eBooks are a great way to sell information. What you need to create an eBook is the following:
- An idea for the eBook
- Experience in this area or the willingness to learn about it
- A PayPal Business Account
- Webspace for your Website
The topic of your eBook
The topic is in the best case something you already know about and something people want to know about. If you are an expert in teaching children about music and you know the last time you gave a beginners level course at your local kindergarten people loved it and wanted more you are on the right track. Have a particular target audience in mind when you think about choosing your topic. The audience shouldn’t be too broad and not too specific. In the first case you might not be able to offer enough specific advice and in the later you might have a hard time finding buyers for your eBook. To make sure there is a demand for your topic do some niche research.
What do you have to know? What information sells?
In general you should be an expert on the field you write about. Obviously as more as you know about something as more valuable is the information you are going to sell. But you can sell all sorts of informations. eBooks don’t have to be about “How to become an expert woodworker”. You can talk about experiences you had in the past like living in India for a while and how to manage an inter cultural relationship with an Indian woman for example. The hard truth is people who are desperate will be more willing to pay for your information. An ugly example are for example reflux disease eBooks. Those eBooks promise people the ultimate solution to get better and in the end they just sell the big “secret” to eat a lot of green apples because they help your digestion…
No matter if you know already about a topic or you take your time to learn about it if you write a truly helpful eBook that will answer peoples questions you picked the right topic.
Writing your first eBook
First write an outline and brainstorm all the subtopics you want to write about. Sort them and create an index for your eBook that makes sense. Now write chapter for chapter until you are done. Take your time to and read it again to edit it and make it better. Usually eBooks come in a PDF format. You don’t have to pay anything to get the right software to write and export your book to a PDF file. Just get Open Office and use it for that. This is how the majority of eBook writers do it and it is very efficient, easy and quick.
Selling your eBook
Go to GoDaddy or any other domain registrar of your choice and get a domain name that matches your topic. Set up a website and explain people why they should get your eBook. Use a PayPal “Buy Now” Button for the payment (you need a Business Account for that which is free). Whenever you get paid you can send your eBook via Email or use an Autoresponder like AWeber to do this automatically for you.
Make sure you write an effective sales letter or promotion page. For now just try to stress emotional benefits of your eBook. Talk about what readers get out of reading it, make bulleted lists of the main benefits and price it according to what you think your information is worth. Experiment with the pricing and see how good your conversion is.
You can also mail some copies of your eBook to other people or blogs in the field you were writing about. They might review your eBook on their site or even give you an testimonial that you can use on your site.
Look for forums in which people discuss about your topic and link from relevant threads to your site. Much success.
