418 – 97 percent profit awaits you: Tom talks Value of Ebooks

Episode 418 – Value Of Ebooks
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody it's Tom here with episode four hundred and eighteen of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the value of ebooks now before you even listen to this episode. All right. If you have been thinking about writing an e-book, stop right now. This Wednesday, my e-book mastermind is starting, which is a 12 week course with one class per week to getting a lucrative PDF e-book, a Kindle e-book and an audio script for your audible e-book. In a matter of weeks, people are making gorgeous, high quality e-books and we only have three slots left for this class. So don't delay. Check it out at screwthecommute.com/ebookmastermind and then come back and listen to this show. All right. Hope you didn't miss Episode 417, that was Tracy Brinkmann, he overcame horrendous obstacles, including the loss of a young daughter and drug addiction to become the top consultant he is today. It was very inspirational story. Then coming up after this is Episode 419. Dr. Rissy or Morissa Schwartz. She's on that cusp of being a Gen Z revolution, right? She has a publishing company and she's ranked number one in the New York, New Jersey area for her social media business. So check that out. That would be coming up Wednesday.

[00:02:04] Now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on screw the commute? Well, if the show's has helped you out at all in your business or giving you ideas to help you start a business. We want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com. Look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk in your phone or computer and will tell me how the shows helped you out. And hey, put your website in there so that you get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute in front of thousands of people. All right, pick up a copy of your automation ebook. We're talking about ebooks today. This is one that sold hundreds. I mean, it's probably sold a thousand copies at 27 dollars apiece, but we give it to you free for listening to the show. And guess what? Just one of the tips in the book is Save me seven and a half million keystrokes. It'll save you carpal tunnel. It'll allow you to grab customers from other companies that are too slow to get back to him. So check that out. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree and then pick up a copy of our podcast app. Also, while you're at it at screwthecommute.com/app. Put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now I want you.

[00:03:22] All right. I want you. I'm pointing at you right now. I want you all right. To think about. Listen, I need to be able to sell from home. My kids need a good career. My grandchildren, my nephews and nieces. My business needs a boost online and I'm paying a fortune for pitiful results. Think about that. One of those probably apply to you or I'm thinking about starting an online business, whatever one applies to you or maybe multiple things apply to you. Check out my school. It's IMTCVA.org, the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world. And it's certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. It's legitimate. I went through background checks, criminal background checks. I went through financial checks. Every year we have to recertify where they check everything. So, you know, I just don't want you to get caught up with these scammers that call themselves universities. And they're not they're unregulated, unscrutinized, just to take your money. We got people making money before they even graduate with the curriculum that I teach, which is all these hard core, hard core skills that are in high demand. Every business on Earth needs all this stuff. And so they're happy to pay you or your graduate to do this or you apply it to your own business and save yourself. Listen to this. Sometimes a hundred times you would pay. I'm taking this slow. I want it to sink in when you see the kinds of things you could learn to do so easily in-house with either yourself or local or some of the employees that work for you, you pay a hundred times that in some cases for the same service.

[00:05:18] How are you going to make money that way? So this school wipes that out and you can get a scholarship. If you're in my mentor program, I'm not going to dig in too deep on that today. You've heard a lot of my episodes. It's the longest running, most successful ever in the field of Internet marketing. You can check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. But this episode's on ebooks. I want you to jump in. My ebook mastermind is only, I think, three slots left for this class. And we don't, you know, only start a new class every month or other month or so. So check that out and screwthecommute.com/ebookmastermind.

[00:05:57] Well, let's get to the main event now. So I've been fired up about ebooks for many years. I mean, my first ebook was released right around the beginning of 2001. And it brought in 42000 dollars a year for nine years straight, my second and third were released later that year. And between the both of them brought in another seventy two thousand a year for nine years straight. Both of them still bring in some money today, but for the topics they're on, it's too expensive to promote them anymore.

[00:06:34] Now, I want to explain that to you a little bit more. These books, when I first started doing this, I didn't know any better. They're what I call one shot deals. And I'll go ahead and tell you the topics, the first one was called instant eulogies based on the eulogy I did for my dad, I said, boy, people need this. So I had a book for that. And the other two were wedding celebration speeches and wedding celebration toasts. Those were two separate books. And yes, I was thrilled with the money that they brought in. And I was thrilled, especially with the eulogy book, that I could help people during a very stressful time. Now, the wedding books, though, they were mostly bought by drunk guys who at the last minute they're at the like the bachelor party. They they realized they didn't have a clue on how to do a wedding toast or wedding speech. Right. And they they knew the bride is going to be on video and the bride would kill them if they messed it up. So so so that's what who bought a lot of those books at the last minute. And remember, digital delivery means you can get it at the last minute, you know, the funeral is not going to change because you weren't ready and neither is the wedding. All right. So so they had a lot of urgency to them. That's one of the benefits of e-books is immediately downloadable.

[00:07:59] But anyway, now that I know better, I'm not thrilled. I'm thrilled with the money. They brought it, but I'm not thrilled with the fact that these books were one shot deals that people that bought them would probably never buy anything else for me because they probably weren't interested in Internet marketing for small business, public speaking or entrepreneurship. They just had to get through one event and I helped them. Also, the books didn't lead to anything else for them to buy from me. It was one small sale and done all right. Now, I learned pretty quickly way back then that there's a better way. Now my next book, as of this morning, has brought in three point six three million dollars. And this was an e-book that was written in four hours with a layover at an airport. OK. When that average is about two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year over many, many years and still brings in from four to fifteen thousand dollars a month. Now, since then, besides all the other courses and products I've produced, I knocked that I think I don't know about another 18 books and they've all made money and I can't really remember the exact number because you can crank them out so fast, which I'm going to cover a little bit later. You have to mess up pretty badly if you can't make money with an e-book, which is 97 percent profit and virtually zero risk and cost to produce it, if you know what you're doing.

[00:09:46] Now, another thing about books in general, I've been saying this for years, they're the most hassel least profitable thing you can do. But if you look at it properly, which I'm going to try to open your eyes, it can be the most profitable thing that you can ever do. And and by the way, I am talking about speed here. But folks, I'm all about quality. I'm not talking about turning out just garbage. No, these are high quality and high speed. So I'll get to that later. So here's why an e-book can be the most profitable thing you ever do. Well, the book should always lead to something bigger, and I'm not saying turn out crappy books that don't give value and that they're just big sales letters. Your reputation will go south pretty quickly if you do that. What I'm saying is to strategically put in the book things that are related to the topic of the book that bring you in extra money. So here's some examples. You can mention a product that you like when someone clicks the link in your ebook and buys the product. You get a commission that's one way to make extra money from your e-book, you give good quality, but simply mention and endorse another product and you get a commission if someone buys it. That's basic affiliate marketing. Not to take that up a level. Let's say someone else has a membership site and they charge people monthly or yearly for the membership.

[00:11:26] You could recommend that site and each month get paid. This is beautiful because you only recommended to the membership site once, but you keep getting paid as long as the people you referred stay a member and you guys can either be part of their yearly fee or part of their monthly fee. This is how my ebook brought in three point six million dollars. I keep getting paid when someone buys what's in the book. I talk about this all the time when I'm interviewed, I say I couldn't stop the money coming into my checking account if I tried. It sounds like B.S. on the surface. But when you do, what I'm telling you here is to recommend things that pay you over and over and over. It's totally true. I mean, I'd have to close all my accounts and move to Mexico so to stop the money. But what I'm describing is called a residual or recurring affiliate program. In other words, it keeps paying. You recommend that once and it you keep getting paid as long as the person keeps buying. So those things were both affiliate programs, the basic affiliates, a one shot payment and residual, you get paid over and over. Those are great. But they refer to you selling someone else's product or referring someone else's product the other way is to refer higher priced products of your own. Again, you weren't cheating them on the initial purchase of the book, you're simply offering them a more in-depth training or personal training on the topic or maybe video training or coaching or one on one consulting, stuff like that.

[00:13:17] Hey, maybe it's your own membership site that gives you a recurring or India or residual income. How about that? Maybe it's on a related topic. Right, let's say you wrote an e-book on the I don't know much about horses, but let's say the beginner's guide to caring for your first horse. Well, this book may be covered renting a stall and grazing space at a farm, how to brush and bathe your horse, how to find a good vet, what basic equipment you need, how to exercise your horse, you know, all that kind of stuff. Well, you could spin off other books on how to show your horse at horse shows or how to learn how to jump your horse or dressage. That fancy, I don't know horse. I don't know exactly what it is that's got a cool name. Or you could have a book all about horse transport, the horse trailers. I actually saw a membership site one time that had to do with shipping horse semen. And I'm not kidding. I guess some of these big race horses, you know, the semen is worth a quarter of a million dollars. So, I mean, this all kinds of spin off. Now, let's talk about what it takes to do this. So I really get tired of hearing about people that they say, well, took me six years to write my book.

[00:14:45] And when I look at it, I'm thinking maybe six hours would have been reasonable for this book. But six years. You kidding me? Now, the three point six million dollar book I told you was written in four hours. I got many that took six to eight hours and brought in thousands of dollars. The first couple of days they were released. Now, now, I used to write massive e-books, one I had was 1042 pages, and it dominated by industry for 10 years straight and actually had 700 affiliate links in it. OK, and nobody ever complained in 10 years that I was recommending things. And I made more money on those affiliate links that I made on selling the book. And the book was 97 bucks, but it got so big it was overwhelming for readers. So I started breaking the book down after 10 years into a much smaller 60 to 90 pages or so on specific topics. And people started gobbling them up because they could digest it quickly and consume the information. So you want to make sure they consume whatever you put out, because if they don't, if it doesn't make sense or it's stupid or whatever, or they can't read it well, because you didn't format it properly for ebooks, then they're never going to buy anything else from you. You don't want that. That's what we teach you. And of course, all of these little details. And remember, just because I'm talking about speed, that doesn't mean they're junky books, I'm all about two things quality and speed.

[00:16:22] So I want you to make money fast and have the readers so happy they can't wait until you come out with your next book. Now, I teach various ways to do this at lightning speed in the master class or in the mastermind, I would call it. Yeah, if you don't happen to hear this episode until after my next class starts visit, screwthecommute.com/ebookmastermind for the dates of the next class. Now, we also cover in the mastermind how to sell the book. Another thing that irks me to no end is when good writers only write and no one gets to read their great writing because they didn't market their books. All of that stuff is included in the in the mastermind. I want you to make money from your writing so you can afford to keep writing and also if your information can help people listen, you're cheating them if you don't market the book so that people know about it. I mean, how are they going to be helped if they've never heard about your book writers? You know, so many writers in most cases other than author 101, I spoke at twice a year for, I don't know, ten years. And clear back to the Chicken Soup for Soul mega seminars where I was the headliner. I mean, the many speakers or writers just refused to market. They just want to write. Well, that has killed so much good information that's sitting in computers and typewriters and nobody sees it.

[00:18:02] That's cheating people. So unless you're a celebrity with a massive marketing team, it's up to you to make sure the world hears about your great information. And I'll be covering all that in the mastermind. So it's time you started an information business using e-books or you can add e-books to whatever kind of business you have to increase the sales in your business. So, for instance, I'll just take another thing I know from eating this stuff, but I don't really know how to run an ice cream shop. Right. But let's say you had an ice cream shop. You can only make a relatively low profit from people in a certain area who visit your shop and you have high overhead, you have rent, you have a lot of electricity, you got freezers, coolers, you got waste, you got employees. I mean, there's all kinds of overhead. So you're your profit margin is is relatively small. Even if you're selling the ice cream for ten times what it's worth, that's all of it's eaten up. Most of it's eaten up in overhead. You could make a book on how to create your own ice cream cakes. And you can make way more money with virtually zero overhead compared to what it takes to run an ice cream shop and sell to thousands of people thousands of miles away from you that would never set foot in your ice cream shop.

[00:19:30] They can give you money. I mean, just imagine what it would be like if a year from now you had a bunch of these books bringing you in money, not only from their cost or the price people paid for them, but from the things you promote inside the book. What would that mean for your business? Well, it's meant a lot for my business over many years. And there's even ways you'll learn about for free e-books. Amazon will give away books for you for free. And you say, well, why bother? Well, remember I said, I don't care about the cost of the book. I want what the book leads to, which in my case I have products from seventeen dollars to fifty eight thousand dollars. That's what I want. I want the big money stuff, not the little stuff. All right, now, if you're not convinced, go over to screwthecommute.com/ebookmastermind and see the beautiful, high quality and lucrative e-books that participants made in just a few weeks. And I hope to see you in the class remembers only a few slots left for this Wednesday, so go over there and grab it at screwthecommute.com/ebookmastermind. And then if you can't make it, but I highly recommend you do. I mean, we only do them every couple of months. So get in to grab one of those slots if you can. All right, everybody, I'll get your on the next episode. That's Dr. Rissy. Catch ya later.

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