In the United States, some people have made $ 400,000 by writing a very simple e-book, which is almost 3 million RMB.
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Editor’s note: Nowadays, the concepts of new media and self-media are getting more and more popular. In the United States, some people have earned 400,000 US dollars by writing a very simple e-book. Now more and more people start to write something on the Internet in their free time. There are many channels such as Weibo, blog, and public account. There are many ways, but how can you make money from what you write? This article tells you how to make money from e-books you write through several different principles. This article was translated from Medium and was originally titled “How My Friend Made $ 400K From Selling an Insanely Simple eBook”.
I mentioned a friend of mine several times, who made $ 400,000 by writing an e-book and selling it online. Many people have asked me how to do it, so I want to share his approach with you, because I have been curious myself.
Although I didn’t want to sell e-books, with the encouragement of my friends, I wrote a free e-book and it has been downloaded more than 40,000 times.
The e-book written by my friend is called Crush It. The main content of this book is to teach you how to set up your own blog and promote your own blog.
Wandering Bali
My friends have almost no time to write e-books. Like me, he just writes a short blog. The idea of creating an e-book has always existed, but he has never done so.
My friend lost power during a holiday in a foreign country (I think it’s Bali, but I don’t remember it, it’s not important anymore). There was nothing he could do, and there was nowhere to go at night. It sounds like a tragic travel experience, but it was precisely this opportunity that gave him time and reason to sit down and write his e-book quietly.
During the course of a few days, because of a power outage, he had nothing to do, and he has been writing his e-book. Living in a foreign country, no one knew, and no electricity, such a wonderful environment gave him a lot of inspiration and ideas.
As soon as this book was written, he just proofread it, spent a few bucks on the Internet to make a cover, and put it on his WordPress blog.
He doesn’t actually think his e-book is so good. I am one of the early readers of his e-book. Although it has not changedMy life or anything similar, but it does have a great advantage, that is, this book is very friendly to novices, it lists detailed steps to teach people to set up their own blog.
Are you ready? Let’s see how he made this $ 400,000.
Set an appropriate price
The list price of this e-book is $ 19.95, which is already very high compared to many other e-books, and other e-books are sold by bloggers for a few dollars ( Basically, it is a relatively cheap price, mainly because you want to sell small profits but sell more.
A $ 20 e-book is about as expensive as yours for a book written by a well-known writer like Tim Ferriss. And he also feels that his own book is worth the price, because the contents of the book are all his accumulated experience over the years. So by setting a reasonable price, he made $ 400,000, much faster than most bloggers in his field.
Believe in yourself
He made $ 400,000 from a simple eBook, partly because my friends believed in themselves. After the success of his book, he later started charging $ 1,500 an hour for mentoring. This is also his belief that his ability can provide more help to others, which is also what makes him different from other bloggers like me.
He wrote his e-book without any sense of superiority and didn’t tell everyone that he was better than them. The content of this book is rustic and humble, and most importantly, it is really useful.
He believes that his talent is that he can teach others, not that he is special or better than others, so if you use the methods in the book, everyone can run their own blog.
Anyone who can teach useful knowledge online has the opportunity to make as much as $ 400,000.
Behaving like an expert
There is no such thing as “ambiguity” in his e-book.
He proves himself as an expert in this area, and uses his blog content to support his point of view. At the time, he was not a well-known blogger, but that did not stop him from feeling like an expert.
We are all partiesExperts, even if we are not Bill Gates in the computer world. To make $ 400,000 for an e-book, you don’t have to be a household expert.
Speaking from experience
He provides more than just steps for amateur readers like me. He can give you a lot of inspiration from his own experience. Through some of his thoughts and feelings, you can also start to build your own blog and write your own stuff.
From experience, share some stories to help readers prepare for their own blog in the future.
refined content
You may think his e-book is long and took several years to write. But my friend’s e-book didn’t.
This book has been written for a few days, and it only takes a few hours to read it. It’s not a marathon reading, it’s just the right length so you can read it in your free time, and it’s easy to read it in practice. The price of an e-book and the value it brings have nothing to do with its length. The criterion for evaluating the value of an e-book is whether it is useful.
Email marketing
The first step my friend took was to e-mail links to e-books to potential buyers. Some people buy it, and people who like it can easily share the link with their friends.
His book has no fancy marketing campaigns or social media promotions. His marketing strategy is simple, as unadorned as his e-book, and that’s all it needs. The marketing success of his e-book lies in his marketing perspective, not his mailbox capacity or his marketing capabilities.
Inspirational content
This e-book is about a boring topic like setting up a blog, and he makes the process inspiring. No matter what blogger you write about, he will add a bit of inspiration to this topic and guide people to have this interest in building a blog. It is this guidance that makes his e-books valuable.
In his book, its content is actually a standard blogging process. But in fact, it really is amazing that he can really let you take action and practice. He is also why I became a blogger. Inspiration may sound ethereal or empty, but in fact we all need a little inspiration to take action.
Publish all steps
His book covers all the steps of setting up a blog, including screenshots. He didn’t hide anything.
You can’t just tell people half the story to deceive them. If you want to make six digits from an e-book, you better be prepared to giveAll steps and details.
My friend’s eBook is actually a guide to setting up a blog and starting a blog. Without a guide, you can only search in Google, you can only listen to the opinions of those who have never done it, and you can only listen to the opinions of those who talk in general.
Those people only tell you what you can’t do, but they rarely tell you what you can do and what you want to do.
Featured blog homepage
My friend’s blog homepage has one of the most prominent features. When you enter his WordPress blog, at the very top of the right-hand column, you can see a very eye-catching e-book link.
If you like his blog, you won’t miss his e-book. The person who found his e-book on the homepage accounted for most of the $ 400,000 income.
Promote on blog
As a blogger, he is often invited to do some interviews. Most of the interviews are free, so my friend came up with a wonderful strategy: as long as he can put a link to his e-book after the interview, he goes to this interview.
This small request gives those who have never read his blog the opportunity to see his eBook.
Accept PayPal
There are countless ways to collect money online, but many are a waste of time.
My friend ’s idea is simple: choose a payment method that most people around the world can use. Instead of introducing complicated methods like bank card transfers, he decided to use PayPal to collect money directly.
This decision is another reason why he was able to make $ 400,000. He makes it easy for people to pay in the way they are used to, and PayPal is safe.
This method of receiving money is not the cheapest, because PayPal will charge a certain fee, but PayPal does allow more people to buy this e-book.
Timeless content
The e-books written by my friends are not outdated.
You can read it a few years ago or you can read it today, and even if you read it today, it will still be very helpful to you, except for some outdated software plugins.
When you write an e-book, if you keep its content from being eliminated (which means it’s hard to tell when it was written and is always useful), you can Continue to make money from it. And because books are written differently, some books may continue for many yearsMake money.
Open a new path
Even though the e-book has made $ 400,000, it has more than just money.
People who read his e-book contacted him and asked him if he could offer a knowledge-based live broadcast. These courses even reach more than $ 1,000 per hour. You can’t meticulously count how many hours of instruction are from e-books and how many hours are from videos, but it can be said that the money obtained by selling e-books alone is $ 400,000.
With an e-book, you can start a new path and attract more business and customers for you. But you can also make money from e-books and just leave, and do other things you want to do, which is also very good.
It takes time
His e-book didn’t become famous overnight. It took a long time. It took several years to accumulate the $ 400,000, and he invested part of it in his own development project to add value to the money.
He spent money asking well-known bloggers from all over the world to be lecturers, and also participated in events such as A-Fest. These investments allowed him to expand his social network and find like-minded friends to work with them, further increasing the $ 400,000 in revenue.
Open a free channel
One of the reasons ebooks make so much money is that his readers have many other free channels to learn about his work.
Some people will clearly price all their e-books and blogs, which will only make their books impossible for more people to know.
The effective method is to publish a few free resources, and then charge a part of the books, so that people can get to know you, read your things through free resources, and if they like, they will continue to buy Paid works.
If you just charge people, they may never have access to your job.
People read my friend’s free blog post, and some of them decided to keep learning and bought his e-book for $ 19.95.
Donate part of the proceeds
It’s great to make $ 400,000. What my friend taught me through his e-book, which I still use today, is to give part of the proceeds to others.
Some of the money he raised was used for charity projects and given back to those who supported him. Leaving all your money for yourself will make you forget the support others have given you.
When you get what you want, also help others get themwant.
This way you can not only make money from a short and powerful e-book, but also get an inspiring power.
Do not replace it
A well-written and dated e-book never needs to be replaced. My friend resisted the urge to continue writing a new e-book and kept his original for many years.
He has many other things to write, but his e-books are always popular.
Suppressing the replacement of this e-book with the new version is one of the reasons it made $ 400,000. Running an e-book is like taking the time to stew. Only by slowly cooking can you build momentum and taste.
This is what I hope you learn. This is really useful. Patience is the key. Through your book, you need to motivate people to practice and help others in the process. You must know that everyone is from others. The motivation started.
Okay, that’s all why my friend made $ 400,000 from a very simple e-book.
Translator: Xiao Zhuo