Greetings and Salutations!

One of the key things I've been plowing hard at these first weeks of 2015 is an ENORMOUS push on ebooks. On all of my websites, including BellaOnline, ad revenue is just plummeting. On the other hand, ebook revenue is skyrocketing. I know authors who are making $100,000 a month or more with ebooks. So I have been undergoing a substantial change in how I strive to pay the bills.

Here's how it works. I'll use BellaOnline as the example but this should also work on any other websites you run, too.

I have a low carb website with hundreds of thousands of visitors each month coming to read my low carb content. Since January 1st I've added another 27 articles to that site - more than one a day. Google sees that heavy activity and then boosts my entire site in their ranking system as a "valuable often-updated site" which means even more people then find me. These don't have to be rocket-science articles. For example, Bob made me a low carb smoothie for lunch. I took a photo of it, wrote down the recipe, and posted it. Fifteen minutes and done. Yes absolutely you can have longer stuff too, that you schedule in, but quick and easy is key for most of us. Most of us are fairly busy!

I post each day to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and my forum. Again, these don't have to be complicated. I just post what I'm eating and ask people what they're eating. It takes two minutes at the most. It keeps people engaged and remembering to visit my site.

Now here's how this all helps, since there is pretty much no ad money left in the world ;). (OK I exaggerate, but it feels like that). The web content and visitors are all driving to your ebooks.

Look at one of my recent posts. The Tilapia with Vegetables recipe Bob made for me a few days ago.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art300658.asp

See it's fairly straightforward, a photo, short article, and done. Now look at the bottom.

There is ONE GRAPHIC there. One graphic that is sized to fit easily on mobile phones - we now get over half of our traffic on mobile devices so it's critical that you think about that when adding those end-of-article promotional links. The visitor clicks on that one graphic and gets taken to my list of ALL of my ebooks to buy. I currently have 13 of them. And they can buy them on any platform they wish. Kobo, Kindle, iTunes, you name it. People around the world use all different platforms so it's important to give them their options.

Here's the beauty of this.

I put that one image/link at the bottom of EVERY article. One JPG reference. If in the future I add a 14th book, I just change that one source JPG. All of these articles will instantly update to show the new image with all 14 covers.

That link goes to my main listing of ebooks. If I ever need to change any of my ebooks for any reason, or add to them, I change that one list. Every single article is now all set.

ONE graphic. ONE link. Easy to click on, easy to update.

Ebook sales are HUGE. I am getting close to crossing into a five-figure-a-month income from ebook sales. You can't do that with just one ebook. You need a bunch of them, so that when someone buys one and likes it, they have more to buy. You want that fan you've connected with to have lots of other content to buy. It's the same reason authors write connected series. Authors go through all that work to find a fan. Once you have a fan, give them more to read!

Think of ways to break the ebooks out into meaningful topics. Sure, I could have made one massive book with all recipes in it, but some people are out there specifically looking for no-cook low carb recipes. Some are looking for low carb smoothie recipes. By providing those specific options, you get found. Then they'll gobble up your other books.

I know I've said this before, but as a web writer, I strongly, strongly encourage you to monetize your online efforts with matching ebooks. That is the key to success now. You already have all this traffic coming in to read your articles. Put all that traffic to work. Get it all to drive people to your ebooks. Then the more traffic you build, the more ebooks you sell. The more ebooks you sell, the more loyal fans you get who want even more ebooks from you. The more articles you write, the more fodder you have to create more ebooks from. Each of my low carb ebooks there is a compilation of articles from my site. So everything supports each other and your time is optimized. All of the new articles I wrote in January got added to my ebooks. Nothing is wasted.

Let me know if you have any questions at all about any stage of this process!

Sincerely,

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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