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May 31, 2010

DLGuard Review – Secure Sales Software For Automating An Independent Ebook Business

Filed under: sales software — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Alexander Rodriguez @ 6:59 pm

The DLGuard shopping cart/checkout application has been helping web-based entrepreneurs for several years to integrate a secure checkout system into their own websites. This DLGuard review focuses on the products use in running the sales administration & digital downloads of an ebook business.

A few years ago I had been writing ebooks and seeking out the best ways of publishing and selling them online. Using the online ebook retailers provides a lot of exposure (and potential sales) but I was concerned about the products marketing on these sites and the inability to capture customer emails during the sale (the retailers hold onto this). Only through selling from your own site can you retain this control so after reading a DLGuard review about its use in software sales online I gave it a try.

DLGuard is a set of scripts that provide all the web pages and back-end logic for setting up a shopping cart on your own website. Installation was relatively simple and configuring your inventory of ebooks for download is quickly done.

The sole task that may take some time is the optional activity of customizing the checkout pages to blend in with your site. This could be outsourced (the code is scripted with the flexibility to do this) or you could just stick with the defaults.

It really starts to automate your ebook business after a sale is completed (payment processed). DLGuard automatically emails the customer with a unique link to their ebook (residing on your server) for them to download.

Securing this download link is critical to protecting your intellectual property by unscrupulous people sharing the link. DLGuard can be configured to limit the download attempts and set a validity period for the link which will halt a lot of lost sales for your business.

Once the software is setup then it is merely a case of adding new ebooks to its inventory of products each time you wish to sell a new book. The sole point where you need to intervene is when refunds are requested. In this case the DLGuard customer tracking data can be used to refund genuine customers and highlight those who are merely scammers (repeated refund requests from the same individual is a sure sign they are skimming your inventory for their own purposes).

If your site is getting sufficient traffic then it is worth selling from your own website, and DLGuard can ably provide this functionality. If your site receives low traffic volumes then you may be best advised to combine selling from your own site along with putting your ebooks on major online sites (to leverage their traffic in the initial stages).

If you enjoyed reading this DLGuard review, then be sure to visit our website for articles on writing ebooks and software and selling them online

March 27, 2010

How To Write An Ebook That Customers Will Want To Buy

Filed under: sales software — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Robert W. Smith @ 8:26 pm

At the core of deciding how to write an ebook is the principal that you should produce a book that people will want to read. This applies in old-school publishing just as much as it applies for modern digital formats.

Fledgling ebook business entrepreneurs that are writing ebooks should therefore take the same approach as corporate publishers in deciding how to write an ebook. This article will detail how to research what your readers want and how this can inform how to produce your ebook.

If you are somebody that is very much in tune with your target audience then perhaps you already know what your readers want. If on the other hand you are unsure, or you wish to confirm your hunch, then thankfully there is an on-line tool that can facilitate authors.

Google’s Adword Keyword Tool (just search for the tool name to locate it) is a tool that can analyze all the popular phrases that are used on the internet. It facilitates researching specific words/phrases and also querying websites. The results it provides show the popularity of terms and words used regularly on internet searches.

For anyone authoring an ebook it should be apparent from the results it returns that this tool can give you an insight into people’s needs. If a large number of people are searching for a specific phrase then this informs you that (a) there is a market and (b) what specific sub-areas of a subject people are interested in. The results often show popular searches for sub-areas you may not have considered writing about (e.g. ‘taking better holiday pictures’).

On the other hand, using the tool and entering a URL for a website you are interested in that relates to your subject of interest can garner a list of key phrases used in this subject. Importantly, it can proffer phrases you may not have considered using. For example you may find that many forums on photography would have the phrase ‘digital lighting’ as a popular phrase so you might consider a book relating to lighting techniques when using digital cameras.

Don’t rush this research phase. As the saying goes, an inch is better than a mile in the right direction. Bring together a list of terms and phrases that appear to be popular (according to the tool) and have a close relevance to the subject area you wish to cover in an ebook. Try to focus in on just one phrase that you consider using as the core theme of your ebook. This key concept forms the main thread through your book along which you can introduce related concepts (perhaps using the short list of key phrases from your research to guide sub-concepts).

The single key phrase should also be used in the main title of your ebook. Doing so helps your chances of the book being targeted by your readership based on their search terms, which are after all an insight into their needs. You can use variations of the phrase in the title and reorder the word so that the title reads well.

Writing ebooks and want to sell them yourself? Then read my DLGuard review – the one-stop solution for selling digital downloads.

March 24, 2010

Writing Ebooks To A Project Plan – A Key To Momentum In Your Ebook Business

Filed under: sales software — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Anne J. Mahon @ 8:36 pm

Writing can generally be a fluid creative process but it is easy for this process to spiral off track and out of control. It is fine to allow creative license but this should be contained within the overall process and overall goal of the eBook you are writing.

Therefore, treat writing ebooks with the same approach you would create a physical project (e.g. building a wooden chair). With this approach first brainstorm as many ideas as you can, focus in on ideas that interest you and prototype them. Prototyping ebook ideas can be as simple as white-boarding as many ideas as you can, delving deeper into the ones that interest you and coming up with a story line or chapter guide for your book.

After prototyping your eBook ideas you are ready to start into the execution phase of producing and writing your eBook. The stages mentioned below are formed in such a way that the overall goal of your eBook filters down into each activity.

Establish the goal of your eBook.

Set the goal or goals for your book. Don’t try to muddy the waters with a multitude of goals. Think of any of your favourite books and they probably have a small amount of objectives and one central goal.

Specify all the tasks involved in writing the book.

This can be as simple as taking your rough listing of chapters, add any formatting/presentation that will be required and not forgetting research that you (or others) will need to do. You’ll have your own list of add-on tasks specific to your eBooks subject. Give each task a rough level of effort (e.g. 2 days to complete chapter 1).

Highlight those jobs that require external help; source and schedule their time early on.

Will you use an assistant to run some research? Maybe you will outsource to a designer the books page formatting/icons? Planning to interview experts in the field? Plan ahead and contact these people to front load this work if possible.

Add in contingency for things that may go wrong.

You’ll know better than I what percentage you should give here. Once you write a couple of books you’ll have a better gauge of how many days you run over (or under). Adding 10% to 20% is being prudent.

By this stage you now have a list of all the work to be done. You could use project management software to plan this out and establish the duration of all your work. Alternately, use a whiteboard with the days of the week and add post-it notes for each action to be completed. Or just keep it simple by adding the actions to your diary along with any planned holidays you wish to take (so you know to work around them).

Work the plan.

As the saying goes “create a plan, and then work the plan”. As you start implementing your planned tasks you can tick them off of your list as completed. Keep track of tasks running over. Use your contingency/margin of error for these. This should not suppress the creative writing process. Instead, this is focusing your mind on the value of your time.

Set yourself milestones and track them in a report.

Any project plan should have natural minor and major milestones. These can be chapters/sections/paragraphs. Work each day with a goal of the next milestone to keep motivation levels up. It is easier to think of only have 1,000 words to an end of chapter milestone, rather than the ominous prospect of 20,000 words to the end of the book. Track these milestones in a simple report/document.

Pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Last thing to do is a post-mortem.

Congratulations on getting to the end. One last thing to do is a post-mortem on your plan to highlight delays, unforeseen task/issues, inaccuracies in defined level of effort and how much contingency was used. These can feed into plans for future books and help you grow your fledgling eBook business to greater heights.

Writing ebooks or software and want to sell them yourself? Then read my DLGuard review – the one-stop solution for selling digital downloads.

March 20, 2010

Pioneering DRM Innovation In The EBook Business

Filed under: sales software — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Roderick Dunne @ 2:45 pm

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an area that authors in the eBook business should pay close attention to over the coming years as these technological advancements are determined to safeguard the written word.

What DRM boils down to is working out a way to stop your eBook being sold-on, copied or distributed without your knowledge (and without you benefiting). Technological innovation in the music industry was slow to catch up on providing DRM, resulting in songs being widely distributed on the Internet. Music publishers were slow to act (and react) in that instance.

In the case of the eBook business, rights management was built in from the early days of computer engineering as eBooks are a product of the computing industry, rather than having started out of the regular hard-copy book publishing industry. This key differentiator means eBooks have used technological innovation from an early stage to protect the text and content of eBooks.

Historically, it has been software producers such as Adobe who pioneered the PDF file format for writing eBooks. Their software can be configured to constrain/restrict certain functionality of PDF readers. You may have seen this before where you receive a PDF book but are perhaps unable to copy/paste any of the text. It is possible to even restrict the user from printing out hard-copies of the document. This is DRM in action.

Most PDF file creators/readers/add-ons now provide this functionality. Some prime examples are the Adobe Reader and Microsoft Reader. The Microsoft reader goes one step further by ID stamping PDFs with the purchaser’s details in order to discourage sharing the PDF with others.

In recent times, the Kindle Reader can notify their home servers over an internet connection if eBooks are being illegally shared. The vendor can then decide how to deal with the file sharer (possibly through the courts). They could infact take the option of remotely removing the file off of the player (as they have already done http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/amazon-kindle-1984/). The ramifications of this to device owner’s privacy are yet to be fully understood but it is certain to be a hot topic over the coming years.

In parallel with the hardware producers firming up the DRM security, software publishers are also including functionality into their PDF publishing tools to include the ability to disable an eBook remotely if a customer uses fraudulent credit card details or is seeking a refund (two traditional means of obtaining PDFs at no cost). For most authors writing eBooks, protecting their PDFs through simple configuration of PDF creation software is an ideal solution.

These technological advancements in the eBook business may be too late in coming for the existing published PDFs. These still have copyright protection on their intellectual property once it is written. The new advancements in PDF security and copy protection should however make it even more secure and viable for the average person to start writing eBooks and start profiting from selling eBooks online.

Writing ebooks or software and want to publish them yourself? Read Robert’s DLGuard review and get your software or ebook business online today.

March 6, 2010

Selling Software Online – Digital Download Management Options.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Roderick Dunne @ 11:08 pm

Software applications (a.k.a. apps) have become increasing popular with the proliferation of applications for smart phones. Parallel to this, an industry has grown up around the ways of distributing digital products. The following guide details the main options currently in widespread use. Each approach has benefits and constraints relating to security, control, and cost that will either suit or not suit software authors and publishers.

Third Party Vendors

This is a scenario that should be familiar to most people who have seen online sites listing thousands of applications (freeware/shareware/commercial purchase).

In this model, the software owner uploads their product to the distributor’s site. The distributor controls all sales and promotion of the product for a commission on each sale made. Developers of iPhone applications use this approach to benefit from Apple’s brand and sales channel. Developers of other software for PCs/Macs may wish to use several sales channels to increase their potential sales and diminish the risk of a distributor failing (going bust or failing to sell enough of their product).

The distributor also handles the shopping cart and payment processing which is one less headache for the software publisher. But the cost to the software publisher is that they have little control of their product’s marketing on the distributor’s website.

When customers purchase the software, the download link security is managed by the distributor. This entails controlling if the hyper-link for the software has a time limit or if there is a limit on the number of download attempts that can be made.

Given that you have no access to the purchaser’s details; you cannot build up a membership listing of purchasers. As a result, you miss out on potential loyalty purchases. This could affect you if you intend publishing several software applications and therefore benefit from a listing of loyal customers.

Sales/Download Management & Distribution Tools

This approach provides a more independent approach that will suit many software creators. In this scenario, the software creator installs the software to manage sales and downloads on their own server. This lets them administer their own online shopping cart, secure download links and mailing list data. There are many open source and commercial available that can provide this functionality.

As the software publisher, you retain access to the customer mailing lists and can control how long the download links are to be available for.

After the cost of the sales application, your only cost on each software sale is the commission to the payment processor (e.g. Paypal), and the only operational overhead is the installation and ongoing administration of the sales tool.

In Conclusion

If you are developing applications for which you wish to tie in with the network effects of a large corporation (e.g. developing iPhone Apps) then leverage the third party vendor. You could try going it alone but you will be competing against the advertising and marketing strength of a huge organization.

If you wish to sell software online and retain control over marketing and customer data then installing your own sales management and distribution software solution will provide the benefits and control you seek.

If you are starting out selling your software online and only have one app to sell then using an online distributor would be the prudent option for you to test the waters with your software and establish what the market potential is.

Writing ebooks or software and want to sell them online? Read Tony’s DLGuard review and get started in software or ebook ecommerce today.

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