PowerTRUST Member Bonus
Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Audri:
This is Audri Lanford. I am here today with Jim Edwards. It’s a pleasure to
have you here Jim.
Jim:
Thanks, Audri. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Audri:
Today we’ll talk about how to write your own ebook in seven days. That’s a
pretty intriguing title. I want to mention before we get going – number 1,
even if you’ve never considered writing an ebook or any other kind of book, I
think you’ll want to pay close attention to this program that we’re doing. I
think it’s going to open your eyes to ideas you may have never ever though
about.
Number two, is that if you’re not driving, I really suggest you take out a piece
of paper and a pen, as I always say and write ideas down as we talk. Always
be thinking “how can I apply this to my business and how can I make this
work for me.” You’ll get a lot more out of the session if you’re thinking
about how to apply it. And, if you don’t write the ideas down right away, you
may well lose them. We don’t want that to happen.
I’d like to introduce Jim now to all of you. Basically, what we’re going to do
in this session is interview the author of five very popular ebooks. Jim’s most
recent ebook is called “The Lazy Man’s Guide to Online Business – How to
work less, get paid more and have tons of fun.” This is always an exciting
concept.
Jim is also the author, along with Joe Vitale, of “How to Write and Publish
Your own Ebook in as little as seven days” and this is the topic we’ll discuss
today.
And, “Thirty three days to Online Profits” written with Yanik Silver.
Today we’ll focus on how to write and publish your own outrageously
profitable ebook in as little as seven days.
I love the little sub-head “even if you can’t type, can’t write, and failed high
school English.”
We’ve got a lot to cover, so I’d like to get going.
1
PowerTRUST Member Bonus
Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Let’s start with what our members are going to learn from this session, and,
what kinds of business owners and entrepreneurs will benefit from it?
Jim:
Basically, anyone who is operating an online business can write and ebook. I
know that’s a tall, general statement. I don’t know who said it first, but
basically everyone has a book in them. Pretty much, no matter what type of
enterprise you’re operating online, an ebook can be integrated into that
business for both profit and an extension of your business to help you get
more sales.
Pretty much – anybody.
Audri:
It’s funny. So often, that’s the case. We try to pick topics that will be useful
to most, if not all, of our listeners. I certainly agree with you based on our
experience that it can be tremendously useful.
Here comes the question that I imagine you get asked a lot. Probably the first
thing all our members are thinking about is, “Why should I bother to take the
time and energy to write an ebook? Why should I do this?"
Jim:
The number one reason why you should bother to write an ebook is that it can
create a stream of passive income for you. With an ebook, there’s nothing to
deliver physically. Once you write it, set it up online, then it’s something
that you do once but you get paid over and over and over for it.
That’s really the biggest reason.
When I woke up this morning, I had sold last night almost one dozen ebooks
between $19.00 and $39.00 each.
Audri:
I will again second that from you. It’s a wonderful experience to come in to
your office and see all these people have given you money while you were
asleep – or at a wedding (we’re about to go to a wedding for a few days) and
nothing is really going to change in our business except that all these new
people will order ebooks in the interim.
Jim:
Yes. I went on vacation to the Bahamas for four days. During the time I was
gone, my web site kept making me money through people buying ebooks. I
checked my email once for an hour while we were gone.
2
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Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
Audri:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
I know that both you and Joe Vitale have had some pretty interesting
successes with the ebooks that you have created.
Can you share some of those with us?
Jim:
Sure. My first ebook that I wrote back in the dark ages of 1997 still sells. In
fact it sells enough that it covers my house payment, two car payments and the
electric bill five years later. It has nothing to do with marketing on the
internet.
It actually is on a subject that comes from my past life, which is that of a real
estate agent and mortgage broker. I wrote a book on how to sell your house
your self. I started selling it in 1997 and it has sold consistently every month
for the last five years.
One of the neatest things that’s happened for me, is the amount of freedom
that writing and publishing and selling ebooks has given me. Like I said, I
just went to the Bahamas, a few months ago I went to Las Vegas, I’ll soon be
going to Mexico for a second honeymoon (with the same wife). The whole
time you’re gone, you’re making money.
Another book that I wrote with Yanik Silver made more money in one
weekend then I had made the previous year. I know this is a tall statement,
but it’s the absolute truth.
And Joe Vitale has done really well with ebooks as well. He took an existing
hard cover book of his, converted it, revamped it and rolled it out as a book
called “Hypnotic Writing” and in three months he made something like
$40,000 and he wasn’t even the one selling it. He has someone else selling it
for him.
The stories can go on and on. Ebooks give you the flexibility and ability to
multiply your efforts by selling a product, but there’s no product to deliver
physically. You don’t have to put something in a package or add postage.
With tools that don’t cost hardly anything, you can set up a 99% fully
automated delivery system and you’re making money.
Audri:
I’d like to point out to our members that both you and I write ebooks related to
internet marketing. We also have written a book on Gourmet Cooking on a
Budget and things completely unrelated to marketing. We did a book with
3
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Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
John Cantu on Getting Paid to make People Laugh which is our best selling
ebook.
I don’t want people to think that you have to write books about making
money. Your first example was about how to sell a house by yourself.
Jim:
Right. And the second book I wrote was about how to get a mortgage without
getting taken to the cleaners or taken to the bank by a mortgage banker. That
one is called “The Ten Dirty Little Secrets of Mortgage Financing.”
So, the first two publications I came out with had nothing to do with
marketing and they sell consistently.
Audri:
In fact, if I had to give anyone a bit of advice, I would suggest that you don’t
write about marketing. There are so many books already available on this
topic. There are so many niches that are just begging for ebooks. There are
endless opportunities here.
Jim:
We’re going to talk about identifying some of those niches in a few minutes.
Audri:
Perfect. What are the biggest benefits of writing?
Jim:
Name recognition is always handy. If you’re a consultant, speaker, or just
someone who would benefit from name recognition – that is, having your
name on a “book” – even if it’s an ebook is very beneficial to people’s
careers.
If you’re a lawyer, doctor, teacher – whatever – having an ebook can help you
with name recognition.
From an economic standpoint, having your own ebook gives you something
cool that you can barter with. I rarely buy ebooks from other people. I trade
them my ebook. That’s a pretty nifty thing because I can trade my ebook and
get free software, free ebooks. I’ve gotten free tapes and other real stuff.
Audri:
Just coming back to the first thing you said. The concept of writing the book,
weather it’s electronic or hard copy, when you’re a professional, and the slang
is “They wrote the book on it.” That means that you are the expert. So, the
opportunities for your career are just almost unlimited when you have book.
4
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Speakers:
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Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Jim:
Sure. And that’s really the reason why I wrote my second book. I went in to
the studio and turned it in to a 90-minute cassette. It was a 40-page workbook
that I had printed. I used to give it away to people when they were shopping
for a mortgage. Everyone else was giving away a ten cent business card. I
was giving away what amounted to a $30.00 business card and I started
closing some major league business because I had my own tape and book set.
It was a major credibility builder.
Audri:
That’s Wonderful.
Jim:
With the advent of Print On Demand (POD) publishing now, if you want that
$30.00 business card, you come up with your ebook, print copies of it that are
fully bound, real books. You can buy them one at a time for $15.00
So these are all other benefits. Building credibility, having something you can
barter with, and name recognition.
Audri:
OK. Cool. Now, in the title of your ebook, you talk about writing an ebook
in just seven days. Common wisdom says it takes years to write a book,
weather it be electronic or hard copy. Obviously, an ebook is really no
different than a hard copy – it may be a bit shorter, but nonetheless, can
people really write an ebook in just seven days?
Jim:
Yes. You need to get organized and focused. If you can get focused and
make a concentrated effort to do this – now this isn’t going to happen in 45
minutes per day – you have to sit down and actually do it. If you get a laser
focus on what you’re writing about, divide up all the information chunks that
you’ll write about and then sit down and do it.
If you sat down for 8 hours per day, you could write the book in three days.
There are certain things that people do that prevent them from actually sitting
down and doing that.
Audri:
First, I’ll second what you said. We write an ebook in nine days. I can’t say
we spent more than 2-3 hours per day on it during that nine day period. What
you’re saying from our experience is very, very do-able.
Jim:
Sure. And you may not do all seven days in a row. It might be two days, one
weekend and then two more days.
5
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Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Audri:
You led me right into the next question. What is the single biggest mistake
people make when they do decide they want to write an ebook?
Jim:
Thinking this through, the worst mistake that people make when they’re
writing an ebook is to sit down and write the ebook without making sure they
have a willing audience out there wanting to purchase it.
What happens is, people have this great idea for an ebook. I can’t tell you
how many emails I get from people asking me what I think about their ideas.
Well, it’s a great idea if you’re the one that wants to buy the book.
The thing is you’ve got to make sure that there’s an audience out there looking
for what you’re selling and is willing to pay for it. So many people will make
all the other mistakes, so it takes them a year to write the book, and then they
finally get around to it, get it finished up, expect to roll it out, win a Pulitzer
Prize and they realize that no one cared.
Or, that no one was willing to pay for it. There might be a bunch of people
who cared and were interested in it, but no one is willing to pay for it – which
is just as bad.
Audri:
Exactly. Well I’m going to ask you in a few minutes how you find that
market. But, let’s first move on to other big mistakes that people make?
Jim:
The other big mistake, besides putting time into a book that no one is
interested in buying, is piling a bunch of money in to it. Investing tons of
money to buy traffic, in graphics and other stuff, before they actually test.
Once they kind of know that a market is there, they pile in all this money and
get financially and emotionally attached to the book.
You want to test as cheaply as possible when you start rolling out your ebook.
The other mistake people make is that they lose focus. When someone buys
an ebook, they’re pretty much interested in one specific area of information.
So you’ve got to keep your ebook tightly focused around the top.
People tend to ramble, because they’re trying to fill up space. You’d be better
off writing an ebook that is only 30 or 40 pages long that was laser focused,
6
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Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
then turning out something that was 120 pages that you had to wade through it
to find the 30 or 40 that they purchased.
Audri;
I’m going to second that. All of our ebooks are about 40 pages. We find that
people love that because it’s completely focused.
Jim:
I’ve read your books and you’re delivering the value and exactly what they’re
trying to buy.
People buy ebooks because they want information now. If they were looking
for something to cuddle up on the couch with, they’d go down to Books A
Million.
The other big mistake is that I see people not writing books from the
perspective of how do they benefit the customer – the person buying the
ebook.
You need to write the ebook imagining that you’re the customer reading it.
And all the words you put on the page need to benefit the customer and meet
the need that caused them to buy the ebook.
I know that’s not a real succinct thing, I’m trying to say that if you’re going to
write it, write it from the customer’s perspective, understand their needs and
meet their needs before you start writing the ebook.
Audri:
Yes. Our members have heard this many times before. Not only for writing
for ebooks, but for everything related to business. You have to have that
customer-centric approach.
If you think about a specific person who has the problem you’re trying to
solve, and you write to that person, and you imagine what it is that they’re
trying to accomplish, you can do that in a pretty easy way.
Jim:
Sure. And there’s a selfish motivation for me in doing this too. I love to have
a noble motivation that I’m helping people, but writing your ebook like that
performs a very important business function. Namely, it cuts down on
returns.
Audri:
OK, so now we’ve talked a lot about mistakes. What is the bullet proof,
best ebook to write and sell online?
7
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Speakers:
Audri Lanford
Jim Edwards
Name:
Jim:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
This would be a “how to” ebook that solves a problem for a large number of
people.
What are people going online for?
Audri:
To get information.
Jim:
Right. And if they’re going online to get information, then they are looking
for a solution to a problem. The information is out there, but it’s sometimes
hard to find.
So, people will buy an ebook that solves a problem and they can get all their
information in one place quickly. That’s the best kind of ebook to write.
Audri:
Somehow I’m not surprised you said that.
We talked for a moment, and you just brought it up again, this concept of
identifying your target market. You said that you want to write about a
problem that a large group of people have.
Clearly, identifying who your target market is is a very important step. Tell us
about this. How do you do this?
Jim:
One of the quickest ways to see what is a hot topic is to look at your own
ezine subscriptions. First of all, what do you subscribe to? This will give an
indication of your interest, which will help you. Probably you’re going to be
looking to write an ebook within the scope of your interests.
So, look at what topics people are talking about right now.
What you also want to look at is, with the topics that they’re talking about,
how many of those people are actively subscribing to these ezines? It’s one
thing to subscribe to an ezine that has 3 people subscribed to it. It’s another to
see what ezines have 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 people subscribed to them.
That’s a good way to see what the focus is of your target market.
Audri:
How would you do that?
8
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Speakers:
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Jim Edwards
Name:
Jim:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
You want to look at what kind of stories they’re publishing – what kind of ads
they’re running. Look at what types of themes are running through these
ezines on a consistent basis.
If you find an ezine that’s about marketing, or an ezine that’s about Spinach
Farming and Hydroponic machines and they’ve got 20,000 subscribers, that’s
a real good sign.
Because you’re got 20,000 potential people who could be interested in your
ebook if you wrote an ebook on how to get a better spinach yield out of our
Hydroponic machine.
The ezines are where people congregate and you can see what types of things
they’re interested in. So, this would be a first step.
Audri:
Do you have any suggestion on where they find out how many subscribers
each ezine has? Is there a site they can go to?
Jim:
Well, you can go to the home page of the ezine that you subscribe to and
sometimes they’ll tell you how many people subscribe.
The other way to find ezines and other stuff is to go to a big search engine like
Google.com, or a directory like Yahoo.com and start doing searches for the
key words that you think your target market would use.
Let’s say you do a search for Spinach Hydroponics and they come back with
three sites that are about this topic. Would you say this is a good or bad sign?
Audri:
You tell us.
Jim:
It’s a bad sign because there are only three sites out there about Spinach
Hydroponics. Now, if you do that search and it returns 3,000 sites and you
start looking around and you click on the first site and it’s “Joe’s Spinach
Hydroponics” and they’ve been in business since 1996, and they’re doing “x”
amount of volume, and you go to the next and the next and the next, you’ll see
there’s a lot of people in business around that subject.
That’s a great sign. That means that there is an audience here.
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Jim Edwards
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Audri:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Let me just add a little something here as well. We have wonderful resources
that I can share with our listeners. It’s the WZ.com web site. We have about
500 different topic areas.
Not surprisingly, Best Weight Loss Programs, is our highest subscriber rate
with about 130,000 subscribers.
I want to give you some other ideas of where we’ve got tons of subscribers:
46,000 subscribers to “Gourmet Cooking on a Budget,” Sony’s PS 2 has over
34,000 subscribers. “Freebies on the Web” has over 20,000, “Creating and
Delivering Humor” has over 24,000, “Dating” has over 20,000, Harry Potter,
Home Business of the New Millennium, Search Engine Optimization…
In fact, we even have about 5,000 people who are interested in a topic of
“Humorous Quotations.”
This is just one little example of the kinds of things people are interested in.
Jim:
Right. But always remember the rule that you can find an easily identifiable
group, but they have to be willing to pay for your ebook.
You’ve got to balance all this stuff. My advice is always this: before you try
to come up with the next American novel, do a couple days of research
and really see what the target market is looking for, what they’re buying, what
they’re not buying, what they’re already getting for free, what they’re willing
to pay for.
Audri:
That’s great advice.
So, let’s continue in terms of selecting the topic and the idea. Clearly we do
want to sell a lot of copies. We now have a market that we can readily
identify. There are lots of sites on it, there are good ezines, etc. What do you
do next?
Jim:
The kicker is, what category should your topic fall within for your target
audience? What I’m about to tell you is worth more than the price of
admission that you paid to listen to this call. That’s not hyperbole either.
The best topics for writing ebooks is:
1) Write about a subject that will help people make money.
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Jim Edwards
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“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
2) The second one is a topic that will help them save money.
3) Something that will help them save time.
4) Writing an ebook about something that will help them avoid effort.
You could write an ebook that would say, “How to create a $600 per month
profit center with your Spinach Hydroponics machine, by selling to your
neighbors.”
Anyone who has one might say, “Hey, this thing is costing me $50 to run,
and I can buy this $29 ebook and all of a sudden I can turn it into a $600
per month profit center. I’ll buy it!”
Especially if it's got a 30-day money back guarantee.
Now, let’s say you wanted to sell a book that was “How to Double Your
Spinach Hydroponics Yield in Half the Time. You can turn out 20 lbs of
Spinach in two months.”
Now, anyone who knows that it takes four months to normally do this will be
very interested.
So, those main topics, these are the topics within your target market, if
you can figure out how to help them make money, save money, save time, and
avoid effort, is a topic that has a high probability of success.
Audri:
I’m going to point out that the title of your most recent book is:
“The Lazy Man’s Guide To Online Business – How To Work Less, Get Paid
More and Have Tons of Fun” – that pretty much covers all of these four
categories.
Jim:
The original title of that book and the target market didn’t change, but the
original title was “How to Get More Done, Faster.” When I rolled it out to
people who knew more than I did, to a person, they all said “Cool book –
sounds like work.” Nobody wants to pay $29 to learn how to work more.
So, it wasn’t by accident that book got named what it got named.
Audri:
It really is getting to the four different categories.
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Jim Edwards
Name:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
Jim:
Those really would be the four – if you can do that, you’ve got great potential.
Audri:
Tell us the three proven methods for turning out a highly profitable ebook in
record time – even if you have no idea what to write about.
Jim:
There are actually more than three, but here are the three that I’ve talked about
in my book.
One of the fastest ways is to do a “top ten list.” If you wanted to write a book,
you would sit down and write out the ten most important points that you want
to get across.
Then you would write between 1,000 and 5,000 words about each one. For
example... and I used this formula before I realized it was a formula for The 10
Little Dirty Secrets of Mortgage Financing. And, actually got other people to
write the majority of that book for me. I wasn’t quite sure what the ten secrets
were. (You know why there were 10 secrets? Because I decided there would
be 10.)
I had about 50 clients who were real estate agents. I asked them what were
the questions that buyers kept asking them over and over and over about a
mortgage. Then I distilled all the variations down into 10 questions and then I
answered those questions and turned it into an information product.
Audri:
Everybody can do this. Every single member can take your topic and do
exactly what Jim just said.
Jim:
Sure. Go ask a bunch of people what they want to know, and then go find it
out.
Now, there’s other things that you need to do, like polishing up the book, etc.
The second way is to write a series of letters to somebody. If you can imagine
the perfect person who needs what you’re doing, you write up an outline of all
the points you want to cover. Then, you write them a letter about each point.
Then you compile the letters into a book.
The third way, if you’re writing a book from personal experience (i.e., If I
knew now, what I didn’t know then, etc.), basically to tell a story of how you
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Conversation:
solved a problem. Tell it in a way that people can relate to the humanity of it
as well as being able to see all the steps to achieve the results you achieved.
Audri:
So, one of these three methods, at least, is something that literally everyone
listening to this should think about. Write down how this would work for
you.
I’m sure this question is going on in the back of everyone’s mind. We’re all
very busy with a million things that need to be done. How do you manage
your time when your schedule is already completely full? How do you take
the time to write the book?
Jim:
I’ll give you the smart-alec answer and then I’ll give you the real answer.
The smart-aleck answer is “cut out all TV from your life, and your life will
totally revolutionize.”
For those of you who can’t cut out two to three hours of TV per night,
basically it comes down to three steps.
Step 1 is “planning”: know what you’re going to write about and create an
outline of your material.
Step 2: You have to set incremental deadlines for yourself. You have to
schedule appointments for when you’ll sit down and write. You’ve got to find
30-minute blocks where you can sit down and write. 30 minutes is about how
long it takes for the average person, when they don’t have their writing
muscles up to speed, 30 minutes is the time it takes to write a complete
thought or a letter.
Step 3: Be a grown-up about it. Don’t accept any excuses from yourself. Just
Do It (just like the Nike commercial says). The key is understanding all the
benefits, which are: passive income, extra money, an eventual replacement for
a job you don’t like. Whatever your personal “why” is – that’s your
motivation for doing it. It’s simple, but you’ve got to just “do it.”
Audri:
If you imagine looking at today’s date, let’s say you only have Saturdays that
you could spend on it. If you do this, you’ll probably be done within one or
two months of Saturdays.
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Jim:
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If you have a strong enough reason for doing it, you’ll do it.
My philosophy has always been, if it took you seven Saturdays in a row, a
month and a half is going to be here no matter what, and you’re either going
to have it written or you're not. But, that month and a half is going to be here.
So you could either be a week from now or two months from now with an
ebook that you’re ready to sell.
Or, you won’t.
Audri:
Right. It’ll be a lot more profitable for you if you are.
Jim:
Yes – my wife loves the money.
Audri:
The least interesting aspect of writing an ebook is the formatting, and we’re
not going to talk about that today because we don’t have time.
But, I want to talk about marketing, because as you mentioned and as our
members know, that’s really the key to success here.
Let’s start off with a big question. What’s the fastest and best strategy?
We’ve got our ebook done and now we want to make money with it.
How do we generate thousands of dollars in ebook sales?
Jim:
As far as I know, the absolute best way to sell thousands of dollars of ebooks,
really fast, if you don’t have your own list, is to do a joint venture with
somebody who has a list and has the ear of your target audience.
I’ll use myself as an example. We’ve sold thousands of dollars worth of
ebooks through other people’s lists. When I started out I didn’t have a list. I
have one now.
You go to someone who has your target audience. You let them see a copy of
your book. If they like it, you cut them a sweet deal – make them an offer
they can’t refuse money-wise – and chances are they’ll put it in front of
their people and you’ll both make money.
Audri:
What’s a “sweet deal?”
Jim:
This is not a hard and fast rule. This is the Jim Edwards philosophy. If it’s an
ebook, an electronic product (i.e. software – or something that you don’t have
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to physically deliver), then I expect to get 50% of the sales price less whatever
hard costs for selling the book.
Then, I expect to pay 50% out to someone else. By paying someone else half
the money, it does a few things. It shows them that you’re serious and makes
it a “no-brainer” for them. If it’s a good product, why would they take the
time to invent their own? Why not take yours, sell yours, and get half the
money? They can make money right away.
Audri:
I’m going to echo what you’re saying. We have our own lists and these are
phenomenal and that’s clearly where everyone wants to get.
We launched a product, and we made $12,000 in three weeks from other
people’s lists. It worked.
Jim:
$12,000 is some serious money – no matter who you are.
Audri:
That process doesn’t stop. It’s not like you do it once and then you’re done.
Jim:
No. You go and find other people and you start building your own list. In the
beginning, until you have a list that you can roll out to, you’ve got to find
other people.
A joint venture is by far the best and fastest way to sell a bunch.
Audri:
The first joint venture that we did (and this was not for an e-product), we did a
hard cover product for which we had no list. We made $450,000 within the
first 45 days. This was by doing joint ventures. It’s a powerful technique.
Jim:
Jay Abraham calls this a host beneficiary, but everyone else calls it a joint
venture.
Audri:
What else?
Jim;
The next most important thing you’ve got to have, is traffic. You’ve got to
have a killer one-page sales letter. You’ve got to have a place where people
go on your site that is a one-page sales letter that explains all the reasons
people should buy your book.
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Jim Edwards
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“How to Write Your Own Ebook
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Then, you’ve got to keep track of your conversion percentages for that sales
letter. This will come into play with joint ventures as well as with other
traffic building techniques.
So the next most important thing with marketing is, you’ve got to have
this sales letter to sell your book.
Audri:
What would you consider a good conversion rate is? Conversion rate means
that you take the number of people who buy and you divide it by the number
of people who have visited your site, and you want to know what that number
is.
Jim:
Right – the number of unique people. I’ve seen them as high as 12%. One of
my recent ebooks, with a certain list, converted 12%. Also, with other lists, it
converted at one half of a percent.
So, you’ve got to know who your audience is. You’ve got to be careful when
you use the term conversion rate.
A good conversion rate that will make other people want to work with you is
at least 1%, but you prefer at least 2%.
Audri;
We have one book, the Cantu book, that converted as 16%, but that was one
list and is certainly not the average.
Jim:
You’ve got to have your conversion rates, because everything else you do
with your marketing is based on this.
Audri:
OK, so now you’ve got your sales letter, some joint ventures, what next?
Jim:
You have to find sources of targeted traffic. One of the best ways, besides JV
partners, is with ezines. Getting ezine owners to run articles you write
that relate to your ebook’s topic.
There are thousands of ezines out there that need content. You can put
together a 400-500 word article that discusses some aspect that’s covered by
the broader picture of your ebook.
You get these ezine publishers to run your story. At the bottom, you’ve got
your resource box. Two cools things happen with this. One is that you
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Jim Edwards
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“How to Write Your Own Ebook
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Conversation:
expose yourself and your message to a larger group of people. The people
who read the article that you’ve written and click on your resource box to
come to your web site are already predisposed to think of you as the expert in
that area.
This is a technique I have a bit of advantage in that I write a syndicated
newspaper column, so I’m used to cranking out a 500-word article every
week. But, if you only did one article per month, and concentrated on getting
it into as many ezines as you could, there are thousands of ezines out there.
So, it’s not like the thing will go stale if you get it into 40 or 50 ezines.
Audri:
We use this technique a lot and it works brilliantly.
Jim:
The next thing is roll out with some pay per click search engine traffic. If
you’re selling a book on how to make money with Spinach Hydroponics, then
you go and get the key word on GoTo (which is Overture now) and find
some of the other pay per click search engines and see if you can make
some money with pay per click’s.
If you can get 100 people to show up to your site, and you pay a dime a piece,
that’s $10. If you sell only one ebook for $29, you’ll net about $18 for every
person you bring to your site.
Audri:
Great.
Jim:
One of the things I cover in my book is getting multiple results from the
same effort. If you write that article, another source that’s often overlooked
for getting their content out there is that not only ezine owners need content,
but site owners need content as well.
If you can get some websites that are catering to the same audience to publish
your article on their site, then that becomes a source of ongoing traffic.
Audri:
That’s very interesting. Can you talk a bit more about this?
Jim:
If you can find somebody who’s got a site that’s all about Hydroponics, that’s
content heavy. They need to replace and add to their content. You offer that
they can use your article in exchange for a link back to your site.
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I don’t care if you put your own affiliate link in there. If one in ten says yes,
then go find 100 so you can get on to 10 websites.
Most people are not proactive about the marketing of their ebooks. They
write it and then they wonder why they’re not rich yet.
Audri:
That’s so true. That’s a really good idea. There are so few people doing this
right now.
Jim:
That’s how I ended up becoming a newspaper columnist. I went down to the
local paper and said, “The articles you’re writing about the Internet really
stink. Here’s three that I’ve written. If you like them, I’ll let you run them
and I won’t charge you a thing.” I’ve pyramided that into a syndicated column
with other papers and websites. It all started by offering free content, in this
case, to an offline publication.
Audri:
Those offline publications need articles too. There might be some different
rules, but nonetheless, that’s another source to get people to your site.
We’ve talked about what you should do when it comes to marketing. Let’s
talk about what you should avoid in terms of marketing.
Jim:
Avoid complacency. I don’t know of any other techniques other than
spamming and FFA (FreeForAll Links).
There are some techniques that are better than others depending on who
you’re selling to. You’ve got to take at least one action every day to expose
your book to someone new.
You need to avoid thinking that things will never change. Once you start
selling your ebooks and if you sell 20 one day, you can’t think that you’ll sell
20 again tomorrow – that’s not how it works. You can’t be complacent about
the marketing. You’ve always got to look for new sites, new links, new
affiliates, new JV partners – it’s an ongoing process.
Audri:
Can you share some secrets about what’s working and what’s not working in
the real world of online publishing today?
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Jim:
“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
That’s a pretty open-ended question… what immediately comes to mind is
that what does work now is automation. Automating your system for ebook
delivery and all the stuff that goes with it.
When I started in 1997 it was almost impossible to find somebody to process
your credit card orders on the Internet. Now, there’s tons of places that will
process your credit card orders. Some of them don’t even charge you
hardly anything as an upfront fee, no monthly fees and you only pay when
you’ve sold an ebook.
Autoresponders are dirt cheap and they have so many features you can barely
figure them out.
There’s no excuse not to automate, because what you couldn’t automate
before, now you can automate virtually everything and devote the majority of
your time to marketing.
Audri:
I’d like to say a plug for your two books, including the automation/efficiency
book. It is terrific. And “The Lazy Man’s Guide…” They are books that literally
everyone should have.
Jim:
Well thank you.
I don’t mean to sound corny, but what’s working right now is outstanding
value. The market is getting crowded. As long as you provide outstanding
value, you overdeliver in your ebook, you provide a reasonable level of
customer service, this will really add to your marketing.
I can’t tell you how many people send me emails saying, “Wow, thanks for the
fast response.” If you’re organized and you have everything set up, it’s easy
to provide great service and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time.
Audri;
That’s a very common theme and our members have heard this many times
before and I’m glad you said it.
Jim:
What doesn’t work, especially in the ebook world, is turning out an unfocused
piece of junk that you barely spent any time on. As far as ebooks go, this is
something that is promoted by some people – they say, just turn something
out, see if the market is interested, and if you do sell, you can improve it later.
I personally don’t agree with this philosophy
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Jim Edwards
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“How to Write Your Own Ebook
in 7 Days!”
Conversation:
I guess the other thing that isn’t working is that you could write the greatest
ebook in the world, but if you didn’t market it, it’s like buying a 50-foot
billboard and hiding it in your basement.
You’ve got to learn to market the ebook.
Audri:
We’re just about out of time. I have two last questions.
What one thing would you like everyone to remember from this interview?
Jim:
If you’re interested in ebooks, please, no matter how smart you think you are,
no matter how great an idea you think it is, do not write the ebook until you
know there is a market out there. Please!
Audri:
Can you tell people how to get in touch with you?
Jim:
The easiest way is through my website which is www.ebookfire.com
Audri:
We will put a link to this interview, as well as audio files, on our private
PowerTRUST site.
Thank you so much for being with us today. This has been very interesting. I
think our members can see clearly now why and how they should write an
ebook and begin making money from it right away.
Jim:
Thank you, Audri!
End of Transcript
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