How much should you charge for your ebooks? One of the dilemmas you face when selling your first ebook is trying to price it. Should it be $9.99 or $29.99?

You want to make it affordable it so it tempts customers into hitting Buy Now but you also need to make a profit, right? If you price it too low, you reduce the profit margin. If you price it too high, you may lose customers.

Or would you? Maybe you’d make more…

What’s the Best Price To Sell ebooks?

You need to work backwards. What I mean is that best price is the price that suits your customer.

But, here’s the catch.

You can persuade your customer that they need more that they want (I bet you see this in supermarkets all the time) and you can play with their emotions, for example, by creating limited editions.

There is a strong urge in humans to have something that others can’t afford, is unique, or hard to find.

Once you understand how these emotional triggers work, you can experiment with different pricing strategies.

What’s the Best Price To Sell?

Ok, the best price is between $9.99 and $33.99.

I’ve seen exceptions to this but the best selling ebooks are in this range.

Why?

If it’s less that $9.99, it’s seen as low-value and not worth the effort. The subtext in the customer’s mind is that if I do a Google Search, I’ll find a similar product for free.

If it’s less $19.99, customers think about buying the product. It has to be something of high value that solves an immediate problem.

If it’s around $33.99, then it has to be more valuable that the hardback (if it’s an ebook) and something they can justify to their boss, for example, when they claim it as an expense.

With this in mind, you need to consider the buyers:

• Sense of urgency
• Immediate problem
• Justification to superiors or peers

Emotional Triggers & How Buyers Buy Online

Most online sales are instant purchases.

Customers don’t:

• Look on Monday
• Get an invoice on Tuesday, and
• Buy on Thursday

It’s very direct. They have a problem. They do a Google Search. They find your site. Then it’s buy or no buy.

Conclusion

The only way to determine the price your ebook is to starting selling as soon as possible. Once you’ve launched three or four books, you will have a much better insight into what your target customers are willing to pay and also use the feedback to refine your products. In some ways, this makes things simpler.

You can see these ebooks to research your target market and use the data to build better products – that sell more copies.

Additional Tip: Use E-Junkie for ebook delivery and your affiliate program. It all ties into PayPal (and other payment processors) and it’s only $5 a month.

Google Adsense isn’t the only way to make money on your blog.

If anything, it may be the weakest and least lucrative way to generate income. Looking for some other examples to monezite your blog?

11 Ways to Make Money on Your Blog

1. Webinars – focus on a specific industry where your target customers have a budget for education products. Good examples are banks, finance, government agencies and software companies. Restrict the number to 100 at most to increase urgency and make it more exclusive.
2. Paid Tweets – develop a loyal following on Twitter. Become the default person for your area of expertise. Connect with as many high profile bloggers in the same space and get onto every twitter list you can. Contact firms with budgets (see above) and offer paid tweets. Charge by batch, e.g. 10 tweets per week, rather than single tweet. Or join networks that offer paid tweets services, such as paidpertweet.com
3. Sponsorship – create a blog on finance, insurance, legal or another vertical where there is serious dollars available. Avoid low value areas where companies have lesser budgets. Offer sponsorship on your tweets, blog posts, emails, and other content formats. See this tutorial from Darren on Find a Sponsor for Your Blog
4. Educational Products – one of the advantages of the recession is that folks are more willing to invest in their education. And their kids. Develop products that you can sell online (avoid the hassle of selling offline) and offer bundles and special offers to compliment your offerings. Maths, languages, finance, study aids all do well.
5. Facebook Page Design – know how to use Photoshop? Develop a portfolio of Faber designs and offer these to corporates. Again, avoid B2C and go for B2B and other lucrative agencies. See SpiderWorking.
6. Skype Coaching – what’s the one thing you know best? Consider packaging this and offering 1-1 coaching over Skype. I taught business executives in China how to speak business english for 6 months. It paid 50 USD per hour. Not bad when all you need is a Skype account (free) and good headphones.
7. Information Products – go to your local bookstore and pick out ANY self-help or DIY book. Take it home and use it as a template to create your own info product. Use eJunkie ADD LINKS to sell it. They cost 5 USD per month. The user interface is simple to use.
8. WordPress Plugins – While there are tons of free plugins out there, there is also a market for more advanced plugins. Don’t know how to code? Don’t worry. Hire a developer on oDesk. Give them the specs and you sell the product.
9. WordPress Theme – same as above. Use oDesk. Focus on a business sector and design the templates for that market. For example, create wordpress themes for the banking sector, automobile industry or other more obscure industries that get overlooked. DIY Themes is an excellent example of how to do this right.
10. Photography – Got a camera? I paid $35 USD for five pictures of spanners (wrenches) yesterday. Each time those photos are sold, the photographer gets paid a royalty. Contact the bigger players such as iStockPhoto and Photo.com. It’s a great way for students, retired, or work at home parents to make extra income. And very lucrative if you do it right. Again, focus on one area and be the expert.
11. Cartoons – Look at what The Oatmeal does. It’s not PC, juvenile, and a bit rude at times but wildly successful. He sells copies of his cartoons from the site and has niche micro sites where he sells others. Expect a book from him soon.

Those are eleven ways to make extra income online.

What have I missed? Which ones do you find the easiest to use?

Last week we share some free ebooks on Social Media. Here are some more I found. Most are PDFs and can be read offline.

14 Free eBooks about Social Media

1. Amber Naslund – Getting a Foothold in Social Media
2. Brian Solis – The Essential Guide to Social Media
3. Chris Brogan - Social Media and Network Starting Points
4. MarketingApple.com – Marketing Apple
5. Peter Pixel – Good Usability
6. Amber Naslund. – The Social Media Starter Kit
7. Philip Sheldrake – The Social Web Analytics ebook
8. Positioning Strategy – The New Rules of Business Blogs
9. Amber Naslund – Social Media Time Management
10. PRSA – Blogs & Social Media
11. SEOBook – Google Adwords Secrets
12. Brian Solis -The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
13. Skellie – The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want
14. US Air Force Public Affairs Agency – New Media and the Air Force

Other Free eBooks?

If you know of other free books, please add them below.

They say perception is everything, right?

One of the perceptions about ebooks is that they’re just PDFs. They can’t compare with the real thing, such as printed books you can hold in your hand.

For most customers, this means that ebooks SHOULD cost less than real books as there is no printing, bookstore, and real world interactions.

That’s true… up to a point.

How to Change Customer’s Perception About Ebooks

One way to get over this hurdle is to refer to the ebook in other terms. For example, refer to it as:

• Special Report
• Market Research
• Productivity Tools

The point is that if you deflect the customer away from the work PDF (and it’s low cost associations, then it’s easier to increase the price.)

You can also consider using words such as:

• Digital Downloads
• Information Products
• Courseware

How to Position Your Ebook

What this means is that you need to get the reader thinking about the

1. Benefits
2. Advantages
3. Strategic uses
4. Cost Savings

that the book offers.

Actually, if YOU stop thinking of it as a book and look at it as a solution to a problem, then you automatically begin to re-frame it in your own mind.

Do you see the difference?

Do You Pay Your Doctor By the Hour?

Probably not. You pay your doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant or anyone who provides professional advice on their knowledge.

You’re not after their time. You’re after the expert knowledge they have accumulated through training and practice.

Selling ebooks is the same.

You need to position the product so that it solves a problem – instantly!

Once you frame the product offering in these terms, then price is no longer an issue.

Additional Tip: Use E-Junkie for ebook delivery and your affiliate program. It all ties into PayPal (and other payment processors) and it’s only $5 a month.

If you’re looking for some primers on Social Media, in particular how to make money from Facebook and Twitter, then these 25 free ebooks including Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, and John Jantsch will get you started.

What I like about these books is the high quality and effort from the authors. In some ways, these ebooks express what’s best about Social Media and sharing information.

25 Free eBooks about Social Media

1. Amber Naslund - Building a Social Media Team

2. Antony Mayfield - What is Social Media?

3. Blizzard Internet – SEO for WordPress blogs

4. Brian Solis – The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations

5. Chris Brogan - Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle

6. Christopher S. Penn – Podcast Marketing eBook

7. Cory Doctorow - Content

8. Craig Rentmeester – We Have a Website. Now What?

9. CRM Transformation – Increasing Your Email Marketing Program

10. David Meerman Scott – The New Rules of Viral Marketing

11. Duct Tape Marketing – Guide to Using Twitter for Business

12. Dynamic Copywriting – Marketing With Case Studies

13. Edison Media Research – Podcast Customer Revealed

14. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence

15. Geekpreneur – Promoting Yourself With Twitter

16. Geisheker Group – How to Write a Marketing Plan

17. Hunter Nutall – Zen of Blogging

18. iCrossing – What is Social Media

19. Jeff Hayzlett – Social Media Tips: Sharing lessons learned to help your business grow

20. John Jantsch- Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business,

21. Jono Bacon - The Art of Community

22. SmashLab – Primer in Social Media

23. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics

24. Stacie Mahoe Get Viral Get Visitors

25. Startup Internet Marketing – Masters of Marketing

Other Free eBooks?

If you know of other free books, please add them below.

I’m not a big fan of ebooks. To be honest, they’re just glorified PDFs and look terrible onscreen. So, I tend to avoid them. However, I came across this jewel in Adobe’s lab site and it’s terrific.

What does it do?

Adobe Digital Editions is a rather slick ebook reader that lets you read and manage eBooks, both online and offline, with support for PDF and XHTML-based content.

You can use it to download and purchase digital content, which can be read both online and offline. Transfer copy-protected eBooks from your PC to other computers. Organize eBooks into a custom library and annotate pages. It also supports eBook formats, including PDF/A and EPUB.

FAQs

• Digital Editions is built from the ground up as a lightweight, rich Internet application (RIA).
• Download is only 2.5 MB including Adobe Flash Player 9 and takes less than two minutes to install over a broadband connection.
• With an RIA service model, you always have the latest version of Digital Editions, giving you the advantage of new features and security enhancements.

What is Adobe Digital Editions?

Digital Editions is Adobe’s new rich Internet application (RIA) specifically designed for digital publishing. It lets you easily acquire, manage, and consume eBooks and other kinds of digital publications.

How does Adobe Digital Editions differ from Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Reader supports a variety of workflows beyond consuming eBooks and other commercially-published content, such as interactive forms, digital signatures, and other workflows that involve integration with other office applications. This means that Reader’s functionality is not optimized for consumer-level eBook reading. Likewise, Adobe Acrobat offers advanced document generation and collaboration functionality.

Digital Editions extends the eBook capabilities (integrated in Reader and Acrobat) via a simplified, content-centric user interface. Digital Editions is distributed as a web-based RIA, ensuring that users will always have the current up-to-date version of the software.

Does Digital Editions replace Adobe FlashPaper?

For some, it might. Digital Editions delivers a lightweight Flash-based user experience for document viewing, and adds native PDF and XML document viewing capabilities, so that translation of content to SWF format is not required.

However, initially Digital Editions will not operate inside the browser, and requires a Player Add-in installation. Customers who require in-browser operation with the standard Flash Player may wish to continue to utilize FlashPaper, which remains a component of the Adobe Contribute product.

Interface designed for digital reading

I have to admit that I really love the ui. It’s clean, well-organized, and is an improvement over Adobe Acrobat. (Try it and you’ll see.)

• It’s expressly designed for reading digital publications.
• Use the Reading View to view bookmarks, annotations, and a table of contents.
• Display PDF files in a double-page, single page, or fit-to-width view — or specify your own custom fit.
• Increase and decrease text size with EPUB content.
• Fast, free download and installation

Stand-alone installer

You can distribute Digital Editions internally on an intranet site or a local network.

Content portability

Manage digital publications across multiple computers and devices using your Adobe ID and a simple authorization process. Digital Editions also provides support for content portability on mobile devices, so you can take your eBooks with you wherever you go.

Markup features

Add bookmarks to PDF or EPUB documents so that you can quickly navigate around a document. Highlight text and add comments for future reference within your digital publications.

Support for PDF and EPUB

Native support for PDF/A and EPUB formats. PDF/A is the ISO-approved standard for the long-term preservation of electronic documents. EPUB is an XHTML-based file format designed to reflow text according to screen and font size, which makes it optimal for reading content on mobile devices.

Borrowing eBooks

You can borrow eBooks from many public libraries for use with Digital Editions.

File organization

Organize digital publications and manage devices in the Library View. Sort by title, author, and publisher, and view the covers of your favorite eBooks. Create custom bookshelves to further organize and manage your content.

Multiple platform support

Digital Editions runs on many platforms for reading digital publications on laptop and desktop computers. In addition, it allows support for the Sony® Reader.

Multimedia support

Supports embedded SWF files so you can include multimedia experiences in digital publications.

Easy eBook creation

With Adobe InDesign® CS3 software, you can create content and output it to both the PDF/A and EPUB formats supported by Digital Editions.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers

Copy protection

It works in conjunction with Adobe Digital Experience Protection Technology (ADEPT), a hosted service that provides publishers with copy protection in both retail and library environments.

Multilingual support

English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional.

Issues

Why do some PDF documents look different in Digital Editions beta than they do in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader?

It uses Adobe PDF technology that has been optimized for small code size and lower system requirements.

This technology is optimized for performance and on-screen readability, rather than graphics-arts or prepress-level fidelity. Some minor differences in graphics and font rendering are therefore to be expected.

In addition, the Digital Editions PDF implementation does not support several enterprise-oriented PDF features. These features are not typically used in PDF-based eBooks and, if present, are ignored, but could cause certain documents to render incorrectly.

Which PDF 1.7 features are not supported by Digital Editions?

PDF interactive forms, JavaScript, digital signatures, 3D, and annotations are not supported by Digital Editions.

Links:

Adobe Labs – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/

You can read more detailed and technical FAQs over here and then

FAQs – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/faq.html

Download a nice collection of free ebooks from the site here.

Free ebooks – http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/library/

Let me know what you think. What’s not to like?

Yesterday we looked at a new Microsoft Office to iPhone app which lets iPhone & iPod touch customers edit Microsoft Word files, synchronize their files and send & receive attachments. So, since we’re here I thought it best to give a list of what else it can do.

For mobile or home users who want to use Word documents on iPhone or iPod touch, it offers quiet a range of features: Here goes.

• Advanced viewing and editing features
• Touch navigation
• Cut/copy/paste
• Text selection
• Predictive text entry
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Bold, italics, underline
• Embedded pictures
• Tables
• Word count
• Password-protected files
• Edit in landscape view

Most of this is made possible thanks to InTact Technology, which ensures that all original file formatting is retained once a file has been edited and forwarded on.

Documents To Go also uses Apple’s built-in viewing technology for dealing with other important files such as Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and Apple iWork.

This feature keeps files in one central location and makes managing and using them simple and straightforward.

Want to know more?

Documents To Go is available at $4.99 from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/

I don’t have an iPhone but if I did this new Microsoft Office to iPhone app might be worth investing in. It lets iPhone & iPod touch customers edit Microsoft Word files, synchronize important desktop files and send & receive Exchange attachments. DataViz, who develop Microsoft Office compatibility solutions, released its mobile Office suite application, Documents To Go, on the Apple App Store.

Documents To Go includes a desktop application that provides Windows and Macintosh customers with the ability to transfer files to their device using a Wi-Fi connection.

Customers can “set it and forget it” by adding entire folders or select single files within a folder. More importantly, during synchronization, Documents To Go checks to make sure all documents on the iPhone are current. If any changes are made on either the desktop or iPhone, Documents To Go will automatically make sure the latest copy is on both the desktop and iPhone or iPod touch.

Receive, Edit & Send Microsoft Exchange Attachments

Documents To Go with Exchange Attachments includes a built-in email client which allows customers to download, view, edit and send Word attachments while on the go.

This integrated portion of the product uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync technology, which DataViz has licensed from Microsoft, to provide secure, wireless synchronization with Exchange Server 2003 and 2007 e-mail.

Customers can make changes to their Word documents and immediately reply back with the updated files.

In addition, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and other attachment types can be viewed as well as attached to new e-mails sent from within Documents To Go.

Pricing & Availability

Documents To Go and Documents To Go with Exchange Attachments are available at $4.99 and $9. from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/

It’s hard to keep up with all the new product releases from Adobe. This one is worth a look if you develop ebooks or want to read them offline.

Adobe Digital Editions lets you read and manage eBooks and other digital publications with some very slick management features.

The user interface is fantastic. Adobe has built Digital Editions from the ground up as a lightweight, rich Internet application (RIA). Digital Editions works online and offline, and supports both PDF and XHTML-based content.

The download is only 2.5 MB including Adobe Flash Player 9.

With an RIA service model, users always have the latest version of Digital Editions, taking advantage of new features and security enhancements. http://labs.adobe.com

What is Adobe Digital Editions?

Adobe Digital Editions is a new rich Internet application (RIA) designed for digital publishing. It allows users to easily acquire, manage, and consume eBooks and other kinds of digital publications.

How does Adobe Digital Editions differ from Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Reader supports a variety of workflows beyond consuming eBooks and other commercially-published content, such as interactive forms, digital signatures, and other workflows that involve integration with other office applications.

This means that Reader’s functionality is not optimized for consumer-level eBook reading. Likewise, Adobe Acrobat offers advanced document generation and collaboration functionality.

It extends eBook capabilities (integrated in Reader and Acrobat) via a simplified, content-centric user interface. Digital Editions is distributed as a web-based RIA, ensuring that users will always have the current up-to-date version of the software.

Does Digital Editions replace Adobe FlashPaper?

Maybe. Digital Editions delivers a lightweight Flash-based user experience for document viewing, and adds native PDF and XML document viewing capabilities, so that translation of content to SWF format is not required.

However, initially Digital Editions will not operate inside the browser, and requires a Player Add-in installation. Customers who require in-browser operation with the standard Flash Player may wish to continue to utilize FlashPaper, which remains a component of the Adobe Contribute product.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/faq.html

Issues

Why do some PDF documents look different in Digital Editions beta than they do in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader?

Digital Editions uses Adobe PDF technology that has been optimized for small code size and lower system requirements.

This technology has shipped in hundreds of millions of mobile phones and other embedded devices. It is optimized for performance and on-screen readability, rather than graphics-arts or prepress-level fidelity.

Some minor differences in graphics and font rendering are therefore to be expected.

In addition, the Digital Editions PDF implementation does not support several enterprise-oriented PDF features. These features are not typically used in PDF-based eBooks and, if present, are gracefully ignored, but could cause certain documents to render incorrectly.

Which PDF 1.7 features are not supported by Digital Editions?

PDF interactive forms, JavaScript, digital signatures, 3D, and annotations are not supported by Digital Editions.

Try it: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions/