How I Made $6K With My eBook

e-junkie is OK, but the UI is horrible, it's all in flash. I went w/ e-junkie at 1st because of the coupon code that gave me 120 days for free & because they handle all the digital delivery logic like link expiry. I'm now w/ ClickBank as it seems to be more popular w/ affiliate marketers, only costs an upfront $50 & can accept multiple methods of payment.

euroclydon2• 16 years ago

There has got be a better way to think about this market that just selling eBooks. It's premium information conveyance, right? Like a stock tip sheet?

My brother is in a marketplace that depends heavily on advertising to get customers. He spends several hundred a year, just on newsletters and eBooks that tell him how to best utilize his advertising budget, which seems to be over a thousand per month.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

he pays for newsletters? Can you share which ones?

davidw• 16 years ago

How much time did it actually take you to write the book?

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

Writing took about 2 months IIRC. But the learning took >1 year :p

icey• 16 years ago

I would be really interested to hear about the learning process. Was there something in particular that you read that was especially helpful? Did you buy other e-books to learn how to write and market e-books?

duck• 16 years ago

2 months of work for $6000? While making money probably wasn't the only reason for doing it, isn't that a pretty bad payoff? I know you will keep making sales, but (especially for technical writing) it will have a short shelf life...

kqr2• 16 years ago

Any reviews of his actual ebook?

http://createyourproglang.com/

euroclydon2• 16 years ago

Man, if it's tough to get programmers to buy a set of custom controls or developer tools, it must be ten times more difficult to get them to buy an eBook. I'll admit, the site does portrait credibility.

allenp• 16 years ago

I thought that too, but I think the difference is that a developer could look at a program and say, "hey, I could build that" but with a book they might not see it the same way.

psyklic• 16 years ago

No way, I buy lots of eBooks. I consider them a cheap education, especially with some of those great $10 deals that some publishers have for modern titles (e.g. friends of ED, Manning).

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

http://www.rubyinside.com/how-to-create-your-own-programming...

wallflower• 16 years ago

> “ The book I want to read. ”

— Matz, creator of the Ruby language

The amazing review / testimonial the author probably was able to ask for because he's credible and an active member of the Ruby ecosystem (tinyrb).

Another lesson on the value of real working relationships.

zephyrfalcon• 16 years ago

Of course, it also implies that Matz did NOT read the book... :-/

jamesbritt2• 16 years ago

Right. Says nothing about the quality of the book.

Also, I'd like to read the book, but not for the price the author is asking.

I'm impressed that one can sell an e-book for near $1/page, though. I realize that, in the end, it's about value delivered, not page count, but still.

It tells me that people are not as price sensitive to some things as I thought.

basugasubaku• 16 years ago

It was a single tweet (http://twitter.com/yukihiro_matz/status/3875573878). A more direct translation is "book I want".

I'm glad the site links to the source, though. I like easy to verify testimonials.

oscardelben2• 16 years ago

Indeed I thought it was a joke until I read the testimonial.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

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?

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

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.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

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.

aik• 16 years ago

I wonder how many more sales he will get for it appearing on hn?

johngunderman• 16 years ago

I've seen this book from an HN link a few months ago, so he already got one boost. This will probably bump his sales nicely again though.

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

5 so fare fyi.

Alex3917• 16 years ago

How I made 6k with my eBook How I Made 6k With My eBook

bgraves• 16 years ago

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?

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

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.

rubyrescue• 16 years ago

nice landing page! it makes me want to create my own language and i don't even have enough quality time with the ones i already know!

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Interesting set of ideas, thanks for the link! I hadn't actually heard of the book before, but I'm intrigued. Maybe they should include a last step of "post about book in popular geek hangouts". I'd also be curious how many sales were generated after the blog post, if they'd consider revealing that data.

Also, "Help Me Promote My Book And Get 50% on Each Sale"

Now THAT'S a good way to sell a book. Hooray pyramid schemes!

zackattack2• 16 years ago

That's not a pyramid scheme.

Groxx2• 16 years ago

Ah, my mistake, not pyramid scheme. Just pyramid sales (if nested within itself).

grumpycanuck2• 16 years ago

I self-published a PHP programming book (http://www.littlehart.net/book) and I've sold about the same number of copies as he has (~200 between PDF and LuLu) but (a) I didn't charge as much as he did and (b) didn't hook up with any affiliate marketing / promotion until October of 2009. Sold about 150 copies (PDF + Lulu) before I found my current publisher.

daok• 16 years ago

Why have you left Lulu?

grumpycanuck2• 16 years ago

I'm using LuLu for print-on-demand copies of the book, just like I did before. I went with someone else to help with PDF sales.

kalid2• 16 years ago

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 inside :).

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

Aww yes I need to learn LaTex :/

kalid2• 16 years ago

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.

citrik• 16 years ago

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

varikin2• 16 years ago

I am impressed with the fact that he made $6k. A few years ago, I took a writing class that was taught by a published author. At the time, she had 4 books published, all Sci-Fi, by a New York publisher. She told the class that she got an advance of $5k for her first book. When that sold well enough to cover costs for the publisher, she started receiving royalties. At the time, she had gotten about another $5k. So for about 1 years worth of work and over 5 years time, she made about $10k.

I know fiction is a different market than programming, but just the number comparison is interesting.

lsc• 16 years ago

yeah. uh, so far I've made less than that on the book of xen[1] and the publisher has said that it is selling 'surprisingly well' - he (my publisher) warned me going in that writing technical books doesn't pay as well as most things a qualified person can do.

But then, I get a real kick when I walk into Fry's and see my book.

[1]http://nostarch.com/xen.htm

varikin2• 16 years ago

I dream of being a published author one day and walking into a book store and secretly signing my books :)

I have heard that technical books don't sell well, but then again, this author is not very well known and her books don't sell well either. She said that every agent and publisher takes on new authors hoping they become the next William Gibson (or other huge name). Most authors barely survive off of writing.

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

I've heard ppl selling a lot more then I did in a lot less time. Self-publishing is probably less glamourous, but surely more profitable.

brc• 16 years ago

Did you consider using DRM or is it just a freely distributable PDF?

abl• 16 years ago

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?

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

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.

cadr• 16 years ago

How did you choose the price point?

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

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.

acangiano• 16 years ago

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.

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

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.

nailer• 16 years ago

In the 'Creating Passionate Users' sense, you made something that helps your audience be awesome - which is the best possible thing to create. Communicating that properly helps, but the product is king.

PS. I'm interested in buying your book now too, because I believe it will personally make me awesome.

bemmu• 16 years ago

The landing page is really sweet. What do your adwords ads look like?

zackattack2• 16 years ago

1. Who did the design and how much did it cost?

2. Can you show me your landing page for the initial adwords exploration campaign? How much was your CPC? How much did you bid? What was your quality score? (Thank you SO much)

macournoyer_16• 16 years ago

1. I did everything myself, except reviewing

2. Sorry the old page is gone, it was a very crappy 2 colors page w/ a box in the middle w/ bullet points. My idea was, if I get decent CR on this, I'm guaranteed to sell some. I don't remember the CPC and the bid, but I spent 50$/day for 2 days on just a few keywords (about 10 iirc).

ananthrk• 16 years ago

FWIW, review of this eBook in HN earlier

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813133

Edit: In the comments, you can actually see the author asking advice to improve the copy of the landing page :)

coolb• 16 years ago

do you use any other marketing tools/techniques other than clickbank?

How I Made $6K With My eBook

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