[SweetEmbraceMan]

I've noticed there are significant number of people asking questions about a field nobody seems to know the answer to. (ie. the question pops up on Y! Answers or other forums and people are like "???"). Now I happen to be somewhat knowledgable on the subject AND nobody else seems to selling this information. I figure I could set-up a website, buy some traffic (the Adsense keywords are uncompetitive) and make some easy money on the side.

Has anyone done this before? Are there any crucial mistakes to avoid?

[thegmanifesto]

klasik,

There are tons of people pitching "how to write and e-book and make money" products out there.

Not to say you can't make money doing that.

Information products are great. Low overhead. High Profit.

[SweetEmbraceMan]

(02-22-2010 03:51 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  

klasik,

There are tons of people pitching "how to write and e-book and make money" products out there.

Not to say you can't make money doing that.

Information products are great. Low overhead. High Profit.

Yeah but the vast majority of them fruads. I can generally trust the people in this corner of the internet, so I thought I'd ask here first.

[thegmanifesto]

"Yeah but the vast majority of them fruads."

For sure.

I think it would make it harder to stand out from the pack though. Saturated.

But I think you can do it, and marketed correctly, you could make some scratch.

[The_CEO]

There's this guy that you may have heard of...

His name is Roosh and he's living off the fat of land in Brazil..
(not to mention the proceeds from his E-book, BANG...)!

I bet he has some tips.

[Roosh]

My book came after I already had a readership, so I haven't had to hustle hard for customers. People read my blog and trust my advice so it's almost a logical thing to buy the book. The better content I write, the more readers I get, the more books I sell. It's not easy but it's a way to do it.

If you're going to write a book about a topic, I suggest writing a blog on that topic while writing the book. Even a small readership will translate to sales. Otherwise you have to use google adsense to get traffic, which can be quite expensive to learn and figure out. I tried it and what sucks is the moment you stop paying for clicks is the moment you stop getting traffic. Write a great article that people link to and you get hits to that forever.

[hydrogonian]

I agree with what Roosh said. Build content around a quality product, that offers lots of value, and you will be successful.

While I don't have my project out yet, I've been working two years on it.

I'm taking so long because I'm a perfectionist, and I understand that the better my product, the harder it will be for any competition to follow me. Take the same approach and, after your sure that you have a unique and worthwhile idea, execute it to the best of your ability.

If you only do it half-assed, you will be copied, out-competed, and likely will be wasting your time.

Also, I would heavily consider picking an idea that is substantial enough to warrant print-only distribution. While others will disagree with me on this, pirating will eat into your sales, perhaps significantly, if you choose to offer it electronic format. Keeping an iron grasp on your distribution will preserve your price points and profits.

[Roosh]

Quote:

While others will disagree with me on this, pirating will eat into your sales, perhaps significantly, if you choose to offer it electronic format.

This is not true at all and just represents the old, conservative way of thinking. Personally my income of Bang doubled when I offered the ebook, and now I sell more copes of that then paperback. Read techdirt.com.

Obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy.

[thegmanifesto]

"Obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy. "

Absolutely.

The guys who made Cocaine Cowboys http://www.amazon.com/Cocaine-Cowboys-Jo...thegman-20 actually embraced the bootlegging in their marketing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-LtQjgZZlQ

I recall them saying almost the same thing as "Obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy."

[hydrogonian]

(03-22-2010 03:39 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Quote:

While others will disagree with me on this, pirating will eat into your sales, perhaps significantly, if you choose to offer it electronic format.

This is not true at all and just represents the old, conservative way of thinking. Personally my income of Bang doubled when I offered the ebook, and now I sell more copes of that then paperback. Read techdirt.com.

Obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy.

I understand, and have previously considered, the reasoning behind what you say. I see how this philosophy works in the music industry.

Also, I am deferential to your experience.

I guess I hypothesized that being the only true distributor for a product, inclusive of torrent sites, would maintain my profits over a longer period of time.

I expect word of mouth marketing, due to the quality of my product and online content quality, to increase awareness and sales over time. Of course, my real lesson will eventually come from the market.

However, I am more than happy to learn from your experience . A couple of related questions then, if you don't mind:

1. Reasoning:

a. So your saying that piracy combats obscurity, and therefore is a positive thing for sales?

b. Or is it simply that the increased sales themselves, made possible by ebook availability, are worth it even though torrent copies would be available?

2.

Would leaving an information product vulnerable to piracy still be worthwhile when I own the absolute most targeted keyword domains for the subject (SEO), as well as have confidence in my ability to write high quality and persuasive content?

3.

While I am targeting a very specific niche, there are other information products available in the general genre. In the genre which my project is being released, ebook formats are commonly sold for roughly 2/3 less than a hard copy formats.

Would a price discount, lets say from $300 for a hard format to $100 for an electronic format, be worth the sales in the electronic format? I realize that you can only answer this question based on your general experience with your books. Whatever you can offer would be great.

Thanks Roosh.

[Roosh]

1.

It's different for every product, but I do believe piracy creates sales IF you have a quality product. For example stay Stu pirates my book, reads it, and likes it. He posts on some seduction forum that "Bang was a great book." Ten people take to that statement and 2 end up buying it (while the rest pirate it who knows). In this case it did create sales. Also when I come up with a new book, Stu may well decide to support it by buying it. Also I once had a day game student (paid about $200) who admitted he pirated my book. Now if I see my book on some share site I send a DMCA takedown of course, but I'm not freaking out about it. As long as it's easier to buy my book through the normal channel instead of pirating it, I think it'll work out in the end. Keep in mind that some guys download gigs of crap but never even read. They wouldn't have bought my book anyway.

Think of paperback books. I have given made paperback books to people and maybe they passed it on. Five people can end up reading that one copy, yet the author only gets one sale out of it. Should each of those five people have to buy the book? If you download Bang and you forward it to your wingman, should I get upset about that? A little bit of piracy can spread your message and get more people into your work who wouldn't otherwise.

2. Before I offered the Bang ebook, someone scanned the whole thing and had it up on some sites. And in the pickup scene my book isn't "huge". If you are the only product in a niche market and there is demand for it, someone will scan the book. RSD put out The Nine Ball, a paperback, and the scanned version is floating around. You really can't defeat piracy entirely, so how can you use it in your favor? In Brazil, bands like Calypso and Djavu give away their music for free on their websites and to street vendors. And then they make money on the concerts. They don't sell albums at all, only live DVD videos.

3. You'll just have to experiment. Do split testing with Google Website Optimizer. Pricing products is an art and right now I can't say that the price of Bang maximizes revenue and sales. You'll just have to go with your gut and be willing to make adjustments depending on what the market is telling you.

$100 sounds crazy to me, but if your product is what you say it is then I think people would want to save $200 for something they need. In the end you can do what I did with Bang... offer the paperback first, and then take baby steps into the water.

[hydrogonian]

(03-24-2010 09:42 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

1.

It's different for every product, but I do believe piracy creates sales IF you have a quality product. For example stay Stu pirates my book, reads it, and likes it. He posts on some seduction forum that "Bang was a great book." Ten people take to that statement and 2 end up buying it (while the rest pirate it who knows). In this case it did create sales. Also when I come up with a new book, Stu may well decide to support it by buying it. Also I once had a day game student (paid about $200) who admitted he pirated my book. Now if I see my book on some share site I send a DMCA takedown of course, but I'm not freaking out about it. As long as it's easier to buy my book through the normal channel instead of pirating it, I think it'll work out in the end. Keep in mind that some guys download gigs of crap but never even read. They wouldn't have bought my book anyway.

Think of paperback books. I have given made paperback books to people and maybe they passed it on. Five people can end up reading that one copy, yet the author only gets one sale out of it. Should each of those five people have to buy the book? If you download Bang and you forward it to your wingman, should I get upset about that? A little bit of piracy can spread your message and get more people into your work who wouldn't otherwise.

2. Before I offered the Bang ebook, someone scanned the whole thing and had it up on some sites. And in the pickup scene my book isn't "huge". If you are the only product in a niche market and there is demand for it, someone will scan the book. RSD put out The Nine Ball, a paperback, and the scanned version is floating around. You really can't defeat piracy entirely, so how can you use it in your favor? In Brazil, bands like Calypso and Djavu give away their music for free on their websites and to street vendors. And then they make money on the concerts. They don't sell albums at all, only live DVD videos.

3. You'll just have to experiment. Do split testing with Google Website Optimizer. Pricing products is an art and right now I can't say that the price of Bang maximizes revenue and sales. You'll just have to go with your gut and be willing to make adjustments depending on what the market is telling you.

$100 sounds crazy to me, but if your product is what you say it is then I think people would want to save $200 for something they need. In the end you can do what I did with Bang... offer the paperback first, and then take baby steps into the water.

Thanks for your perspective.

I've been reading through techdirt.

A lot of the "new business model" philosophy is similarly put forth in "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott, which I read a little while ago. There are some good tips in that book, and its worth picking up, or at least reading in the bookstore. You can likely remember all of the salient points from one reading. But like I said, similar to the techdirt admins perspective.

Essentially, the less barriers to high quality free content, the better. For both trust and sales. For instance, its better to offer an free e-paper / whitepaper download without email registration than with. Analyzing the way I use websites, that strikes me as exactly right. Whether I choose to go the e-book route or not, I'll be working toward the goal of easy to access and copious content.

In the niche I'm in, $100 bucks isn't uncommon, with higher prices more common. The price point alone gives higher motivation to pirates, which is something I have to consider if offering an electronic copy.

I haven't noticed scanned copies of some of the better products that I own in this genre, but thats not to say that they don't exist. My book / product is exceptionally long, which may or may not be a deterrent to scanners.

Anyway, baby steps. I'll likely test the waters slowly with each format.

Thanks again for the reply.

[Vacancier Permanent]

Interesting topic in here.
Hydro,
Here's a suggestion:
Since you mention you're in a niche where 100$ isn't uncommon and you mention that your book/ebook is quite long, how about delivering it in various formats? Say for example, turn that book website into a membership site where you'd be providing the content of that book as an e-course or even a video series of sorts, say over a few weeks? You could charge people a membership fee of say 20 bucks or so a month and with some good marketing, you could rank up with not much difficulty, 100 paying members in a short period of time. But for that, if I were you, I'd build first some credibility in the field by providing good content for free for a few weeks, build a list of the readers by capturing their emails via a capture page and take it from there. There are a lot of ways you could monetize your site, some even without the readers/surfers having to provide their email addresses nor buying anything. And I'm not referring to Google adsense which is a joke, full stop.

All the best in making this little baby of yours be the start of something big.

Cheers,

Lorenzo.

[hydrogonian]

(03-25-2010 03:56 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  

Interesting topic in here.
Hydro,
Here's a suggestion:
Since you mention you're in a niche where 100$ isn't uncommon and you mention that your book/ebook is quite long, how about delivering it in various formats? Say for example, turn that book website into a membership site where you'd be providing the content of that book as an e-course or even a video series of sorts, say over a few weeks? You could charge people a membership fee of say 20 bucks or so a month and with some good marketing, you could rank up with not much difficulty, 100 paying members in a short period of time. But for that, if I were you, I'd build first some credibility in the field by providing good content for free for a few weeks, build a list of the readers by capturing their emails via a capture page and take it from there. There are a lot of ways you could monetize your site, some even without the readers/surfers having to provide their email addresses nor buying anything. And I'm not referring to Google adsense which is a joke, full stop.

All the best in making this little baby of yours be the start of something big.

Cheers,

Lorenzo.

Thanks, as you offer some really good ideas.

A subscription model had crossed my mind, but I had not though about it in any depth. I definitely like high volume / lower price based models, as I think they protect better against large variances in income.

I also noticed some vendors changing from a print book to subscription model ie: seobook.com. Now that guy charges a fortune for his subscription, and likely makes much more than he did with his book. Its probably the same content, although it is easier updated now.

I'd likely have to think of some type of hybrid model, as a lot of my book contains material that needs to be repeatedly referenced to be truly useful. My personal preference is for print, as I like to highlight, and I would have to be sure that I could get what I need from a resource if I had to pay and only could get it online.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm cautiously excited, but also hoping that I didn't waste two years. Whatever happens, it was a learning experience.

[Vacancier Permanent]

You're welcome Hydro, this is what I like most about a forum and specially this forum where guys are more than willing to share their experiences in order to guide a brother in the same path.
What I've noticed the so called "gurus" doing online is to deliver the same info in various formats to satisfy all kinds of customers. Some people like to read, while others prefer to listen to audio and others to watch video. You could do all 3 by having an ebook version say going for 50 bucks or so, then have an audio course series in mp3 downloadable formats for say 199$ and a video series downloadable again for anywhere between 3 to 500 bucks. It's very easy to have the audio formats created, all you'd need to do is just read your book/ebook and record it and voila, you have an audio course created! I've seen that done from all kinds of people, even a guy like Anthony Robbins, his audio series cds are nothing more than just reading the content of his books in about 80% of time. No kidding. So if he can get away with that, why not you and me and others in here? Why would you limit your earnings to just 1 book? Why don't you use the power of the internet and technology to profit from it in various forms as mentioned above?

Also, another cool way to monetize your site, is put some good free content, articles or even small ebooks of say 20 pages or so on your topic and make them available for free to your readers. But in order for them to get the info for free, they'd have to complete a CPA offer on your page to unlock the info. You can very easily use a content unlocker that you can either have it created for you by a progrmammer for about a couple hundred bucks or an even fast way would be to use the one provided for free by CPA Lead, but you have to be a member of that network, which is free to join. So as you can see, there are tons of ways to monetize your site and your ideas.

Hope this helps.

[Roosh]

Audio version is a good idea actually.

[Irminsul]

Roosh,

I've been lurking here for a while, but this is my first post. I'd like to ask you something about preventing piracy of your ebook. I noticed that your ebook is not on the Rapidshare-style download sites, or BitTorrent. Are you managing that with just DMCA takedown requests? Or is it just that not many people are trying to upload it? I've got some ideas for information products for which there is definitely demand, but I'm worried that people would just pirate them. For instance, you mentioned RSD - I think it is well known that pretty much nobody buys their stuff. Their DVDs are all over on BT. Is that just because they're too lazy to send off DMCA takedowns? Or is it pretty much just impossible to keep stuff off there?

I realize that there are guys like David DeAngelo/Eben Pagan, who supposedly makes $30 million/year off info products despite the fact that they can all easily be found on BT, but he caters largely to the older set that is less savvy about pirating.

[kimleebj]

(01-01-2011 09:49 AM)Irminsul Wrote:  

David DeAngelo ... supposedly makes $30 million/year off info products

Amazon sells his book for $3, his audio for $150, and his DVD's for $300. I think his seminars are $1,000, so the books are merely free advertising. Think about price discrimination.

Personally I prefer books. I have seen many bad DVD's, where the producers needed to add subtitles or addendums because they forget important details in the script. Books are easier to edit. But books are also easier to pirate.

[Irminsul]

(01-01-2011 01:04 PM)kimleebj Wrote:  

Amazon sells his book for $3, his audio for $150, and his DVD's for $300. I think his seminars are $1,000, so the books are merely free advertising. Think about price discrimination.

Right, but my point is that all that stuff (other than the experience of attending the live seminars, obviously) is on BitTorrent and is easy to get. So I guess in selecting a niche to market info products to, you have to consider how familiar people in that niche are with file sharing technologies. E.g. I have a feeling that people who market pickup products to guys in their 20s don't make much money due to piracy.

Quote:

Books are easier to edit. But books are also easier to pirate.

Kind of. DVDs take up a lot more bandwidth and storage space. But, watching a pirated video is the same as watching a DVD, whereas a physical book is somewhat more pleasant to read than an ebook (at least I and a lot of other people seem to think so). There's also something psychological involved - people who would never pay for a CD might still buy lots of printed books, even if they can get them online. You feel like you're getting a physical object for your money. So printed books have that going for them.

[Vesuvius]

Thanks Roosh.

? for you.

Should my blog be just about my book? I want to branch out on all of the things that interest me.

I've noticed that you and Roissy offer up commentary about other social aspects that I know a thing or two about.

My blog would be more like Zero Hedge for the unawake, but with game in there to start out with.

I also have first hand knowledge on growing shrooms of all sorts. My mentor could probably write a book that I could sell as well.

V

[oldnemesis]

(01-01-2011 09:49 AM)Irminsul Wrote:  

I noticed that your ebook is not on the Rapidshare-style download sites, or BitTorrent. Are you managing that with just DMCA takedown requests?

You can only expect DMCA notices to work on the sites in US, or which have US owners and therefore fall into US jurisdiction. For everyone else compliance with your notice is purely voluntary. Some (thepiratebay) do not comply at all.

[oldnemesis]

(03-24-2010 09:42 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

2. Before I offered the Bang ebook, someone scanned the whole thing and had it up on some sites. And in the pickup scene my book isn't "huge". If you are the only product in a niche market and there is demand for it, someone will scan the book. RSD put out The Nine Ball, a paperback, and the scanned version is floating around.

I'll second that. There is a HUGE book scanning activity in Russia; pretty much every new book released is scanned and uploaded to Russian library sites in mere few days. Nowadays people use digital cameras to "scan" those books as it is really fast, and OCR software gets better and better. It is not as difficult as some people think it is.

[Roosh]

(01-03-2011 09:20 PM)Vesuvius Wrote:  

Should my blog be just about my book?

There are no hard and fast rules about a successful blogs. You can pull successful examples from every conceivable style. What matters is that your content is good and that it shows up weekly.

Quote:

I noticed that your ebook is not on the Rapidshare-style download sites, or BitTorrent. Are you managing that with just DMCA takedown requests? Or is it just that not many people are trying to upload it? I've got some ideas for information products for which there is definitely demand, but I'm worried that people would just pirate them. For instance, you mentioned RSD - I think it is well known that pretty much nobody buys their stuff. Their DVDs are all over on BT. Is that just because they're too lazy to send off DMCA takedowns? Or is it pretty much just impossible to keep stuff off there?

I've had to send only a dozen or so DMCA request over the years. Honestly I rather worry about creating quality books than stamping out piracy. If you create something great, you'll be rewarded with people who support your work. I've had guys "buy" my book after they've already had a pirated copy to show their thanks.

[phoenix abroad]

(01-03-2011 09:20 PM)Vesuvius Wrote:  

Thanks Roosh.

? for you.

Should my blog be just about my book? I want to branch out on all of the things that interest me.

I've noticed that you and Roissy offer up commentary about other social aspects that I know a thing or two about.

My blog would be more like Zero Hedge for the unawake, but with game in there to start out with.

I also have first hand knowledge on growing shrooms of all sorts. My mentor could probably write a book that I could sell as well.

V

Who are you targeting with this? Be very specific.
Create an ideal profile of your visitor - what age are they? where do they live? what do they do for fun? what type of job do they have?

How are you helping solve their problems?
Why should they care?
What can you offer that other people can't?

Keep a narrow focus in the beginning. It is so much easier to start out targeting a small niche of people, and you can always expand later.

You should start out with your knowledge of shrooms and see if that is a viable market to sell a growing guide or whatever to them. Would people pay for that? How would it help them?

--------

Also if you are worried about piracy you can use embedit. It allows you to embed readable documents into your site as Adobe Flash, which is more difficult to pirate than a regular pdf e-book. This helped me immensely because my target market is college students and they steal everything.

For most people though piracy is not that huge of an issue. Like Roosh said obscurity is far worse than piracy.

[lifeabroad]

(02-22-2010 11:35 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Otherwise you have to use google adsense to get traffic, which can be quite expensive to learn and figure out. I tried it and what sucks is the moment you stop paying for clicks is the moment you stop getting traffic.

Maybe you meant Google Adwords instead of Adsense. You purchase ads on Adwords while people, with websites, make money showing ads with Adsense.

Paying for ads is tough but gets easier with a full line of products. Normally you lose money on the initial product but end up making your money on the back end.

I love paying for ads because it is easier to scale when you find out what works. Why stop paying when you are making money with it?

Articles is cool also. I would rather use paid traffic first to see if I am converting sales before I spend too much time with articles.

Article traffic has been known to convert better.