Sometimes its good to make money online the good old fashioned way. Books have been out for like 1500 years. Before that they had scrolls and cave drawings and etc. It really is a good way to market a product, service, or idea. The internet started off with unprofessional looking fan pages and porn sites. When i started blogging for money here on BloggerNoob, ebooks were an already old way to monetize a blog or website.
How does one make money with an ebook? Well back in the day, they had ebooks as pdf files with links to affiliate commission sites. Or it was a way for web masters to lure more visitors to the website.
The important thing is to go out and market. Ebooks are all grown up now. Amazon’s Kindle started it. Of course Sony and the lot had ebooks before the Kindle, but it really was Amazon that popularized it. And you know what happened after that. Apple came in and took the game over. I like to think of Amazon’s Kindle as Magic Johnson, or Larry Bird. And Apple’s iPhone and iPad as Michael Jordan.
Anyway, I’m blabbering off. Please excuse me…i haven’t blogged for a very long time. I’m out of practice.
I’ve been meaning to blog about iBooks Author for a while now. Ever since it came out actually. I’ve been tinkering with it and i think it really has a lot of potential for people who are looking to make money online. Even the lowly noobies and beginners. It’s that easy to use. If you know your way aroundMicrosoft Word, you can easily write and self publish ebooks/ibooks onto Apple’s mighty AppStore.
I won’t do a howto on how to work iBooks Author. Instead i will spit out some ideas about monetization.
First lets look at what kind of books we want to publish. Do we want to make the ebook free or paid. Paid is the obvious choice, but let me tell you, it’s not so easy to get someone to fork over anything over FREE on the AppStore. Just ask Android Developers.
So in the beginning i would recommend going the free route. You’re not going to make money right away with a free book. But you are planting seeds. If you get a lot of downloads, money will follow. That’s what i always tell website owners. Don’t worry too much about money coming in. Just drive traffic to your website.
Let me show you an example. I have a friend who write children’s books. He decided to hire developers to transfer one of his books to the iPad when it first came out. He set the book up as paid. Guess what, not a lot of people downloaded that book. So later he decided to publish his best book for free on the appstore. It made its way up the top ten in his book category. He didn’t make money off of that free book. But it drove up traffic to his website and his second book (paid version) got quite a few downloads. Positive reviews started being posted and he’s doing well now.
See what happened? It’s like boy band members. They don’t make any money on the first album. You gotta get popular and quickly release a second album to make any money. Just ask Justin Timberlake.
Again, i can’t stress enough about the importance of being niche specific. Don’t write some general ass book. Be as focused and niche specific as possible. If you love Cars, don’t write a book about cars. Write about Tokyo Drifting. If you love rap music, don’t go top 40 route. Write about 80′s rap or better yet, write about the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff.
People write books for a reason. It’s not just to improve humanity. They do it to market themselves. Look at Barack Obama. I didn’t even know who he was before he wrote “The Audacity of Hope.” And now look at him. He’s the damn President. If your book gets a lot of free downloads, you’ll become famous. Not really but you will be looked upon as someone with authority within your niche. That can aid you in your money making ventures.
Before you get started. Do some market research. Check out the top 25 list on the app store. See the type of books that are getting a lot of downloads. Check out the pricing. The lower the better. Read about other indie publishers. Network with other publishers. Remember to write what you know and what you are passionate about. Don’t just write to make a quick buck. Allrightythen. Go on and get started. Even if you don’t make any money with it, you’ll feel proud that you’ve published something on the AppStore. How cool is that!
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