Month: May 2018
The magic price to market your ebook.
Have you ever wondered why all those products on TV all cost $19.95? How about why used car dealers…excuse me, “preowned” car dealers offer $199 down $199 a month?
It’s an often used and very successful marketing concept. The idea is that certain numbers set off alarm bells in a buyers mind and by shaving a penny or two off the price we can avoid these alarm bells. A person will wrinkle his brow and wonder if that fancy kitchen gadget is worth $20, but he will be franticly dialing the phone credit card in hand for the low low price of $19.95. What a bargain.
Believe it or not sales figures seem to support this idea. Shave a few pennies off the round dollar amount and people are more likely to buy from a TV ad, however this doesn’t work in all forms of marketing.
When buying in person people appear to prefer round numbers. For instance. I have a friend who sells knockoff tennis shoes at flea markets. Don’t laugh. He quit his regular job because he makes more in a weekend at the flea market than he did in a 40 hour week.
Anyway he dicovered that the magic price for knockoff tennis shoes at a flea market is $20. Any more and buyers huff and go “I might as well go to the shoe store for these prices.” Any less and they question the quality of the shoes, Look them over again and agian, then walk away without buying.
I won’t make a value judgement about peoples’ behavior. The object is to make sales, not judge your customers right? The simple fact is for every product and service there is a magic price that a customer will readily pay with almost no selling on your part.
I won’t even try to guess why, but for ebooks that price appears to be $7. You have probably by now seen the rash of $7 dollar ebooks everywhere. On marketing web sites and blogs and all over the web. For some unknown reason $5 is too low and 8$ is too high.
Does it really matter why? As marketers we don’t need to question why. We find what sells and stick with it until it doesn’t sell anymore.
If the public will pay $7 without flinching who am I to question them?
Maybe it’s because $5 is not a lot of money these days. So if it cost $5 it must not be any good or it would cost more. But then $10 is double digits. Hold on here $10, I could get two fast food lunches for that.
Okay, I am guessing why, but the point is, $7 is the magic price for an ebook. At least for now it is.
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Writing An Ebook ñ Learning Step By Step
They say the best way to making money on the Internet, is to create your own Ebook. Wow! Thatís a simple statement, but do you know what is involved. Iíll try to explain what I have learned and I am learning while Iím creating my own Ebook.
Brainstorming
If you know what you want to create, youíve already on your way. But, if youíre not sure what information you have stored in your years of living well, it can be difficult.
Iíve found the best way to brainstorm is to write your ideas, experiences and knowledge down on a piece of paper then do research to determine what people are looking for on the net.
Research
To determine if your product, idea, or info-knowledge will fly you must do research. Go to Wordtracker or Overture and see how many times people in the month were looking for what you want to write about.
This will give you an idea if it is a viable product. Also do a straight search in Google and Yahoo for your keywords, and see what turns up. Investigate some of the sites, you may be surprised that you have a completely slant on the information you want to present in an E-book which is a good thing.
Writing
If you think your ebook may fly, then it is time to write. Create it in html or a txt format, using Word or Notepad. Then download Gymnast itís free (you can find it on my site — go to the tools sections, and look under Promote tool.
This will create your ebook. But before you pull it into a PDF, be sure to proofread your material.
Next, you can create an Ebook cover. Yes, I know, youíre on a tight budget, so . . .
look to OnlineWebCreations.com
The Deepest Secrets To E-books
The deepest Secrets behind e-books finally revealed. If you want to know how they make it, you’ll definitely need to know what they’re doing.
So what is ebook really all about? The following report includes some fascinating information about ebook–info you can use, not just the old stuff they used to tell you.
Ebooks are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They are an entirely new medium for sharing marketing information, ideas, techniques, and expert knowledge.
Each day the number of people accessing the Internet grows, causing the exposure of your ebook to increase incrementally. It’s obvious why electronic self-publishing has become so popular so quickly.
The publishing industry, I hope, does not intend to forever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. Books in print have their own special qualities and merits, and the world would be diminished by their disappearance.
Having said that, let’s look at what makes ebooks so important and so unique. Ebooks have certain abilities and qualities that other mediums do not possess.
For example, ebooks are fairly easy to produce, and their production cost is inexpensive. Just think about it: you don’t need a publisher, an agent, a printing press, offset film, ink, paper, or even a distributor. You just need a great concept, the ability to write it or to hire a writer, and the right software.
Additionally, ebooks are easily and rapidly distributed online. They are also easily updated; they do not require a second print run. All you need is to go into your original creation and modify the text or graphics. Because of this flexibility, ebooks can change and grow as fast as you can type.
Ebooks are also immediately obtainable. You don’t have to go to a bookstore or search through endless titles at an online bookstore. All you have to do is download it from a website, and presto! It’s on your computer, ready to be read.
Ebooks are interactive. This is one of the most unique and specific qualities that ebooks offer. You can add surveys that need to be filled out, order forms for customers to purchase your products or goods, sound and video that draw your reader into the virtual world of your ebook, even direct links to relevant sites that will expand your ebook outward.
The potential is virtually limitless.
Ebooks have a particular kind of permanence that other mediums do not possess. Television shows and radio shows air once, and then may rerun a few times. Ebooks remain on your computer for as long as your choose, and they can be read and reread whenever you choose to. They can even be printed out and stored on the
shelves of your traditional home library.
Another wonderful quality is that ebooks have no barriers in terms of publishing. You don’t need to go
through the endless process of submitting your manuscript over and over again, and then once you land an agent, having the agent submit your manuscript over and over again. Nor do you have to shell out thousands of dollars for printing a self-published book.
All ebooks require is a writer and appropriate software. Figure out your market, write your book, post it on
your website, and with the right business savvy, your audience will come to you.
The best time to learn about ebook is before you’re in the thick of things. Wise readers will keep reading to earn some valuable ebook experience while it’s still free.
Finally, you have creative control over your ebook. You don?t have to compromise with an editor or the publishing trends of the time. You don’t have to haggle with a designer or wait for copyedited galleys to arrive by snail mail. You are in complete control of the design and the text.
How to Use ebooks for Marketing and Promotion:
There are innumerable ways to use ebooks to promote your business and drive quality traffic to your website. Once posted on your site, you can turn them into a daily course, which brings your customer back to read the next chapter.
You can use them as a free gift for making a purchase or for filling out a survey. Put your ebook on a disc, and you will have an innovative brochure. Blow your competition away by inserting the disc into your sales packages.
The most effective marketing products are those that are unique. Copyright your ebook, and immediately, you
have a powerful tool that you, and you alone, can offer to the public. People will have to visit your site to acquire your ebook, which increases the flow of quality traffic and the potential of sales and affiliate contacts.
Make sure that you keep your ebook current. Update it frequently as the market and trends change. Add new advice and techniques to show your prospects how your goods or services can enrich their lives. By constantly keeping abreast of new trends and techniques, you can continue to see profits from your ebook for years after your original creation.
Another phenomenal advantage of ebooks is that you can test their marketing potential without putting out hardly any cash at all. You can even produce an ebook one copy at a time, each time you receive an order, eliminating the need for storage and inventory. By this method, you can gauge the saleablity of your ebook, and make adjustments as necessary until the orders start pouring in.
Ebooks allow you to learn about your market and customer habits and motivation over a period of time, without risking your precious financial resources. They also provide you with an invaluable way to gather marketing information, which you can use in many different facets of your business.
Use your ebook to discover what the specific goals and problems are in your specific industry. Then figure out how to solve these problems, and publish an ebook with this invaluable information. This will increase the value of your business, upgrade your reputation, and get you known as an expert in your field.
You can extend the value of single ebook by breaking the book down into chapters for a serial course, into special reports available on your website, or into audio or visual tapes. Ebooks can be broken down into several different promotional materials by excepting some of the articles and using them to promote your
product.
You can include a catalog in your ebook to promote all the products or services you sell. You can include a thank-you note for reading your book and an invitation to download a trial version of your product. Or you can include a form for your audience to contact you for further information or with questions, thereby building your business relationships and your mailing list.
Using ebooks in this manner helps to cut the cost of individually producing separate promotional materials. You can use a single ebook to entice new prospects and to sell new products to your current customers.
No other medium has this kind of flexibility and ability for expansion. Think of your ebook like a spider spinning a beautiful and intricate web. Now go and create that web, and see how many customers and prospects you can catch!
The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you’ll be glad you took the time to learn more about ebook.
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A Computational RAM (C-RAM) Architecture for Real-Time Mesh-Based Video Motion Tracking: Part II Motion Compensation
This paper presents a new Computational-RAM (C-RAM) architecture for real-time mesh-based video motion tracking. In Part 1, the motion estimation part of the proposed architecture is presented. Here in Part 2, a new C-RAM mesh-based motion compensation architecture is presented. The input data to the architecture is the mesh nodes motion vectors and the reference frame and the output data is the compensated (i.e., predicted) frame. The architecture uses the affine transformation for warping the deformed patches in the reference frame into the undeformed patches in the current frame. The architecture computes the affine parameters using a multiplication-free algorithm. The reference and current frames are stored in embedded S-RAMs generated with Virage™ Memory Compiler. The proposed motion compensation architecture has been prototyped, simulated and synthesized using the TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Using 100 MHz clock frequency, the proposed architecture processes one CIF video frame (i.e., 352×288 pixels) in 0.59 ms, which means it can process up to 1694 frames per second. The core area of the proposed motion compensation architecture is 28.04 mm2 and it consumes 31.15 mW.
Mohammed Sayed and Wael Badawy, “A Computational RAM (C-RAM) Architecture for Real-Time Mesh-Based Video Motion Tracking: Part II Motion Compensation,” Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computer, Vol. 13, Issue 6, December 2004, pp. 1217-1232.
A Computational RAM (C-RAM) Architecture for Real-Time Mesh-Based Video Motion Tracking: Part I Motion Estimation,
This paper presents a new Computational-RAM (C-RAM) architecture for real-time mesh-based video motion tracking. The motion tracking consists of two operations: mesh-based motion estimation and compensation. The proposed motion estimation architecture is presented in Part 1 and the proposed motion compensation architecture is presented in Part 2. The motion estimation architecture stores two frames and computes motion vectors for a regular triangular mesh structure as defined by MPEG-4 Part 2.1 The motion estimation architecture uses the block-matching algorithm (BMA) to estimate the vertical and horizontal motion vectors for each mesh node. Parallel and pipelined implementations have been used to overcome the huge computational requirements of the motion estimation process. The two frames are stored in embedded S-RAMs generated with Virage™ Memory Compiler. The proposed motion estimation architecture has been prototyped, simulated and synthesized using the TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. At 100 MHz clock frequency, the proposed architecture processes one CIF video frame (i.e., 352×288 pixels) in 1.48 ms, which means it can process up to 675 frames per second. The core area of the proposed motion estimation architecture is 24.58 mm2 and it consumes 46.26 mW.
Read More: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218126604001921
Mohammed Sayed and Wael Badawy, “A Computational RAM (C-RAM) Architecture for Real-Time Mesh-Based Video Motion Tracking: Part I Motion Estimation,” Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers, Vol. 13, Issue 6, December 2004, pp. 1203-1216.
Why Should You Write An eBook
The fact is that this is the perfect time to write an ebook. What the publishing industry needs are people who can tap into the world as it is today – innovative thinkers who can make the leap into the new millennium and figure out how to solve old problems in a new way. Ebook’s are a new and powerful tool for original thinkers with fresh ideas to disseminate information to the millions of people who are struggling to figure out how to do a plethora of different things.
Let’s say you already have a brilliant idea, and the knowledge to back it up that will enable you to write an exceptional ebook. You may be sitting at your computer staring at a blank screen wondering, “Why?î Why should I go through all the trouble of writing my ebook when it’s so impossible to get anything published these days?
Well, let me assure you that publishing an ebook is entirely different than publishing a book in print. Let’s look at the specifics of how the print and cyber publishing industry differ, and the many reasons why you should take the plunge and get your fingers tapping across those keyboards!
Submitting a print book to conventional publishing houses or to agents is similar to wearing a hair shirt 24/7. No matter how good your book actually is, or how many critique services and mentor writers have told you that “you’ve got what it takes,” your submitted manuscript keeps coming back to you as if it is a boomerang instead of a valuable mine of information.
Perhaps, in desperation, you’ve checked out self-publishing and found out just how expensive a venture it can be. Most “vanity presses” require minimal print runs of at least 500 copies, and even that amount will cost you thousands of dollars. Some presses’ minimal run starts at 1,000 to 2,000 copies. And that’s just for the printing and binding. Add in distribution, shipping, and promotional costs and – well, you do the math. Even if you wanted to go this route, you may not have that kind of money to risk.
Let’s say you already have an Internet business with a quality website and a quality product. An ebook is one of the most powerful ways to promote your business while educating people with the knowledge you already possess as a business owner of a specific product or service.
For example, let’s say that you’ve spent the last twenty-five years growing and training bonsai trees, and now you’re ready to share your knowledge and experience. An ebook is the perfect way to reach the largest audience of bonsai enthusiasts.
Ebook’s will not only promote your business – they will help you make a name for yourself and your company, and establish you as an expert in your field. You may even find that you have enough to say to warrant a series of ebook’s. Specific businesses are complicated and often require the different aspects to be divided in order for the reader to get the full story.
Perhaps your goals are more finely tuned in terms of the ebook scene. You may want to build a whole business around writing and publishing ebook’s. Essentially, you want to start an e-business. You are thinking of setting up a website to promote and market your ebook’s. Maybe you’re even thinking of producing an ezine.
One of the most prevalent reasons people read ebook’s is to find information about how to turn their Internet businesses into a profit-making machine. And these people are looking to the writers of ebook’s to provide them with new ideas and strategies because writers of ebook’s are usually people who understand the new cyberspace world we now live in. Ebook writers are experts in Internet marketing campaigns and the strategies of promoting and distributing ebook’s. The cyberspace community needs its ebook’s to be successful so that more and more ebook’s will be written.
You may want to create affiliate programs that will also market your ebook. Affiliates can be people or businesses worldwide that will all be working to sell your ebook’s. Think about this? Do you see a formula for success here?
Figure out what your subject matter is, and then narrow it down. Your goal is to aim for specificity. Research what’s out there already, and try to find a void that your ebook might fill.
What about an ebook about a wedding cake business? Or an ebook about caring for elderly pets? How about the fine points of collecting ancient pottery?
You don’t have to have three masters degrees to write about your subject. People need advice that is easy to read and easily understood. Parents need advice for dealing with their teenagers. College students need to learn good study skills – quickly. The possibilities are endless.
After you’ve written your ebook
Getting your ebook out is going to be your focus once you’ve finished writing it, just as it is with print books. People will hesitate to buy any book from an author they’ve never heard of. Wouldn’t you?
The answer is simple: give it away! You will see profits in the form of promoting your own business and getting your name out. You will find affiliates who will ask you to place their links within your ebook, and these affiliates will in turn go out and make your name known. Almost every single famous ebook author has started out this way.
Another powerful tool to attract people to your ebook is to make it interactive. Invent something for them to do within the book rather than just producing pages that contain static text. Let your readers fill out questionnaires, forms, even crossword puzzles geared to testing their knowledge on a particular subject. Have your readers hit a link that will allow them to recommend your book to their friends and associates. Or include an actual order form so at the end of their reading journey, they can eagerly buy your product.
When people interact with books, they become a part of the world of that book. The fact is just as true for books in print as it is for ebook’s.
That’s why ebook’s are so essential. Not only do they provide a forum for people to learn and make sense of their own thoughts, but they can also serve to promote your business at the same time.
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Women Magazine Writers: Breaking into the Game
As any woman who has tried to make a name in magazine writing knows, it’s not always easy to break into and stay in the game. Here are some tips to give you an edge.
As women, we have an edge over men when it comes to our abilities to listen and to communicate. When we combine those qualities with strong writing skills, we can become topnotch news and feature writers for magazines. But, as anyone who has tried to make a name in magazine writing knows, it’s not always easy to break into and stay in the game. Here are some tips to give you an edge.
Build a Portfolio
If you want to be a magazine writer, you’re going to need a portfolio of published work. If you haven’t been published, start writing for the Web – it’s the easiest place to get published these days. If you can’t get a paid writing gig, then write for free – but make sure that the pieces you write have your byline. You can also write for your own website or blog; just make sure that you’re impeccable with your writing style and grammar, and avoid ranting about controversial topics.
Whether you have a fistful of clippings or only have a few links, it’s important to get your portfolio online. Keep in mind that content on the Web is constantly changing, so don’t rely on links to your articles. If you have Web content in your portfolio, take a screen shot of your piece and turn it into a PDF file. The same holds true for your print articles. Editors don’t want to receive a stack of copied clippings; they want to be able to see your work with a few mouse clicks. So turn your portfolio into a set of PDFs and put them on your website.
Find Your Niche
If you’re a good writer, you can most likely write about almost any topic. Nevertheless, in order to market yourself, it’s best to find your niche. Maybe you excel in delving into medical journals and writing about health topics. Perhaps you’re an ace interviewer and can write exceptional profiles. It could be that you have a depth and breadth of knowledge about a very specific topic, such as women’s infertility. Or, maybe you have a natural ability to write for a teenage readership. Understanding your niche will help you pitch the right topics to the right magazines.
Be Pitch Perfect
Most magazine editors receive pitches from dozens of freelancers every week. In order to get noticed, your pitch has to be fantastic. Start by doing your research, and only pitch to magazines that fit your niche. Don’t overlook local or regional magazines; in fact, savvy writers can turn their regional writing into syndicated pieces that they can sell over and over again.
It’s also important to make your pitch specific. If you’re going to pitch an article about women’s infertility, for example, tell the editor the angle you’re going to use and why it’s fresh, the experts you’re going to interview, and what her readers will get out of the article. Suggest sidebars and, if you can provide artwork, include that as well.
Underpromise and Overdeliver
Once you get the gig, make sure you’re every editor’s dream-come-true. Submit your article early, provide the names and contact information of your sources so they can be fact-checked, and don’t whine if you need to do a revision or two. Once your piece is published, drop the editor a thank you note and let her know that you’d love to work with her again. That way, you’re sure to be at the top of her list the next time she’s handing out assignments, and you’ll be a bone fide women’s magazine writer!
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Why should you protect your eBook?
With so many people beginning to realize the value in writing and creating an eBook, there comes along another kind of personÖthe eBook pirate! They, too, see the value behind eBooks and the income potential, but they also know that most eBook writers have one fatal flaw.
They don’t protect their eBooks from theft!
Imagine you are walking around town pulling a small wagon. This is no ordinary wagon, but it is a wagon filled with gold coins! Everyone notices you and wants to talk to you, take their picture with you, and so on. Most people just marvel at your boldness to walk around like you do. You had to work hard to get all these coins and you want to show them to everyone.
Well, every so often, when you don’t realize it, someone takes a handful of coins. It’s only a little at a time, so you barely even notice, and even when you do, you don’t think much of it because there’s still so much more left.
At the end of the day, to your dismay, you look back and see that only a few coins are left!! You’ve been getting ripped off all day long and, now, what you had worked so hard for is gone! To make matters worse, you see lots of other people with their own wagons, pulling along their gold coins!
This is what happens when you don’t protect your eBook. Did you know that when you write an eBook it is your copyrighted property and no one can take it legally? But people do it all the time. If you just publish your eBook in a MS Word file or even a PDF file, you are like the poor fellow and his wagon of gold. People can take info from these files and turn around and pretend it belongs to them!
Now, what if this wagon-puller had an attack dog with him that prevented people from stealing his gold? Do you think anyone in their right mind would take any? Well, a few might try, but they’d soon realize that there is no point. The pain outweighs the gain.
The same goes for eBooks. Find a way to protect your eBooks and you’ll stop getting ripped off by eBook thieves!
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The Power Behind E-books
I can remember the excitement of buying my first downloadable-book. It was back in the late 1990ís and although I cannot remember the title of the e-book I do recall that the seller lived in Georgia, USA and within ten minutes of buying it I was printing it out in rural Wiltshire in the West of England.
Since those early days I must have purchased hundreds of such books. I have had everything from 300+ page manuals right down to 2 or 3 page ‘reports’. But the trouble is that over half of them end up either part or totally unread.
I believe that for most people there are two basic problems with e-books., they are not easy to read on screen and if you print them out this can take time and be expensive on ink.
Despite all the dire predictions profits of doom I believe the future for e-books and information products in general is very good. However, writers must understand the requirements of their readers. To be honest if a subject needs more than 100 pages to get its message across perhaps a downloadable file is not the best way to provide the information.
eBay is a great example, there are hundreds if not thousands of e-books on the subject ranging in price from a few cents up to some costing hundreds of dollars, The average price for a ‘How to Make Money on eBay’ type book seems to be around $67 but go to Amazon or Barns and Nobel and you will find print books with far more information for around $20. So why do we pay more for less?
The answer is ‘immediacy’. We want it and we want it now.
And if the reader wants the e-book now, he or she also wants the information straight away. What they do not want to is to have to wade through hundreds of pages to find what they are looking for. In other words the ideal e-book should contain the basic facts or methods with as little padding as possible. Ideally a person should be able to read the contents of an e-book at one sitting And in my opinion the ideal length for an e-book is around 30 pages but anywhere between 20 and forty is fine. For most subjects the important points can be included within that page range.
The advantage for the author is that it is a lot easier to write a 40-page book than one with 200 pages. There is also a greater chance of the reader actually clicking on your affiliate or other links within your book if he or she actually reads it all. If the writer feels that it will take 200 pages to cover the subject why not cut it down to 5 or 6 smaller e-books selling at say $15 each.
The current trend of pile it high sell it cheap is driving many people out of the information market and some might say that is not a bad thing. But there will always be a market for value for money and easily digestible information products on subjects of interest to the customer. So if you are a writer please cut the padding, just give me the facts, just the facts.
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