September 17, 2007

Part 2 - How To Make Money Writing and Selling Your Own eBooks

In my last article, I sketched out how to make money with resale rights ebooks on eBay.

Flying MoneyIn this article, I'll explain how you can make even more money come flying your way by writing and selling your own ebooks.

There are a number of benefits to doing this, and lots of different ways you can do it too, limited only by your imagination. I'll make a few suggestions to get you started, but once you get in the right frame of mind, you'll find yourself coming up with all sorts of creative ideas.

When starting something like this, you should always consider the viral factor. By that I mean you want your ebook to spread virally across eBay and hopefully for it to turn up in other ebook collections and offers as a bonus.

And you should also consider something even more important, and that's called the WIIFM - What's In It For Me?

In everything you do, you should carefully think about the motivation. What would get other people to a state where they REALLY want to resell your ebook? You have to imagine you're them, and then think about the WIIFM.

So what would strongly motivate you to resell someone else's ebook? Well, you're in this business to make a profit, so I guess the number one answer for most people is "money". In second place would be to build a mailing list.

(For me, the number one answer is build a mailing list, the money will follow.)

There will probably also be a number of minor reasons you'd resell a particular ebook, but the biggest WIIFM for most people is money.

If you accept that, then you have to set up a system where the reseller can make a nice amount of money on the back end after selling your ebook. The more the better, for both of you.

Let's look at how YOU can make money first though, and then we'll look at how we can adapt things so that the reseller makes money too.

Before you even write your ebook, you have to do a bit of market research. This is huge topic in its own right, and I'm not going to cover it in this article.

Let's assume you've done your research and you've found something you CAN write about, you WANT to write about, and that it's also a hot topic.

The first part in this process is to write your ebook. How you write it is another big topic I'm not going to cover in this short article.

(You may even want to write TWO ebooks. The first is a short 10-20 page report on your subject, and the second would be a longer, more detailed and juicy version. I'll discuss why later on.)

Once you have your first draft and you've checked it for typos, the next step is the first real part of the monetising process for you.

What you're going to do is put links to similar, relevant products throughout your ebook. These links will be your affiliate links to those other products, so if someone clicks one and buys, you'll get paid a commission.

It's a lovely feeling getting checks (cheques) for selling products, and you've no idea where they came from because you can't remember. ;-)

Example: You write an ebook on golf, and now you want to promote some golfing products within your ebook. You could go searching on Google for golf affiliate programs which can take some time, but the easiest way is to go to ClickBank and search their market place for golf related products.

Typically, you'll find products on there with 50% commission, and sometimes as high as 75%.

Choose the products you want to promote carefully. Again this is food for another article, but I'll briefly say here that you should check out each of the sales pages of the products you like the look of, and ask yourself if YOU would buy that product.

After you've chosen the products you want to promote, rewrite parts of your ebook and work in a mention of those products together with your affiliate link. Use a link cloaker such as Smart Link Cloaker to hide the fact that it's an affiliate link. (For whatever reason, some people don't like to click links if they think you're going to make some money out of it.)

And somewhere in there, you want an invitation to a page where people can sign up to your mailing list…

Finally, do another rewrite of your ebook and "juice it up" a little. What I mean by this is, make it a little more interesting to read. Dry facts are okay, but it's always better if you can work in for instance a bit of controversy.

Don't go over the top.

Yet again, juicing up an ebook is another article I'll have to write at some time - there are a number of ways you can do it, using controversy is just one of them. Watch this space.

And really finally, make it look good and easy to read if you haven't already done so. Use pictures and plenty of white space to break up the text.

Okay so now you have your ebook full of your affiliate links. Your next step is to start listing it on eBay for $1.99 with master resale rights (MRR). To get people to buy it, you'll have to do a good job on your sales page, which should also be part of the package. After all you want it to be as easy as possible to get a listing up for the average ebook reseller.

(And this is yet another article topic that's too large to include in this one.)

After a month of listing it (it may take longer), if you've done an all round good job of everything, you'll have ebook resellers buying it and listing it themselves. From that point it will spread virally across and outside eBay.

Now you have a source of free advertising. You don't need to list it on eBay any more as plenty of other people are doing it for you. And all the people that buy it and read it will be clicking on your affiliate links, and some will buy.

And you'll be getting checks from ClickBank while doing nothing. And as I said in my last article, your job as an affiliate is to connect the buyer with the seller and take your cut. Win-win-win.

Better still, some people will be signing up to your mailing list if your offer is good enough.

Isn't that cool?

Here's a slight variation on that just to finish off, but like I said earlier this is only limited by your imagination.

You write TWO ebooks on the same subject.

One is a short 10-20 page report with MRR. The other is the larger more valuable ebook that you're either going to charge more money for, or you're going to use as a "bribe" to get someone to sign up to your mailing list.

You start selling the report on eBay and wait until it's picked up by other resellers. Inside the report, you make it clear there's a better version that can be obtained just by going to your web site, and there you make your offer. They get the better ebook in return for their first name and their email address, and you then have them on your mailing list.

And for a slightly different scenario…

You could sell the larger ebook with a commission paid out to the ebook reseller who has signed up to your affiliate scheme and then rebranded the small report with their affiliate link.

Viral PDF RebranderThe best ebook rebranding tool is ViralPDF by Sean Kelly. He's such a nice guy and his support is excellent. You should go get it if you don't already have it.

It's important you always think about the WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) when you do any of the above. And by that I mean you to think about the WIIFM for your affiliate and not so much for you.

You may want to build a mailing list as your main priority, and forego any money made on the larger ebook. So you could give 100% commission to the affiliate and make your larger ebook $17.00 or more.

Now THERE's a good incentive for affiliates to resell your ebook. They're going to

a) make money on the upsell, and
b) get a chance to build their own mailing list too if they use SmartDD.

Especially with the follow up email 24 hours later to make an offer of their own.

In yet another article, I'll explain how you can set up a series of autoresponders for each niche, and then forget about it.

When I've written all the articles, then I'll write the really big juicy ebook that ties all the articles together and fills in all the gaps.

With Master Resale Rights of course…

;-)

For my next article, I think I'll cover the topic of market research, although if YOU have another suggestion, please leave it below.

And…

How am I doing? Is this useful? Got a question? Got a suggestion for the next article?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

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2 Comments »

September 17, 2007

Jeff Davis :

Hi Frank,

I'm just breaking into ebay, tryin to learn the ropes, and
I find this article facinating, I'm even gonna flow chart the
steps, and mind map it.

I get overwhelmed easily, and I find that if I chunk it up,
and keep it simple, I can get complex tasks done.

You write a mean article, Frank, keep it up, we love it!

Best Wishes,
Jeff Davis

September 18, 2007

Chris :

Even better than before!

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