It’s true that it’s an asset to learn how to write an eBook and make money. 

Before I go into how to make money with an eBook, I’ve got a personal story for you.

Some of the very first money I ever made online was from writing one and it was beginner’s luck I made some serious bucks from it right out of the starting gate.

(Sometimes you’re better off being a total looser when you start; I’ll tell you why later.)

How I Started Writing eBooks to Make Money

My teaching job was at a private school that didn’t pay much and there was no retirement plan. Now I don’t know about you, friend, but I think having no money sucks. I look at money kind like I look at the air – you’ve just gotta have it.

At the time, I was working two jobs and my income was very low.  (I know you’ve probably read stories like this
before, but this is the way it happened.)

When you’re you’re barely making any money, life can be hard.

If you don’t have money, life is not easy. 

The car breaks down and you worry…

Your wife or kids get sick and you worry…

You just barely pay your mortgage and you worry…

There isn’t a way to fund your retirement, so you worry.

The great thing about America is if you want something bad enough, you can get it.  Money, a home, food, etc. it’s there for the taking…If you’re willing to work… sometimes you have to work your butt off.

When I Saw This My Attitude Totally Changed…

This happened to me before I ever thought about how to write an eBook and make money.

I was driving down my street one day and I saw something that hit me pretty hard.  The city had issued notices to some of my neighbors that they needed to get the cracks in their sidewalks fixed. 

(Yep, my family got a notice too.  Fortunately, our sidewalks weren’t too bad and I could fix it myself – thank God!)

My neighbor must have had some bad cracks because the city told her she had to have her entire sidewalk replaced. 

As I drove past her house, I saw this young Mexican kid with a ginormous hammer bashing the hell out of the sidewalk in the hot summer sun.

His t-shirt was soaked and his tanned skin was slick; his head was down as he put everything he had into taking out that sidewalk. 

I slowed my car so I could watch him for a few seconds more. The man was like an unstoppable machine.

Six hours later, on my way home, he was still there with a wheelbarrow full of concrete slabs – the job almost done.   

At that second I said out loud, “Now there’s a guy that’s going to make it, in life.  He’s willing to do whatever it takes.” 

I knew right at that moment, I needed a side-hustle and I had to do something on my own that could eventually bring in some extra cash.

I don’t know what happened to that sidewalk-basher.  I’ll bet his family never went hungry, and I’m sure that when his kids grow up they’ll have benefited from his work ethic tremendously. 

I know on the day I saw him, he inspired me.

The Weird Idea I Used to Make Money

The school I taught at was a military academy.  I was the band director there and I was in charge of all of the music students for the entire school.  This included the school’s bagpiping team called the “Highlanders”.

These kids were really into the Celtic culture and they were constantly practicing their bagpipes. 

I don’t know about you friend, but the bagpipe is not a fun instrument to listen to.  Especially when you have to listen to gang of them play all day long.   

The band hall wasn’t professionally built for sound because the school had gone the cheap route on the deal. There was a lot of echo and those pipers were pretty loud in there.

I didn’t want to stifle their passion, so I bit holes through my tongue to keep my mouth shut.

Once again, fate struck and I had another moment of inspiration that I’ll never forget.

At the end of the school day, I saw one of the Highlanders. He had all of his Celtic gear on and he was carrying his bagpipes with him.

So I asked him why he was all dressed up. 

“Oh, I’m going to play for a wedding.” 

I said, “Great!  You have a friend or a relative that’s getting married?”

“Nah, I’m getting paid to play. 
These people heard about me from some friends so they hired me.”

I was surprised, but it sounded legit.  
So I asked, “What’s the pay like?”

He smiled and said, “I’m only playing at the very beginning of the wedding for about 10 minutes so they’re paying me $75. Pretty sweet, eh?  I get to hang around and eat too!”  (It almost seemed like he was more excited about the food.)

“Wow!” I said.  “You do this often?”

“Oh yeah, I play for anniversaries, veteran’s events, small parades, events at churches. I stay pretty busy and I give lessons too.”

He was making a nice side income from his bagpipe passion.  This gave me my first idea on how to write an eBook and make money.

Me? An eBook Writer?

At the time, the Internet started becoming commonplace in the home.  I didn’t know much about writing for it, yet.  I did know that having a  niche to target was a good thing, and this seemed to be a specialized area.

So, what the heck, why not write an eBook?

Every day I saw my new money-making – bagpipe bud, I drilled information out of him.  I found out that he wasn’t
the only piper there that was making good money on the side with his pipes.  Before I knew it, the Highlanders were flooding me with ideas for my new eBook.

Not only did these students tell me who all the top instructors and players were but also all the places where bagpipers hung out at online.  Turns out there were a number of sites that were forums where these guys would network and share ideas.

I took all of the ideas my bagpipe friends gave me and then brainstormed ways that pipers could market their services.  I also created marketing pieces that they could use straight out of box-like template letters and postcards.

So my first eBook “How to Make Money with Your Bagpipes” was born.

Yep, I made a lot of mistakes along the way.  For one thing, I priced the eBooks too high.  $25.00 for someone to sell an electronic book like that was pretty steep. I probably should have sold it for around $10.00, but what did I know?

The cool part was it did sell and a lot of bagpipers did use it.  I received quite a bit of positive feedback. 

The most flattering thing that happened as a result of writing my eBook happened a few years later.  I got this email from some guy and this is what it said:

Subject: About your bagpipe ebook…

Elmo,

I hope you get this email because this is the only address I could find for you on the Internet.  About 6 months ago, my computer had a melt-down and I lost all my files including my favorite eBook, “Making Money with Bagpipes”.  I used that book quite a bit for my piping business and would like to buy another copy.

How can I send you the money?

Thanks in advance!

Randall McSweeney

I sent him a copy of the eBook free, I was so flattered.

How to Write an eBook and Make Money – The Ultimate Guide

All the Reasons Why You’ll Want to Write an eBook and Make money

When I was brainstorming on how to write this material on how to make money with ebooks, I thought it would be beneficial to give you a few reasons why you’d want to do so.

Reason #1 – To Make Money

You will not get rich writing an eBook. 

However, writing one can be very profitable.  As a matter of fact, if you can churn them out fast enough, you can make a healthy living from selling a bunch of them.

 The uber-copywriter, Bob Bly, has a bunch of them he makes money from.  There’s not a week that goes by that I don’t an email from him promoting one of his eBooks.

Mr. Bly is a machine.  He has over 95 regular, sit on your shelf books that are published from major companies. I have no idea how many eBooks and information products he sells, but the number has to be considerable.

And he does very well writing eBooks for money.  

Yeah, selling one eBook won’t make you rich, but you can make a good income from selling a bunch of them.

Another reason why the profits are so sweet on selling eBooks is because the profit margins are great.  You don’t have overhead, or orders to fulfill.  The customer just pays for it and it can be delivered immediately. And the best part is, other than the time it has taken you to write your eBook, you’ve spent nothing.

That’s right…Pure profit!

Reason #2 – To Be Seen as an Expert in Your Field

Becoming an authority in your niche is super important to your business. 

Even if you’re a plumbing contractor and you write an eBook on how to fix leaking pipes, you’ll stand out from all of the other plumbers as “the go-to guy”.

(If you can actually get a book published by a legit publishing company, you’ll really stand out.)

Reason #3 – To Use as a Lead Magnet

Most businesses hand out eBooks on their websites as a lead magnet.  If you give them your email, they’ll send you a free eBook.  But you’re not limited to using it for that alone.

You can also print up sections of it and use it as a free report. You can then offer it in advertisements and yellow page ads as a lead magnet.

 A tactic I have used personally is to actually put one up for sale on Amazon as a Kindle Book and then give it away to people who give me their contact information.   It makes it look more like you’re giving something of value that way.

Why Being a Loser Isn’t Always a Bad Thing

Remember at the beginning of this article I told you that being a loser wasn’t always a bad thing?  Well here’s why…

If you have a big hit right out the starting gate, it may give you a false sense of security.  Once I made some decent money selling my Bagpipe eBook, I quickly set upon my next one.  Man, I felt like I hit a gold mine with this eBook venture.

I carefully selected my next topic to write about because the last one was selected as a matter of happenstance. 
By now I had purchased some excellent eBooks on the subject of writing them and I did more niche/market research on this one.

Guess what?

It didn’t sell.

The closest thing I heard to “Cha-Ching!” was the sound of crickets chirping.

Then I did the second stupid thing, I got depressed and gave up…for a while.

It wasn’t until I read something by serial another serial eBook writer that I started feeling better. This guy writes tons of eBooks and this statement will stick in my head forever:

“Sometimes I’ll write my butt off on an eBook project and do tons of research, certain that I’ll hit gold.  I can’t sell it for anything! 

Then I’ll write one on some offbeat topic that I’m sure no one will give a crap about and it’ll sell like hotcakes. 

Go figure! 

You just never know when you’ll hit gold and when you won’t. The good thing is there will always be a percentage of your books or info products that’ll sell if you write enough of them.”  

So, if you don’t have success on your first one or two eBooks, don’t give up on writing them.  They can be a great source of income for any writer. 

If you follow the advice I’m about to dish out to you, you’ll be well on your way to writing Information eBooks that will bring in a nice extra income for you the rest of your days.

Taking your eBook Writing to the Next Level

If you want to actually start writing an eBook or any other information product for that matter, you’ll need to be self-motivated. 

Nobody is going to force you to write the darned thing. 

The biggest barrier to motivation is procrastination. You will have to give yourself enough reasons why you’ll want to write an eBook.

Here are a few different ways you can motivate yourself to get started:

#1 Break the task of writing your eBook down into smaller tasks.

You can make anything infinitely easier by simply taking a large goal and breaking it down into smaller chunks.  My favorite way of doing this is by listing my steps in order on a whiteboard. 

It is a very simple method and all you have to do is list all of the parts of your eBook in order and cross them off one after the other.  You’ll get a sense of accomplishment after each task is finished.

There is one downside to this technique if you’re not careful.  Don’t just dash out your work as fast as possible. You could easily just pump out a lot of junk that is low quality.  The best way to think of each section you write is as if it were a work of art. 

You want quality work, not “hurry up and get ‘er done work”. 

#2 Create a list of all the reasons you want to write an eBook and place it where you can constantly see it.   Make your list look similar to this:

• More money in the bank
• Prestige
• New home
• Spouse quits job
• More clients for business
• Sense of accomplishment

You may want to add more to your list over time.  Just sit back and take some time to think over all the reasons you want to write your book.  Once again, make sure you put your list right where you can see it at all times.

#3 Create a Vision Board

Get a piece of cheap poster board and use it to put pictures of things you want to get or accomplish with your writing venture.

Here’s a picture of what one of these looks like:

If you don’t want to go to all of the trouble of cutting out magazine pictures and pasting then to poster board, you can always use an online vision board. 

Will you achieve everything you list on your list?

Probably not, but you’ll get much closer to achieving your goals with this kind of visionary thinking than if you didn’t have them listed at all. However, at the end of the day, you will be the only one who decides whether or not you achieve your goals or not.

You Are Not Ready to Start Writing Yet

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to start writing without considering your market.  You do not want to write an eBook that nobody wants to read.

You need to do some serious research on the front end if you’re going to sell your book and make money. 

Selling informative “how-to” products is a lot easier than selling fiction books.  But even if you’re writing fiction, you’ve got to know your market and what people will want to read.  If you haven’t noticed, certain authors stick to their markets.

• Stephen King writes horror.
• Louis Lamoure wrote westerns
• Michael Crichton wrote science fiction that was based on scientific fact.

These types of writers work in these markets all of the time and are intimate with them.

It’s the same with writing informative eBooks.  You have to know your market or you won’t be able to sell them; plain and simple.

In the case of my bagpipe eBook, I already had a good idea that there was a market for it. I also had a lot of great ideas for it from my students.  However, I did not sell enough of them to make it a full-time writing income.

The “make money with your bagpipe” niche was too small for that.

So you want to write an eBook that has a larger audience or market than that.

There are eBook authors that make an excellent second income from their efforts.   However, many of these authors get their clout from writing a series of eBooks that are within the range of their niche or market.

One of the common opinions you hear from people is that you should try to write in a niche you’re interested in.  However, if you find that you have an opportunity to write outside of your niche and you really want to do it, then go for it!

(Just make sure you can make money with it first.)

The Successful information eBook Formula:

1. Identify a solid niche market
2. Find out what they need to be solved within that market
3. Write the sales letter for the eBook
4. Write the informative eBook that helps them solve the problems
5. Market and sell the eBook to the target audience

Step 1: Identify Your Information eBook Niche Market:

A niche market is a group of like-minded people that have a common interest.

(Preferably a common interest that they will be willing to spend money in.)

One of the opinions you hear from many writers is that you should try to write in a niche you’re interested in.  However, if you find that you have an opportunity to write outside of your niche and you really want to do it, then go for it!

You may encounter an opportunity to make some good money, so why not write it?

It’s so easy to identify a niche market because there are highly successful sites that have already done the work for you. 

In the past, you had to work hard to identify a market.  Even when you had the Internet to help you.  Now we have easily accessible lists we can use.

How to Use Amazon for Niche Research

Amazon has really made niche research easy.  

Once you navigate to Amazon’s site, click on the drop-down menu on the left side of the search window and click on “Books”. 

Once you do that, hit your enter key or click on the little magnifying glass on the right.

You will be taken to a new page that displays a list of book categories on top of the page.

You can click on one of the categories at the top of the page

Once you click on one of those categories you’ll be taken to another page that will display all sorts of books in the category that you picked.  However, the real gold is on the left side of the page.  On the left side, you’ll see a list of refined categories that are within the one you chose.

For example, within the business category, you could choose “Marketing and Sales”.

Not only will you be able to see some of the top selling books in this category, but you’ll be able to see even more categories that are in this area of interest.  You can continue drilling down in these subject areas as much as you want.

While you are on some of those pages, you’ll be able to look at books that are very popular.

Where the Real Gold Lies In Amazon

Once you have decided on the page with the grouping you want to explore, you can then begin to take a look at books which are popular in that niche.  

Now here’s where the real gold lies. 

You need to take a look at the books in the class that you’ve selected – especially the comments section.  You want to look at the books that have a lot of commenters. 

Why?

Well, if a book is popular enough that a large number of people are willing to read it and then take the time to write about it, it must be good.

Not only that, but if the comments are rather detailed and well written, it means that the people who are reading the book and then writing about it are not just a bunch of idiots.  You can bet that this niche, and subject is a good one with considerable interest in it.

 

You can also do similar research on other book sites as well as eBay.

Before You Start Writing…Assess Yourself

If you’ve gone through the process of looking into the different book categories on Amazon or eBay, you can now start to really think about what subject you’ll be dealing with.

The reason why you’re taking this extra time and precaution is that a good topic is very important.  You are going to be investing a lot of time, effort, and possibly money in this venture and you want to make sure it’s a moneymaker.

One of the best ways to get your eBook written in a reasonable amount of time is to write about something you know about.

This is the reason why you need to assess yourself.  You’ll be able to write faster and with more authority than everyone else if you are intimate with a subject. 

If you start writing eBooks, you’ll fare much better if you try to specialize in an area that you know all about.  First of all, you’ll eventually want to be seen as an expert in a particular arena.

If you write an eBook about Internet marketing, then a book on how to barbecue, and then you wrote another one on motivation, it’ll be tougher to be seen as an expert or an authority on a particular subject. 

My advice to you is to pick a subject you’re familiar with and write about it.  If you can write more than one eBook in that niche, do it.  You want to eventually be seen as an expert in that niche or field.  

How to Find Out if You Have a Winning Idea – For FREE!

You can use a site like Quora or Medium to write about a subject.  These are free sites and you can test your subjects there very easily.  Log on to one of these sites and start writing about your subject. 

If you start getting quite a bit of comment and readers from these sites, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll have a good subject for an eBook.  

You can then take the stuff you’ve written on one of those sites and re-purpose the content you’ve already written into a few of the chapters of your eBook.

What to Do If You’re Not an Expert at Anything

If you’ve spent hours trying to think of an area of expertise for your eBook or niche, there here is a procedure you can follow so that you can be seen as an expert. 

Step 1: Sit down with a word processor or a pad of paper and brainstorm all of the ideas you can think of that would make a good idea for your niche or subject.  Once you have 10 to 20 ideas narrow down your ideas to just one or two.

Step 2:  Go to the library or go on Amazon and get your hands on 10 of the best-selling books on your chosen subject. Once you have them either make notes or highlight the best ideas from those books. 

Step 3:  After you’ve digested and made notes of all of the books on your subject, you can then take those notes or ideas you’ve highlighted and use them as material for your eBook. 

Step 4:  Pat yourself on the back because you now know more than 95% of the populace does about the subject.

Once you’ve gone through these steps you can now tout yourself as an expert in your particular field.  

I know what you’re thinking…

He’s telling me to lie to people about my “expertise”.  

Not so! 

Think about this for a second – what makes a person an expert at a particular subject? Is it always a degree?  Did Edison have a degree in electrical engineering?  Did Tony Robbins have a degree in being a motivational coach or expert?

No!

You need the willingness to study and learn how to use what you’ve learned. That’s it!  Once you’ve immersed yourself in your subject matter and then applied some of it to your own life, you’ll be light years ahead of most of the other people that are in that realm. 

You need to totally immerse yourself in your subject if you want to become an expert in your chosen area.  (This is why you need to pick a niche carefully and stick with it. If you try to become a marketing expert in 9 million different fields, you’ll get burned out and give up.)

Step 2: How to Find Out What Your Niche Audience Really Wants

Once you’ve identified what niche is going to be profitable for you to specialize in and write about, the next step is to get into their heads and find out what they really want.

Years ago, a famous copywriter named Dan Kennedy wrote a book called “The Ultimate Sales Letter”.  In this book he divulged all of his amazing secrets to writing powerful sales letters that get results. 

(Honestly, I don’t know of any non-fiction writer that would not benefit from having a copy of Dan Kennedy’s book sitting on his shelf…But that’s just me!)

In this book, one of his marketing students was getting amazing results selling his coaching services to dentists. The reason why this guy was getting these kinds of results is that he studied his market so he could find out exactly what his prospects desperately needed.

(This kind of goes along with how to become an expert in your niche, so pay attention…)

So he did the following:

• He read all of the dentistry publications he could every month
• Hung out on as many Websites and forums that he could that was related to this industry and read what they were talking about.
• Subscribed to email newsletter publications related to dentists
• Went to their conventions and other events so he could meet and talk to them
• Scheduled “Master Mind” sessions with dentists to help them and also get more information about the industry 
• Acted like he was a dentist so that related dentistry businesses would send him stuff he could study and get more ideas from

As you can see, this Dan Kennedy student did a lot of research for his niche market. The reason why the eBook business is littered with failures is usually that the writing is not addressing the needs of the market. So you have to become intimate with what your readers need to know.  

Another way of getting information about a particular niche is to actually ask people that work in your arena if they wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.

For example, if you’re going to write an eBook on how accountants can get more clients, it would be very beneficial for you to interview as many accountants as you can on the subject.  It would also be smart to ask them what industry publications they read and if you could have some back issues of them if they’re finished with them.

The Short Cut Method to Finding Out What Your Readers Want

Thank god for Amazon, and other sites like it; you can get a load of great insight from doing research there.

As I mentioned earlier, you can get all kinds of great information about your niche just by reading the comments section of the books or products listed. 

Let’s say you’re writing an informative eBook on how to draw anime. So, head on over to Amazon and once again, click on the drop down menu until you see “Books” and click on it.  In the search field type in “Drawing Anime”.

You’ll get a ton of books that are on display for teaching this subject. 

Next, scroll down the page until you get to a book that has a lot of comments, like this one:

Once you find a book that has a load of comments, click on the title and you’ll be taken to the information page.

Right under the title, you’ll see a blue link that says, “Customer Reviews”, click on that.

There you’ll find a section on Amazon where you can read the comments. You want to look at a lot of comments that people write because they will tell you exactly what they liked and what they hated.  

Here’s a good example of what I mean:

Don’t just read the good comments! 

You also want to know what people didn’t like about the book.  The best thing your information eBook can do for readers is to help them solve a problem that they are having. That way, you can address those issues in the section of your information eBook that people are dying to learn about.

In this manner, the Internet is a warehouse of information.  You can find out how passionate people are about your chosen niche and you can find out immediately what they like or dislike about a subject.

Other places you can do research at:

• Forums
• Groups on LinkedIn
• Signing up to email lists
• Quora
• Medium

The Gold You Will Find In Your Research 

The thing you will notice about this research is that a pattern will begin to emerge. You will see the same benefits, features, and complaints over and over again.  These are the pleasure/pain points that you’ll want to focus on in your eBook.

Make sure you take notes on these points:

• What do they really need?
• Can you offer a solution to a great deal of stress or pain in their lives?
• What do they desperately want to know how to do?
• Are there any problems they encounter on a regular basis?

Not only will they give you ideas on what to write about, but there’s a very good chance that other similar eBooks on the market overlooked some of these points.  Just by filling in the gaps that others may have overlooked, your eBook will stand out. 

Not only will the information you gain by researching your topic help you write a better eBook but it will also help you write your sales page for the eBook too. 

Step 3: Write the Sales Letter 

Once you’ve got your eBook research done, there’s one thing you can do that will help you sell it after it’s finished.  You can write your own sales letter before you start writing your eBook.

(By the way, some information marketers will actually start marketing a product before they even create it. That way, they’re sure there is a market for it before they even start writing it.  True!)

Why is it good to write the sales letter before you start writing your information eBook?

For one thing, it will act as an outline for your eBook.  You don’t want to write an entire book and then later find out that you left something out.  ( I once created a video course and added something in the sales letter that was not in the course.  Man, that was a pain in the neck to fix!)

So, you can easily keep track of what you will have in your course if you write the sales letter first. 

Another reason why you’d want to write the sales letter first is that it will help you think of other things you could include in the book.  It will actually help you brainstorm even more ideas! 

Some of these ideas could be used as bonus material that you could give away as a sales sweetener. People love bargains, so whenever you can offer bonus material, it’ll blow their minds!

While I could write an entire book on how to write a sales letter, here’s a quick series of steps you can take to get the process started.

Quick Method of Writing Your Sales Letter

First: Write it as if you were talking across the table from a friend.  This will make the writing much easier for you. Just imagine your sitting across a table having coffee with someone you know and you’re trying to explain to them what your eBook is all about.

Second: Use ideas from other great copywriters.  You can look at eBook sales letters by top copywriters to get all sorts of ideas.  Bob Bly has written tons of them, here’s an example of just one of his best sellers: The Internet Marketing Retirement Plan.  Just look at the format he uses and use that as a template. Also, Bob has a massive portfolio of samples he has written for almost every industry on his home site. 

Third: Once you’ve written your sales letter, put it away for a day or two and go back to it. Read through it again and see if there’s anything you may have left out.   You’ll more than likely come up with more bullet points or ideas that you can include in your eBook.  

Fourth: Keep your sales letter on hand as you write your eBook because you can refer to it often. Believe it or not, you may even come up with even more ideas for your product.

I know I skimped on the subject of writing a sales letter. There are all sorts of resources you can use to learn how to write one quickly. 

Here are a few posts and books that can help you out:

Autopsy of a Sales Letter Part 1

Autopsy of a Sales Letter Part 2

Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Sales Letter

Copywriter’s Handbook – Bob Bly

Step 4: Write Your eBook

Ok, now we can actually start writing the eBook.  

This is where all of the research and time spent digging up information about your subject comes into play.  You are now going to perform what is affectionately known in the copywriting biz as a “brain dump”. 

You’re just going to start writing your first draft and write without editing.

You don’t want to stop or edit you just want to start spitting out everything you know about your subject as quickly as possible.

Productivity Tips to Get More Done:

Make sure that you have all of your resources on hand.  If you have .pdf files of eBooks you’re using as source material, only have those open on your computer.  Have your physical resource right next to you as you write.

Shut off the Internet. It is very easy to get distracted as you write. You want to write as much as you can without getting sidetracked looking at the news, videos, or having advertisements pop up.  You want to be super productive at this time.

Do not edit! No matter how bad you think your writing is, don’t go back and start editing.  You want to get a solid rough draft completed of your work. A lot of doubtful thoughts may come into your writing like, “Man, this really sucks.” Or “Do I really know what I’m writing about?”  Just keep writing as much as you can as fast as you can.

Use the Pomodoro Technique. If you find that you’re getting tired, use the Pomodoro technique. Get a timer either on your computer or an egg timer from your kitchen and set it to 25 minutes.  When your timer rings, take a 5-minute break.  (Go for a walk, get a cup of coffee, etc,)  Once you’ve done that, get back to writing as fast and furious as you can.

Spend at least 2 hours writing like this.  Writing an eBook is still a big undertaking.  You can easily get sidetracked and depressed if you don’t keep at it.  If you do something consistently every day for at least 60 days, you’ll have developed a good habit.  So make sure you’re consistent with your writing.  If you find that you’re spending more than 2 hours a day at this venture, GREAT! 

This step is simple so write as fast as you can and get all of the information on paper or a word processor file.

In case you didn’t notice, most of the work you’ll do on a project like this is on the front-end.  Once you’ve thoroughly researched your subject, gathered together all of your resources, written your sales letter, etc. you’ll find that actually writing the eBook is the easiest part.

Now it’s time for the final part of this great work you’re doing…

Part 5: Editing Your eBook

At this point, you’re going to start organizing your writing.  Start by reading through your work and then moving parts of your writing into organized sections.

You may find that you need to eliminate certain parts completely.  That’s fine. A good idea would be to save the unused material that you can’t use into a file you can possibly use later for a blog post or article.

At any rate, you’ll want to start organizing your writing into sections and chapters. 

Get Free Editors to Help You

Many times telling other people you know that you’re writing a book will gain you a lot of interest. So whenever you tell a friend or a relative that you’re writing a book, ask them if they wouldn’t mind reading some of it for you.

Tell them you would appreciate it if they could take a look at it and if they wouldn’t mind pointing out anything that they find wrong with it.

I would suggest only giving them a chapter or two at a time so they don’t get burned out trying to read an entire book.  I usually give my chosen readers a chapter or two and tell them it’s material for a blog post I’m writing.  (I’m not lying to them because if I can’t use the material, I can always re-purpose the writing into a blog post.)

Don’t make the mistake of getting hacked-off at your readers.  They may tell you something you don’t want to hear about your writing. Take it with a grain of salt and move forward.

True Story About Persistence

via GIPHY

When I was in the 7th grade I wanted to learn how to play trombone so much, it consumed my every thought.  My parents finally gave in and bought me one. When I got home and started practicing, my playing sucked. I drove my family nuts with the horrible sounds I was producing.  

Even though my family was very supportive, they couldn’t help but laugh at my playing.  

To cut a long story short, they weren’t laughing 5 years later when I got a great gig playing jazz all over Europe for the United States Army. 

A good thing to remember is that there will always be criticism of your work no matter how good you are. Just keep being persistent, success will come and you’ll leave all of those critics in the dust.

How to Make Sure Your Manuscript Has Zero Mistakes

Once you’ve finished organizing and editing your work, there’s one more step you need to take. You’ll want to go through your writing and make sure that there are no mistakes in it. 

Why? 

Well, the Internet is a rather unforgiving space. The stuff you write now will still be online years from now. So you’ll want to make sure your writing is as good as you can get it.

Here’s a method that you can take that will help you get your writing as good as you can get it.

• First, print out your eBook chapter by chapter.  Once you’ve done that, get out a ruler and read your work line by line, using the ruler as a guide as you read down the page.
• Take a red pen or highlighter and mark all of the errors, or unclear writing you find as you go down the page.
• When you’ve finished the chapter, go back and revise it using the printed pages you’ve marked. Once you’ve corrected your errors or made necessary changes, print up the chapter again and read it aloud this time. 
• Once again, mark anything you think or find wrong with your material. 
• Rinse and repeat this process until you are confident it is the best you can produce with this chapter or section of your writing.
• Do the same to all the other chapters for your information eBook.

Format Your Information eBook

Now you can start to format your writing. What do I mean by that?

You’ll want to add relevant images, subheads, a table of contents, etc. to your eBook.  

Here’s an easy way to learn how to format your eBook with bullet points, subheads and all the other features you can give your work to make it sparkle and shine.

Shortcut to Learning How to Format Your eBook

If you go look at the way most good blog posts are written you’ll have an excellent idea of how you can format your information eBook.

If you really want to know how to write an eBook and make money, you should follow the big dogs in the information marketing business. 

Start collecting and making a file of blog posts and online articles that you find easy to read.  A few of the experts I follow consistently are:

Neil Patel

Jon Morrow

Sue Dunlevie

These bloggers know how to format their blog posts and make them very easy to understand and read.  You want to follow their formats.

Use Reader’s Digest

Grab a copy of Reader’s Digest off the stands at your grocery store.  The articles in those magazines will show you how to add interesting images and subheads to your writing.

Just to give you an idea, here’s an example you can look at to see what I mean:

 

 

If you understand how to format your writing you’ll know more about how to write an eBook and make money than most people.

Here’s a few more pointers that will help you get your formatting in top shape:

• Space out your text with a lot of White Space.  Use double spaces between your sentences to break up large blocks of text.  If a reader sees large paragraphs of text, it gets them tired just looking at all of it.  Break up your text into smaller chunks.
• Implement subheads throughout your eBook.  If you have a new big idea, make sure you use them to announce the next section of information.
• Make use of bullets and bullet statements; they can act like miniature headlines.  The will also help your eBook transmit important facts in your material to your reader quickly. 
• Use relevant, well-made graphics for your eBook.  Photoshop is great, but you can use PaintShop Pro and still get awesome results for a fraction of the money Photoshop costs.  (I also created a PaintShop Pro Video Course to help you get started with PaintShop.)

Publish Your eBook 

You’ve now learned quite a bit of how to write an eBook and make money.  But there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done.  You now must get your eBook into a format that can be given away and read.

You will now need to turn your word processor file into a PDF file that can be distributed, sent to your customer, and read. 

In case you don’t know, most eBooks can be read using a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat Reader.  Readers of this type can be found almost anywhere online and are usually free. (Adobe has the best and it’s free for the taking.)

It’s very easy to turn your word processor files into a .pdf file.  If you have Microsoft Word all you have to do is go to Save —> click on the drop-down menu and save as a .pdf file. 

It’s really just that simple.

However, if you don’t have Microsoft Word there are alternatives.  

Here are a few free online converters you can use:

Free PDF Converter

PDF 2 Go

TO PDF 

Once you’ve got your file converted to into PDF format you’ll be able to start selling it.

Part 6: How to Make Money with Ebooks

OK, up to this point I’ve told you all of the ways to create your eBook. (Remember the title of this is “How to Write an eBook and Make Money“). 

We are now down to the money-making part  – so strap yourself in, because this ride just got interesting!

I’ve been writing blog posts for years now and whenever you finish a good one, you’re not finished. As a matter of fact the work has just begun because you have to start promoting it. It’s the same way with selling a book or an eBook. If you want to make money with eBooks you’ve got to promote the crap out of them!

Make Sure Your Title Grabs Your Readers

There’s a very smart author and entrepreneur named Tim Ferris. He wrote this book called the 4 Hour Work Week.  

When he was trying to decide on the title of this book he wanted to make sure it was powerful enough to fuel the sales of it.  So, he took out ads online for different titles of his eBook to see which ones got clicked on the most. 

Turns out the 4 Hour Work Week was the winner. 

I’m not suggesting that you do this, because I’m assuming Mr. Ferris had deep enough pockets to fund this campaign.  But it does point out just how important it is to select the title of your book.

When you’re trying to sell your eBook it will be done online and therefore you’ll have to learn a little bit about a thing called “keyword research”.  Keyword research is a method of finding out what words and phrases people are clicking on in your chosen niche.

Keyword research is very important when learning how to write an eBook and make money.

There are several online tools that you can use to find this out. Here’s a list of the most powerful and accurate keyword tools online:

Google’s Keyword Planner (Free – However you must get a free Google AdWords account. It’s real easy if you already have a Gmail account to get one.)

WordStream (Paid)

SemRush Keyword Tool (Paid)

I use Google’s Keyword Planner.  Not just because it’s free, but because it’s very powerful.  

All you have to do to find out what people are looking for is to type in a word or a phrase related to your eBook. So let’s use the word “eBook” as an example:

When you log in to your Google AdWords account, click on Tools –> Keyword Planner

 

Once you click on “Keyword Planner” you’ll be taken to another page with a box that looks like this:

Next, a new box that looks like this will pop up. Type in the words or phrases related to your subject that you can use in a title.

Once you hit the “Enter” key, you’ll get results of keywords that look like this:

You’ll see average monthly searches and how competitive it is to use each one.  You can now see which keywords are the most searched for on the Internet.  The best strategy is to use keywords that are relevant to your eBook that has a lot of searches and low competition.

So, you’ll want to do this research as you finish up your eBook and start the process of selling it.

Not only do you need to be concerned about the keywords in the title, but you’ll want to think about online sales pages and how you’ll use descriptions online for your eBook. 

You should make a file with your chosen keywords and keep it on hand as you get ready to make a title or market your eBook.

create and write your eBook sales letter pages

There are quite a few ways you can build a sales page for your eBook and when you’re learning how to make money with eBooks you’ll want to start as cheap as you can. 

The cheapest way is to sell through middlemen like Amazon.  A site like Amazon will give you the means to create a full-blown landing page and sell your product.

It takes a little time to learn and set up, but once you’ve followed Amazon’s directions on how to build one, you’ll be able to create as many as you want. Amazon does charge you for each sale, but you don’t have to pay a monthly fee to sell your eBooks or any other product you have.

If you want to sell an eBook on Amazon’s Kindle here are the directions: Sell Your eBook on Amazon

You can also set up a FaceBook business page and write articles. You can also drive all kinds of traffic to your Facebook business pages as well. To find out the steps needed to set up a free Facebook business page click on this link: Creating a Facebook Business Page

The other ways of cheaply setting up a web page would be either to get with a hosting business and build your own website (You’ll need to know how to write your own HTML language or get someone to do it for you.) or get hosting and get a WordPress blog.(Easy to set up and you can hire someone cheaply to set it up for you.)  

How to leap over all of this Hard Work and get it done super-easy with Shopify

When talking about how to write an eBook and make money it’s kind of hard to do without mentioning sales and delivery systems. What I’m talking about is the actual means you’ll use to sell your eBook online.  You will need the following:

• A Web page or blog site to sell from
• A sales page where your sales letter and offer will reside
• A sales and delivery system

Now if you want to jump over this you can easily get a site like Shopify.

Shopify will hand you all of this and more. You can easily set up a site and have all the bells and whistles you ever wanted using this platform. 

The best thing about Shopify is that even if you are a total beginner at building a site that sells and delivers stuff, you can learn very fast with this service. (Which is the reason why it has grown so fast over the few years.)

Another great thing about this business is that Shopify will let you test drive it so you can see how easy it is to set up a site and start selling all kinds of stuff. You should at least check it out by going to the site here: Shopify

How to sell your eBook and Make Money Using WordPress Plugins

If you set up a WordPress blog you can use a thing called “Plugins” to set up an eBook sales and delivery page.

Here are a few FREE plugins you can use to sell your eBook from a WordPress Page:

Simple e-Commerce Shopping Cart  

WooCommerce 

Easy Digital Downloads

Ecwid

As I said before, these plugins are FREE.  The developers/sellers of these plugins will try to up-sell you with their services – and that’s fine.  The reason it’s fine is that their premium services are worth it. 

Once you start selling and making an income, you’ll want to invest your money into services that’ll help you make even more money.  So keep them on the back burner as you’re starting out because they will become valuable to you as you grow your eCommerce business.

How to Make Money with Ebooks – Marketing 101

Now we’re going to really start kicking some serious booty because we’re going to start marketing your eBook at hyper speeds you never thought possible.

Why aren’t people making more money selling eBooks anymore?  

Because they write the darned things without doing any research before they write it. (But hey, we’ve already covered that earlier, right?) 

The Reasons Why Most People Can’t Sell Kaka Online

1.  They create a product online without thoroughly knowing if there is a starving audience for it
2. They place it on sites like Amazon and wait to see if it’ll sell
3. They have no marketing plan to sell it with once it is ready to market
4. They read a lot of marketing crap and don’t implement any action
5. They attempt to become successful in their business without enthusiasm

The last two points above are the most important ones, in my humble opinion.  Without taking massive action, you’ll never get to first base. Look, Internet marketing isn’t easy; you’ll need God-like powers to succeed.

If it were easy everyone would be making loads of money online. If you really want to know how to write an eBook and make money, you really need to pay attention to this. 

Because I’m going to tell you what you’ll definitely need to have before you start selling anything online. And  I can sum it up simply in one word: ENTHUSIASM.

[ctt template=”1″ link=”KT7iu” via=”yes” ]Without ENTHUSIASM your business is dead in the water because YOU are the fuel that’s going to run it and keep it moving![/ctt]

If you’re going to make it in business you’re going to have to be ENTHUSIASTIC every single time you set out to do something. 

Where did I get this idea from?

Top salesmen, copywriters, entrepreneurs, and business people, that’s who.

Here are a few quotes to get you fired up:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

“Today is life…the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”– Dale Carnegie

“I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win.”– Michael Jordan

“Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.” – Henry Ford

“The real secret of success is enthusiasm.” – Walter Chrysler

“A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.” – Charles Schwab

If that didn’t fuel enough to get you stoked about enthusiasm, then watch this:

Using the Massive- action Marketing Approach to sell your ebook and make money

Now we are going to launch a massive attack and get your eBook sold.  

There is a lot of work to be done, so strap yourself into your seats!

Get your eBook on as many vendor sites as possible.  You need to sell it everywhere you can.  Here’s a list of places that you can place your eBook to get it sold for you: 

The good thing about these vendors is that you don’t need a Website, blog or anything else to sell it from because they handle everything for you.  All you’ll need is a valid email address to get started.

Payhip

Blurb

LuLu

Tradebit

Nook Press

Kobo Writing Life

SmashWords

Scribd

Payloadz

E-junkie

Booktango

Clickbank

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s a website reference that’ll show you over 100 other places you can sell your eBook from! Loads of Places (paid or free) You Can Sell Your eBook From

Remember how I told you to write that sales page about your eBook before you actually wrote it?  Well, now you’re going to be using the crap out of it because that’s going to be the copy you’ll use to sell your eBook on all of those sites.

If you’re going to use Clickbank as one of the places to sell your eBook from, then you’ll want to copy and paste the eBook into the sales page on that site. 

(See how much easier it is to have pre-written sales copy about your product BEFORE you’ve even written the eBook?)

Make Money with eBooks Step 2: 

Create audio recordings of a chapter of your eBook and post them online, or…

Make audio recordings of your sales copy and post it online, or…

Just talk about your fantastic eBook and post it online.

While I could list a crapload of places your could place your podcast, there are a couple of free places you could put yours.

One way to do it is to place your audio files onto a service like Google and then use a simple plug-in or piece of software to play the audio files.  

The other free way to get your Podcast put online is to use a free service like Podbean.  Podbean will let you put a full 5 hours of free podcasting on their service.  Podbean has a vast array of editing and ways you can seamlessly place podcasts on your site. 

If you want more than 5 hours of audio it’ll cost you $9 a month, which is very reasonable. 

Make money with eBooks Step 3: 

Create a video about your eBook, or outsource the work.  You can use a program like Camtasia to help create your video.  Camtasia is super easy to learn how to use, and you can churn out an informative video on your eBook very quickly.

However, don’t do the stupid crap you see everyone else doing. A lot – and I mean a lot of people are making crappy videos.  You need to plan out your videos and write a script for them.  

If you use Camtasia, you can use a program like PowerPoint to make your points.  The major idea I want to make sure you understand is you must edit the freakin’ thing. Take out all awkward pauses, and mistakes and give it a clear appearance.  

If you want to see a good example of a way NOT to make videos, watch this:

Here’s an example of a scripted video I made with Camtasia while taking classes in Ed Tech at Boise State University.  

Conclusion 

 We’ve covered a lot of territory on the subject of how to write an eBook and make money.  If you follow through on all that I’ve outlined here you should have some success and make some money.  Honestly, there is a slim chance you’ll write your very first eBook and make a ton of money.

Recently, a very famous marketer that makes bazillions of dollars online said that any kind of marketing and sales on the Internet must have to take the long view.  In other words, you need to think of your sales and marketing efforts as a long-term event spanning years.

So you could take your eBook and develop it into a course.  You could sell a physical version of a course or make it into an online course.  You could also make it into a video series and sell it through a site like Udemy. Not only that, but if you so desire, you could also use the material and beef it up with even more material and turn it into a physical manual to sell on Amazon as well.

Whatever road you take, you can do this fairly quickly before moving on to your next eBook writing project. If you take the long view approach to your eBook writing business, you may have a string of them, each bringing in money every month.

If you liked this post, please comment and share your thoughts on this subject.  If you really liked it, please do me a big favor and share it by clicking on the social media buttons below.

It always is a big help when you let me know what you think. 

Here’s to your future success in eBook writing!