Selling ebooks? Increase conversion with instant download 

The easier you make it for people to buy, the more of them will take the plunge.   

If you’re selling ebooks or other downloadable products, let people download them instantly as soon as they’ve paid. As long as people actually want to buy what you’re selling, it’s a sure-fire way to increase conversion. You’ll hook impulse buyers too. 

How? Try ejunkie. It’s an extremely cheap and efficient way to let people pay by PayPal, Google and a load more major secure payment gateways.  It only takes a few minutes to set up an account, upload your ebooks and generate button code to for each toadd to your site.

I subscribe to their cheapest service, five US dollars a month, which more than covers my needs. In my case a person clicks on the ‘add to cart’ button to buy my ebooks. They’re taken to PayPal. Once they’ve paid they download their ebooks instantly. I get a copy of the transaction for my records. All this takes place off-site. All I do is add a bit of simple code. Brilliant! 

See e-junkie in action on my ebooks website. 

I built my simple personal comedy ebooks website –

A surprise really. I haven’t dedicated much time to it. I’ve just been fiddling around whenever I’ve had a few spare moments. 

Key phrase: comedy ebooks

• number 2 on page 1 Google UK
• number 1 on page 2 Google web

Key phrase: comedy ebook

• number 1 on page 1 Google UK
• number 10 page 1 Google web

Key phrase: funny ebooks

• number 2 on page 1 Google UK
• number 5 on page 1 Google web

Key phrase: funny ebook

• number 4 on page 1 Google UK
• number 4 on page 1 Google web

Here’s how I got my ebook site onto page 1 of Google

• named the pages sensibly so they match my key phrases: funny-ebook, comedy-ebook etc
• used at least 300 words of keyword-rich copy on every page for search engines to grab hold of
• wrote reasonably seo-aware meta data
• updated the content at least twice a month
• added a sitemap
• did a few hours’ consistent manual link building via online directories with decent page ranks – from 2 to 6
• wrote about it in a couple of blogs, using key words and phrases in my link text

This is what I did to keep human visitors happy 

• made the site interactive on a very basic level, with special offers and free ebook previews
• added images of the ebooks’ covers for visual interest
• provided payment by PayPal for customer trust and familiarity
• added extra services: ebook design and ebook editing 
• launched a new ebook, with its own web page, every three months

This is NOT a perfect site… in some ways blancminge.com is fairly awful. I’m only part way through completing the basic things that make a site SEO-friendly. And if I’d had my head straight the day I bought it, I’d have dreamed up a url with ’comedy ebook’ or ‘funny ebook’ in it.

Despite all that, in ten months my comedy ebook site hauled itself up onto page one of Google’s SERPs, for a variety of key phrases, across the entire interweb. Cool, that.

It just shows you how far you can get on your own, taking regular, sensible steps to build up a solid presence via nice, additive free, natural SEO. No tricks, no dodgy stuff and no big bucks. Just persistence.

E-books are hot. But is there any commercial value in uploading an e-book to your website?

Provided the content is relevant, informative and well written, an e-book should ding the right bells. A great e-book can pack enough power to infuence buying behaviour and increase conversion. 

Upload your e-book as a .pdf and you tap into more good stuff. Search engine algorithms like words. They’ll ‘read’ the .pdf, checking its relevance against the site’s content. If they like what they ‘see’ they’ll make your site more visible to people who are searching for your type of business using your key words and phrases. 

If visitors enjoy your e-book, there’s a chance they’ll tell other people. Some might link back to your site or blog about your e-book, which’ll help raise your visibility and give your business added credibility.

Update the e-book itself whenever you have something new to say and you’ll benefit again. Search engine bots tend to revisit sites for re-evaluation more often when the content’s refreshed regularly.

Once your e-book has been created and formatted, adding to it should be fast and inexpensive. Uploading new editions takes seconds.

And you can track response and check for traffic increases easily and fast using your regular webstats package – great for informed planning.

The verdict? From a marketer’s perspective, a quality e-book is a valuable element of the marketing mix. Go write!