A few months ago I bought an ebook/site from an online friend, who had yet to do anything serious with it. I thought it would be a great way to get stuck into the ebook biz and learn a bit about it. I created a new template for the site - more as a website rather than those one page push pages that ebooks are always associated with. I actually wanted to take the time and make the site look good - offer options - all that good stuff.

Early on into the developement of the ebook site I realized that maybe there was something to the one page “buy my ebook” sites that are out there. Seriously I thought I was giving visitors who were going to this site too many options. You know - buy the ebook, buy another product that is similar and yes, one more thing… You see I was thinking that I was polluting my income stream - the focus of the site was to be the ebook.

Well, I went on with the original plan - offering 3 things on the site. At first it was super slow going. I was worried too, I’d put a bit of money into the site as an investment and I’d never done that before. But I knew the product was good - but the niche was really a small one. But those people out there, if they knew about it - I figured they’d be interested in what I had, I knew I would be if the roll was reversed. So with that in mind I went to my other online friend (this gets complicated now, what I am doing is piggy-backing my product on his… they compliment each other, but are different enough that advertising on each other’s sites would not be a conflict - but a good thing!). So I went to him and he offered me free ad space on his site. How freakin’ awesome was that! Free ad space fit my non-existant marketing budget for the site. Oh the stars had aligned! LOL.

Since that time, which was about 4-5 months ago now I’ve managed to break even with my ebook sales. I’m now in the black y’all! Woo… I don’t think I’ve been so happy in a long time. Of course I’m still thinking I need to revamp the existing site to perhaps focus more on the ebook and not much else… maybe keep the other options open to people who visit but not to make it as important as the ebook… maybe links in the footer. I’m still debating. But so far the site has worked it’s magic enough that I’m thinking this was a success - if I make even one more sale I’d be making a profit

I’m not sure what the mojo is to making super sales with ebooks, yet. Perhaps my niche that I picked is very very focused and the success so far with the site is actually pretty darn awesome. But I would love to see a bit more money rolling in - a bit more steady - a bit more passive income. That would be my biggest goal for the site. Of course I think I would need to market it a bit more.

Marketing… ah yes. So far with the ebook site I’ve put an ad on my friend’s site and I also tried Google Adwords. Now I had quite a bit of ad views - but no click thrus. So it was a bust - I ran it for a couple of months and I don’t think I had one click. Not one. I had to pay for the impressions for the ads that ran - which kind of sucked and if I really think about it I’d need to have 2 more people by the ebook before I made it into the black for the site as a whole on what I’ve spent on it. But I am going to focus on the fact that so far - what I spent to purchase the site… has now been covered by the sales I’ve made. A couple more would make my day…but I’m thinking the niche is still small… so maybe if I focused future Marketing on the site to smaller blogs - blogs that are like this one where entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers frequent and focus on them.

So that’s my experience so far with selling ebooks - very limited, but it’s not to say that it has really given me the urge to try doing a bit more in this area. I think this is definitely a great way to start those passive lines of income (well, we all know it’s not truly passive… but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not as work intensive as some projects we undertake to make money online).

So that’s what I’ve learned - it might be a great idea to purchase an existing ebook from a reliable source - one that hasn’t been overly marketed or re-sold a thousand times over. It has to hold some uniqueness to it, unless you’re a marketing-mofo who just knows how to put things over the top and make sales with anything and everything you lay your hands on. But for most of us, we’re not… and being a bit unique never hurts. Be sure to write good content for your site - try to focus in on keywords in the content that will help on the search engine results. I am still working on that point myself. Make sure that the ebook is super easy to download - try using Secure Product Delivery as the means to get your ebook to those who want to buy - it’s instant, and you aren’t stuck with sending the ebook - automatic = passive = lovely! I’ve been using Secure Product Delivery, and I’ve had no problems with it - I love that it’s automatic AND they’re now offering the option to add an affiliate option to it. So cool. I might just add that to my to-do list with this ebook site. Have people resell the ebook - so they can make money too. Ahh.. that would be sweet.

So now, I’m going to get back to the ebook site and try to sort out how I’m going to tweak the site and make it pull in a few more sales - I’m thinking:

• Better content focused around keywords
• Better buying visibility
• Offer affiliate option
• Subtle - other 2 options on the site.

So there’s the plan in the next little while…

My other projects that I’m working on you can check out at NichetoRiches - I’d love to see you there!