Life Is Awesome

So I promised a few people I would write about details of my first ebook launch. I wasn’t sure when to write about the launch, but I figure now is as good a time as any.

The Launch

It was actually a very low key launch and I didn’t do much promotion for it other than mentioning it on my blog a few times and sending copies to the people who gave me quotes for it. I didn’t set up an affiliate program, I didn’t send out a million review copies, I didn’t try to make the launch into something huge. I mentioned it on my blog and twitter several times, so my audience knew it was coming finally. I wrote a simple post and an even simpler sales page and just let things be. Since it was my first product and I had no idea what I was doing, I wanted to make sure I didn’t fall flat on my face trying to do a huge launch.

The Sales

In the first two days I sold 29 ebooks and continue to sell about one or two a day now.  At $27 a pop minus fees, you can figure out how much I earned from the initial launch. This however, is without much promotion at all.  I am now going to work on building more links and getting more reviews of the ebook. I would like a steady stream of traffic to the ebook page to get at least a few sales per month indefinitely.

My thoughts on the sales… I think it’s great! My blog isn’t huge. I compared how I did to other bloggers who launched ebooks and released their stats and for what I did I think it’s pretty awesome. I honestly had no idea what to expect regarding sales. My numbers fit the kind of launch I did and while they aren’t mind-blowing, they definitely have encouraged me in the fact that I can sell something of my own creation.

The Mistakes

I know if I had created an affiliate program from the beginning I would have made more sales. That may have translated into more money.  I’m not saying having no affiliate program was a mistake – I don’t think it was because I didn’t want to focus on that this first time. But others have mentioned it as a possible mistake.

My sales page probably isn’t the greatest. I can’t get into the whole internet marketer thing too much, so I went with something simple and my style. It probably could be improved upon and I most likely will change it around for improving future sales.

Not being ready for traffic overload was definitely a mistake. I honestly didn’t think it would be a problem since it was such a low key launch, but my site almost crashed and burned. Apparently all my friends in the niche were cool enough to retweet and link to the ebook’s sales page and the post about it, so I had a ton of traffic hit my site all at once. It ran really slow for a while but thankfully held up with the added traffic. It almost didn’t and I have no idea what I would have done if it hadn’t. I didn’t have a backup plan because it wasn’t something I even considered. I honestly didn’t think it would be like that, but it was my blog’s best traffic day ever.

Thoughts

I mentioned the sales earlier, but I did this project for a number or reasons.

One, of course is money. I need more money and I wanted to have a product I could sell. I didn’t have grand expectations for it but did want to create something that would continually sell each month. I will be happy if I just get a few sales each month to add to all my other income streams.

Second, authority!  In the niche I have my own well defined place, but I wanted to have some sort of authority. Writing an ebook that people appreciate and your peers respect is a nice way to gain that authority. I’m now known as someone who knows about blogging and who can teach others about it. I’m hoping that translates into other opportunities like speaking at niche blogging conferences (well, once I get over the fear of public speaking).

Third, I genuinely wanted to help people. The fact that I charged money for my advice doesn’t mean it wasn’t given out of a desire to help and teach. A lot of people want to have nice blogs but have no idea how to create or run them. I do and I know how to translate all the tech speak into easy to understand instructions. I wanted to help confused bloggers understand things like SEO to help them create better blogs. I accomplished that and I’m really happy with all the positive feedback from people who have learned something and have improved their blogs because of the ebook.

Those are the reasons why I took this project on. It really did start as something small and grow into something much bigger and unexpected. But since I’ve got my first product and first product launch behind me, I’m totally ready to start something new. I will be working to promote this product of course, but I also want to start doing other things.  I’m excited about the possibilities now and can’t wait to start working on the next new project.

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