“ The Pros and Cons To Starting Your Very Own Online Ebook Store ”

 by: Dan Preston

(c) Dan Preston - All rights reserved

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If you’ve ever considered to start an online ebook store,
but for any reason have been hesitant to do so because your
not certain whether this is for you or not, I have written
this brief article with over 3 years experience as an ebook
store owner to help you see what all is involved and to try
and help you make the decision whether or not this is for
you.

Here are just a few of the Pros and Cons that can help you
make an educated decision about starting such a venture.

Pros

1) Your In Control – Dependent on your daily schedule you
get to decide when and how often to work on your new store.

2) Choosing A Name For Your Book Store – Much of the
pleasure with starting any kind of business is getting to
name it. Just make sure to choose a catchy name that’s easy
to remember for potential and returning customers.

3) No Inventory – Unlike traditional paper bound books an
ebook does not take up book shelf space. All you need is a
reliable web hosting company to upload your files and images
to and you’ll never have to dust a cover or package them in
a box because their all kept on a computer hard drive ready
to be downloaded when a customer completes the checkout
process.

4) Brandable – Many ebooks can be branded with personal
information such as website URL’s and email addresses so
that if a customer likes what you have to offer the links
that can direct them back to your website or to your contact
information can be found inside the book itself.

5) No Store Hours – Unlike a traditional book store your
business online never closes allowing you to have your
products ready for sale 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
Also your potential customer base is not limited to just the
town you live in, but to anyone in the world that has a
computer

6) Earning Potential - Now don’t take this the wrong
way....... Unless you know some top secret way to convince
people that your product is far superior to all others there
is no guarantee that you’ll be able to leave your full time
job in order to sell ebooks as a primary income. Although,
over the years I have found ebooks as a nice “compliment” to
my full time job earnings.

This doesn’t mean that making a living selling ebooks is not
possible. As a fact many people who have sold ebooks with
reseller rights or have found a high demand yet low
competitive niche subject to write their own ebook about
have been quite successful indeed.


Cons

1) Taxes – No matter what type of business you run, it is
very important that you keep track of ALL expenses and
earnings so that when taxes are due you will have everything
you need to provide your tax preparation service with.

2) Operation Fees - Even though the costs will be far less
than owning and renting a retail store filled with paper
books, there are some expenses you will have with an online
ebook store to deal with.

For example: You will want to accept credit cards on your
site. Most credit card processors only charge a one-time
setup fee and then only charge a percentage of each sale you
make thereafter.

You will also need a place to store your files and pictures
on the internet so that they can be retrieved for viewing by
potential customers. For this you will need a web hosting
service. These can be set up for once-a-month billing all
the way to once-a-year billing. It all depends on your
hosting companies package deals.

3) Marketing – In order to make sales people must find you.
A few ways to market your items for sale range from search
engine placement, paid advertising, link swapping, joint
ventures and article writing. Marketing can prove to be a
tough process, but is very necessary for the success of your
business.

4) Web Site Setup/Design – This may be considered an
enjoyable thing by some people, but unless you hire a web
design company to create a themed layout for you and if
you’re not familiar with web site design this can be a time
consuming process.

On the other hand, by doing the web site work yourself can
prove to be an excellent opportunity to learn about web site
design and management so that you can add or delete pages at
any time you feel necessary.

Hopefully this article has convinced you that ebooks are
definitely a great product to start a business with.

Just keep in mind that with any business in order to be
successful it is a wise choice to write up a business plan
to chart your course and once up and running you must push
through all the ups and downs and never give up.

Dan devotes much time working on his internet ventures. He
currently has a T-Shirt store at
http://www.cafepress.com/tshirtsngifts and an ebook store at
http://online-book-store.net that caters to his visitors.