By Andrew Cavanagh

I spent my New Year’s Eve at a local restaurant PACKED to capacity with diners at a very high price per head.

Here’s what may interest you. I am friends with the owner. This time last year he had no real internet presence. This year following a few simple guidelines from me he’s beginning to dominate the search engines for his local geographical search terms. And this New Year’s Eve not only did he pack his restaurant to capacity he had so many calls from his website he could have booked every table TWICE over.

We talk a lot about selling ebooks and information products online but I’m looking at both business models and I can tell you geographical marketing of local brick and mortar businesses is easier…competition is low and the potential for profit is enormous.

Best of all the market is so HUMONGOUS that EVERY marketer on the internet could be actively working with 10-20 businesses in his local area and it wouldn’t even be a blip on the Google landscape. You can make money from this in several ways.

All you need is some basic SEO knowledge (how to use long tail keywords and get backlinks will do it) and some knowledge of how to get a web page online.

You can:

1. Charge a consulting fee for helping local business owners optimize what they’re doing so they top the search engines for terms like “East Brooklyn Coffee Shop”.

And show them how to turn that traffic into subscribers and buyers (here’s a tip…give away free gifts from the website and use calling a live phone number as a call to action).

2. You can charge for setting up and/or running websites for local businesses.

This is a huge money spinner with many companies paying $5,000 to $20,000 plus to get a website up plus monthly hosting fees. And the websites they pay for rarely produce real sales. You can charge an upfront fee plus an ongoing fee to set up a website and add content on a regular basis optimizing the site and whatever offers the business is currently running.

It is VERY, VERY easy to get even a small business owner to write you a check for $1,000 to $5,000.

Let’s say you just talk to a local business owner without a website and offer to set one up for $1,500 plus $50 a month. I would never work that cheap but this is a no brainer for a business owner if you can demonstrate you have a website online that looks anything like decent. And it just so easy to get business owners on board.

I’ve found in the last couple of years I have to be very careful how I talk to business owners when I’m out and about because 15 minutes into a conversation with me they’re so excited they want to give me money for making over their website and I just don’t have the time for it!

What am I telling these guys?

Nothing you can’t find on a forum like the Warrior Internet Marketing forum…target long tail keywords…get multiple keyword phrases to the top of Google…one phrase per page. Have a call to action on every page. Capture email subscribers and follow up with them (even while you’re sleeping).

You get the idea. This is really old hat to internet marketers but it straight out blows a business man’s mind. Remember he hasn’t heard it before. To test out if what I’m telling you is true just go to any privately owned local business where the owner works there himself. Maybe buy something or just have a chat to the owner.

Ask him “Do you have a website? Are you getting any sales from your website?”

And then just start telling him everything you know about how he could be getting to the top of the search engines and getting real customers calling him and coming in off the website. How he could be following up with customers and prospects automatically online, preselling them etc etc. All the golden information you’ve learned online.

Once you’ve established what a great website is worth to him offer to do it all for him at $1,500, $3,000, $5,000 or more. And see what happens.

Andrew Cavanagh is an online marketing pioneer with over 25 years experience in offline business. He is the author of the special report: Offline Gold For The Online Marketer which reveals how you can make money fast selling your online marketing skills to brick and mortar business owners.

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Seven Essential Internet Marketing Tips

By Mark T H

If an entrepreneur is going to launch an internet business, there are essential tools that must be in place if success is to be the ultimate outcome. This article discusses the tools that I have found to be the essentials thus far.

This is not a long list, but if any of these are missing from your tool box, you would do well to incorporate them. Interestingly, these can be used to market small brick and mortar businesses as well as internet start-ups. All of the marketing techniques are the same in the virtual world as they are in the literal world. So here we go.

1) You must have an idea, a niche to pursue. You must have something to offer. You have to have something to sell. It could be knowledge, services, hard goods, soft goods such as software, or simply informational products. Whatever the case, you have to have something. You cannot simply sell “nothing” and expect to make money. I once saw a website about “nothing”. It was a blog about “nothing” and contained a series of articles written about whatever popped into the authors head. I looked at the site for a while and never really got anything from it. I left, never to return. Interestingly, the blog was monetized with Adsense. Needless to say, I was not a targeted visitor, so I did not click on any ads. Do not waste your time selling “nothing”. Find an affiliate program. Most brick and mortar businesses offer them and usually, it is just a matter of visiting their website and signing up. More often than not, HTML code will be provided for the products. Remember, pick a niche product that you believe in and enjoy writing about.

2) You must have your own domain name. Nothing screams a lack of professionalism like the name “yoursubdomain.yourdomainhost.com”. No offense to the free blogging services, but if you use one, you may as well be running a business from the inside of a jail cell. Your hands are completely tied. Usually you have great limitations on how you can modify your code. You have limitations on what plugins you can install. There may be now and will assuredly be limitations on how you can monetize it in the future. If one day you decide that you have had enough and you want to sell it and all of it’s content, guess what…YOU CAN’T! You do not own it. Web names are cheap. You can find them for $10 bucks per year at http://www.GoDaddy.com. Get your own domain and rule it!

3) Launch a blog! Blogs are great. Search engines love them. If you add unique informative content on a regular basis, you will have visitors. Think back to tool # 1, an idea or niche. Blogging is much easier if you enjoy what you are writing about. In you niche, there are individuals with an extremely wide variety of experience and knowledge levels. Even if you are not an expert, there is someone who knows less than you do and will benefit and learn from what you write. Additionally, blogs are very easy to monetize. You can write reviews on products and add an affiliate link to that product at the end of the article. Sometimes, business may come looking for you. If you have a contact form on your blog like the one at the very top right of this page, sometimes, businesses will drop you a line asking you to review their product. Usually, they will offer you money to do so. Additionally, you can sign up for an Adsense account and let Google rotate your ads for you. Once the article is written and on your blog, it is essentially monetized forever if you use Adsense.

If you keep your blog updated, perhaps one post per week, you will always have visitors and you will, more than likely be writing about current topics. This is where blogs are superior to static and stagnant websites whose content rarely, if ever, changes. At least, that is how search engines seem to be viewing it.

4) Get yourself some good hosting from a reputable host like Hostgator or 000webhost. It is true that there are free web hosting services that offer some pretty nice functionality such as PHP support and MySQL databases, but in the end you need that plus RELIABILITY. What good is a free host with all of the functionality in the world if it chokes when ten people try to view your website at the same time. I have had my experience with free hosting and trust me, it wasn’t free. I paid dearly for it by losing traffic.

5) Sign up for an auto-responder such as Aweber or GetResponse. Nothing has the ability to drive repeat visitors to your website like a double opt-in email list. This tool can be a bit complicated to master because you have to handle it in a special way. An auto-responder has to be used in conjunction with an irresistible give-away such as a free report relevant to your niche. In my experience, if you offer something for free in exchange for an email address, generally, people will allow you to contact them. Once they are on your list, provided they do not unsubscribe, you can email them a newsletter or notifications of product launches be they yours or joint ventures. Either way, the money is in the list.

6) Get yourself a cool opt-in form like the slide up that you saw at the bottom of this article whenever you loaded the page…that is, if you are viewing this article at TheBitBot.com. Opt-in forms that pop up or slide up are proven to attract the attention of visitors. If they take note of the free report or tool that you are offering in exchange for their email address and the right to contact them in the future, they are more likely to opt in if they like the offer. Advertising is all about capturing the attention of your audience. Now you can market to them over and over again as they are a targeted audience.

7) Grab yourself a beer or glass of wine and reward yourself.

Learn everything you need to know about “Internet Marketing”. Download my free internet marketing ebook entitled ‘Internet Marketing Basics’ for free upon signing up for a free email subscription to TheBitBot Organic SEO & SEM Blog Newsletter.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Seven-Essential-Internet-Marketing-Tips&id=4969537

By Mark T H

Over the past year I have spent a substantial amount of time researching the subject of internet marketing. I must say, this is really a much more fascinating pursuit that I ever could have imagined. There are so many variables and steps involved and the learning curve can be quite long and span several years if one does not know where to look or what questions to ask.

For that reason, I have decided, for this post, to condense everything I have learned into one short article that can act as an outline for anyone who has not yet obtained a personal road map to this end. So, here we go.

Step 1) Select a niche that you will write about. Take a moment and reflect on your life experiences, your interests, your pastimes, things you are passionate about, things that have consistently held your interest over the years or problems you have worked hard to overcome.

Odds are, there are a great number of people who have the same interests, passions, pastimes or the same problems that you have had to overcome and who perhaps have not yet found the solutions that you have discovered. Whatever it is that you discover can be turned into an internet marketing business.

These days, whenever anyone has a problem or interest, the first thing that they do is refer to their favorite search engine and begin researching their problem or interest to find what? Information on that subject or problem. Out of these two scenarios, solutions to problems are actually more profitable in that people are usually willing to fork over money for a solution.
Once you have selected your niche, move on to step number two.

Step 2) Open your browser and go to the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool and enter keywords related to your subject of interest. For information on how to research what keywords to use, check out the link in this sentence. Checking your competition in the article linked to in the previous sentence is very important. Find keywords with high searches per month and low competition. Once you have selected about five potential keywords, proceed to step three.

Step 3) Direct your browser to a domain registrar such as GoDaddy and begin searching for potential domain names that are exact matches for these keywords. If you find it, register it. If not, try to find something as close as possible and then proceed to step four.

Step 4) Acquire hosting for your soon-to-be-launched website. Hosting is very important. You want reliable hosting so that when visitors come to your website, they are served the website and not some error page stating that your web page is inaccessible. This is important because, statistically speaking, this is the one and only chance you will have to impress them. Personally, I prefer Hostgator. They have been the best that I have found so far. Now proceed to step five.

Step 5) Launch your website. This is much easier than it sounds because there are so many tools available today to do this with. For the absolute easiest route, use a popular blogging platform such as WordPress, which can be downloaded for free. Once you have downloaded it, upload it to your server using an FTP manager such as Filezilla. Note: if you go this route, a high speed internet connection is highly recommended. Of course, you can skip all of these steps if your hosting service offers a free script install for platforms such as WordPress in the CPanel (i.e. Control Panel). Next proceed to step six.

Step 6) Begin writing short articles about your subject of interest. On a slow and consistent basis, post the articles that you write to your blog or website. If your articles are unique and useful, your blog will begin generating traffic. It is important to note that you will not provide the solution to the problem you are writing about here. The solution will be withheld and revealed only in a special report that your produce in step seven.

Step 7) Write a short and sweet report or ebook on the subject you chose. Make sure that the report provides a definitive solution to the problem you chose to write about. Additionally, break up the report into several chapters so that you can give the first chapter away for free. Once the report is complete, save the first chapter in the form of a PDF file. Additionally, save the entire report in the form of a PDF file and then proceed to step eight.

Step 8 ) Register with an autoresponder service such as Aweber or GetResponse. Once you have registered for an autoresponder account add the code provided by the service to your blog or website in the form of an opt-in box placed in the sidebar of your website. Alternatively, you can add it to a squeeze page that describes the benefits of your report. Proceed to step nine.

Step 9) Once you have added the opt-in form to your website, set up your autoresponder to deliver the first chapter, as promised, to your visitors. Congratulations. You have now began harvesting emails and started building your list. Proceed to step ten.

Step 10) Using your autoresponder service notify your list of updates to your blog or website and begin developing a relationship with your subscribers. From this point forward, in each post, refer to the complete report that you produced that will be available for sale on your sales page that you created specifically for selling your report.

Step 11) Continue to research and continue to develop solutions to problems in your niche. Provide real value to your subscribers and help them discover real solutions.

Step 12) Reward yourself. You have created an online business.

That’s it. That is a year’s worth of research condensed in to one thousand words that took ten minutes to read. No need to buy expensive “make money online” products now.

To help you get started in your own internet marketing career, you will need landing page templates. To get your own free landing page templates subscribe to TheBitBot Organic SEO & SEM Blog Newsletter for free and you can download free landing page templates.

If you are interested in “Search Engine Optimization” or “Search Engine Marketing”, subscribe to TheBitBot Organic SEO & SEM Blog Newsletter and get a copy of Google’s SEO Starter Guide delivered to your Inbox.

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http://EzineArticles.com/?Twelve-Steps-to-Your-Own-Internet-Marketing-Business&id=4926349

By Jimmy Brown

I want you to add a new word to your business vocabulary -

The word is “specialization”.

A new age has dawned in information marketing. And it’s the age of “specialization”.

Before I explain how this will help you create information products that sell like crazy, let me give you a very brief history lesson.

(I promise, this won’t hurt a bit.

Information products online have evolved since I logged onto the Internet back in 1999…

1) THE SIMPLE AGE.

Times were simple back when I first came online. And so were the information products. Way back when, information products weren’t readily available online like they are today. If you could find ANY information on the topic you were interested in, you grabbed it.

2) THE SYSTEMATIC AGE.

As more and more people learned how to create and market information products online, a new era emerged: the “systematic” era. This was a time when huge information products were created with hundreds of pages. The idea was to create comprehensive courses on a particular topic.

3) THE SEPARATION AGE.

As “internet marketing” and other business-related markets became inundated with product offerings, the birth and rapid growth of “niche marketing” occurred. People began separating themselves from the crowd and focused on “tiny niche topics” of interest.

4) THE SPECIALIZATION AGE.

Again competition came – even in these small niches. While there is still money to be made by focusing on these tiny, untapped markets — the well is drying up at a fast rate. Now enters a new age … the “specialization” age of information marketing.

Which brings us to the lesson -

There is a LOT of money to be made by creating small, 7-15

page reports on PRECISE topics.

Most consumers would rather NOT sift through 100 pages of information to find out how to do something they are interested in, nor would they like to pay for 100 pages of information when they only need chapter 3.

With more and more products available on the market, consumers are getting pickier and pickier. They want what they want and only what they want.

Perhaps the biggest untapped information gold mine lies in this concept of creating small reports on precise topics.

* 17 Ways to Find New Affiliates Using Google.com

* How To Walk Off 7 Pounds in 7 Days

* 3 Ways To Get Your Next Vacation Free Of Charge

* The 15-Minute Guide To Stalling A Divorce

* Top 7 Ideas For Starting A Homeschool Support Group

Specialized information.

7-15 page reports that sell anywhere from $10-$100, depending upon the information.

And the benefits of writing these small reports are staggering -

1. You can write a small report in just a few hours of one day.

2. The profit per page ratio is astounding – 10 pages for $10 is a dollar per page per customer.

3. Small reports are MUCH easier to write than full-length courses.

4. There is a never-ending supply of topics for small reports.

5. You maximize the lifetime value of your customer. In other words, you can sell report after report to the SAME customer.

6. A series or collection of your small reports can be bundled into premium-priced courses over time.

7. When “hot topics” emerge (almost daily!) you can quickly crank out a small report to strike while the iron is hot.

8. When other marketers are seeing success with their products, you can create a complementary report to offer for sale as a supplement.

9. Many people can’t afford to buy (or refuse to buy) high-priced courses – but virtually anyone can whip out $10-$15.

The list could go on and on.

I’ve been creating small reports for a long time. In fact, I make over $15,000 in PROFIT every month from just ONE of my sites.

I know this works.

And not just for me.

I had a customer recently email me to let me know he sold 420 copies of his VERY FIRST small report, during its first month.

So, what I want to convince you to do is this -

***TRY IT FOR YOURSELF****

Create a small 7-15 page report and begin selling it online and see what kind of results you see.

A new information age has dawned – the age of specialization!

Create your own “special” reports and get your piece of the pie.

Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Small Reports Fortune” – if you can write 7-15 page small reports, you can earn a living online working just a few hours each week from your home. Look for his EXCLUSIVE formula “Creating A Six-Figure Income With Small Reports” at http://www.SmallReportsFortune.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jimmy_Brown
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Key-To-Creating-Information-Products-That-Sell-Even-In-Overcrowded,-Highly-Competitive-Markets&id=444788

Have you ever wanted to be an Internet Marketer?

No, not some loud mouthed, pushy “Infomercial” pitchman. I am as turned off by them as you are.

A Real Internet Marketer provides value.
Provides valuable content.

To his or her tribe, followers or list, call them what you will. I call them my friends.

Here is an opportunity to provide valuable content, market a product, learn all of the “ins and outs” of Internet Marketing -
and make more friends, rather than lose the ones you have now.

Are you interested? Click the eBook, or click here -
or perhaps you like Tropical Fish – If so – Just Click Here.

Information Product Ideas – 4 Quick & Easy Information Product Ideas to Catapult Your Business

By Rob Schultz

I always tell my clients, the best way to get off to a great start with your information products, is to set yourself up for a few easy (and profitable!) wins. The problem is once folks find a way to create them easily, they complicate matters by creating ambitious efforts right out of the box.

And that is a recipe for failure.

When you are starting out resist the temptation to swing for the fences. The best way to ensure your second and third and fourth products are incredibly successful is to get your first one out the door.

So here are four quick and easy starter ideas:

Idea #1 – The Five Secrets Resource List

A sure bet is what I call the “Five Secrets” Resource List. This can be a CD, MP3 or eBook that spells out five secrets to the results your potential customers are hungry for, that showcases your own unique approach and point of view. Examples include “The Five Secrets of Passive Revenue”, “The Five Secrets to Happier Kids”, or “The Five Secrets to Doubling Your Profits AND Your Free Time.”

The key here is compelling content, not the format. You also want to be sure this product also suggests several ways your listener can take their next steps towards achieving their goals. And be sure to include your own services as one of the primary ways to make that happen.

Idea #2 – The Three Steps Audio

Secrets are cool. But people want to know what they have to do to make those secrets come alive in their own lives and businesses. Again, the actual format for this product is not important. What is crucial is that your steps are sequential, easy to follow, and give the listener a small taste of what you can really do for them.

These steps should detail how to obtain a highly desirable result that is eluding your potential customers. Examples include “The Three Steps to Losing 15 Pounds by Summer”, “The Three Steps to Quicker and More Lucrative Real Estate Deals.”

Idea #3 – The Five Minute Visualization

Aw, come on, you’re saying. I’m a business consultant. Isn’t this visualization stuff wishy washy? Well, if you consider 300-pound football players wishy washy, you’d better be the one to tell them.

Cause the truth is visualization has gone mainstream. While it may have begun with therapists, healers and spiritual counselors, its now used by athletes and top business performers.

Yes, you can do more than five minutes. There’s nothing magic about that number. What makes these so exciting is they can be created very quickly, with a minimum of writing and preparation. And rather than just talking at people, these kinds of short programs involve people.

And when you can get people to become involved with you, its much easier to take them to the next step for an ongoing business relationship.

Idea #4 – The 30-Minute Marketing CD

Sometimes the best way to create profits with your products is not to sell them at all, but give them away. Your 30-Minute Marketing CD is designed to provide a prospect with valuable information quickly. All they need do is provide their email address. This allows you to catapult your mailing list – the true key to profits!

These short audio programs, given away at your live, in-person appearances, at networking events, or online, give folks an actual sample of the benefits you can deliver. And you would be surprised how much people like free stuff. Even if you’ve never been on Oprah (and that’s most of us) you’d be surprised the crowd you’ll draw giving away a free CD.

You can even create an instantly downloadable MP3 version as part of the goodies you offer people who opt in to your mailing list on your website.

Hot Tip:

To boost consumption of your program, you can also offer an free gift. And the only way they find out about the free gift is to listen to your 30-minute marketing program!

Information products are powerful. But most folks who want to do them never will because the think its impossible. By getting started with one of these simple but powerful ideas, you can take your first profitable steps towards building your own auto-pilot revenue empire.

Would it be helpful to have instant access to more crucial revenue generating keys?

You can discover 5 additional powerful avenues for creating your own information product gold mine with the free “5 Audacious Avenues to Your Passive Revenue Product Empire” quick start kit available at http://www.audaciousaudio.com/passiveprofitreport/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rob_Schultz
http://EzineArticles.com/?Information-Product-Ideas—4-Quick-and-Easy-Information-Product-Ideas-to-Catapult-Your-Business&id=2391156

With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell

Here’s a riddle: How do you make your book a best seller on the Kindle?

Answer: Give copies away.

That’s right. More than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge.

Although some of the titles are digital versions of books in the public domain — like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — many are by authors still trying to make a living from their work.

Earlier this week, for example, the No. 1 and 2 spots on Kindle’s best-seller list were taken by “Cape Refuge” and “Southern Storm,” both novels by Terri Blackstock, a writer of Christian thrillers. The Kindle price: $0. Until the end of the month, Ms. Blackstock’s publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is offering readers the opportunity to download the books free to the Kindle or to the Kindle apps on their iPhone or in Windows.

Publishers including Harlequin, Random House and Scholastic are offering free versions of digital books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-retailers, as well as on author Web sites, as a way of allowing readers to try out the work of unfamiliar writers. The hope is that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.

“Giving people a sample is a great way to hook people and encourage them to buy more,” said Suzanne Murphy, group publisher of Scholastic Trade Publishing, which offered free downloads of “Suite Scarlett,” a young-adult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, “Scarlett Fever,” out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list.

The digital giveaways come as publishers are panicking about price pressure on e-books in general. Amazon and other online retailers have set $9.99 as the putative e-book price for new releases and best sellers, and publishers worry that such pricing ultimately creates expectations among consumers that new books are no longer worth, say, $25 (the average list price of a new hardcover), or even $13 (a standard list price for trade paperbacks).

Some publishers have tried to take control of pricing by delaying the publication of certain e-books for several months after the books are made available in hardcover.

Executives at some houses said that given such actions, offering free content amounts to industry hypocrisy.

“At a time when we are resisting the $9.99 price of e-books,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, the publisher of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer, “it is illogical to give books away for free.”

Similarly, a spokesman for Penguin Group USA said: “Penguin has not and does not give away books for free. We feel that the value of the book is too important to do that.”

But some publishers regard free digital books as purely promotional, in the same vein as the free galleys they distribute to booksellers and reviewers to create attention and word-of-mouth buzz for an author.

“Most people purchase stuff because somebody has recommended the title,” said Steve Sammons, executive vice president for consumer engagement at Zondervan.

Neither Amazon nor other e-book retailers make any money on these giveaways either. But it is a way of luring customers to their e-reading devices.

Free e-books are also a way of distinguishing a less-well-known author from the marketing juggernauts of the most popular books.

“You have to show people things because there’s a lot of competition,” said Ms. Johnson, the author of “Suite Scarlett” and seven other books. “If they go into a store, they are going to see 4,000 books with Robert Pattinson’s face on it,” she added, referring to movie-tie-in versions of Ms. Meyer’s “Twilight” series. “Then my book will be buried under them.”

And if a free e-book rises to the top of the Kindle best-seller list — or Barnes & Noble’s ranked list of free e-books — it automatically gives an author more visibility.

“When you push to No. 1 of any best-seller list, that in itself seems to beget publicity,” said Brandilyn Collins, who writes suspense novels with Christian themes and whose novels “Exposure” and “Dark Pursuit” were No. 1 and 2 on the Kindle best-seller list earlier this month and remain in the Top 10 (and are still available free).

Most of the giveaways are of older titles by an author, with the idea that reading them will convert new fans who will go on to buy more recently released books. Even if only a small percentage of those who download a free book end up buying another one, “that’s all found money,” said Steve Oates, vice president for marketing at Bethany House Publishers, a unit of Baker Publishing Group, whose authors Beverly Lewis and Tracie Peterson had free titles on the Kindle best-seller list this week.

Samhain Publishing, a publisher of romance and erotica, has offered a free e-book title every two weeks for more than a year. Christina Brashear, its publisher, said that the giveaways have led to a noticeable bump in sales.

In October, the most recent month for which she has statistics, Ms. Brashear said Samhain offered free digital versions of “Giving Chase,” a romance novel by Lauren Dane, leading to 26,897 downloads.

But paid purchases of some of Ms. Dane’s other novels jumped exponentially. Her earlier novel “Chased,” which sold 97 copies in September, sold 2,666 digital units in October, and another of her previous books, “Taking Chase,” which sold 119 copies in September, sold 3,279 in the month in which a free download was available.

With e-books still representing about 5 percent of the total book market, data on the effect of digital giveaways is still inconclusive. Brian O’Leary, a principal at Magellan Media Consulting Partners, which advises publishers, said that while it appeared that free downloads led to an uptick in actual book buying, there was a risk that free reading could eventually “supplant paid reading.”

Indeed, said Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins, “free is not a business model.”

Authors are torn between wanting to experiment with new formats and wanting to protect their income. Charlie Huston, the author of the Henry Thompson crime trilogy and a series of books about Joe Pitt, a vampire detective, said that “the part of me that grew up in a union household” still feels as if he were occasionally undermining himself by sanctioning digital giveaways by his publisher, Random House.

But, he said, “I guess my attitude right now is that I can be afraid of what’s coming or I can try and aggressively embrace it in some form.”

And in some cases, the free e-books work. Pamela Deron, a 29-year-old administrative assistant in Florida, said she downloaded a free edition of “Already Dead,” the first in the Joe Pitt series, onto her Kindle this month.

“There are so many authors out there that fall into obscurity,” Ms. Deron wrote in an e-mail message. “Simply no one knows of them, and some readers are hesitant buying an author they never heard of. Free books allow you to experience the writer as a whole, not just a small tidbit.”

She added: “Fifty dollars later, I have the entire Joe Pitt series.”

News Release

Amazon Announces New 70 Percent Royalty Option for Kindle Digital Text Platform, Enabling Authors and Publishers to Earn More Royalties from Every Kindle Books Sold

SEATTLE, Jan 20, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced details of a new program that will enable authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell.

For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option. This new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010.

Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

“Today, authors often receive royalties in the range of 7 to 15 percent of the list price that publishers set for their physical books, or 25 percent of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “We’re excited that the new 70 percent royalty option for the Kindle Digital Text Platform will help us pay authors higher royalties when readers choose their books.”

DTP authors and publishers will be able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate. In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). At launch, the 70 percent royalty option will only be available for books sold in the United States.

The Kindle Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their books for sale in the Kindle Store. To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com

About Amazon Kindle

Kindle and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper.

Kindle and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Kindle is the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc., seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including http://www.amazon.com, http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.amazon.de, http://www.amazon.co.jp, http://www.amazon.fr, http://www.amazon.ca, and http://www.amazon.cn. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Kindle devices and content are sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

SOURCE: Amazon.com

Amazon.com Media Hotline: 206-266-7180

How Online Learning Is Revolutionizing K-12 Education and Benefiting Students

On January 12, 2010 @ 3:28 pm

By Lisa Barone

Happy 2010, folks! With so many social media studies showing that companies are looking to up their involvement in social activities this year, I thought I’d help cure that age-old “what should I blog about today?” question. Or at least give you a healthy head start for the year by providing 100+ potential blog topics for your small business blog.  Consider it my contribution to your yearly editorial calendar. I know you’re creating one, right?

So, here are some potential topics. Grab a pen and jot down your favorites. [Or maybe just hit Print.]

Focus on your Industry

1. Write 10 ways your industry will change this year
2. Break down the new laws that will affect your niche in 2010
3. Create a list of the best industry resources
4. Talk about why things are better today (or not) than they were 10 years ago
5. Attend industry events and blog about them
6. Your best marketing tips
7. How your industry is like Your Favorite TV Show [I suggest using Glee. Because that's my favorite show.]
8. The ugly truth about your industry
9. The 8 people in your industry you want to meet
10. What someone needs to consider before getting involved in your industry
11. Comment on an industry-related conversation going on in LinkedIn or Google Groups
12. Talk about the “thing” that would rock your industry if invented or put together
13. Create a chart that breaks down a complicated industry issue or problem
14. Interview someone well-known in your world and profile them
15. Rewrite an old post with fresh eyes and new ideas
16. Publish a presentation you gave somewhere else (with permission)
17. Have a chat with a competitor and blog about it (again, with permission)
18. Search Google News for relevant press releases and news about your industry. Write your own take.
19. Debunk a long-standing myth
20. Host a seminar or meetup and blog about
21. Create a list of the 10 books that someone in your industry should read.
22. Post about what you’d like to see fixed in your industry
23. Conferences people in your industry should attend/speak at
24. Your favorite untapped traffic sources in your industry
25. Issues in your space that deserve more attention

Go Social

1. How you’re using Twitter to increase earnings
2. Post a video that has nothing to do with your industry but that you think people would enjoy.
3. Post a picture. [Browse StumleUpon for inspiration]
4. Participate in a blog meme like last month’s Best of 09
5. Share the best social media campaigns you’ve seen, big and small
6. Hold a contest and pit people against each other
7. Create a poll. Blog the result.
8. Invite a guest blogger to post on your blog
9. How social media increased your ROI this year
10. How social media did nothing but confuse you this year
11. Search Delicious for popular posts on your topics and take a new stance
12. Go to your industry’s Wikipedia page and see what people are talking about in the Discussions area. Comment on it on your blog.
13. Post photos from your company party/team building workshop
14. Find a question on Yahoo Answers or OnStartups and respond on your blog
15. Create a list of the Must Follow Twitter people in your industry

About your Business

1. Why you’re different (and better) than your competition
2. A video tutorial showing how to use your most popular product
3. The problems your sales people hear about most
4. The answer to the most common email you get
5. Share the tools do you use to do your job
6. The secret ways to use your site/product
7. The top 10 WordPress plugins you use on your site
8. How you use your favorite social media site
9. How you built your email list
10. How you’re using Facebook
11. Look at your site logs & answer customer questions
12. How you delegate tasks (or what you mucked up by not delegating)
13. Use Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool and answer popular questions
14. Write about why you’re not using social media at all
15. Answer questions left in your comment section
16. Write about the personal branding tactics you use
17. Give 5 reasons to sign up to your email newsletter
18. How you learned to do what you do
19. Create a list of your favorite X
20. What you’re doing to beat the summer slump or winter blues
21. Share a case study
22. Provide an end of the week link roundup
23. Review something
24. Reveal the best niche blogs to guestblog for
25. What keeps you up at night
26. Share a time when you got it wrong in 2010
27. Your strategies for coming up with blog topics.
28. Branding tips that have worked for your business
29. 50 reasons why someone should hire you
30. 5 things people should be focusing on but aren’t
31. What can other industries learn from yours

Highlight Your Customers

1. Put the spotlight on your most active commenters
2. Praise your best customers
3. Post a question and let the community to answer it
4. How customers can woo your customer service department for free stuff
5. Give something away to one of your blog readers.
6. Feature a video detailing a customer’s success with your product
7. Share your biggest screw up with a customer…and how you made it right
8. Publish a customer testimonial
9. Explain the benefits of being a customer
10. Share local organizations you support and ask customers to share their favorites
11. How customers can connect with you on social media
12. Hold an event for Twitter followers to meet and blog it

Get Personal

1. What have you read lately that inspired/angered you?
2. Introduce your staff
3. Share the best decision you made as a SMB
4. Your biggest challenge as a SMB owner
5. What you love best about being a SMB owner. What you don’t like.
6. The danger of doing everything by yourself
7. Write about the achievement you’re most proud of
8. A time when you got it right in 2009
9. Create a video introducing your team to your community
10. Get your rant on
11. How to remain productive working at home
12. Introduce a new employee and what they bring to the table
13. Share the local vendors you trust
14. Give people a video tour of your building
15. Describe your company culture
16. Your new baby (whether that’s a real baby, a pet, a new project for 2010, the car you’ve been restoring for the past two years, etc)
17. Share your company’s history or story
18. Tell a story not about your company
19. Share 10 things you’re thankful for
20. What’s next for your company
21. A list of your most trafficked posts

The point is, there are TONS of things for a small business owner to blog about and share with their audience.  Now that I’ve helped get the ball rolling, get to it.

About the Author

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services, and other Internet services. She blogs daily over at the Outspoken Media blog.