Mar 25
BobMake money with ebooks publishing ebooks, Writing Ebooks
People looking for home-based business opportunities are frequently attracted to the idea of publishing ebooks – and why not, the potential rewards are huge, entry costs minimal.
Many people, however, are put off the idea because they think they can’t write. I have two answers for you if you’re one of these people. The first is this: absolute nonsense, of course you can write!
Let’s get the idea you can’t write an ebook out of here straight away. If you can explain to someone how to do something, you can write. Think about how you would explain to someone how to make a cup of coffee. You could do that, yes? Then just write it down. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer prize winner, just get your message across. Does it strike you that I’m a literary genius? Of course not. Yet I’m a successful published author with hundreds of articles and six ebooks to my name.
Of course you can write. You might lack a bit of practice but that’s all.
Second piece of advice is this: don’t go for War and Peace first time out!
A lot of folks think that in order to get into publishing ebooks you need to put together something that’s hundreds of pages long. Nope. In fact there are a number of people making a very good living out of writing short reports – and by short I mean as few as thirty pages!
Now in case you’re a little dubious, think about this for a minute. People go online to find information or solve problems. If you can offer someone a solution to a problem they will often be more than happy to pay you for it. A short report can do that.
Let’s take a different angle on it. People searching for information are often looking for something related to their hobby or pass-time – and people get very passionate about these things. Passionate people spend money. Lots of it. Just look at golf. I have a friend who isn’t very good at golf but he is nuts about it. He’s always looking for ways to improve his game and he’ll spend a small fortune on the latest doodad, book or dvd. If you tried to sell him a short report he thought would improve his drive, at a sensible price point, he’d grab one off you without a second thought.
The sensible price point is key. It’s true that in some markets people are selling high priced ebooks that have little content. They might make sales and get good short-term income but it’s no way to build a sustainable business. Much better to sell someone a concise ebook for $7 to $10 now, then a closely related follow-up a bit later. Then the advanced, complete, full-blown version a couple of months after that. Get the idea?
You might also wonder, if you’re going to get into publishing ebooks, where you’ll get your inspiration from. Here’s one for a start. Walk up to your nearest news-stand, or into your nearest newsagent and look at the titles. Almost every one is packed with potential short, profitable ebooks.
More about how we do that in another post coming soon. In the meantime, you can see exactly how I put together short, profitable reports here.
Mar 25
BobMake money with ebooks publish ebooks
If you’re looking to change your lifestyle, especially in these trying financial times, you’ll struggle to find a better home-based business opportunity than to publish ebooks. There are an overwhelming number of positives and, provided you can put up with your own company, no negatives.
Now I’ll admit I’m a bit of an ebook nut, have been for years, but before you think this is all some kind of marketing hype, let’s analyze this sensibly. What do you want from the perfect home-based business?
1. Low Risk. If you’re currently employed by “the man” (or “the woman”) you don’t want to put that income at risk. It’s definitely not the time to be doing that! Writing and publishing ebooks can be started in your spare time. In fact many of the world’s most successful ebook publishers did precisely that until they had enough income to ditch the day job.
2. Low Start-up Costs. Right now, at this very minute, you have all you need to start an ebook business from home. You have access to a computer and the internet. The programs you need are largely freely available. Getting a professional blog to promote your work will cost you less each month than a family-sized pizza.
3. Available Skill Set. You’re prepared to learn a few new things but you don’t want to be doing a degree in differentiated-indigenous-macro-biology or something equally impossible to be able to get started. You can start to publish ebooks with the skills and experiences you already possess and then earn while you learn.
4. A Hungry Market. If you’re going to sell something, you want it to be something people are keen to buy! There was a fear that ebooks would damage the book market in general but the opposite has been true. Today, more books are published (and therefore bought) than before the computer was invented and Amazon currently carry over 200,000 ebook titles. People love this stuff. There has never been a greater opportunity for home-based ebook publishers.
5. Great Income. It’s nice doing what we love but it doesn’t put bread on the table! Ebook publishing is unarguably one of the most profitable business models of all time with profit margins that can exceed 90%. Ask any traditional business what their margins are like and you’ll realize that this is astonishing.
6. Personal Time. It’s nice having a big income but none of us want to loose the time we spend with family and friends. It’s true that if you’ve got a full-time job now you might have to put in a bit more effort at first but the rewards are tremendous. Once things are up and running, maintenance is minimal. The result is more income and more personal time – what could be better?
7. Easy Exit. Eventually you might want to retire. You’ll want to maximize the value in your business. What better assets than a number of ebooks and associated systems that are selling virtually on autopilot. You might want to reconsider and keep it going! Seriously though, if you do decide to cash-out can you imagine what another business person would be prepared to pay for something like that?
So there you have it. Ordinary people just like you and me start to publish ebooks and go on to build hugely profitable, hugely enjoyable businesses working from home.
I’m not pretending that you’ll be a millionaire tomorrow but there are no real restrictions on what you might eventually earn. It won’t be some boss that decides your income, it will be you.
Mar 23
Bob7 Dollar Secret, Make money with ebooks $7 script, one time offer, OTO
Sometimes we take for granted the initials and acronyms we use. A common question I get is what is an OTO?
OTO stands for One Time Offer and it’s a useful mechanism for trying to sell someone a little extra once they’ve bought your primary offer. Here’s how it works in general:
We’ll assume the customer has already decided to buy your ebook (or digital download of whatever sort). They go to Paypal and pay (Paypal is just an example, you should be able to do this with any payment processor). After successful completion they are re-directed to their download.
Except we intercept them on their way to the download with another sales page. Now you need to be careful not to tick people off here, after all, they just paid you and they’re keen to get their download. You need to offer something closely related, at a big discount or an upgrade to a premium service. The OTO can be, and often is, a more expensive item, but it needs to be a very attractive offer otherwise you risk losing the customer.
Generally it’s pointed out that they’ll not see an offer this good again, hence the “One Time Offer”.
You also absolutely must also give them a clear opportunity not to take the one time offer and just get the download they’ve already paid for.
If they take the OTO they’ll return to Paypal and this time go to a page which gives them downloads to both products they’ve ordered. You made two sales instead of one. Waahaay!
The easiest way I know of to implement an OTO is using the $7 Script. I do this often, especially as the initial purchase it quite low cost. In most cases the OTO is a more expensive option but not always. I frequently offer a companion product at half its normal price and this works well for me.
You could argue that I’m giving half the price away. I prefer to look at it that I made half as much again as I would have done had the buyer only bought one ebook. They might have returned at some point in the future and paid full price for the second, but I’d rather have real money now than promised money later!
The $7 Script and an OTO also work well for affiliates. Normally the affiliate will get 100% of the cover price and 50% of the OTO. In reality they don’t actually get 50% because Paypal can’t handle that kind of split transaction. What really happens is that every other sale goes to the affiliate so they get the full one time offer price on the first sale, then the original ebook publisher keeps it on the second sale. The affiliate gets all of the third, the publisher gets the forth, and so on, and so on…
It’s good for the ebook publisher and it’s great for the affiliate who doesn’t need to wait until the end of the month, or longer, to get their money – they get paid instantly.
Mar 11
BobMake money with ebooks 24 hour hot products formula
This blog is about making money with ebooks, right? I make no secret of the fact that I think it’s the most lucrative way to make money on the internet. Look at it this way. There are only two ways of making money online and those are (1) sell someone else’s stuff, and (2) sell your own stuff.
Period. That’s it. Might be lots of ways to do those things, but still only to ways to actually make any cash!
Selling other people’s stuff can be very lucrative. I do it, so do lots of other people. There’s big money to be made…
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