Kristi Hines: Why You Need to Write an Ebook for Income

I’ve sold lots of ebooks and can attest that they do sell well as it’s just more convenient for someone to pay a small price to digest the info they want versus them scouring the whole net putting pieces of information together here and there.

And although I have yet to sell an ebook which I was 100% author of I have sold ebooks tweaked from PLR products which is a good way to get your feet wet so to speak in case you feel a bit overwhelmed with writing the whole thing from scratch

Ana,
Very informative post.

I found it interesting that Kristi isn’t a big fan of long sales letters.

I think that if you’re not “big” name with a big list, you need a good sales letter.

I think it has been said enough, but I’ll still say it…

There is nothing negative about writing an ebook. It’s all rewarding I believe, whether you make 10 sales in 3 months or 1000 sales in 3 days.

Being a published author builds greatly on your credibility.

You sell more because it’s from you. Your readers trust you and buy a book you wrote yourself 5 times more than they would buy the best affiliate product you refer.

And as for the money part, those who monetize with adsense and make $00.03 per click and later write a book that sells for $9.99 per sale are the best people to ask how rewarding ebook publishing is!

But I’ll be the first to say it’s not a small undertaking! No, not if you’re aiming for a quality content where over 90% of the content will be written from scratch.

I wrote down writing and publishing ebook as part of my goal for 2012. So I basically started thinking of a book idea from January 1st when I wrote down that goal.

Writing the outline was the major struggle. Once I was able to cross that hurdle it was like I was on a journey and I had a clear map. Everything just followed from my head while writing. Well, except when I wasn’t in the mode to write.

Another major hurdle was dealing with distractions. Updating my site became a big distraction while writing the book. I realized that after working on my site and shut down to continue writing my book I become very tired to write, sometimes sleepy. For several weeks I only wrote 10 pages!

I had to take a drastic decision. When my Internet subscription expired I decided to stay completely offline for 2 weeks and do nothing but write my ebook. I set a goal to write for 8 hours everyday. And I was able to achieve this for most of the days in that 2 weeks. At the end of the 2 weeks I was proud of myself for the much I have written.

After the 2 weeks and I renewed my subscription I reduced my writing hours a day to 5 hours. I did very little online. I didn’t updated my site much while writing my book. I only tried to send out newsletters and carried my subscribers along.

Completing the content of the book took me at least 2 months of active writing and 2 months of inactive writing. About 4 months all together. My ebook is big, 327 pages long and at least 97% of it was writing from scratch. And other 4 bonus books written specially to go with the sale of the book.

It was a lot of work but dear am I proud of my end result!

I cried reading this line from Saksham of bloggingjunction.com review of the book:

“Personally, I don’t think you’ll find a book on how to blog better than this one.”

Because that was my goal. And I put my all into it. So it felt really good to hear it from an honest review that I achieved that goal.

I use this opportunity to thank again Saksham and Harsh of shoutmeloud.com (the 2 persons who’ve sent in their reviews so far) who took the time to read and review the 327 pages ebook. Saksham especially has been a darling; always asking me how he can help. And he’s even promised to publish a review of the book free on his blog. Honestly never knew there are still such people in this blogging/internet marketing niche.

Making money is great. But making money as a result of providing something that really help people is greater and much more fulfilling.

I wasted at least one month trying to get a reliable payment processor. Most of the popular ones are either not accepting work from home products or they’re not accepting members from Nigeria.

I wrote my sales page myself and I doubt a copywriter will do better than I did (I can be proved wrong).

Joe Robson one of the best copywriters once said in his book Make Your Word Sell! that the best person to write your sales page is you because you know the product better. I simply read the Make Your Word Sell! ebook about 3 times (in total now) and came out with a a sales that I believe can compete with some professional sales pages; especially when you judge by leading with benefits vs simply leading with features. There’s hardly any amateur copy writer that will read that book and not come out with at least a semi-pro sales page.

I don’t know how the book is going to do yet (just launched 4 hours ago) but I am hoping for the best. It’s a shame I can’t welcome affiliates (at least for now) because Ejunkie pays with Paypal and Paypal is not opened to my country. My country is also one of the few countries Clickbank doesn’t welcome registration from (though I wouldn’t have used them anyway, I think their fees are too high).

Maybe Amazon later. I know amazon pays with check not sure yet if they accept all countries for merchants. I may look into Amazon in future. But I am hesitant already because then I have to price lower than what I already have; and I think the price I already have is low enough for a product of its quality.

In total it has taken me 5 months to write and launch a big book. And I was able to achieve that only because I was so determined to achieve that goal before moving on to any other project I have planned for the year. I even didn’t mind to let my site suffer while I write the book. I felt I can devote time to growing my traffic after launching the book, which I intend to do specifically through guest posting and updating my site.

If you want to write an ebook and complete it (especially a quality ebook) know that you may have to make some sacrifices along the way. And you’ll probably face some disappointments too. But if you keep pushing yourself and see it to completion the rewards (even though I am yet to confirm if I have made a sale or not) are countless.

Among everything else it’s another way for people to talk about you. Since your book will reach lots of people especially if you work with affiliates, it’s the best medium to use to finally take your place as the authority you likely are in your niche.

Another benefit of writing an ebook many don’t talk about is that if you write a quality product it can bring opportunities your way you never thought of. I know people who have gotten public speaking opportunities as a result of a product they released.

Either write a good product or forget it. If you rush to put something together just for the sake of writing and it’s your first product, then you’ll ruin your chance to sell any future products because first buyers will never buy from you again. Whereas if you write something of quality the first time, future products will become easy to sell. I know that’s something I am counting on too.

And talking about future products, the first is always the hardest to write. I already have a title for my follow up product. In fact I am hoping to have 2 other ebooks by November. If things work out most of the content will not be written by me but mostly Interviews.

So everyone who hasn’t and averaging at least 200 blog traffic, now’s the time to start working on a book. If you can balance things writing a book is also an opportunity to grow traffic.

Ana your readers have been waiting on you for a long time. So come on, start working on it already! (that’s easier said than done I know!)

You bet it’s worth it. And now that I look at what I’ve earned, I could kick myself for waiting until last year to write my ebooks. Biggest business mistake ever.

I was always concerned that people would feel there were enough books on niche websites, WordPress, etc. and the daunting task of trying to figure out where and how to start, what to include, what to leave out, etc. was overwhelming. Even though people were asking me to write a book I just felt overwhelmed.

But Christmas of last year, I finally made myself sit down and compile many of the common questions I continue to get and I just began writing, writing and writing until it was done.

I update my book almost every 2-3 months because I go into quite a bit of detail (Penguin, SEO updates, etc.). I wanted to make sure that my book wasn’t just a re-write of what was on my sites.

Nothing wrong with compiling and re-packaging existing content if that’s your plan because I’ve found that some people actually like ebooks like that for reference. I just wasn’t comfortable doing it.

You’ll also find that even though many people may have read a lot of the content in your book on your website or in other places, so many people value having an organized resource they can refer to, print out, bind, or whatever.

I say go for it, Ana! I’m sure it will go over extremely well both on your site and with affiliate sales as well.

Ana and Kristi – Thank for the useful advice. Generating enough good content to put together an e-book is definitely something I aspire to. Any suggestions on how to price an e-book. $25 for Kristi’s advice on blog post promotion is a good value, but what is the price range suggested for a less well author?