There’s a bit of a change to the site I’d like to point out: check over on the right hand side, and you’ll see there a are two new pages: resources and signup.

Adding the pages wasn’t that big a deal really, and I hope it will be helpful to have the resources listed all in one place. If I’ve done this right, there should be a clickable link for everything I’ve listed. If not, or if the link doesn’t work, please leave me a post.

The sign up did take some actual programming, kind of. I had to generate the form through AWeber and then get it into the post. I’m still figuring out the delivery part of the signup bonus, but I’ll get it to you one way or the other. It still isn’t pretty, I obviously have more to learn, but I’m getting there.

I hope you’ll sign up for my list. Generally, I’ll use the newsletter to let you know when I’ve posted something new, what it is I’ve written about, and what new resources I’ve found. I don’t have much of a budget, so there won’t be many things for sale. I won’t recommend anything I haven’t already tried.

I’m using an autoresponder company called AWeber to handle the newsletter. In all my research, that company has been recommended time and again and with reviews way above those of any other service. I’ve also noticed that many of the newsletters I’m subscribed to either were already using AWeber or changed to it at some time over the course of my subscription. Aweber has extensive training available, and by all accounts offer great service. They even have a feature to check that the emails you’re sending out aren’t spammy (a free part of the basic service). I think this is important especially for us newbies, as we learn our way along this business. As you get ready to think about getting your list started (which should be high up in your priorities), do check out AWeber.

I’m still slogging through my files to find products with value, that have all the parts I need (not just the book; I need to be sure there’s a picture of the book cover, and I have to be certain that I have the rights to sell it). While I was doing that, it occurred to me that my comment about rebranding books might not have been very clear.

One of the primary reasons for selling ebooks, especially in the internet marketing world, is to get those books into circulation, providing useful information, so that readers will want more of that kind of information from you. One excellent way to do this is to include links to your website in the book. Readers click on the link to see what else you have to offer, and they then are given the opportunity to buy something else from you and sign up for your newsletter. It’s called viral marketing; your name and website get spread around like a virus.

This works well with resale and master resale rights to a book, because you, the purchaser and reseller of the book, are not allowed to change anything in the book, including the reference to the author’s website. And that works well for the author. But the producers of those products have found a way to further encourage their buyers to promote their products through rebranding.

With rebranding, you, the buyer, sign up for the seller’s affiliate program, and get an identification (generally a number) specific to you. When your buyer goes to the author’s website and buys something there, you get a share of the revenue, generally, from what I’ve seen, about 50% of the money spent by your customer.

The rebranding process is quite simple, once you’ve been shown what to do. So, I’m going to show you. (Putting this together gave me the opportunity to learn how to upload a book file to my server, so we’re all learning.) Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to do screen captures to give the full visual, so I hope my instructions are clear.

Here’s a free book for you: A Beginner’s Guide To Yoga. Right-click on that link and save the file to your computer (in a place you’ll remember - perhaps in a folder for exercise or health products). Now go to that folder and open the file. You’ll see 4 items: Brandable eBook, Yoga pdf, Yoga Salesletter, and License. These are all the tools this seller is giving you to sell his product. Unzip the files. You’ll need winzip, if it isn’t already on your computer (there’s a free trial). You also need Adobe reader to open .pdf files (a free program). Just click on the blue links to get them.

Open the license first (a good habit to start right now). This is an excellent example of what to look for, although not all are this clear and complete. You’ll see that I do have the right to give the product away, and I can also include the Master Resale Rights in doing so.

Next, you’ll want to open the Yoga pdf folder and take a look at the product to be sure it’s something you want to sell and have your name associated with.  Look at the salesletter, even if you’re not sure you’ll use it. Get a feel for what this seller claims and how that sets up with the product itself.

Now, to the rebranding. Open the Brandable ebook folder, and then open the readme.txt document. Now you have the instructions to use the rebrander, but you first have to sign up for the affiliate program, in this case by going to http://www.plr-content.com/affiliates/. It takes a few minutes, you have to confirm their email to get the information, but even one sale should take care of this litte bother. Once you have your number, replace the xxxx in the text file, and copy the entire link (highlight the link and press control+c, or right click and select copy). Now double click on the rebrander software.  Replace the link and click on rebrand. You’ll be prompted to save the new book, A Beginners Guide To Yoga_rebranded, so save it into your yoga folder.

Now, since you don’t really want your customers to rebrand this away from you, you’ll want to clean up your folder. Delete the yoga pdf, delete the brandable ebook folder, and change the title of your branded book to remove the “rebranded” part of the title. If you’re going to sell rights with the book, be sure the license stays with the package. And be sure to keep a copy of the license for your own records.

You now have a book to sell, the sales material to go with it, and the opportunity to make more on it than just the sales price.

I’ve spent the last two days going through my files to find the books I want to start listing on eBay.  In doing that, I’ve discovered an entire area that I’ve not seen addressed yet.

It should make sense to us to check each ebook and package we download to be sure it includes what it says it includes, but I had no idea that I’d find such a mess in my files! I found quite a few files that didn’t include the book the title of the file indicated, files that had requirements that I register my copy of the product before I could resell it, and files that were simply sales pages for the books.

I do know that when I began collecting this stuff as a newbie, I didn’t know even what I was supposed to be looking for. And, when presented with a huge number of products being given away, I’d just left-click and download away. My bad. However, I thought I’d been more discriminating of late. Wrong.

I think it’s important that we make sure each product offers some value. Even if you’re doing penny auctions, your customers have a right to get what they think they’re getting. We want to be sure they see us as sellers with honesty and integrity. As we move along, you’ll see that one our primary goals is to get our buyers to sign up for our newsletter or other products. Giving them a bad first product will guarantee they quickly unsubscribe from that newsletter or make sure they never buy from us. There is one pretty well-known marketer from whom I’ll never buy again because of bad/non-existent help with his product when I found it wasn’t what I expected.

Along this line, I removed a resource from the last post because all the products I downloaded from the site had a problem. I will be contacting them about those problems, but for now I certainly couldn’t recommend the site. Even though the products were offered for free, I have to wonder what kind of care they put into their purchase offerings.

So, the going is slow in my review of the books I’m going to try to put onto eBay. At least I can be somewhat confident that customers will get what they expect (knowing full well that there is always the possibility of dissatisfaction when dealing with the public).

One other thing: a number of the products I have came with the option to be rebranded. This means that I could put links to my web page inside the book, and/or I could put an affiliate code in it, so that I might make some money should my buyer then buy something from the original writer of the book. As nearly as I could tell, most of these books came to me from someone other than the author, and so marketers missed out on the opportunity to brand them themselves before giving them to me. I think they missed out because they didn’t fully review what they had. A few affiliate sales will more than make up for the time I’m spending looking at these products.

Next up, I’ll tell you about finally getting these ebooks listed, and we’ll see what kind of adventures that brings.

Today I thought I’d tell you about some of the resources I’ve found to be helpful in at least getting a plan together to start this business. They’re all free, although most offer an upgrade for pay. I’m only using the free resources at this time; many of these products are on my “products to look at” list when I start generating some money.

First, there’s a new giveaway event, fittingly called the Free PLR Giveaway. There are bunches of new products, including ebooks, software, and memberships. They seem to be primarily focused on internet marketing, with all kinds of useful information. I haven’t had time to download and read everything yet, but I recognize lots of reputable marketers taking part. They’ll be adding new products, but I don’t know how long the items will be offered. This is actually Round 3 of this particular event; I picked up lots of useful products from the first two.

The eBay MasterClass site is a valuable resource for eBay information. You’ll find more how-to videos, ebooks, and software.

PLR Wholesaler is another great resource for private label rights products.

I have subscribed to a number of newletters that give advice on eBay selling. One that is specific to ebook selling is the Planetsms newsletter. It’s written by a Platinum Power Seller who offers some great information.

I think that’s enough for you to think about and look at for today. Don’t be put off when you need to leave your email address. If you don’t like being on the email lists, you can always unsubscribe. For now, the free information and products you’ll pick up will be well worth your time.

You may have noticed that when an offer is made to you to purchase or you are given ebooks or software, there is often a mention of what kinds of rights come to you with that item. When you’re just starting out, trying to get information to start an on-line business or collecting things to build your library, this might seem that important, but it is something to which you should pay attention. This information will become important if you decide you want to sell electronic products later on.

The very most important thing for you to do is to check what the documents themselves say.  Sometimes you’ll just get the ebook itself, as an .exe or .pdf file, and this should include on the title or next page, a statement about the writer’s copyright and what rights are being given. If you’ve downloaded the file as a .zip file, check for a “readme.txt” file after you’ve unzipped the folder. This is important to keep with your download, so there is no question as to what your rights are, should there be a question later.

Now, here are the kinds of use you’ll be granted:

Personal use only. This seems pretty clear. You are given the information only for your own enjoyment or education. You cannot give the product away, nor, obviously, can you sell it.

Giveaway rights only. Just what it says. However, be sure to check the licensing; sometimes there are specifics even for this. You may or may not be allowed to include your own links in the product; you cannot change the product or authorship.

Resell rights. This means you can sell the item, but you cannot include any but personal use rights to your customer. You may be allowed to change some of the links to include your own information or affiliate identification. You cannot change the product, and you cannot claim authorship.

Master resell rights. Here you can sell the product and include resell rights with it, meaning your customer can resell it. You probably can change some of the links to include affiliate links. You cannot make changes or claim authorship.

Private label rights. These include the right to materially change the material or product, repackage it, and claim authorship.

I have to emphasize that these are general definitions and guidelines. The only thing that gives you any of these rights will be the certification that is included with the product. You must check carefully to see what is allowed. Some authors specify that you cannot offer the product for auction, or that you can only give the item away under certain circumstances, or that it must be bundled in a specific way. This is generally to ensure that the item’s worth isn’t diluted, benefitting you as well as the author. If you purchase an item and you’re not sure about a point, be very careful that you contact your seller and get explicit answers in writing.

A word of caution about contemporary popular books. Just because the book is digital, it does not mean that copyright terms are changed. I say this because I was recently offered a package of ebooks that included the works of two very popular fiction writers. I knew the works were not old enough to be in the public domain (which I’ll discuss another time), and I cautioned the seller. I believe he was offering them with resale rights of some kind or another, for which he clearly had no authority from the original author/copyright holder. He had been told that because they were digital products, it was okay. I hope he’s doing well with the lawsuit.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of books out there being offered for sale on-line. Most have the terms of their use or sale clearly spelled out. Just remember, the rights you get don’t come from my definitions, nor from the sales page promises. Check the certification, be sure that what you’re doing is legal, and you will have the opportunity to make some money.

I mentioned giveaways briefly last time, and I’d like to tell you more. There are entire websites given over to free products, and you can find some great stuff (as well as some not-so-great stuff), but what I’m talking about are giveaways built around a season or holiday, made available through partners with email lists.

These giveaways are promoted as ideal ways for marketers to grow their own lists. A marketer signs up to participate by offering a product. When you, the consumer, participate and find a product you want, you are asked to provide your email address in order to opt-in and recieve your gift, and it usually means you are subscribing to that marketer’s newsletter. You get stuff you can use, and the marketer grows her list. Good all the way around.

I know you might be reluctant to so freely give over your email, but you shouldn’t be in this circumstance. Most of the marketers require a double opt-in process (you get an email asking you to confirm that you are, in fact, the real person who signed up), and they are firm in their promise not to sell or share your email. In a year of participating as a consumer, I don’t believe any of the marketers have violated that promise. Down the line, if you find their newsletter doesn’t provide you with anything useful, you can opt out.

If you’re new to all of this, you’ll find lots of material to download, mostly having to do with internet marketing. I learned a great deal just reading the free ebooks and information given in the follow-up newsletters.

One note of caution: you’ll want to download everything, and that’s okay if you have room on your hard drive. However, you’ll make your life infinitely less complicated if you develop a filing system from the first. You’ll see that some marketers tell you just to download the items to your desktop- Don’t Do It! Not only will you have a mess on your desktop, you’ll find it extremely difficult to find that one book you know will have all the answers, but put aside to read later.

Set up files as specific as you can to the topic of your new material. For example, you’ll probably want separate files for traffic information, blogging information, article writing, ebook writing, software for x, y, or z, etc. Try to be as specific as you can to make it easy to find again. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted trying to find an ebook or tool because my filing system wasn’t specific enough. I even lost track of a couple of purchases, because I couldn’t remember where I put them. I now have specific files for each purchased item, all beginning with “purchase,” i.e., purchase site stealer.

Another way to keeps things in order is to watch the file name that shows when you download the product. Quite often, it will have nothing to do with the product, since it’s a name the marketer uses for her own download system. You might find that your Make a Billion Dollars Blogging ebook downloads with the title PLR14blog.pdf. Be sure to change that to something that makes sense to you, preferably the actual title of the book. Later on you’ll be tempted to download Make a Billion Dollars Blogging again because you didn’t remember getting it the first time.

Something else to be included in your download system is to note whether you’ve found a resales rights product and what kind of rights you have. Classes of items will generally be private use, giveaway rights only, or a level of resale right: resale, master resale, or private label rights. I’ll talk more in another post of the differences between these rights, but for now, just know that it will be helpful to have that as a part of the title of product, or a separate folder, for these classifications. I find it helpful to note the rights in the title. For example, our blogging book with private label rights would show as Make a Billion Dollars Blogging PLR.pdf in my file folder “blogging for money.”

To get you started building your library, here are two excellent giveaways. There are overlapping offers for the same product in them, but there are also lots of unique items. Visit them and start building your library. And remember the filing tips. You’ll thank me later.

The Great Summer 2007 Giveaway

Joint Venture Gifts