Any aspiring Internet Marketeer worth his or her salt just doesn’t need to spend their evening creating the content of an eBook, it just isnt time used effectively. There are a plethora of competent freelancers who would be more than delighted at taking the pain and headache of this task away from you to deliver a product that will save you time and money. The most savvy Internet Marketeers are outsourcing this task to sites like Elance to create an eBook product ready to go – this is the way forward in the 21st cenntury.
This post will expose step by step how you go about creating an ebook, putting together a succinct and coherent proposal, sourcing a supplier and working with them to produce the finished article in record time. The post will provide estimates of the costs of doing this so you can work out your budget beforehand. It will also contain a template for your project description, saving you even more time in having to put together a thorough proposal.
You have two main options when creating your product;
You could use your own content or your own subject matter expertise to create the content or simply outsource the entire content creation of your eBook.
If you are already an expert in a particular niche and want to create an eBook using your knowledge combined with content you have already created then it’s just a matter of compiling the relevant content together to submit as a supporting document to your eBook tender document. You’ll need to start by following these simple steps;
Think about;
- Who is the book aimed at?
- What is your niche?
- What will the book help my customers do? (The eBooks that sell the most are those that are ‘How to…’ guides)
- What am I going to call the book? (Something like; ‘How to grow the worlds biggest cucumbers in 5 days…’ or ‘How to make $10k in 3 days selling widgets, you get the idea…
- What are the main ideas or chapters contained in the book? (Doing this beforehand will help your editor and copy expert produce something that is bang on the money.
This preparation shouldnt take you more than 90 minutes to do.
I Contrary to popular belief you don’t need expert knowledge in a subject in order to write a book, you can outsource the entire content creation to an expert who will compile the whole thing from start to finish. Not a problem, it’s simple – take an Ebook on weight loss.
Enter “free eBooks on weight loss” into any search engine and select one
Go to the index of that book to see what the main chapter headings are – that will give you a feel for what should be in your eBook.
Write up your chapter headings in addition to the tasks I had outlined earlier in this post and you are ready to post your project on Elance.
Elance is a mastermind resource. You will find all sorts of freelancers offering their services from SEO experts to PA’s. You will find everything you need on Elance.
Creating an account with Elance is simple, their website is easy to navigate, so get yourself to their site and register an account, then follow these steps;
> Click on <Post job> and enter job description, something like “Create content for giant cucumber growing eBook”
> Select category <writing and translation>
> Select sub-category <EBooks and Blogs>
> Enter Job Description, something like ‘I want someone to write an eBook on the subject of How to grow the worlds biggest cucumbers in 3-days, I have attached some Chapter headings for some ideas but I’m also open to your suggestions. It needs to be 30 pages in length with some relevant images and illustrations… Please specify how many rounds of revisions you include for in your price.’
> Select up to 5 desired skills you are looking for, such as ‘article writing, content writing. These appear in a drop down menu for you.
Another great feature on Elance is that you can post your job for all freelancers to bid, you can also invite specific freelancers to bid for your work. We’ve identified a portfolio of suppliers in each niche and we invite them to tender for the work each time, so often we use the same suppliers over again and sometimes, to keep them on their toes and competitive we choose others.
You need to have a good idea of your budget for your project. Elance allows you to specify a fixed price or hourly rate. Choose a fixed price to start with and set it to between $50 and $500 , which are the lowest threshold options you have to choose from. The cost of creating eBooks vary significantly, you can spend $100 right up to $800. Naturally the quality will differ but you can always ask to view samples of their work when freelancers start to bid for your project. This is a competitive market place and there are many freelancers vying for this kind of work, so expect to receive plenty of bidders . Analysing bids can be time consuming when you first start out, so you might want to be ruthless and immediately decline bids that are too high, or bids that seem unrealistically low, rather than opt for the cheapest every time it’s worth doing a little bit of research into the each bidder, for example you can read feedback they have received from customers on other projects – this gives you a feel for their competence, professionalism and punctuality.
Alongside the creation of your eBook content you’ll need an eBook cover designed and also an opt-in box. You can create a separate project for this by following the same steps, the only difference will be the project description which should read something like this; ‘I want an eBook cover designed on the subject of How to grow rock star style tomatoes in 3-days. I also need an opt-in box’. Simple. There are tons of freelancers doing this kind of work for $50. Don’t spend a cent more than that.
We spent $165 on proof reading, editing and formatting our first eBook (we developed the content our self). We then spent $50 on creating an eBook cover and opt-in box. So total spend $215.
The only other consideration is lead time, how soon do you need your eBook? Most freelancers can turn something like this around in a week, so if you desperately want it for the next morning then you might be asking too much.
Use your time sagely and efficiently, don’t waste valuable time on these kinds of tasks. You’ll need to be prepared to spend a few dollars but you’re planning on recouping this investment right? Becoming a Rockstar author is one thing, making $10K passive income online is another. Using Elance is one way to help you move closer to your dreams.
