How does an author or entrepreneur make money with e-books? The most common way used to be writing a book and selling it as a PDF file from a website created for that purpose. Now that is just one of many ways to get into e-book publishing. Here are three other options available to writers and non-writers alike.
Offer Free and Paid Versions
This is a technique I've used myself. Sales were slow for an e-book I wrote about how to find a cheap house, so I kept the sales page up but added an option for those who wanted to get the book for free. The catch was that they would get just a chapter per week for seven months. I uploaded thirty mailings to my email auto-responder, to be sent out automatically each week once a visitor subscribed. Each of these directed the receiver to an otherwise hidden page on the website where that week's free chapter was located. I put pay-per-click ads on these pages, along with a link back to the sales page, with a reminder that readers could go download the PDF e-book version and have the whole book in minutes.
Sales of the book doubled. Apparently readers liked what they saw and didn't want to wait to get the rest of the book. On top of that, I was making $100 monthly from the pay-per-click ads on the pages where the free version was hosted. If you try this, it is important to distribute the free version over at least a few months, so readers who really like the book are motivated to buy it rather than wait. Monetizing the web pages where you host the free chapters is not necessary, but can provide extra income.
Sell Multi-Author E-books
You do not have to write an e-book to publish and sell it. You can have others write it for you. Specifically, you can have numerous authors and website owners each contribute a chapter as a way to promote their business or other books. Although this can be done with short stories, it is more common in non-fiction niches. For example, to create an e-book on self-improvement tips you would contact writers and website owners who have some knowledge about meditation, motivation, breaking bad habits, and anything else related to self-improvement. For contributing a piece, they would get exposure, and no other payment (make that clear in the agreement).
One way to boost sales when using this strategy is to get the authors of the chapters to sell for you. If you sell through a distributor that that handles affiliate commissions for you (like ClickBank), you can offer your contributors (and anyone else) 50% for each sale they make. Look for contributors who have large mailing lists for maximum sales.
Give Away E-books With Affiliate Links
This is another technique I've personally used. I have a website on brainpower, and a related newsletter with tens of thousands of subscribers. After trying six brainwave entrainment products for meditation, I wrote a short book on how to use these high-tech recordings to meditate and to boost one's ability to think creatively and clearly. In it I recommend my favorite product, linking to it with my affiliate code. I get over $40 commission for each $85 sale. I periodically give the PDF e-book away to my subscribers, and some of them follow my recommendation.
You can do this with many different subjects/niches. If, for example, you know a lot about body-building, you can put your tips in a short e-book and recommend a more comprehensive book on the subject. There are several published online by authors who will pay you 50% of each sale you make for them. If you do not already have a website, you will have to find a way to distribute your free e-books. There are websites which do this for you at no charge. A better tactic might be to approach owners of online newsletters (as long as the newsletter is on a related subject), who might like the opportunity to offer a free book to their subscribers.
Other Techniques
- Give away e-books that promote a website, and monetize that website.
- Create or buy a stream of new e-books on a subject, add two or three to a protected download page each month and charge a subscription fee for access.
- Write a sample version of a book you've already written and give it away as an e-book to sell the full version.
- Write e-books for others for an hourly or per-page charge.
- Help internet-novices publish and sell their e-books for a fee.
- Use e-books to promote your offline business.
- Publish on e-readers like Amazon's Kindle or Barnes and Noble's Nook; this is perhaps the easiest ways to get started making money with e-books- and at no cost.
Only two of the strategies covered here require you to do the writing yourself. The rest work the same way if you pay someone to write the book, and you can easily find writers through freelance platforms online. Whether you do the writing yourself or hire it out, the rest of the process is something you can do from anywhere, which is perhaps why publishing e-books is becoming such a popular home-based business.
Steve Gillman - Steve Gillman is the author of "101 Weird Ways to Make Money," and the creator of numerous websites.
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