Not Every Ebook is a Success, But it’s Always a Lesson

This guest post is by Chris The Traffic Blogger.

Ebooks have played a vital part in my business for all three of the years I have been operating. From free offers to successful products, these handy publications enabled me to earn quite a bit of money in three years, as well as grow an audience of over 11,700 members.

What I’d like to do for you today is go through a history of the ebooks I’ve written, and explain what I’ve learned along the way. My hope is that you will learn from my mistakes and failures as well as enjoy the experience of sharing in my story.

My first ebook was written about World of Warcraft gold (the in-game currency for players) and how to make as much of it as possible, as quickly as possible. The ebook benefited from being sold to a highly receptive audience that I’d spent months building a relationship with.

Having only 500 subscribers made me nervous, but I went forward with writing the book and publishing it anyway. To my pleasant surprise, the ebook made over two thousand dollars in the first twenty four hours. I was absolutely ecstatic.

Why was it so successful? I didn’t know it at the time, but I had done quite a lot of things right throughout the process of creating, selling, and advertising my new ebook.

I used media that was perfect for gamers within my product, namely diagrams, audio casts and videos. This ensured that readers would absolutely love the product once they purchased it. I always find it interesting how people assume ebooks have to be … well … books! The “ebook” wasn’t just a .pdf file, it was actually a series of web pages that you needed to have paid for in order to visit. Being unconventional was one of the primary reasons for the success of the ebook.

The content itself was straightforward, easy to use and incredibly useful. I had worried that maybe I wasn’t writing enough, but as the sales poured in I soon realized that this was exactly what gamers were looking for: easy strategies that anyone could follow and be successful with. That’s what I was selling; solutions to their problems. Who wants a long-winded solution anyway?

To improve the number of successful sales, I used a huge number of websites, social media outlets, and forums to sell and/or advertise my ebook. I didn’t simply write “buy this now to be successful!” Rather, I took the time to engage members of these sites in conversation about similar topics. Eventually, someone would ask for more information, or if I had a website. That’s when I would promote my ebook, and it worked amazingly well. All those people who were reading the conversation but not contributing ended up buying the ebook, not just the few involved directly.

This is a life lesson for selling anything online: don’t try to sell outright. Instead, focus on answering questions. If your ebook is the answer, then you can feel confident recommending it within the discussion!

Getting more subscribers to my autoresponder email sequence was very important to me throughout the process of building up my business. To increase the influx of new subscribers, I created an incentive to sign up: a short ebook broken up into seven emails. Each of these seven emails contained a very specific piece of information, and discussed how this could help readers succeed. These were an incredibly big hit to the tune of +220% new signups per day; once again, I made use of an unconventional way to share an ebook.

Free ebooks are one of the simplest ways to test how good an ebook writer you are. Splitting up the ebook into a series of emails is also a great way to distribute it, especially if you aren’t sure if your audience would want to download something from your site. This is particularly true if you are dealing with a group of users who are afraid to download anything online.

Not all of my ebooks were amazing success stories. One in particular was my first book about making money online: The Why People Course. I chose to forget everything I did right with the past two ebooks and try something new.

It’s okay to try new things, but not at the expense of the lessons you learned in the past. I simply wrote up a very long peice (105 pages) on everything I knew regarding running a business online. There was no table of contents, just three gigantic sections of information. It was, to be frank, completely overwhelming for readers. Since I didn’t focus enough on any one area, many readers said that they felt the information was great but far too spread out to be truly useful. That’s not to say I am disgusted with the book, it’s actually pretty good in terms of content, but it’s nowhere near focused and organized enough.

Unfortunately, I also tried to really sell this book instead of engaging others in conversation about related topics. I told them to just go buy it and see for themselves, instead of proving the value I could bring through discussions and debate. I was a salesman instead of a friend recommending a successful product.

Why didn’t I write in such a way that the information was concise and immediately useful like my previous ebooks? Why didn’t I take advantage of unconventional methods for selling the book like I did in the past? For one, I fell victim to the lie that you have to do things a certain way in order to be successful selling an ebook. Because the niche was new to me, I felt that what I had learned in other niches was no longer true. I see this in the words of many of my readers who move to the make-money-online niche from either offline sales or similar businesses to my own. It’s not a good mindset to get stuck in.

The book earned very little and I went back to the drawing board.

Black Sheep is my newest ebook and, I think, one of the best I’ve written. It combines traditional book writing methods with the new age of online concepts. I concisely define what it is I want to teach my buyers (critical thinking and decision making skills in order to improve their online businesses) and keep the book focused on only the information that will achieve this goal. Instead of 105 pages of fluff, I have less than 40 pages of actually useful and powerful information.

I’m still learning to write in the make money online niche and am nowhere near as successful with it as I have been in the gaming niche. However, I hope to continue to go back to what worked in game writing and apply the same concepts to writing for online marketers.

The next ebook I write will probably be for either making money online or a new gaming blog I’m starting about the Diablo 3 franchise. In either case, I will be going back to using outside the box methods for presenting the information within my next ebook, all the while remaining as concise as possible.

These are the lessons I have learned from successfully and not so successfully writing ebooks. What have you learned? Have you not tried to write an EBook yet?

Chris is a self proclaimed expert at showing bloggers how they can get traffic, build communities, make money online and be successful. You can find out more at The Traffic Blogger.

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Online success should not be measured in enemies

This guest post is margieclayman.comby Margie of tenacious D.

One of my favorite Elvis Costello choruses goes like this:

"What's so funny ' bout peace, love and understanding?"

I've always liked that song, but I've never really thought I would live in a time where that question would resonate. I always thought, "well, that was written when peace and love, it seemed hokey, maybe, or maybe even impossible. It was more than a rhetorical question when Elvis first sang it. "

And yet, if I am here in the year 2011 is, I have to ask the same question. What's so funny ' bout peace, love and understanding? Certainly seems as though all three concepts are carried out in a PR crisis in the online world.

I've gotten picked up a bit more than my years in the world of social media. Why? Because I am nice. I'm lovey dovey. People have told me that it's really boring to listen to someone like me, because I never had any ruffle feathers.

To the friendly, I think that is a completely ridiculous feeling.

Sure, you get a strong response from someone if you call someone, to hurl insults, bash, or say that someone is really stupid. There is no doubt that ruffling feathers tends too big for attention and traffic spikes. So what?

If you want to get people to read your blog posts, to entice what about the concept of writing really good content? Really thought-provoking content? What about writing about something people are not much about writing? If, I do not know ... like you're beautiful, perhaps? Why does excitement in the online world, or interest, synonymous with cruelty or malicious intentions? I would rather boring and beautiful than enjoying a bit of success at the expense of others.

This is another expression that I have seen many in the online world about my year the wild Internet navigating waters, and I also think it is utter nonsense. Why are we measure success by how many people hate us? There is no other domain that I can think of in the human world where we measure success in this way.

"Congratulations, Daisy. Everyone in your Department do you hate so we are going to give you now! " That just doesn't happen. So why do we need to pull out the haters instead of a measure when we talk about measuring online success? What is this need to have people attack us everything about?

How can I measure my online success? I look at how many people say that they enjoy my posts. I look at the solid relationships that I've built. It's not exactly a revolutionary concept, people.

My friend Sean McGinnis ran into a post that this claim: that women are not as many can find success in the world because women just not selfish or egotistical enough.

First of all, let me tell you about some of the women I have encountered in my life. If you know about knife stabbing, in-it-for-itself, ruthless, downright cruel women want, I can spiders ya a yarn, sonny jim. That's not a problem.

Second of all, what?!? Are we really say that success is based on how much you want to make people vomit when they see you? I mean, that doesn't sound like a success for me. That sounds kind of like, I don't know ... crazy-sauce?

In addition to the glorification of failure do I find the glorification of rudeness or cruelty the most nauseating thing I have encountered on the Web. You do not have for breaking your button Censor be welcomed. You don't have to get accolades because every other post has an f-bomb. Surely there is more to online success than comparisons with male and female genitals is someone who invites? I mean, really. Can we aim a little higher?

Then again, maybe I'm just a boring nice person.

You tell me what this is all about.

Margie represents the third generation to tenacious D marketing company of her family. She is the resident librarian in the Blog-library www.margieclayman.comand is the resident blogger at.

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Why is the way to Blog success bumpy (and what to do About It)

This guest post is find all the answersby Jane van.

Have you ever wondered, "why does it always happen to me?"

I'm sure you. It always happens. When you have a shiny target for your business project, or when you want to start a new company, you face them — challenges.

They are everywhere just waiting to welcome you. You don't like them and you wonder why it always happens that you need to take the hard, bumpy road to success.

But wait. It's not just you. Who travels the path to success for the first time faced with this. The road is never smooth and it is never as expected.

Why is the way bumpy?

There are so many reasons. But the fact that the bumpy does not mean that it is bad. And it is also true that a lot of lessons to learn by traveling on a bumpy road.

Let me discuss some of the causes of a bumpy road.

Usually, when it is your first time rough. Are you in a project for a first time, if you try a new business idea, take a new blogging initiative, and so on, you do not expect a good road.

Your expertise, your ability to the results, your ability to anticipate and develop alternative plans under pressure — all these factors depend on how well you know the ground. If you are in business for more than two years, you already know what to expect. You already have a Plan B for issue X.

But if you have a completely new company, say for example, blogging, you know neither begins nor Plan B issue x And there may be so many Xs throughout. process! All these make the bumpy road. You finally runs as a headless chicken if you are not prepared for it.

But the road can not bumpy just because you take it for the first time. There may be another important reason ...

You can prevent a bumpy road — or at least bring forward so you support the least damage — do you have an action plan.

What kind of business you're in, you must absolutely an action plan. There are so many reasons for the development of one, and one is to avoid at least some of the pits in the bumpy road. Have a good target and action plan will save you a lot of hardship. This way you work smarter, not harder.

I would like to make one thing clear. Here, I am not speaking about those who start a business or a project without a charity or a plan of action, then wander through all the storms and deserts to somewhere that they never wanted to.

Invite such persons the challenges for themselves. They do not have a target, so they don't have a plan either. If they don't know what exactly they want to achieve, they have their own success not defined.

But there are people who are really prepared for what's ahead — who know what to achieve and how to achieve it. However, since they start in a new company, some unexpected events occur. If they happen, they tell the individual that they have to learn a lesson.

So lets say you Plan A take and implement. With it comes Issue 1, which you never managed to anticipate. so you somehow wrestling to manage the chaos, Issue 1 to get resolved, and going with Plan a.

Now the next time you Plan A run in your company for any other purpose, now that you anticipate Issue 1 and include in your plan. Not only that, but you also have a solution for Issue 1. The second time, you will have learned from your previous implementation of Plan a.

If you are not your (possibly forgetful, negligence, or lazy) lesson, you have than to face all the chaos the next time too!

This is a brilliant way to face a problem: expect the worst. You do not need to surround yourself and your company with pessimistic or negative thoughts. But remember that you may have to face something bad, something serious, or something that you absolutely love could drive.

Do you have a plan, you could easily expect that problem.

This is another great thing to do. The obstacles, but don't be hard on yourself. If things didn't turn out as you plan, you don't have to panic. Just stay calm and go with the flow.

Customize yourself and your business to unexpected hard times. You will soon to customize it. Not just develop a comfortable attitude to hard times. If you do this, you will never travel smoothly.

Of course not! If everything perfect from start to finish, you will not be smarter and sharper. You will not learn skills or attitude, and you will not learn about your competition and your capabilities.

You need some hard roads have in the beginning. This will make that you can learn skills needed to overcome the problems. You can learn that you have a tough competitor in you business only after you face a problem.

You could learn what state you only after you have tried to do something beyond your limits and failed.

You could learn that you develop a certain skill should only once you realize that you are unable to comply with a large part of your business.

My Ph. d. supervisor that Aneta Stefanovska used to tell me that life is a school. We learn lessons each day. We all sorts of different lessons, and we always learn. This also applies to our company.

A bumpy road teaches us a lot. Such a road is not always bad. Sometimes his failures in essential to help you in your company to get smarter and sharper, and the next time you prepare for a difficult ride.

When you happen to come across a bumpy road, evaluate. Stay calm, evaluate the causes and see what you can learn from it. Discover ways you can take your blog to success along a road that gradually is smoother.

Jane writes about Blogging Tips, relationships and Self Improvement find all the answerson her blog. She wants to tell you that a blogging action plan shouldyou absolutely.

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Cooperation is the key to blogging success?

This guest post is by Onibalusi YoungPrePro.com's.

I was looking to the sky a few days ago and what I saw made me see how organized even animals can be. I saw about 50 birds flying from a tree to another and by the time they returned, each had a stick in her mouth — they worked on building a House.

This taught me a very important lesson about blogging, and made me realize that every thing around us us to be a better blogger can learn.

If those birds could just work in groups to build their home, then what about our bloggers? Why can't we effectively use the power of collaboration to build of our blogs?

The truth is that the number of new bloggers are trying to build a successful blog single-handedly nowadays is breathtaking. We know that there are more than 152 million blogs in the blogosphere, but we just can't figure out how many successes — as far as we are concerned, the majority of online blogs are failures.

How we then stand out as bloggers? What can we do to encourage our blogs success rates, and our blogs to distinguish it from the 152 million other blogs in the blogosphere? The truth is that we are the answer to this puzzle that a gazillion times have heard, but we've really never considered it as that important.

The key is cooperation.

You've probably heard that you should work together to build a successful blog at least once, but why on earth would you even try? After all, you can praise for building a great blog only claim!

That power could be speed, power, or anything that involved. If you have a look at the case of the 50 birds that I talked about, you'll notice how easy these birds can build what House they want to build in a much shorter timeframe than if the work was done by one of them alone.

It would be difficult for you to kick start your blog, but the strength, cooperation and wisdom of 50 extra bloggers can not be compared. I know that it is almost impossible to get that many bloggers to you, to support, especially if you are very new. But the truth is that you don't need 50 bloggers to support you to build a successful blog — three bloggers work with you to the success of your blog will be a whole lot of difference.

A lot of people will have told you, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but do you know that you can build a great reputation in a matter of years with the right tactics?

By linking to the appropriate groups bloggers at the right time, you can easily build a successful blog without moving an inch. Sometimes all you need just the adoption of a successful blogger in your niche. Even if you're not the approval of an A-list blogger, get the approval of two or three bloggers on the same level if you have a whole lot of difference it will make.

The funny thing about getting people to support you is that you don't need a hundred people to support you before you succeed. You only need one or two targeted people.

We human beings are created in such a way that we can easily be influenced by things and people around us, and this to your advantage can use. If you can get the support and approval of two to three other bloggers in your niche, you can easily use that if social proof to get more bloggers to support you, and that approval of these two bloggers can mean the difference between readers think you're cool, or that you don't know what you're talking

When people hear about collaborating with other bloggers in their niche, is the first thing that they try to send an e-mail to a few bloggers asking them as friends or ask the blogger to establish a regular link exchange campaign with them. If that is what you are about to do, then you might as well forget it. Below are a few ways that you with other bloggers in your niche can work together.

We bloggers are one of the smartest people (okay, I'm a blogger and I'm baised — but my point is that we also have common sense), so we take note, when people do something for us.

If you send me a link to tell you today, and you tell me to tweet your post tomorrow, and you tell me to review your product next week, but I have not seen that you share my messages or do me a favor in the past two months, do you think I will do that for you? The next thing I will tell you is, "no, thanks, that is a great offer but I don't think it will work with my audience" — even if it will. But when you are "always" spreading the word about me and to tell people how great I am, even if I have a million followers and you only have one, I will like to spread the word to my followers about you.

When was the last time you sent an email to a blogger to thank them for their blog post? Just try to do it once or twice, and you'll notice that you will be able to request the assistance of that favorite blogger of yours.

We bloggers like it when people say good things about us. We like to be appreciated, and some of us even like to be flattered. Give us what we want will only bring you on our radars.

I'm not trying to say that you must email a blogger and tell him or her that they start your god — that will only increase of an additional flag and put you on the "Beware of list" for that blogger. The best thing to do is a simple and polite email, maybe Mark interesting points in one of their articles to Show the blogger that you really read their messages to send.

Although there are media such as Twitter and Facebook, I still think the best medium to use for this kind of contact is email. I know that Twitter might be the easiest way to get in touch with your favorite blogger, but that is also its weakness. A lot of people, but very few people use email thank you to send messages to bloggers (or at least little in comparison with Twitter). The end result is that sometimes before the blogger can take to your e-mail address, but because you don't really need a response, it's okay. And it's enough to make the blogger to notice you.

Which birds were helping each other.

We must do the same as a blogger.

You won't go far by trying to exploit your fellow bloggers for attention, or links, or anything else, so don't even try to go that route. It might work in the beginning, but it will end up biting you.

The best way to succeed in your efforts as a blogger does everything that you really do. When you make your efforts not only to contribute value to your readers, but also to your fellow bloggers focus, you will eventually get great results for it.

Onibalusi Bamidele is the founder of YoungPrePro.com, a blog where he teaches people How to write for traffic and money. Get his free eCourse 7 series on how to write a successful Online company to build

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