A lot of people suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to their monetization strategy. What’s even worse is that many of those who approach online publishing with a single monetization strategy in mind are those that just decided to jump in on the bandwagon without really having a passion for what they do. This shows not just in their substandard content, but also in the lack of willingness to do the necessary legwork find out the business model that will really work for them. So it isn’t a wonder why many have blogs and websites that are less than profitable.
When it comes to online publishing, don’t fall into the trap of relying solely on ads for your revenue. We do love ads, and sure want a chunk of the ad money that corporations are shelling out as part of their mega ad campaigns. However, there are other ways you can make money in online publishing aside from ads, including selling e-books and paid subscriptions.
It used to be that getting published was almost an impossible task for an ordinary person. Rejection after rejection is something you’ll have to deal with if you planned on sending your book concept or draft to publishing houses. Thanks to the Internet though, just about anyone who’s interested in writing a book can now do so without having to rely on the big publishing houses to get their content out. Self-publishing, once unheard of, is now really common. Selling your self-published book online is not hard at all, although admittedly the success rate of unknown authors are not that good. However, your chances is still way better than had there been no online publishing at all.
When it comes to selling your e-book, you can go about it in different ways. You can make use of the services of self-publishing companies like Lulu.com and BookSurge. You can also go directly and sell you books via Amazon, iTunes, and Barnes & Nobles. Of course, don’t forget that each have their own formats for their respective book readers (Kindle, iPad/iPhone, and Nook). And lastly, you can sell them to your regular readers via your own blog or website, a matter that is not too complicated with retail POS software easily available for business/sites that need online shopping solutions. Whichever way you decide to go about it, the point is that publishing ebooks and making a profit from them is a very doable task. Of course, there’s the question of whether you can really write an ebook that will sell.
Image via Albany County Public Library
Originally posted on May 18, 2012 @ 11:12 pm