How I Made $6K With My eBook • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#41

Post by macournoyer_ » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 11:18 PM UTC

bgraves wrote: post #18

I'd love some more details: 1. How did you come up with this as a topic for an eBook? 2. Is this your area of expertise, or did you see a niche market? 3. What are some specifics on your AdWords campaign? 4. Looks like you have a strong online presence. Do you think that helped sell your book or was it completely irrelevant to its success?

1. I've been interested in language and VMs about 1 year ago, built http://code.macournoyer.com/tinyrb/ and a couple other languages.

2. No, it all started w/ a passion for languages. I had the idea to write a book after reading 4 Hour Work Week

3. What do you want to know exactly? I used the keywords "create programming language" iirc

4. Yes, I think it helped a lot. The only "marketing" I've done is on Twitter and my blog (also recently on my site http://refactormycode.com). I was surprised by the success, but I'm now convinced that OSS can pay in a way or another.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#42

Post by macournoyer_ » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 11:19 PM UTC

kalid wrote: post #28

Thanks for sharing! One of your questions was about laying out the ebook. For my own, I started with InDesign but found it too painful to use (I only used it for the cover). I used LaTex (since I had some math equations) but the benefit is that it's all plaintext and easy to modify with quick scripts. It also gives you really nice typography. Again, this is probably most useful if you end up having math equations ins…

Aww yes I need to learn LaTex :/

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#43

Post by cadr » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 11:31 PM UTC

How did you choose the price point?

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#44

Post by steveklabnik » Mon, Mar 01, 2010, 11:32 PM UTC

macournoyer_ wrote: post #36

steveklabnik wrote: post #15

How do you feel about ClickBank? One of my weekend projects is a little site that'll make selling digital goods online really simple, targeted at a non-technical audience. Obviously, you are technical, but how'd you feel about the various sites that are out there? Did you try other services before ClickBank?

ClickBank is ok, a little better the e-junkie, but e-junkie has digital delivery built-in, but still... we're very far from the nice UIs we usually take for granted in our community. My dream setup would be Shopify + http://www.fetchapp.com/ but this is quite expensive for my low volume.

Interesting; I wonder if I've never heard of Fetch because I'm not really involved in this kind of business.

If you have any thoughts you'd like to share on what sucks about your experiences with any of this stuff, I'd love to get an email and pick your brain.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#45

Post by acangiano » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 12:17 AM UTC

Your approach to the whole thing was very much affiliate/internet marketing oriented: list building via PPC, squeeze page, product sold through ClickBank, generous kickbacks to affiliates, high price for low page count, artificial urgency created through a limited time offer, and so on.

Here is what I admire:

* You managed to do all this without pissing off geeks, who are very sensitive to bullshit and tend to have an holier than thou attitude towards these techniques.

* I didn't buy the book, but I suspect it's rather high quality, compared to most junk sold on ClickBank.

* Your landing/squeeze page is surprisingly classy. It manages to accomplish a good CRT, despite the lack of autoplaying audio/video, exit popups, and the typical centered column look.

In short, good job.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#46

Post by kalid » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 12:48 AM UTC

macournoyer_ wrote: post #42

kalid wrote: post #28

Thanks for sharing! One of your questions was about laying out the ebook. For my own, I started with InDesign but found it too painful to use (I only used it for the cover). I used LaTex (since I had some math equations) but the benefit is that it's all plaintext and easy to modify with quick scripts. It also gives you really nice typography. Again, this is probably most useful if you end up having math equations ins…

Aww yes I need to learn LaTex :/

Yeah unfortunately there's a steep learning curve, but worth it for anything math-related.

Here's a sample chapter laid out with LaTeX: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://betterexplained.com...

The #1 rule is to not use the default styles unless you want your book to look like a master's thesis.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#47

Post by citrik » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 1:04 AM UTC

macournoyer_ wrote: post #42

kalid wrote: post #28

Thanks for sharing! One of your questions was about laying out the ebook. For my own, I started with InDesign but found it too painful to use (I only used it for the cover). I used LaTex (since I had some math equations) but the benefit is that it's all plaintext and easy to modify with quick scripts. It also gives you really nice typography. Again, this is probably most useful if you end up having math equations ins…

Aww yes I need to learn LaTex :/

Quick, Someone write an E-book on LaTex ;)

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#48

Post by macournoyer_ » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 1:14 AM UTC

cadr wrote: post #43

How did you choose the price point?

Based on other similar package/eBooks around at that time and the price it cost me to run AdWords for 1 day. The initial market research w/ AdWords can also help choosing a price. According to my tests, I guessed I could sell one book per day w/ ads, which cost ~50$/day. I thought $50 was too much, so cut it back to $40.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#49

Post by macournoyer_ » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 1:16 AM UTC

acangiano wrote: post #45

Your approach to the whole thing was very much affiliate/internet marketing oriented: list building via PPC, squeeze page, product sold through ClickBank, generous kickbacks to affiliates, high price for low page count, artificial urgency created through a limited time offer, and so on. Here is what I admire: * You managed to do all this without pissing off geeks, who are very sensitive to bullshit and tend to have a…

Thx a lot! I'm also surprised by the low quality of most products on ClickBank & other sites. That's why I'm talking openly about it, I'm sure most geeks here could do way better then everything on those sites.

Re: How I Made $6K With My eBook

#50

Post by macournoyer_ » Tue, Mar 02, 2010, 1:25 AM UTC

abl wrote: post #39

Do you worry about people pirating your eBook, or worse yet - infringing your copyright by taking the information in the eBook, and publishing it as their own? It seems that by going with a publishing agency, one would have a lot more legal protection in that regard?

No I'm not worried. I'm just trusting people buying the book like they are trusting me by buying it. I hate penalizing everyone for what some people might do.

Also, it's a pretty small niche and it got good exposure when it came out. I think it would be hard to copy and sell it to the same market again.