How To Write And Sell E book
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274-7851
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
Conveting you book to an E book should be the first thing a writer have at the mind there are variou sight where you can publish you E book like publt.com, amazon.com and there are so many, many site.
Can you really make money writing and selling ebooks? This ebook expert says YES!. Ellen, has created a successful business with a five figure income in her first year, and three years later she was making a six figure income all with ebooks.
She says that creating a successful ebook is about more than having a great idea. You have to have a plan and an understanding of how the business works.
It became apparent that there was no lack of people that wanted to write ebooks, but they didn’t understand the process.
So in this interview, you’ll hear a process along with the knowledge on how pick the right topic, and make your ebook a winning success.
You’ll Also Hear…
• How to make money with an ebook • How many pages it should be • How much to charge for your ebook • What types of services you need on your website • Why the title is so important • Mistakes people make when starting an ebook. • What you need to get started
You don’t have to be an expert to write an ebook. In this interview you’ll hear how to do just that. Go to Ellen’s site at the link below for more great advice and a link to her blog. This interview is 55 minutes. Go to www.KillerEbookCoach.com for more information.
Are you ready to write your first e-book? If so, go get a free report at www.KillerEbookCoach.com. That’s www.KillerEbookCoach.com.
Ellen: I made $40,000 my first year, $67,000 my second year, and a $120,000 by my third year. So, I thought, “It’s just not that hard, but nobody’s giving people a process, a system where they can start from the beginning and build this thing in a way that makes sense.” So, then I created my Ebook Profit Marketing Secrets course.
Ginnie: What got you interested in ebooks?
Ellen: I’ve always been a writer all my life, and then I used to be a copy editor for some technical magazines and I worked in publicity. I’ve been a writer for magazines, and I’ve always been a writer. I’ve always just been involved in that.
I always knew someday that I wanted to write a book, and then, well a whole series of things happened. I was in the music business for twenty years. I’m a Grammy nominated song writer, and it just got to the point where it was just – I wasn’t making a lot of money. I was winning a lot of awards, and my parents were helping me, and then they both passed away within eleven months of each other.
There I was, and I had no skills. I had been in the business for twenty years, and so my husband and I fixed the house that we inherited and sold it, and made quite a bit of money on that. Then, we moved down to San Diego where I thought maybe I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
In the meantime, we bought a condo and that was just at the start of the real estate boom. So, we started making really good money in real estate between selling our house and then that one went up. So, we started buying, fixing and selling houses.
What happened was that we were moving every six months. It was really stressful, and I wasn’t passionate about it. I was making really good money, but I wasn’t passionate.
I was around forty, and I thought, “God, I’ve got to find something to do that I’m going to be passionate and make money at. This is just ridiculous. Everything I’d always done when I was younger, I never made any money, when I was doing what I wanted to do.
So, I got online, and I was just looking around, and I found ebooks. I said, “My god, this is perfect. Ebooks just sounds great. I’m going to write an ebook.” The first ebook I wrote was The Moving Cure, How to Organize Your Move to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity.
Ginnie: How long ago was this?
Ellen: This was about four or five years ago, five years ago I think. So, then, what happened though was first of all, it was very stressful. It wasn’t as easy as they were saying it was. I started looking around for an ebook coach, and there weren’t any.
So, I hired a regular coach, and I was really unhappy with the process. It was like a band-aid. It was you make the mistake and then they tell you what you’re doing wrong. That was very inefficient and expensive.
So, then, you’re going, “Should I write a book? Should I write an ebook? Do I do this? Do I do that?” It was just really stressful.
After I wrote the ebook, I put it up and I didn’t make any money for two years. I made all kinds of mistakes on it, but in the meantime, I had a vision in my mind of how an ebook could be written a much better way than the way I learned how to write.
So, I decided that I was going to become the ebook coach. I was actually taking publicity courses at that time, and the group was kind of saying, “You should be the moving doctor.” I said, “I don’t think so. I don’t want to spend my life talking about moving.” I was just doing that because I thought it could help me get more real estate investors to want to work with me, but it wasn’t like I had this big passion about it or anything.
I love books. I love ebooks. I’ve always loved writing, and so I thought this was a really good fit. I looked around and I saw there really weren’t any, and there certainly weren’t any women, and there weren’t any who came from those technical background or a business background or marketing background.
So, I created the quick start three day ebook authoring workshop, and I started teaching it. It turned people who couldn’t write, people who have tried to write books for all their lives, for five years, for three years, whatever, and teaches them a process where they actually do it in 72 hours or less, and it works.
From there, then it was like, “Okay, well great. They’ve written it. Well, now how do they market it?” So, I spent about sixty grand studying with a lot of the big guys online, and what I found was everybody had a specialty.
You go over here and learn teleseminars, over there and learn Google, and over here and learn affiliates and all that, but again, I didn’t see anybody putting a process together that was easy for people to use who didn’t come from an internet marketing background or technical background, who could get online and actually start making money.
I made like $40,000 my first year, $67,000 my second year, and $120,000 for my third year. So, I thought, “It’s just not that hard, but nobody is giving people a process, a system, where they can start from the beginning and build this thing in a way that makes sense.” Then, I created my Ebook Profit Marketing Secrets course.
Ginnie: The timing of it being at the right time at the right place, would you attribute a lot of your success to that?
Ellen: No, I think that no matter what niche you go into – yeah, if somebody wants to become an ebook coach right now, yeah, it would be harder for them than it was for me. I thought that everybody knew ebooks were the way to go five years ago. It’s shocking to me that only now is it suddenly big. I thought it was becoming big all along.
You’ve got to have positions first, and what I do is I teach people how to do the research to see whether what their vision is is really reasonable or a smart way to go down this road on something that could just be a big waste of time.
Ginnie: Is the first step generally somebody that has an idea for an ebook or just decides they want to write an ebook and want you to help you come up with an idea?
Ellen: It depends. Some people come with me, and they’re very clear about what they want to do. Other people come and they have no idea. They just know they want to write ebooks or they want to make a six figure income online.
Ginnie: They think just by writing an ebook and having it published, that if you build it, they will come.
Ellen: Unfortunately, yeah, people think if they’re excited about an idea, everybody else will be. That’s not always the case.
Ginnie: What’s different about you?
Ellen: There are a few things that are different about me. Like I said, the first thing is that I created this process, so people will say, “Yeah, I can teach you how. Here’s a book that I wrote. Read my book.” What I found was I didn’t learn very well from books.
So, I created a coaching process instead, and so in my coaching process, there will be two instructional calls usually a Tuesday night and a Thursday night when I do the live workshops. We go over finding your passion, finding your skill set, and then seeing where they overlap because once you start writing and you start getting into a niche – that’s the other thing.
It’s not just writing an ebook. It’s getting into a whole niche and creating a business is where you generally make money. So, we do that.
Then, we do finding your target market. On Thursday, we do how to write a great title because if you don’t have a great title, it doesn’t matter. You can have great information and you’re not going to sell a lot of ebooks or books. It’s no different than books.
Then, learning the process, and what we do is we get together on Friday morning, and everybody gets the chance to go around the room and throw out their title, and get help where they’re stuck.
Then, they have three days to write the ebook where I’m on call like a doctor. To me, that’s really where it’s totally different because I’m there, and generally what happens is people get stuck and then just try to figure it out by themselves. They can’t, and they give up.
So, in my process, that doesn’t happen. Now, if they do the home study version, for some people, they like working on their own, and they don’t want to do it in three days. They can set it up in the three day process just like we do live, or they can do it over a longer period of time because I’ve taught them the process. So, they can just map it out how every many days they want to take to do it.
Then, there are other ways for them to get access to me if they get stuck or if they feel they need more, but that’s really the big difference.
The other difference is just me. My background is writing. I was a copy editor. I’ve been a writer all my life. Being a Grammy nominated song writer is great training for writing titles and chapter headings, and what my clients tell me is just that I have a really clear cut to the chase way of teaching this to people where it’s easy for them to understand.
A lot of times, they’ve gone to other people, and sometimes big people, and still weren’t able to do it. Sometimes, it’s having the right connection with a person. Sometimes, people will go to somebody where their story is completely different from the person, so they’re not a good fit. They don’t really understand where that person’s coming from. Sometimes, it’s the fact like I said I have no technical background, no business background, no marketing background.
So, people, like in the creative arts, which is where I come from, are very comfortable with me because they know that I did and they can too because I did it, and not having that background. Whereas, if somebody else who has that background may be inpatient with them, they may have a harder time with them. There are all kinds of reasons.
Ginnie: It sounds like that part of the process really is holding people’s hands, which is really a lot of times what you need is just that support and that somebody to go to and keep you on track.
Ellen: I think it’s more than that though because the home study works, too. So, some people need more, some people don’t need more. Ginnie: You can Sell your program either way, it sounds. Your listening to an interview found on www.hardtofindseminars.com
Ellen: They have to decide whether they really want someone there in real time to hold their hand, or whether they think they can do it on their own.
Ginnie: So, going back through the process, somebody thinks, “Okay, I want to write a book on gardening because I love to garden,” you would take another step and say, “Well, is it growing orchids? Is it growing roses?” You would get a little more specialized because the more you can get specific and narrow, the better chance you’ll have.
Ellen: Sometimes. You really have to look at the niche. If you go and you do the keyword searches and you look at the niche, and there’s just aren’t enough people that are look for just orchids, then you might need more than orchids. Sometimes, you need more than that. Sometimes, it’s the opposite.
If somebody looks up healing, it’s huge. Then, it’s like, “Well, healing is so enormous, what kind of healing?” Then, you might want to pare it down. So, it really just depends on the niche.
Ginnie: Where does one go to find out this keyword search as to how many people are looking for orchids?
Ellen: Well, there are a lot of ways to figure that out. The one that used to be really great was Overture. I don’t know why, but Yahoo came along and took it away, so that was the one.
Now, people generally use FreeKeyword.WordTracker.com. That’s http://Freekeyword.wordtracker.com. The difference between those two is Overture would tell you the exact number of hits. The Free Keyword one, Perry Marshall who is the Google genius says we don’t really know what they’re tracking, but it’s more a comparison to other things.
So, in other words, if you’re looking up “love” which is huge, and then you look up “Gardening orchids,” and love is twenty million, and orchids is 24,000, you’re just getting sort of a comparison.
You have to look at what’s out there and how many people are looking for that particular thing. Then, you have to make a judgment call based on that compared to other things that are out there.
Then, the second thing is I’ll have people write me and say, “I want to write about depression, but there’s just way too many people out there. It’s saturated.” Well, what I always tell people is it’s deeper than that. You have to look at, “Okay, who is out there?” What are they offering?
You’ve got to really look at what they offer, and then you have to say to yourself, “Well, do I have a vision that’s different from everything that’s out there.” If you have a vision that’s different – a perfect example which I love, I don’t know where I originally heard this, but it was Domino’s Pizza. There were plenty of pizza places before Domino’s came along, but what happened was somebody had the idea to think, “This really sucks that when I order a pizza and I have it delivered to my house, it’s usually cold when it gets here. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have hot pizza delivered? What if we gave a guarantee where if they didn’t get it in thirty minutes, it was free?” The pizza tasted really good.
Then, they were able to implement that. They were able to dominate the market because they had a better idea.
Ginnie: It’s a parallel because when you’re going to be doing an ebook, you have to understand marketing.
Ellen: Not really (inaudible) because that’s really what you do when you’re doing an ebook, too. It’s like what else is out there? If you’re going to write the same ebook that’s already been written, why write it?
Ginnie: Right, and again though, I think what I’m trying to say is we’re talking about the marketing of the ebook. So, basically, it’s broken down to different levels. One is actually coming up with the idea for the ebook, correct?
Ellen: Right.
Ginnie: And, part of that is how you’re going to market it, so it goes hand in hand. Ellen: Right, and that’s huge. What most people don’t understand is you really need to do some marketing research before you write your ebook. Otherwise, you could just spending all this time and especially if people aren’t using my process, and they’re spending a month or two months or whatever, writing it, and then they get it out there. Then, it sits on their site, and they go, “I don’t understand nobody’s buying it. I thought it was such a great idea.”
You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Ginnie: Well, is there money to be made writing ebooks? You said it took you maybe several years.
Ellen: Yes, because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wrote an ebook on a subject where there’s a lot of free information. So, people were not willing to pay for that. I didn’t do the research because I was like everybody else when I started.
Ginnie: The price ranges.
Ellen: Generally, it’s $27 to $47, but if you’re in an area where people can make a lot of money like real estate or stock market, I’ve seen people sell them for $297, and make half a million dollars.
Ginnie: How is it the same as publishing a book, or is it totally different?
Ellen: It’s totally different because you can do it and get it right up, and start selling the same day. The whole thing about a book is number one, you’ve got to pay to have it printed. So, right away, you’re in for a lot of money right there. Then, with technology making things so fast, it’s easy to get stuck with a garage full of books. You can change them now. You’ve got to dump them and do a whole new run.
Generally, people wait for a publisher. That’s if you can even get one, and then once you get one, you’re lucky to make a dollar per book. Online, you charge $27 and 95% of that is pure profit. Once you’ve got a shopping cart and an affiliate program, if you really want to be serious about this, a domain name, and pay for your hosting after that, it’s pure profit. Plus, even people who are writing books – I’ve seen this work a couple of ways. I have a colleague who wrote a book. Jason Noman wrote Conversations of Millionaires with Mike Litman, and what they did is they didn’t have any money to print books. So, they put it online, and they started selling it for nine dollars. They did that because they figured if they couldn’t sell it for nine dollars, then they couldn’t sell it for $27 or $47.
So, they did that first. It did really well, and then they took the money they made to pay for the printing. So, that was one thing. Then, another example is Stephanie Frank. She wrote a book called The Accidental Millionaire. Then, she decided to put it online, and she doubled her sales because now she was making as much online as she was making offline. Only now, she was making way more profits.
So, I always tell everybody they should start with an ebook, and if they have a book, they should still put it online.
Ginnie: Who’s going to find it? Who’s going to come to it? How am I going to sell books there?
Ellen: Nobody is going to find it if that’s all you do, and unfortunately, that’s a lot of what people do. Then, they come to me and they go, “I don’t understand. My ebook isn’t selling.”
Ginnie: So, it’s not just having a great written ebook, and putting a price tag on it.
Ellen: No, of course not. People have to know that you exist, number one, and number two, as I said, a title is huge. Titles are huge. It’s always important, but even more important, the more saturated your market is because the truth is if you come up with a great title and you come up with a great marketing plan, you can do well in any market. How many books are there on dieting? A million, but these two ex-models came out with Skinny Bitch, and it was huge.
Ginnie: Talk a little bit about how you put together a marketing plan for your ebook.
Ellen: Well, there are a lot of things that you can do. It’s just deciding, number one, what you want to do, and that comes back to what your skills are and what your passions are. There are people who don’t want to deal with technology. So, they don’t want to get into video or podcasting. They just want to stick to the writing because writing you can do articles and blogs and you can have ezine ads in other people’s targeted newsletters.
You always want to grow your own list because then you have your fans and you have built in buyers everytime you do something new, and then you have email and you have newsletters.
Ginnie: It sounds overwhelming to me. I really don’t know where I would start.
Ellen: Right, well, that’s why my Ebook Problem Marketing. I didn’t do this to push my course, but that’s why I created it the way I did because it’s a step by step where we start at the beginning, and you have an action plan. You just follow it step by step, and that’s exactly the reason.
When I do individual coaching, sometimes people will say, “Well, I don’t really want to talk about joint ventures right now. I’m just really focused on doing teleseminars,” and then I’ll change the lessons around as to which one we do first, not first. It might be seventh or eighth or ninth, but it always starts with number one, finding your unique selling position. That’s always number one. That’s the first thing you need to do is know what makes you unique, what makes you special, why would people come to you instead of somebody else, why would they come to you now.
Think about it. If you were in pain, would you go to an acupuncturist? Would you go to a chiropractor? Would you go to an osteopath? Would you go to a massage? There’s a lot of massage therapists. There’s a lot of different options.
So, you have to tell people why they should come to you. Then, you have to know what’s out there because people will come to you and say, “Well, how come your product is more expensive than all these other ones?” Well, because I just didn’t find those worked really well for most people.
So, that’s the reason, but you have to know what’s out there. Otherwise, you can’t give an intelligent answer Once you do that, it’s putting up a blog or putting up a website or both. Learning how to create a funnel. If you’re going to have people coming to you and you want to be more than a one trip pony, what a lot of people use the ebook for is not just to make money, but actually to brand themselves and to give themselves credibility.
Think about it. If you’re going to make $27 on a book, but you’re going to make five grand on a coaching program, chances are you’re going to make more money on your coaching program.
So, your ebook is really a way to upsell people to other things, but having said that, there are people who get online. I have one client who is now my affiliate manager actually, and she is an actress. She didn’t want to have anything where she had to be anywhere or do coaching or anything where she had to commit to a time. So, her business is totally passive.
There are people who want to do that. So, they just sell digital products. It generally takes people longer to do that, unless they’re willing to spend some money and do pay per click which you can get up in fifteen minutes. Again, I don’t recommend people do that unless they either go through my program or study with Perry and really learn how to do it the right way.
So, it is overwhelming for people when they don’t know what to do, and that’s why getting a coach can make the difference. Unfortunately, there are a lot of coaches out there that charge a lot of money, and they still don’t do the job.
Are you ready to write your first ebook? If so, go get a free report at www.KillerEbookCoach.com. That’s www.KillerEbookCoach.com.
Ginnie: So, having a free ebook that’s actually a really good way to market your other services.
Ellen: Yeah, I started with a free ebook. I gave away over 3,000 ebooks (inaudible) for offering success. Today, I sell it. I also give it away with my workshop, but in the beginning, I just gave it away, and then I upsold people to a two part teleseminar which was two ninety minute teleseminars, and that was free also. Then, what I did is I just sold the
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII
audio and transcripts, then I upsold people from that to my first workshop.The reason you do that is so that people get to experience you. So, they really get that you know your stuff, number one, and number two, they get to see whether they connect with you or not.
When people get to see that, it’s a lot easier for them to study with you than to think about parting with money when they know nothing about you.
So, a lot of times people are either desperate or in a hurry to make money, and they don’t understand that to build a rapport with a customer is way more important in the beginning.
Ginnie: I remember my husband got shingles, so he was looking for a book on shingles and he found one and ordered it, and guess what? He didn’t get it. The guy was a shyster and because of the relationship we had our company, they gave him his money back. That is one of the problems.
Ellen: Yes.
Ginnie: Also, isn’t there a lot of outsourcing? In other words, they don’t write the ebooks, but it looks like their writing. They’re having ghostwriters.
Ellen: Yes.
Ginnie: They may be people that live in other countries and don’t even really speak the language. They’re paying them thirty dollars to write an eighty page ebook.
Ellen: Right, and I had a situation like that where I was on a mastermind course call, and somebody said, “I’m looking for a book on…” I don’t remember what it was, and I had just read one by somebody, and I had recommended it. The guy who was leading the group said, “Oh, I’d be careful with that because he doesn’t write all of them himself. So, the quality is not the same on all of them.”
So, that’s a risk that you run when you have other people do it for you. The other thing is what I don’t understand if you’re an expert in somebody, why would you hire somebody who is not an expert in the thing you’re an expert in?
So, the only reason I would use a ghostwriter is if I already had all the information and said, “Here’s the information. Just turn it into a book now.” That sort of thing, but that’s one of the reasons to learn how to write them quickly yourself because number one, it’s just not that hard, and number two, it does give you more credibility than having other people write them for you in my opinion.
Ginnie: So, you coach, but you love to write, you said. Do you still write ebooks?
Ellen: Oh, yes.
Ginnie: Is it about coaching, or is it a spectrum of topics?
Ellen: No, right now, mine are pretty much about writing and marketing ebooks. I’m actually getting ready to write one that’s a little more consumer oriented. It’s still about writing ebooks.
I remember when I first got on the internet though, I remember there was a free ebook going around from Yanik Silver on how to write emails and it was a big one. It was very impressive, and it was in the early days. I’m sure he got a lot of mileage out of that, but that was a good one. I don’t know what it’s called, but it was on writing emails.
Ginnie: How much of social networking is involved in marketing your ebook?
Ellen: Oh, for me, now, it’s at the top of my list.
Ginnie: How does that work?
Ellen: It’s really actually an interesting media because it’s so funny watching these people, especially guys who learn sort of direct hard core marketing now trying to do social marketing, and sometimes really getting scolded for it because they aren’t doing it right because they’ve been doing the other kind so long that it’s hard for them to stop bragging about themselves.The thing about Facebook and Twitter which are the ones that I generally use are you want to have a mix because what it says is, “What are you doing right now?” Well, so you’re going to tell people what you’re doing, but there’s a lot of other things that you can do on Facebook and Twitter.
So, what you want to do is you want to have a mix between what you’re doing and then also highlighting other people and what they’re doing, responding to what they’re doing. It’s like going to a networking event without going. It’s like instead you create these relationships online.
Ginnie: You use that to actually promote your ebook.
Ellen: You can use it to be promoting an ebook, but what I do is I just use it to promote me, period, most of the time. In other words, what I much rather have people do is go read my blog. That’s actually as opposed to right now because I’m in the middle of doing a series on the nine biggest marketing mistakes people make and I’ve been sending it out in email.
So, it says, “Ellen is posting Ebook Marketing Mistake number two, don’t shoot in the dark, do the research first.” That’s the last one I posted three hours ago.
In other words, it’s like I’m giving people free information, and I’m also telling them what I’m doing, and I also responded to somebody’s comments earlier today something somebody said that something in me, so I responded to it. There are a lot of ways that you can connect with people.
Ginnie: There’s always good news bad news especially when it comes to technology and it’s so great to put so much information out there, but of course, there’s got to be the issues of copywriting and people cutting and pasting and just stealing your material right and left. How do you protect yourself?
Ellen: Well, I don’t worry about it, number one. I know that again, according to Armind, who has so much money to do the research and everything. He practically created a product that was that what he’s saying is it’s now a billion dollar industry where people steal your stuff. If people are stealing my stuff, I’m not happy about it, but I’m hoping that it’s viral marketing. Then, of course, if I do something that’s very proprietary, for instance, I wrote a book with Jim Edwards and that ebook has protection on it. So, if somebody buys that ebook, they’ve got to jump through hoops. They can only download it for so long, and then if they want to come back, we’d have to get their email and their receipt and all that.
So, if I’m doing something that I know that I don’t want people to steal, of course, I protect it. I protect everything I do, no. A lot of the information that you give is free, and you do that so people can see what you do and that you’re a giver and that you understand what your process is and what you’re doing.
I do a monthly call the first Monday of the month. It’s just a Q&A that I do, and people can find it on Facebook. The last one I did was an hour and a half, and then somebody called me after and said, “I can really tell you that you give.” I’d stay on until everybody’s questions are answered.
Now, if I only get three questions and it only takes me fifteen minutes it’s because people didn’t ask a question, but if people are there and they’re taking their time to ask me, I’m going to answer them.
So, it’s another way that people get to see, and then they say, “Oh, well, she gives this much for free. My god, what am I going to get when I actually take the course.” That’s true. My marketing course has a 675 page. It took me seven months to compile it all. It’s huge because I really want people to have the information and not have to spend an arm and a leg to get it. I’d rather make the money with people after they write the ebook. I don’t want people to just take my course, spend that money and then they’re done with me.
What I want people to do is write their ebooks and then they’re my clients, and then they come on and we start becoming JV partners, and if their subject makes sense to me, I’ll have them on a call to my list, or we’ll promote whatever it is they’re promoting.
Ginnie: I like that idea. It’s a mentorship program to a degree.
Ellen: Yes, absolutely. Also, I’m creating an ebook store, and it’s not up yet. We’re just going into beta testing right now, but the whole idea being that the ebooks will be read and they will be high quality, and it will have my seal of approval behind it. There will be a lot more too it as well.
But, then the point is again to make money for the people who have come to me, and help them not just teach them how to write an ebook and then send them out into the wilderness.
For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising, and copywriting, go to Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Ginnie: So, explain a little bit the difference between working with somebody with a joint venture and having an affiliate program with someone. How do those work?
Ellen: I get asked that a lot. The difference is one is active and one is passive generally speaking, but they overlap. So, what I mean by that is if somebody’s an affiliate, what that means is they expect to go to your site or get an email from you on something that you’re promoting, get an email, get an affiliate link, and just either send it to their list, make a video.
They’re going to market on their own, and they’re going to have a link. They’re going to make fifty percent, generally or thirty percent if it’s a live workshop usually, and that’s it. That’s the relationship.
A joint venture is when you create something with somebody, whether it’s creating a teleseminar where they come on my call or I can go on their call and then we’re selling my product or their product to each other’s list, or maybe we’re creating a product together. I did a joint venture with Terry Romaine who was my webmaster. We decided we were better off as friends, and we made an ebook, (inaudible) audio, and people can learn a whole bunch of low and no cost ways to protect their ebooks, but we did that as a joint venture. We did it together.
Ginnie: But, when you’re starting out, where do you get the momentum? How do you start building this list?
Ellen: But, when you’re starting out now, it’s a lot easier because we didn’t really have blogs when I started. We didn’t have video. We didn’t have podcasting. We didn’t have Facebook. We didn’t have any of this. So, I started mine as I said by giving away a free ebook, and then doing free teleseminars and then upselling people from there.
What I found was being a Grammy nominated song writer and struggling for years and not making any money and winning lots of awards was I really understood the whole thing my husband always says is unrewarded genius.
If you do not become an internet marketer, you will not sell your stuff, and if you do not sell your stuff, nobody will hear it.
Ginnie: You’re self taught in terms of you learned as you went along the business.
Ellen: Yes, I definitely learned from the school of hard knocks, let me tell you.
Ginnie: Can you give us another piece of advice in terms of what not to do?
Ellen: Sure, people told me this in the beginning, but things can still happen where like for me a perfect storm happened once where even though they say, when things are going good, don’t back off, you want to keep that cash flow coming. I had a situation where I thought I was doing that, but I created a new teleseminar, and I didn’t want to do the one that I knew my tried and true one, and I didn’t test the name of it, and people didn’t respond to it, and all of a sudden, I had a situation where I went from $10,000 a month to $1,500 a month for three months, and I almost lost my business.
There’s a little bit of investment, but you have to think about it this way. If you were to start a brick and mortar business, it would cost you thousands and thousands. It could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, I just laugh when people say, “You have to get an ebook cover, and you have to get a posting.” It’s such an incredibly small investment.
Even if somebody studies with me, whether they do a home study or a regular course, again, compared to what it would be with something else, there’s not that big of a deal.
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII
Ginnie: You’re right, and that’s very well put, and that’s something to consider. I think part of what happens with a lot of us on the web is we’re used to getting everything for free.
Ellen: That’s one of the myths. Everything is not free. There’s a lot of free information, but then what it comes down to at some point, you have to say, “Okay, I’ve gotten all the free stuff. Now, I’m serious.” Then, you have to pay for your education. You’re going to pay one way or another.
People can either pay by working with a good coach, or they can pay by making horrible mistakes and learning the hard way, but one of the things I wanted to say, and a lot of people go to One Shopping Cart, and I use One Shopping Cart. I have a link for that, but a lot of people when they’re first starting out don’t want to spend that amount of money. So, there’s another one.
My husband starting with that one,and that one is just a one time deal. I think it’s $49 and you’re on your way. The reason I don’t love it is I believe that people should start an affiliate program right away, and almost everybody I talk to when they’re first starting goes, “Oh, I’m not ready for an affiliate program.” What happens if the first or second or third or fifth person who buys your ebook loves it so much and wants to be an affiliate and you don’t have a program?
You’re going to get going a lot faster when you have a program and you have people who want to promote you. So, again, people can be really penny wise and pound foolish getting started with this stuff, but it’s a lot better, I think, if you’re going to do it, do it right.
Ginnie: There’s a learning curve, too. Certainly I can edit audio with Garage Band that comes right on my MacIntosh, but when I’m really serious about this I’m going to get Sound Edit Pro. It’s the difference of the tools and how much you can do with it.
Ellen: That’s very different when I say checkout cart at One Shopping Cart. Let’s say I can buy a Honda or I can buy a Mercedes because I want to race around this track and I need a high performance car, but I’m going to start with a Honda. They’re both cars. One may be more high powered, but they’re both cars.
The shopping cart has an affiliate program, checkout cart doesn’t, and that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s not about waiting until you’re better because while you’re waiting to get better, you’re missing out on people who can help you because if you sell one ebook yourself, and you make ten bucks, let’s say – we’ll say $27 bucks, but you know have got five affiliates marketing you because you started your affiliate program right away, and now each of them sell an ebook at $27. They’re making $27 times five, that’s $135. You divide it by two, you get half of that. You make an extra $67. You made only $27 on your own.
My inbox now or when I go to Facebook, there’s all these videos. Do I have time to sit and watch them?
Ginnie: No.
Ellen: Do you know what I mean? For some people, it might be great, but the truth is if I can read something really quick, I’ll read it. Whereas, if I have to sit and stop and watch this thing, a lot of times, I’m not going to watch it. So, the truth is, I think there’s room for everything. I think some people are out with their iPods and want podcasting. Some people want video.
What it’s coming to is the idea that information be at our fingertips however we want to consume it, and that we can consume it on our own time.
Ginnie: If you were going to tell somebody who said, “I’m listening to this. This is exciting. I want to do this.” (Inaudible) We’ll get your website out there, and all the things. What are three things that you would advise somebody in how to get started writing an ebook?
Ellen: Like I said, I would number one, do the research. That’s the most important thing. Number two, come up with a really great title. Number three, this is pretty broad, but learn how to market, and know that you have to be your marketer. You can not depend on somebody else because I get a lot of people who send me emails, and they’ll say to me something like, “I’ve got this great ebook. I know everybody is going to love it. I’ll be happy to give you fifty percent to market it for me.”
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274-7851
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at 21 http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
Now, just think, like I don’t have enough to do. I’m going to now stop what I’m doing, and market all these people. And, I’m going to get, again, as I was saying before, I’m going to get fifty percent of one, and they’re the ones who are going to make all the money. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m not going to do that.
I teach people how to write ebooks in several different ways. One is the home study course. One is the three day workshop, and the other one is one on one. I’ve had people come to me where they’ve tried. They’ve done the book. They’ve done everything, and it’s like going on a road, and getting off on a side road, and they just keep getting farther and farther away from where they’re trying to go. So, they do it with me one on one.
We do like eight days in a row, and we just knock it out in eight business days, Monday through Friday and then three days next week, and it’s done. The other thing is books are so overwhelming to people because you hear people say, “Oh, it took me years to write my book.” People think writing a book is like really hard.
So, a lot of times when they come to me and they’re thinking about this, a lot of them are too scared to move forward because they think it’s really hard. That’s number one.
Number two, it doesn’t matter how many times I say to them, “We’re going to go over finding your path and your skill set and find your topic,” they go, “I feel like I have to have my topic before I can take the workshop.”
Ginnie: That would sort of make sense to me, but I understand how you’re approaching it.
Ellen: If you wait, you can make that the thing that stops you forever. If I had waited until I knew what I was going to write about, I never would have written The Moving Cure. That was the one that I learned on.
Ginnie: Just get in there and just do it.
Ellen: Exactly, get in there and do it, learn the process and don’t worry if the first one isn’t your masterpiece of your life. It’s like just learning how to
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
do it, and so many times people get caught up in the perfectionism of the whole thing.
Friends if you like kindly comment below the post do share your response. thanks for reading:)
for more info vivit www.HardToFindSeminar.com
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
Conveting you book to an E book should be the first thing a writer have at the mind there are variou sight where you can publish you E book like publt.com, amazon.com and there are so many, many site.
Can you really make money writing and selling ebooks? This ebook expert says YES!. Ellen, has created a successful business with a five figure income in her first year, and three years later she was making a six figure income all with ebooks.
She says that creating a successful ebook is about more than having a great idea. You have to have a plan and an understanding of how the business works.
It became apparent that there was no lack of people that wanted to write ebooks, but they didn’t understand the process.
So in this interview, you’ll hear a process along with the knowledge on how pick the right topic, and make your ebook a winning success.
You’ll Also Hear…
• How to make money with an ebook • How many pages it should be • How much to charge for your ebook • What types of services you need on your website • Why the title is so important • Mistakes people make when starting an ebook. • What you need to get started
You don’t have to be an expert to write an ebook. In this interview you’ll hear how to do just that. Go to Ellen’s site at the link below for more great advice and a link to her blog. This interview is 55 minutes. Go to www.KillerEbookCoach.com for more information.
Are you ready to write your first e-book? If so, go get a free report at www.KillerEbookCoach.com. That’s www.KillerEbookCoach.com.
Ellen: I made $40,000 my first year, $67,000 my second year, and a $120,000 by my third year. So, I thought, “It’s just not that hard, but nobody’s giving people a process, a system where they can start from the beginning and build this thing in a way that makes sense.” So, then I created my Ebook Profit Marketing Secrets course.
Ginnie: What got you interested in ebooks?
Ellen: I’ve always been a writer all my life, and then I used to be a copy editor for some technical magazines and I worked in publicity. I’ve been a writer for magazines, and I’ve always been a writer. I’ve always just been involved in that.
I always knew someday that I wanted to write a book, and then, well a whole series of things happened. I was in the music business for twenty years. I’m a Grammy nominated song writer, and it just got to the point where it was just – I wasn’t making a lot of money. I was winning a lot of awards, and my parents were helping me, and then they both passed away within eleven months of each other.
There I was, and I had no skills. I had been in the business for twenty years, and so my husband and I fixed the house that we inherited and sold it, and made quite a bit of money on that. Then, we moved down to San Diego where I thought maybe I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
In the meantime, we bought a condo and that was just at the start of the real estate boom. So, we started making really good money in real estate between selling our house and then that one went up. So, we started buying, fixing and selling houses.
What happened was that we were moving every six months. It was really stressful, and I wasn’t passionate about it. I was making really good money, but I wasn’t passionate.
I was around forty, and I thought, “God, I’ve got to find something to do that I’m going to be passionate and make money at. This is just ridiculous. Everything I’d always done when I was younger, I never made any money, when I was doing what I wanted to do.
So, I got online, and I was just looking around, and I found ebooks. I said, “My god, this is perfect. Ebooks just sounds great. I’m going to write an ebook.” The first ebook I wrote was The Moving Cure, How to Organize Your Move to Save Time, Money, and Your Sanity.
Ginnie: How long ago was this?
Ellen: This was about four or five years ago, five years ago I think. So, then, what happened though was first of all, it was very stressful. It wasn’t as easy as they were saying it was. I started looking around for an ebook coach, and there weren’t any.
So, I hired a regular coach, and I was really unhappy with the process. It was like a band-aid. It was you make the mistake and then they tell you what you’re doing wrong. That was very inefficient and expensive.
So, then, you’re going, “Should I write a book? Should I write an ebook? Do I do this? Do I do that?” It was just really stressful.
After I wrote the ebook, I put it up and I didn’t make any money for two years. I made all kinds of mistakes on it, but in the meantime, I had a vision in my mind of how an ebook could be written a much better way than the way I learned how to write.
So, I decided that I was going to become the ebook coach. I was actually taking publicity courses at that time, and the group was kind of saying, “You should be the moving doctor.” I said, “I don’t think so. I don’t want to spend my life talking about moving.” I was just doing that because I thought it could help me get more real estate investors to want to work with me, but it wasn’t like I had this big passion about it or anything.
I love books. I love ebooks. I’ve always loved writing, and so I thought this was a really good fit. I looked around and I saw there really weren’t any, and there certainly weren’t any women, and there weren’t any who came from those technical background or a business background or marketing background.
So, I created the quick start three day ebook authoring workshop, and I started teaching it. It turned people who couldn’t write, people who have tried to write books for all their lives, for five years, for three years, whatever, and teaches them a process where they actually do it in 72 hours or less, and it works.
From there, then it was like, “Okay, well great. They’ve written it. Well, now how do they market it?” So, I spent about sixty grand studying with a lot of the big guys online, and what I found was everybody had a specialty.
You go over here and learn teleseminars, over there and learn Google, and over here and learn affiliates and all that, but again, I didn’t see anybody putting a process together that was easy for people to use who didn’t come from an internet marketing background or technical background, who could get online and actually start making money.
I made like $40,000 my first year, $67,000 my second year, and $120,000 for my third year. So, I thought, “It’s just not that hard, but nobody is giving people a process, a system, where they can start from the beginning and build this thing in a way that makes sense.” Then, I created my Ebook Profit Marketing Secrets course.
Ginnie: The timing of it being at the right time at the right place, would you attribute a lot of your success to that?
Ellen: No, I think that no matter what niche you go into – yeah, if somebody wants to become an ebook coach right now, yeah, it would be harder for them than it was for me. I thought that everybody knew ebooks were the way to go five years ago. It’s shocking to me that only now is it suddenly big. I thought it was becoming big all along.
You’ve got to have positions first, and what I do is I teach people how to do the research to see whether what their vision is is really reasonable or a smart way to go down this road on something that could just be a big waste of time.
Ginnie: Is the first step generally somebody that has an idea for an ebook or just decides they want to write an ebook and want you to help you come up with an idea?
Ellen: It depends. Some people come with me, and they’re very clear about what they want to do. Other people come and they have no idea. They just know they want to write ebooks or they want to make a six figure income online.
Ginnie: They think just by writing an ebook and having it published, that if you build it, they will come.
Ellen: Unfortunately, yeah, people think if they’re excited about an idea, everybody else will be. That’s not always the case.
Ginnie: What’s different about you?
Ellen: There are a few things that are different about me. Like I said, the first thing is that I created this process, so people will say, “Yeah, I can teach you how. Here’s a book that I wrote. Read my book.” What I found was I didn’t learn very well from books.
So, I created a coaching process instead, and so in my coaching process, there will be two instructional calls usually a Tuesday night and a Thursday night when I do the live workshops. We go over finding your passion, finding your skill set, and then seeing where they overlap because once you start writing and you start getting into a niche – that’s the other thing.
It’s not just writing an ebook. It’s getting into a whole niche and creating a business is where you generally make money. So, we do that.
Then, we do finding your target market. On Thursday, we do how to write a great title because if you don’t have a great title, it doesn’t matter. You can have great information and you’re not going to sell a lot of ebooks or books. It’s no different than books.
Then, learning the process, and what we do is we get together on Friday morning, and everybody gets the chance to go around the room and throw out their title, and get help where they’re stuck.
Then, they have three days to write the ebook where I’m on call like a doctor. To me, that’s really where it’s totally different because I’m there, and generally what happens is people get stuck and then just try to figure it out by themselves. They can’t, and they give up.
So, in my process, that doesn’t happen. Now, if they do the home study version, for some people, they like working on their own, and they don’t want to do it in three days. They can set it up in the three day process just like we do live, or they can do it over a longer period of time because I’ve taught them the process. So, they can just map it out how every many days they want to take to do it.
Then, there are other ways for them to get access to me if they get stuck or if they feel they need more, but that’s really the big difference.
The other difference is just me. My background is writing. I was a copy editor. I’ve been a writer all my life. Being a Grammy nominated song writer is great training for writing titles and chapter headings, and what my clients tell me is just that I have a really clear cut to the chase way of teaching this to people where it’s easy for them to understand.
A lot of times, they’ve gone to other people, and sometimes big people, and still weren’t able to do it. Sometimes, it’s having the right connection with a person. Sometimes, people will go to somebody where their story is completely different from the person, so they’re not a good fit. They don’t really understand where that person’s coming from. Sometimes, it’s the fact like I said I have no technical background, no business background, no marketing background.
So, people, like in the creative arts, which is where I come from, are very comfortable with me because they know that I did and they can too because I did it, and not having that background. Whereas, if somebody else who has that background may be inpatient with them, they may have a harder time with them. There are all kinds of reasons.
Ginnie: It sounds like that part of the process really is holding people’s hands, which is really a lot of times what you need is just that support and that somebody to go to and keep you on track.
Ellen: I think it’s more than that though because the home study works, too. So, some people need more, some people don’t need more. Ginnie: You can Sell your program either way, it sounds. Your listening to an interview found on www.hardtofindseminars.com
Ellen: They have to decide whether they really want someone there in real time to hold their hand, or whether they think they can do it on their own.
Ginnie: So, going back through the process, somebody thinks, “Okay, I want to write a book on gardening because I love to garden,” you would take another step and say, “Well, is it growing orchids? Is it growing roses?” You would get a little more specialized because the more you can get specific and narrow, the better chance you’ll have.
Ellen: Sometimes. You really have to look at the niche. If you go and you do the keyword searches and you look at the niche, and there’s just aren’t enough people that are look for just orchids, then you might need more than orchids. Sometimes, you need more than that. Sometimes, it’s the opposite.
If somebody looks up healing, it’s huge. Then, it’s like, “Well, healing is so enormous, what kind of healing?” Then, you might want to pare it down. So, it really just depends on the niche.
Ginnie: Where does one go to find out this keyword search as to how many people are looking for orchids?
Ellen: Well, there are a lot of ways to figure that out. The one that used to be really great was Overture. I don’t know why, but Yahoo came along and took it away, so that was the one.
Now, people generally use FreeKeyword.WordTracker.com. That’s http://Freekeyword.wordtracker.com. The difference between those two is Overture would tell you the exact number of hits. The Free Keyword one, Perry Marshall who is the Google genius says we don’t really know what they’re tracking, but it’s more a comparison to other things.
So, in other words, if you’re looking up “love” which is huge, and then you look up “Gardening orchids,” and love is twenty million, and orchids is 24,000, you’re just getting sort of a comparison.
You have to look at what’s out there and how many people are looking for that particular thing. Then, you have to make a judgment call based on that compared to other things that are out there.
Then, the second thing is I’ll have people write me and say, “I want to write about depression, but there’s just way too many people out there. It’s saturated.” Well, what I always tell people is it’s deeper than that. You have to look at, “Okay, who is out there?” What are they offering?
You’ve got to really look at what they offer, and then you have to say to yourself, “Well, do I have a vision that’s different from everything that’s out there.” If you have a vision that’s different – a perfect example which I love, I don’t know where I originally heard this, but it was Domino’s Pizza. There were plenty of pizza places before Domino’s came along, but what happened was somebody had the idea to think, “This really sucks that when I order a pizza and I have it delivered to my house, it’s usually cold when it gets here. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have hot pizza delivered? What if we gave a guarantee where if they didn’t get it in thirty minutes, it was free?” The pizza tasted really good.
Then, they were able to implement that. They were able to dominate the market because they had a better idea.
Ginnie: It’s a parallel because when you’re going to be doing an ebook, you have to understand marketing.
Ellen: Not really (inaudible) because that’s really what you do when you’re doing an ebook, too. It’s like what else is out there? If you’re going to write the same ebook that’s already been written, why write it?
Ginnie: Right, and again though, I think what I’m trying to say is we’re talking about the marketing of the ebook. So, basically, it’s broken down to different levels. One is actually coming up with the idea for the ebook, correct?
Ellen: Right.
Ginnie: And, part of that is how you’re going to market it, so it goes hand in hand. Ellen: Right, and that’s huge. What most people don’t understand is you really need to do some marketing research before you write your ebook. Otherwise, you could just spending all this time and especially if people aren’t using my process, and they’re spending a month or two months or whatever, writing it, and then they get it out there. Then, it sits on their site, and they go, “I don’t understand nobody’s buying it. I thought it was such a great idea.”
You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Ginnie: Well, is there money to be made writing ebooks? You said it took you maybe several years.
Ellen: Yes, because I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wrote an ebook on a subject where there’s a lot of free information. So, people were not willing to pay for that. I didn’t do the research because I was like everybody else when I started.
Ginnie: The price ranges.
Ellen: Generally, it’s $27 to $47, but if you’re in an area where people can make a lot of money like real estate or stock market, I’ve seen people sell them for $297, and make half a million dollars.
Ginnie: How is it the same as publishing a book, or is it totally different?
Ellen: It’s totally different because you can do it and get it right up, and start selling the same day. The whole thing about a book is number one, you’ve got to pay to have it printed. So, right away, you’re in for a lot of money right there. Then, with technology making things so fast, it’s easy to get stuck with a garage full of books. You can change them now. You’ve got to dump them and do a whole new run.
Generally, people wait for a publisher. That’s if you can even get one, and then once you get one, you’re lucky to make a dollar per book. Online, you charge $27 and 95% of that is pure profit. Once you’ve got a shopping cart and an affiliate program, if you really want to be serious about this, a domain name, and pay for your hosting after that, it’s pure profit. Plus, even people who are writing books – I’ve seen this work a couple of ways. I have a colleague who wrote a book. Jason Noman wrote Conversations of Millionaires with Mike Litman, and what they did is they didn’t have any money to print books. So, they put it online, and they started selling it for nine dollars. They did that because they figured if they couldn’t sell it for nine dollars, then they couldn’t sell it for $27 or $47.
So, they did that first. It did really well, and then they took the money they made to pay for the printing. So, that was one thing. Then, another example is Stephanie Frank. She wrote a book called The Accidental Millionaire. Then, she decided to put it online, and she doubled her sales because now she was making as much online as she was making offline. Only now, she was making way more profits.
So, I always tell everybody they should start with an ebook, and if they have a book, they should still put it online.
Ginnie: Who’s going to find it? Who’s going to come to it? How am I going to sell books there?
Ellen: Nobody is going to find it if that’s all you do, and unfortunately, that’s a lot of what people do. Then, they come to me and they go, “I don’t understand. My ebook isn’t selling.”
Ginnie: So, it’s not just having a great written ebook, and putting a price tag on it.
Ellen: No, of course not. People have to know that you exist, number one, and number two, as I said, a title is huge. Titles are huge. It’s always important, but even more important, the more saturated your market is because the truth is if you come up with a great title and you come up with a great marketing plan, you can do well in any market. How many books are there on dieting? A million, but these two ex-models came out with Skinny Bitch, and it was huge.
Ginnie: Talk a little bit about how you put together a marketing plan for your ebook.
Ellen: Well, there are a lot of things that you can do. It’s just deciding, number one, what you want to do, and that comes back to what your skills are and what your passions are. There are people who don’t want to deal with technology. So, they don’t want to get into video or podcasting. They just want to stick to the writing because writing you can do articles and blogs and you can have ezine ads in other people’s targeted newsletters.
You always want to grow your own list because then you have your fans and you have built in buyers everytime you do something new, and then you have email and you have newsletters.
Ginnie: It sounds overwhelming to me. I really don’t know where I would start.
Ellen: Right, well, that’s why my Ebook Problem Marketing. I didn’t do this to push my course, but that’s why I created it the way I did because it’s a step by step where we start at the beginning, and you have an action plan. You just follow it step by step, and that’s exactly the reason.
When I do individual coaching, sometimes people will say, “Well, I don’t really want to talk about joint ventures right now. I’m just really focused on doing teleseminars,” and then I’ll change the lessons around as to which one we do first, not first. It might be seventh or eighth or ninth, but it always starts with number one, finding your unique selling position. That’s always number one. That’s the first thing you need to do is know what makes you unique, what makes you special, why would people come to you instead of somebody else, why would they come to you now.
Think about it. If you were in pain, would you go to an acupuncturist? Would you go to a chiropractor? Would you go to an osteopath? Would you go to a massage? There’s a lot of massage therapists. There’s a lot of different options.
So, you have to tell people why they should come to you. Then, you have to know what’s out there because people will come to you and say, “Well, how come your product is more expensive than all these other ones?” Well, because I just didn’t find those worked really well for most people.
So, that’s the reason, but you have to know what’s out there. Otherwise, you can’t give an intelligent answer Once you do that, it’s putting up a blog or putting up a website or both. Learning how to create a funnel. If you’re going to have people coming to you and you want to be more than a one trip pony, what a lot of people use the ebook for is not just to make money, but actually to brand themselves and to give themselves credibility.
Think about it. If you’re going to make $27 on a book, but you’re going to make five grand on a coaching program, chances are you’re going to make more money on your coaching program.
So, your ebook is really a way to upsell people to other things, but having said that, there are people who get online. I have one client who is now my affiliate manager actually, and she is an actress. She didn’t want to have anything where she had to be anywhere or do coaching or anything where she had to commit to a time. So, her business is totally passive.
There are people who want to do that. So, they just sell digital products. It generally takes people longer to do that, unless they’re willing to spend some money and do pay per click which you can get up in fifteen minutes. Again, I don’t recommend people do that unless they either go through my program or study with Perry and really learn how to do it the right way.
So, it is overwhelming for people when they don’t know what to do, and that’s why getting a coach can make the difference. Unfortunately, there are a lot of coaches out there that charge a lot of money, and they still don’t do the job.
Are you ready to write your first ebook? If so, go get a free report at www.KillerEbookCoach.com. That’s www.KillerEbookCoach.com.
Ginnie: So, having a free ebook that’s actually a really good way to market your other services.
Ellen: Yeah, I started with a free ebook. I gave away over 3,000 ebooks (inaudible) for offering success. Today, I sell it. I also give it away with my workshop, but in the beginning, I just gave it away, and then I upsold people to a two part teleseminar which was two ninety minute teleseminars, and that was free also. Then, what I did is I just sold the
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII
audio and transcripts, then I upsold people from that to my first workshop.The reason you do that is so that people get to experience you. So, they really get that you know your stuff, number one, and number two, they get to see whether they connect with you or not.
When people get to see that, it’s a lot easier for them to study with you than to think about parting with money when they know nothing about you.
So, a lot of times people are either desperate or in a hurry to make money, and they don’t understand that to build a rapport with a customer is way more important in the beginning.
Ginnie: I remember my husband got shingles, so he was looking for a book on shingles and he found one and ordered it, and guess what? He didn’t get it. The guy was a shyster and because of the relationship we had our company, they gave him his money back. That is one of the problems.
Ellen: Yes.
Ginnie: Also, isn’t there a lot of outsourcing? In other words, they don’t write the ebooks, but it looks like their writing. They’re having ghostwriters.
Ellen: Yes.
Ginnie: They may be people that live in other countries and don’t even really speak the language. They’re paying them thirty dollars to write an eighty page ebook.
Ellen: Right, and I had a situation like that where I was on a mastermind course call, and somebody said, “I’m looking for a book on…” I don’t remember what it was, and I had just read one by somebody, and I had recommended it. The guy who was leading the group said, “Oh, I’d be careful with that because he doesn’t write all of them himself. So, the quality is not the same on all of them.”
So, that’s a risk that you run when you have other people do it for you. The other thing is what I don’t understand if you’re an expert in somebody, why would you hire somebody who is not an expert in the thing you’re an expert in?
So, the only reason I would use a ghostwriter is if I already had all the information and said, “Here’s the information. Just turn it into a book now.” That sort of thing, but that’s one of the reasons to learn how to write them quickly yourself because number one, it’s just not that hard, and number two, it does give you more credibility than having other people write them for you in my opinion.
Ginnie: So, you coach, but you love to write, you said. Do you still write ebooks?
Ellen: Oh, yes.
Ginnie: Is it about coaching, or is it a spectrum of topics?
Ellen: No, right now, mine are pretty much about writing and marketing ebooks. I’m actually getting ready to write one that’s a little more consumer oriented. It’s still about writing ebooks.
I remember when I first got on the internet though, I remember there was a free ebook going around from Yanik Silver on how to write emails and it was a big one. It was very impressive, and it was in the early days. I’m sure he got a lot of mileage out of that, but that was a good one. I don’t know what it’s called, but it was on writing emails.
Ginnie: How much of social networking is involved in marketing your ebook?
Ellen: Oh, for me, now, it’s at the top of my list.
Ginnie: How does that work?
Ellen: It’s really actually an interesting media because it’s so funny watching these people, especially guys who learn sort of direct hard core marketing now trying to do social marketing, and sometimes really getting scolded for it because they aren’t doing it right because they’ve been doing the other kind so long that it’s hard for them to stop bragging about themselves.The thing about Facebook and Twitter which are the ones that I generally use are you want to have a mix because what it says is, “What are you doing right now?” Well, so you’re going to tell people what you’re doing, but there’s a lot of other things that you can do on Facebook and Twitter.
So, what you want to do is you want to have a mix between what you’re doing and then also highlighting other people and what they’re doing, responding to what they’re doing. It’s like going to a networking event without going. It’s like instead you create these relationships online.
Ginnie: You use that to actually promote your ebook.
Ellen: You can use it to be promoting an ebook, but what I do is I just use it to promote me, period, most of the time. In other words, what I much rather have people do is go read my blog. That’s actually as opposed to right now because I’m in the middle of doing a series on the nine biggest marketing mistakes people make and I’ve been sending it out in email.
So, it says, “Ellen is posting Ebook Marketing Mistake number two, don’t shoot in the dark, do the research first.” That’s the last one I posted three hours ago.
In other words, it’s like I’m giving people free information, and I’m also telling them what I’m doing, and I also responded to somebody’s comments earlier today something somebody said that something in me, so I responded to it. There are a lot of ways that you can connect with people.
Ginnie: There’s always good news bad news especially when it comes to technology and it’s so great to put so much information out there, but of course, there’s got to be the issues of copywriting and people cutting and pasting and just stealing your material right and left. How do you protect yourself?
Ellen: Well, I don’t worry about it, number one. I know that again, according to Armind, who has so much money to do the research and everything. He practically created a product that was that what he’s saying is it’s now a billion dollar industry where people steal your stuff. If people are stealing my stuff, I’m not happy about it, but I’m hoping that it’s viral marketing. Then, of course, if I do something that’s very proprietary, for instance, I wrote a book with Jim Edwards and that ebook has protection on it. So, if somebody buys that ebook, they’ve got to jump through hoops. They can only download it for so long, and then if they want to come back, we’d have to get their email and their receipt and all that.
So, if I’m doing something that I know that I don’t want people to steal, of course, I protect it. I protect everything I do, no. A lot of the information that you give is free, and you do that so people can see what you do and that you’re a giver and that you understand what your process is and what you’re doing.
I do a monthly call the first Monday of the month. It’s just a Q&A that I do, and people can find it on Facebook. The last one I did was an hour and a half, and then somebody called me after and said, “I can really tell you that you give.” I’d stay on until everybody’s questions are answered.
Now, if I only get three questions and it only takes me fifteen minutes it’s because people didn’t ask a question, but if people are there and they’re taking their time to ask me, I’m going to answer them.
So, it’s another way that people get to see, and then they say, “Oh, well, she gives this much for free. My god, what am I going to get when I actually take the course.” That’s true. My marketing course has a 675 page. It took me seven months to compile it all. It’s huge because I really want people to have the information and not have to spend an arm and a leg to get it. I’d rather make the money with people after they write the ebook. I don’t want people to just take my course, spend that money and then they’re done with me.
What I want people to do is write their ebooks and then they’re my clients, and then they come on and we start becoming JV partners, and if their subject makes sense to me, I’ll have them on a call to my list, or we’ll promote whatever it is they’re promoting.
Ginnie: I like that idea. It’s a mentorship program to a degree.
Ellen: Yes, absolutely. Also, I’m creating an ebook store, and it’s not up yet. We’re just going into beta testing right now, but the whole idea being that the ebooks will be read and they will be high quality, and it will have my seal of approval behind it. There will be a lot more too it as well.
But, then the point is again to make money for the people who have come to me, and help them not just teach them how to write an ebook and then send them out into the wilderness.
For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising, and copywriting, go to Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.
Ginnie: So, explain a little bit the difference between working with somebody with a joint venture and having an affiliate program with someone. How do those work?
Ellen: I get asked that a lot. The difference is one is active and one is passive generally speaking, but they overlap. So, what I mean by that is if somebody’s an affiliate, what that means is they expect to go to your site or get an email from you on something that you’re promoting, get an email, get an affiliate link, and just either send it to their list, make a video.
They’re going to market on their own, and they’re going to have a link. They’re going to make fifty percent, generally or thirty percent if it’s a live workshop usually, and that’s it. That’s the relationship.
A joint venture is when you create something with somebody, whether it’s creating a teleseminar where they come on my call or I can go on their call and then we’re selling my product or their product to each other’s list, or maybe we’re creating a product together. I did a joint venture with Terry Romaine who was my webmaster. We decided we were better off as friends, and we made an ebook, (inaudible) audio, and people can learn a whole bunch of low and no cost ways to protect their ebooks, but we did that as a joint venture. We did it together.
Ginnie: But, when you’re starting out, where do you get the momentum? How do you start building this list?
Ellen: But, when you’re starting out now, it’s a lot easier because we didn’t really have blogs when I started. We didn’t have video. We didn’t have podcasting. We didn’t have Facebook. We didn’t have any of this. So, I started mine as I said by giving away a free ebook, and then doing free teleseminars and then upselling people from there.
What I found was being a Grammy nominated song writer and struggling for years and not making any money and winning lots of awards was I really understood the whole thing my husband always says is unrewarded genius.
If you do not become an internet marketer, you will not sell your stuff, and if you do not sell your stuff, nobody will hear it.
Ginnie: You’re self taught in terms of you learned as you went along the business.
Ellen: Yes, I definitely learned from the school of hard knocks, let me tell you.
Ginnie: Can you give us another piece of advice in terms of what not to do?
Ellen: Sure, people told me this in the beginning, but things can still happen where like for me a perfect storm happened once where even though they say, when things are going good, don’t back off, you want to keep that cash flow coming. I had a situation where I thought I was doing that, but I created a new teleseminar, and I didn’t want to do the one that I knew my tried and true one, and I didn’t test the name of it, and people didn’t respond to it, and all of a sudden, I had a situation where I went from $10,000 a month to $1,500 a month for three months, and I almost lost my business.
There’s a little bit of investment, but you have to think about it this way. If you were to start a brick and mortar business, it would cost you thousands and thousands. It could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, I just laugh when people say, “You have to get an ebook cover, and you have to get a posting.” It’s such an incredibly small investment.
Even if somebody studies with me, whether they do a home study or a regular course, again, compared to what it would be with something else, there’s not that big of a deal.
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII
Ginnie: You’re right, and that’s very well put, and that’s something to consider. I think part of what happens with a lot of us on the web is we’re used to getting everything for free.
Ellen: That’s one of the myths. Everything is not free. There’s a lot of free information, but then what it comes down to at some point, you have to say, “Okay, I’ve gotten all the free stuff. Now, I’m serious.” Then, you have to pay for your education. You’re going to pay one way or another.
People can either pay by working with a good coach, or they can pay by making horrible mistakes and learning the hard way, but one of the things I wanted to say, and a lot of people go to One Shopping Cart, and I use One Shopping Cart. I have a link for that, but a lot of people when they’re first starting out don’t want to spend that amount of money. So, there’s another one.
My husband starting with that one,and that one is just a one time deal. I think it’s $49 and you’re on your way. The reason I don’t love it is I believe that people should start an affiliate program right away, and almost everybody I talk to when they’re first starting goes, “Oh, I’m not ready for an affiliate program.” What happens if the first or second or third or fifth person who buys your ebook loves it so much and wants to be an affiliate and you don’t have a program?
You’re going to get going a lot faster when you have a program and you have people who want to promote you. So, again, people can be really penny wise and pound foolish getting started with this stuff, but it’s a lot better, I think, if you’re going to do it, do it right.
Ginnie: There’s a learning curve, too. Certainly I can edit audio with Garage Band that comes right on my MacIntosh, but when I’m really serious about this I’m going to get Sound Edit Pro. It’s the difference of the tools and how much you can do with it.
Ellen: That’s very different when I say checkout cart at One Shopping Cart. Let’s say I can buy a Honda or I can buy a Mercedes because I want to race around this track and I need a high performance car, but I’m going to start with a Honda. They’re both cars. One may be more high powered, but they’re both cars.
The shopping cart has an affiliate program, checkout cart doesn’t, and that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s not about waiting until you’re better because while you’re waiting to get better, you’re missing out on people who can help you because if you sell one ebook yourself, and you make ten bucks, let’s say – we’ll say $27 bucks, but you know have got five affiliates marketing you because you started your affiliate program right away, and now each of them sell an ebook at $27. They’re making $27 times five, that’s $135. You divide it by two, you get half of that. You make an extra $67. You made only $27 on your own.
My inbox now or when I go to Facebook, there’s all these videos. Do I have time to sit and watch them?
Ginnie: No.
Ellen: Do you know what I mean? For some people, it might be great, but the truth is if I can read something really quick, I’ll read it. Whereas, if I have to sit and stop and watch this thing, a lot of times, I’m not going to watch it. So, the truth is, I think there’s room for everything. I think some people are out with their iPods and want podcasting. Some people want video.
What it’s coming to is the idea that information be at our fingertips however we want to consume it, and that we can consume it on our own time.
Ginnie: If you were going to tell somebody who said, “I’m listening to this. This is exciting. I want to do this.” (Inaudible) We’ll get your website out there, and all the things. What are three things that you would advise somebody in how to get started writing an ebook?
Ellen: Like I said, I would number one, do the research. That’s the most important thing. Number two, come up with a really great title. Number three, this is pretty broad, but learn how to market, and know that you have to be your marketer. You can not depend on somebody else because I get a lot of people who send me emails, and they’ll say to me something like, “I’ve got this great ebook. I know everybody is going to love it. I’ll be happy to give you fifty percent to market it for me.”
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com © MMVII JS&M Sales & Marketing, Inc. San Diego California -Tel. 858-274-7851
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at 21 http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
Now, just think, like I don’t have enough to do. I’m going to now stop what I’m doing, and market all these people. And, I’m going to get, again, as I was saying before, I’m going to get fifty percent of one, and they’re the ones who are going to make all the money. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I’m not going to do that.
I teach people how to write ebooks in several different ways. One is the home study course. One is the three day workshop, and the other one is one on one. I’ve had people come to me where they’ve tried. They’ve done the book. They’ve done everything, and it’s like going on a road, and getting off on a side road, and they just keep getting farther and farther away from where they’re trying to go. So, they do it with me one on one.
We do like eight days in a row, and we just knock it out in eight business days, Monday through Friday and then three days next week, and it’s done. The other thing is books are so overwhelming to people because you hear people say, “Oh, it took me years to write my book.” People think writing a book is like really hard.
So, a lot of times when they come to me and they’re thinking about this, a lot of them are too scared to move forward because they think it’s really hard. That’s number one.
Number two, it doesn’t matter how many times I say to them, “We’re going to go over finding your path and your skill set and find your topic,” they go, “I feel like I have to have my topic before I can take the workshop.”
Ginnie: That would sort of make sense to me, but I understand how you’re approaching it.
Ellen: If you wait, you can make that the thing that stops you forever. If I had waited until I knew what I was going to write about, I never would have written The Moving Cure. That was the one that I learned on.
Ginnie: Just get in there and just do it.
Ellen: Exactly, get in there and do it, learn the process and don’t worry if the first one isn’t your masterpiece of your life. It’s like just learning how to
For more interviews on marketing consulting go to http://www.HardToFindSeminars.
Listen to hours of free interviews, case studies and how to consultant training at http://www.HardToFindSeminars.com/AudioclipsH.htm
do it, and so many times people get caught up in the perfectionism of the whole thing.
Friends if you like kindly comment below the post do share your response. thanks for reading:)
for more info vivit www.HardToFindSeminar.com
Comments