• Home
• About
• Write and Sell an eBook

Ebooks: Finding Ebook Ideas Which Sell

February 14th, 2009    Subscribe To Our Feed

Looking for ebook ideas? Ebooks can make a very profitable online business. However, to make money, you must have eager buyers.

Take your time when deciding on an ebook idea. Collect lots of ideas, and test them. You’ll spend a lot of time in writing your ebook, and later in selling it, so the time you spend on research will ensure that your ebook is a success.

Here are five of my favorite methods for finding ebook ideas.

1. Read the News

If it’s in the news, people want information on that topic. Read online and offline newspapers, especially local news. Local newspapers will often show you the birth of a trend.

2. Write to Order for Businesses: Custom Ebook Publishing

This method works best for business writers, who are writing for a stable of businesses. Ebooks make great promotional tools, so keep your eyes open for ebook ideas you can sell to your clients.

You’re looking for ebook ideas which will help people, while subtly promoting your client. For example, green energy and energy saving looks set to be in the forefront of people’s minds for years to come.

Suggest these ebook ideas to your clients. You’ll get paid for writing the ebook.

3. Read Forums

Rather than browsing forums for fun; browse them for ideas. People have the same kinds of challenges month after month. When questions are asked again and again, they contain the nuggets of ideas for ebooks.

4. Read Letters to the Editor

If you enjoy reading magazines, read the letters to the editor. You should get at least one ebook idea per magazine. A writer friend told me last week she found a great ebook idea in the letters in an old magazine at her dentist’s.

5. Study Amazon Bestseller Lists

Whenever there’s a bestselling book on a topic, it may well prove to be a brilliant idea for an ebook.

Angela Booth’s writing guides have been created to help you to make money from your writing every day. Join the thousands of writers who are making great money with their writing skills.

Discover how to make money online in your spare time with Angela Booth’s Sell Your Writing Online NOW training Not only will you discover how to write and sell ebooks, you’ll get complete training in how the Web works, so you can take advantage of the unlimited opportunities.

For free weekly writing tips sent to your Inbox, subscribe to Angela’s Fab Freelance Writing Ezine and receive “Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report” immediately.

Ebook: Build a Bestselling Format

November 5th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Want to write an ebook? Ebooks sell well online; you can even build an entire home business on a single ebook. Here’s how to ensure your ebook sells, when you build a bestselling format.

1. Focus — Your Ebook Must Have a Slant

The more tightly you can focus your ebook, the better it will sell. Let’s look at some examples.

“Beauty” is too wide a focus. If you’re not a celebrity, an ebook with such a broad focus is unlikely to sell. However, “Instant Acne Cure” is a sharp focus, and if you deliver on the promise, this ebook will sell.

Similarly, “fix your PC” is too wide a focus. “Optimize your PC: Windows XP Under the Hood” is tightly focused. This ebook should sell well for years to come.

It’s worth spending time to get your focus exactly right. If you want to get your ebook written and selling within a month, spend the first four weeks thinking about your focus. Yes, it’s that important.

Here’s another way to think about your focus: it’s a way of targeting exactly those readers who MUST buy your ebook, as soon as they learn of its existence. With a sharp focus, you know without a doubt that your ebook will sell.

2. Promise and Deliver

Now you’ve got your focus, realize that the focus implies a promises, or several promises to your reader. I read many ebooks which although competent, never fulfilled the promise. This is sad, because had the ebooks fulfilled the promises they made, they would sell many thousands of copies over many years.

Make a list of the promises your focus implies.

Now turn that list into ebook chapters. This is the simplest way of outlining your ebook. It shows you exactly what to include, and what to leave out.

I’ve seen way too many ebooks which include information which is totally irrelevant. A history of your topic is rarely relevant, yet many ebooks include a history.

Remember that ebooks are meant to be read on the screen. They’re short. If your ebook is over 100 pages, take a close look. Are you delivering on promises, or just waffling to increase the page count?

3. Evergreen Content Sells for Years: Ensure Your Content Is Timeless

Finally, bestselling formats are evergreen. The information is useful not just this year, but for years to come.

Let’s look at our two examples.

“Instant Acne Cure” — this will sell for decades. With an updated edition every couple of years, this ebook will bring you a steady income.

“Optimize your PC: Windows XP Under the Hood” will also sell for years. There are millions of PCs running Windows XP. Businesses and home users are wedded to this operating system; this kind of book will be a gold mine for you.

Writing and selling ebooks is just one of the topics we cover in Angela Booth’s Sell Your Writing Online NOW (SYWON) — discover how to become an ebook expert and build a fantastic home business with a million dollar potential.

Want to develop a six-figure writing income?

The September 2007 issue of The Writer had a great story: “Secrets Of The Six-Figure Freelancers”. The story’s wonderful because it shows you the potential of a freelance writing career; with the development of the Web and its unlimited markets, if you can write, you can make a great income as a freelance writer.

I chuckled when I read the story because many writers think a “six figure income” is hype. Either that, or they think that a great income is reserved for copywriters, or genre novelists, or other specialist writers.

The fact is that YOU can develop a six-figure writing career: you just need to know that it’s possible to earn $250,000 a year and more as a freelance writer, and then make that your goal.

And of course, you need know-how. That’s what my writing ebook manuals give you. In 30 years as a freelance writer, I’ve learned the tricks of the writing trade, and I’d love to share those tricks with you, so many of my ebooks offer free coaching. Whatever your level of experience as a freelance writer, you can develop a fantastic career, when you know how.

Develop your writing skills today.

Ebook Writing: Turn Free Ebooks to Profit Fast

October 18th, 2008    Subscribe To Our Feed

Would you like to make money with ebooks? You can: start by giving ebooks away. Everyone loves freebies and you can turn this natural behavior to profit.

Here are three ways.

1. Give Free Ebooks Away to Build a Mailing List

You can give away a free ebook in exchange for contact details.

Once people have subscribed to your list not only do they get a free ebook from you, but you also have the chance to communicate with them regularly. They’re the perfect audience for future ebooks you write, because they know that you’re a trustworthy source of information.

Building an audience for future ebooks means that you don’t have to spend money on advertising, since you already have potential buyers you can contact whenever you wish.

2. Give Away a Free Ebook to a Large Web Site

Buying advertising on large Web sites is expensive. If you’ve written an ebook which will appeal to its target audience the site may agree to give away your ebook.

The site gets a freebie to give away, and you get a chance to build credibility and put your URL in front of many customers.

3. Turn an Ebook Into a Blog

Once upon a time you could give away a free ebook and have many downloads. However these days people are so pushed the time that ebooks have lost their appeal as freebies.

Yes, people will still download them — but they often don’t read them.

There is a way around this. Simply turn your ebook into a blog. This means that they only need to read as much as they wish to. You can monetize the blog with advertising, and build an audience for future ebooks.

Offer people the option to download the entire contents of the blog as an ebook if they wish.

“Free” is one of the most popular words in the language. You can make it your favorite word too. Give ebooks away, and you can make great money writing ebooks.

Angela Booth’s writing guides have been created to help you to make money from your writing every day. Join the thousands of writers who are making great money with their writing skills.

Sell your Writing using Craigslist

Have you discovered Craiglist? This great online classifieds site is your key to an income from your writing. Make money from your writing now, when you discover how, when, where and why YOU should be using Craigslist. If you’re not advertisig on Craigslist you’re losing money.

Discover how to make money online in your spare time with Angela Booth’s Sell Your Writing Online NOW training Not only will you discover how to write and sell ebooks, you’ll get complete training in how the Web works, so you can take advantage of the unlimited opportunities.

For free weekly writing tips sent to your Inbox, subscribe to Angela’s Fab Freelance Writing Ezine and receive “Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report” immediately.

— Next Page »

Copyright © 2008 Top Ebook Writer

Credits: Angela Booth's Writing Blog | Fab Freelance Writing Blog | Fab Web Writer Blog | Matteo Turchetto | Andreas Viklund