The Best Day for eMail Marketing

I recently came across an October 2005 AllBusiness.com article that talked about the best days to send out your email campaigns. Ir’s an interesting read.

two separate studies found that Monday was probably the best day to send commercial e-mail … emails sent on Monday had delivery rates markedly above average. The delivery rate on Friday was slightly below average, while the Saturday and Sunday rates were significantly below. Saturday was the worst day to send an e-mail in terms of delivery rate.

But contradicting this is all the other research that indicates later in the week as best. Confused? I am. I suggest you read the article with a grain of salt and start testing on your own list.

Personally, I found that my most productive day with email marketing was Monday and Thursday with the worst (by a huge margin) being Saturday.

Read the AllBusiness.com article …

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Let’s be blunt

If you’re here to learn how to slap together a quickie one-time-offer ebook, overflowing with affiliate links and charge $47, $67, $97 or whatever then how nicely can I say this … keep on going, this ain’t the site for you.

Now, if you’re after a place on the web to learn/discuss how to develop, create, package and sell quality eProducts (yes, even eBooks) then come on in and enjoy. You’ll learn how not to only do all that but develop your very own e-publishing firm.

eProducts (especially eBooks) have had a bad rap from day one. And rightly so. There are so many poor quality eBooks going around that are in dire need of editing, re-designing, and yes, even scrapping.

Sometimes it’s a wonder that any eBooks get sold at all. But they do. There’s a sucker born every minute and play to that persons emotions you’ll pocket some money … but I can bet you’ll never get a cent from then again and they’ll ten of their friends and no sooner than you;re finished with your first offering your name is mud.

So, let’s be blunt again. Here at ePublishingDaily my desirable core reader will be one who passionately wants to publish and sell quality eProducts - be they eBooks to fully-fledged multimedia packages. They want to be in this business for the long-term. They understand that to ultimately succeed one must develop credibility and trust with their audience over time - because they want to sell not just that first product to a customer and then move on. No, they want to sell every product they create to that one customer. They want customers and readers who are looking forward to their next product.

My core reader will want to spend time developing, researching, creating, designing, packaging and marketing their eProducts to achieve strong results over the long term. They will have pride in what they’re offering to the public.

If that’s you, then welcome to ePublishingDaily - I think you’ll enjoy it here.

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The Secrets to Price-Setting

BusinessWeek has an interesting article on the issue of price-setting, going for the angle that many are pricing their products and services too low.

This is a topical issue for information entrepreneurs because on the one hand many are cynical with the current pricing “standards” out there (think: $47, $67, $97) and then there are those that have the view that because the overheads and delivery requirements are next to nothing the price should be on the lower end.

From the BusinessWeek article…

The price you charge for your products or services is a major way you communicate your firm’s value in the marketplace. Yet many small business owners set prices arbitrarily or sheepishly follow the crowd.

For information entrepreneurs there are many facets to setting our prices for our products. Firstly, one has to rid the mind of the thought that because it’s delivered electronically it SHOULD be sold cheap. We are selling information and in these time-poor times people are willing to pay top dollar for concise information that meets their needs.

The other reason why information products are priced in the higher range (as seen by some) is the affiliate equation. More and more information entrepreneurs are telling me that the vast majority of their sales are coming through their affiliates (sometimes as high as 70%). And affiliates usually want nothing less than 50% and then some.

Price is the most important factor in determining profit. Yet countless businesses fail to get their pricing strategy right

But at the end of the day, the price is what the market will bare - and the market is not sentimental or shows any sympathy. You’ll quickly know when you’ve got it wrong.

Read the BusinessWeek article: The Secrets to Price-Setting

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WordZe - The New Keyword Research Tool on the Block

Researching keywords is one important aspect at the beginning of an information entrepreneur’s new product development.

You may have done the basic research, checked out the forums and found a niche target audience with a clear want. Now you want to run it through search engines and keyword research tools to find out the numbers - for example, how many times the keyword or keyword phrase is searched for. It’s an important step along the way to realizing if your product idea will go ahead or be shelved.

So with keyword research tools in mind, along comes WordZe.

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This Week at ePublishingDaily

I think I really hit my straps this week here. I knuckled down and finally got out (what I thought) was some nice posts.

I’ve been a bit sloppy around this blog but that will be about to change. I have a few side ventures but various issues that are out of my hands have meant that they have had to be put on hold.

The other day I basically said goodbye and enough about blogging about blogging, ceasing some blogs and stepping back so as to be more focused on my main goal: being an information entrepreneur and reporting on it - right here at ePubDaily.

I have a swag of posts and post ideas up my sleeves and I’m slowly developing my “voice” on a range of issues that affects the industry we are in.

You’ll be hearing that voice in a few posts next week - but basically they’re of the view that I’m after ethical and quality information publishing - no cheesy gimmicks or underhanded marketing and launch techniques.

Okay. So thanks for dropping by (make sure you introduce yourselves - comment or email, whatever you fancy) and I’ll see you next week.

This week’s posts included:

- The Power of Affiliates

- PDF Functionality in Office 2007 - Yes, No or Maybe?

- Why Bloggers Choose Better Titles than Authors

- 42% of Bloggers Look to Information Products to Monetize their Blogs

- Can you use YouTube to market your info product?

- The Buzz on Adobe Digital Editions

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The Buzz on Adobe Digital Editions

Last week I reported that Adobe had released (in Beta, of course) Digital Editions their big play to kickstart the ebook market after many failed starts.

I went searching around the blogosphere to see the reaction on the release and overall it is positive.

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Can you use YouTube to market your info product?

I was interested to see well-known author Michael Connelly recently utilizing YouTube to publicize his new book.

The nearly 10 minute piece, basically a trailer with actors acting the first chapter was recently added to YouTube by the authors publishers. So far it has been viewed more than 10,000 times. Not bad.

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42% of Bloggers Look to Information Products to Monetize their Blogs

More professional bloggers are looking at monetizing their blogs via information products according to a recent survey.

According to the survey, 42% of those surveyed plan to monetize their blogs by creating and marketing their own information products - a big jump from the 29% at the start of the year.

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Why Bloggers Choose Better Titles than Authors

Liz over at Successful Blog has an interesting post discussing the collaborative effort of writing a book with her Bookcraft 2.0 series.

What intrigued me most was this paragraph, talking about titles…

This is where bloggers outshine the average off the street author. Bloggers know the value of relevant key words. They know readers search for important terms. Bloggers understand from their daily publishing that they should call a book what it is, not something clever that readers won’t understand.

And I totally agree. In the competitive marketplace that is the blogosphere attention to such detail is paramount - and nothing is more important than hooking the reader with a catchy headline.

Without realizing it those of us who write posts day-in, day-out are developing a new skill - the skill of creating that catchy headline.

Another place where you can even learn more about headlines that work is Brian Clark’s Copyblogger - which I urge all information entrepreneurs to visit and take the time to browse through the archives like I’m currently doing - it’s a real goldmine.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

PDF Functionality in Office 2007 - Yes, No or Maybe?

A few months ago word came out that Microsoft was going to include PDF functionality in their next version of Office.

When Microsoft quietly let the world know it surprised many - because it was done with little fanfare. But it was clear why they decided upon this. Government said they would only use office suites that only supported open formats … like PDF.

Microsoft has literally been dragged kicking and screaming into accepting open standards (remember: Microsoft have made their billions on stringent proprietary software over the years), but times are a changin’, hence their move to include PDF in Office 2007 - and the people (that’ll be the customers who fork out the money for such products) have been asking for this for years.

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