

Ask HN: Book-project is a total failure, but what exactly can we learn from it? - ebook

After getting interested in online marketing me and a friend decided to produce an ebook and sell it online. We were both quite successful in our day-jobs so we figured it would be a good subject to write about.<p>So we wrote an ebook full of good career advice and we created a blog where we posted free articles related to the topic. We also posted a few articles to ezinearticles.com and twittered links to all new blog-posts. This resulted in about 1000 unique visitors over a span of two or three months. No sales. So we created a "sales-pitch" page (ehm.. with fake reviews) and invested money in google CPC ads. This was expensive and resulted in a couple hundred more visitors, but again, no sales.<p>We have declared the project a total failure and stopped working on it. But it still bugs me: What the hell did we do wrong? What can I learn from this experiment? I invested a lot of time and I'd like to get at least that out of it. I can't think of a better place, that's why I thought I'd ask here before we take the website down. Did any of you ever try something similar? What did we miss?<p>Thank you.<p>Link (Blog): http://www.careeradvicebook.com/<p>Link (Sales-Page): http://www.careeradvicebook.com/book/<p>P.S.: We really think the information in this book is worth something. We aren't scammers looking for quick money. I'd like to publish it somehow, even if for free. Any recommendations?
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DanielStraight
Wait, so let me get this right. You have had no customers. So where are the
customer reviews coming from?

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mahmud
" _ehm.. with fake reviews_ "

~~~
DanielStraight
Indeed. Although the idea was more to draw a general point. There's not a
chance I would buy it, because the site looks exactly like every scam e-book
site I've ever seen: yellow background, way too much text down the middle with
a cheesy picture, an overabundance of bold text, randomly quoted text (why are
any of the headers quoted?), and (you guessed it) made up testimonials.
Everything about the page screams, "This is a scam. Don't give this guy any of
your money." For comparison, this is what the page of the only e-book I've
ever bought directly from the author looked like:

<http://todoodlist.com/>

It's the polar opposite. It has an amount of text that someone might actually
read. The typography is restrained and not screaming at me with bold text and
big headers every other word. It tells me things I'm actually getting instead
of just making lofty promises. (When you tell me you have a chapter called
"Zen Kitten in a Box" it's pretty easy to believe you really have fun essays.
However, when you tell me I'm going to get laid by reading a career book, I'm
skeptical.)

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ebook
uhm... clickable links:

Blog: <http://careeradvicebook.com>

Sales Page: <http://www.careeradvicebook.com/book/>

