At the end of 2003 I decided that I would make a fortune by writing and selling an e-book on ‘how to choose a digital camera’. After all, as a photographer, friends and acquaintances are always asking for my advice on this.
I spent a heap of time researching, writing and taking pictures for the thing, and got it online.
Guess how many I sold? Two. One in January 2004, and one in July 2005.
Why was it such a flop? I’m not sure. Plenty of people *are* making money with e-books, so somewhere along the line I guess I got something wrong.
Maybe it was my keyword research. Is ‘How to choose a digital camera’ an in-demand topic? My research suggested it was.
More likely it was the combination of
- Not getting serious about bringing traffic to the site
- Not effectively converting that traffic to sales
Anyway, the book is long out of date now and in need of some *serious* revision 🙂
What made me think of all this? I saw that Charles Wright wrote on his Bleeding Edge blog that he is trying to convince broadcatser (and keen photographer) Terry Lane to write an e-book about using (rather than choosing) digital cameras.
Maybe we could write one together?