Make no mistake – e-books are big business online. No matter what you search for there will be someone out there selling an e-book on it.
But the best thing about them is that they provide one of the most potentially lucrative businesses you could ever hope to start online. So long as you do your homework and don’t try and cut corners you can start making inroads into this business within days of deciding to get started. There is plenty to learn but none of it is beyond you – and even if you don’t think you’re up to the job there are plenty of people you can call on to help you.
If you’re thinking of selling e-books to make money online, your best bet is to write your own.
But why do that when there are plenty of affiliate e-books around that you can promote and earn a cut from?
The answer is simple. If you write and create your own e-book no one else will be selling anything quite like it. You’ve got a unique product that will draw attention since no one will have seen it before. As long as you do your research first, you could make a lot of money from one e-book alone.
So first thing’s first – how do you decide what to write an e-book about?
Think about what subjects are currently popular online. Making money will always be a great subject (look at this blog for example!) so anything that taps into this field which doesn’t cover the same ground as loads of other e-books could do well. Try and focus on a specific niche to get the best results; you could start by thinking about what you personally find interesting and see whether any of your hobbies might provide fertile ground to explore.
Once you’ve got some ideas see whether there are already any e-books doing well online on that subject. If there don’t seem to be any around you’ll need to dig a bit further to see if your subject is going to be popular enough to attract a lot of sales. A spot of keyword research and simply looking up related search terms on Google can help reveal the answer to this.
Okay – so let’s assume you now have an idea for an e-book you think will be popular. Next up you have to plan the contents and think of a great title. Titles are very important since they will give the potential buyer an idea of what to expect from the e-book itself. It needs to be specific and intriguing – and full of promise. Don’t worry if one doesn’t occur to you straightaway; quite often you will only think of it once the book is almost written.
The biggest problem when it comes to writing the book itself is staying on topic. It’s very easy to veer off course if you’re not careful, which is why having a pre-written outline to follow will keep you on track. If you plan this out before you begin writing you’ll find the whole process much easier to manage. If you don’t feel confident enough to write it yourself you can hire a ghostwriter to do it for you; there are plenty of sites online where you can hire a freelancer for a fixed fee that you decide on. This gives you complete control over the project.
Incidentally the word ‘e-book’ can be somewhat misleading for newbies to the business. An e-book can indeed be a hundred pages or more long, but it can also be no more than a dozen pages or so. The price for a shorter e-book will of course be lower, but it is still more than you might think given the length of the book itself.
Of course you need to think about more than just the e-book if you want to sell plenty of copies of it. You need to get the word out, and you need to have a great mini website to show it off. These mini websites are really single page sites which promote your e-book in a long sales letter. You would do well to spend as much time writing the sales letter as you did the e-book itself, since it has a very important job to do.
First off you need a stunning headline that will grab the attention. You need to really sell this to everyone who lands on your website so don’t be afraid to shout about the benefits of your e-book! You’ll notice I said benefits there and not features; that’s because the benefits will tell your readers what your book will do for them. That’s a very important point to understand since it could make the difference between getting a reasonable amount of sales and being buried under an avalanche of them!
Think about your price carefully too. Don’t be greedy – but at the same time don’t go too low either. You want to give an impression of quality. Do some research and see what similar titles in your subject area are selling for.
You can also sell more copies by offering bonuses along with the e-book itself. Could you write a number of special reports as well, each one a few pages long, which relate to the subject of your main book? Anything like this will encourage still more people to buy from you rather than going elsewhere for a similar title.
The ultimate goal for you should be to write a series of e-books which each have their own website to sell from. When you write each sales letter be sure to include plenty of keywords and phrases to attract a greater volume of search engine traffic to your site. Pick a good and relevant domain name too – it will help to draw in more people.
The hardest step is in writing that first e-book. Once you’ve got going and you’ve had some experience you’ll start writing them faster, picking better titles and subjects, and selling more copies as a result. Before you know it you’ll have a great business on your hands.
If you’d like to comment on this piece, please leave your message using the form below. Then get writing – your first e-book is there, you just have to get it out.