We talk to a lot of people about making money online and a lot of them want to know… how to sell ebooks on your own website.
They could upload their ebooks to Amazon Kindle and make money that way, there is a lot of traffic to be found on Amazon, but there is also a lot of competition plus, when people land on your website, the last thing you want to do is send them off to another website to purchase your own products.
Ideally you want the people who visit your website to stay on your website. Sending them off to someone else’s website is pure madness, even if it will make you some money.
It could in fact lose you money because how can you offer them an upsell when you send people to Amazon?
You have no control over the delivery method and download page when selling ebooks on platforms such as Amazon, Google and Barnes & Noble.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t sell your eBooks on Amazon, you should. There is a lot of people looking for books and you can make good money selling on Amazon, use it as a second source of income but your really should sell your own eBooks on your own website.
Check that you don’t have to give Amazon exclusive rights to avoid any trouble first. You don’t want to be penalised for selling your own book on your own website while it is up for sale on Amazon.
When you sell your own eBooks via your website, you can get the person’s email address so that you can contact them with other products and promotions and you can offer them other products either during the purchase process or have a sales advert on the download page after the purchase has been completed.
You can also include adverts and links to other products within the eBook you sell on your website, that’s something you cannot do with eBooks sold on Amazon.
The aim of this article is to show you how to sell eBooks on your own website. I am happy to say that it’s a lot easier than you may first think.
For simplicity, I suggest that you deliver your eBook as a basic PDF.
You can create many different types of eBook files and formats such as .mobi but why go to all that bother when all devices these days can read a PDF and keep track of where you are while reading it.
You can create a PDF simply by using the ‘Save As’ or ‘Download As’ options which come with writing software like Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Within a click of a button your ebook can be turned into a PDF.
If you do not use either of them, there are online services like Small PDF which will convert documents into PDF for you for free.
The PDF is then uploaded directly to your website’s server where it will sit waiting for people to access it. You simply link to the PDF from the download page.
Either add the link to an image of the book or link to it using words like ‘Click Here’… or do both.
When people access the PDF it generally opens up as a tab in their browser – depending on what device they are using. From there they can download a copy.
When someone wants to download the eBook, a digital copy is made and downloaded to the person’s device. All incredibly simple and is done in a matter of seconds without you needing to do anything.
What is really good about selling your own eBooks on your own website is that once you have the system in place, everything is fully automatic.
Once payment has been made, the customer is automatically sent to the download/delivery page where they can access the eBook.
Taking Payment
Taking payment is also incredibly easy. You can use PayPal buttons if you know how to make them. Paypal buttons can be hard to make whereas Stripe buttons are a lot more simple.
Stripe payment buttons when clicked, open up a payment form which looks like this:
[Please note: This Stripe form has been modified to suit our website. Yours may look slightly different]
I recommend using Stripe because it is easy to use and the buttons are simple to create. Plus, Stripe pays you 7 days after it has processed the payment.
They deal with the transaction, forward the customer to the download page, hold on to the money incase of a refund request, then deposit the money right into your bank account after 7 days.
It is a fully automated system where you need do nothing apart from send people to your eBook sales page.
When you have one eBook fully set up ready to make sales, you can set up another and another.
It really is simple.
The hardest part of selling eBooks on your own website is actually getting people to your website to see them.
That is something which we can help you with, join The Freedom Skills Academy Exclusive VIP Club for business ideas, tips, tricks, advice and traffic generation help.
