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Seasons, Anniversaries and Special Events - The Impact They Have on Your eBook Business
The right books can be great sellers at the right time of year. Note the word 'right' because certain times of year are notoriously unkind to the mainstream info products seller.
The run up to Christmas, for instance, typically brings little demand for business opportunities books which often fare better just after Christmas when credit card and other bills land on the doormat and tempt the individual to look again at ways to regenerate his fortunes.
Summer, too, with holidays on the horizon, creates a feelgood factor that outweighs worries about boring old things like bills, work and money. When the cold months return though, it's a different matter, there's little to do now but work out ways to make money for next year's travels .... and then there's Christmas closing in ...!
Generally speaking, January to June and September to November, are kindest to anyone selling business opportunity and other moneymaking titles, including marketing, investing in stocks and shares, building a property portfolio, making money at auction.
So what happens in between, how does the specialist seller of business opportunities and moneymaking books survive the leaner times? The answer is he either makes enough during the good times to cover the bad, or he finds something additional to sell with all-year-round or seasonal appeal.
Seasons, Anniversaries, Special Events - A Marketers' Dream Come True!
Seasons, anniversaries, special events - some of universal interest, like birthdays and family celebrations, others with a high market following, like Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, Mothers' Day, 100 years since someone famous died or something important happened, and so on, and so on. And so on!
The market though extremely time-sensitive is enormous for the well-organized info product seller who can earn more in one week than most people make all year.
The benefits are many and include:
* High Niche Market Potential. At Christmas, almost everyone thinks Christmas, and much the same goes for Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween. The result is niche markets that last just a few weeks, sometimes just days, but they're potentially the most profitable of all.
* History Repeats Itself. Seasons and anniversaries come and go, and what you learn one year will benefit coming years' endeavors. You'll learn which ads to repeat and which to bin, which media to focus on and whose advertising sales reps. to cold shoulder, while all the time building a list of enquirers and buyers for future promotions.
* Great Research Potential. Every season, anniversary and special event comes with ready made ideas for you to copy next time round. Be careful, however, and learn to distinguish between legal and illegal copying of other people's ideas, products and intellectual copyrights. When you know the distinction, buy as many advertising publications as possible for your target audience, visit web sites, save marketing emails, compile a huge swipe file of print and online marketing ideas and initiatives. Especially product ideas.
* Sense of Urgency To Buy. Most seasons, anniversaries, special events, are of limited duration and people know if they don't buy soon, the ads. will quickly disappear. There's a sense of urgency attached which forces people to buy NOW, unlike non-time-sensitive promotions which might be put to one side to study later, and promptly forgotten!
* All-consuming Passion. Virtually every season, anniversary, special event has a huge audience of followers, and usually buyers, too, of theme-related products and services. At such times of year, the occasion fills most people's minds, most of the time!
* Nostalgia. The most popular seasons, anniversaries, special events, have been spoken about, filmed, written about over many years, sometimes centuries, so a mass of research material exists which can itself form the basis of your product. More than this, history itself interests today's readers, so you could create a product based purely on the background to a particular season, anniversary or special event. Take virtually any publication and you'll find the Christmas edition of issue one to forever packed with articles, ideas, snippets of useful information, jokes, puzzles, pictures, and more, which can be lifted untouched (out of copyright or with permission only), or adapted (by rewriting, paraphrasing) for your info products.
* Niches Within Niches. Many very profitable market niches exist within already seller-friendly niches. Cat lovers for example, and Elvis fans, are highly responsive buyers within other profitable markets, such as Christmas where books, calendars and diaries come bearing pictures and facts about most popular subjects, including cats and The King.
* Free Publicity. Opportunities for low-cost, no-cost marketing are great, as for example where a book about James Dean was launched on the anniversary of his death and sparked countless television and media mentions through carefully timed news releases about the book.
* Media Self-Promotion. It's a well-known fact that few writers specialise in seasons, anniversaries and special events, so editors are frequently short of features around those special times and will welcome articles, fillers, photos, cartoons and other printable matter in exchange for a write up about your products.
Now, let's hear anyone complain that 'certain times of year' being are to publishers!
This article is condensed from Avril Harper's 'The Ultimate Resell Rights Challenge' (www.resell-rights.net)
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About the author:
Avril Harper (avril@clippingsfactory.com) is a writer and publisher, as well as a double eBay PowerSeller. More of her articles can be found at www.publishingcircles.com