Ebooks for Passive Income

[HiredGun]

Are any current Constant Content writers building passive income streams with ebooks?

[Lysis]

I just recently decided to dip my toes into this. I did a fiction book in 2009 that went nowhere. This weekend I wrote a book on freelancer scams. Basically, a book on how to spot scams and avoid them for freelancers (mostly writers). Since I know it so well, I wrote 30 pages in a few days and published it.

Put both of them up for free and the freelancer scams actually got read. lol yay

Today is the last day for a freebie, so now it has to hold its own. I'm not a marketing person at all, so that's where I fail.

I'm actually dipping my toes into ebooks and apps. Wrote the ebook last week and then created a small app that doesn't have much competition. It's an app for keeping track of Orangetheory workouts. Orangetheory is an awesome workout and I'm addicted to it, but their app doesn't keep track of your progress. sheesh So, I decided to write something for that.

I'll let people know how it goes! But basically, I just started trying both of these markets. I would love to hear stories too because you hear so many different opinions. Some people rock it and others not so much. You know there is always something not being told by the person rocking it, and you have to figure it out.

[HiredGun]

Thanks for the quick reply, Lysis.

Have wondered about the app route myself. Seems to be plenty of do-it-yourself options for apps, but I see soooo much junk in the app store when doing writing research that it hardly seems worth the effort. Guess you're right; find an under-served market and build a better mousetrap. Keep us posted on your ebook/app progress, k? Congrats!

p.s. Did you go with Amazon for publishing?

[Lysis]

Yeah, I did the kdp publishing thing. Kdp.amazon.com I think is the link. I bought a professional image for the cover from istockphoto. There are a lot of cheesy covers out there. I'm not a designer by any means, but this was my experiment just to see what happens.

I have to admit that Amazon makes it super easy to publish, and I keep reading about people who publish 5,000 word ebooks. Mine was about 9k.

Just from reading various posts (and I know you have to be careful about believing everything) is that quantity matters. You write something and people look at other books you wrote and buy other books from you. I"ve also read that marketing is important, and that's where I fail. If you read around, some people talk about their thousands of sales and others say they've sold nothing. It's the same with apps. Lots of successes but then so many fails. You know there is some secret to it, so I'm trying to figure it out but I just started a week ago.

[Lysis]

so, just an update...

Sold 1 app install on the 8th. So far, $1.00 income from app and 0 from ebooks. That buck feels so good right now. lol

[LMasterson]

I've been playing with the whole KDP thing for about 15 months now around other writing assignments. I have 8 ebooks released as a series under one pen-name and another 5 in a different genre released as stand-alone titles under a different pen-name. Income sits around $100-$110 US per month on average (so that's around $135-$145 Aussie dollars after exchange for me), but I'm not really into the whole marketing thing. I guess if I spent more time with marketing they'd probably sell more.

[remoteriverman]

For non-US eBook writers selling on Amazon.com, getting paid involves receiving a paper cheque from the US in the mail - a strange situation from a company that makes so much of its money through PayPal. Very 1970s!

Check out a writer named Yuwanda Black - she lives in the Caribbean and is a very prolific eBook writer who seems to do okay with a high volume of eBook output. Haven't read any of her stuff, but I think she does okay with passive income.

Cheers,
Kevin Casey
kevincaseycopywriter.com

[LMasterson]

For non-US eBook writers selling on Amazon.com, getting paid involves receiving a paper cheque from the US in the mail - a strange situation from a company that makes so much of its money through PayPal. Very 1970s!

There is a setting in the payment section that allows direct wire-transfer of payments into your bank account, even for non-US writers. Amazon cover's the exchange fees as part of the transaction ($25 ... ouch!), but that's better than waiting for a paper check in the mail that could take up to 4 weeks to arrive from the US.

[light87]

To me, writing articles for CC or high-quality blog content in general is a lot harder than writing a fiction book.

You can be a lot more wordy and lax, and all you really need is a great plot. As long as you have good pacing and a great plot, you won't really need to self-publish on amazon.

Unlike the articles we're writing, literary agents work for free to get you published . Sounds to good to be true? Well, it's because they're picky, but then again, all you need is proper pacing and a great plot.

Going the KDP route is superfluous imho, from my own experience. If your fiction piece does well on KDP, then with 99% certainty, had you submitted it to a literary agent, they would've picked up your work and gotten you published with a traditional publisher. If it bombs on KDP, then it probably bombed with literary agents as well.

But, if you're writing 5k-word eBooks offering advice about stuff, then that's when KDP is right for you... I think... I'm not sure whether there are traditional publishers who go for that kinda stuff, but if there are - then the same thing I said for fiction works is true .