Shawn ManaherWe are happy to have Mike Omar share with us his success with eBooks, now the fun disclosure: The view and opinions expressed by Mike Omar, may not fully reflect the view and opinions of The Content Authority, however, we have known Mike for some time and appreciate that he has something really great to share with us. Enjoy and make sure you share your comments below!
Before Kindle ever existed, I had been making passive income selling ebooks on my own websites. My most prominent (and popular) one is an ebook that teaches you how to buy and sell tickets online for profit (the way I got started in making money from home). That website has been making me about $300 per month for years now – all passive (you can learn how to build a website just like that one at my sample sales page website).
Although my ebook websites make me passive income, remember that “passive” is only passive AFTER LOTS OF HARD WORK! After doing the keyword research and competition analysis to figure out what topic to make an ebook about, I had to write the ebook, build a website to sell it, set up the payment processor, and then get the website to rank in Google for the targeted keywords (by building lots and lots of backlinks). In other words, the “passive” part came after at least six months of effort. It was absolutely worth the effort to build lots and lots of these ebook websites, but it wasn’t easy.
When I first heard of the Kindle platform, I was intrigued and decided to give it a shot (since I already had several ebooks already written). I figured it couldn’t hurt. It took me about a week to convert seven of my ebooks to the proper Kindle format and get them all uploaded onto Amazon.
Then…
In my first month I made over $600, with NO PROMOTION AT ALL.
Obviously this was very different from what I was used to, which was a much longer process that takes several months of work and could result in a wasted effort.
With Amazon Kindle, your book is published and is getting eyeballs on it that same day.
What differentiates Kindle from Google is the fact that in Google you are competing with a bunch of websites, a lot of which contain a lot of free information. If someone lands on your website, they may see that they have to pay for your ebook and immediately turn away to look for free information elsewhere.
When someone is on Kindle browsing books to buy, they are already in buying mode. So the opportunity that the person will buy your ebook is much higher right off the bat.
Obviously after that experiment with Kindle, I now use it as my main platform to sell ebooks and try to put out at least a couple each month.
The money I use to outsource the writing for an ebook is usually made back within 2-3 months, so it’s easily a winning model.
I’ve been doing ALL my outsourcing for ebooks and backlink articles through The Content Authority – that’s why I was happy to write about my eBook success story when they asked!
The only reason I haven’t abandoned my old method entirely is because the old method allows me to sell my ebook at any price I desire, so if I can accomplish ranking for my targeted keywords, those ebook websites end up making me more money than Kindle, but again – that model is more difficult and more risky.
With the Kindle model, you can sell at any price you want to also, but remember – you are now dealing with a Kindle Buyer who has been browsing ebooks that sell for an average of below $6 each. If they come across your ebook at $17 or $27, unless it is the most attractive ebook they have ever seen, they aren’t going to buy it!
That isn’t the case with an ebook on your own website…if you make your sales page strong enough, people will buy your book. So the tradeoff is more buyers for less money if you are using the Amazon Kindle, as well as immediate results.
If you have an ebook written that can be sold, I’d recommend selling on both your own website AND on Kindle. Hopefully this idea will inspire some of you to get your ebooks on the web selling for passive income!
Learn more ideas on how to make passive income at the Make Money from Home LIONS CLUB.