With eBooks sky limit! The eBook may be sold on Internet to anyone who has a credit card and an Internet connection in any place in world. Since an author can control topics of their book, they can decide whom to market to.

However with a traditional book it may be difficult to expand to new markets since it will involve further significant costs on distribution and marketing.

High profit potential

EBooks can be produced on a shoestring budget but since customers may believe they offer value for money, author may charge more for them than expected. It is not impossible for almost everything grossed from an eBook being profit.

On other hand traditional books have high production and marketing costs and this means author (unless they are very popular) will have great difficulty in recovering these costs and making a profit.

More versatile than traditional books

EBooks could be used for a number of purposes. The most common method is for sale of eBook. However an eBook could be used as a free gift to customers to entice them to buy a product from you. It can also be transformed into audiocassettes or digital products.

To conclude eBooks are a very valuable tool that could be used as a profit centre, as a publishing tool or as a marketing tool. It has many advantages over traditional book.

***** End of article *****

Andy George is a chartered accountant born in England. Andy was a financial correspondent for eight years at the Cyprus Financial Mirror where he wrote articles on business and accounting related issues to a non-technical audience.

NOTE: I've placed dots (.) after "<" in all lines above. This is to ensure that code shows up properly here. When using this on your web page, remove those dots. NOTE: Be sure to replace URL with address you want to re-direct visitor to.

4. HIDE YOUR DOWNLOAD PAGES FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES

It's amazing how many download pages you'll find via search engines if you put your mind to it. In fact, one search I just ran on Google turned up two download pages on first page of results (albeit both from same website).

To get around this, you need to ensure that search engines do not include your download pages in their index.

To do this, just place following snippet of code between <.head> and <./head> tags at top of your download page's HTML...(again, remove dot)

<.meta name="robots" content="nofollow,noindex">

5. PROTECT YOUR PAYPAL ORDER BUTTONS

PayPal is a great service but it has a gaping security hole that affects anyone selling downloadable products.

When you sell via PayPal, even most amateur of hackers can find out location of your download page just by looking at HTML code on your sales page.

One way around this is to use HTML encryption software to render HTML of your sales page un-readable. While this will stop majority of hackers, more determined ones will probably be able to crack code.

Another approach is to use specialized software like 'PayLock Generator' (http://bizzydays.com/paypal) which creates highly encrypted PayPal order buttons that are very difficult to crack.

6. CHANGE YOUR DOWNLOAD LINKS OFTEN

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you've followed steps outlined above, then you've gone some way towards protecting your digital products. It's not 100% protection, however, which is why I recommend changing your download links regularly. This will help ensure that, if someone does manage to access your products, and has been leaving your download links on forums or whatever, then you'll be able to cut them off.

7. PUT A STATEMENT ON YOUR EBOOK

If someone is giving your ebook away for free, it's not a given that everyone who downloads it will be as dishonest as one giving it away. It's a good idea to place a prominent statement inside your ebook explaining that it's not a free ebook. Ask readers to contact you if they received ebook for free explaining where they downloaded it. You might consider offering a small 'reward' for taking time to contact you.

Okay, those are basic steps you can (and should) take to protect your downloads. If you're worried that this isn't enough, then you'll find some additional resources below that really go extra mile. (I use these myself so I can testify to their worth).

Just one final point... after you make changes outlined above, be sure to double-check everything is working okay.

Michael Hopkins is owner of BizzyDays Ebook Publications. Visit now to download original ebooks for FREE at: http://www.bizzydays.com