Whoever said not to judge a book by its cover must have said it before the Internet was invented. A picture really is worth a thousand words here.
Just like you wouldn’t be tempted to buy from a clunky-looking website, so you wouldn’t be willing to buy a product with a cheap graphic. (Or would you)?
Either have a professional looking graphic, or don’t have a graphic at all. Your sales will only hurt with a poor-looking ebook cover.
Either way, don’t kill yourself or waste your time trying to create a graphic if you aren’t the best artist in the world or don’t know a lick about web graphic design. Either use a cover template, buy some ecover software, or hire a professional online graphic designer.
Targeted, Unique Bonuses
Why, you ask?
Let’s say you sell a product very similar to others in the market. With one difference. You don’t have a bunch of ebooks that have been around for eons (and that have nothing to do with the main product) as bonuses. You have bonuses that you’ve created (or product by others you’ve packaged together) yourself.
And if people want your bonuses, then they’re going to have to buy through you. You’re the only person they can get them from!
Unique bonuses can be others’ products packaged together in a unique way…
…or, even better, something that you develop yourself.
For example, let’s say you have a product a product on ezine publishing. You could take someone else’s ebook on interviews with ezine publishers and someone else’s ezine publishing software that you have resell/redistribution rights to and make a package that you call the Ultimate Ezine Publishing Package, or something like that.
And the same principle applies here as it does with the creation of your main product–you don’t have to create the content from scratch.
Or you could do it from scratch and create your own ebook on interviews with ezine publishers or develop your own software (or have it developed for you).
A Home On the Web
That includes giving your ebook it’s own domain name and a website with reliable web host. It makes your ebook that much more special.
You can get domain names really cheap nowadays. They used to cost you $70/$80 dollars annually, but now you can get them for under $10. Just do a search on Google for “cheap domain registration” or “cheap domain names”.
Whichever domain name registration service you use, make sure you have control over your domain name. This allows you to move it to whatever web host you want to, in case you have trouble with any of them.
And with your web hosting service, make sure they provide 24/7 customer support. And that you have at least 99% uptime, web based control panel to make changes to your website in addition to the ftp capabilities, access to a secure server license (even if you have to pay extra for it), and email accounts.
