Buyer Beware! Tips When Buying An Ebook - Internet Marketing Australia

You almost can't go to any webpage anywhere on the Internet without someone trying to sell you some kind of ebook or other media online. There is a whole lot of great stuff out there on the web today, but there's also a lot of garbage as well. Hopefully this short post will help you when buying an ebook online, so you don't have to make the same mistakes I did.

1. Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover

Some of the best ebooks I've read online had sales pages which resembled something my four year old daughter did on our hallway wall with some crayons. There truly are some great products out there being sold with less-than-desireable sales letters and I know of many well-known authors and publishers who sell ebook copies of their real-world books and many of them have horrendously designed sales pages. In cases like these, it does pay to know a little about what you're buying.

Also, I have found some other absolutely fantastic stuff written by almost-unknown authors, so if you've never heard of the author, it doesn't mean that it's not going to be a great read. Some books need a bit more scrutiny before buying though, which brings me to my next point...

2. Judge A Book By Its Cover.

It might sound contradictory when compared with my last point, but some sales pages really should be given a good going-over before you think abut buying. I'm not really taking about the layout or the visual experience, but more of how the sales letter is being pitched at you. In my experience, most of the pages out there selling books that promise you can earn $10,000 a week should be taken with a grain of salt and if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

Most of the bad products out there have sales letters that sound extremely pushy and are almost forcing you to buy it with their pitch. I've found that if the product is good, the sales page writer will know it and will rely more on word-of-mouth than anything else and will not need to resort to forceful selling tactics to sell you anything.

3. Scrutinize Your Payment Security.

There are a lot of people out there trying to rip you off and I've come across a lot of sites selling products with dodgy payment gateways from companies I've never heard of. If you are being sold something and it comes time to enter your credit card details, make sure you're confident as to who you're actually giving your money to. Not to say that there aren't payment gateway providers you haven't heard of before, but if you're unsure it's best to punch their name into Google or something.

But if you're really doubtful, just stick with the big guys like Clickbank and Paypal. They both offer protection plans against fraud and are very secure.

4. Make Sure It's Guaranteed.

This is a huge one. Make sure that you're buying a product which offers a buyer guarantee of some kind, namely one that will refund your money in full if you don't like the product. Sure the seller of the product could just say that he will refund the money and not actually do so once you've bought it, but that's when buyer protection from Clickbank or Paypal come in.

The only reason I'm mentioning those two so much is that you'll find most ebooks being sold online today will either be connected to Clickbank or Paypal and if this is the case, you can take it up with them and they will refund your money for you.

Also with the guarantee, make certain that they give you some frame of time in order to make your decision abuout whether you'd like a refund or not. I've seen ebooks out there offering to refund your money in full, but only if you email them within 24 hours of purchasing them. To me, this doesn't inspire the greatest confidence in what I'd be buying. Anyone offering a week or more as the time required to request a refund should be OK.

5. REFERENCES!

Probably the most important thing when buying something online is to get some kind of reference or credibility regarding the product like a testimonial, but don't rely on the ones posted on the site (most of these are fake). I mean a real testimonial or reference from someone who has recommended the product to you like a friend or a trustworthy online source. This means that someone has actually bought the product and liked it, which probably means it has some value.