I’ve realised I have slightly cheated on this whole concept, so I’m going to explain myself and also show why I can justify it.
When writing the book I had a number of costs:
- I had to pay to get my proof copy of my book printed and delivered to me in the UK – this was around $40. I realise this means I’m shelling out money I’ve haven’t made from the web – but I could have made this from signing up to credit cards through the affiliate deal I mentioned earlier – I didn’t want to because I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle. So I have decided I am going to take the cost of this off my current total of $131.60, to make $90.
- This cost is slightly unfair: I had to get a copy of my passport notorised in order to send to the US government to get a US tax ID. I’m not sure if the notorisation of the passport cost anything – my parents got it done through their lawyer (notories are had to come by) , but they never actually asked me for any money, I’m not sure if he charged them either as they had quite a big deal going through at the time. I’ll keep you posted if I find out if it did cost anything. This however isn’t really a cost if you live in the US or if you decide to use a print on demand publisher in your own country.
So in theory at the moment I have $90 to spend. I think this should be enough to get me going, but I’m going to be have to be absolutely sure on the money making affiliate scheme I make up as I have no room for error – I can’t afford to test market as $90 is all I have!
So I tried to get accepted for that affiliate, but unfortunately I didn’t – so I’m still waiting on a new affiliate product to sell.
In the meantime I’ve sold more books, I’ve sold around 22 books now, and I’ve got $131.60 to play with.
I was speaking to a friend of mine at work,
Anthony Shapely who has had some success with affiliate program – I’ve asked him if he will coach me through my first affiliate program, in return I’ve told him I’ll give him 50% of the profits I make for that program and 20% for the ones I do on my own until the end of 2009. Hopefully he will be interested, I hope so because its a no risk way of him earning extra money!
I know its not many, but its not my family or friends buying them (thank god)!
So I’ve sold 19 copies, 2 are with Lulu – which means I won’t get the money from them, the rest are with createspace, totalling $118.86 so far. Not bad, unfortunately I get charged $8 for requiring it in a cheque, unless I want to open a US International bank account (yeah right!)
Unfortunately I’m still waiting for permission from the affiliate, so I can’t send out my big e-shot yet. It will have to wait a while.
David has setup Ping.fm – now his Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Hi5, Website and Flickr account can all be updated at one place!
I just looked up about reputation management with Twitter and this story came up top:
It’s definitely worth a read. I’m going to start slagging any companies that do me over!!! NTL is one of them, but I guess that’s old news now (but I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after paying out over £250 for services I would never use!
So I’ve now sold 9 books on Amazon and I have received a total of $59.22. I’m going to use $50 to create a legal email marketing campaign promoting an affiliate, sending it to around 300,000 recipients. I get $30 per referral.
So based on this, how much can I earn? $6,000? Here is the math:
I send an email to 300,000 recipients
Typical responses to email is 1%, I’m assuming 0.1%, if I do really badly we’re looking at 0.01% or even 0.001%
So that is either: 3,000 sales, 300 sales or 30 sales or even 3 sales.
At $30 per sale I would get either: $90,000, $9,000, $900 or even $90 – either way its a pretty good percentage return on $50!!!
I’m going to spend tomorrow evening writing the copy and then send it out…
Wish me luck!!!
This is my business of the week: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item;=330308155119
I’ve checked it out and the story matches up with the WHOIS and the ebayer’s history. Judging from my questioning the website has a conversion ratio of around 0.5% – not so good, but I think the sales values should be quite high – anyways its only just over £100. I won’t be buying it though – I haven’t got the cash!
Well I wasn’t just looking for businesses for £30, I was just going through businesses for sale on Ebay and on Businessesforsale.com. Businessesforsale.com has gone crazy by the way, lots more businesses for sale – obviously due to the recession.
Ok, so I’ve sold a total of 8 books now, unfortunately 2 of them were on Lulu and the royalties aren’t even worth the minimum payout, and there is no point in me trying to promote it because I can get more in royalties from Amazon.com – plus they have a better conversion rate AND its cheaper!!!
So I’ve now got $39.48 to play with, KACHING! Inventive Millionaire is born. It’s only taken me 5 months to get some cash from nothing!!!
So what’s the plan now I hear you ask! Well I’m not sure yet, I can’t buy too much with that money… I’m going to check out the Ebay businesses for sale!
Yep, I’ve sold another book. All I need now is somebody to give it a good review and I think I’ll perhaps sell a few more. I think this sale came after I posted up the link on a number of forums…
