Journey to $500/day selling eBooks online

Hey everyone. I recently joined BHW and stumbled upon a fellow who documented his 16-day journey of starting a camgirl business.

I really admired his ability to commit to his plan and walk us all though the ups-and-downs of starting an online business. I struggle from being an overthinker, and I feel like writing things down or speaking them aloud helps me get out of my head and puts things in perspective. Most of the time, there's always a solution to the problems we face. We just need to take a deep breath and figure a way out.

Spoiler alert: I won't be starting a camgirl business. I decided to do eBooks to start - but I will be following his daily journal format nonetheless.

Am I fucking myself over by posting this and are. 1000s of people gonna copy? Maybe. But who gives a fuck. The internet is big enough for us all to eat. Abundance mindset.

I appreciate all perspectives from anyone that's willing to participate.

The Plan:
The plan is broken down into 5 steps:

1. Find ebooks online that I can modify (legally)
2. Redo their cover and title
3. List on Etsy
4. Strategically buy fake reviews to boost etsy listing credibility
5. Sell and repeat

Today i've started step 1.

I'm not sure how much of a time investment it will be to move through steps 1-4. Maybe I'm naive in thinking it's this easy. I know the market is saturated as fuck. Only one way to find out.

Potential Problems:
a) I need to think of creative titles and covers for these ebooks i'll be modifying. Maybe I'll outsource the cover art to ensure it's eye catching AF. I should also study some of the top etsy ebook listings and find out what they have in common. Are they doing something unique? Or are they just straight up ranked by # of reviews. Like I said, I know the market is saturated as fuck, so getting my listing to the top of an Etsy review page really is my X-factor here.

b) I need to find someone who can do Etsy fake reviews for me. I don't think there's a bot system out there that does this like it does for instagram followers/likes. Even if there is, it's unlikely that it won't get flagged by Etsy. Fuck that. Not risking my entire Etsy profile for this. I could probably find some review farm in India/China that does this for low. Need a guarantee it won't all come from same IP.

c) I've also heard that one should never use paypal when selling ebooks. Not sure how that works with Etsy. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

d) I should also think of ways I can find distribution outside of Etsy. It's hard to do without any leverage. Maybe reach out to influencers on IG and pay them a rev split? We'll see.

e) My own focus. Literally. I'm always thinking of the next thing, and I get demotivated once I don't see progress instantly. Stupid way to think, it's taken me astray many times. A big reason why I'm committed to this journal practice every day for as long as I start making money.

Goal:
A few hundred bucks a day is really the goal here. If I can make this an automated business so I can move on to my other ideas, that would be great. Am I being naive in thinking this is easy as it seems? Only time will tell.

Will be updating this thread every day with my progress/output to keep me disciplined. Excited to make some friends here along the way! Cheers lads.

Something new, GL

Don't focus on Etsy only, try other platforms to sell your ebooks, forums, create blogs related to the money-making niche, etc

I am following this for sure, do you mind sharing your progress, traffic sources, and strategies, and also sharing the place where you're getting the ebooks from?

Share as much info as you can, so we can all learn and apply this method.

Good luck mate!

Good Luck for your journey. Great idea. What Kind of books are you focusing?

Good Luck OP!

Have you consider writing your own books instead of taking other people's books and rebranding them?

good luck on your journey!

How much time do you think you'd need to redo one exemplary book to be ready for sale/resale ?

Do you consider buying some eBooks with Resale Rights? then sell them Good Luck mate

Dont worry ,from 1000 ppl reading this only 10 will try to copy you and maybe succeed, the rest of 990 are searching for "500 a day" methods in Marketplace xD

westboundwallo said:

Am I being naive in thinking this is easy as it seems? Only time will tell.

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Yes. Nothing ever is once you've done things a few times and succeeded and failed you learn this as a prerequisite. But you'll learn something along the way to turn into value. Best of luck.

Good luck buddy!
Following the journey …

Will you rely on only the traffic that Etsy brings you?

I had this idea too. Nice to see someone already implemented. Good luck!!

Day 2: I know nothing, John Snow.

Life will constantly humble you and show you how little you know after all. That's reassurance. Keep going.

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So remember yesterday when I had laid out my simple 5 step strategy to making $500 a day? Then remember in the same breath how I mentioned i'm probably being naive in thinking how easy this is? Turns out I was right. Let's walk through the different beliefs I had going into it, and what my updated course of action is:

Belief 1: "I'll just list eBooks on Etsy"

• when you search for something on Etsy, you'll realize most of the listings aren't actually eBooks. Ebooks account for maybe 20% of any search result.
• I'd say it's about 70% planners, and 30% other creative stuff (eBooks, mp3 files, cards, paintings, digital stickers)
• No point in trying to stand out in the already oversaturated "planners" market. So that leaves me with the other 30%
• These listings are much more unique from eachother. They are paintings, self-written ebooks, audio transcriptions, posters, etc that serve a very specific market. One example I saw was "forbidden spells handbook". Like wtf? Who would have thought to sell that.
• They are each very unique, which make them hard to replicate, and provides value to a very specific type of customer, in a very specific way.
• I'm not saying I can't still stick to my OG plan of selling eBooks ... I just need to be more strategic about it and know EXACTLY who to sell to. The more niche the better. You'll understand why in the next part.
• It also wouldn't hurt if I was more creative. Would help me stand out. Instead of eBooks maybe I can outsource and tell a graphic designer to make _______ for me from the ground up? This would give me more creative control from start to end. Rather than just creative control on the cover art.

Belief 2: "I'll buy reviews to increase my ranking on Etsy"

• Nope, this isn't Amazon. Etsy isn't interested in creating a hyper competitive marketplace littered with cheap china garbage marked up and propped up by reviews.
• Instead, they want to make a creative marketplace where ALL products get exposure. You'll find it very common for listings with 5 reviews to be right beside listings with 3000 reviews. Etsy doesn't care
• So what do they care about?
• SEO and Keywords. That's it.
• Etsy knows it has 1000s of listings made each minute, and they want prospective buyers to find exactly what they're looking for, before they leave the website and go look elsewhere.
• They also want sellers to stay on the platform with the with the promise of sales and exposure in an ever growing and crowded website.
• So what's the solution to this? You guessed it, a really fucking good search algorithm.
• They built one, and now to make sure this beast of a search algorithm is able to find listings to show to customers, Etsy puts extra emphasis on sellers to make their listings as DESCRIPTIVE and keyword-filled as possible.
• so that the Etsy algorithm can discover it easier, and serve it to the right audience. That's it. It doesn't give a fuck if you have 10000 reviews. If your keywords and description are shit, the Etsy algorithm won't be able to find it and know what audience to serve it to.
• So instead of focusing on buying fake reviews, my best bet is to actually do an amazing job at the SEO for my listing. https://www.etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/366470356778and https://www.reddit.com/r/EtsySellers/comments/u8io16/how_to_rank_your_etsy_store_in_2022/ both helped alot

Work for next 2-3 days:

1. Do keyword research and determine which Niche has an 'opening' for me to sell stuff in
   • We're in holiday season, so what digital items sell the most right now?
   • What category/niche is digital items growing the most in?
   • What tools can I use that will help me find this data? Google trends is one
   • Manually searching keywords on Etsy and searching for 'digital downloads' would also help

Thread Responses (Day 2) - Answering as much as I can while eating dinner

Don't focus on Etsy only, try other platforms to sell your ebooks, forums, create blogs related to the money-making niche, etc

I am following this for sure, do you mind sharing your progress, traffic sources, and strategies, and also sharing the place where you're getting the ebooks from?

Click to expand...

I'll start with Etsy since it has the most distribution. If this works I can move on to other platforms.

There's a lot of things I've learned so far, but my notes are long as fuck right now and it would take forever to write it all down every day. Plus i'm not even sure if half of the stuff i'm applying will actually work. I think it's best if I save it to the end, that way I'm only sharing stuff that actually worked. For now i'm just testing a bunch of different niches.

Have you consider writing your own books instead of taking other people's books and rebranding them?

Click to expand...

See my updated notes in day 2

Yes. Nothing ever is once you've done things a few times and succeeded and failed you learn this as a prerequisite. But you'll learn something along the way to turn into value. Best of luck.

Click to expand...

Wise words fellow Raven

Good luck. I was interested in the same strategy.

You should add an income stream. Sell some eBooks on BHW also after upgrading the account. Lot of potential here.

good luck on your journey!

Nice man.good luck

how do you deal with potential plagiarism charges?

if you rip people's ebook content and plan to resell, you would need to modify significantly. and even then you could get found out and ass fucked

and you really think you will get enough traffic from just posting on etsy? what if you don't get any traffic or very little? buying ads will get you traffic guaranteed

etsy is a lot of chicks. lots of women and girls. try to sell something that all these girls will fall in love with. make up bullshit. girl shit. or sell them hand bags and skin tight yoga pants. lots of girls love those yoga pants that make their ass POP like bubble butt. sell them that kind of shit

girls love shopping man. they love to go to mall and spend spend spend. just sell them that shit