
$15,000 In Income From An EBook, How I Did It - bradpauly
http://www.saturnflyer.com/blog/jim/2012/09/19/15000-in-income-from-an-ebook-how-i-did-it/
======
nathanbarry
Very nicely done! Selling books and training is a great way to get into
products. My first ebook was released 2 weeks ago ($20k+ in sales so far).

To anyone wondering if they could do it to, the answer is yes. I can point to
a dozen stories of successful ebooks that have made over $10k in 6 months. Not
to mention to increase in credibility and readership that the author gains.

Here are my quick tips on writing a technical guide:

1\. Find a topic that is in high demand. I chose designing iOS apps, anything
related to popular programming languages or new technologies.

2\. Talk about the value to the customer (time saved, better understanding,
etc) rather than the features of your product (100 pages, PDF, ePub, etc). You
need to mention the details of what the purchaser gets, but that isn't what
will sell them on your product.

3\. Don't just sell an ebook. Ebooks are cheap and simple or at least that is
how they appear. Sell the book, but with it package code samples, video
tutorials, expert interviews, and anything else that will give the reader a
head start. This has the advantage of increasing the value of your product
which helps with pricing.

4\. Have more than one package. With my book I had three packages, with
different amounts of extras in each. The base one included the book and a
couple templates, the middle included 5 detailed video tutorials and more
templates as, and the largest one had even more templates and code samples.
Each package built on itself and the price increased accordingly.

Many people, and especially companies, won't hesitate to buy a more expensive
package if it looks like it will save them more time.

5\. Price high. My packages are at $39, $79, and $169. Setting those high
prices is the best decision I made. The highest priced package has made almost
as much money as the previous two combined. Jim does a great job with a price
of $42.

I hope that helps anyone considering selling an information product like what
many people on HN have done recently.

For reference you can checkout the sales page to see how my packages are
organized: <http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/>

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem is that books that try and sell me based on promising some
improvement in my lifestyle usually set my BS radar off.

I have a lot of programming books on my shelf about various topics , but I
don't have one called "make a shitton of money with your text editor".

It would feel a bit like those ebooks that promise to make it easy to generate
effortless income on the stockmarket or get highly attractive women into bed
with you.

I have no doubt that such books sell, but I wouldn't feel confident writing
something that might not necessarily do exactly what it said on the tin for
everyone reading it.

~~~
bdunn
Email me at brennan at planscope.io and I'll forward you a dozen emails from
people who've bought my book (<http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com>) who now
have a higher income and a better lifestyle.

The books on your bookshelf are meant to improve your lifestyle - they teach
you new skills that you can charge for. Some books, however, do that on a
higher, more general level.

~~~
nathanbarry
After reading Brennan's book I raised my rate from $100/hr up to $150/hr. When
I mentioned my rate to 4 new prospects they didn't seem to notice. It didn't
seem expensive at all to them.

Maybe I should raise my rates further...

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm not sure why you need a book to tell you that you can raise you rates if
you think that people will pay your higher rates.

~~~
nathanbarry
I've thought that I could raise my rates for over a year now. But Brennan's
book gave me the drive to actually do it.

------
bdunn
Congrats, Jim!

I think a lot of people severely underestimate their ability to teach others.
I didn't think I had any information of value to give to freelancers until I
wrote my book and was overloaded with "thank you" emails (and $$$). And I know
a lot of other people selling infoproducts (including Jim) that have gone
through the same experience.

I'd encourage everyone reading this to think about what _you_ have to offer
that someone else might want. Is this something valuable that they'd pay for?
Chances are, if this someone can make a better living from your research, they
will pay. It's really one of the most rewarding win-win I've experienced.

~~~
saturnflyer
Thanks. It's hard work, for sure, but all the knowledge and experience behind
it is there. Impostor syndrome must be overcome.

------
grueful

      I already had a leg up because I had most of my product put together. I just needed to figure out how to market it.
    
      And the first thing I learned was that my product was dead, would remain dead, and was a waste of further time and effort. I fundamentally had begun in the wrong place and needed to first find what people wanted.
    

You could put a million MBAs in a room for a million years and they'd never
come up with any strategy more effective than _talking_ _to_ _actual_
_customers_ _first_.

~~~
saturnflyer
I actually have customers on that product. But they're unfocused and
unrelated. How do you add features when the customer needs aren't clear? You
don't. You just kill it.

~~~
grueful
"Actual customers" is about as overloaded as "talking."

You need people you can connect with, provide value to, extract value from -
and you have to make all that into a reproducible and reasonably predictable
process given all of the constraints in play.

If you can do that, you're often well down the path towards a viable business.
If not ...

------
bjonathan
Cache version :
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.saturnflyer.com/blog/jim/2012/09/19/15000-in-
income-from-an-ebook-how-i-did-it/)

------
duck
I like how Jim priced it at $42. It seems like a lot of authors go too low,
trying to profit from quantity instead of quality. To me, asking a higher
price on an ebook helps show the value you can expect from it after reading
it.

~~~
saturnflyer
Less than an hour of billing and they've got new techniques and better
understanding of application architecture. It's also the answer to life the
universe and everything.

------
majorapps
$15k certainly sounds impressive, but how many hours have been spent
researching, writing and marketing the book? Only once we have a ratio'd
figure to compare can we claim success.

~~~
bdunn
There is more to success than the income.

1) You build a mailing list of people who have bought from you in the past.
HUGE value here.

2) You get some extra personal brand exposure. Invitations to speak at
conferences, podcast interviews, and so on.

3) Passive income is the gift that keeps on giving.

~~~
jbigelow76
Good points but don't forget that he probably also increased his expertise in
Ruby which itself drives value in his consulting work.

~~~
tomjen3
Not necessarily.

But it certainly increased his _percieved_ value.

------
xiaoma
Wow. This is great. I've been working on an ebook myself as I both need the
supplementary income and have the expertise in a certain niche to do it.

I tried kick starter, but they rejected me. Apparently they don't allow any
sort of how-to materials. I hadn't realized it was so easy to sell as a per-
release. This is actually really encouraging and I think I may borrow your
entire layout!

Oh, and that sounds like one heck of a week. Glad to hear your spirits are
still high.

edit: Where did you put the link to your mailing list in the "tip of the
iceberg" piece you linked to?

~~~
saturnflyer
Thanks!

There was a signup form there originally, now it's a link to my main page
about the book at <http://clean-ruby.com>

------
zupreme
Thanks for a great read Jim. I've also been doing very well from my own series
of ebooks, one of which has remained in the top 10 of it's category since last
year (jumping to # 1 several times). Unlike you, I didn't realize the great
passive income potential of ebooks until after I put my 1st one out. Since
then I've churned out several of them and I haven't looked back.

I won't claim that ebooks have made me rich, but they have provided a very
nice supplemental income for me.

~~~
serialpreneur
zupreme: Just curious, would you mind sharing a link to your ebooks ?

------
stef25
The buy now link at the bottom of the article points to a nasty warning in
Chrome, I tried to add this as a comment but that didn't work and your site in
general seems down now.

~~~
saturnflyer
Thanks! I didn't anticipate this kind of traffic. I'm working on it.

------
paulhauggis
I would like to write an e-book on how I made money from an e-book. I think it
will make millions!

~~~
RenierZA
You mean like John Locke did?

[http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months-
ebook/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sold-Million-eBooks-Months-
ebook/dp/B0056BMK6K)

~~~
sheff
In case anyone thinks of buying the book above, John Locke is mentioned in
this NY Times article which says part of his "system" which is not mentioned
in his book is buying Amazon reviews.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-
fo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-
meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Interesting article, I always suspected this went on but never to the extent
described in the article.

