How my eBook made $1,800 in 3 days with 78 people on my list…

…and while doing everything “wrong.”

Note: this post is for those of you who have considered writing an eBook to generate revenue, as opposed to the give-it-away-go-viral school.

Maybe you’ve heard by now that there is some serious money to be made by packaging and selling your expertise in the form of an eBook.

• $12,000 in a day
• $30,000 over 6 months and still going strong.
• $72,000 in a week

I’ve read all of those posts. And I thought, yeah, maybe I’ll try selling a product when I get a really high traffic blog and a list of at least 1K and I shelved the idea. Better to think about the freemiums.

Then I talked to Gary.

Gary’s the traction coach. He’s been helping me on this business adventure. He made a very good point that often we download great free stuff and there it sits on our hard drive. While it’s good, valuable stuff, we just don’t commit to reading it.

I guiltily browsed through the folder on my desktop full of great, valuable free stuff and agreed. There are only so many hours in a day. I wanted people to actually read and use the eBook I was working on, the now launched Sticky eBook Formula.

Here’s how it went:

My stated goal was to sell 50 copies.

I gave my working draft to some blogger friends, a couple offered me testimonials.

I hired a proofreader ($85), my good friend Steven Blumenthal did the design gratis.

Then I told the 78 people on my email list that they could buy my eBook for $10

19 of them did. That’s a conversion rate of 24%. Not bad at all.

But then I thought, oops, those were the people that know and like me. Who the heck else is going to buy it? I didn’t know, but I carried on.

I wrote a sales page.

I did not hire a copywriter and just flowed together a page using the following formula:

• Headline
• Twitter Version
• Who it’s for.
• What it does, what’s in it.
• What it costs.
• When the price goes up.
• What some other people say about it.
• Buy button.
• Guarantee.
• P.S.

Then I asked a list of about a dozen people who are all active in social media, have blogs, et cetera to tweet about it. I posted in two forums (I highly recommend you join at least one for future launch support): Inside The Third Tribe and the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint.

Some of my VIP dozen became affiliates. Four people wrote reviews on their blogs that day, which put me over the moon with joy. Thank you Jade, Ben, Karen and Ali!

I sold 37 copies in the first 24 hours. Total by Thursday: 56.

Yay! Mission accomplished! And I grossed $819, minus an affiliate share of $68 left me with $750. Well done me!

And then there was ProBlogger.

Friday morning I awoke to find that Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, the Wall Street Journal of blogging as business, reviewed the Sticky eBook Formula. Darren, I’m assuming, saw my announcement in the Third Tribe where he is also a member.

Holy &*%#

As of this writing, here’s the breakdown:

• 158 copies sold
• $2,703 gross
• $818 affiliate share
• - $85 for proofreading
• $1,800 profit.

Ok this might be a buzz kill if you’re shopping for magic overnight wealth, but I think it’s pretty awesome to make $1,800 in 3 days.

Let’s not forget, though, that I probably spent 30 hours (a conservative estimate) writing, editing and otherwise working on the eBook. Still, that’s $60/hour, nothing to sneeze at — and will increase when I sell one here and there or relaunch version 2.0.

There is greater value here that is less quantifiable.

• My list has grown to 217
• I can use “as seen on ProBlogger” in my promotional materials.
• StickyEbooks.com received 1,786 visitors (a nearly 700% jump).
• I now know that the market for my services is as strong or stronger that I had expected. Lots of people want to write eBooks.

Also, 80 people (and counting) recently received the Sticky eBook Formula as a bonus for the World Changing Writing Workshop.

Great, you might say, but how do I guarantee my eBook gets a review on ProBlogger (or my industry’s equivalent)?

There are no guarantees, that’s for sure. But here are two things to do to increase your eBook’s exposure:

• Join a forum, any forum in your niche, and be nice to people. Network network network.
• Focus on making an interesting, worth-reading product.

You don’t need a big list to begin.

If you spend the time crafting something that is useful and serves your readers it will always be a great return on investment.

I think it’s our attitude that matters most.