jonathanleger - 10:08 pm on Jun 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

NOTICE: I sticky'd AW with a very long description of how I've achieved (almost) what he's wanting in less than one month. I've edited it heavily since it contained links and descriptions that violate the TOS. I wanted to post it here for the benefit of everyone else. It may not be the absolute best way to do anything, but it's worked for me. I apologize if I missed anything that should have been edited out.

Hey AW,

The best way to make money online is to sell information. <snip>.

I started selling [an ebook I wrote] less than three weeks ago and I've already made about <snip> in sales. This month is looking to do much better than that. My ebook is a niche ebook that does not have a wide general appeal. Only <snip> can use the information, and although there are <snip>, in comparison to general webmasters (millions of those) that's not much. Compared to "normal" people that use the internet (hundreds of millions) that's nothing.

So my advice to you is to think about what you know or are interested in. Do you like to garden? Build web sites? Work on cars? Whatever. Topics that involve money are best because if the topic can make money you can sell your information for a higher price. I can sell my ebook for <snip> because it's return value is tremendous. But you can charge $19.95 for a general interest ebook. People do it all the time.

People are willing to pay for ebooks. According to an article at WriteNews.com, “a total of 660,991 ebooks have been sold by retailers in the first half of 2003, a 40% increase over the same period in 2002.” As to revenues, the same article states that “$4,965,171 in sales have been logged by retailers in the first half of 2003, a 30% increase over the same period in 2002.” And keep this in mind: these are statistics from retailers only, and do not include individual web sites that are selling their own ebooks (there are thousands of them).

Once you have a few topics in mind, go to this website and see if enough people are interested in those topics to write an ebook about it:

[****.com...]

Enter in the keywords that somebody would use when searching for your topic. If more than 3,000 or 4,000 searches are done each day for that topic, you definately have a hot seller. 1,000 will do, but the more the merrier.

Once you know which topic will sell best, go to Google.com and search for "<your interest> forum". Take the gardening example. If you want to write an ebook on gardening, search for "gardening forum". Visit those forums. Read the posts. See what questions people are asking, what topics are discussed the most. What do people need to know? Make each major topic a chapter in your ebook. Take notes and put together a table of contents for your ebook. I did this when writing and revising my ebook to find out what people wanted to know in terms of their <snip>. In fact, WebmasterWorld.com was my principle source of this kind of feedback.

Once you have the table of contents, do research at Google.com for the answers to each question that became a chapter in your ebook. YOUR EBOOK DOES NOT NEED TO EXCEED 75-100 PAGES. So don't think it's got to be huge, it doesn't. (<snip>--it's the value held within those few pages that matters). Use a 12pt Verdana font and generous margins: 1" top and bottom and 1.25" left and right. It makes for easier reading. With that font size and those margins, you'll only need about 250 words per page--child's play.

Flesh out those chapters. You can easily write twenty pages a day or more if you put some time into it. And I know you're motiviated to make some money. You seem to have a good grasp of English and grammer from your posts, so this should not be difficult for you. Once you've written the ebook in your favorite word processor, go here:

<snip>

You can download a free printer driver for Windows that will let you print from any word processor directly to an Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) file. That's the best format to distribute your ebook in because almost everybody's got it.

Once you've written your ebook, email me at:

<snip>

I will create you an ebook cover graphic for free using the eCover Generator software I bought. Just tell me the title and the subtitle you want. You can see an example of how an ecover looks at:

<snip>

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it.

Get a PayPal account at PayPal.com. It's free and easy to setup. Get a website. I recommend going to <snip> and getting the Standard Windows hosting account for $10/month. You can Pay with PayPal now, just email <snip> and ask him if you can pay with PayPal, he'll tell you how to do it. You wont actually have to pay until he invoices you 30 days later. The total charge will be $45 for 3 months of hosting ($30 for the hosting plus an anually $15 domain name registration fee).

You only need to create a one-page website that talks about your ebook. STRESS BENEFITS. "Our new gardening ebook will show you how to keep ants out of your garden permanantly!" "We'll give you a list of the 10 best farmer's markets in your area where you can sell your fruits and vegetables!" I'll say it again: STRESS BENEFITS. People buy benefits.

See my example:

<snip>

Be sure to tell your visitors somewhere on the page that the ebook is in Adobe Acrobate Reader PDF format, and give them a link to where they can download the reader for free:

[adobe.com...]

Get a free tracker for your page from:

<snip>

This will tell you how many visitors you are getting. From the number of visitors and number of sales you will be able to figure out your conversion ratio. This will become important later.

At PayPal.com setup a "Buy Now" button. It will walk you through how to do this on the "Merchant Tools" tab. It's very easy to do. Instead of the default "Buy Now" button, select the VISA/MasterCard logo button because it makes it plain that they can use their credit card. Click the "Add more options" button and change the "successful payment url" to a second page on your web site (i.e. "http://www.myebook.com/sales.html").

At the bottom of your web page paste the code so that once people have read all about the benefits of your ebook they can buy it. They do not need a PayPal account (say this on your page near the button), just a credit card or a checking account (you can buy things with your normal checking account through PayPal).

Create the "sales.html" page. All it really needs to be is a link to the PDF version of the ebook. You will, of course, need to upload the PDF ebook to your website. :) Once somebody completes a purchase they will be sent to this page. It's good form to also provide a link back to your main page. Put your tracker code on this page, too.

Now you're ready for some affiliates.

Search Google.com for sites dealing with your ebook's topic. You want to focus on small to mid-size websites, not corporate sites (don't bother going to hgtv.com to sell that gardening ebook, they probably wont even respond to your email). Email the owners of the sites and offer to give them a free copy of your new ebook to see if they would like to promote it from their site. I did something similar and got a number of affiliates selling my software and ebook right away.

You said that you don't have much cash yourself to spend. You wont have to. These website owners already get great traffic targetted to your topic. Be generous with your commission rate, 25% - 40% depending on what your ebook costs. I'm giving 25% because my ebook is expensive and so the affiliate makes good money on it <snip>. Much to my surprise at least two of my affiliates started AdWords campaigns for my software. <snip> Those ads showing up for <snip> on the right are not mine!

Copy and paste your main page into an affiliate page for each webmaster that agrees to sell your ebook. Go back to PayPal.com and create a new "Buy Now" button for each affiliate. Change the product description to include some information that will tell you where the sale came from (a number, the domain name of the affiliate, whatever). Send the buyer to the same "sales.html" page as before. Paste the new code into your copied page and upload the page. Email your new affiliate the link to the page where (s)he should send visitors to read about and buy the ebook.

Repeat this process over and over with other webmasters for your topic. A few will accept your offer, many will reject it. Keep going. Email new prospects day in and day out. You will have no shortage of prospects if the keywords tool above said there are 3,000-4,000 searches per day for your topic.

After signing up a few affiliates you will start to make a few sales. Figure out your conversion ratio by dividing the number of sales by the number of visitors (from your tracker stats) for a given time period. If you're getting a 2% or better conversion ratio, start telling the webmasters that you email this. Anything over 1% is beating the industry standard.

At the end of 30 days, if you hussle, perhaps you can reach your goal. As soon as you have $50, go to ClickBank.com and get setup to sell your products through their affiliate network. This is the reason I'm doing so well this month. It's worth the money. In fact, keep your first $45 for your hosting costs and invest your next $50 profit into getting the ClickBank account setup. Then add a link to your main page telling people that they can make money by reselling your ebook through ClickBank (they can signup as an affiliate for free if they do not already have a ClickBank account).

These instructions are almost exactly what I did, without the mistakes I made (mostly buying traffic that didn’t convert), and will hopefully get you on the road to your $100 - $200 a day goal as quickly as it did for me. And I managed this part-time while holding down a full-time job.

To your sucess.

Jon