That's me contemplating things again high in the Dolomites - copyright 2009, David Hennessey
We’d all like to earn a little more money, right? In my case with a family to feed I am always contemplating how can I develop my business income and at the same time increase the level of value I am offering to readers and paying clients.
In addition, most likely like you, I always want to achieve these two goals of increased income and level of service without investing a ton of money and keeping high the level of professional service my readers and clients expect from me.
Well, recently I noticed a possible problem on my personal development site that may be income in disguise and the same problem might apply to you if you have or are building your own blog. Read on to see what I discovered and if you have the same challenge you can follow the nine steps I offer below to fix the problem and hopefully earn yourself some extra money.
Here is the challenge
I have written over 100 articles in the last eight months for the site but the problem would be the same if I had only written thirty or forty articles.
The problem is now if you arrive at the site and you like what you read in the recent postings on a particular area of personal development you could then spend hours ‘surfing’ around the library (archive) section of the site looking for a set of articles to help you achieve a particular goal. But do you have the time to do all this surfing?
I don’t like to spend thirty or forty minutes looking on a site ‘digging’ up articles. I much rather find the articles grouped together and easy to read at my leisure off line when I wish.
Here is my thinking
So I got to thinking I have written several PDF e-books that are for sale and several that are free. All these e-books for sale or free are all stand alone content not currently available on my personal development site. They are not a compilation of site content. Now what if I compile a selection of my most popular or best articles in a particular category add some new never before published content, create a PDF of all of these articles and offer the new e-book for sale to interested readers who have little time to navigate and are willing to part with some cash to save this time and quickly get the information they want on a topic.
In essence, I will have created a new for sale e-book with ninety percent of the content still available online but in a very time saving package for people who are tight on time and would prefer to pay a little to get what they want right away. Other people who do not want to invest the money but have the time can simply surf away.
And so…
So for my personal development site I am in the process of creating a compilation e-book and I most likely will do more than one depending on the monetary success of the idea.
I am sure this idea must already exist on the net (it is most likely the foundation of many an e book on the market) I am sharing it here as it is a good way (I believe) potentially for wellness business practitioners who share lots to earn some money from work they are currently doing on line anyway.
Here are nine steps to make it easy for you to apply this idea
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One
Organize
When you start writing your blog postings choose the categories you will write in ahead of time, for example, professional speaking or healthy eating. This will help you build your e book over time as you write new articles in these categories. If you already have your categories set up take a look at them and see if they are really the categories you want to create an e-book from.
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Two
Unique Value
Make sure each article has original value so that even as a stand alone posting someone will be delighted to read what you have to say. If you offer bit sized chunks of real value readers are more likely to invest in your work when you offer a compilation e-book.
If all you are doing is retelling news stories in your blog to get visitors or resharing someone else ideas to get visitors you are offering no unique value. Of course, with disclosure and copyright requests you can build a blog with news and information but the content will not make a saleable e-book. But I am sure you already knew that.
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Three
Quantity
I think at this time ‘the for sale’ compilation e-book needs to be of a minimum of fifty postings to start. Then just add to this minimum of fifty ten previously unpublished postings as added value.
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Four
Ease of Reading
Make sure the contents of the book are well organized so the reader does save time seeking out the content they seek and that, of course, the book is all on the same topic so the buyer gets what they want. I don’t recommend you ‘pad’ this sort of e-book with lots of publicities for your products that you sometimes find in free e-books. Test out your new e-book with friends to see if they think it is a breeze or a pain to check read.
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Five
Be Clear
When you write your publicity for the e-book on your blog make it clear there is xx pieces of previously published content and xx pieces of new content and give examples of the section headings inside the book. When the buyer gets what is expected they are always happier.
If they buy your e-book and afterwards they discover it is mostly already online content you might start getting requests for refunds.
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Six
Make the Book Portable
Turn the e-book into a portable document file (PDF) with a paid for Adobe program or one of the free online PDF makers. This helps prevent your book from being copied (at least it makes it harder) and helps it keep its format when you email it across the internet to a buyer. This may sound unnecesary to mention but I recently got an e-book that was in MS word.
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Seven
Ease of Purchase
If you currently have no items for sale on your blog when your new e-book is all ready to go you may wish to open a basic PayPal account to handle the purchase.
Millions of people are daily users of PayPal. I have used www.paypal.com for several years and I like the idea that buyers actually do their secure transaction on the Paypal system rather than on my computer. The buyer can use their credit card and a number of other of types of payment.
Once PayPal is set up on your site what essentially happens is you get an email to say you have received money from a customer via PayPal and you email the purchased e-book.
If you need assistance to set up PayPal you can always contact me to coach you on now to make a basic Paypal set up on your site. Or you can contact PayPal customer service or your web person.
By the way, in case you don’t already know if you are using a free hosted blog like wordpress.com you will not be able to install a product buying button on your site. You will instead need to have a self hosted blog like the one you are reading now that is hosted by a company I use called like this one.
For more information on blogging platforms types you can visit my resource section and read this article on blogging platforms and the differences. The resource section on this site also offers you additional educational material that will be of value to you if you are only in the process of setting up an professional site.
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Eight
Make Your Articles Great
Of course, it is very important that what you are writing is quality work when it comes to copy quality. I am constantly working on making my writing better since I never did so well in writing in school. One investment I recently made is to buy a copy of Darren Rowse’s Copywriting Scorecard e-workbook that makes it super easy to see if what you are writing is quality material needed to attract readers to become buyers of your work. One of the nicest features is a digital scorecard you can use to see how well written your article is.
Darren is the founder of the highly rated ProBlogger website that is one of the best resources on the net for how to write online. Rather than me give you my scoop on the contents of the book simply click here to visit the ProBlogger site and get more details on Darren’s new book. Then you can choose to invest in it or not.
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Nine
Price Appropriately
I sense that the price point for a compilation e-book depends on many variables. But for sure you don’t want to price it too low like five dollars because then the content appears cheap because the price is cheap. Where the top end is I will have to let you know when I have completed my first version.
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Well, there you go, best of Success to you in monetizing your blog in a reader friendly way and I welcome your feedback as always.
Don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Your friend on the journey,
David
P.S. Remember to get yourself a copy of my current FREE e-workbook to help you grow your wellness business. It is not a compilation of postings and it is Free.
