How to make and sell a magic E-book
A short tutorial on the basics of creating and selling a PDF E-book
So you have a trick or routine and you want to sell it on line as an instant download. How can you do this without spending hundreds of dollars?
To be honest it would be very difficult to make a "good" E-book without spending a little money. If you want a quality product you'll want to invest a little into it. But this doesn't mean you can't do it with a low budget. That's what I had to do when I released my first E-book. So I decided to put together this little tutorial to share how to make a good E-book for very little money. I hope someone finds this helpful.
What you'll need to make your E-book
In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make an E-book for next to nothing. Actually you can make one absolutely free but to make a good one you'll need the fallowing:
-A digital camera in which you can upload pictures onto your computer.
-An image editing program such as photoshop or Paint shop pro.
The Product
The single most important aspect of your E-book will have to be the information. No matter how well the E-book is put together. No matter how many images it includes or the overall layout. If the people who buy your E-book aren't happy with the information then it will not be successful. Magicians are quick to review their purchases in online magic forums. Most magician site that have a message board include a section devoted to reviews. So when someone purchases your E-book you can bet that they are going to tell other magicians what they think of it. A good review will go a long way and bring in many more sales. A bad review can also do a lot of damage.
Let's face it. If you have something worth selling then you hope to make a little money from it. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people are into crafts so they sell their products to make a little extra money. I happen to be into magic and I was lucky enough to stumble upon some ideas that turned into good tricks. After I went out and mastered them and smoothed out all the rough edges I decided to make them available. But I didn't decide to do that until I knew for sure that this information was usable and original.
The bottom line is make sure you are making an E-book that contains information that is worth purchasing and make sure you're not producing something that is already out there. Good or bad, People will spread the word about it.
Making the instructions
Now that's we've decided that the information is worthy of selling. Let's talk about how to actually put the instructions together. The first thing you'll need to do is to type out all the information you want the E-book to contain. I use my "MICROSOFT WORD FOR WINDOWS" program for this because it allows me to spell check and place images right in the instructions. Most computers have this program so I suggest you use it. Another reason you'll want to use MS-WORD is because you'll need that file type to turn it into an E-book later on.
You can convert these following
formats to PDF for free:
Document formats
Image formats
For now let's just talk about making the instructions with MS-WORD.
When I do this I just type out the instructions and when I come to a part of the instructions that will need a diagram I type a description of that diagram needed in a different colored font. For instance I might type:
Insert image of left hand holding a double lift from the performers view.
Then later I'll be able to go back and make those diagrams. When you make your diagrams with your paint program you should make them fairly small. Don't' worry about making them the perfect size to fit your instructions. Actually make them smaller then you need. This will make the final product a smaller file so it'll be a faster download. I usually shrink my images down to about 150 pixels wide. Then when you insert them into your instructions in MS-WORD you'll be able to resize them.
Turning your file into an E-book
Now that you've got your instructions finished and all the diagrams in place. It's time to turn it into an E-book. I'm going to show you how to turn your MS-WORD file into a PDF E-book absolutely free.
All you have to do is go to PDFonline.com. From this site you simply click the "Start Creating PDF" link and fallow the instructions. You'll upload the file, name it and insert your Email address. Then you'll upload your instructions. The file will be converted into a PDF file then Emailed to you within a few minutes (They say it could take longer but it's never taken me more then 5 minutes).
That's all there is to making the E-book. When the Email arrives you simply download the PDF file they attach to the Email. Upload this file onto your web server and you're ready to make a link for people to download it from your site.
Selling your E-book
Once you have your file uploaded into your web site server you're going to have to make an add page. This is the page that you'll direct your potential customers to to purchase your E-book. I can't tell you what to say but this is the page you'll use to try and sell your product. I should warn you though. If your advertisement isn't accurate people will call you on it and also pass along that observation to others (See above about the quality of your product and getting reviews).
Accepting their orders (Payment methods)
I use paypal most people have a paypal account. I also use it because it also allows me to accept credit card and E-check payments. If you don't yet have a paypal account and you want to use their services you can click the below banner to join up and get more information on that.
Inserting payment Buttons on your site
The easiest way to sell your E-book is to simply use a paypal button. When you make the button from the paypal site it'll give you the option of directing your customers to a "Thank you" page. If you insert the link to download your E-book onto the page they are directed to then they'll be taken to taht page to download the file. BUT I DON"T SUGGEST YOU USE THIS METHOD!!!
The above method is the easiest but it has a lot of security flaws. For instance lets say your E-book is located as www.yoursite.com/ebooks/yourfile.pdf. Anyone could make a paypal "buy now" button, put it on their site and link them to your file. So they'll be able to sell your product from your site and you wouldn't even know it. They could make money and steal your sales.
That's why I suggest you use one of the systems avaaible to make your sale more secure. I use a service called Payloadz to sell my E-books. It's a service that's tied with paypal to sell downloadable products such as E-books and videos. Visit their site to learn how to use their services. I like this service because it makes the purchase easier and more secure for both myself and my customers. You can create "Single Item Purchase" buttons or you can use it with a "Shopping cart" system. When someone purchases your E-book they are directed to a site where they can download the file from. They also Email the file to your customers. The reason this is a little more secure is because it generates a location to download from that only lasts a couple of days. In other words your file won't be kept in one single location so no one else can link to it for more then48 hours. After 48 hours the file will no longer be kept at that location. Payloadz also offers an Affiliate program so you can grant other people permission to sell your E-book and pay them a commision each month. Hence, bringing you more sales (The affiliate program is only an option. You don't have to use it if you don't want to).
A little extra security
One thing you should know about putting "buy now" buttons in your site is that anyone could look at the code of your page and alter the price. There are a couple of things that can help you make this a little more secure against hackers. Nothing is completely secure though.
