Whether you’re heaving a huge sigh of relief that the little darlings are headed back to school or just note that it’s one of those ‘time passing’ markers, it is time to reflect on the fact that 2/3 of 2008 is gone.

For me, it’s an “oh my” time as I see I’ve managed to fritter away a bunch of time. It’s going to be really hard to hit my goals for this year. Then again, maybe this is finally the push in the behind to put on that full court press to GET STUFF DONE. We’ll see.

Although I’m behind in the number of books listed at eBay, that pace is starting to pick up. And I had enough listed and sold to do a bit better each month – and that in July and August, slow months for any marketer.

One thing, finally, is that I’m working hard at monetizing my sales. I’m trying to focus more on digging through all the private label rights products I have, branding them, and adding affiliate products that I think enhance the material. I’ve also changed around the offer on my delivered CD product, offering inexpensive PLR and MRR packages. Roughly half of my customers buy books related to eBay or internet marketing, so I think they may want access to these digital products, either to sell themselves or to learn from. Since I just figured this out (a DOH moment), we’ll see.

If you’re interested in inexpensive rights packages, check my offers here.

Speaking of PLR, I found a product today that I’m very excited about. It’s just a little software program that’s very inexpensive, but I think using it is going to be very helpful in managing some of the stuff collecting digital dust – and to make me some money.

I’ve talked before about all the ebooks I’ve managed to collect. Just going through them is a major pain (self-inflicted, of course, since I am the one who let them just sit there for so long). One frustration is finding a great product with private label rights, but that has been given to me in pdf format without the source doc file. Now what? I can either sell it as is, without being able to take advantage of the plr aspect of the product, or I can retype it into a word program myself. Depending on my mood, some were put into a “get back to it later” file, and some of them were just tossed.

Today, I found my solution. It’s a little program called Tiger PDF Convertor, and that’s exactly what it does. You open it, click on the convertor button to load the pdf you want changed, click another button, wait a couple seconds for it to do its thing, then save the generated text file. Sure, you still have some work to do with the text file, but that’s sooo much easier than typing everything just so you can begin the format! Take a look here. The suggested price for it is $17.00, but I’m passing along my good deal and only charging $5. It’s also a resale product, so it comes with images and a sales page. You have to do your own thankyou/download page, and truthfully the sales page can use some work, but it’s a great product at a great price.

And another note about rights. If you get this tool, please remember that you can’t just start tearing apart all the pdfs you have and redoing them. Check the rights of the product before you start mucking around. If you don’t have rights that specifically state you can remake the product or tear it apart for articles, etc., or that you can claim ownership, don’t do it. You might think you won’t be found out because there’s so much out there on the web. And maybe you won’t. Then again, you might. I recently read a post by a fellow who found out the hard way. His mistake was inadvertent, but the original author decided to be a jerk about the whole thing. Some lawyers made a lot of money; the fellow who made the mistake lost a lot of time and money and lived a very stressful life for awhile.

eBay Cheater Update: After a couple more seemingly nowhere messages from eBay, I checked on the seller I’d found doing a booming digital delivery ebook business, and he’s not there anymore. Finally! I have seen other listings that are suspect, but until eBay works out their reporting systems for this, I don’t think I’m going to wade in any more. I did have an interesting exchange with one seller, though. She blatently listed a cookbook as being delivered by email, and she was charging a $.25 delivery fee. I asked why. She told me it was to cover paypal fees and that since she was selling her book for $.99, what with eBay fees, she really wasn’t making any money. Huh? Her sales are mainly hard goods, so I don’t understand why she’d jeopardize her account for this. Funny world. I’m not going to try to report her, but someone else might…

I think that’s enough for today. Be well.

A common theme for me, as you know, is my struggle to quit trying to get things right long enough to just do the darn whatever-it-is. I remember sharing a quote that said in effect the perfectionist will tweak and worry and never get anywhere, while the successful person just goes for it and fixes stuff later if necessary.

Well, I got slapped up the side of my head with a reminder of that today when I went to eBay to see what one of my favorite sellers was doing about getting digital products online to sell.  Turns out, as of today, he has 188 items listed, all ebooks on CD, and he’s sold more than 50! So while I’ve been diddling, worrying about trying to put packages together, worried that buyers wouldn’t see value in buying just one book on a CD, he’s been making money. (Check out seller PlanetSMS with the advanced search option).

Once again, that quest for perfection bit me in the behind! I need Nike’s slogan “just do it” tattooed somewhere!

This also points up the fact that there just aren’t that many ebook sellers who have made the transition to physically delivered products. Now, John is a PowerSeller, and has great feedback, so I’m sure that plays a part in the number of sales he’s making. But more importantly, he took the new eBay regulations in stride, figured out how to make them work for him, and he’s off and running.

So, I’m going to pull myself together and get these things going. I only have three listings in my store, two of them compilation packages, which I’m going to pull. I finally realized that I have all the listing stuff saved and will just have to do a bit of tweaking to get them slapped into TurboLister and posted in my store and for auction.

What a dope I am! Almost two full months of stewing, considering, investigating, yadda yadda yadda. No more! I’m off to get those darn things up and selling for me.

Stay well.