In the previous post, I talked about my initial shyness about buying erotica online. Even though it was totally private, and I wasn’t truly embarrassed about my reading habits, it still gave me pause to make the change from “anonymous coward” to someone with a name on a credit card.
Now, I’m going to talk about it from a seller’s point of view. Self-published erotica authors, this is especially for you.
As one of my teachers said, “A sale is a fragile thing.” I took his word for it; he’d made millions for himself, and billions for other people.
Marketers have certain fields they specialize in, and mine are two of the easiest to be in: how-to products, and tech jobs. The people who buy in these markets have straightforward problems, and the products offer straightforward solutions. It doesn’t say anything about you if you buy a how-to book on painting houses, other than that you want to save money painting your own house or want to start a housepainting business. If you’re a programmer and you need a resume, so what? No one expects programmers to be good at selling or writing.
But the more personal you get (such as bad breath or acne cures, impotence manuals, identity protection, etc), the more finesse you have to show in handling the sale. And the more hidden obstacles you might encounter in trying to sell your stuff.
For example, a sex chat line increased sales astronomically when they added in this line to their ad: “Discreetly billed to XYZ Supply Company.” They had figured out that mostly attached men called sex chat lines, but their wives handled the credit card bill.
Another of my teachers said something like, “You can only make a sale when you give them the means to justify it to someone else.” He was specifically talking about handing the potential purchaser a ready-made argument for when they have to explain where their money went.
But forget justifying it to someone else for a moment — sometimes it’s justifying it to yourself that is the first obstacle! I know a lot of strong, independent women who have trouble reconciling themselves to their liking for bodice rippers. If you can take any of the push-pull of “I want it, but I shouldn’t want it,” out of the buying process, you’ll make your readers a lot happier (and get more sales.)
Be a good host.
So, think about what might set your audience more at ease. Think about the objections that they may be too reserved to voice, and try to help them overcome their conflicted emotions about buying something they really want, but don’t feel that they should want. If there’s any possibility that people think “something’s wrong with me because I want to read about werewolf sex,” you’ve got to anticipate that.
If you liked this article, you can also join my mailing list for more marketing tips, as well as my white paper on list building (if you haven’t gotten that already.) Don’t worry, I don’t mail out often — just when I have something to say.
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