Earlier this year I made an e-book about “How to get Laid in College” (not the exact title of the book of course, but that’s the subject matter). It’s gotten quite popular (I wrote it under an alias of course). Being a frat guy, I know quite a bit about that subject and therefore I thought I would try marketing an e-book.

So how do you get started?

First of all, write the e-book in Microsoft Word. Later on you’ll have to convert it to PDF format.

For me I didn’t use any program like Clickbank and instead opted to sell the e-book by myself without affiliate sales. It worked out ok because I don’t like the fact that Clickbank takes a portion of my earnings. Since I sold my book for $14.99 I didn’t want to lose any profits. I also knew that I had the programming know-how to make my own mailing script so I didn’t use a mailing script service like Aweber.

HOWEVER.

For those without the technical know-how to promote your e-book I do recommend Clickbank. This program allows other publishers to promote your products and get a percentage of the profits.

Aweber is a mailing list script that allows you to maintain a large mailing list and send out e-mails if you have some kind of new product or if you want to hype up your product more. Most people who sell e-books will entice potential customers to get on their mailing list by promising free content like a free chapter of the e-book or free tips. This is exactly what I promised for my website. I promised users would get a free chapter of my book if they signed up for the mailing list. Once I got their e-mail I could advertise my product to my leisure.

Writing your e-book

The first step to making money off your e-book is to write it. You’re going to need to have some expertise in something. For me, my expertise was hooking up with girls at college, I’ve done it so many times I have a few tricks up my sleeves and a few lines that I use pretty well. Write it in Microsoft Word and then go to Save As (click the arrow, not the words “Save As”) > PDF or XPS (this works in Word 2007).

As a college student hopefully you have good writing skills. Your book demands it. If you write in chat slang you will probably not get many happy buyers. Also the better your book’s content, the more you can expect from word of mouth advertising.

So what if you have no expertise in anything? Well that kind of sucks but there’s other things you can do. Say you are terrible with women. You can still release a book called “How to Get Laid” and make money. What you need to do is research and find out exactly “How to get laid” and then rework that material so that you make it your own. Hopefully you don’t need to go down this route, but it’s something to consider.

Format Your E-book

I will refer you to one of our partner sites, who’s made a great post that I don’t want to replicate. Click here.

Making your landing page

A good landing page is everything. You’ve got to hype up your product. I recorded some audio and allowed users to listen to me talk about my product. This makes your product seem legit. Here is an example of a good landing page. Notice that he has created a simple attention-grabbing header and template.

Pricing your e-book

I recommend pricing it under $20 since most real books cost even less.

Getting paid

Some people use Clickbank because it automatically delivers the product when someone buys a product. Then clickbank pays you with a check at the end of the month. I don’t like this because Clickbank takes a good percentage of your sale, but for people who want as little hassle, going with Clickbank is probably a smart move.

Another similar service is E-junkie, but you’ll just pay an upfront fee every month without taking a percentage (good for those high-selling e-books).

As for me I just did everything automatically and only allowed for payments via Paypal. Whenever you get a sale from paypal, you will get a notice via e-mail. I made it so that it would alert my phone and then I would go to my computer and e-mail the e-book to the buyer.

Promoting

The way I promoted my e-book was with Google Adwords. I’m not sure if other advertising companies are better, but I found that Google Adwords did fine for me (although a bit pricey at $5 / day). This was basically the only way I promoted by book and it made profit. Of course not every product will have the same results. You should experiment with finding the best keywords to target for your adwords campaign. You should also try Search Engine Optimization and other free promotional tools (not covered in this post).

Good luck with making money with your e-book.