RE: Self publishing [online]

["Johan Hiemstra" <webmaster -at- techexams -dot- net>]

>Rob wrote:
>I for one am very interested in hearing your experiences with online
>publishing/distribution.

Well, one reader is an audience, so I'll just go ahead. If nobody minds,
I'd like to keep this discussion online so I don't have to repeat myself
and maybe even be able to share some useful knowledge on this list I've
had so much benefit from. I'll try to list the basic things I do, and
could do, and how that makes me money, and could make me more. Feel free
to ask me anything.

Those scams I was referring to earlier always give the same reaction to
sane person: "if it was so easy, why wouldn't they do it themselves? Or
why wouldn't everyone do it?". The reason it are scams is not because
they advertise something untrue, but because they sell you common sense.
There's no big secret. It's just hard work like most other day jobs. And
there is not just one right way of doing it.

Everything is based on my own experience and not according to any
standards, nor am I an educated businessman. Although some business and
marketing skills are important, the most important thing is still
writing. When you are a techwriter you usually already choose the right
audience: those who are online and buy online. Let me first list some of
the advantages of online self-publishing (in my humble perception):

- 'You' get to choose what you write. Of course you can't just choose
anything, but there's plenty to choose from. Many people think you have
to be original to earn money online these days but that's often not
true. The topic doesn't have to be original, only the content. What I'm
trying to say is that it is often actually better to write something
about a common topic. A topic common on the Internet that is. A good and
current example is security (and not just for information systems and
network security). Anyway, you can probably find something that actually
interests you (be your own SME).

- You can more easily 'achieve' a large audience. This doesn't always
mean you make more money, but personally I enjoy the fact that my
material is read by hundreds of thousands instead of the couple of
thousand that buy my book, or read my article in a magazine. This is of
course only true when you don't charge your readers for your material...
I'll get back on that later.

- You can choose to do pretty much everything yourself. As long as you
know how to format in HTML and/or create a PDF file, and use the
Internet. Although getting professional marketing will help, you can do
a lot yourself. 

- It basically doesn't require any investment other than hard work. 


Now let's go back to what I actually do, which is a combination of two
things:

- Selling e-books (PDF).
It's actually one at the moment, but more will follow soon.
http://www.techexams.net/technotes/networkplus/pdf.shtml
It's a PDF guide I wrote over a year ago (my writing skills have
improved :)), which prepares IT pros and students for CompTIA's Network+
exam. I choose to sell it on my own website, but there are plenty of
sites where you can sell e-books. It's not mandatory to have your own
site. It does have it's advantages (can market your own product) but
many if not most of the customers are first time visitors, which are
actually looking for the product.

If you write an e-book that is functional, pretty much all you need to
do is advertise it (i.e. google adwords, amazon, newsgroups, etc.etc.).
A good product sells itself. And if you choose the right topic, there
are hundreds of places where you can advertise it at no cost (without
spamming or shameless self-promotion), and advertising really does work.
If you want to publish and sell on your own website you'll need a credit
card processor such as the one I'm using www.2checkout.com (I wouldn't
recommend that particular one though). They usually charge only a small
percentage (i.e. 50 cents + 5%) of each sale. You can get website
hosting for as little as 4 beers per month. 

This one e-book doesn't bring enough food on the table, it's good for a
couple of nice restaurant dinners though. It took me about 2 months of
work, but receive revenue from it for several years (and after updating
it several years more). If I would stop being lazy and my crazy neighbor
would stop playing drums, I could write for 12-18 months and sit on my
lazy behind again for 2 years.

On a side note: I got cell phone on which I can receive e-mail. I use
that e-mail address for one purpose only: sales receipts. So each time I
sell an e-book, my phone makes a special sound (which used to be "You've
got money" but that didn't go well in public ;)).

- Giving away e-books or online articles
Free is still hot and it is easy to find non-paying customers. Others
(websites) will often be glad to find them for you. This actually is my
primary income; publishing my own material and not charging anything to
the reader. (I know it's obvious, it's just nice to be able to 'say'
it). The revenue, of course, comes from advertisers. Take for example my
e-book again, the page I linked to contains also a link to a free
version. In the free version, the first page after the cover, is a full
page ad, basically a huge banner. For every download I get a couple of
cents (others pay per click), which with 2000 downloads per month equals
two times a lunch. (I love to eat out).

Instead of, or in addition to, giving away e-books in PDF, you can
'simply' publish it online in old fashioned HTML. In that case you'll
have to get the revenue from advertisers thru banners, google adsense.
'Just' the basic how to run a successful website stuff. But regarding
self publishing, the revenue is not just the income from advertisers. As
I mentioned earlier, this gives you a chance to build up a large
audience, 'fans', which are more likely to buy your offline products as
well. Plus, it's easier to open doors at publishers. (in my case
pointing them to the Who's Online section on my homepage
(www.techexams.net), or showing some other stats about downloads and
pageviews and stuff works quite well.)

If you do run your own website there is another option that is not that
common (yet): selling Site CDs. I'm going to experiment with this with
www.3dnuts.com. It's a site with tutorials for 3D Studio Max (which
happens to be one of my hobbies, so kinda like my own SME). I just
started early October and already have about 1500 visitors per day. Each
tutorial I wrote, is read about 100 to 500 times a day (simply by adding
them to a dozen of link directories). I can choose to sell these
tutorials in PDFs or sell reprint permission to magazines, but instead
are going to sell them all in  a single package. When I wrote about 10
tutorials, I will start offering a Site CD, which basically means they
can purchase and download the entire site so they can burn it on a CD
and use it offline. For those with low bandwidth connection I will mail
them a CD by snail mail. I know of a couple of other sites who are doing
this with success (and broadband access didn't have much influence on
it.) 

I hope there's something useful or interesting at least in the above
text. I need to get back to work :)

Johan










 





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