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!
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.
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.