Once upon a time, there was a straightforward solution to “monetizing” your website when you got tired of trying to make AdSense work:
Write an ebook!
Having something of your own to offer, even a simple $7 ebook, virtually always beats trying to monetize your traffic with advertising.
And that’s still true. (In fact, sales of ebooks hit $9 billion in 2015.)
But as more and more people have taken that advice, we need to get a little more strategic to build strong businesses around ebooks.
It can still be done, and I’ll be talking about folks who are doing it. But you can also let ebooks become part of a bigger game, within a larger digital business strategy.
The straight ebooks-for-sale play
We all know that some fiction authors are making a killing selling digital-only books on Amazon.
In fact, a few of those authors are dear friends of ours.
But that’s not what we’ll be talking about today. The world of fiction is a fascinating one in its own right, but the other type of ebook — the somewhat traditional “information product” designed to teach something valuable — is one we have a lot of experience with.
Two powerhouse ebook publishers
It’s getting trickier to build a business around ebooks alone, but if you look at Darren Rowse’s Digital Photography School, that site grew to an ecommerce powerhouse on the strength of ebooks.
(In recent years, DPS has expanded to offer courses as well — a natural evolution that can be remarkably profitable.)
The DPS ebooks
Category: Ebooks
A Simple Plan for Managing and Completing a Content Project
On June 20, 2009, I was reading Copyblogger and I got a new idea: I should write an ebook.
At that point, my writing and editing business was less than a year old, and I had never written anything that resembled a book.
Could I actually do it?
I knew I wanted to try, so I established a plan on July 1 that would help me write, design, and self-publish an ebook on my website by September 15.
I’m going to share that plan with you today, so you can adapt it to any type of content project you’d like to finish by the fall. You’ll also learn some habits I like to avoid when there is a specific goal I want to accomplish.
Select the right topic
Writing an ebook could easily take a year or two … or five.
But launching it as soon as possible was an important step for my business. The ebook would help:
Establish my authority as a writer and editor
Build my email list
Strengthen my author bio when I wrote guest posts
The last bullet point above was especially critical because I didn’t have my own blog yet. I’ll explain that in a bit.
In order to complete the project by the end of the summer, I decided to create a short guide to avoiding common writing mistakes.
If I had chosen a more complex topic, either the quality would have suffered or I wouldn’t have been able to release it on September 15.
Carefully select a project
Writers: Discover How to Step Up Your Game with Our Free Ebook
We love writers around here. Have you noticed?
Professional writers. Aspiring writers. Struggling writers. Successful writers. Writers of all kinds!
To show our appreciation, we put together a free ebook for writers called WORD. Because in our experience, writers are also readers, so an ebook seemed like the perfect delivery system for our information.
We gathered our best articles-written-for-writers from people like Sonia Simone, Brian Clark, Stefanie Flaxman, Beth Hayden, and this other writer you may know.
Download WORD: Writers Offer Reliable Direction
Here’s what you’ll find inside WORD:
Traits that all well-paid writers share
The change in mindset that helps you charge more
How to craft a pitch that lands you the job
A pricing formula you can use
How to focus on “true benefits” that make the sale
It’s some of our best content for writers, and we want to get it into your hands today!
This 45-page beautifully designed ebook is available to you for free from your friends at Copyblogger
Just add your email address below, click the confirmation link we’ll send you, and you’ll get instant access to WORD from Copyblogger.
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The ‘Horror’ of Making a Living from Selling eBooks
Look out, Stephen King.
A new generation of Horror authors are using the power of self-publishing to climb the ranks, get new fans, and push the envelope in the genre.
J. Thorn is an up-and-coming Horror author who knows how to write great books … and build an audience and income stream with them.
In this episode of Authorpreneur, host Jim Kukral and J. Thorn discuss:
How J. Thorn went from selling two books a day to 200 books a day
How to build a powerful fan-base and turn them into readers through creative content marketing
The biggest mistakes J. Thorn made when writing and launching his first book
What readers really want and how to give it to them
How much work is involved in becoming an authorpreneur
Click Here to Listen toAuthorpreneur on iTunes
Click Here to Listen on Rainmaker.FM
About the authorRainmaker.FMRainmaker.FM is the premier digital marketing and sales podcast network. Get on-demand business advice from experts, whenever and wherever you want it.
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