How fast can you write an e-book?

Though Jim Edwards and I wrote a #1 best-selling e-book titled “How to Write and Publish Your Own OUTRAGEOUSLY Profitable e-Book in as little as 7 days,” you can do it even quicker than 7 days.

How?

Here are at least three ways:

1. Don’t write it.

That is, speak your book and then transcribe it using a service such as www.idictate.com. Or use one of the voice recognition software out there, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking. Either way, if you’re more comfortable speaking rather than writing, speak your book first.

2. Coauthor it.

You can make yourself almost instantly famous by associating yourself with someone who is already famous. Jim Edwards came to me over two years ago and asked to coauthor a book with me. He said he would do most of the work. I agreed. The result was the e-book I mentioned above, which continues to be a bestseller. Since then, Jim is now a recognized authority in his own right and has written several other e-books.

3. Make soup.

This is the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” approach to creating a book. You don’t write a word. You simply ask people for contributions. Joe Kumar did this with his popular e-book “30 Days to Internet Marketing Success.” Joe is a teenager in Singapore, totally unknown until he compiled his ebook and made himself an online celebrity. Jo Han Mok and I just did this with our new book, “The E-Code.” We simply wrote people and asked for their contribution. It’s amazingly easy to do. You can be unknown, and famous people will give you contributions.

Again, writing e-books doesn’t have to be hard or take a lot of time. The trick is in delivering something people want. Do that and no one will care if you wrote your baby in an hour, a day, or a week.

But once it’s written, you can make passive money from it for a long, long time.

Go for it!

If you sell downloadable products (via ClickBank, PayPal, etc.), you need to be sure that no-one can access those products unless they’ve paid for them. It’s no secret that there are many people out there who will try to get to your download pages without paying for your product or, worse again, will make your download links available for free to others.

So what can you do to prevent this from happening?

Here are a few tips that won’t provide 100% protection, but will ensure that the majority of users will not be able to easily access and steal your products.

1. NAMING YOUR DOWNLOAD PAGE

If you name your download page something like ‘thankyou.html’ or ‘download.html’ then it’s a pretty simple process for the average hacker to locate your page and download your product. Give your download pages a complicated name that is neither easy to guess, easy to remember nor easy to recognize.

2. CREATE ‘NESTED’ DIRECTORIES

In keeping with point number 1, this is just a question of making it more difficult for the average hacker to find your download pages.

Let’s say you’re selling an ebook called “How to Make Your Hamster Happy”. Now, let’s say you’re selling it at this URL: http://www.yourdomainname.com/happyhamster.

In this example, your sales page is contained in the directory called ‘happyhamster’.

Now, rather than store your download page in this same directory, you can make life more difficult for the hacker by creating sub-directories (or ‘nested’ directories) for your download page.

Just create a sub-directory inside ‘happyhamster’ called, for example, ’srB45n’ and another directory inside that one called ‘trd12s’ (or whatever) and then place your download page inside this directory. In this scenario, your download page would be contained at this, more hidden, address: http://www.yourdomainname.com/happyhamster/srB45n rd12s

Another approach is to place your download page directory in a separate place altogether on your server - thus making it even more difficult for a hacker to track it down.

3. CREATE AN INDEX.HTM PAGE FOR EVERY FOLDER

If you don’t have a page called ‘index.htm’ in the directory that contains your download page, then your host server will display a page listing the contents of that directory.

Here’s an example of a directory that doesn’t have an ‘index.htm’ page: http://bizzydays.com/example. As you can see, the contents of the directory are there for all to see (and download).

Your ‘index’ page can be a regular page from your site or you can make it re-direct the visitor somewhere else. You can see this idea in action by visiting http://bizzydays.com/free. As you can see, when you try to access that directory, you’re immediately re-directed to the BizzyDays.com home page.

To create your own re-direct page, simply paste the following HTML code into Windows Notepad (or your web-editing software) and save it as ‘index.htm’ or ‘index.html’. Now upload it to the folder you wish to protect.

<.html> <.head> <.meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=FULL_ADDRESS _HERE"> <.meta name="robots" content="noindex"> <.title> <./head> <.body> <./body> <./html>

NOTE: I’ve placed dots (.) after the “<" in all the lines above. This is to ensure that the code shows up properly here. When using this on your web page, remove those dots. NOTE: Be sure to replace the URL with the address you want to re-direct the visitor to.

4. HIDE YOUR DOWNLOAD PAGES FROM THE SEARCH ENGINES

It’s amazing how many download pages you’ll find via the search engines if you put your mind to it. In fact, one search I just ran on Google turned up two download pages on the first page of results (albeit both from the same website).

To get around this, you need to ensure that the search engines do not include your download pages in their index.

To do this, just place the following snippet of code between the <.head> and <./head> tags at the top of your download page’s HTML…(again, remove the dot)

<.meta name="robots" content="nofollow,noindex">

5. PROTECT YOUR PAYPAL ORDER BUTTONS

PayPal is a great service but it has a gaping security hole that affects anyone selling downloadable products.

When you sell via PayPal, even the most amateur of hackers can find out the location of your download page just by looking at the HTML code on your sales page.

One way around this is to use HTML encryption software to render the HTML of your sales page un-readable. While this will stop the majority of hackers, the more determined ones will probably be able to crack the code.

Another approach is to use specialized software like ‘PayLock Generator’ (http://bizzydays.com/paypal) which creates highly encrypted PayPal order buttons that are very difficult to crack.

6. CHANGE YOUR DOWNLOAD LINKS OFTEN

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you’ve followed the steps outlined above, then you’ve gone some way towards protecting your digital products. It’s not 100% protection, however, which is why I recommend changing your download links regularly. This will help ensure that, if someone does manage to access your products, and has been leaving your download links on forums or whatever, then you’ll be able to cut them off.

7. PUT A STATEMENT ON YOUR EBOOK

If someone is giving your ebook away for free, it’s not a given that everyone who downloads it will be as dishonest as the one giving it away. It’s a good idea to place a prominent statement inside your ebook explaining that it’s not a free ebook. Ask readers to contact you if they received the ebook for free explaining where they downloaded it. You might consider offering a small ‘reward’ for taking the time to contact you.

Okay, those are the basic steps you can (and should) take to protect your downloads. If you’re worried that this isn’t enough, then you’ll find some additional resources below that really go the extra mile. (I use these myself so I can testify to their worth).

Just one final point… after you make the changes outlined above, be sure to double-check everything is working okay.

What a lack of research could do to you. by Brian Holte Copyright 2004 August

This article may be re-published as long as the source box remains. Notification of use would be appreciated.

When creating an ebook how well do you research the topic before hand?

It’s absolutely crucial that you research what problems your target market is having and what they’re spending money on.

The time to pay attention to detail is here.

If you don’t research how will you know what problems exist in your target market, what their recommending for products to try, pay even closer attention to the dollars involved. Hope fully they’re purchasing pattern will lead into 3 digit numbers.

This is why probing for the information you need you’ll be in a better position to analyze the information to see if it’s a worthwhile project to start, if not junk it.

Case in point, I recently had a young lad email me and explain he was a first time author of a 30 pg ebook targeted at teenagers.

He realized that because his target market is teenagers and teenagers do not purchase as frequently online as adults do that he was in a bit of a bind.

What was he to do? He’d put a bit of work into his project and knowing what he does now, he has to decide whether to sell or give it away. He needed some positive feedback, nothing to devastating. Instead of targeting students he could alter the ebook towards another target market, a market with money to spend and a hunger for his type of info product. Just a little copying, pasting, and editing.

Praise those accomplishments: The first thing I did was congratulate him for being a first time author.

Good topic, wrong market for low income earners: The topic he was covering was actually a good topic, but he realized after the fact that he had probably created a dud for an ebook because of the restrictions imposed on his target market…lack of access to purchasing power.

What would you do in his position?

His question to me was what he should do with the ebook. He had considered giving it away to people as an incentive for them to sign up for his newsletter, or selling the ebook at $5.00 a copy. Indication of his problems: I assumed that because he only put a price tag of $5.00 on the book that he was either not comfortable with the content he placed in the ebook OR that he was selling himself short. I would assume the latter.

Summary:

The collection of data, decision time. Once you’ve collected what you think is all the info required via surveys, it is now time for the decision making process

Why researching the right way the first time will save you hair loss and disappointment:

This is why doing a thorough job in the researching part of your work is so important. If he would have put a little more thought into who his target market was he wouldn’t have created a dud for an info product.

Lack of researching is the number one mistake that most new authors make, take your time researching…what’s the rush?