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Have you been wanting to write and market your own ebook? As many have discovered, writing a good ebook does not guarantee sales. In fact, very few ebooks are actually successful at generating income. Diggy from Upgrade Reality understands exactly what it takes to be successful with your ebook and he wrote this article specifically to guide you through the process.
The Concept of a Successful eBook
Before I tell you how to successfully launch and market an ebook you need to understand the concept of selling an ebook to make big money.
People will pay money to get a solution for their problem. They don’t care if it’s an electronic book, video, physical guide or even written on a roll of toilet paper. If the solution is very good and easy to obtain, people are going to share that solution with their friends whenever they get the chance to.
So if you want to make money by selling an ebook, you need to create a very good solution for a specific problem. The better your solution, the bigger the chance is that people will talk about it, and thus help you greatly in the marketing aspect of your book (word of mouth and social media recommendations are very powerful).
Again, you are not just selling a book they can download, you are selling a solution for a problem. The following 7 steps will walk you through the entire process. So, let’s get started.
Step 1 – Finding Your Problem
The first thing you need to do is research. You need to find a problem that people want a solution for and are willing to pay for. You don’t necessarily need to have knowledge about the problem, because you can learn more about the problem and potential solution later.
If you already have a blog or email list, the easiest way is to just ask your readers what they struggle with and what they would like a solution for.
Other ways to find a problem you could provide a solution for is to visit forums and browse the threads to see what kind of problems people are having. If there is a problem that comes up on various forums then you have something that could potentially bring you a lot of money if you can provide a good solution for it.
Don’t skimp on the research part, this is the most important aspect. If you don’t have an in-demand problem that people need a solution for, you’re going to spend hours and days creating a product that nobody is going to find valuable.
Step 2 – Researching Your Solution
After you’ve done your research and decided on the problem that you’re going to provide a solution for, you need to start finding that solution.
Once again, forums are a very valuable resource for finding free information. In the same way that you discovered the problem that many people have, you can find answers and solutions for that problem. Browse threads in forums and copy all useful and helpful answers that other people recommend. This way you are starting to build an arsenal of information that you will use to create your solution to their problem.
Another good way to get information for your book is to study 5 top-selling products in that niche. Buy them if you must, it’ll be a good investment. (Often products have a refund guarantee so you could even ask for a refund after having studied the content in it, although that is kind of unethical). I suggest looking on Clickbank.com for the top 5 products in that niche.
Step 3 – Writing Your eBook
Now that you’ve researched the problem you want to provide a solution for and have a ton of useful information for your book, it’s time to start writing it.
I can’t give you specifics on how long your book should be. If you have the best solution and can give it to someone in 10 pages then that’s perfect. If you need 200 pages then that’s also great.
The main thing is that you provide a great solution for the problem, and that you provide that solution in easy-to-understand language, and in easy-to-follow steps and instructions. Write under the assumption that your reader is a complete newbie with a very average IQ level, in other words, the simpler your language the better it is.
Writing your ebook should take you 1-2 weeks at most, depending how much time you dedicate to it every day. Personally I like to put all my other projects on hold while writing an ebook so I can focus all my attention and creativity on it.
Step 4 – Design
A beautiful / professional design makes a big difference in the presentation of your product. Ultimately if you have the best solution in the world then people are not going to care about the design, but chances are that you’ll have some competition. This means you’re better off spending some time and money finishing off your project with a pretty design.
If you’re any good at design you can do it yourself, otherwise you can outsource it. I personally use Charfishdesign.com and Charlie does an excellent job with designing the covers and formatting your entire ebook for about $350.
If you want a pretty book cover for a cheaper price, you can run a contest on forums.digitalpoint.com and offer a prize of $40 for the winning 3d and 2d ebook cover. Just state the details you want to have on your design and you’ll likely get 5-30 different designs you can choose from. Then, use a program like openoffice (free to download) and you can easily format your digital book, use nice colors and fonts for headings, insert a footer and then export it as a PDF file which is the ebook format you will sell.
Step 5 – Testing & Testimonials
Now that you have your completed ebook (designed and all), it’s wise to give it to a handful of people to get their opinion. I’d suggest going to the same forums and creating a thread or messaging members to say you’ve created a premium ebook with a solution to problem X, and ask if they want a free copy in return for feedback and a testimonial.
This way you can see if you need to make any changes, and you’ll have a handful of testimonials to use on your sales page.
If possible, try to get reviews and testimonials from some of the big and popular bloggers/websites in your niche. This will boost your authority and credibility enormously.
Step 6 – Sales Page
Now that you have your testimonials ready, it’s time to set up your sales page. This is the page where you describe how your product will provide value to the lives of your customers. If you really don’t want to write your own sales page you can outsource it to a professional, but be aware, good copywriters are very expensive
I recommend putting your sales page on a new domain, if possible with the keywords in the domain. For example, I created an ebook and video course about cooking easy healthy dinner recipes and I chose the domain http://www.easyhealthydinnerrecipes.com for the sales page. A domain with keywords in it is very helpful for ranking in search engines and getting free targeted traffic later on.
You can get lots of good ideas about creating sales pages by studying the sales pages of top-selling products. (Once again, Clickbank.com is useful for this).
Without going into too much detail and technical information about creating sales pages, there are two important things that you need to keep in mind when creating your sales page:
1. Don’t have any distractions on your sales page. No ads or links that readers could click on that would take them off the sales page. There are only 2 ways to get away from your sales page and that is by buying your ebook or by closing the browser.
2. Focus on benefits. How is your information going to help the reader. The more benefits you give your reader, the more you convince him to buy. Paint a picture of how much better his life will be after he buys and reads your ebook. Pictures and testimonials help a lot in providing proof and credibility to your product.
I recommend using ejunkie.com as your checkout cart service. It’s very cheap at $5 per month, and it allows you to create an affiliate program for your ebook which is very useful to generate extra sales.
Step 7 – Affiliates & Marketing
You’re all set up and ready to sell. You’ve got your ebook and sales page finished and setup with your shopping cart service.
Now it’s all about announcing your new project to your readers. Announce it on your blog, to your email list, on your Facebook account, on your Twitter status, in forums and wherever you can. Remember that it’s good to announce your ebook multiple times over a period of a few days because many people will not react or even see your first announcement.
Scarcity tactics always work, where you say there are a limited number of copies for sale, or that the price will go up after X copies are sold, or that your ebook will only be available for X number of days. Create a sense of urgency.
It’s after you’ve launched your new product to your own audience that the real marketing begins. Create an affiliate program where you offer affiliates 50%-75% commission when they make a sale. Then go out and email as many people as you can. Tell them about your book and why it’s such a good solution to problem X. Tell them about your affiliate program and how much they could make if they tell their lists and audience to buy your product.
You can also focus on SEO to get your sales page on the first page of Google for the keyword/topic of your ebook. If you can get a top ranking it means that you will get free sales for months and years to come without doing any work. If you don’t know anything about SEO you can always consider paying someone to do this for you. I recommend outsourcing only after you’ve made money on the initial sales and you know that your product is a success.
Conclusion
I’ve made way over $1000 from selling my own ebooks and I have friends who have made literally tens of thousands of dollars from a single ebook.
Creating an ebook can be very profitable but also very time-consuming. If you have never created an ebook and want to do so, try not to expect too much from it the first time around. You will likely not get rich from it, but there is of course a chance that you will have a winner with your first attempt.
If you follow the 7 steps I’ve laid out for you in this article then you’re got a very good guide to help you successfully create, launch and market an ebook. I wish you good luck!
Dirk de Bruin (a.k.a Diggy) writes for Upgradereality.com, a popular blog that provides practical self improvement tips for upgrading your reality. 
The first and very successful ebook that Diggy created (in the same way described in this article) is called Upgrade Reality and it’s about overcoming your fears and personal obstacles so you can go after what you want and achieve your goals.
Upgrade Reality covers the essential things that a person should have in their life. This ebook speaks about how to tackle the problems you are currently having with the appropriate mindset and emotions. Learn more about Upgrade Reality!
