How to Write and Make Money From an eBook Without Actually Selling It

An eBook is a great way of making money on the internet and you don’t need to have a website to do it. Nor do you need to actually sell the eBook to make money from it.  So how do you do it…well in a nutshell, it involves you writing a short ebook preferably about a topic you know about and distributing it for free around the internet.  It doesn’t have to be long – 10-15 pages is enough. In order to make money from it, you add multiple affiliate links to different products within the ebook.

Here’s how it works…

Step 1: Choose a topic that you have an interest in

The best eBooks are written by those who know what they are talking about. It will also make it easier to write if you have an interest in the topic. Having said that however, there is no rule that says that you need to know the subject to write about it but it will take longer because you will need to do the research for it first.

Step 2: Find products to promote in your ebook

There is no point spending hours writing an eBook only to find that there are no products to add to it. So before you start writing, you need to find products that you can ‘sell’ in your eBook that relate to your topic. You can choose products from Clickbank, CJ.com, Linkshare.com, ShareaSale.com, Amazon.com or any of the other affiliate networks. These companies are all free to join and offer thousands of different products and services that you can promote. Clickbank is a good one to start with as they don’t care whether you have a website or not.

Once you know that there are plenty of products you can start writing.

Step 3: Start Writing

This is not as scary as it sounds. If you have a flair for writing then you will probably have no problem getting started but if the last thing you wrote was a report in high school then you might find it hard to get going.

The easiest way to write an ebook is to break it up into sections first. For instance, say we decide to write an eBook on dog training. We might break it up into the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. How to train your dog to sit
3. How to train your dog to come when called
4. How to train your dog to shake hands
5. etc, etc

Once you have the main sections you can then provide the content. Always leave the introduction till last as it will be a lot easier to write.

Here is a really good tip. Start out with dot points. Don’t worry about making it read right at this point. Just jot down as many things as you can think of for each of the sections of your ebook.

Once you have the dot points then just expand on each dot point with sub-dot points. Before you know it you will have lots of content.

Now you just need to structure those dot points into coherent sentences.

If you really don’t want to write it yourself then pay a professional. Elance is a great place for this – it is full of writers willing to work on your projects and you would be surprised at how little it costs.

Step 4: Add Affiliate Links

Once you have completed your ebook you will need to add affiliate links. You can add them within the content itself where appropriate or add them at the end as a list of recommended products – or both if you like.

Step 5: Convert to PDF

Before you distribute your eBook you will need to convert it to PDF. There are a number of free versions available on the internet that are simple and easy to use. Ensure that once the document has been converted that you check to ensure that it has formatted the content correctly and that any links within the document work correctly. Some converters work better than others but we recommend one of the following:

• http://www.freepdfconvert.com/default.asp
• http://www.doc2pdf.net/

Step 6: Proofread Your eBook

There is nothing worse than reading a document with multiple spelling errors or bad grammar. Make sure you run a spell checker over it and read it through thoroughly yourself. Better yet, get someone else to do it for you. The more people that look at it the better so get your family or friends to help out.

Step 7: Distribute Your eBook

The next step is to distribute your ebook. Here are some ideas:

– email websites that relate to your ebook topic and tell them they can send out your ebook to their email list if they have one or they can use it as a free giveaway to encourage people to sign up to their newsletter.
– submit your ebook to ebook directories – there are plenty of them…just do a search in Google
– create a Squidoo lens, Hubpage (hubpage.com) and attach your ebook to the page so people can download it.
– submit to forums

And if you found that your ebook turns out better than you expected and you  might just be able to sell it rather than distribute it free them sign up with Clickbank.