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Ask YC: Anyone actually making money selling ebooks/digital goods?
So, this article seems to have gotten traction on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215
It's not a new idea. Tim Ferris has been preaching that since the Four Hour Work Week was published, and affiliate marketing programs are clearing houses for people doing this sort of thing.
Is anyone on HN doing this, or have you done it in the past. I'd love to hear some anecdotes from this community.
- idont 18y ago(On my classified website) I only see scammers active in MLM who are making money with ebooks... ;) Sad... The perception of ebook is pretty negative (low quality)... Amazon will improve this perception I hope...
- russell 18y agoCould you elaborate? I know people here are looking for positive models, but advice on how to avoid the perception of being a scam could be useful.
- briansmith 18y agoWhy don't you filter out the MLM scammers?
- menloparkbum 18y agoI sell software, digital images, digital videos and digital audio files. Do they count as digital goods?
- tertius 18y agoBut do you make money?
- menloparkbum 18y agoYes.
- russell 18y agoCould you (and others) elaborate a little more? Are you a reseller for for a large number of titles? Are you a generic site or a very focused topic specific site(s)? Are your materials self produced or exclusive? I am interested because I am looking for different monetization models for my GF who is a fine art painter and photographer.
- menloparkbum 18y agoI plan on writing up some thoughts about this in a series of blog posts over the summer. However, maybe I should make it a paid e-book? I kid, I kid... maybe.
- lionheart 18y agoI do this. I have been since about 2004. I don't make eBooks though. I'm a programmer so I make software, usually things to help with web-design, and then sell it using a similar site format. Its been my sole source of income, and its not a bad living, although I personally know people who are making $1-$10 million a year in profit from sites like this. They're not one-man shops though, they usually have about 5-10 employees to help run everything, but its still very profitable. Digital goods cost pretty much $0 to copy and distribute, so the profit margins are amazing. It really amazes me how a lot of people, especially in a community as open-minded as this, are quick to label everybody who has a strange-looking site a scammer. I use the salesletter format for most of my sites, and it works. I don't care what it looks like as long as it gets results. As for the Parrot guy, I know nothing about him so I have no idea if he really does ignore refund requests. I use http://www.clickbank.com/ http://www.clickbank.com/ as my payment processor, and they handle all that. They honor all refund requests, with or without an explanation, so I couldn't even deny one if I wanted to. I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody has about this market. It's basically an evolution of the direct mail market from before the Internet. Its looks a little strange to the Web 2.0 people here, but its a valid market.
- immad 18y agoDoes the sales letter format really convert better than a normal site format (menu items at the top and a big buy link at the top and nice layering). I looked at the parrot site and I had a hard time finding the buy button.
- lionheart 18y agoAmazingly, it does. Trust me, I'm as surprised as you are. I've tried both designs, run split tests, the salesletter always wins. I know plenty of other people who have also run tests, same result. I have no idea why. Maybe people like to read? The same tests also show that the less graphics the better. You'll notice that the Parrot Secrets site has almost none. Not even a logo or a header graphic. That's on purpose. The tests I've seen show that fancy graphics just destroy the conversion rate on a site like this. I have no idea why this is the case. But I'm going to do what works, not what looks fancy.
- izak30 18y agoPersonally, I don't. I've worked very closely with someone who does (managing their campaigns and websites) Here's what I know. Pick a niche, be an expert, outsource everything but the content creation, and spend your efforts selling. Pick a payment gateway that handles charge back procedures well, even if you can get it cheaper somewhere else (use paypal) Price Higher than you think it's worth. I've seen some really incredible results. Lots of money being made here. People do buy this sort of stuff, but I think that most of us at HN...don't; which is why it seems foreign.
- TY 18y agoHave a look here - there is a whole interview with the CEO of ClickBank (the company that specializes) on this subject that might be useful to you: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516821 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516821 The value of services such as ClickBank is that they provide you access to a large established affiliate network - something that is very hard to build yourself...
- callmeed 18y agoA little over a year ago, we created a DVD and companion ebook on the topic of SEO for photographers. We serve that niche market and were finding that most photographers a) had Flash sites and b) had no clue how to get on Google at all–let alone rank well. We were doing service work for people and they were lining up faster than we could help them. So, we decided to sell the info. I decided to do a DVD because I wanted to include a lot of screencasts. The companion PDF is more of a checklist/workbook. We did a 1,000 DVD run at DiskMakers and also let people access it online. We're pretty much sold out of the initial run of DVDs (I have a few left in my closet) and we've sold the online version to a lot of overseas photographers who didn't want to wait for it to ship. We charged $79 for the DVD so you can do the math there. http://www.photographyseo.com http://www.photographyseo.com. One thing I want to emphasize is that we did absolutely no marketing other than linking to it on our main website and blog. No AdWords or other online campaigns. If I had tried hard, I imagine we could have sold 2 or 3 times the amount we have by now. I'm considering doing a revised version that is an online/ebook version only–or possibly doing a version that has a slightly broader audience ("SEO for wedding vendors" for example). If anyone wants to see the PDF or browse the videos, drop me an email.
- steveplace 18y agoI'm actually releasing one in 1.5 weeks, so we'll see how it goes. I've also done affiliate marketing and that's done well also. But I view this as means to cash rather than means to a true business. More like a springboard, I suppose.
- shaqir 18y agoGuys what do you think of Carbon Copy Pro
- paraschopra 18y agoI will tell you my story. A few months ago, I got all excited about these ebooks and all. So, I picked up a topic I could write an ebook on 'How to Start An Online Business' http://paraschopra.com/business/ http://paraschopra.com/business/ First I tried launching it as a premium ebook, priced at $65 with some 6-7 pages long copy (see the source code of the page, the long copy is still there) I didn't sell even a single copy. (Though I must admit, the traffic was really low, not even 5-6 visitors per day as I didn't do Adwords) Then I dropped the price to $5, and did a short copy of the sales letter. Still nothing happened. Now I am offering the ebook as free download and I get 2-3 downloads per day thanks to Google First Page Result for the term 'How to Start an Online Business'. Nothing sells like free stuff! Maybe it was the ebook or maybe it was the sales letter or maybe it was both, but the fact is that I didn't sell even a single copy. With stories of an ebook making a million, there are a million (untold) stories of ebooks making zero.
- psyklic 18y agoNice book. Even if it is mostly annotated hyperlinks, the resources seem to be of good quality and organized well.
- gommm 18y agoWhy not try again with a long sale copy but this time use adwords and have an affiliate programs... Having an affiliate program is good because it gives you a chance at seeing how someone who is used to do this kind of marketing works (at least that's what I imagine, I haven't launched my website yet but was planning to have an affiliate program where people get a percentage of sales right from the beginning). It seems to me that the most important to get sales is not the book but the ad copy and the use of sem to get the traffic there... That said thanks for the book I'll see how it is :-)
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoI'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt: 1. Find a niche. "Start an online business" is not a niche. 2. Try affiliate programs and SEM to drive targeted traffic. These work best in a smaller niche (see #1) 3. You've got a lot of links on your page that take people away from the page, which drives down conversion, which drives up your cost per conversion, which hurts your ability to do #2 4. You're selling the steak, not the sizzle. Why do I want to start an online business? What's my core goal? What problem does your book solve? 5. A "huge list of resources" sounds like a lot of work. Google provides me with millions of links on this subject for free. What's valuable to me is that someone has culled those millions of links down to just what I really need to know, not 11,000 links that I then have to pick through. There are other issues, but fixing those would be a big step in the right direction.
- fatbat 18y agoWhere do these people get the testimonials? Are they even real or is it another Betty Crocker? I would think that faking a testimonial is a snake oil salesman tactic.
- izak30 18y agoTestimonials are mostly real (from what I know), exchange free copies for testimonials (and use the good ones); use 'personal' testimonials over again, rather than 'product specific' testimonials. Those are just a couple tricks.
- ahoyhere 18y agoJust like everything else, it can work, but most people don't put the requisite effort into it to make it work. That means research and understanding people / the market first.