What is an e-book?
Honestly? It is just a PDF. Simple as that. E-books are a low priced ticket item that can be sold alone as the main product of a business, or as a cross or down sell.
Income Potential:
e-Books can be free or paid for, and generally will sell from $9.95 and upwards depending on the nature of your content, niche and value. As they are a low ticket item, you need to sell in high numbers in order to gain a reasonable income from them (they can be a fantastic side income as well though) e-books will generally convert at 3-5% which means for every 1000 visitors to your e-book sales page you get, you should make 30-50 sales. Once you’ve achieved this, the key here is to raise that conversion percentage and scale your traffic.
Don’t be fooled by a low ticket item though, I’ve made over $10,000 from my little side income e-book and I know businesses that have made over a million dollars from their e-book.
You can also use an e-book as a lead magnet and offer it for free in exchange for an email address. This can also be a great strategy to attract people to your business, obtain their email address and then remarket different products and offerings in your email newsletters and/or email funnels.
{Secret trick} The secret trick with e-books, regardless of whether they are paid or free is to ensure they are valuable and not fluffy or flaky. This doesn’t mean it needs to be content heavy, it means it needs to be content rich. 4 pages of amazing content over 30 pages of fluffy content wins trust, makes your reader like you, hopefully inspires them, makes them remember you and positions you as an authority figure. I promise you, if you give them 30 pages of fluff you will only annoy them.
e-Book Structure:
There are no set rules for whether they need to be structured in a specific way, but generally they do follow the flow of a book and you may like to order your content the following way:
A title
Starting point
The main points you want to make
Supporting data for your points so the ebook is authoritative
The conclusions
The planned call to action
{Secret trick} Don’t feel like you need to create your e-book in this order if you find you’re procrastinating. Simply just find that window in, even if that is starting from the end and working backwards then go with that!
How to Create Your e-book
I use Canva to do my e-books in, it is simple and basic and also free. You do not need to be a professional writer, or a professional designer to create an e-book although you may like to still outsource these parts.
The key is to write simply and clearly. People will buy your ebook because they want to learn how to do something. You’ll come across loads of blogs that say, you need to structure all your content out, have a clear idea, do your index before starting etc etc, and some people may be able to do that and that is awesome.
But, also know that if you aren’t a planner (like me) it is completely ok to work it out as you go, the key here is to step back, get some space from it, look at it again and then go back and edit and refine.
I used to think I was wrong for working like this but I have since learned, I work very intuitively and this has served me very well. This is about working within your strengths and zone of genius, not folding into a way the internet has told you to work.
{Secret trick} Always serve your audience first when writing an e-book, but as I tell my clients, the trick here is to weave in sales psychology to position your business and what you offer.
How to Decide What Your e-book Should be About:
Come up with a list of things you feel inspired to talk about (as your e-book will come to you a lot easier than something you aren’t inspired to talk about) and then if you have an existing audience, ask them what they think and whether this would be of any interest to them.
Ensure your e-book provides a solution to a problem, or inspires someone to take a simple action or where they can gain an easy win and also share a personal story or experience. Why? A personal story is engaging, builds authority, and creates empathy with the reader and they will remember you for it
If you don’t have an audience yet, find Facebook groups where your audience hangs out and ask them. Doing a poll is also a great idea to gain intel. You can poll for titles of your e-book too so you can see which one is the most popular.
You can also go through old blog and social media posts and look for the ones that got the best engagement and/or the most click throughs as intel and clues.
Sometimes you can never really tell for sure and waste so much time wondering when you could have tried it, tested it, refined it and mastered it, so just try it and see how it goes and then use the experience to learn and get better.
{Secret Trick} Firstly serve your audience but at the same time weave in sales psychology to allow your e-book to further promote your business within the same pages.
How To Sell Your e-Book
Most website platforms will allow you to upload your e-book as a ‘digital product’ You can then add that product into your shop and weave the link into your blog, internal pages and also your other platforms such as your email list, your social media and any third party platforms. The key to a successful e-book is getting eyes on it, don’t forget about the law of conversions. Work on creating buffering and layering content all of which leads and links back to your e-book. Once you’ve established a good flow of traffic and eyes on your e-book, if you maintain that flow your e-book can become passive.
{Secret Trick} Use Facebook Ads and offer a free lead magnet, then on your ‘thank you page’ offer your e-book as an upsell. Add the email into an email funnel that then presents more products and offerings to recoup your ad spend.
Set Your Intentions up For Success:
The purpose of your first e-book isn’t particularly to make stacks of money from it, maybe you will, maybe you won’t. The first go at your e-book is more an education process for you, to learn how it all works, what goes into it, what’s required, how you’ll sell it, how it resonates with your audience so take the pressure off yourself and know that this is a process, and maybe you’ll nail it first go, but it is also ok if you don’t, it just simply means it might take a few goes and each time you do the process you are a step closer.
{Secret Trick} If you nail it first go, you’re in the minority so well done on doing a standout job but if you don’t nail it first go is absolutely ok, please remember most successful people have had many previous ‘failures’ before they found success.
