DFHW: Living the 4-Hour Work Week
Living the optimized work week
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Hi all. It certainly has been a while since I've last posted. That's because in many ways the 4HWW concept has been shot given the urgency of making ends meet and scrambling to get whatever dollars are left to spend. One of the most important things for a small business is cash flow. If you can manage your cash flow[...]
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Hi all –
Sorry for the pause in content. I’ve been working hard as well as I’ve embarked on my MADFUN exercises. Plus, I haven’t really had much to write about. Maybe I should write anyways?
In any case, thanks for the feedback I’ve gotten from you all on my eLance and Time Management posts. I hope they have helped. On the 4HWW front, I’m looking at writing and publicizing some eBooks as a passive income source. Has anyone else had any experience in successfully doing that? Ironically, if I come across some great techniques, I’ll publish them as an eBook so that you all can learn from me!
Tony M. | November 20th, 2008 at 11:52 am #
Having someone write an ebook for you on ELance for $500 and trying to sell it on the web via Adwords is one of the most complex ways to loose $500. I know – I did it before I knew better.
rexreed | November 20th, 2008 at 1:23 pm #
Great comment — however, that’s not how I would approach the eBook business model. First, I would write a book on a topic you care about or have some passion for, rather than farming it out to an over-priced freelancer on eLance (if you haven’t already, check out my post on eLance quality and the comments there) and trying to make money via AdWords.
You need a book that can sell copies on its own merit, preferably a book that can sell at $10 or more a pop to a target market that can accommodate a few hundred such sales a year. You need to spend no more than 8-16 hours writing a pithy eBook (around 15-20 pages) that provides significant insight into a particular topic or provides a reason why people should spend $10 to learn about something.
If you do it that way, you won’t lose your shirt. Worst case is you lose some time. But I would not do it the way you did it and commission an uncaring third-party to write a book on a subject and then depend on people stumbling across my site or other organic traffic to generate revenue based on traffic that isn’t directly related to people reading the book.