How to make money online selling ebooks

If I am not mistaken, the topic on how to make money online selling ebooks is the most flogged subject ever amongst internet communities.

Everyone has some piece of advice or strategy that they use.

It's so interesting that you'll find people selling surefire strategies and hacks.

But on a very serious note, do people actually make money online selling ebooks?

The answer is YES and people like you are earning daily income selling ebook online.

These are called digital products.

What are digital products

Digital products are products that exist only in a digital form like the music file you bought off Apple music or a movie you're watching on Netflix. But ebooks form the largest percentage part of the digital product community.

You can find ebook scattered all over the internet teaching you various things from health and fitness to career goals and basic everyday information.

At this point, I'm quite sure you have a lot of questions running through your mind. The whys, the hows and so on.

But to get your appetite whet, let me shed light on a few questions.

Is selling ebooks profitable?

Yes, selling ebooks is extremely profitable if you know how to go about it the right way. 

Most people are either not taught properly or don't understand the process of how to set up a profitable ebook business.

While selling ebooks online isn't a get rich quick scheme as you've been made to believe, it has the potential to generate a good and sustainable source of income.

Why? Because of its low cost of entry and high potential reach.

No cost of handling or logistics and no expiry date.

How do you find profitable ebook ideas?

There are millions of profitable ebook ideas all around you. While there are lots of ideas to choose from and it might seem overwhelming at first, it is still the number one reason why most people fail at creating profitable ebooks.

But there are several steps you can take to avoid this seemingly obvious pitfall.

1. Focus on your area of expertise: The fact that one ebook idea seems to be the bestseller at the moment doesn't mean you should jump right in. If you're not knowledgeable about a specific topic, you will have difficulties creating a profitable ebook off that topic.
2. Avoid general topics: As simple as this advice may seem, a lot of people still fail because they are trying to reach a large audience with their ebooks. You need to avoid generalised topics and focus all your time and energy on specific areas.
3. Provide a solution: A profitable ebook idea must be able to identify an existing problem and provide a simple step-by-step guide to solving it. It should be clear, concise and easy to understand.

Now that you know what to avoid, it is time to move over to the next most important step if finding a profitable ebook idea, and that is research.

How to Research profitable ebook ideas

If you're not sure how your ebook is going to perform (which you shouldn't base your assumptions at), several online tools will help you figure out what people are interested in and help you decide if your ebook will be profitable or not.

I won't go in-depth into every single tool and how to use, that will be in a separate course on its own.

I will only list a couple of online tools you can start using today to determine the profitability of your ebook idea.

But before we continue, here is a little disclaimer, the online listed below are not designed to give you specific insights into your ebook ideas. These are tools content marketers, bloggers and advertisers use to understand what people are interested in on the internet.

Google Search

Almost everyone on the internet has at least used Google search at one point in their life. Google search is still by far one of the most important tools you need when researching a profitable ebook idea. Being able to read in between the lines of Google search results is what you have to master.

To use Google search in your ebook idea research, simply follow this short and not so concise step;

1. Search for your desired ebook idea on Google search.
2. Focus all your attention on the first 10 organic results (please ignore all the advertisements) and also the total number of search results.
3. Read through the individual posts and observe how in-depth the post it. Pay close attention to the length of the post and do a mental assessment to determine if the author covered all the relevant areas.
4. If there are comments on the post, make the mental note of how many comments each post has. The more comments a blog post has, the better. Also, don't ignore the social share count if it has, this is very important.
5. Analyse your data to determine if your idea will work or not.

Quora

If you don't know what Quora is and how people use it, here is a little summary to bring you up to speed.

Quora is the biggest question and answer social network available today. It's a community where people can ask and find answers to just about any aspect of life you can think of.

So why is Quora on this list? The simple answer is if people are asking about your area of interest, then there is a high probability that you are in the right niche.

Just like I outlined the steps you should take while conducting research using Google search above, Quora is quite similar and here is how you go about it;

1. Search for your desired area of interest on Quora. 
2. Analyse the first set of results to determine if people are asking relevant questions in that area.
3. Focus your attention on the number of upvotes. Upvoting is how readers indicate on Quora which answer is more accepted.
4. Analyse your data to determine if your area of interest will work or not.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a social media analytic tool that tracks how contents are shared across various social media networks. Why is this important you might ask?

Well, if people are sharing a topic that is relevant to your area of interest, it simply shows they're willing to engage and spread the word about it.

Unlike the previous two research tools mentioned above, BuzzSumo is not free to use for in-depth analysis.

Although the free account will give you free insights into your desired area, having a paid account will unlock all its powers.

To use BuzzSumo in your ebook idea research, simply follow along

1. Search for your desired area of interest on BuzzSumo
2. Look at the top results and analyse the total shares on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
3. Analyse your data to determine if your area of interest will work or not.

Once you have identified your ebook idea and conducted research to validate your idea, the next step is to create your ebook.

Creating your ebook

There are lots of different ways to create your ebook. As long as you have any software that can help you save your document as a PDF file (this is the file format that ebooks use), you are good to go.

While some people prefer to write with Microsoft Word and save it as a PDF document, others like myself can choose to use any software from Adobe Photoshop to Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or even CorelDraw.

Which by the way is just us showing off really, you don't need such sophistication to create your ebook.

In fact, with apps like Canva and Figma, you can create an ebook without needing any technical knowledge in design.

We have a free course on how to create a professional ebook, if you have not signed up for it, I encourage you to do so now.

But is the overall design of an ebook an important factor? The simple answer is YES.

Your ebook design needs to look professionally done and attractive. I can hear you screaming off the top of your lungs "What about the content??".

The content is the most important aspect of creating a profitable ebook but psychologists have observed for generations that people buy first with emotion then validate it with logic.

So making your ebook design look attractive will pause the consumer in his tracks and make him pay attention to what you are selling.

With Canva, it is very easy to design beautiful ebook covers without spending a dime so make sure you check out our free course.

Let's do a quick recap of what we've discussed so far. 

1. We can all agree that ebooks selling is still one of the most profitable businesses online today with little to no start-up cost.
2. We also identified why people fail to sell ebooks online and how you can avoid the same mistakes.
3. We briefly discussed some online tools that will help you analyse your area of interest and determine if it is profitable or not.
4. And finally, we touched briefly on how to create your ebook and why it is important to pay attention to its design.

In part 2 of this article, we will be discussing how to promote your ebook online to attract the right audience and make everyday sales.

We will also be looking at how you can come up with a profitable social media strategy to help you achieve your goals and turn your ebook ideas into a money-making machine.

The ideas I will be sharing with you covers everything related to building an engaging audience on the internet. Whether you're planning to create and sell your ebooks or online classes, or you want to increase your website or blog traffic, the same principles also apply.

It will be an enlightening article so please stick around.

If you have any questions please share it in the comment section below and I'd reply to you as soon as possible.

Also, hit the share button below to share this post with your friends and families, you might just be helping someone with a new career.