Friday, June 6, 2008

How To Use Ebay For Front End Sales And Make The Biggest Profits Later

Writen by Avril Harper

Once you have a buyer on eBay it's vital that you keep that person's name and address and look for additional items to offer them later. Research shows that around one in five buyers ultimately become regular buyers. This happens in mail order, on the Internet, by direct mail, and on eBay.

This means if you don't follow up on past buyers you're effectively losing out on 20 per cent more profits at every marketing opportunity.

Imagine you sell an eBook on eBay, about making money in the property business, for example, and you sell one hundred copies each month. Over the year that's 1200 customers. Of that number 240 are potentially regular buyers of similar or even unrelated products.

Now let's say you've been selling the book for three months, you have 300 customers, of whom you expect 60 to become regular buyers - IF you offer them something to purchase that is! If you don't offer them something else later, you've just lost one of the greatest resources any business can have - back end selling potential. Repeat Back End Selling Potential.

So, let's say you continue selling that initial book on eBay and let's assume you make $10 profit per sale. That's $1000 a month, $12,000 a year.

Let's see how the figures stack up if you locate a second book about the property business which this time makes you $50 pure profit per sale.

This means from those 60 second time buyers gained over three months you'll make $3000 extra, $12,000 over the year, making cumulative annual profits now of $24,000.

Imagine now that you double sales of your eBay lead book (called 'lead' because it leads to additional sales later - back end selling). Or you could add another lead product to eBay, for the property book or for something different. Either way, all things being equal, that is first time customer numbers stay much the same, profit potential remains constant for each front end and back end book combo, then each new book, with back end seller, adds another $24,000 to your bank account.

Four new front end combinations makes just short of $100,000 a year; forty new lead book and back up package all but hits the ONE MILLION DOLLARS a year mark.

This is the simple step-by-step formula for turning virtually anything you sell on eBay into a fabulous back end earnings source.

This is how to make your first million:

Promote a book on eBay, it can be virtually any subject, any format of book, the most important thing is that it lends itself to back end selling, meaning the subject must be something people want to know more about and to learn more they'll purchase similar subject books later. Niche market titles are especially good for back end selling. So people who buy books about fishing will buy more books about fishing, dog lovers similar, UFO enthusiasts, craftworkers, and so on.

This is what you do next:

1) Keep names of buyers and enquirers to sell to later.

2) Obtain another book that might interest buyers of the first product. Get it from the public domain, or create one from other people's articles (ask permission from them, few will refuse), obtain it from out of print booksellers, etc.

3) Write a sales letter for the second book or send the first chapter free with a link in the back of the chapter for people to purchase the full version. Some email programs let you include your PayPal button for payment in the body of an email containing the sales letter or sample chapter.

That's it, mission accomplished, more money going into your bank account.

More Back End Selling Tips

Here is another great way to adapt this lead generating for front and back end selling process through a string of books, of different genre, different types. This can be accomplished by selling books online, offline, as free sample chapter downloads, and so on.

This is what you do:

1) Ask first time buyers to join your mailing list for future sample chapters of books chosen to interest them.

2) Compartmentalise names and addresses in your email programme, according to type of books people previously bought or obtained as free downloads, etc.

3) Look for new books to interest niche book buyers or general interest books to suit most people. Send sample chapters as appropriate in emails to your past buyers: niche and special interest books to specific buyer categories, general interest titles to all past buyers.

3) Add a payment button inside the email to attract early impulse buys for your full length version. This saves losing potential buyers who delay visiting an alternative sales page for the full length book and change their minds or lose the location of your sales page. The next best way to accomplish a fairly certain sale is to send the sample chapter as a pdf attachment to your email, making sure links for sales page or payment button in the pdf file are active and working properly. Alternatively add a printable order form at the end of the sample chapter giving both online and offline ordering options.

4) Send the complete book to buyers as an email attachment or as a direct link between payment and download page.

Avril Harper is a triple eBay PowerSeller and editor of eBay Confidential and webmaster of http://www.publishingcircles.com She has produced a free guide - 103 POWERSELLER TIPS - which you can download with other freely distributable reports and ebooks at http://www.toppco.com

No comments: