Hey there,
Good morning! I hope you had a great weekend. My weekend went a completely different direction. It went from planning an out-of-town trip that was cancelled, to car shopping (also cancelled), to have a low-key errand-driven weekend that ended with some delicious Mediterranean food at our favorite deli in town and grocery shopping at the connecting grocery store (it’s called Phoenicia in Houston).
This is part 2 of my Income Streams series.
If you haven’t read part 1, go back through and read it, on sponsorships and sponsorship income.
I want to talk ebooks!
How to build an ebook business from scratch
Create an ebook, market it, sell it, then rinse and repeat for additional ebooks in your collection, down the road.
I went from writing ebooks in a weekend to writing them in a few hours and this will help me write around 8 or 9 new books this year.
My goal is to turn ebooks in to a full-time income stream.
For writing them, I use Google Docs.
For proofreading and editing, I use Grammarly and Quillbot.
The ebook cover design is with Canva.
Then, I market through my Medium account, email marketing, and a plug on Twitter every now and again.
It’s a super low-effort passive income stream for me that’s helped me bank an extra $10K+ from it.
The most work comes from the start, where you write the ebook. You have to:
Pick a niche
Choose a problem-solving topic to help your audience
Outline it
Draft it
Write it
Proofread and editing
Then, you put it all together.
The very first time you do it, it feels like a LOT of work, because it kind of is. Then, the next ebook will be easier, the next one after that, even easier, etc.
The more you practice, the better it gets, I think.
How to know what to write about?
Ask your audience.
What’s your niche? Who do you serve?
Tired, overworked stay-at-home moms that are looking for an outlet
New college graduates trying to navigate the workforce
Military wives who are trying to manage a busy household
Corporate women who want to indulge into a fun hobby so they don’t have to focus on work 100% of the time
You can straight up ask your audience?
Take a poll on social media. Facebook and Instagram are good for this.
You can also lurk in subreddits to see what your audience’s burning questions are. Look at Trending, Top, and Hot questions in subreddits and pay attention to the comments.
You can do something similar with Quora and TikTok, honestly.
This is a great way to see what people’s pain points are. You will learn what their struggles are and what they need help with, so you can create a product to fill that need.
What about marketing?
Marketing is a beast all in itself. Something I haven’t fully mastered myself, if I’m being honest.
You can go organic, paid, or both.
I tend to lean toward organic marketing. And, the way I do it is super low impact though, I want to change this so I can get more sales.
First, I use Medium.
I plug my ebooks throughout my Medium stories. Easy.
Next, is social media like Twitter, TikTok, or Pinterest. It’s super easy to write a few lines about your book on Twitter or share a tweet and plug your book at the end.
TikTok is about short-form video so you can create a trending video based on what people are watching right now and mention your ebook around it.
Here’s an example of a trend I used on my account. It got about double the engagement of my regular videos.
Pinterest is about creating a pinnable graphic (just an image or video with text overlay) that can be circulated across the platform over and over again (you can use Canva for this and just use one of their Pinterest templates).
Paid marketing can be PPC ads, influencer marketing, whatever you wish.
Putting it all together
There’s no better time to start than right now.
Pull the trigger and be an action taker!
See my ebooks.
What would you write your ebook about?
Enjoy your week!
Cheers,
Jenn
Thanks for the article. I have written non-fiction and fiction books, but my downfall was the marketing. For me writing the book and putting it together is work but fun. The marketing is not! I think that now that I have a Newsletter and am a writer for Medium the task to push a new e-book should be a little easier. Keep up the good work. I'm sure you will make your dreams come true.