I want to earn a passive income by creating an ebook to sell online. How can I do that?

Digital products such as ebooks, online courses, online tools, etc. are popular these days as they are a quick source of generating income that persists for months or years after you do the work involved in creating and uploading them. That is the nature of passive income.

If we consider the present situation, ebooks are in huge demand and are a good route for making passive income. Let’s discuss more.

You’ve picked a good time to get into ebooks as a business venture. With that in mind, you should also be aware that every other person is nowadays writing ebooks. In such a situation, the growing competition is undeniable.

Fortunately, most competition is incompetent, and gives up easily, so do not get discouraged just because you are participating in a crowded market. There are a lot of buyers who likely await whatever your ebook has to offer, and you just need to persevere, do a good job, cut no corners, and do the work of promoting by yourself.

And since you want this to be free, make no mistake, you will need to put in time to promote yourself and learn a few skills. Time and effort is the replacement for money.

To earn a good income, the niche of your ebook should be something in demand and specific. I assume that you must have researched the market for that. That’s the basic step for an ebook to succeed. Here are thirteen steps for you to plan out.

Step 1: Decide the type of ebook you want to create. I mean, whether you want to create a fiction book, nonfiction, etc. I assume, just based on your wording, that you mean to write some kind of nonfiction instructional book, basically selling your expertise on a topic. Please excuse me if that is not the case.

Step 2: Research the market for the demand of the niche of your book. Something like “How to Lose Weight” is too vague, and thus has too much competition, but something like “How Overweight Men Living in Raleigh, North Carolina Can Get Abs During the Winter” is way too specific, and thus has no market. You want to go somewhere in the middle, with a big niche but a qualifier. “How to Lose Weight for Women Who Want Their Husbands to Desire Them Again” is a big group, but targeted as well, so that would work. Since you are not writing an ebook as a hobby, income is the main requirement. This step needs in-depth research if you want the book to sell. You probably won’t end up going with the first idea you came up with.

Step 3: Decide the title of your ebook. It should be unique, brief, and define the book. Don’t get cute or coy. Basic “How to Do This” titles are easily understood and work well at grabbing attention.

Step 4: Plan the contents of the book in the form of chapters, parts, etc. whichever is suitable as per the type of the book. You don’t have to write something very long, but you do need it to be well structured.

Step 5: Start writing the content of the book with the help of any word processing software like MS Word, LibreOffice, etc.

Step 6: If your budget allows, and you feel the need, you can get the help of an expert. It depends on how scientifically driven your topic is.

Step 7: After writing the book, do editing and proofreading. Make sure the sentences read gracefully and there are no mistakes in grammar, spelling, nothing like that. This is a professional product, and that needs to show on every page.

Step 8: Get a good cover for the book that looks professional and conveys what it has to offer. It should also look good in a variety of sizes, even a thumbnail, since you never know what size people will see it as on their device. This is one area where, unless you are a professional designer, I would spend money. There are people on Fiverr who can do cover design at an extremely affordable price. Mostly, it just needs to look like it wasn’t made by an amateur.

Step 9: When you have completed writing and editing, then you can either self publish the book or look for a publisher. Since you want passive income, let’s throw out the publisher option. Self-publishing is easy and offers more long-term revenue potential, IF you are willing to work for it. Anyone can self-publish. It’s everything after you hit publish that takes work.

Step 10: After everything is complete, next comes promoting the book. Again, it depends on your budget to advertise. Even with a budget of $0, you can make use of social media websites to promote your book. Participate in places where your target customers are likely to gather, and build a name for yourself.

Step 11: To complement Step 10, you need to have a website. Having a website is free and easy with Wix, WordPress, etc. Plus, that website can help you to make the book more available to your readers. It’s controversial, but if you’re not selling fiction, I would recommend selling only on your own website, not on big ebook platforms like Amazon. You have a better chance getting traffic to your own site than optimizing for attention on someone else’s sales algorithm, for a store absolutely packed with books. As a part of the promotion, you can offer a part of the book for free, and gather their email to sell them on the full version. It’s also a common strategy to sell a print version for free (cost of shipping only) and then use that to lead the customer into buying more books or other products. If you’re willing to go that far (going from just an ebook to print copies is not cheap), you can make a ton of money. But with just one book or product, you have fewer options.

Step 12: To make more money and get more visitors on your website, you can implement ways to gather traffic (visitors) on your website. This is non-negotiable. It’s promotion, and it’s your best bet for free promotion at that. Of course, I can help you with that if you have questions. Stay relaxed, because once you complete the basics, getting traffic to a website is not difficult. But it will take time, especially when going free.

Step 13: Be open to feedback, whether positive or negative. Feedback is your customers telling you how to make more money. Make an updated version or a new book to provide for the needs expressed in your reviews. More of what people liked, less of what people didn’t. Continue to produce ebooks and other content, and continue to improve, and the amount of passive income you make will continue to rise.

This might sound like a lot of work, but keep it in perspective. Once you’ve done it, you can sit back and go on vacation for three months, and you’ll still make the same amount of money, roughly. You put in the work, not indefinitely, but so that from then on, you won’t have to. And the more you work at it and grow, the greater that guaranteed paycheck becomes.

By implementing the above steps, you can create an ebook and sell it to make passive income. The above steps are mostly free of cost, except that they will take your effort and time. To stand out from the competition and make more income, I would recommend you implement a specific method for producing as good of a first ebook as you can.

To create an ebook perfectly so that it practically sells itself and provides you more income, PPC (Perfect Product Creation) can be a good choice. That video course isn’t free but only costs about as much as a nonstick pan.

In conclusion, creating and selling an ebook is an intelligent decision to consider as a source of passive income, provided you create and promote it in the right manner.

Please feel free to reply to me if you have any questions.

Good Luck!

Thanks,

Cleo