Selling Ebooks Profitably

This selling ebooks case study comes from the website of author Lori Ballen

In 20025 Lori launched an ebook that is now making US$1,000 a month, and the business is scalable. On day 1 Lori made her first sale.

Why was the book created in the first place? It is part of a system designed to bridge free content and higher-ticket offers (coaching, etc.), and to create recurring income streams without requiring a huge team. 

Why selling ebooks?

It is important to understand the reasoning behind selling an ebook in the first place. If you have a goal then all the other efforts would be directed towards this goal. it is similar how Facebook first started and grew.

Lori gives us 3 reasons:

1. Middle ground between free content and coaching: Ebooks are the transition product. For those in the audience who aren’t ready to join coaching, a well-priced ebook gives value and builds trust.
2. Many buyers of ebooks later become coaching clients, so ebooks act as funnels 
3. The content of the ebooks comes from topics already covered. If people are asking, there’s an ebook opportunity.

Now, you have focus and also an audience. With this audience you build books around topics that audience is interested in: YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok Shop, Amazon Influencer, blogging, and beginner-friendly strategies for monetization.

It is important to understand that Lori has an audience to start. Many ebook selling companies started with something and moniterised later. Lori has a blog, Youtube channel, TikTok account of Pinterest- where she is very active. Even if you have friends and family, they will take an interest in what you say. Then they have friends and your sphere of influence and audience increases. Dude perfect did exactly the same- used their friend network who also had a network of friends.

How to create the ebook?

Lori could have used How To Make An Ebook That Sells ;).

Lori uses ChatGPT to capture her voice which then allows Lori to just dump thoughts out quickly. AI can then arrange and edit that was put down. Many authors start with titles and then start to brainstorm those titles. Just dumping information down. in time you can create subtitles. For instance- creating an ebook:

• What type of ebook
• Word Processor
• Structure
• Format for people
• Cover
• Where to sell it
• Pricing
• How will people find out more about me?

These are all top headers and then you can drill down and create sub titles from those.

For Jasonera we use Word and then export to PDF or .Docx for KDP. For our cover we either:

• Do it ourselves
• Use Canva- which can be awesome as long as no one else has used that cover
• Freelancer- can be a little bit expensive if you are selling a $2.99 ebook
• AI. Can be awesome, but also can look very similar in style to others.

The idea is to get something clean and professional looking. But don't spend all day tweaking here and there. Good cover is sometimes just that- good enough.

Price?

Price is a bugbear of ours. Price is only present upon which people are willing to pay. If you have a 5 page ebook about 100% making $500 then charging $99 for that ebook is not a bad deal.

$2.99? Who thought up that price. Sure it is a disposable amount that offers quick sales and usually a entry into a sales funnel. But to make money off that? You need to sell lots of ebook or even better lots of a series of ebooks.

Loris standard price? $27. Why did Lori pick this price? Well it is based upon the following:

• It is low and high enough to show professional content and to "qualify" people into liking what you offer. There is a high chance they will buy other products.
• It is not deemed throwaway- so people usually reread and take notice of what is in the ebook
• If you post high you can drop the price for discount days or promotional work. It is difficult to do that with a $2.99 ebook 

Where to sell and how to get people to that store front?

Lori uses third party store fronts that allow Lori to set and forget. This is important as your main focus is to funnel people to those sales pages. Sure, those sales pages need to convey what you are selling and that it is worthy. But your marketing should have already warmed up prospects to that anyway.

Lori uses Stan Store and Stan Store. While selling through Youtube, Lori uses Fourthwall (a Youtube approved store) so ebooks appear under the videos and friction is reduced. Description links are OK, but having your ebook there and then is better.

However, you could be splitting traffic up to 2 sites now. So your stores have to be the same in structure, price and content. This can be difficult. Sometimes it is better to have one store that is universal and have traffic funneled to that. You keep hold of the traffic (just in case the store goes down and you have to pivot).

Just make sure that whatever content your are showing- video or text, then your product is visible. People don't have to search for it.

Traffic?

Youtube is the main funnel. Lori creates tutorials that are very similar to the product that she is trying to sell so at least the audience will have some interest in the subject. In those videos the product is referenced,

Lori also has the following:

• A Pinterest account where she is very active
• Blogs- using Pins and videos to make more fuller content- also gives passive views to the views and Pins. Lori also collects email addresses from the blog. These email addresses are funnelled through a system to filter on what they like and are offered one product per system

Overall about selling ebooks?

If you have

• already got an audience (even a small one) interested in what you teach,
• topics people are asking questions about,
• some capacity to create content regularly (videos, blogs, pins),

Then creating an ebook to sell is very possible. It also has a good chance of success because;

1. Your audience will be primed to buy about a topic that they are interested in and about questions they have already asked
2. If you have an ebook that is bought on Amazon then you go further up the charts and then kick in Amazons logarithm which creates more sales.
3. Keep on feeding the audience content especially from topics that they ask about and keep on generating subscribers.

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