10 ms·

"If you choose to go digital only as an e-book, this is where profit rules and amazing numbers can be achieved. How amazing? I know one man who nets between $5,

"If you choose to go digital only as an e-book, this is where profit rules and amazing numbers can be achieved. How amazing? I know one man who nets between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 per month with a single e-book and affiliate cross-selling to his customer lists. I’m not kidding." Any idea of what ebook is he talking about?

deleted 16y ago
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- deleted 16y ago
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patio11 16y ago
There is a lot of money in "Internet marketing"/"Make Money Online", mostly in taking rubes to the cleaners. Affiliate CPAs reach into the several hundred dollar range (sell someone someone else's $500 course guaranteed to make you into the next parrot ebook king, take 75% commission). At the risk of stating the obvious, returns followed a zipf distribution (the overwhelming majority make nothing, a few make small amounts, some smaller number do about what I'm doing with BCC, and a few make huge businesses out of it). This is far from the only seedy sector which is awash in greenbacks, incidentally.
vaksel 16y ago
none it's bullshit...that's $60-$120 million profit a year from a single book. These numbers just don't exist. If most of his sales are from affiliates, who typically get 75% per sale...that means the book would need to sell close to $200 million. If the book costs $1,000, that's 200,000 sales. If the book costs $500 that's 400,000 sales If the book costs $250 that's 800,000 sales If the book costs $125 that's 1,600,000 sales. If the book costs $50 that's 4,000,000 sales Then you need to take into account conversion rates. If the book sells at 1:200(average more or less)... @$1000 that's 40 million uniques a year @$500 that's 80 million uniques a year @$250 that's 160 million uniques per year @$125 that's 320 million uniques per year @$50 that's 800 million uniques per year And as far as I know the #1 site in the world is Facebook, not makemoniezonline.com
- patio11 16y ago
  Think less like a technically savvy HN reader who does not pay for content online, and more like an info marketing huckster who has an email list of 50,000 people who have bought a similar product in the last six months.
  - ramit 16y ago
    Let's be careful here. Patrick, you and I both know how the conversion models in this area work, and while the info-marketing world is filled with scammy sleazebags, there are also some very credible ones. For example, I sell information products as well as a New York Times best-selling book. My students do very well, whether it's learning how to automate their finances or earn more via freelancing. If they don't, they request a refund and I eat any costs of my online products. Virtually every info-marketer offers generous guarantees and has to live up to their product's hype...or they go out of business. This is an extremely competitive area. Vaksel, let me also offer some feedback on your numbers. You're analyzing them without knowing how the field works, and frankly every Web2.0 company could learn a LOT from studying the direct-response field. Want to know how to increase your AOV by 200% or 300%? How about finding undiscovered 6-figure revenue sources in your business (like I did 2 months ago)? Why not look to the people who have been doing this for decades? You assume that most of the money is made from the sale of the ebook itself. That's not correct. Most of the revenue is actually made from the "back end," or other products that are either cross-sold, upsold, or repeatedly sold. Every direct marketer knows that you profit more from having a dedicated group of customers who buys from you time after time...which is why the very best ones take INSANE care of their customers. I'll speak for myself, but I continue to send lots of free material to both my free users and my customers. I email them free stuff. I call them. I write them hand-written cards (seriously). As a result, on the rare occasion when I sell something, I can sell it for premium prices (often 100x more than my competitors charge for their products) and people happily pay it because they trust me and they know it's the best. Here's another example. I know an info marketer who pays a 200% commission for any affiliate who sells his book. So if you sell his $27 ebook, you get $54. How does he afford that? Because he's systematically built a funnel that offers his customers more products that they want and are willing to pay for, making it a simple no-brainer customer-acquisition cost -- even at 200%. A skilled direct-response marketer could take a $27 ebook and turn it into $500 of LTV...and the customer would be DELIGHTED to pay it if the material is of outstanding quality. IMHO, a lot of Web2.0 companies should stop poo-poohing marketing and learn how it really works. Virtually every Web2.0 company should be doing upsells, cross-sells, and partnerships...and as a guy who co-founded a venture-backed startup and know a lot of other startup CEOs/marketers, I know that very, very few do. I've put together several bookmarks that might be interesting: * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/emarketing http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/emarketing (direct-response stuff) * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/marketing http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/marketing (general marketing) * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/monetization http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/monetization Hope this helps.
wallflower 16y ago
Remember the Parrot e-Book? Think bigger, more targeted audience (people who really want the edge on making money online vs devoted parrot owners) "Cringely: Making 400k/yr profit on an eBook about parrots" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

patio11 16y ago

There is a lot of money in "Internet marketing"/"Make Money Online", mostly in taking rubes to the cleaners. Affiliate CPAs reach into the several hundred dollar range (sell someone someone else's $500 course guaranteed to make you into the next parrot ebook king, take 75% commission). At the risk of stating the obvious, returns followed a zipf distribution (the overwhelming majority make nothing, a few make small amounts, some smaller number do about what I'm doing with BCC, and a few make huge businesses out of it). This is far from the only seedy sector which is awash in greenbacks, incidentally.

vaksel 16y ago

none it's bullshit...that's $60-$120 million profit a year from a single book. These numbers just don't exist. If most of his sales are from affiliates, who typically get 75% per sale...that means the book would need to sell close to $200 million. If the book costs $1,000, that's 200,000 sales. If the book costs $500 that's 400,000 sales If the book costs $250 that's 800,000 sales If the book costs $125 that's 1,600,000 sales. If the book costs $50 that's 4,000,000 sales Then you need to take into account conversion rates. If the book sells at 1:200(average more or less)... @$1000 that's 40 million uniques a year @$500 that's 80 million uniques a year @$250 that's 160 million uniques per year @$125 that's 320 million uniques per year @$50 that's 800 million uniques per year And as far as I know the #1 site in the world is Facebook, not makemoniezonline.com

patio11 16y ago
Think less like a technically savvy HN reader who does not pay for content online, and more like an info marketing huckster who has an email list of 50,000 people who have bought a similar product in the last six months.
- ramit 16y ago
  Let's be careful here. Patrick, you and I both know how the conversion models in this area work, and while the info-marketing world is filled with scammy sleazebags, there are also some very credible ones. For example, I sell information products as well as a New York Times best-selling book. My students do very well, whether it's learning how to automate their finances or earn more via freelancing. If they don't, they request a refund and I eat any costs of my online products. Virtually every info-marketer offers generous guarantees and has to live up to their product's hype...or they go out of business. This is an extremely competitive area. Vaksel, let me also offer some feedback on your numbers. You're analyzing them without knowing how the field works, and frankly every Web2.0 company could learn a LOT from studying the direct-response field. Want to know how to increase your AOV by 200% or 300%? How about finding undiscovered 6-figure revenue sources in your business (like I did 2 months ago)? Why not look to the people who have been doing this for decades? You assume that most of the money is made from the sale of the ebook itself. That's not correct. Most of the revenue is actually made from the "back end," or other products that are either cross-sold, upsold, or repeatedly sold. Every direct marketer knows that you profit more from having a dedicated group of customers who buys from you time after time...which is why the very best ones take INSANE care of their customers. I'll speak for myself, but I continue to send lots of free material to both my free users and my customers. I email them free stuff. I call them. I write them hand-written cards (seriously). As a result, on the rare occasion when I sell something, I can sell it for premium prices (often 100x more than my competitors charge for their products) and people happily pay it because they trust me and they know it's the best. Here's another example. I know an info marketer who pays a 200% commission for any affiliate who sells his book. So if you sell his $27 ebook, you get $54. How does he afford that? Because he's systematically built a funnel that offers his customers more products that they want and are willing to pay for, making it a simple no-brainer customer-acquisition cost -- even at 200%. A skilled direct-response marketer could take a $27 ebook and turn it into $500 of LTV...and the customer would be DELIGHTED to pay it if the material is of outstanding quality. IMHO, a lot of Web2.0 companies should stop poo-poohing marketing and learn how it really works. Virtually every Web2.0 company should be doing upsells, cross-sells, and partnerships...and as a guy who co-founded a venture-backed startup and know a lot of other startup CEOs/marketers, I know that very, very few do. I've put together several bookmarks that might be interesting: * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/emarketing http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/emarketing (direct-response stuff) * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/marketing http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/marketing (general marketing) * http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/monetization http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/monetization Hope this helps.

wallflower 16y ago

Remember the Parrot e-Book? Think bigger, more targeted audience (people who really want the edge on making money online vs devoted parrot owners) "Cringely: Making 400k/yr profit on an eBook about parrots" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215