
How I Made $6K With My eBook - xutopia
http://macournoyer.com/blog/2010/03/01/promote-cyopl/
======
acangiano
Your approach to the whole thing was very much affiliate/internet marketing
oriented: list building via PPC, squeeze page, product sold through ClickBank,
generous kickbacks to affiliates, high price for low page count, artificial
urgency created through a limited time offer, and so on.

Here is what I admire:

* You managed to do all this without pissing off geeks, who are very sensitive to bullshit and tend to have an holier than thou attitude towards these techniques.

* I didn't buy the book, but I suspect it's rather high quality, compared to most junk sold on ClickBank.

* Your landing/squeeze page is surprisingly classy. It manages to accomplish a good CRT, despite the lack of autoplaying audio/video, exit popups, and the typical centered column look.

In short, good job.

~~~
macournoyer_
Thx a lot! I'm also surprised by the low quality of most products on ClickBank
& other sites. That's why I'm talking openly about it, I'm sure most geeks
here could do way better then everything on those sites.

~~~
nailer
In the 'Creating Passionate Users' sense, you made something that helps your
audience be awesome - which is the best possible thing to create.
Communicating that properly helps, but the product is king.

PS. I'm interested in buying your book now too, because I believe it will
personally make me awesome.

------
wallflower
> “ The book I want to read. ”

— Matz, creator of the Ruby language

The amazing review / testimonial the author probably was able to ask for
because he's credible and an active member of the Ruby ecosystem (tinyrb).

Another lesson on the value of real working relationships.

~~~
zephyrfalcon
Of course, it also implies that Matz did NOT read the book... :-/

~~~
jamesbritt
Right. Says nothing about the quality of the book.

Also, I'd like to read the book, but not for the price the author is asking.

I'm impressed that one can sell an e-book for near $1/page, though. I realize
that, in the end, it's about value delivered, not page count, but still.

It tells me that people are not as price sensitive to some things as I
thought.

~~~
macournoyer_
That's why it's important to sell more than just an ebook. I included 2 full
languages you can use in OSS, <http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/>
started from the Ruby language included in the package. + screencast and more.
Also the book is amazingly good :p

~~~
jamesbritt
Good points. :)

And a better deal.

Taking advantage of "This is a not a dead tree" is sorely lacking in the
E-books I see. Even the page layouts of E-books assume you're using some
shaped-like-a-page viewer, rather than allowing for a flexible layout that
works well across different screens and devices.

------
euroclydon
There has got be a better way to think about this market that just selling
eBooks. It's premium information conveyance, right? Like a stock tip sheet?

My brother is in a marketplace that depends heavily on advertising to get
customers. He spends several hundred a year, just on newsletters and eBooks
that tell him how to best utilize his advertising budget, which seems to be
over a thousand per month.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
he pays for newsletters? Can you share which ones?

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grumpycanuck
I self-published a PHP programming book (<http://www.littlehart.net/book>) and
I've sold about the same number of copies as he has (~200 between PDF and
LuLu) but (a) I didn't charge as much as he did and (b) didn't hook up with
any affiliate marketing / promotion until October of 2009. Sold about 150
copies (PDF + Lulu) before I found my current publisher.

~~~
daok
Why have you left Lulu?

~~~
grumpycanuck
I'm using LuLu for print-on-demand copies of the book, just like I did before.
I went with someone else to help with PDF sales.

------
mynyml
Cool tips. I especially like the part about testing the market before actually
doing the work. Clever.

~~~
myth_drannon
That's a case from Tim Farris book ( at least the first time I read about it)

~~~
macournoyer_
Yes exactly! It works for everything you want to sell online.

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abl
Do you worry about people pirating your eBook, or worse yet - infringing your
copyright by taking the information in the eBook, and publishing it as their
own? It seems that by going with a publishing agency, one would have a lot
more legal protection in that regard?

~~~
macournoyer_
No I'm not worried. I'm just trusting people buying the book like they are
trusting me by buying it. I hate penalizing everyone for what some people
might do.

Also, it's a pretty small niche and it got good exposure when it came out. I
think it would be hard to copy and sell it to the same market again.

------
davidw
How much time did it actually take you to write the book?

~~~
macournoyer_
Writing took about 2 months IIRC. But the learning took >1 year :p

~~~
duck
2 months of work for $6000? While making money probably wasn't the only reason
for doing it, isn't that a pretty bad payoff? I know you will keep making
sales, but (especially for technical writing) it will have a short shelf
life...

~~~
oscardelben
It took him 2 months but we don't know how many hours per day. Also this was
the first book he wrote, maybe with the next one he'll make 6000 in one week.
You can't expect to win big the first time.

~~~
GFischer
If it's a good book, maybe he can revise and update it, add more chapters, and
make a 2nd edition (with a new marketing campaign behind it).

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steveklabnik
How do you feel about ClickBank? One of my weekend projects is a little site
that'll make selling digital goods online really simple, targeted at a non-
technical audience. Obviously, you are technical, but how'd you feel about the
various sites that are out there? Did you try other services before ClickBank?

~~~
macournoyer_
ClickBank is ok, a little better the e-junkie, but e-junkie has digital
delivery built-in, but still... we're very far from the nice UIs we usually
take for granted in our community. My dream setup would be Shopify +
<http://www.fetchapp.com/> but this is quite expensive for my low volume.

~~~
steveklabnik
Interesting; I wonder if I've never heard of Fetch because I'm not really
involved in this kind of business.

If you have any thoughts you'd like to share on what sucks about your
experiences with any of this stuff, I'd love to get an email and pick your
brain.

------
aik
I wonder how many more sales he will get for it appearing on hn?

~~~
macournoyer_
5 so fare fyi.

~~~
Alex3917
How I made 6k with my eBook How I Made 6k With My eBook

------
bgraves
I'd love some more details: 1\. How did you come up with this as a topic for
an eBook?

2\. Is this your area of expertise, or did you see a niche market?

3\. What are some specifics on your AdWords campaign?

4\. Looks like you have a strong online presence. Do you think that helped
sell your book or was it completely irrelevant to its success?

~~~
macournoyer_
1\. I've been interested in language and VMs about 1 year ago, built
<http://code.macournoyer.com/tinyrb/> and a couple other languages.

2\. No, it all started w/ a passion for languages. I had the idea to write a
book after reading 4 Hour Work Week

3\. What do you want to know exactly? I used the keywords "create programming
language" iirc

4\. Yes, I think it helped a lot. The only "marketing" I've done is on Twitter
and my blog (also recently on my site <http://refactormycode.com>). I was
surprised by the success, but I'm now convinced that OSS can pay in a way or
another.

------
varikin
I am impressed with the fact that he made $6k. A few years ago, I took a
writing class that was taught by a published author. At the time, she had 4
books published, all Sci-Fi, by a New York publisher. She told the class that
she got an advance of $5k for her first book. When that sold well enough to
cover costs for the publisher, she started receiving royalties. At the time,
she had gotten about another $5k. So for about 1 years worth of work and over
5 years time, she made about $10k.

I know fiction is a different market than programming, but just the number
comparison is interesting.

~~~
lsc
yeah. uh, so far I've made less than that on the book of xen[1] and the
publisher has said that it is selling 'surprisingly well' - he (my publisher)
warned me going in that writing technical books doesn't pay as well as most
things a qualified person can do.

But then, I get a real kick when I walk into Fry's and see my book.

[1]<http://nostarch.com/xen.htm>

~~~
varikin
I dream of being a published author one day and walking into a book store and
secretly signing my books :)

I have heard that technical books don't sell well, but then again, this author
is not very well known and her books don't sell well either. She said that
every agent and publisher takes on new authors hoping they become the next
William Gibson (or other huge name). Most authors barely survive off of
writing.

~~~
prawn
I co-wrote a book ('Web-Graphics for Non Designers') and later tracked it down
in a Borders/similar store in London and got my photo taken with it there.
Certainly a novel experience for anyone who's not a f/t author, but not so
exciting that I'd be dreaming about it! I was writing to a very difficult
deadline, fried my brain in the process and it was hardly lucrative.

From my experience, I'd be hard-pressed to be convinced to do it again. I got
a few thousand as an advance for writing three of the books ten chapters and
it involved research, a plan, fleshing out the content, providing
supplementary assets and then a couple of rounds of editing. I've done better
out of non-spammy MFA sites in terms of return on time invested.

------
rubyrescue
nice landing page! it makes me want to create my own language and i don't even
have enough quality time with the ones i already know!

------
kqr2
Any reviews of his actual ebook?

<http://createyourproglang.com/>

~~~
euroclydon
Man, if it's tough to get programmers to buy a set of custom controls or
developer tools, it must be ten times more difficult to get them to buy an
eBook. I'll admit, the site does portrait credibility.

~~~
allenp
I thought that too, but I think the difference is that a developer could look
at a program and say, "hey, I could build that" but with a book they might not
see it the same way.

------
ananthrk
FWIW, review of this eBook in HN earlier

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813133>

Edit: In the comments, you can actually see the author asking advice to
improve the copy of the landing page :)

------
brc
Did you consider using DRM or is it just a freely distributable PDF?

------
cadr
How did you choose the price point?

~~~
macournoyer_
Based on other similar package/eBooks around at that time and the price it
cost me to run AdWords for 1 day. The initial market research w/ AdWords can
also help choosing a price. According to my tests, I guessed I could sell one
book per day w/ ads, which cost ~50$/day. I thought $50 was too much, so cut
it back to $40.

------
kalid
Thanks for sharing! One of your questions was about laying out the ebook.

For my own, I started with InDesign but found it too painful to use (I only
used it for the cover). I used LaTex (since I had some math equations) but the
benefit is that it's all plaintext and easy to modify with quick scripts. It
also gives you really nice typography. Again, this is probably most useful if
you end up having math equations inside :).

~~~
macournoyer_
Aww yes I need to learn LaTex :/

~~~
kalid
Yeah unfortunately there's a steep learning curve, but worth it for anything
math-related.

Here's a sample chapter laid out with LaTeX:
[http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://betterexplained.com...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://betterexplained.com/ebook/MathBetterExplained.Preview.pdf)

The #1 rule is to not use the default styles unless you want your book to look
like a master's thesis.

------
Groxx
Interesting set of ideas, thanks for the link! I hadn't actually heard of the
book before, but I'm intrigued. Maybe they should include a last step of "post
about book in popular geek hangouts". I'd also be curious how many sales were
generated after the blog post, if they'd consider revealing that data.

Also, "Help Me Promote My Book And Get 50% on Each Sale"

Now THAT'S a good way to sell a book. Hooray pyramid schemes!

~~~
zackattack
That's not a pyramid scheme.

~~~
Groxx
Ah, my mistake, not pyramid scheme. Just pyramid sales (if nested within
itself).

------
happenstance
Thanks for sharing.

How do you like e-junkie? What other alternatives did you consider?

~~~
macournoyer_
e-junkie is OK, but the UI is horrible, it's all in flash. I went w/ e-junkie
at 1st because of the coupon code that gave me 120 days for free & because
they handle all the digital delivery logic like link expiry. I'm now w/
ClickBank as it seems to be more popular w/ affiliate marketers, only costs an
upfront $50 & can accept multiple methods of payment.

------
coolb
do you use any other marketing tools/techniques other than clickbank?

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zackattack
1\. Who did the design and how much did it cost?

2\. Can you show me your landing page for the initial adwords exploration
campaign? How much was your CPC? How much did you bid? What was your quality
score? (Thank you SO much)

~~~
macournoyer_
1\. I did everything myself, except reviewing

2\. Sorry the old page is gone, it was a very crappy 2 colors page w/ a box in
the middle w/ bullet points. My idea was, if I get decent CR on this, I'm
guaranteed to sell some. I don't remember the CPC and the bid, but I spent
50$/day for 2 days on just a few keywords (about 10 iirc).

