1 Hour eBooks and PDFs

The idea is simple.

Just turn one of your blog posts into an ebook (or a pdf) and sell it to your audience for $5.

And, tell them that’s what you’re doing! Don’t mislead them in any way; be 100% honest with them.

Basically, let them know that this is a long post, and they can find everything below, but that they can also buy the pdf version (which is the same, but excludes the ads, so it’s easier to read). They can then store it on their computer or print out. And, it only costs $5.

I put this note at the top of one of my more popular (and longer posts) and at the bottom, and I didn’t think much of it. This was at the end of March, during the Pandemic.

I figured I had nothing to lose. Maybe I’ll sell a few copies.

And, here’s what happened.

In April, during the pandemic, I made $45. Not a lot, but some nice extra pocket change.

And, it hadn’t taken long to do – maybe less than 1.5-2 hours (as I wasn’t quite sure about all the steps).

I didn’t think that much of it until later in May when I realized I had made another $45…without any extra work.

So, I did the math and after the paypal fees, it was about $40 extra profit per month, which meant I could make $480 a year for less than 2 hours worth of work. That was worth it.

So, on the evening of May 30th, I decided to create a 2nd pdf…this one was my most popular post and almost all the traffic came from Pinterest, so I figured it wouldn’t do so well.

Turns out I was wrong. I made 2 sales over 2 days (for $10).

So, I made $55 in May between the 2 books. Then, on that Sunday and Monday, I did 2 more. They each took me an hour (as I timed it).

In June, I made $175. And, collectively, it probably took me 5 hours at the most to do all 4 of these. In total, I’ve made $275, so $55 per hour spent.

These are working passively for me and at a pretty steady pace. I’m sure I won’t sell that many in Nov/Dec, but if I take 175 and multiply by 5 (rather than 6 months), that’s means $1,150 for the year for 5 hours of work (or $230 per hour).

And, for next year when I have a “full” year, if I multiply by 11, that’s an additional $1,925. Even if my sales are cut in half (let’s suppose I lose a lot of traffic), that’s over $900 for the year.

No, this will NOT make you rich.

But, as I hope you can see, it was pretty easy and not very time consuming to do, and you can do it, too.

And, very importantly, while this is only a little bit of extra money, from some of the lessons here, you’ll learn how to use this same process and many of the elements to help you launch into to bigger (and higher priced) ebooks and even printables.

It will make your bigger launches much easier and less intimidating. You will have many of the basics done, things like an ebook template, how to sell the product (and get the tech stuff right…yes, you’ll see how I had to delay my first launch a few days as I couldn’t figure out this stupid annoying tech stuff), and how to make professional looking mock ups.

And, if you’ve already launched an ebook or printable, that’s wonderful. You’ve done the hard work already. Here you’ll learn some tips that can accelerate your growth, and hopefully can also implement this simple idea.