Adventures In Reselling

All About That Reseller Life

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How to Publish Your Book on Amazon for $99

A long time ago, on a desktop far, far away…

Who hasn’t dreamed of not only writing their own book, but seeing it in print on Amazon.com, having a copy for their bookshelf, buying ‘five copies for my mother?’

Well, now you can do it for a $99 fee and some cybernetic elbow grease. This page will show you how I did it, and chances are you can do it too. I’ve been reading for several years about Print On Demand, the nifty new techology where you put in PDF files on one end (One for the cover, one for the insides) and a beautiful, perfect-bound, bookstore-quality book comes out the other. I’ve even seen the technology in action at an document imaging tradeshow (that’s my profession, by the way.)

I’ve known other people who have used Print On Demand (POD) as a way to self-publish, including my own father. My problem with that is I have no room in my garage for books, I don’t want to get involved in the process of selling and shipping books, handling returns, etc.

Suddenly, while Googling something a week ago, I stumbled on some fantastic Goo. Amazon, the online bookstore, has absorbed a POD publisher named BookSurge, making it a separate Amazon division. Now I could take my book project, upload it to Amazon/BookSurge, pay a fee, and VOILA! my book is on Amazon for everyone to buy. It ships within 48 hours, BookSurge pays me a 25% royalty within 60 days, I can even buy five copies for my mother at a discount!

I emailed BookSurge and was assigned an account manager, who I will call Joseph (since his name is Joseph). I inquired about the details of publishing a book. For $599 I could get the hand-holding, send us your manuscript version of the publishing, or if I was brave, courageous, and could format my own PDFs, for $99 I could use the Author’s Express program to upload my book projects.

Since my book creation project was designed to be the forerunner of many more titles, $99 seemed like the way to go.

I ran all over the site, downloading example PDFs, submission guidelines, and anything else I could find. The site recomends using Adobe -something or another- for text formating, and Adobe Acrobat 6 (not 7!) for PDF creation.

I decided from the git-go that Microsoft Word and PDF Factory Pro would have to work for me, since that is what I had on my desktop, and I don’t want to spend weeks learning yet another desktop publishing application, although I am sure it is a good one.

Besides, I was already thinking about writing this page, and I wanted to come up with a process most anyone would be comfortable with.

The only real shortcut I took is that my cover is plain text, with no images on it. I figured my first book is going to sell mostly if not entirely on Amazon, and a pretty cover is not that important there. In any case, I can always go back and upgrade my edition (The additional fee for resubmitting either the interior or the cover is $50, once the book is published.)

Sample files and a complete step by step description of how I formatted and published my three books (so far!) is at www.actasif.com/bookproject

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How To Make Money Through Your Ecommerce Website

If you are in the process of setting up an eCommerce website, or of you are interested in increasing the revenue and profits from your eCommerce website, there are some suggestions that you need to keep in mind. There are some helpful tips that will show you how to make money through your eCommerce website both in the short and the long term. This article is designed to provide you with an important overview of tips and pointers that will show you how to make money through your eCommerce website.

Of course, at the heart of understanding how to make money through your eCommerce website is the need for traffic. You absolutely must have high traffic to your eCommerce website if you expect to generate revenue and profit from that venue.

Competition on the Net today is fierce. Therefore, when it comes to learning how to make money through your eCommerce website you need to employ all of the various effective techniques that have been demonstrated successful at increasing traffic to eCommerce website venues. Chief amongst these techniques and practices is search engine optimization or SEO.

In order to master the ability to understand how to make money through your eCommerce website you will want to make sure that the design and development of your eCommerce website results in a venue that is attractive. Consumers from all walks of life naturally are drawn to stores in the brick and mortar world that are nicely decorated and appointed. Similarly, consumers in cyberspace are drawn to those websites that are professional in their appearance, that are — in a couple of words — “nice looking.”

Another simple and yet vitally important factor that you need to keep in mind when it comes to how to make money through your eCommerce website is ensure that your eCommerce website completely is user friendly. While it is all well and good to draw traffic to your website, if a potential customer or client finds your website difficult to use, other websites are only a mouse click away.

Yet another factor that you must keep at the top of the list when it comes to how to make money through your eCommerce website is to provide excellent customer service. More business is lost due to less than adequate customer service (as well as technical support as applicable) than anything else when it comes to eCommerce website operations.

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Four Ways To Make Money From Your Ecommerce Website

There are four basic ways to make money from your web site. You can sell products and services. You can sell subscriptions or memberships. You can make money from advertising. And you can use your site to generate referrals and commissions.

Most businesses only use one or maybe two of the four. You can increase your direct revenue and your opportunities for cross-promotion if you consider them all.

Here’s a review of what you need for each. In every case you want to deliver what your customers expect and automate as much of the process as possible.

You can make money on your site by selling things. You can sell products or services, but to make money you have to make sure you have mastered the details.

No matter what you’re selling you’ll need a good shopping cart. Online shoppers expect to be able to pay with credit cards and with PayPal and complete transactions online. Your shopping cart should calculate shipping charges and sales tax automatically.

If you’re selling physical products, make sure you’ve worked out all the fulfillment details. Make sure that you have a shipping and inventory system that will deliver great service to your customers.

Since the net is a worldwide phenomenon, you may get orders from other countries. How will you handle them?

You can also sell digital products such as e-books and Special Reports. Buyers will expect to be able to download their digital product as soon as they’ve completed paying.

You can sell services. Many companies are conducting classes on the web, called “webinars.” You’ll need to be able to take orders and send acknowledgments to those who sign up. You’ll also need a reliable way to deliver your webinar.

You can make money on your site by having subscribers or members who pay you a fee. A membership or subscription fee is simply payment for privileged access.

People will pay for access to current content, to archives, to services or to other people. Determine what mix of these is best for your business. Make sure you can handle subscription payments, acknowledgments and renewals.

You can make money on your site from advertising. This used to be quite complicated. But today, with Google’s AdSense program just about any site can generate advertising revenue.

You can make money on your site by using your site for referrals and commissions. On the web, these are called “affiliate programs.” They can help you make money two ways.

When you send business to another site using an affiliate link, you generate a modest fee for yourself. Whenever you recommend a product or service on your site, check to see if there’s an affiliate program that will pay you for the link.

Your own affiliate program can help you draw more desirable traffic to your site. You’ll need software to help you keep track of the business that affiliates send your way. There are standalone packages for this, but affiliate software is also part of most sophisticated shopping cart packages.

None of these items is rocket science. So use this article as a checklist and take a look at online shopping cart software and ecommerce providers like 1AutomationWiz.com to help you automate all of these methods on your ecommerce web site.

The bottom line in increasing revenue is using as many of the above income generation methods as you can, as effectively as possible. It’s another case of how the marketing magic is in the mix.

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Getting the Most out of Amazon Coupon Codes

Amazon.com is the leading online bookstore today. This probably accounts for the fact that a lot of people want to obtain Amazon coupon codes. To tell you the truth, obtaining a code is not a big problem. There are many sources for coupon codes:

1) Coupon sites – there has been a recent increase in the number of sites devoted solely to the distribution of various coupon codes. These sites often obtain their profit through affiliate marketing. Whenever a person uses a code from that site to make a purchase, the site gets paid.

2) Communities – certain communities also revolve around the concept of sharing information that would make their lives a lot easier. Coupon codes are such information. In such communities, it is expected that you would contribute your own sources of coupon codes.

3) Promotional e-mail –if you frequently make purchases from Amazon.com, you might receive some emails detailing new products and some promos. These emails may contain one or two coupon codes that you can use to reduce your expenses.

There are other sources of codes. However, these sources are not the main focus of this article. What we are concerned about is the use of such codes. How exactly do you make sure that you obtain the maximum savings?

A) Divide your purchases – in most transactions, it is often impossible to make use of two or more coupons. If the coupon codes you have are for specific items, it might be more feasible to divide your purchases and check them out separately. This would allow you maximum savings. You might take a really long time to check out your purchases, however.

B) Save coupons – it is often inadvisable to make use of your coupon codes immediately. If the coupons are for very specific items, it might be better to keep those coupons until you actually need to buy the books in question. However, you should never throw coupons away. Doing so would be a great waste of cash. Save the codes until you can use them.

C) Choose codes wisely – if the coupon codes in question are for all purchases, then you might want to start thinking in terms of percentages and savings. Will you use the $2.5 off coupon or would you use the 10% off coupon? This depends on the total price of your purchases. Always make sure that you get as much value as you can out of the coupon.

D) Use codes as cash – many people are able to obtain Amazon coupon codes. As mentioned before, they are not really hard to get your hands on. However, most people think of these codes as “extras” that may come in handy. This mindset will not help you get the best value from your codes.

You need to start thinking of the codes as cash. When you get a coupon code, you are effectively being given free cash. And what do you do with cash? You spend it or save it. You do not forget about it. Shifting your mindset in this manner will allow you to keep the coupons you have in mind when you make a purchase on the site. It will also help you stick to your budget, since you automatically factor in the value of the coupons when you buy from Amazon.

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How To Start A Business Through Ecommerce

Starting business through ecommerce is an excellent way to provide you with additional income when marketing nutritional supplements or wellness products. With the increasing popularity in today’s world for online shopping, you can reap the benefits of starting business through ecommerce.

Ecommerce will allow you to reach a global market. Your customers will be from all around the world. In the nutritional supplements and wellness product industry, these types of products are needed by humans in general. Your market is not restricted to just one type of consumer or one geographical region. Starting business through ecommerce will allow you to reach vast numbers of potential buyers for your products.

It can become costly for companies to stock, supply and have employees to keep an offline store open. Additionally, the store is typically not run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and on holidays. Being able to have your business operate all the time will maximize your profit potential.

Starting business through ecommerce allows you to operate an online store without the overhead costs of stocking, employee costs, physical facility costs, and other operational costs. You will find that operating an offline store costs a great deal more than running an ecommerce site.

Ecommerce allows you to save money on mailing and billing. Typically customers will pay for the products immediately. There is no cost for mailing out invoices or sending out notices to collect payment.

In fact, you have fewer product loss potential with ecommerce than with an offline store. There is no way for customers, thieves, or employees to shop-lift your products.

You will enjoy having more inventory control. It will be easier to track what your customers want to purchase at your ecommerce site than with a regular offline store. The majority of the time you can order your inventory from suppliers as the orders come in on your site. This means that you have fewer products in stock that did not sell well. This creates a tremendous money saver for distributors and marketers.

Did you know that many product items can be shipped for free and electronically? An offline store has to have brochures, coupons, advertising flyers, and even business cards printed. These items then have to be placed on a display for customers to pick up or mailed out to a mailing list which costs money for both printing and postage. These same types of items can be sent electronically without printing and shipping costs through an ecommerce site.

With a limited geographical region of an offline store it can be difficult to build your customer base to purchase your products and services. An ecommerce site not only allows you to connect to people on a global level but you can send out electronic re-order forms through email to clients. You can even offer refer friend incentives to increase your customer potential at little cost.

If you have a nutritional supplement that the buyer will take daily and the bottle size is 30 pills, you can send out reminders every 25 days to re-order the supplement. You can also email brochures of complimentary products to encourage further buying from regular customers.

With an offline store you would need to stop with each person that purchases an item and have them fill out a mailing list form. No-one is going to do that or the lines would be a million miles long and customers would become angry to never return again. Each time a customer purchases from your ecommerce store, you automatically have their email address and their shipping address. They didn’t mind giving you the information because you need it to ship their product.