Giving away an ebook for free is easy, set up a opt in email for and in exchange they get your free ebook whether it be a report or tutorial. But how do you sell your first ebook hassle free and securely? I have been getting asked this a lot since releasing my tutorial The 20/7 Rule.
I’ll go through the process below, it’s easy quick and in my opinion the best hastle free way to do it;
- Have Something To Sell
Seems obvious doesn’t it, but if you haven’t completed this phase then you need to get it sorted and finished, after all a business isn’t a business unless it makes cash and profit. The way I write tutorial ebooks is the exact same way I write content for this post, just on a bigger scale.
When I wrote 7 Days To Better Traffic and The Secret To a Thousand Comments a month (which you can get for free by filling in your details in the Sign Up box on the top right) and The 20/7 Rule I wrote down the bullet points I wanted to talk about, exactly the way I write my posts. Then instead of writing two of three paragraphs on each point, I would treat that bullet point as a post title on it’s own. So for example this bullet point ‘Have Something To Sell’ if it were in my ebook would be a page or more of content.
Some people really deliberate and worry about the content that goes into an ebook as they want it to be perfect and while that’s a great attitude to have, you really must leave spelling, grammar and the asthetics of it till you have got the written part of the ebook done. By that I mean you need to actually write it, don’t spell check it, don’t correct a spelling when you have seen it just write it as it’s coming into your head. Once it’s finished there will be plenty of time to correct everything, just get the bulk of the work done.
If you have the bulk of the ideas and content you want to actually write about, providing it’s not a research intensive ebook writing at a speed of a 1,000 words an hour you could have yours finished or close to being finished in a couple of days you have off from work if you really hammer it.
- Secure
If you do a google search on how to secure your ebook from illegal download, it will throw up a lot of very clever, but quite difficult ways of making sure only the people who buy the book get hold of it, screening it behind no-index pages etc. All this is labour intensive and in my opinion a waste of time. Use a third party to handle the checkout, sale and download all in one place.
There are a lot of different options for you to use, I chose E-Junkie because it only costs from $5 a month, it handles the sale (you can decide which payment method you take) and handles the delivery (you upload your ebook and when someone pays they get the download link from their servers). This made the whole process for me headache free, I was seriously looking at setting up secret download pages and having to protect that page etc etc, but by using a good solid reliable to sell my tutorial I’ve had no problems at all and the client gets the product immeadiately.
The other good thing about E-Junkie is you can become an affiliate (which I am) which can cover your monthly cost and even make a profit on it, win win in my eyes.
- Payment
You could accept payment in a couple of different ways, but virtually everyone these days recognises paypal and because I have had my paypal account verified for years it’s the easiest option for me. I did think about using Google Checkout, but for businesses in the UK trying to appeal to a global market it’s best to sell in USD, Google Checkout (despite me trying a lot and asking directly) won’t let you sell anything in a currency that’s not your standard banking currency (GBP £) so I binned that quickly and stuck with paypal.
For a nano-second I thought about charging in GBP (£) but you really can’t if you want to appeal to a audience outside your own country, people know USD everything is traded is USD and for the time being that’s not going to change so you may as well stick to it, plus most people roughly know what their local currency equates to in USD ($).
- Marketing
Having a mailing list is a massive help when trying to sell anything, they have already signed up so they are interested in what you have got to say and offer, send out a broadcast letting your readers know the product is avaliable to buy, but down hammer them with it.
By having a page tab that lets people click and see what you have to sell won’t bring in sales by it’s self. I ran this as an experiment on this site, but my 20/7 Rule page was up 2 days before my email broadcast and I didn’t get a single sale, but within minutes of the broadcast going out it started selling. Equally have something on your site that is more noticable than a page tab like a picture or advert for your product.
Not to mention affiliating your product out, but I haven’t done that yet so I can’t talk with any experience on it and wouldn’t want to start professing about something I haven’t done or experienced. That said I will be looking to make an affiliate scheme due to release soon.
Have you sold your first product yet? How did you do it?
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Hi James,
Great instructions posted and one that I will have to come back and refer to whenever I get around to actually creating and selling a product!
Congrats again and I hope this is just the start of your info-empire. You’ re on your way now to replacing your full-time income with unlimited online income.
Karen
.-= Karen´s last blog ..The Number One Shortcut To Be Successful In Life =-.
Yeah here’s hoping Karen, thanks for the support!
lol, my ebook took me about a year to write because it was a research intensive ebook. Diamonds are so technical.
I do have ideas for writing a couple of quick ebooks that should sell well.
Just curious, do you have any numbers you could throw at us, like how many books you sold the first day after that broadcast. I liked the 2 day testing you had. That’s actually pretty interesting. I think I’m going to join ezines and write some short articles that point towards my ebook. Should help!
Hi Richard! Not to discourage you from ezine marketing, but in my experience the time you invest in writing and posting to ezines doesn’t always equate to traffic and exposure you need – guest posting on high traffic related sites works a lot better. You wouldn’t even have to talk about the book directly, but just put it in a brief “about the author” section.
Just a suggestion, thought.
.-= Kiesha @ We Blog Better´s last blog ..Where I got the idea for my Guest Post Contest =-.
Hey man, yeah in the first email broadcadt that went out, abotu 60 people visited and it resulted in around $60/70 worth of sales (bearing in mind fees etc), it’s not massive but it all adds to the pot, it’s levelled off now and found it’s natural selling mark which should average out at about $400 a month just from that one ebook ish.
Long way to go but more products and services being released soon, one which will have a massive affiliate scheme linked to it
Hey! Did you write this just for me
This really is awesome help – I’m still revising my e-book, but you’re write, if you can just buckle down and get the bulk of the writing down, everything else will flow rather easily.
Hey, while you’re on this subject, got any tips for designing an ebook cover?
I know…one step at a time…
.-= Kiesha @ We Blog Better´s last blog ..The Simplest Guest Post Contest Ever =-.
Hi Kiesha. It looks like most people use http://www.myecovermaker.com/
It’s cheap and easy!
Hey thanks! I’ll check it out.
.-= Kiesha @ We Blog Better´s last blog ..Break your church newsletter into sections =-.
Kiesha, you knew what I was going to say before I said it lol, yeah I actually use a designer who does all my logo stuff, he’s going to be advertising up his services soon
Travis?
.-= Keith´s last blog ..Blog Tip | Work Environment =-.
Yup
James, thanks for the detailed write-up. Interesting to learn about your process of writing the ebook. I’ll probably have to refer to this post in a couple of months
.-= Moon Hussain´s last blog ..Fun Friday Round-Up: Delicious Blog Chowder! =-.
Yeah Moon make sure you bookmark to come back too
Excellent review and details on your eBook experience, I myself signed up to eJunkie about 2 weeks ago and had an idle account (didn’t get past free period) but plan on using it to sell my first ebook which I am hoping to have completed by June.
Unfortunately, once somebody downloads your ebook for their use, it is in PDF format and there is no way to prevent them from distributing, uploading or sending to whomever via email right? You can only control the download access but not distribution once a client has the book.
.-= Dragon Blogger´s last blog ..WeReward: New Service from IZEA Around the Corner =-.
Yeah that’s true but if someone wants to share your ebook with someone else without them paying for it, there going to do it no matter how you try and stop them really
These are very useful tips on creating your first eBook. I’ll definitely go back to this article when we do decide on making one. I think it’s also important to let someone test the eBook and see if the contents are navigable and easy to locate.
.-= Julius´s last blog ..How to Caption Videos in YouTube =-.
Book mark it then brother, glad it helped
Thanks James, this is very helpful for me. Now I just need to brainstorm, make a list of bullet points and write based on that. This is great advice. Thanks for sharing!
anytime Jarrod
I’ve been wondering how the process goes with creating ebooks and you explained it beautifully. Great post on how to do it and I will recommend people to this post when they need the same job done.
When I finish writing my ebook I’m using this post as a reminder of things.
Thanks!
.-= Eric´s last blog ..Five Reasons Why I Don’t JUST Tweet Newer Blog Articles =-.
cool man give me a shout if you need any help, send your bio in !
Hi James, this is a no nonsense guide and If you follow it, you will certainly get sales.
It’s a way to go, as you say, but nevertheless it’s your first income online which is about better than the other 99% of the population who have yet to earn anything online.
.-= Matthew Needham´s last blog ..So, whats your problem? (part 2) =-.
Yep, you have to start somewhere it’s the only way to go
gotta chime in with the others, this was a great post about how to get it all together. I have been doing the same thing and it is good to see another persons perspective.
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Dreaming, what’s it all about? =-.
Who you using man?
for the first couple I am doing it all myself. I have it set up to pay through paypal and dl right from my site. I cant afford to pay ejunkie or one of those until I can actually sell some books. I sold one.
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Dreaming, what’s it all about? =-.
Yeah I was the same really, e-junkie is $5 a month and that’s it so for me it’s something I was willing to pay, totally know where you’re coming from
luckily I had some experience setting up and selling via paypal from my wifes quilt shop so it isn’t too bad. I have another one coming up that is a primer on flyfishing I think I will use e-junkie for but we will have to see
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Dreaming, what’s it all about? =-.
Are you sending it out manually once you recieve payment then?
No, you can redirect to a page from paypal after payment is made. I send them to a downloads page which has the .pdf file as well as an HTML file for Kindle and a .pdb file for palm based OS devices.
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Dreaming, what’s it all about? =-.
I looked into that but got put off by trying to keep it secure
not too worried for the fiction books, they are separate from everything else and buried so they would have to be shared to get out. They are just little right now though. The bigger ones, I think may go to an email link. Hopefully by the time that is an issue, I can be making at least the $5 per month to use a service. I could direct email but that would take forever if more than 1 person bought anything.
.-= Justin Matthews´s last blog ..Dreaming, what’s it all about? =-.
I’m just in the process of writing my first ebook pal. I’m not saying its going to be a work of art, but the aim is to create literary gold dust :]
Came across an awesome plugin that processes payment and auto-download internally, with max download attempts etc. Gonna give that a whirl before I outsource, and see how it goes.
Interesting point with pricing too. I would, up until now, have just processed payments in GBP, but I’ll be reconsidering now and looking at the USD equivellant. Good job I checked this out!!
.-= Phil Johnson´s last blog ..Stop wasting time and money! =-.
E-Junkie do a great job mate very easy