Do I need a website to sell my eBook?

A few days ago I posted my latest eBook Cover designs and received a couple of emails from a few readers who are currently in the process of writing their own eBooks. One sista now wants me to design her cover, but she had a few questions AND I thought my answers might be of interest to you.

She wanted to know where to sell her ebook and also if she needed to have a website. My response:

I sell all my eBooks and other digital content via eJunkie. You can sign up for about $5 a month and get an easy to setup online store (like mine). eJunkie charges you on the number of products you have, not on the number of sales you make. They offer secure downloads so you can track and limit the number of times viewers can access your content AND they integrate easily with paypal, Google checkout, authorize.net, clickbank and others.

Even though I use my ejunkie store, I also like to create other types of websites to promote my eBooks. Its hard to make sales when you just send viewers to your store page. For that reason, ebook authors also use landing pages (details here), one page websites created to sell a specific product.

It helps if you can direct them to another space like your Blog, so they can learn more about you, your products, and your following. Your blog is the ideal place to build relationships with potential customers, so people can start to find real value in what you do. If you don’t have a blog, you should start one.

For serious webpreneurs with a plan, I always recommend using the wordpress.org platform to setup a wordpress blog on your own hosting plan. If you are not ready to shell out some cash, you can setup a free blog. I would suggest using blogger.com instead of wordpress.com only because with blogger you have more options as far as setting up your blog them and less restrictions on posting adsense links on your blog.

As mentioned above, in addition to promoting my eBooks and other content on my blog, I also like to create one page websites also known as landing pages, to market specific products. In short, its a good idea to have a combination of your store, your blog, landing pages, and social profiles to market your eBooks and other products online.

If you haven’t already done so, download my 7 part audio series on how to setup and sell eBooks online. For more how to help you can also watch my complete Sistas Who Blog video series which includes a detailed tutorial on using eJunkie to sell or promote your ebooks online. You can also get access to these videos by downloading my Blogging for Business Starter Kit.