Setting the price for your eBook can be quite tricky.
Too high and no one will buy it, too low and you’re missing out on potential profits. So how to you find that happy medium? That sweet spot of acceptable profit and happy customers.
This article discusses how to do just that via A/B Split Testing and Google Adwords.
A/B Split Testing Your eBook Price
Simple A/B split testing is a simple enough concept. You have some variable you would like to test, like the price of your eBook, you develop two pages, one for each option. And you send customers to the two different landing pages on an even basis, one customer to page variation A, one customer to page variation B, page A, page B, and so forth.
At the end of a period of time, such as a day or better yet, a week or more. It should be obvious which page out performed the other. Now it’s time to adjust and tweak your pages again, overwrite the under performing page variation, and re-test against the winner.
In this article, we’ll have a look at how to simplify this process by using the Google Website Optimizer which allows for better test control.
Eventually the idea with A/B split testing is to come up with a landing page and a price that converts visitors just browsing into paying customers.
If you’re looking at testing multiple variables such as headings, body text, images, etc, there are better methods than simple A/B split testing.
Multivariate testing with the Google Website Optimizer will give you more control when testing larger amounts of variables.
As with A/B split testing with the Website Optimizer, you define sections in your page which alternate on a per visitor basis. Multivariate testing however expands on this idea, allowing you to define multiple alternating sections on your landing page to test images, headings, and other sections on your page at one time.
We’ll just focus on price for the overview of this method, which is ideal for simple A/B Split Testing.
So right about now you might be asking, how do I even get traffic to test with? After we cover the basics I’ll tell you why it’s smart to use Adwords to pump traffic to our test pages.
It may cost a small amount of money, but the insight it will give you is enormous and could mean the difference between not charging enough and thus losing profits, or charging too much and not getting the optimum results from your advertising.
Pricing Your eBook
The first step is to come up with a pricing scale that you would feel comfortable charging customers for your eBook.
For the high end of the value scale add another 20% to it. Chances are your estimates are way off. Most people severely undervalue their product on first attempt, A/B split testing will help you get over this hump and come up with a price that your customers deem they are willing to pay for your product.
For the low end, I wouldn’t recommend selling anything for less than $10-15. Any less and the customer will perceive it’s value is too low and wonder why it’s not completely free.
Pricing Psychology
Psychology can play a big part in pricing as well with many experienced internet marketers believing that the sweet spot in pricing lies in numbers that end in 7, ie. $27, $97, etc.
This differs slightly to traditional marketing which pegs the optimal psychological pricing with numbers ending in 95, or 99, ie. This dinner set only $29.95! The new Toyota only $19,999!
Anything except a round number seems to work fine, but if you can take advantage of pricing psychology, go for it.
Variable Control
To control the variables in this test, try to have as few elements of your landing page changing at any one time as possible, especially when you’re testing prices.
Variations in design can throw out your results of price testing. I recommend keeping design tests and price tests separate if possible to allow for maximum accuracy.
It’s best to split test price over a week or more if possible. This is because buying trends naturally show a weekly or monthly cycle according to people’s pay checks and various other reasons.
The longer you leave your test running, the more accurate your results will be as it will smooth out any spikes due to different days of the week.
If you’re worried about how much money you’re burning through, simply set your spend limit lower in adwords. It will mean you won’t get as many visits, but testing should still be possible.
If you’re spending money in driving traffic to a landing page via advertising, then the contents of that page are worth every dollar you spend on testing them. The only way to test what works is by investing in testing to get real results. Guessing will not work, which is why those who test achieve superior results every time.
The Google Website Optimizer
Google has developed a fantastic tool for optimizing your website content that doesn’t get used enough in my opinion.
The Google Website Optimizer allows webmasters to develop a single landing page, then specify sections within that page for A/B split testing and multivariate testing.
Once you define which sections you want to test, load your test data, and preview your test pages, you can begin to run your A/B split testing.
At the end of your testing period, Google Website Optimizer will provide you with the results from your test data, allowing you to draw meaningful conclusions about click through rate increases or decreases and conversion rate percentages.
There are other platforms that do a similar job (both for free, or at a cost) or you can of course do the testing yourself by creating two pages, but using the optimizer is the easiest way I’ve discovered of completing this testing. As a bonus, you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to achieve meaningful results. Just a bit of patience 
.
Paying For Traffic
The only way to get traffic to your landing page that is as close to a guarantee as you’ll get is by paying for advertising. That’s exactly what we want to do for completing our A/B Split Testing.
Paying for traffic via Google Adwords or other advertising systems has two major benefits:
- It’s instant and easy to setup; and
- The traffic is temporary.
Setup your ad (which can take as little as 10 minutes), pay for some pre-paid advertising credit, and shortly after, your advertisement goes live.
The more you’re willing to pay the more traffic you’ll get. Very simple to use and very close to instant traffic.
This is great, because it provides us with a quick response to our test unlike traditional methods of gaining traffic (search, link building, etc).
The other reason this is so good for testing (but maybe not so good for regular websites), is the effects are often temporary. When you stop paying, your advertisement stops running, and the traffic stops with it.
Perfect for us as A/B split testers, because we want to tweak the offering, and re-test, potentially with a different pricing structure entirely. Fresh visitors are essential for unbiased A/B split testing.
Paying for advertising can cost as little as 15-30c per click, meaning you can pump 100 visitors to your website for around $15. Prices vary a lot depending on what niche you’re jumping into, so take that figure with a grain of salt.
To get an estimate on what you’re likely going to pay per click for the keywords you want, I suggest using the Adwords Keyword Tool to have a look at average costs and traffic numbers.
For initial testing purposes, it’s good to be receiving traffic of around 100 people per day. This will give you a solid 500-700 per week which is a solid start for statistical analysis. Obviously, the more visitors you can test with the better. It’s preferable to start analysis when you’re passing the 1000 visitors point.
Conclusion
A/B split testing and multivariate testing are powerful techniques that any internet entrepreneur needs to know about. Especially DIY entrepreneurs who are on a tight budget, or those folks that just want to get the most out of their marketing efforts.
If you’ve already successfully marketed an eBook, it’s never too late to start testing. Perhaps add some bonuses, or restructure your offer and test test test!
I’ve really only just touched on this subject, and I’ll hopefully be able to turn this into a demonstrable series for those that really need step by step actions to follow.
If you have any valuable resources to contribute to this discussion, please feel free to leave a comment or a link below.
