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.

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.

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.

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…

…but nothing like the money you make when it’s your product and you control everything. Computers and the internet give us the opportunity to create digital products – like ebooks or videos – that cost little more than our time. We’re talking virtually 100% profit. Who wouldn’t want to be in a business like that?

One of the guys who agrees with me is top affiliate marketer and product developer Chris Rempel. He’s known as “the lazy marketer” but in reality he’s nothing of the sort. Chris is a very smart cookie who, rather than following the herd, prefers to go his own way. His motto is to work smarter, not harder, and I’ll admit I’m a fan.

But then I would be. Using Chris’ tactics and ideas has always resulted in me making more money. Of course I like the guy!

I also particularly like his latest release, The 24 Hour Hot Product Formula.

In the past Chris has tended to concentrate on letting us know the way he builds his affiliate income. Now he’s giving away how the product creation and marketing side of his online business led to his first six figure month – yes, over $100,000 in 30 days.

I’ll admit he’s a bit ahead of me there, but I’m getting there!

The 24 Hour Hot Product Formula is a combined ebook and video course. To be honest, the videos aren’t the slickest you’ll ever see but Chris is more concerned about delivery information than flashy bells and whistles.

Fair enough, I can live with that. If the videos might be better produced you can’t knock the actual content. He gets straight down to the nitty-gritty. Chris isn’t afraid to challenge some accepted practices and give concrete reasons for doing so, not just theories.

I’ve only just got my copy of the report so I can’t tell you about all the tips and techniques he proposes. I’ll report back on them later but for the time being it was important to let you know about it now because there’s a discount available – but I think it’s just until the end of the week.

The report may not be right for you, right now. If you’re new to all this making money online stuff and you don’t know what keywords are or have no experience of the Google keyword tool or Clickbank, you might want to leave it for now.

On the other hand, you might want to grab your copy while it’s cheap and learn the rest as you go on.

I don’t often put my name behind stuff. I have to much too lose if it turns out to be junk and people come ranting at me that I gave duff info. I can’t be doing with all that.

I’m quite happy to put my name behind this though. From my brief initial examination I can already see two ways to get far more out of it than the few dollars I spent to get it. Grab yours before it goes up.

…and if it doesn’t work for you, give me a shout!

There’s a tendency to over-complicate the creation of an ebook. Whilst there are many things we can do with an ebook that we can’t do with a traditional book, at its most basic creating an ebook requires just three simple steps.

1. You need an idea.
2. You need some software to get it onto the page.
3. You need some more software to turn it into the ebook.

I can’t help you with number one, but then you probably wouldn’t be here if you needed the idea! Numbers 2 and 3 shouldn’t be a problem either because you can get both of them for nothing.

If you don’t have Word or another word processor on your computer you can get a free and very competent one from Openoffice.org. That deals with getting your ideas onto “pages” which are in fact just a text document.

To create an ebook from your text document you can get free software to turn it into a PDF. Just do a search online for free PDF maker and you’ll find several.

You may find people who will suggest other formats for you ebook than PDF. Don’t listen to them. There are other programs which will create different kinds of ebooks. You do not want them, they can only restrict your potential readership.

There are only two formats you need to worry about and that’s PDF, because it can be read by just about every computer in the world, and the original text file if you’re going to have your book available for other ebook reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.

As your ebooks develop you might want to put your hand in your pocket for Adobe Acrobat which will allow you extra functionality and features but there’s no need to do so at the start if you don’t want to.

So that’s it. Your three simple steps to how to create an ebook. Off you go. Fame and fortune are just around the corner.

In truth it would be misleading to suggest that it’s that easy. It is simple, you really don’t need anything more than I’ve mentioned to create your ebook, but making a success of it and making a good living from it requires some work.

The great advantage when you create an ebook is that you can handle everything yourself, you don’t need the OK of some massive publishing company who might be more lead by financial forecasts than the actual merits of your work.

The great disadvantage when you create an ebook is that you have to handle everything yourself!

I’m joking slightly because I don’t view it as a disadvantage but the fact is that unless you pay a professional service to promote it for you, you not only have to write your ebook but you have to handle all the marketing and selling as well.

I don’t know an easier way for the average person to make a very good income than writing and selling ebooks – but you’re not going to be a millionaire overnight. If you’re looking for a relatively easy way to provide yourself a very comfortable living then I believe ebook writing is the answer. If you’re looking for “the lazy man’s way to riches” you better keep looking – this isn’t it.

OK, maybe not.

If you’re going to write a successful ebook – no matter what the subject, you’ll stand a much better chance of success if you have a good picture of your reader in your head. Who’s this book going to appeal to? What are they really looking for? Etc.,

Sure, you can just go bashing away at your keyboard and turn out a master work, but your chances of making a few dollars are greatly increased if you know you’re writing something that people want to buy!

For ebook fiction writers it’s perhaps different than for non-fiction authors. The fiction writer is, to an extent, always trusting to luck because it’s almost impossible to know if your style of prose will appeal. You can read as much as possible, of course, you can submit short pieces to various sites to see what reaction you get, but until your work becomes known you don’t have a customer base to appeal to. Your task is to create a buzz, perhaps at Squidoo.com, Stumbleupon.com or other social sites. You can try seeking out blogs or article sites that accept short fiction like Buzzle.com

If you’re going to publish an ebook which is factual, either a resource book or a “how to” project, then we can be much more accurate about targeting potential readers – your customers.

There are many ways to do this, lots of it for my favorite price: Free.

You can get a feel for what the market wants by visiting forums. You can search the web and see what your competition is doing. What else is on the market at Amazon and at independent ebook publishers? Can you see any gaps in the market that you could exploit?

On the other side of the coin, if you can’t see any competition is there a market at all? It can happen, sadly, that the “great” idea you have for an ebook has no competition simply because nobody wants an ebook on the subject!

It’s a mistake I’ve made myself. I should have done my research before I started.

Of course there are no guarantees, but we can work at defining our market before we start and give our ebook a better chance of success.

On the other hand there are those people who just have to get the ebook done. Have to get it out of their system. If that’s you, just go for it. I know an author who did just that and published his ebook last year. Last time I spoke to him he’d sold about a dozen copies. It didn’t matter to him, he’d achieved his goal and was happy to have done so.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that attitude at all. For me though, this is what I do for a living. If you want to earn a reasonable income when you publish an ebook make sure you don’t just know your subject but your customer too.

It’s also baloney.

There isn’t really a secret to making money with ebooks at all. Everything you need to know can be found online. Some of it is free, some of it you will have to pay for – that’s hardly a “secret”.

Probably the best value-for-money ebook you will ever pay for is 7 Dollar Secrets, which costs…. you guessed it, just $7!

That low price is going to be one hell of a surprise once you discover the power of the techniques inside.

To be honest I can’t say a lot about the ebook without giving away the content because the whole thing only runs to 33 pages. Not much you might think, but you’d be wrong. For your measly 7 bucks you get a great deal.

Because not only do you get the ebook, you also a download of the software that drives the whole ebook sales and marketing system. Not just an explanation but all the code to use yourself on your own ebook website. It’s as close to an “ebook business in a box” as you’re likely to find… and for seven dollars? There must be a catch, surely.

Nope.

Click Here for the $7 Secrets website.

In case I’m not getting the full impact across, I’ll say it again. For seven dollars you get the ebook itself which explains the idea and the method. You also get access via free download to the 7 Dollar Secrets System. This is the actual scripts that you run on your site, the web pages, another ebook of instructions, the lot.

Please don’t underestimate the power of what’s on offer here. Don’t confuse low price with low value.

I reckon that starting from scratch you could be up and running making money with ebooks in a week or so. Now you’re not going to be rich overnight but build it up and you could be looking at thousands of dollars a week, all from this simple program. Nothing else to buy – well some hosting I suppose – but then just add a bit of hard work!

I understand that you might be a bit concerned about the scripts and putting together a website, I felt the same because I usually prefer to get someone to do that kind of thing for me. Fortunately it’s very well explained and there’s support available if you get stuck. Believe me, if I can do it anyone can.

Let’s be honest. It’s $7. That’s less than the price of a pizza and you get a complete ebook business system not just some cheese and pepperoni!

Click Here for full details.

A Unique Free Bonus Gift From Me.

I’ve been using this system for a while now and I’ve added a couple of ideas that I think make it even more powerful. After you’ve got your copy of the 7 Dollar Secret using the link above, email me your receipt (to: info @ boxabooks dot com) and I’ll send you this powerful $7 Secret Bonus Report absolutely free.

You can’t get this report anywhere else, and it’s not for sale separately because it’s purposely designed to work hand-in-hand with the 7 Dollar Secret. There are lots of ways to make money with ebooks but this is a start point that you can put into effect now and profit from for years. Get your copy here.