My Personal eBook Education

My personal eBook education started in 2005 following my graduation from college. Through craigslist, I was lucky enough to secure an interview with one of those guru guys you see on late night infomercials. Although I didn’t get the job (the guy was actually really creepy, and more or less trying to stir up some interest in his $2,000+ product), what I took from the experience was a real appreciation of the potential of starting an online digital product business, and a desire to be successful. The seed was planted.

What really got me excited was the automated nature of the business, and the fact that I would have a product to sell forever without running out of supply. Just like a musician or an author, I could release my creativity to the world, yet unlike the signed artist or author with a book deal, I could keep 100% of the profits instead of a few cents on the dollar. Still though, I had one huge problem

I had no website, no product, and no idea on how to proceed. So I set out to teach myself everything I needed to know in order to be successful without really knowing where to start. I did know that I could buy a product with resale rights, but I considered (and still do) the majority of such products to be scams. I wasn’t about to pay some slick Internet marketer $50-100 to teach me, even though it may have been a good idea, although I suppose it could have steered me in the wrong direction, too. So I did what I knew how to do best, write.

Following an extensive experience playing and coaching soccer, I had always wanted to write a book about the subject, even before I heard of e-books. Now I had found the perfect avenue. So I worked and worked every single lunch and evening until my product was done. Although I was extremely happy when the book was finished, I still had no method for getting it in front of people. It was time to build the website, and once again I wasn’t sure how to proceed.

Years prior, my dad had purchased Macromedia Dreamweaver to build a site for our local soccer club, so I installed it on my laptop and went to work. My initial design turned out to be a hideously ugly one-page sales letter, but it was certainly functional. The same night I finished putting the payment button and delivery page on the web, I created a Google Adwords account, wrote some advertisements, and set myself up with a budget of $20 for the next day and went to bed. Much to my dismay, when I woke up the next day I had exhausted my budget without making one sale. Inside, I was crushed.

Soon thereafter, I came to the conclusion that my entire plan for marketing my soccer book wasn’t going to work. I didn’t have an endless pool of resources to dump into ineffective advertising trying to find something that worked. I did some research and discovered that I was going to have to evolve my plan a bit, and take a long term approach to generating the traffic I needed. Enter my foray into the world of search engine optimization.

The first thing that I decided was my one page sales letter had to go. For generating long term traffic, it just wasn’t going to work. Next, I decided to write a whole bunch of articles on soccer, hosting some on my website and releasing the rest for syndication. Finally, I started to tweak the navigational menu and other onsite factors to improve my sites likelihood of ranking high for the most important keywords, in addition to makes sales. I wrote more articles to target specific terms and released another round of articles, and tried to seek out other relevant sites for back-links. Soon thereafter, the traffic (and sales) started to roll in. I had completed my mission.

Looking back on my experience, I wouldn’t change a thing, for it was the process that taught me the most about marketing, and myself. Perseverance, dedication and hard work in all the right places usually pays off! Learn more about The eBook Education