Passive Income eBook beginner

When is the last time you read an ebook? If you love to read or learn new things than it probably wasn’t too long ago. And have you given much thought to the fact that you can make money by creating and selling an ebook too? You should, because it’s much easier than you think!

Can you make a passive income by creating and selling an ebook? You can make passive income selling eBooks on your own website, on affiliate websites or on Amazon. By selling just one eBook per day at $17 each, you can make $500 per month. Creating and selling an eBook can be done for free or a low cost making it a compelling passive income idea.

Did you know that there are ebook sellers who make hundreds of dollars every year off the books they have created? Some of these books can be created in a day, and from there, all you have to do is offer it to the right audience and sit back as sales roll in. Here is a look at how you can make this happen.

Passive Income Creating & Selling an eBook

The entire process is quite straightforward and here is how to create your eBook for free.

1. Finding an Awesome Niche

If you already have an audience (eCommerce clients, an Instagram or YouTube following) then you may already know what kind of eBook you can sell to them. If you do not have an audience, however, you may still need to find a niche. Some topics are over saturated and you might want to steer clear of these if you want your eBook to generate any interest from potential readers. So, before you put down your ideas, take some time to analyse what people are looking for, and if they are willing to pay for it. The video below demonstrates how to choose a trending niche using Google Trends.

Some ways to find out what people need within a niche include reading forums like Reddit or Quora. They are full of questions people want answered. Some hot topics today touch on healthy living, natural remedies for common health issues, financial advice, DIY projects, and so forth. You should not have a problem finding an in-demand topic you are passionate about. That said, also consider the competition you will face when you put out your eBook and try to sell it.

2. Serving Your Target Market

If you do not yet have an audience, one way of validating your eBook idea is by joining Facebook groups in your niche and then posting to the group. Something like “hey, I am thinking about writing an eBook about [insert your niche idea here] – what do you guys think? I would love your opinions.” People will write back with what they want to know. If you get a lot of interest in a specific Facebook group, you may have found your target audience.

You might be passionate about the subject you are writing about, and yes, you might know plenty to write the entire eBook from experience or the knowledge you already possess. But even so, go the extra mile to give your readers greater value. Make sure you know the subject you want to cover in a lot of depth so that your book can have refined information that gives the reader high-quality details they would get nowhere else (especially in a free blog post). Write from your own experience, add statistics, and exclusive video content to go the extra mile.

3. Writing The Book (For Free)

The video below outlines how to write an eBook quickly and easily for free using Google Sheets, Unsplash and Canva. Once you have outlined what you want your book to be about, you can write the book very quickly by dictating the content in Google Sheets.

But if you don’t have the time to spend writing, you can always outsource the work to a ghostwriter. Luckily, you can find very skilled writers online these days, and with a little guidance from you, they can come up with fantastic eBooks on your behalf. Obviously, although this option is the most passive, it also costs a little more since you have to pay a ghostwriter. We highly recommend Fiverr for low-cost, high quality ghostwriters. Learn more about Fiverr by clicking on the button below.


Learn More About Fiverr

If your eBook is about “easy ways to create a smartphone app”, make sure you give it the most compelling title you can. The title should also be very memorable so that your readers can remember it easily and recommend it to other people. For the example stated above, rather than use a boring title like “Android Coding Documentation” you can try something more compelling like “10 Simple Steps to Create A Successful Android App.”

4. Selling Your eBook Online

Thanks to Google Sheets, it’s easy to save your eBook in a PDF format or as an ePub file depending on where you would like to sell it. If you would like to sell it on Amazon, ePub will be the right format. If you would like to sell it in your own online store, PDF will do just fine.

We highly recommend Ecwid eCommerce to sell your eBooks online. The entire process can be automated thanks to Ecwid’s awesome eCommerce tools. You can even embed your Ecwid store to your existing site if you already have a website! Learn more about Ecwid eCommerce by clicking on the button below.


Learn More About Ecwid

eBook Creation & Sales Tips

Here are a couple tips to help ensure successful eBook sales!

Marketing to Your Audience

If you already have an audience that is interested in your eBook, it will be easy to announce that you are launching your sale and to start making money from it. However, if you do not yet have an audience, you can also try other arrangements that can help you make money off the book. For instance, an affiliate deal with a third-party site whose audience would be perfect for the content your book offers. Building an audience using a blog is also an excellent way to promote your eBook. You can learn more about how to drive traffic for sales in Project 24.

Learn More About Project 24

Write a Compelling Description

The book cover and description are the first things potential readers will look at when considering whether the book is worth buying or downloading. Therefore, take the time to write a compelling book description. You should touch on the various issues the book addresses and even cover some concerns potential readers might have when getting the book.

Make an Awesome Cover

They say that you should never judge a book by its cover, but readers do so all the time. Thanks to Canva, you can make sure the book’s design easily grabs your target market’s attention thanks to their pre-made templates that are easy to customize for any beginner. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a dime if you don’t have money set aside for the task. Canva offers many free cover designs you can use, and tweak to come up with something amazing.

How Passive is Creating & Selling an eBook?

All things considered, creating and selling an ebook is pretty passive if you have content that people are interested in. After the initial effort it takes to come up with the ebook idea, write and promote it, the rest of the process involves waiting as your ebook makes you money. Tools like Ecwid eCommerce automate the entire sales process for you so you have no need to actually send anything once the sale is made. You can earn off an ebook you created years ago, and it would not take any extra effort on your part.

Scalability

Yes, the ebook business is very scalable. For one, you can create as many ebooks as you want. After all, you can create an ebook within a month. Therefore, you can scale your business considerably and have several ebooks through which you can make a lot of money passively.

Startup Costs

Believe it or not, you only need a little money to get into the ebook business. For instance, if you can write the book yourself for free using Google Sheets and Canva. Not hiring a ghostwriter would save you money. You can also sell it on Amazon for free. If you decide to sell on your own website, you may have hosting and eCommerce fees. All in all, the cost of these services can come to less than $200/year. But otherwise, as long as you have a computer and the right research tools such as an internet connection, then you can create an ebook and market it.

Time

A fair amount of time is required to create an ebook, but it should not disrupt your regular schedule. As mentioned earlier, using voice typing saves a lot of time. And if you are too busy, you can always hire a ghostwriter to write the book for you. Still, you can write the book during your free time and you could be done within a few weeks and start making money off your efforts fairly quickly if you already have an interested audience. Take note that, if your eBook topic is not evergreen, meaning that your eBook needs to be updated every so months, than you will need to invest more time into the project.

Difficulty

In the past, getting a book published was a coin flip as publishers could reject your work completely. But with an ebook, you get to sell your book to your audiences directly with no other people getting in the way and derailing your plans. Creating and selling an ebook is therefore very easy.

Risk

There is always the risk that your ebook will not sell as well as you expected it to. But that usually happens when you do not create a good enough ebook, do not answer the needs of your target market, or forget the importance of marketing it properly once you have written it.

Seasonality

eBooks can be seasonal if you cover a seasonal topic. For instance, if your book is about DIY gardening tips for the winter, it will not sell very well once summer comes. But some topics have no seasonal value, such as self-improvement. So, your choices regarding the book’s subject matter will determine whether or not it will be affected by the seasons.

Return on Investment

The ROI on ebooks is pretty good because you don’t have to invest that much money into this business to begin with. When you market the book well, you can expect pretty good returns from your efforts, which does not require much of your time or financial resources. If you sell just one eBook per day at $17 each, you can make $500 per month. An ebook can therefore offer great ROI.

Related Questions

Can you really make money creating and selling eBooks? You can make money from selling an eBook, and many people do. Thousands of people sell ebooks and make hundreds of dollars every year doing it. As long as you undertake the entire process in the right manner, there is nothing stopping you from making a decent amount of money off this venture.

How can I make money writing eBooks? You can make money selling eBooks by creating them and then selling them online. One way you can do this for free is by using Google Sheets (dictation) and Canva to create your covers. These are free tools that can allow you to create a stunning eBook in no time.