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In today’s post, I am going to be showing you 7 steps to create your own eBook and sell it online. Creating eBooks is a very lucrative side hustle, that many people turn into a full time gig once they realize just how much money making potential there is in doing this.
We are going to be going through all the stages you need to take to create a profitable and helpful ebook that you can sell to just about any sized audience. I am not just going to show you how to throw some pages together and call it a day, I am going to show you how to create something of value, something your readers will be very pleased with, and something profitable that you can rely on to make you passive income for years to down the road.
If you want your eBook to be as profitable as possible, be sure not to skip any of these 7 steps, as each step feeds off the previous step, as well as helps to move you along to the next step. If you want to make the most money , you need to create a great product. Following these steps will make it easy to do just that.
Why Write An eBook?
There are many reasons why you might want to learn how to write an eBook, but for many people, the main reason is to make money. The great thing about selling a digital product online is you do the work once, but reap the rewards over and over again. eBooks generate passive income, which is arguably the best kind of income to make! Products that generate passive income make you money 24/7, 7 days a week, and if you have everything set up right, you don’t have to lift a finger to earn any of it.
It’s money on autopilot.
Learn how this blogger makes 6 figures writing and selling eBooks in her business.
There’s no cap on how many copies you can sell. You don’t need to be present to receive payment or to deliver the eBook to your customer. And you can easily set all of that up to run on autopilot.
Another great advantage to creating and selling your very own eBook online is….. it’s your product. You have total freedom and control over what the price is when you make a sale, and unlike affiliate marketing (promoting other people’s products) you get 100% of the commissions.
When you write an eBook in your niche, you are showing your audience you are an expert in your chosen topic. You establish authority when you create a resource, and by selling it for money, you give it value.
How Much Money Can You Make From Writing An Ebook?
When it comes to selling eBooks, the sky really is the limit. It really just depends on how many people buy it and what you price it. And how many people buy it depends on how valuable the eBook is to them, and how you choose to get the word out about it.
It’s totally possible to make a full-time income selling eBooks online if you treat it like a full time business. You can read about a girl who created 1 eBook and made $30,000 from just that eBook in 1 year here.
Let’s dive into exactly the steps you need to take to create your own ebook and sell it online.
7 Steps To Create Your Own eBook And Sell It Online
Choose Your Topic (Your What and Why)
The first thing you need to do is figure out what the topic of your eBook will be and why your reader should read it. What is the purpose of the information contained within, and why does it matter to your audience? What will it teach them, and what results will people who read your eBook get?
Usually your topic will be something you are already knowledgeable about. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert or a guru to write about it (thanks to modern day research capabilities nowadays on the internet), but if you are at least passionate about the subject and are able to obtain and communicate the most relevant information on that topic, you should be able to produce content that is valuable enough that people will pay for.
Most people buy eBooks online because they are looking to learn something. Unless you are writing an eBook strictly for entertainment purposes, your eBook should be written in such a way as to educate and motivate your reader to take some kind of specific action (or actions) that will be helpful and useful to them.
When you begin brainstorming ideas, think ahead to what exactly you want the reader to be able to achieve after they have read your eBook. This is very important to figure out ahead of time so when you begin writing, your content will be focused and clear and not confusing to your reader.
When your writing is clear and concise, it will also help make it crystal clear to your reader what they need to do to achieve the end goal you have promised. The more clear your instructions are on a topic, the more success your readers will have with achieving the end goal. Happy readers leave glowing testimonials and reviews, which encourages readers to-be to hit that ‘buy’ button.
Knowing exactly what people are going to get out of purchasing this eBook BEFORE you even start writing will set the stage for a successful eBook.
Validate Your Idea
This is probably one of the most important steps in the process. If you skip this step, it could very well be a deal breaker. You could get all the other steps right, but if you don’t validate that people actually are looking for the topic of your eBook, no one is going to buy it.
Not validating an idea is probably one of the biggest reasons product creators fail. Unfortunately, just because you think your idea is golden does not mean everyone else feels the same.
We can greatly increase our chances that our eBook will be a hit by taking the time to do research to determine if people are actively searching for our topic.
How do you validate an eBook idea? There are many ways we can do this. I’ll cover a few here:
- Keyword Research. Discover what phrases and questions people are already searching for in Google by conducting keyword research. There are both free and paid keyword research tools available on the web. I use (and love) SEMRush. Though it’s a bit pricey, it is VERY thorough and you can uncover a ton of keywords using it. I have also used Ahrefs, which is just as good, in my opinion. You can get a 30 day free trial with SEMRush and a 7 day free trial with Ahrefs. Some really great free keyword research tools are Google Keyword Planner, Answer The Public, and Google Suggest.
- Email List. If you already have an email list, you can come right out and ask your subscribers what kinds of what kind of information would be useful and helpful to them. You can create a survey or a poll and ask them to fill it out and send it back.
- Facebook Groups. This is one of my favorite ways of obtaining information about problems people have. Actually, all of Facebook (not just groups) can be helpful, as you can use the search function to search your topic to see some of the conversations that are happening about your niche. People are always asking questions and giving advice on Facebook. You can join a group that is relevant to your topic and scroll through some of the posts to discover what pain points your target audience has.
- Amazon. Amazon is always a wealth of information on just about everything. Check out some of the search queries that come up when you use the search bar to search books on your topic. Amazon also has a ‘suggest’ feature where it auto fills the search box to give you more ideas that you might not have thought of yet.
There are a lot of different ways you can check to see if there is a demand for your topic.
Research
If you want your eBook to be profitable, this step is absolutely crucial. Conducting research on both your topic and your market will help the launch of your eBook be successful from the start and help you avoid costly mistakes.
You may think you know everything there is to know about your chosen topic, but I guarantee there is always something more to learn. And if you take the time to dive into your topic and uncover new information, your eBook will be much more valuable to your readers.
Social Media is a great tool to use to ask people questions about your topic. Get a conversation going to find out what people know about it and what they are hungry to learn.
This is a great way to not only find out more about your topic, but find out what people would pay for such a resource. Let them know you are conducting research, would like their input, and offer a few free copies of the finished product to some folks for their feedback.
Feedback will help you identify any gaps that may exist in what you’ve offered your readers and what they are actually looking for, and although it is not always the easiest thing to receive, feedback is crucial to the success of your eBook.
Plan Your eBook
This step is where you will make decisions about what you will include in your eBook. Creating an outline in a program like Microsoft Word is useful and will help you to see a bird’s eye view of your content to make sure it is all relevant, makes sense, fits together, and flows well.
If you create an outline, you can easily assess whether or not to add, delete, or move content easier than if you just started writing with no plan.
You will also be planning out all the details of the actual eBook in this step, like how long you’d like it to be, how you will present the content (chapters, sections, modules, etc,), what will each part cover, how will you present the information, etc. What kind of information will each section contain? Will your eBook have images?
This is the step where the architecture of your eBook all comes together. Think of it like the blueprint phase when constructing a building. You wouldn’t just start nailing random boards together and hope that when you finish, you’re structure will resemble a building. You would draw up blueprints, plans that detail the layout of your building, before beginning construction.
Rather than starting off on a blank page, working page by page hoping it will all come together, have a plan and work from it. If you take the time to map and plan out each individual section of your eBook, when it comes time to start writing, it will all come together nicely.
You’ll be glad you didn’t skip this step!
Write Your eBook
There are a lot of ways you can write your eBook. My favorite is with the free version of an online program called Canva. Canva is probably the simplest drag and drop graphic design platform I have ever used. I have tried lots of different programs in the past, but by far, Canva knocks the ease of usability out of the park, and has really nice looking templates and font combinations to choose from.
If you aren’t design savvy and don’t do well with the learning curve of programs like Adobe InDesign or Powerpoint, Canva will be a life (and time) saver.
I am not design savvy, but I was able to use Canva’s layout templates to create some really awesome looking pages. Here are a couple designs I created in Canva for an eBook I wrote about creating Low Content Books:
![create your own ebook and sell it online](http://workingthenewnormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2-642x1024.png)
![create your own ebook and sell it online](http://workingthenewnormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/3-642x1024.png)
Canva is great for beginners and pros a like. Other programs you can check out are:
- Adobe InDesign – For more advanced users who are both tech savvy and design savvy. The link brings you to a page where you can sign up for a free trial.
- Google Docs – Free with a Gmail account with access to documents and spreadsheets. Very similar to working in a WORD doc.
- Microsoft Word
- Pages for Mac – Really awesome drag and drop capabilities with very nice graphics and design templates. Can only be used on Apple products like iPads and Mac computers. Would highly recommend for beginners due to ease of use.
- Pressbooks– Pressbooks is a DIY book design and production software that you can use to format your books for ebook stores and print-on-demand services.
After you have written your eBook, make sure to proofread it and save it as a high quality PDF.
Price Your eBook
Finally! We get to the fun part! How much to price your eBook. One awesome benefit of selling an eBook is you can sell as many copies as you want without having to make more. Because you are selling a digital product, there are virtually no production and manufacturing costs.
Therefore, even if you only price your eBook at $5.00 a copy, you can still make a pretty penny if you sell lots of copies. For example, to make $500, you’d only have to sell 100 copies of your eBook. Once you get the ball rolling and are bringing traffic to your eBook’s sales page on a consistent basis, you’ll easily sell 100 plus copies over and over again.
The average price for eBooks priced on the lower end of the price range is between $7 and $9. You can always start out low, test the waters, and raise the price as your market allows. Elise McDowell, who wrote the eBook Empire course made $30,000 in one year with one eBook that she started out at $7. Over the course of the year, she gradually increased her price to $9, then to $19, and ended up with a final selling price point of $25.
You won’t know what your target audience will or will not pay for unless you test it. If you are continually testing, you will eventually find your market’s sweet spot. Your market’s sweet spot will be where most of your sales are made.
Sell Your eBook
Now that you have your topic chosen, your idea validated, your content researched, the structure of your eBook planned, your content written, and your eBook priced, you need to get that puppy sold! This is where all that hard work and effort pays off.
There’s a few ways you can sell your eBook, I’ll touch on the 3 that I have had the best luck with.
Your Blog or Website
If you already have a blog, then you are in luck, because you can use your blog to sell your eBook. You are especially in luck if you already have a following or an eMail list. If you blog to an audience on a regular basis, your blog would be the first place to set up shop with and sell your eBook.
If you don’t already have a website set up, all you need to get started is WordPress, a PayPal account, a PayPal button, and an eMail address.
Simply set up a Pay Pal button to place on your website, and place that button anywhere on your blog you want to promote your eBook.
Amazon KDP
Another place to sell your eBook is on Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon has made it extremely user friendly to format, upload and publish a Kindle book.
Publishing on Amazon is a no-brainer if you don’t already have a following and you want to gain exposure fast. You can create an account and get started here.
Most people probably wouldn’t think of using Pinterest to sell an eBook, but it’s really a hidden gem when it comes to getting visitors to your website. Many bloggers have literally grown their business soley by using Pinterest. It’s been known to be a good tool to get consistent traffic to websites, blogs, and landing pages.
Other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are good for traffic boosts, but your pins on Pinterest will be circulating and available for users to pin and save for years following your initial pin. So, a pin you make today, could be bringing you in consistent traffic 5 years down the road. This makes it the perfect way to set your eBook up to bring in passive income for you day in and day out 365 days a year.
Ready To Get Started?
If you are looking to write an eBook, successfully launch it, and make thousands in passive income, then grab a copy of eBook Empire and get a step-by-step blueprint of how to write and launch your successful eBook in just 4 weeks.
You’ll learn:
- How to find an awesome eBook idea using Pinterest, Amazon, Facebook and more
- How to make sure that eBook idea will be profitable
- How to easily outline your whole eBook in less than an hour
- How to design your format for free in Canva, Apple Pages or Google Docs
- How to design your eBook cover for free in Canva
- How to market your eBook when it’s ready
- How to create a high converting sales page
- How to make sales from your eBook when you don’t have an email list
- How to set up an evergreen funnel and make passive income