You have to write an e-book.
I’m taking a bit of time to give you a few tips about writing an e-book,
But before a few updates.
I’m still getting emails for the adult blog project, and the waiting list goes very long, but the good news is, I’m currently experimenting an evolution of the adult blog project, mixed with the be a whore post, added to some of the latest moneymaking tips I got. If it goes well, I’ll create an adult blog project v2, still free and still private. And Everybody on the waiting list will get access to this new project.
Besides I’m having 2 other projects to share with you but no time to prepare them yet!!! So probably you’ll discover them around may or june, so if you didn’t do it yet, subscribe to my RSS feed to be sure not to miss those.
Now, why do I say that you have to write an e-book? I’ll tell you my little story.
I began in the business of internet marketing in 2004 when I decided to write an ebook.
You know the trick: You choose a subject that you know. You write an ebook. You sell it, and you become rich.
Of course it doesn’t work so easily, but it was a good project, I learned many things, and it really got me started in this business.
It took me around 6 month working part-time, because I knew nothing at the time… SEO? Affiliate? What? I had to learn everything along the way.
I picked up a subject, wrote a 50 pages ebook about it.
I did some keyword research with wordtracker, and registered a domain with those keywords, then set-up and SEO’ed a website.
I did some backlinks building, nothing fancy, mostly by hand.
I waited then for the money to flow, but nothing, I was really disappointed (first lesson, don’t expect to become rich so easily!) so I didn’t take care anymore about the website. But after 6 months, I got my first sale! Still it wasn’t enough to make me spend more time marketing it. (first mistake, you always have to be patient, and put the effort to make money). Anyway after one year, when I checked the sales, I realized that I had made $600! Totally passive income. Imagine if I had worked a bit more to get more traffic.
I had to close it for some personal reasons, but I decided to re-open it in 2006.
Meanwhile, some domain squatters had already bought my domain to put some domain parking on it 
So I used the same name and added “tips” : “xxxxx.com” became “xxxxxtips.com” so I could have the same keywords in the domain name
And I added a blog.
This one is really what everyone should do when they sell an ebook.
You look at any ebook landing page, you see it is always this big white page with a long speech and testimonials. They all look the same.
But by adding a blog, I think it gives some trust to the people, because
1) you give some info to people, if it is good enough, they see you’re not going to sell them a crappy ebook.
2) By seeing some activity, they know that your site is still maintained, it doesn’t looks like old stuff (even if you wrote your ebook 4 years ago like me).
What’s my routine? I write a short article on the blog, every two month. If my article is too big, I cut it in several pieces.
I wait a bit to get my new post indexed by Google.
Finally, I go to those articles directories, and submit my article to get some traffic/backlinks.
I have maybe a dozain of articles since 2006, and spend an evening once every two months for writing the new article, but I could write more articles if I wanted to market more my ebook.
Results? I get a steady 150 visits per day and make a couple of hundreds per month.
Having a blog really increase my organic traffic and my sales.
So I advise you to write an ebook, it’s not a big instant moneymaker, but with consistance and patience, you can get a nice passive income.
And you’ll learn many things along the way.
There is the majority of people who try to make money on the internet and fail/don’t make a lot. I believe that one thing that the successfull minority has, is patience and consistence. Yes, you can try to make big and quick money, but ALWAYS work on some long-term side project, even if you earn nothing now.
It’s like the stocks market. You can make a lot of money quickly but it is not easy. Or you can make good money on the long-term if you take some safe stocks that you know for sure they work with time. But of course, it is more boring, and you need more patience.
Some long-term project is basically everything that involves creating your website around a subject you know: Sell an ebook, but could also be to set-up a community through a forum, or create a resources website (like those myspace goodies websites)…
You have plenty of opportunities, just take action now!!!
Tags: make money online, home based businesses, earn extra money, internet business, make cash, make money now, work from home
Cool story, man. Thanks.
What about payment processing? Please tell us about good payment gateway.
Ahah well I didn’t want to mention the payment processing, but ok I’ll tell you.
At first I used CCbill because I thought I would sell 10,000 e-books the first year LOL
CCbill were reliable but you need to do serious business to make it profitable, because of the fees. When I say serious business, I mean several thousands of dollars a month, otherwise it’s not worth it.
I used then clickbank, which I loathe, because
1) they pay by check
2) you need to pay to get your e-book included in their catalog
3) if you don’t make a sell during a couple of weeks you pay weekly fees, which is bad for beginners, and totally unfair, as it doesn’t cost anything for them.
Moreover, their affiliate system is not as great as it seems, I make maybe 15% of my sales at most through affiliates.
But it’s a no worry system.
Looking back, if I was doing it today, I would probably rely on paypal only.
But in 2006 paypal payment was a pain to associate to automatic sales delivery.
Thanks.
I’m thinking about something like regnow and plimus. But their antifraud kills sales.
I know it’s a problem.
I also thought about GoogleCheckout but heard some horror stories that in case of credit cards frauds the refund is charged to the seller + extra fees.
For this I must admit that don’t have any CC fraud issue with clickbank
Again, if doing this today, I would have a look at paypal, you can find now some API in PHP
thanks, nice story. i too think it’s a great idea to make an ebook, to have a passive income is such a nice thing.