Glad to inspire1

Market research/testing was very important for my launch.

:) Right now I'm thinking about offering a TON of awesome free training on my website. I'd want to do it with 100% value with no focus on monetization. You can sign up for email updates on DougBeney.com if you want to get notified when I go fourth with the idea.

Okay, Doug I just subscribe to your site. How about in your e-book have you writing about how you make money online in there? :-)

The eBook is in a technology niche that deals with circuitry, so nope.

Okay thanks Doug.

I'd recommend just using Gumroad. It's much, much easier to set up. I ended up using the plugin Easy Digital Downloads. It comes built-in with accepting paypal but I had to buy the Stripe extension to accept credit cards. Gumroad is free and accepts everything, so I'd probably use that in the future.

Great - thank you!

If you're unconvinced that eBooks sell really well, take a look at Amazon.com and there Kindle eBook selection. While physical books are NEVER going away, eBooks are growing in popularity for portability's sake.

yeah, I was actually just reading your blog on how to write an e-book. Something I never considered. I thought you had written it, but I see that you suggest to outsource the work. I'm going to check out that youtube video you posted about how to do it. Looks like another great source to generate revenue!

:D

I follow a lot of Corey Ferreira's content. He has a course on launching eBooks, but I only followed his free content. Pat Flynn also has a lot of great tips on writing eBooks.

Here's are the steps I went through to publish the book:

- Step 1: Market validation
-- I created a Reddit post in a niche-related subreddit saying something along the lines of "I'm thinking of writing an in-depth eBook on XYZ. Would you be interested in it?". This let me know if people would be interested in paying for the information.
-- After that, I setup a signup page where they can drop their emails and get updated whenever I launch the book. I messaged the Reddit users that were interested in the book and I updated the Reddit post to include a link to my signup page.

- Step 2: Building a list
-- AFTER the market validation proved the topic was viable, I started by creating all of the social media accounts. I posted regularly for a few weeks (I should've stayed consistent with this!)
-- I then learned Facebook ads. I only recommend doing this step if you are willing to invest $500+. I created an ad that promotes my squeeze page (the signup page). I started out on $5 a day and bumped that up to $10 after I figured out what the hell I was doing. I was getting valuable subscribers for $0.25 a lead at first. Eventually that number increased to $0.60-$0.75 per lead.

Side note: Keep in mind that I was writing the book at the same time as I was building a list for it. I'd recommend doing the same. You don't want to start promoting it after the book is already written. I actually started promoting the prelaunch before I wrote a single word of the book.

- Step 3: The launch
-- Launching was pretty easy. I sent out updates on social media about 1 week before launch saying that the book was going to be released on May 16.
-- On Facebook, I boosted the post ONLY to people who already like my page. This was an incredibly strategic way to reach all of my fans and let them know that the book was coming.
-- On May 16 at 12:00 in the morning, I made the website live and scheduled an email to go out at 8:00am.
-- I double and tripled check that everything was perfect and then I just sat back and waited.

This all happened over the course of a good amount of months. The hardest part was actually writing the book. I had to learn circuitry, learn Arduino programming, and buy a bunch of components to build with. There were a lot of frustrations but I'm glad I did it. I'm already getting testimonials saying how amazing the book is. I'm saving a lot of headaches!

My next steps:
-- I'm going to boost a post on my Facebook page saying that the book is available.
-- I'm going to invest more time (and maybe dollars) into social media.
-- I'm going to create a blog on the book's website to get some organic SEO traffic
-- I'll try to get some guest posting opportunities. I also know some musician youtubers who might be able to review my product.

Btw, the book is here: DIYMIDIController.com

I might actually turn this comment into a full blog post on DougBeney.com, haha. If you're interested in what I'm doing I'd appreciate it if you sign up for email updates for my site. (I'm not going to sell you anything on my personal site btw.)

Thank you so much that's so helpful!! Really appreciate it. I will definitely sign up. Your story and blog posts on here keep me motivated!

Promoting pre-launch when you haven't even written a word of the ebook yet is brilliant. Talk about goal setting and giving yourself the success mindset! No way to get out of it once you put that ball in motion.

Thanks, Lisa!

:D

Hey Cohen! Feel free to send me an email whenever you like:)

Yessir! Done. Thanks for all your help, dude. You're my role model :)

Love hearing that!

:D

:D

Thanks Jason!

Definitely, Leo! And who says email marketing is dead?

The ones not making money - LOL