The key to earning lots of money is to really care about the work you are doing. Everyone has a special area of interest and expertise to write about. Anyone can publish an information product. In fact, publishing a digital book is the single most profitable product you should consider marketing on-line.
I live in Eugene Oregon, known as the track capital of the United States. In the 60s & 70s I was a long distance runner. I spent most of my weekends traveling to compete in foot races. I enjoyed the time invested.
I needed to acquire information about the various footraces in order to choose which races to put on my calendar. I spent a year collecting information and developing relationships with the race directors & promoters.
Here are a few of the details I wanted to know in order to plan my racing calendar.
- The race dates and the fees required.
- The specific city and location for each race
- The purpose for the race
- Where the entry fees go
- The specific race rules and details,
- Age groups and other entry requirements
- Expected weather and temperatures expected
- The past winning times.
- The race sponsors
- How to get to the race site
- Entry requirements
I figured if I saw a need for this information, others would too. Later I self published a ink and paper book entitled "The Northwest Runners Guide" This book offered complete information about every race held in within a day's drive in the Northwest.
This was my first self-published information product. My father and I hit the road placing the book in as many sports and bookstores as possible. When we first started we had placed our first 500 books in about 35 stores throughout the Northwest.
However we soon started getting calls from all over from stores all over the Northwest wanting to offer the book in their stores. Soon the book started selling well.
The book sold well because the information was timely and very specific, and because there was nothing else like it was on the market. I could have sold it at almost any price.
I published my information book in 1983 the year that IBM introduced the personal PC. It was one of the first information products produced and updated on computer. It was ahead of its time.
This whole project required thousands of hours and took over a year to produce. The sad part was it was already out of date the day it was published.
The cost to print the books in such small quantities was over $1. I sold the book directly to runners for $5 at races, this paid for my travel. That's an 80% profit.
The bookstores wanted 40% to 60% profit just to sell it and they didn't pay me for at least 90 days. I didn't make much from the bookstores because of the costs and labor required to print the physical book. I was lucky to earn a dollar a copy in profit.
If I had considered how much time would be required to prepare the database and keep it updated on ink & paper I might have had second thoughts. If I hadn't owned my own print shop or I could have never afforded to self publish and market it in the first place.
I discontinued marketing the book after a year because I found it impossible to keep all the information up to date or to make a profit. I had developed a great product with a dedicated niche market yet I couldn't sell the product at a reasonable profit. Had the Internet been available to the public at large at that time I could have offered an electronic book.
I give you this project as an example of a perfect Internet information product. You can develop your own information product and market it profitably on-line.
THE ADVANTAGES OF PUBLISHING AN E- BOOK
Compared to traditional hard copy publishing, the cost of e-book publishing is almost nothing! Electronic books can be updated as often as needed without accruing additional costs.
The advantages of self-publishing electronic books include:
- NO office to rent
- NO printing costs
- NO delivery costs.
- NO staffing costs
- NO warehousing
- NO inventory tracking
- No geographic limits.
- NO production or distribution costs!
- NO bookstore product returns
- NO damaged returns
- NO shipping costs
- NO return costs
Delivering your information product electronically over the Internet eliminates all of the problems I encountered entirely!
Publishing an electronic e-book is easy to accomplish and it costs less than you would think. Just about anyone can do it. All one needs to do is research the material, purchase software, and set up an automatic on-line ordering and delivery system.
Your info product can always be up to date. You can revise your electronic book in a few minutes without incurring any additional hard costs.
In next week's newsletter I will review an inexpensive software product you can use to create and protect your information product. I'll explain how you can automate the process of creating your own electronic book. It's as easy as building a web site and it's easier than you think.