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Unusual
Ways Newsletter
(Subscriber Access Only)
(Subscriber Access Only)
Writing and selling your own ebooks is simpler than ever. Write about something that interests you (and others, of course), create a PDF ebook or report, list it for sale and start promoting it. There is no editor who has to approve your manuscript, and you can literally write a book and have it ready to sell in days if you are ambitious.
Simple doesn't mean easy though. You still have to do a lot of work, especially after the book is done. People will not find it if you don't promote it in some way. But we'll get back to that in a moment.
Writing An Ebook
I've written - and am currently selling - ebooks on real estate investing, backpacking, problem solving and a dozen other topics (I have a wide range of interests). We are all experts on something. As long as there are some people out there with the same interests as you, and you have something to say that they would like to hear, you can write and sell an ebook. Concentrate on providing information which is most likely new to the majority of your potential readers. In other words, give them a reason to buy your book.
You can write in a variety of formats. I use our page-making program, but you can use MS Word and many other word-processing programs. In the end, you will be converting it to a PDF, which is the standard of the ebook industry now. Spell checking and having a friend edit your book is a good idea, but the wonderful thing about ebooks is that you can correct them and republish in a matter of minutes.
To convert to a PDF, you can use Adobe's PDF program, but it can take weeks to learn to use it, and it's very expensive. I have found two better ways. The first, which I currently use, is Adobe's easy alternative, Create Adobe (registered trademark) Online service: http://createpdf.adobe.com. You can try it for free, and it costs just $10 or so per month. They can convert a dozen different formats, including a web page. If you write a few books, you could do all your conversions within a month and spend just $10. It is very easy to use.
Another alternative is to download the free word processing software available from www.OpenOffice.org, and use that to write your book. They have a function that converts your document to a PDF. Use this and you can get to the point of having your PDF ebook without spending a penny (assuming you already have a computer).
What To Do With Your
Ebook
You can make money giving away ebooks (I know of one man who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this). Free ebooks are often short, perhaps 40 pages or less, and sometimes just a short version of a complete book. Put on the first page, "Please feel free to copy and give away this ebook, or even use it as a bonus with products you sell, as long as you don't change it at all." This motivates marketers to use your book as an extra value they can add to their offers.
The idea is to get it spreading out there on its own. Of course you'll have several links to your website in it, and give a reason or two why the reader should visit. It is at your website then, where you will make money from the reader, selling products, promoting affiliate products, or collecting for advertising.
Selling your ebooks can be accomplished several ways. I use ClickBank. They are trusted and well-known, which makes people feel more comfortable giving their credit card information. They automatically make your ebook available for thousands of affiliates to sell (you set the commission rate), which is possibly helpful (few will promote your books if they are less than $10 and pay less than a 50% commission).
At the moment it costs $50 to set up an account, and they take $1 plus 7.5% of each sale (this may change). That means that on my $17 ebook, "Secrets of Lucky People," they take $2.28, leaving me a profit of $14.72. By the way, in traditional publishing, I would typically get 10% of the publisher's 50%, or just 85 cents per book (some top authors might negotiate 10% of the retail price, or $1.70). You can see why writers are moving towards e-publishing.
You still need to have your own website, where your sale's page will be, and where the download page for the book is. Buyers click on the order link, are sent to a secure ClickBank payment page, and after they pay are directed to the download page on your site. If you want to see how the first part of the process works, you can visit my site, http://www.TheSecretInformationSite.com, and click on the order button (don't worry, nothing can be charged until you enter a credit card number).
You can also get your own credit card merchant account. You may keep a bit more of the profit this way, but there are set-up fees, monthly fees and per-charge fees. But I like the fact that ClickBank handles the sale. They even handle the occasional refund (I always offer a money-back guarantee) when I am traveling. All this for a couple dollars per sale - that's a good value I think.
Another option is to list your ebook for sale at www.Lulu.com. I believe it is still free to set up an account. If you use the Open Office word processor and the services of Lulu, you can actually have a book created and for sale for free. They also print the books on demand if you want to sell a paper version.
Promoting Your Book
Have you heard the saying, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door?" It is one of the most ignorant quotes out there. Nobody will recognize the value of a better mousetrap or your book until you show it to them. I can guarantee that if you write the best book ever written and simply put an order link on a web page, you'll have to keep our day job.
Marketing is something you'll have to learn about. Search "writing a sale's page" on Google, and start studying. You have to get them to click that order button. If you do a good job, 1-in-100 visitors will become buyers. Obviously then, you also have to learn how to get the traffic there - and don't think you'll pay for it. It costs about 40 cents per click to get any decent traffic to your site, which is $40 per 100 visitors. Unless you have a better conversion rate than 1% and a book that costs over $40, you'll lose money daily.
You need free traffic. This is where the work starts. You can post free classified advertisements online, list the book at a few of the free ebook listing sites, and contact relevant websites which might want to promote the book for a commission (if you have an affiliate program set up). The best way by far is to write some simple articles related to the topic (possibly even excerpts from the book), and distribute these through article directories. You can learn how at my website, http://www.999articles.com.
By the way, you'll notice at "999 Articles" that I give away a course which I also sell as an Ebook. The catch is that the free version comes a chapter at a time by email, spread out over months. Many people choose to buy at some point, especially once they see the value in the first few chapters. I also host the weekly chapters on the website, allowing me to sell advertising there.
Writing and selling your own ebooks is no longer an unusual way to make money. More and more people are discovering that they can write about what they want and get paid for it in this way. The "lesson" here is certainly an abbreviated one, though. There is a lot to learn if you want to really make money at this. Perhaps I will write an ebook on how to write and sell an ebook. I'll let you know.
Note: This is part of the "Unusual Ways"
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