copy of the excellent instead. It not only protects your download pages, it also provides automated product delivery that integrates with PayPal.

That's it for now — talk to you soon.

Michael

Hi. If you've been marketing online for any time now, you'll already have noticed that every successful marketer uses One Time Offers (OTOs) to increase their bottom line.

So, what is an OTO and how can YOU start including them on your website?

As the name suggests, an OTO is an offer that you make available to your visitors on ONE occasion only. The offer should be mouth-wateringly tempting and great value for money so that your visitors will be very hesitant to miss out on the opportunity to secure a great deal.

An OTO is usually inserted at a point where you're thanking your visitor for completing an action such as subscribing to your newsletter or buying your product.

Some examples…

- If you're selling an ebook for $17 on the front-end, you could offer your customers the chance to buy the master resale rights for an additional $27 once they've completed the initial purchase. The offer would only be available at that point and nowhere else (at least not at that price).

- If you're getting people to subscribe to your mailing list in order to secure a trial copy of your product, you could (on the 'thank you for subscribing' page) give them a one-off opportunity to upgrade to the full version at a knock-down price.

The most common way to implement an OTO is to use it as the 'thank you' page after someone has subscribed to your mailing list or ordered a product. (In the latter case, be sure to include a 'no thanks, just give me my product' link at the bottom of the OTO page.)

The most important key to success with OTOs is that the offer be relevant to your visitors and that it be so valuable they'll find it very difficult to resist.

If you don't have products of your own to create your OTO, then you can use a Ready-to-Plug-in OTO Package like this one instead. This package includes the OTO sales letter, a selection of OTO templates AND, of course, the contents of the package which is a selection of over 40 products with master resale rights.

Even if you don't operate in the internet marketing niche, you can still use this OTO package as the basis for a package of your own. Just tweak the sales letter to your needs and replace the products with some that are more in tune with your business. (You'll find lots of niche products you can use for free at PLR Wholesaler amongst others.)

Whatever approach you decide to use, it's REALLY worth including an OTO in your sales/marketing process. It can generate additional income on an ongoing basis with no additional effort on your part.

Just take a little time to set it up now, and you can be reaping the rewards long into the future.

Here's all you need to do…

- Create an offer aimed at your target market or use this ready-to-go offer instead.

- Upload it to your website as the 'thank you' page for your customers or subscribers.

That's all there is to it, so don't put it off, get started today!

All the best,

Michael

Hi there.

Ebay made an important announcement this week that affects anyone selling downloadable products via Ebay auctions.

Here's an email I received from Garrie Wilson (as a subscriber) that offers some advice on how to deal with this development…

This past week, eBay has made two announcements.

The first was to announce that their affiliate program would no longer be run with CJ.com.

This news alone made my blood boil because I have thousands of links out there and they can't all be changed. Not to mention the time it will take me to change the ones that I can.

And when the new program launches, I will only have 30 days to make changes.*ROAR*

The intelligent thing for eBay to do would be to slash their commissions at CJ, not accept new people to that program, and increase the commissions with the new program so people at CJ will have an incentive to make the move when they have time.

Then, as I'm sure you have heard already, eBay announced that as of March 31, digital items must be listed using the Classified Ads format.

You can read the official announcement at:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803241300132.html

The first thing you should take away from this is…

…Your business should *never* rely on one method of income, lead generation, traffic or anything else.

You should always have mutliple streams so if/when one dries up, it doesn't hurt nearly as bad.

Now that the damage is done, we have two options:

1. We can kick and scream that it's not fair and take our toys home.

OR

2. We can adapt AND turn it into bigger sales.

Option 1 is straightforward, so I'm not going to comment on it.

However, option 2 can lead to more profits buy using a few different strategies and that's what I want to cover.

Strategy 1: Use the Classified Ads

Just list your items as a classified ad. They only cost $9.99 for 30 days. You may need to work on your copywriting skills but that's something you should be doing anyway. Maybe this will be the incentive you need to start.

Strategy 2: Burn the Digital Items to CD

A soon as you put them onto a CD, you just made them a tangible product and are within the eBay guidelines.

[SIDENOTE: Nowadays it's VERY easy to create and deliver professional CDs and DVDs -- with NO inventory and NO start-up costs! Find out how, here:
http://www.ebooktimes.com/CDs_DVDs ]

Strategy 3: Create Themed CDs

If you have 20 products that deal with the same topic, put them on a CD and give the CD a cool name.

This is actually great because you just created a new product that is YOURS!

Just be sure and double check all the licenses for the poducts.

Strategy 4: License Commercial CDs/DVDs

You can get master duplication rights to CDs and DVDs. I actually sell some right now and plan to be creating more in the very near future.

The ones I have available now are:

1) Beginners Guide To List Building

2) PLR Rights Domination

Strategy 5: Offer a Downsell to a Digital Version

Now, I don't know how eBay will re-act to this BUT you could always offer to refund the S/H fee if they would rather opt for a digital only version.

Personally, I wouldn't, but you could…

The Extra Opportunities…

This decision has also created some *extra* ways for you to increase your profits and here are just a few…

1. You could even start creating CDs/DVs and sell licenses to them.

2. Include demo software that if people buy it, you will earn a commission.

3. Include inserts to advertise other products and services. If you sell enough volume, you could even sell inserts to other people.

That's three extra ways to increase your profits but there are others. Just use your imagination.

Now, if you don't want to burn, print and ship the poducts yourself, you can use services like Kunaki.com, lulu.com or a different one. Just search Google and find one that will suit your needs and price.

Before I go, I want to mention that there will be less competition because people are lazy and many of them, will take their toys home.

To YOUR Success,

Garrie Wilson

This article was a bit of an eye-opener for me because it made me realize that I can add, say, an extra $20 to the price of a product that's delivered on CD/DVD while adding a fraction of that in actual costs!

I needed to find out more — and I did. 

It turns out you can automate the entire process — with NO inventory, NO packaging to deal with, NO shipping to deal with, NO start-up costs and NO minimum amounts you need to sell.

In short, ANYONE can start doing this today. Right now!

And here's how you get started…

Download Garrie's PDF Guide plus Video Tutorials Package that explains EVERYTHING.

It's exciting stuff!

You can actually be selling and delivering your OWN professional-quality CDs and DVDs in no time — even if you haven't a CLUE what kind of products you could sell!

The package normally costs $47, but I've managed to get a nice big discount for you. It's only valid for 5 days, so grab it now while the going's good!

Click Here to Secure Your Discount

All the best,

Michael

Hi. I received a lot of questions regarding the new Viral Mini Sites script that I talked about in my last entry.

Here are answers to the three most common questions I got…

—–

Q. I have a product that I've been selling for a long time, but sales are sluggish. Should I consider a Butterfly Marketing (BM) approach with a product like this?

A. I would say, yes, go for it. If you're not generating the income you'd hoped for from one of your products, then the BM approach might be just what you need to turn things around.

By giving your product away for free you'll be building a targeted subscriber list — which can be worth MUCH more than an individual sale in the medium and long term.

Additionally, by having a good One-Time-Offer (OTO), you have a good chance of generating as much (or even more) instant income than you would by continuing with the regular direct sales approach.

—–

Q. I have no idea what I could use in my OTO — and ideas?

A. The answer to this depends a lot on the type of product you're offering on the front-end.

Some BM sites offer a 'lite' (but still valuable) version of their product up front, and then offer a chance to upgrade to the full version — at a discount — in the OTO.

Others give the full version up front and then offer the chance to buy master resale rights or private label rights in the OTO.

Another approach is to offer other products that tie in with your front end offer. For example, if you're giving away an ebook about parenting, create a package of ebooks (or other products) that will also appeal to parents to offer through the OTO.

One great place to find products — across a broad range of niches — that you can use in your OTO is Gabor Olah's Private Label Rights Wholesaler website. (By the way, this website also operates on the Butterfly Marketing principle.)

—–

Q. If I get the "Viral Mini Sites" script do I have to give my product away for free on the front end? Couldn't I continue selling it — and still take advantage of the other benefits of using the script?

A. It's entirely up to you whether you decide to give your product away for free or sell it. The advantage of giving it away for free is that you will grow your subscriber base much more quickly — which is one of the MAJOR benefits of the BM approach.

However, even if you decide to continue selling it, the "Viral Mini Sites" script still offers many advantages including the integrated OTO, the membership/download area that includes the ability to broadcast emails to members and, of course, the integrated affiliate program.

If you take a look at the Viral Mini Sites website itself you'll see that they're using their own script — while SELLING the product on the front end.

—–

Okay, I think that covers the main questions for now. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to drop me a line. In the meantime, be sure to check out the "Viral Mini Sites" website and see if you think that this powerful script can give new impetus to your business in 2008.

Here's the URL: http://www.ebooktimes.com/VMS

All the best,

Michael

Hi. Today we're looking at that most challenging of online business tasks… getting more traffic.

Before that, I just want to point out that I've left answers to all those questions and comments I received to the last Q&A regarding ClickBank and PayPal. Scroll down until you see my comment here.

Now… traffic… 

I get asked about this a lot so this is not an ACTUAL question I received, just a version of the question…

Q. I want more traffic.

Hah! That's an easy one! Why didn't you just say so?

Okay, listen, there are 3 fundamental rules to getting more traffic (and these apply to most other aspects of running an online business)…

 1) Take action. Reading about traffic techniques but not applying them will get you nowhere.
 2) Be persistent. Making itsy-bitsy efforts and then throwing your arms up in despair will get you nowhere either.
 3) Be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day and all that…

Let's take a closer look at each point…

1. TAKE ACTION:

Pick one or two traffic techniques that you think you can work with — and then work with them. Keep working with those techniques (and those techniques ONLY) until either (a) you've exhausted their potential (b) you've decided they don't work or (c) you're absolutely sick of them.

The point is, don't try EVERY traffic technique willy-nilly. Focus on a few and do them well. Master them. When you've found a few that work for you, keep applying them. Over and over again.

The only way to be sure a technique works, is to test it. If you're not sure WHY this is important, read this article:
http://www.bizzydays.com/reprint_rights/sales.htm

In that article I recommend DynaTracker (and still do). However, at the time it was $67 — now it's $297! If that's too much for you, shop around for a cheaper option or download a copy of AdTrackingPro with my compliments:
http://www.ebooktimes.com/dl/AdTrackingPro.zip

Here are some places where you'll find traffic techniques you can start testing now:

 10 Things You Can Do TODAY to Boost Traffic to Your Website:
 http://www.bizzydays.com/reprint_rights/website_traffic.htm

 50 Traffic Techniques:
 http://warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=141726

If you're not in the mood for testing new stuff from scratch, you might want to check out traffic testers. They test free and paid traffic sources to see if they're any good: http://www.ebooktimes.net/testers.htm

2. BE PERSISTENT:

This is the single MOST important key to success online. Unless you're a genius (or have a lot of money to throw at your business), then you're just going to have to build your business from the ground up like the rest of us. It takes time, it takes pure, brute stubborness — it takes persistence. A little more on that subject here:
http://www.bizzydays.com/reprint_rights/ramble.htm

3. BE PATIENT:

As you apply various traffic techniques, your flow of traffic will gradually grow. Don't expect IMMEDIATE results to everything you do. The efforts you make today — the actions you take today — result in the traffic you're getting next week, next month and next year. Dribs and drabs. Bits and pieces. Keep at it and it all adds up.

Time is important to search engines too. The longer your site is online, the more credibility it gains with regards to the search engines. Build up incoming links. Add/change content on your site (at least a little from time to time). Gradually, Google & Co get to like you a little bit more and a little bit more.

If you're not patient, then you'll probably need to spend some money to get that traffic coming in fast. You can try the PPCs like Google Adwords, MS AdCenter and Yahoo! Marketing. You can run solo ads in relevant ezines. Just be sure of one thing: if you ARE paying for traffic, be sure to TEST the results.

You can also do things like hire people on scriptlance.com or elance.com to get backlinks to your site, write and submit articles for you, optimize your page for search engines, submit your sites to directories, add your pages to social bookmarking sites and more. (Take a look at projects that are already running on these sites for these type of things to get an idea of what's available and at what cost.)

Okay, listen, we could go on and on about this all night (it's 2 a.m. here as I write), but I think you can see that there's no 'magic bullet' answer to the traffic question. There are no amazing ebooks or softwares that are going to end your traffic concerns forever.

Anyone who promises the ultimate solution is just selling hype. Look at all the poor idiots (your's truly included) who sent off checks to the scammers at morethantraffic.com in the hope of the most amazing traffic solution ever. Doh! (Hey, it's not there any more, but their sales copy was seriously compelling. Really…)

Okay, enough. It's time for me to hit my leaba. (That's Irish for bed… as if you didn't know…)

If you have any questions about this — or anything else — leave a coment using the form below. Don't forget, you can include your URL so you also get a free link back to your site!

All the best,

Michael

Today's Q & A answers two specific questions related to using PayPal or ClickBank to accept payments on your website.

If you have any questions about this — or anything else — leave a coment using the form below. Don't forget, you can include your URL so you also get a free link back to your site!

Q. I sell my ebooks via PayPal and I want customers to be taken straight to the download area after they order. I know this can be done, because I see it on other sites. Please tell me how to set this up.

Here's the procedure for setting up your PayPal order button so that the customer is taken to the download page after completing the order…

Firstly, log in to PayPal. Now, click on 'Merchant Tools' and then click 'Buy Now Buttons' which is under the heading 'Key Features'.

Now, enter the details of your product order button on this page. (Be sure to leave the radio button under 'security settings' set at 'yes'). When you're finished on this page, click the 'Add More Options' button.

Scroll down to the "Customize your buyer's experience" section. Here you can enter a 'Successful Payment URL'. Enter your download page (thank you) page URL for your ebook here. (If you want to enter a URL for a cancelled payment you can — I usually enter the sales page URL here).

Now, when the customer has completed payment on PayPal, there will be a 'Continue' link or 'Return to Merchant' button on the confirmation page. Clicking this link will take the customer directly to the download page URL you entered above.

Q. I'm using ClickBank to sell my ebook. Now, I'm launching a second ebook and want to use ClickBank too. The problem is, the standard ClickBank affiliate link will only point to one specific page. What can I do so that I have a different affiliate link for each of my products?

There are two possible ways to get around this issue…

Firstly, there are a number of scripts available such as CB Multi-Item Manager (which includes resale rights) which will enable you to sell different products via one CB account, while still being able to give your affiliates separate links that point to individual product pages.

Secondly, you could simply open a new ClickBank account for each new product. Until recently, your first account with ClickBank cost $49.95 and all subsequent accounts were free. Now, however, subsequent accounts are no longer free, but are available at a discounted price of $29.95.

For more information on how to set up automated delivery of your ebooks using ClickBank, PayPal or other payment processors, read my tutorial here.

Okay, I think that covers it for now. If you have a questions, please leave a comment below.

All the best,

Michael

P.S. Don't forget to check out Richard Wing's sale that I mentioned in my email. It includes a nice range of products with master resale rights — including an ebook compiler. And the price is definitely right. You'll find the details here.

If you're overwhelmed with all the resale rights ebooks accumulating on your PC, or if you don't know HOW to start reselling those ebooks, then today's Q & A might be just what you need.

If you have any questions about this — or anything else — leave a coment using the form below. Don't forget, you can include your URL so you also get a free link back to your site!

Here's a question I received this week…

Q. I have tons of ebooks on my computer. On a separate area to keep track of all of them. My problem is: How do you manage all these zip files within the zip files!!  When you put them on a website, you have to host the picture, type your description and manage all these files on the website as well as your PC!! I end up with so many folders that it turns into confusion central! How on earth do you keep all of this organized?

A. I'm not 100% sure from your question if your difficulty is with keeping track of all the ebooks files you've downloaded on your PC or whether it has to do with handling ZIP files or whether it has to do with getting these files uploaded to your website.

I'm going to assume it's a bit of all three.

Firstly, keeping track of all those downloads on your PC…

I wrote a message to Ebook Times subscribers a few months ago that touched on  this subject. There was a free marketing giveaway going on with a lot of stuff available to download. Here's an extract from that message:

—QUOTE—
The first thing I would say is, don't download everything you come across just because you CAN.

It's important to remain focused in your business. It's very difficult at times, with all the distraction online, but it's very important.

One way to stay focused is in terms of the ebooks, software etc. that you download.

If you have no intention of selling products on Ebay, then there's no point in downloading an ebook on the subject.

Similarly, if you're thinking about downloading an ebook on, say, building a list, think before you click. Haven't you ALREADY downloaded 17 ebooks about building a list — and never even looked at them… Don't do it! Don't click the download link, you don't need it.

The only exception in the two cases above would be if the product came with resale rights or private label rights – if you're into that type of thing.

But, again, there's no need to download every resale rights product you see. Ask yourself if you're going to put it to use. If you're inclining towards 'no' then move on. There's plenty more where that came from. Plenty which are better or more relevant to your business.

We're being bombarded with more and more free products to download so it's important to remain in control by developing a filtering system. If not, we risk spending countless hours just downloading with little time left to actually DO anything.

Even by staying focused, there will still be no shortage of stuff that you'll want to download so it's important to develop an effecient way of storing it all on your PC.

For a long time I had the habit of calling folders things like "new-stuff-from-free-viral-giveaway-site" and then downloading everything in there. Pretty soon all I had was heaps of stuff in heaps of folders and no idea what's what.

A far more effecient system (in my opinion) is to store your downloads based on theme or topic. So, you create, for example, a "Downloads" folder in your "My Documents" folder and, inside that "Downloads" folder you create a number of sub-folders each covering a topic.

So, you might have a folder called "ezine publishing" and a folder called "copy writing" and a folder called "traffic" and so on. Now, when you download an ebook that deals with the topic, you place it in the corresponding folder.

That way, when it comes to the moment that you want to work on that area of your business, you'll be able to go directly to that folder and have a wealth of information and resources already sitting in one place.

Also, if a product includes resale rights, then here's a simple trick to make that fact stand out… place something like this at the start of the ZIP filename: "_RR_"

So, for example, let's say you download a product plus sales website and the ZIP file is called: productname.zip Change this to read: _RR_productname.zip

The underscore at the start will make sure that all these products are listed together at the top.

You can do the same thing for other traits, such as "_PLR_" for Private Label Rights and so on.

Another good idea, if you BUY ebooks from time to time, is to put a "bought" folder inside your topic folders.

That way you'll see that you've actually spent money on something related to this topic, so let's see if you can get a return on your investment. I can't remember buying it but, if I bought it, it must be because I though it was worth it at the time. Let's check it out.

It's also important that you delete the junk. If you've just wasted 10 minutes on something that turns out to be a bit of a dud, then get rid of it. Don't leave it on your PC ready to waste another 10 minutes of your time again in the future. Just say "Go away useless junk!" and hit the Delete button.
—END QUOTE—

One tool that you might find useful is Ebook Librarian. It will help you categorize and keep track of all your ebooks. You can download it here:
http://www.bizzydays.com/free/ebooklibsetup.zip

Now, when it comes to dealing with resale rights products in ZIP files, it's not as complicated as it might first appear.

Firstly, I'm going to assume you're working with WinZip to zip and unzip your files. If you don't already have it, you can download the free trial version here:
http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm

Now, here's an sample file you can download so that we can study a precise situation. It's "The Gold Collection Software Package" and it includes resale and give-away rights. Click here to download it:
http://www.ebooktimes.net/alt-tr-downloads/SGC-package.zip

When it's finished downloading, go to the folder you just saved it to. Right-click SGC-package.zip. On the menu, select "WinZip" and on the sub-menu select "Extract to folder C:\….." This will extract the contents of the ZIP file to a new folder with the same name (in this case, SGC-package).

Double-click into the new folder. You'll see it contains the main products — the software tools themselves — as well as a 'readme' text file. It also contains a ZIP file called mini-sites.

Now, the first thing you'll want to do with any set of files like this is check out the main product or, in this case, products. Whether you're interested in it for your own use or whether you just want to determine if it's good enough quality to resell, it's best to do it right away and be done with it.

If it's up to scratch, fine. If not, back out, delete the zip file and the newly-created folder and move on.

If you decide you want to resell (or give away) the product, you'll need the accompanying website.

Right-click on the "mini-sites" ZIP file and, like above, select "WinZip" and on the sub-menu select "Extract to folder C:\….." Now you have a new folder called "mini-sites". In this case it contains a page to resell the products and a page to give the products away. The images that accompany the pages are in the same folder as the pages themselves. (That means that, when you upload them to your website, the images need to be uploaded to the same folder as the pages in order to display properly.)

Now, using your web editing software, you open and edit whatever sales page and/or download page that is included. In most cases, adding your own contact details and payment link are the basic areas you need to edit.

—SIDENOTE—

For a tutorial on setting up payment and delivery of your ebooks, click here

For information on setting up your ebooks for download on your website, click here.

– END SIDENOTE—

If a download page isn't included, here's a quick way to create one: open the sales page in your web-editing software and then save to it the same folder under a new name (something less obvious that download-page.htm). Now, delete all the content on the page and replace it with your 'thank you page' information and download link. Here's a generic thank you page you can use as a model:
http://www.ebooktimes.com/generic-thanks.htm

Now, once you're finished editing the pages, you just need to upload them, together with the original zip file, to your website. You'll need FTP software to do this. If you're not familiar with
FTP, this ebook might help:
http://www.bizzydays.com/free/usingftp.zip

The easiest way to keep control of all the different products you upload to your site for resale, is to create a new folder for each one. You can do this using your FTP software. Give the folder a name related to the product. Now, upload the pages and the images to this folder. (If the images are in a subfolder relative to the pages, just upload the subfolder as it is).

Your new sales page will now reside at: http://www.your-site-name/subfolder-name or something to that effect.

If you want the sales page to be picked up by the search engines, put a link to it from somewhere on your website that's already being indexed. After that, promote it as best you can.

Back on your PC, there's a final step you could take that might help keep more order.

Create a folder called, for example, "Products I Resell". Make a copy of the original ZIP file and place it in here. This will keep everything together and easy to find should you need it.

Okay, I think that about covers it. Like I said, if you have a questions, please leave a comment below.

All the best,

Michael

I frequently get asked questions from visitors and subscribers about different aspects of the ebook business or online business in general. I figure that, for every one person who raises their hand to ask the question, there are many more who are also looking for an answer.

With that in mind, I've decided to start including some of those questions and answers here on the Ebook Times blog.

If you have a question you'd like answered here, please leave a comment below. 

Before I get to today's questions, I just want to draw your attention to a handy new ebook that's just been released. It's called The Resource Report and it's available for Free here. In it, Mike Filsaime lists the tools and resources he has used to build his business. Some of them are free and some of them are not. All of them are quality tools.

The Resource Report is ESSENTIAL reading if you're using GoDaddy as a domain registrar (and fascinating reading if you're not). Mike does NOT like GoDaddy. Big time. He explains why, in a stunning exposure of GoDaddy's modus operandi that's certain to scare the living daylights out of anyone using their service. Read all about it in The Resource Report.

Okay, here goes, two questions and two answers….

Q. Please could you offer advice regarding reliable and cost effective providers of domain name registration and hosting. I am now about to launch several more sites and require a more cost effective solution with more facilities. I have researched the subject, to exhaustion, on the internet, but everytime I come up with a possible solution I read elsewhere of why I should not go that route because "they are unreliable", "screw things up" or are "out and out b*!%£*$'s" and take money from retained credit card information etc etc. I feel that, after 3 months, I have gone round in a circle and have made no progress and am now totally confused.

A. What I've done in order to be able to launch new websites quickly and cheaply is get my own webhosting reseller setup — and then use it only to host my own sites. It sort of happened by accident. In the beginning I DID intend to start selling hosting accounts but I decided that it might result in a lot of extra support issues so I decided to abandon the idea. However, I realized that this would be a great way to host all my OWN  websites — and it would cost me just $39.95 per month. The service I use now costs $99.95 per month if you're opening a new account, but still represents reasonably good value. The service is reliable, there's cPanel with all the bells and whistles and they give great support. You also get a WebHostManager admin area where you can set up your new websites any time you want.

You get a huge amount of bandwidth and hard drive space, so there's virtually no limit on the number of sites you can host. You'll find the details here: http://www.webhostingrevenue.com/

If you look around on Google, you'll probably find other, similar services — perhaps at a better price.

While you're at it, search for 'multi-domain hosting' or something along those lines. This type of service (that's becoming increasingly common) allows you to host X number of separate domains on one hosting account.

One other approach worth considering is outlined in this article from the Ebook Times archive.

As regards domain names, I buy all mine at Namecheap.com for $8.88 each. I can manage them via one admin area and I can pay for them using PayPal which is handy (for me anyway).

Even if you have to deal with one company for domain names AND one for hosting, it's still pretty painless. In my setup, for example, I buy the domain at Namecheap, then (still in Namecheap) I change the DNS settings to point to my hosting (the settings are the same for every site). I then go to the WebHostManager admin area and set up hosting for the domain. It takes just a few minutes.

Q. I have been looking into using AWeber.com as an autoresponder service. Would you have any comments on this as a choice or maybe recommend elsewhere? Any suggestions from your personal experiences?

A. For a while I used an autoresponder script installed on my own domain. However, after some instances of unreliability with the script and, more recently, accusations of spam, I decided to stop hosting the script myself and go for a third-party service. I now run all my autoresponders using prosender.com (which is actually just a labelled version of Aweber.com). It works well for me and the price is right so, yes, I'd have no hesitation in recommending Aweber or Prosender.

Okay, that's it for now. If you have any questions on the topics above — or anything else that I might be able to tackle in future Q&As, please leave a comment below.

All the best,

Michael