⏳ How To Seperate Time From Money
💸 Create value from your knowledge. Sell your own eBooks and courses
👋 Welcome to the latest issue of the newsletter that explores unusual, rewarding (and fun) ways to make money. I'm Dan, chief explorer. Thanks for being here!
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📚 #002: Sell your own eBooks & courses
Creating your own eBooks and courses. Selling them online.
It’s something I had a crack at with my eBook: How To Take A Month Off Drinking, with limited success (made about $100).
I wanted to learn more: Why consider it? How to do it properly? Who’s doing it well?
Here’s what I discovered:
🤗 The Opportunity
Everyone has knowledge and experience that’s valuable to others. Why not transform that into an eBook or course? Then sell it online, at scale.
🤷♂️ Why Consider It?
Get paid for sharing stuff you already know. Help people who need your knowledge.
Seperate your time from money. Escape the 9-5. Selling eBooks and courses online can scale exponentially. Your time (at a ‘real job’) can’t.
🌟 Why Now?
People are learning online. Covid accelerated this trend. The e-learning market will be worth $1 trillion by 2027.
They’re seeking niche knowledge. From individuals, not institutions. People want practical, actionable advice from others who’ve done stuff successfully.
Platforms, like Teachable, Gumroad, and Kajabi make it easy.
🤑 How Big?
I didn’t need to interview anyone for this issue, because there are a bunch of creators who are incredibly transparent about exactly what, why, and how they do it. They even share exactly how much they make from their eBooks and courses.
Jack Butcher made $1 million+ in 18 months with Visualize Value, and his courses, which teach people how to build things on the internet.
Daniel Vassallo quit a high-paying job at Amazon and quickly made $200k+ from selling one eBook and a course.
Daniel ‘builds in public’: openly sharing his creation process and revenue numbers:
🤩 Inspiration
There are individuals teaching almost every topic you can think of - cooking, gardening, podcasting, fitness and more. Here are some people who’ve made over $100k from their eBooks and courses:
Daniel Vassallo (above) shows how Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience in a no-frills video course (Course)
Steph Smith gives time management tips in Unlock Hidden Hours (eBook & Course)
Joanna Wiebe teaches people how to write well with Copy Hackers (Course)
Kourosh Dini helps people find calm, focus and productivity (eBooks & Courses)
Pieter Levels, founder of Nomad List, teaches how to build profitable startups the ‘indie way’ in Make (eBook, which has made $276,890)
Codie Sanchez shares how to build a $1 Million+ Email Newsletter Business from her experience doing that (Course)
🏁 How To Start
🛠 Create
Choose your niche / topic. Make a list of your interests, (work) experience, and things you’re good at. Think about challenges you’ve overcome, and stuff you’ve helped people with.
Narrow down the list to things you might know enough about to create an eBook or course on.
Understand your audience. Think about your ideal customer and why they would want to take your course, or read your eBook. Create a persona.
Have a clear goal in mind, i.e. people who complete your eBook or sourse will get: a bigger Twitter audience, actionable ways to be more productive, or a profitable one-person startup.
Start small, share before you create:
Post it on social media, write a blog post, or run a mini-workshop on it first - help validate your idea, see if there’s an audience for it, and build a following before you create it
Feedback from this can help refine your concept, content, and format
Pre-sell it to verify demand. If you make revenue before you’ve even made anything, you could be onto something. Ask pre-sale customers for feedback to help you create it - what do they expect in terms of content? What’s the ideal format for them?
Paula Pant made $140,000 in pre-sales before launching her course on rental properties.
Create the outline. Layout the steps of your eBook or course in a logical, step-by-step order.
Choose your format(s). Think about the best way to teach your topic. Will it be an eBook or a course? Is it written content, re-usable templates or videos? A combination? What are you best at?
If you’re making an eBook, I recommend Canva for creating the layout and design, they have a bunch of free, nicely designed templates
Pre-made / recorded content can scale, which is the point. But also think about whether you add ‘live extras’ or premium versions like course cohorts, office hours with you, or live events.
Content is what matters most. People will happily watch a grainy video shot in on an iPhone, if the content delivers the real value they’re seeking. Create content that will inspire action. No need to over-produce it.
Keep it simple, practical and actionable. Your information should come across as clearly as possible. You are teaching people something new after all.
Be yourself. People don’t just want knowledge, they want your unique perspective on it. They want to get inspired and motivated. By you!
💸 Sell
Looking back at my eBook, this is where I fell-short. I spent a ton of time on the content, layout and design, but hardly any time or thought went into selling it.
Choose the right platform(s) to sell on. There are a quite a few of them out there, these are the best I found:
Gumroad: makes it super simple to sell eBooks and courses (what I used)
Teachable: for creating online courses with advanced marketing built-in
Kajabi: an all-in-one platform to create, market and sell
Many platforms hav marketplace with existing audiences looking to buy eBooks and Courses, and/or have tools to help you with marketing and selling.
You can post your eBook or course on more than one platform to get more reach.
For more, check out The 10 best platforms to create and sell online courses in 2021
Pre-sell it (see in Create above)
Offer some for free. To a few friends and family, or an influential supporter. Get glowing early reviews that will help drive more sales.
Offer early-bird pricing. Reward your first supporters with discounts. As you get good reviews, increase the price over time.
Steph Smith started at $30, and is now up to $230!
Create an email campaign. Email is great for building relationships with your potential customers. Demonstrate knowledge and experience on your topic. Send more than one email over time, i.e. a campaign.
Post on social media. More than once. On more than one social channel. See where it resonates.
Write a guest blog post on your topic, or partner with someone on social media with a lot of followers - get a lot more reach, if you don’t have your own audience.
Find the right channels where your potential customers are. Are they trying to solve things related to your topic in Facebook Groups, Reddit, or Twitter? Searching on Google? Your persona research can help here.
Find out and market there - start free, then consider paid marketing (ads) where your audience is.
Measure traffic and sales. Most platforms have dashboards, so you can measure where traffic and sales come from. Double down on the channels that are working.
Build your own audience. Most of the Inspiration examples I gave above had existing large audiences when they launched their eBooks and courses. This of course gives a huge advantage.
You can grow your own audience Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or start a newsletter, by posting about your topic consistently over time.
Create additional courses and eBooks for the same audience. Once you have launched and sold one, you have some credibility in a space, you can create and sell more.
A growing audience definitely helps with distribution for your next eBooks or courses!
The best way to start creating and selling eBooks and courses, might actually be taking a Course about it! 😄
That’s it. I hope you learned something, and you might be inspired to create and sell your own eBook or course - let me know if you do!
Cheers,
Dan
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