Let’s be honest – social media has grown into a major aspect of the digital world. It has easily blended into every scope and redefined the way we interact online, the way we shop and simply the way we live in general. It has helped us to view the digital world from a prism of safety and also be informed about practically anything related to our interests.

And that is simply how social media should function. But when it comes to brands and their social media outlets, the situation is kind of different.

The truth is, many business owners actively involved in the social media world are asking themselves: ‘Why can’t I have more followers?’ ; ‘Why my business doesn’t have followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram?’ and ultimately ‘How to get more followers on every social media channel?’

Folks, it’s time to change something. In fact, many things…

(The First) Signs Of Social Media Activity and Encouragement

There is one important thing related to the number of likes that every brand on social media focuses on – it really encourages the efforts. Gaining new followers on social media is a dream for every company, and the first signs of great improvement and building a base of a stable follower count are the simple ones:

• Great social page design (Profile Picture, Cover Photo, About Us section)
• Quality of Content

Without these two, no one is likely to follow a brand, unless it’s a brand established by their friends.

But hey, how do big brands do it? How are they active in growing their followers and publishing stellar content?

How Big Brands Do IT

Now, in order to have a social media strategy, you must know the most popular social media outlets to focus on, no matter the niche you are in. As much as it mattered few years back, now you can market ANYTHING on social media – even if you are selling fish rods.

So, what are the most popular social media channels a brand should focus to?

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. Pinterest
5. LinkedIn
6. Google Plus

In fact, here is a handy image about all of the popular social media outlets and the age groups using them. Although in general, every age group uses every social media channel, from this image you can find where your age group belongs and focus on that outlet more and more!

So, how to penetrate these marketplaces and position your brand as a high-liking authority? Some of the best but also common tips that go along the lines of this are:

• Filling in every form of content in your profile
• Sharing your social media links to your friends via email and other networks
• Placing follow links and widgets on your website to build organic traffic and promote your site
• Adding a social email signature – including every social media outlet as a button

Want more stats? Here is an image about Facebook, the leading social media giant.

While these are all beneficial, they are all group-focused to get you a better image about your social media presence. But how to do it on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – some of the major social media channels out there?

The Unified Approach

The most basic step you can undertake, as in every social media outlet is to fill out your profile completely. This comes as a MUST.

After you do this, writing an awesome bio with one or two select keywords or hashtags is probably one of the best ways to start gaining followers on Twitter. Additionally, adding your URL and location is important – as URLs are great for adding context, location is great for getting found locally via many tools.

Needless to say it, a profile picture and cover photo are essential for any social media outlet. But seeding the first five to ten tweets is even more important – to kick-off with quality content and tweets directly linked to you and your company.

And here it comes.. The big question: How to gain more followers on every social network?

We present you to the 4 way-recipe:

1. Share a link – make sure you share a link in every post you publish
2. Follow – follow people if you want real followers, as easy as it is!
3. Hashtag – explore the world of hashtags and use them in every post, especially on Twitter from where they come
4. Mention – a great way to trigger the interest of online users and get them to know more about your brand, especially useful on Twitter with its direct tweets option but also handy on Facebook when you need to address an answer to a particular person in a group comments section
5. Add your phone number and email address on Facebook to let your followers contact you directly
6. Reach out to real influencers on social media and sharing their content – a great app for this is Buzzsumo, where you can search for the most shared content
7. Stick to the influencers and ‘steal’ their followers – Especially useful on Twitter, find an authority in your niche and get ready to follow his followers. This is useful simply because the interest group you are targeting is exactly your target group
8. Include social media share buttons on every blog post you publish
9. Hold ‘best photo of the week/month’ giveaways and contests, which can be great on Instagram (ex. Post the most amazing photo with our X product, tag us in it and like our page for a chance to get the X prize)
10. Make sure your content goes viral – as much as it sounds generic, the Post Planner tool (www.postplanner.com) might come handy for spreading viral posts
11. Guest blog on popular niche sites of yours
12. Cross-promote with a business that is complimentary to your niche
13. Build a mobile version of your website or even an app – users are now more mobile than ever, and they really appreciate you caring for them (and their devices)!

Conclusion

Of course, all of this may sound easier said than done however once you get to know social media – you will get to know the effectiveness of the tips we shared. Like, follow, share and repost – as the main formula to social media success in the form of more followers!

• Description
• Author Page
• Your Book Sample

Let’s take a look at each one of them. First comes the

DESCRIPTION

Once the reader is on your book page on Amazon, there are a few things that will determine whether or not the reader will buy your book – the reviews, the sample and the description. I mention the description last, because it seems that most authors underestimate it a lot and have very plain and unnoticeable descriptions. This is a great chance for YOU to stand out. Put a little effort and you will be one step ahead of the competition. Let me tell you how. You will have to use some simple HTML tags that will take you to the pro league. First about the length of the description don’t ale it too long, people can read your sample if they want more, the description should be short and straight to the point. Anywhere between 250 – 500 words is fine. Look at the description as a sales page, give people reason to buy your book, tell them what they will get and how it will help them with their problems.

In your description make sure to use colour for your headlines. As well as to make them bold. Here are the basic HTML commands that you will need:

1. <b> The text you want bolded </b>
2. <i> Text you want to be italic </i>
3. <h1> Your headline text </h1>
4. <font color = “here comes the hex code of the colour #44hj00> The text you want colored is here </font>

for web safe colours and getting hex codes you can visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors

Also numbered lists and bullet points are very helpful. They will improve your descriptions appearance and readability.

<ol>

<li> text #1 </li>

<li> text #2 </li>

<li> text #3 </li>

………….

</ol>

For bullet list it is almost the same:

<ul>

<li> text #1 </li>

<li> text #2 </li>

<li> text #3 </li>

………….

</ul>

This simple codes will help your book confers better and look more professional. Now that you are 1 step ahead of the competition, let’s leave them way behind with making everything on your Amazon page looks its best.

Author Page

Another part that most self published authors don’t pay attention to is their author page. When a potential buyer ask themselves, who is this guy, why is he an authority, this is the place they will visit. Put a very professional photo there, preferably one taken by a professional photographer, not a selfie with your phone. If all of your books are on a specific topic it is good that everything on your author page is related to that topic.

SAMPLE

The third thing that will be very crucial for your sales, is the sample of your book, on Amazon it is 10% of the book. So make sure that in the first 10% of your book, there is something that will grab the readers, avoid putting too much advertising there, or other things that may repulse your potential buyers. Make sure that your formatting and spelling are perfect.

If you follow these 3 steps, you will have a lot better conversion rate for your book. Which will help you build your group of loyal readers more easily and of course make you more money.

FREE vs 99c

The KDP Select program is still a must for any new writer out there, because it helps you get more exposure. It is not as effective as it was before, but still the free days allow you to get a lot of reviews and exposure to your book. Keep in mind that KDP Select requires you to distribute your book exclusively on Amazon and nowhere else. There is a saying that 100 free downloads make 1 However I am personally against free days and mostly agains the free launch. Because this way the people that were interested in your book and expecting its release will get it for free. You will miss a lot of solid sales this way. If you don’t have any auhor paltform, maybe still the free launch is the best option for you. If you have a small platform then go for the 99c launch.

The 99c advantages are:

• your paid ranking will improve (which will not happen from the free day)
• You will getting more quality reviews from people that are at least a little bit interested in the topic of your book. They have paid for it after all.

Downsides:

• You won’t get as much reviews as from a free day.

Another pitfall from the free day is that you risk getting a 1 star reviews from people who have no interest on the subject of your book, that bought it just because it was free. These reviews usually sound like this. “I am glad it was free….. ”

Another way of use for the same strategies are the promotion days on regular basis during the KDP Select program. This will help you improve your rankings a lot. Especially if you make 99c promos. You will get a solid increase in the sales after the promotion and you will get a nice number of reviews. A thing you need to keep in mind about a FREE DAY promotion is that it might ruin your review ratings. By getting a lot of unrelevant reviews.

Before maing any FREE DAY promotions you have to prepare well and submit your promotion to FREE BOOK promotion websites. You can get a list from this great blog here: http://www.tckpublishing.com/list-of-sites-to-promote-your-free-amazon-kindle-books/

THE DOMINO EFFECT

In order to understand which strategy works best for you, you need to keep track on your metrics on a regular basis. The most important things to track are the SALES and REVIEWS. These are the 2 things that will determine the success of your books. Sales are directly responsible for your ranking and the most recent sales have the greater impact on your ranking on Amazon Top Paid 100, Hot new Releases, Keyword Search, Customers also bought section.  Amazon is the 3rd largest search engine in the world, do you get it how important is your ranking? Reviews have almost none impact on your ranking, but they have a great impact on your sales, the better the reviews, the better your book will convert. Do you get the picture, it is like a DOMINO EFFECT.

Also important information about promotions and launching is to know that there are some days in the year on which the amount of books sold on Amazon increases tremendously. These are Christmas and Thanks Giving. Last year on Christams day were sold over 2 million books. Just keep that in mind.

As a conclusion I want to say that the more sales you can “squeeze” on your side after launching your book, the more Amazon will help you make more sales and get more exposure. So make everything you can to do the best book launch you can on your side.

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments section below, THANK YOU!

In our previous guide, we talked about how to start a dropshipping business and make the most out of the lack of inventory. Well, extra points on this strategy and a definite support has also come from the major brands – or Amazon as a major online platform nowadays- with its establishment of the famous FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) service.

Amazon is one of the largest eCommerce websites out there. And undoubtedly, it became even larger since the establishment of a logistics network that is ultra sophisticated, diverse and globally present. With covering more than 20 unique categories, many sub-categories and 10 global markets, shopping online has been changed by Amazon in the most fundamental way.

As one of their bigger innovations, Amazon has presented the service called Fulfillment By Amazon or shortly known as FBA. In a nutshell, it is a platform that handles the back-end operations of third-party sellers in the dropshipping aspect of online business, something that we talked about before (check our Guide To Dropshipping). The service covers storage, fulfillment and customer service operations brought in-one or basically the entire back-end fulfillment of an item once it is purchased by a customer online. Making the whole process faster and easier, Amazon has led the way to a new innovation in which it differentiates the third-party sellers’ products from their competitors in a faster way in terms of delivery, as well as a improved access to a wide customer base.

The Main Benefit of FBA

The leading advantage of Fulfillment By Amazon – FBA is definitely the fact that sellers are now able to ship their products in bulk to Amazon and Amazon will pack and ship them as individual orders , making the whole process easier and eliminating headaches when it comes to multiple orders at a time.

When using FBA, it is known that the sales increase for any seller, simply because the FBA method quickens up the whole process of shipping, making the 2-day shipping a reality and an affordable option for every online buyer.

At this point, you may be asking yourself:

How do I start using the Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) service?

FBA is made for anyone. Instead of hiring tremendous spaces for inventory or even stack up your garage so you ship all the products to every buyer, the Fulfillment By Amazon helps in a major dropshipping way – it lets you send over all of your inventory to Amazon, make a real income from FBA and … satisfy the buyer to the maximum, which is our next sub-heading.

So, why are customers always happy with the FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) strategy?

The FBA method starts with you selecting a niche in which you figure out which products will do on the market and which do not sell well. Once you find your perfect products and start the dropshipping business, it is easier to sell the products in just a few days. Whether you are home or on vacation, the great thing about FBA is that it will store your product in the FBA warehouse and send them to Amazon, from where you will digitally receive information on inventory levels and adjust the prices with only your computer and the Internet.

The third-party merchant reality here is another great thing about Amazon. Every buyer on Amazon wants to be assured that his product will arrive shortly and is of the highest quality. Therefore, connecting with an FBA account is beneficial to you and your business, while it attracts the buyers to buy your products, get them faster and ultimately, benefit you with their higher purchases (coming from the fact that the shipping price with FBA is increased).

The Price Checking Solution

In the event that you just started your dropshipping business and do not know the prices of all your dropshipping products, Amazon has thought of that too with introducing us the Amazon Price Checker App – working on every smartphone. And we all have smartphones in these times, right?

Nowadays, everyone can access the Amazon price checker through their smartphones, which is exactly the reason why this service is effective from the seller’s point of view. Many sellers have claimed that they made extra profit of 10-20% in the beginning of using FBA for their online business, while others have profits close to 100%, 400% or even more.

Taking Your Dropshipping Business On Another Level

Another great thing worth mentioning when speaking about FBA is the scalability. When starting a dropshipping business, no one wants to stick with hundreds of products. It is obvious that you need to find your product and target group to sell them to. And in this point, FBA is again perfect – as its introduction revolutionizes the ‘garage selling’ methods and lets you build a dropshipping empire without any actual products you possess.

The FBA Fees

Obviously, there is the fee factor there as well when considering to run a FBA for your dropshipping business. The UPS partnered shipping by Amazon (which is the best in the world) comes with a fee of $9-$15 per a 50 pound box – also depending on your location to the nearest fulfillment centers. And did we mention that the fulfillment centers by Amazon are rapidly expanding, meaning that there certainly is one in your area?

Despite this obvious fee which the customers pay, the commission of Amazon varies depending on the categories you sell your products in, but it’s normally there. And better yet, it is the price that every dropshipper needs to pay for a smooth delivery process and a process of packaging the products meeting the highest standards.

For more information on the fees by groups, weight or in particular, you can check Amazon’s FBA chart here.

Conclusion

The truth is – You sell it, Amazon ships it – and you have nothing to do with that.

The advanced fulfillment method by Amazon benefits your business and guarantees better and more sales. With the direct option of packing, shipping and providing excellent customer support, the FBA solution works well with product returns (which are also rare in cases with FBA, since the products do not underlie any obstacle).

In the end, Fulfillment By Amazon – FBA is a great program worth investigating and starting with if you want to boost your Amazon sales and reach your target group in a qualitative, better, revolutionized, quicker and simply – more effective way.

If you haven’t stepped into the deep waters of social media, you are missing a big opportunity for your business. However, you should not be worried, simply because you can do it easily. If you want to build the perfect social media presence for your business, we suggest you to start with Facebook as a pillar of the other social media tactics we are going to present.

At this point, you may be wondering ‘Why Facebook for my small business?’

Facebook is the largest social media network out there counting over 1,5 billion people from all around the world. If you want to make your brand discoverable online, while being connected with its customers in terms of gaining valuable insights, Facebook is the place that pretty much involves every person who ever engaged with your brand, is trying to or researching or a potential customer of yours.

So, how to set up a killer Facebook page for your business? It’s simple, and it involves 5 main steps:

STEP 1. Choose a classification

At first, you should normally navigate your browser to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. After you are connected, you will be shown even six different classifications to choose from for your page, with each of them providing more relevant fields and details of your business, as seen in the picture below.

Whatever type of business you are running, you should select the proper Facebook category for it. We are selecting the second choice – Company, Org. or Institution as our today’s example in guiding you how to make a Facebook page for your business.

STEP 2. Complete The Basic Information

After you check the choice of the categories, you will be redirected to a page full of boxes, where you’ll need to type in some content and make your Facebook page for your business unique. Basically, the first steps to creating a killer Facebook page for your business involve:

• A written ‘About’ section, which characterizes your business in 2 to 3 sentences. Stick to what your company provides and make sure to include a link to your website as well, which is a great way of attracting people to your website from your Facebook page.
• Upload A Profile Picture, which is the main visual icon of your page, and also the picture which will show in the results section along with the name of your business. Basically, your logo is your best profile picture for a start, however make sure to stick to 180×180 pixels, according to the rules of Facebook. Hovering over your blank picture will show the button listed as ‘Add a Profile Picture’, from where you can add your unique logo.
• Reach More People – Suddenly, you will be greeted by Facebook with a prompt to create an advertisement and draw attention to the audience with your brand. However, we recommend to avoid such actions, simply because your page is empty from the start and may not be as effective as when it’s full of engaging content – and advertised.

STEP 3. Mastering The Admin Panel

The Admin Panel is basically your playground. You have the ‘Page Info’, where you can add or edit the details about your business, the ‘Notifications’ tab, where you can see who interacted with you and in which way as well as the ‘Page Roles’ in which you can give people in your business access to your Facebook page.

Step 4. A Content Strategy

A killer Facebook page for your business is important not only as a logo and information (it’s not Yellow Pages after all!) – but as a complete source of content, images and video. And these three types can be written and posted in the ‘Posts’ section. Basically, you can post anything on Facebook from:

• Plain text status
• Photo with caption
• Link with caption
• Video with caption
• Event page
• Location check-in

Make sure you use variety of content, images and video. This should be mainly oriented to what type of business you are in and what kind of posts your audience expects from you, what kind of posts they would like to read or on which links they would like to click.

Apart from the posts and your main profile picture, your business page on Facebook also demands a Cover Photo. In a nutshell, this is the photo that is the background header of your page and usually consists of your tagline, some quote or even a promotional incentive – whether it’s a contest, discount or new collection (or range of services) in your store, you should feature it.

Here is what a creative cover photo looks like in a Facebook Page.

As you can see, Fanta chose to optimize and blend in the overall atmosphere of its logo acting as a profile picture while blending in the whole background perfectly, so it adds up to the promotional aspect as well.

Step 5. Measuring The Growth

Once you learn how to master Facebook for your business, you should know how to measure the success and undertake further tactics to enrich your follower base and along with that, target new groups of customers and expand your business while increasing your sales.

Fortunately, Facebook has done a great job with it’s in-built tool of measuring your follower metrics with which you can see and get to know where you are standing. The feature is called ‘Insights’, it can be accessed in the top navigation bar, and it includes everything – from the recent Likes and Visits to the Overview and Reach your page is making each day.

And here is how it looks in a screenshot (with the ‘Overview’ tab selected).

EXTRA STEP – Marketing Your Facebook Page for Business

In the end, there is always a need of proper marketing and promotion of your Facebook page. And fortunately again, there are many ways to do it.

Once you start upgrading your Facebook page and filling it with posts, links, pictures and video, you have an availability of running a Facebook Advertisement, which is a pretty great option since it allows customizing the target group who will be able to see your advertisement – which in a nutshell makes you determine your upcoming organic traffic and visitors.

Another great tactics include:

• adding the Facebook button in the header of your website along with the other social media networks (as soon as you establish them), so that your customers can transfer their path from your website to your Facebook page,
• adding the hyperlink to your Facebook page at the bottom of your email signature
• adding your Facebook Page Name to your business cards, windows or promotional material
• running daily promotions with discounts for the customers who will share their products or happy service from your brand

and many other activities which will help you not only build a killer Facebook page for your business, but also position yourself as a brand authority in the marketplace and expect increased sales and levels of customer satisfaction.

If you have heard or seen the successful practices of dropshipping and ever considered what does it take for you to start your own dropshipping business, stay with us today. We’ll explain everything behind the retail fulfillment method that made itself popular in the modern days, in which you don’t have to have your products in stock to manage an entire business.

The Basics Of Dropshipping

In a nutshell, dropshipping is all about perfect organization. It is unlike any standard retail model and revolutionizes the use of third-parties. With this in mind, the dropshipping business doesn’t have any stock yet always has enough in stock to deliver in any location.

The merchant in the dropshipping method is instead purchasing every single inventory from a third party. Whether the third party is a wholesaler or manufacturer of any kind, dropshipping orders are being fulfilled quickly and efficiently without any present stock at the dropshipper.

Now, before we get started on the matter of how to start your own dropshipping business, we need to clear it out – this business has a lot of benefits, but also considerable drawbacks.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Dropshipping

The “Plus” Side

On the good side, there are many aspects which are revolutionized with the dropshipping business.

1. Easy To Get Started – The ultimate ground breaker when it comes to dropshipping is that basically anyone can start it. It is an easy method in which you don’t need to deal with storing any physical products – which means that there are no sufficient investments in inventory upfront. But apart from that, there is a whole other burden which you are not tied with, including tracking inventory, packing and shipping the orders, managing and paying for a warehouse, handling the returns and managing the stock level.
2. Less Capital Required – The most major advantage and a privilege for anyone to start with dropshipping in an easy way is the need for capital, which is eliminated in the very start. This means that you don’t need to purchase any inventory put front nor tie up huge amounts of money in the banks to secure your business. What you need to do is to focus on the three-dimensional synergy – between you as a merchant, the sale and the end-customer.
3. Flexible Location – You can work with dropshipping from the comfort of your home, or any other location with an Internet connection.
4. Wide Variety of Products – You don’t need an inventory, right? That means you are not required of making any pre-purchases – which in other words means that you can have any product on your mind to be resold afterwards. You can sell cars, ship parts – even rocketcraft, if you think it’s profitable!
5. Fully Scalable – If you start with several products and it turns out great, you can easily grow your dropshipping business without doing all the extra work. With a great leverage put on a variety of suppliers, some process automation when it comes to the additional orders as well as expansion on the current plans – you can grow your dropshipping business to new heights – and makes sales grow without any special effort in inventory, or investments of any sort.

The “Minus” Side

1. Low Margins – Probably the biggest disadvantage to ever be considered with dropshipping are the lower margins. With the overhead costs being too much minimal, and the easiness to get started with the business, many suppliers have considered and worked their way through the margins and came up with low margins. However, that hasn’t stopped many people and companies from building a fortune in dropshipping.
2. Shipping Issues – Many times, working with suppliers means dealing with a lot of drop shippers as your competition and dealing with shipping issues and complexities. Whether it’s the charges which are passed along to the customer in the worst-case scenario, the OVERcharges which are a practice of many suppliers or simply other miscalculations, everyone considering to start a dropshipping business should have this in mind.
3. Inventory Issues – As much as there is no inventory at all, this creates problems to track items and which ones are in and out of stock. This is simply due to the inventory changes in dropshipping and the number of orders fulfilled, cancelled, shipped or returned. However, there are a lot of programs and software to sort these issues out, and a constant sync of the inventory with the suppliers is the best practice in dropshipping.

Now that you know both the good and bad sides, you have probably come to a decision where the good sides win over the bad ones (which are not really bad at all), and you still consider to start a dropshipping business and lead it to success.

But how to start? After all, there are many thins to have in mind, right?

How To Start A Dropshipping Business

In order to start your dropshipping empire to-be, you need the first and most basic 3 elements. Without them, you are left with nothing.

1. A Web Store

The home of your products is the web store. Also, it is the most functional part of the system and takes the form of a basic eCommerce store split up in different categories. Whether you are selling clothes or electronics, you need to be able to differentiate the products so that the customer can find his way through them and eventually make an order.

Having an online store is essential to start with dropshipping, as it is the main element on which you get involved with your customers. They make the orders, you ship the products. In a nutshell, that’s how it goes.

So, how to set up a web store for dropshipping?

We’ll explain this in a few step-by-step methods:

1. Get a hosting and domain
2. Install WordPress
3. Configure and install a theme
4. Install an eCommerce plugin (WooCommerce) and configure it for taxes, payment issues, shipping etc.
5. Add all your products you are starting with. Make sure to add a relevant product description and a featured image of the product
6. Structure your website in the best way

Of course, there are platforms like Shopify who offer all-in-one web store solutions for dropshipping, however they usually cost a lot. On the good side, setting up a store on Shopify is easier than on WordPress, in which case you might need help of someone more experienced in the technical side.

2. A Supply Chain

The second part and probably most tangible part in your business is the supply chain. The products from the web store must come from somewhere, and that is exactly your supply chain.

Instead of stocking up products in inventory, with dropshipping you can work on a supply chain with a cost-effective side, since you don’t need to deal with inventory – only with suppliers and manufacturers. Here, you decide who you work with. However, it is important to take advantage on the best manufacturers and sellers which also offer the greatest margin – something that will be worth to you a lot on the long run.

From the product’s perspective, a supply chain is meant to have the most popular and wanted products on the marketplace. That is why considering which products to start with into dropshipping is one of the biggest struggles.

So, how to find a dropshipping supplier or manufacturer for your business?

Before finding a relevant supplier, you need to ask yourself the following questions to make sure you are on the right way:

• Does it have all the products I need?
• Does it have a premium customer support?
• Does it ship to every location – or where does it ship to?
• What are the delivery times?
• What is the profit margin on the products + the shipping costs?

As you can see, the process is straightforward and takes a lot of work. However, if you do it the right way, you can end up with a supplier or a manufacturer worth of having. In fact, most of the good suppliers are most likely already tied with many dropshippers, so their practice in this field is extensive and they are able to guide you in how it works. However, be aware of everything before making a contract!

3. Your Marketing Efforts

Sure, you got the web store and the supply chain. But how will you attract your visitors?

Before starting off, you need a solid digital marketing strategy so you are not left behind with nothing but expenses. Your organic customers must come from somewhere and it’s up to you to decide how you’ll bring them in.

So, what type of online marketing should you use for your dropshipping business?

Some of the best digital marketing practices with dropshipping are:

• Online marketing (Google Adwords, Paid Ads etc.)
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
• Quality Blogging with Keywords
• Competitions, sweepstakes and contests
• Email marketing with an organic mailing list
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques

The truth is, each one of this methods underlies a lot of steps and techniques you will most likely learn on the way to your dropshipping success. They all are considered as Internet sciences and in order to grow your dropshipping business fast, you need to adopt them as the only side of dropshipping you are concerned with – and that is marketing your products.

Conclusion – Is Dropshipping worth it?

Dropshipping is nowhere near the perfect business model. But when you see better, is there such model? If it was, we’d be all running it for sure…

On the good side, dropshipping will make your time online worthwhile with you learning so many things you can also use later. The online marketplace is tied in with basically everything and the number of advantages when it comes to dropshipping are definite. However, there are problems which are a reality, but if you try and solve them like many of the dropshipping giants do, you will be on your way to dropshipping success.

To wrap it up, the good news about dropshipping is that with a careful practice and consideration, you can slowly move your way up in the business, solving every bit of problem and generating stable cash flow. Starting the dropshipping business and failing it won’t leave you with a big investment in water, since it is flexible and fully scalable solution to grow a business online.

So, why not build your own dropshipping empire?

Here are 3 different approaches to getting a great book cover:

• 99 Designs – here you can post a contest and have multiple designers work on your book cover. This way for sure you will have many options to choose from. The down side is that it is pretty expensive, book covers start at 300$ there. But if this is ok with your budget then go for it. This will be the less time consuming way and you have money back guarantee. Usually there is a little extra hidden cost, about stock photos here, so keep that in mind as well.
• Second option is to hire a professional freelance designer from elance.com – this option will require some time to pick the best candidate to do your book cover, but usually the designer will provide everything needed for the cover and you can negotiate a few option for the design as well. You can get all that for around 100$ at a very pro level. The down side is that it will take more time to choose the right designer for your cover. Here is my page on elance where you can hire me to create an unique book cover for your ebook – PROFESSIONAL BOOK COVERS
• The cheapest way is to go for fiverr.com – there you can get a cover from 5$ (usually a little bit more, with stock photos). A good strategy about fiverr is to have a few people work on your cover, this way you can make your own little contest for around 30$. However, don’t expect miracles, imagine how much work and effort you will put into something for 5$, yeah not much, so if your budget allows it, I recommend one of the top 2 options.

Build a Vision for Your Cover

Now that you know from where to get your cover, it is time to learn for what to look for in a book cover. First of all it is very important that your cover is relevant to the category of your book, yes it is good to stand out, but it still has to be relevant, you can’t put a cover suitable for a romance onto a how to book, it just won’t work. On the web 2 things attract readers – bold colours and huge fonts. Keep your titles short, so they can be well displayed from a very small thumbnail. Also it is very important to take a look at the competition, at the ones that are doing well and at the ones that are not, learn from them and build the vision for your cover. Ones you have a vision it is time to collaborate with a designer to make it real.

Communicate well

Give as much information to the book cover designer as possible. This will speed the process and make things easier for both sides. And cheaper for you if you are paying for hours worked. Another important thing to consider is finding the balance between listening to the designer’s opinion and following your vision. I am not going o lie, this is extremely hard. For two reasons. First of all the designer probably has designed thousands or at least hundreds of covers, so maybe they know better about some things, on the other hand no one knows your book better than you. So build your idea, but be flexible while still staying true to the original concept/message of the cover.

Final Thoughts

In a conclusion I want tell you what to expect from your great cover. Why it is important? Great cover will bring more traffic to your book’s page. It will attract more readers to take a closer look at your book. Will this automatically lead to more sales, surely. But what you should be trying to improve is your convert rate. And this is something that a cover itself can’t do. That’s why you should not only focus on the cover be sign, but pay extra attention to your description, sample of your book and your author page on amazon. But I will discuss these things in the next article.

If you plan on writing your own book, this means that for sure you have thought of its cover, the book cover plays a huge part of your book’s overall success, because readers DO judge a book by its cover. In this article we will review the technical side of what you should know in order to be more familiar with the requirements that the major retailers have regarding the book cover.

Probably you’ve heard a lot about different images’ formats, Royalty Free images, PSD files, size requirements, and you might be unfamiliar with them or not have a clear idea what they are. As a professional book cover designer for a long time. I have had a lot of experience with everything related to images. And I will tell you the most important things you need to know, so you feel a lot more confident when you talk with your designers and other authors on this subject. This way you can be also much more clearer about what you want and what you require from a book cover designer. Which will speed up the process and make it much more effective. Let’s start with…

File Formats

JPEG – aslo you can see the extentions – jpg, jpeg, JPG, they all stand for the same format. This is the most common and widely used format as far as photographs are concerned. All the stock photo websites offer images in jpeg. Compared to other formats like PNG, TIFF, GIF, etc it offers a very high quality, sharpness and richness of colors, but unlike the other ones it is well compressed and its size is relevantly small (compared to the others). That’s why it is most used as far as web grapics are related. It is also accepted by all major online ebook retailers for the image format of your cover.

PNG – also widely spread format. It’s unique quality is that it supports transperancy, but this has a downside because PNG are bigger in size than the JPEGs, but they offer cool effects lie shadows, etc. In the world of book covers PNG is the format of choice for 3D covers that you place on your website.

GIF – is the third major web graphic format, as far as book covers are concerned, you won’t need to get in touch with it at all. It also supports transperancy, to some extend (much more limited than the PNG) and unfortunatelly it also supports only 256 colors. It is used mostly for simple web banners, because it supports simple animations and is very small in size.

PSD – the native photoshop format, that majority of book covers are desinged in it. (the ones designed professionally of course). It has all the layers and elements of your design and I highly recommed you to require a copy of it from your designer, becasue if you lose touch with him/her you will be able to handle it to another designer who can easyly tweak your cover, instead of starting from skratch.

When we talk about ebooks you better forget your well known old buddy – PDF. You don’t need to do anything with PDFs when your ebooks are concerned.

VECTOR files – EPS and Ai

The vector images are very good for book covers, because they can be used very well both on print and web graphics. They are very small in size and also can be transormed to any size without any quality loss. They can also be tweaked by any designer to fit your needs perfectly, you can find millions of stock vector files in most of the stock photo libraies.

Another thing that most authors are unfamiliar with is resolution. I often receive instructions from people saying, I want my cover to be 1000×1500 pixels at 300 dpi. Which is a total nonsense. Resolution only matters for print, for exampel if you have a 6″x9″ book cover then for print it has to be 300 dpi, or the pixel dimentions will be 1800×2700 pixels. For ebook and the major retailers requirements for size, the pixel dimention is what matters. But when the dimensions of the book are 1000×1500 pixels, then the dpi doesn’t play any part in the quality of the image.

eBook Cover – Size Requirements

Amazon  Kindle – Ideal ratio of 1,6 and a minimum size of 625×100 px. and a recommened size of 1563×2500 px. In my experience a cover with dimentions between the above and with a ration between 1,33 and 1,6 works just perfectly fine with amazon’s platform. Also keep in mind that if the ratio is lower 1.3 for example your cover will look bigger in the search results on amazon compared to someone who’s cover is with 1.6 ratio (please check the screenshot below from amazon’s search results, as you can see my book cover on top looks bigger than my competitor’s. Important note, if your cover has a white background, you should add 2-10 pixels border around it, so it can pop from the page background in the search results. File formats: Jpeg or TIFF. TIFF files are usually much large than JPEGs which might be slower to load.

Barnes and Noble’s Nookpress – they require a JPEG or PNG file, they also have a file size requirements no more than 2MB and no less than 5kb. About the pixel dimentions, the shortest side has to be at least 750 px. 1400 px are recommended.

SMASHWORDS and iBookStore – Smashwords took iBookStore requirements, because they wanted to give a better experience for the users of high resolution retina displays. They both require the shortest size to be at least 1400 pixels. The ratio has to be between 1,33 and 1,6. It has to be a vertical rectangle. The recommended size is 1600x2400px which has 1,5 ratio (the most common ratio for paperbacks in the USA). For Smashwords it is also a requirement the cover to include the title and author name.

All ebook covers have to be in RGB color mode.

The third part of your necessary knowledge about images are the

ROYALTY-FREE IMAGES

These are the images that you can find on many website that offer stock photos. I personally use DepositPhotos, because it has both good subscription plans and reasonably priced on demand credits to purchase photos. The photo library is about 30 million images so basically all you need, you can find it there. Of course you can choose any of the other websites, but I recommend this one becasue of my personal experience and because I can gurantee that everything is all good there. I don’t want to make fake promises. I will give you only tested advices, you are not the lab mouse here!

The question about royalty-free images is how can you use them?

Firstly there are 2 types of licenses for them – Standart and Extended. You can see a detailed comparison here: http://depositphotos.com/license-comparison.html basically all the stock photo websites, have pretty similar terms for the licenses. However there are a few interesting things as far as book covers are concerned:

For example in many website’s terms you will see that extended license is required for print on demand items. But you will be surprised to understand that books (from createspace for example) are not considered as print on demand items by most websites. The thing is here that extended license is only required when the image adds almost all the value to the product as it is for t-shirts, mugs, etc. As for the book, it might be essential for the cover, but related to the whole book, it has little value. The information in your book is what people pay for not for the image on the cover. In all my work on book covers I have never heard of anyone purchasing an extended license image for a book cover. And I also haven’t heard of anyone getting in trouble, when using a standart license image.

What I suggest as an advice to you is to always require from your designer to provide link from where they got the image used on your cover. Unfortunatelly I still see a lot of people using random images, they found on google, like desktop wallpapers, which can get you in trouble. So be careful to know what is on your cover.

If you have any further things that are unclear to you, please leave me a message in the comments section and I will answer you. Thank you and have a great day!

A New book is coming soon and it will be ABSOLUTELY FREE! Here is the first chapter of it. The topic is Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies and everything you need to know to get started with them. Enjoy the first chapter and subscribe to get the full book for FREE!

What is Bitcoin?

For those of you who have never heard of Bitcoin, it’s a software-based payment method first introduced to the world in 2009. It utilizes a public ledger so that everyone is kept up-to-date with all transactions. Payments made with Bitcoins are recorded in this public ledger which is based on a peer-to-peer system rather than utilizing a middle-party (bank or financial institution). Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency.

Bitcoins are generated to reward users for processing payments. This process is known as mining and involves using computer power to verify and record payments to the public ledger. Mining is not the only way to earn Bitcoins; they can be exchanged for products, services, or even fiat money. Users send and receive Bitcoins electronically by using a virtual wallet.

In other words, two users will each have a wallet that holds their Bitcoins. User A can send Bitcoins to User B by means of an electronic address randomly generated by the wallet. Once payment is sent, it is considered pending and added to a block chain. Once that block chain has been verified by a miner, then the transaction is considered confirmed.

Bitcoin continues to grow as a viable payment method, extending out to larger companies that are looking for an edge on their competition. Online merchants have an added incentive to accepting Bitcoins. Bitcoin fees are much lower that the fees that credit card processors charge of 2%-3% per transaction.

On the downside, Bitcoin has been the subject to some extreme scrutiny. One of the most common concerns is that it can be used for illegal activity. My response to this is that cash can also be used for the same illegal activities. Sites like Silk Coin have been the cause of this scrutiny but was shut down since it was a black market.

A Block Chain

The most important aspect of the Bitcoin system is the public ledger since it records all transactions. So long as mining remains decentralized, Bitcoin will accomplish its neutral stance. Here’s a more detailed look at how it works.

A transaction is recorded to a public ledger and grouped together. Each group consists of multiple transactions. Every 10 minutes, these groups are mined, verified, and added to a block chain. So a block chain is essentially a group of verified transactions. These blocks are quickly published to all networks.

This process allows Bitcoin software to determine when Bitcoins are spend and fairly distribute them. It prevents double spending in a neutral environment without a need for a central authority. There is no single institution or person controlling Bitcoins. Everyone controls them equally.

Bitcoin Mining

Mining is the process used to maintain a block chain. Users are rewarded with newly created Bitcoins and transaction fees paid by the transactions for mining blocks. Miners can be located anywhere. They process payments by verifying transactions and then adding them to a block. In 2014, the reward for adding a block to the chain was 25BTC. New block creation is limited to every 10 minutes to regulate the Bitcoins available on the market.

Transaction fees are optional but will speed up confirmation of a payment since miners can choose which transactions to process first. Naturally, they are going to mine ones with a transaction fee first since they are worth more Bitcoins.

Ownership of Bitcoins

Pay close attention to this section because it’s very important. The ownership of Bitcoins is associated with a specific private key. So when a transaction is sent, it is mixed with this private key in order to prove that the user owns that amount of Bitcoins. If this private key is lost, then so are the Bitcoins. You must keep it safe at all times since lost Bitcoins cannot be recovered. This private key should also be protected since theft can occur.

Security, Theft, and Loss

Since all Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a public ledger, there is a justified concern for anonymity. Therefore, users are able to use different addresses for each transaction. This helps to protect their privacy.

Preventing unauthorized transactions from a user’s wallet is paramount to Bitcoin security. A private key acts as a safeguard for the owner. Again, protect this key because you can lose your Bitcoins if you lose this private key. The best way to protect this key is to always back up the key to an offline computer and use paper printouts. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

With that said, Bitcoin is still relatively new so now is the absolute best time to start using them. This book will show you how to get started. I’m going to walk you through the creation of a wallet, show you how to mine, and also show you where you can spend those Bitcoins. There are so many opportunities here that are just waiting to be seized.

If so chances are you have been stuck in wondering if someone will buy your book and what should be the title. Most people are stopped by these 2 obstacles. With these article I will try to get these 2 out of the way, so you can continue with your dream to write a great book.

Research Your Ebook Idea

When you have a good non-fiction book idea, it is a must to research it well. The first stop of your research should be google. Search your key phrase (and some similar ideas around it), see how many people are searching for such things, what are the most searched keywords related to your topic. You can find the google keyword tool HERE. Aim for eywords with more than a few thousand searches per month.

Next step, check the competition on Amazon. Enter your keyword, browse your potential categories. If the top ranked books there have a lot of reviews and a good paid rank (above 30 000), this means that your idea is good and a lot of people buy this type of books. This research will not only proof your idea, but it will also point you the right direction for your ebook title. Remember Good titles sale ebooks and bad titles are instantly forgotten. Your title has to be very punchy and attention grabbing. Your title should not be general, like “make more money” or “lose weight”. It has to be very specific. For that reason you should firstly define your one key reader.

Answer these questions:

• What do they want to achieve?
• What problems do they have?
• What are they afraid from?

A great approach is the title to be the desired out come people will get from reading your book. Another proven model for a better title is to add a number at the title. This makes things very specific. Readers love that.

Some great examples of great titles are:

• Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back To Health – Very specific solution to lose weight
• The 4-Hour Workweek – The infamous book of Tim Ferriss is a good example of offering a great solution to all your problems in just 4 – Hours a week.
• How to Create $1600 per Month Niche Websites for Passive Income – the usage of the exact amount of money builds trust and expertise, you suddenly thing that the author has already done what he promises and seems much more legit.
• The $100 Startup – another great example of understanding the reader’s needs, fears and desires.

You got the idea, right?

So lets sum it up. To proof your ebook idea and to have a great title, you need to follow these steps:

• research your keywords
• research the competitions
• define your one key reader (the person that will need your ebook)
• offer the solution in your title

Really simple, right? If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to get updates on my new posts coming out every week.