Hey all… I’m pretty dog-gone excited about my new eBay publishing business. Yep – I now have 4 different products (on CD’s) up for sale on eBay and I’ve sold 2. Of course – 2 sales is not going to make me rich, but it’s a start. It validates that “I” can sell public domain products on eBay – even in a crowded market.
The CD that has sold two copies is ONE public domain book! Not a compilation of freebie stuff I downloaded. I also included a bonus of a few public domain articles I scanned from a related magazine. This CD has sold now twice for $19! I use Kunaki to print and deliver my products… and after all the eBay, Paypal and Kunaki fees I come out with $9 profit! (I’m using exclamation points a lot today, because I’m so excited).
I actually took a book apart and scanned it myself (I talk about it here). I figured out the best system for myself and have scanned 6 books so far… it’s very easy and takes about 20-30 minutes even for a 300 page book.
I’ve shared my goals for this month and this year in the Public Domain Treasure Hunter Forum – One of my goals is to have 100 products (CD public domain products) for sale on eBay by Nov. 30th 2012. Does that seem like a huge project? Not to me… I’ve got a system, and branding all in place. I can actually do 3 or 4 products start to finish in one day.
I do have one product that is a compilation of the “free to download” stuff… and plan to have several more of those for each niche topic I cover in my product “mix”.
So far I have 4 products live on Ebay – (1 compilation and 3 scanned books). I have 2 more products ready to go up next week (they are all done except for a photograph of the actual product for my ebay listing).
Something new I’m adding to my list of “goals” is to convert these scanned books into Kindle books. I will be annotating these books just as I suggested in this article. Actually – I will probably add in images of my own as well. These books are in a niche I know something about and it will be easy to add in what’s needed to “pass” the Amazon test.
The Kindle cover design will be very similar to the cover I created for the CD version… so not a ton of extra effort for cover design is needed on my part.
The branding “extras” will be needed in the Kindle books. I plan to “link” to bonus material that is only available if the customer purchased the Kindle version.
I will be going through the entire Kindling process (course) bit by bit as I start to publish these new books. The way Geoff teaches marketing your Kindle Books seems fairly simple and I just need to follow the steps.
I’m hoping that some of this marketing will do double duty for my eBay products. Actually I do have several marketing ideas for the eBay products planned – I just need to implement. Blog posts and some social media are the first steps.
Really – I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished – I just need to keep taking the steps to move forward and Implement! I don’t see how any of us can generate income without “Implementing”… *giggle*.
How To Publish Books On Kindle
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
I know you will do well in whatever you try. I think this has just been waiting for you. I would love to know what your ebay name is. Not so that I could steal from you but to see how you load to ebay.
Marilyn aka G-Ma´s last [type] ..Thinking of Mom
Oh, I’m so excited for you. You’re right in the zone. Go you! The key is definitely in the implementing. Ideas come to people all the time, but if they don’t take action, the ideas are lost and such a waste. Thank you for being an inspiration!
Congratulations on your progress!
BTW, there’s only 30 days in November.
hi Debra Thanks for an update on your ebay case study I am following it with great interest and learning a lot from your frank info it would be so easy to keep all this great info to yourself
Glad your having a lovely holiday here in the UK its the lack of sunshine this summer is really bad its the wettest summer for over 200 years even last night i recoreded 20mm in my rain guage in my back garden The olympic tourch arrives in my town today just noth of London .Say you send us some of your sunshine and we can send you a bucket of rain
regards and thanks
peter mcgrath
Terrie… thank you… I changed it to 30 (what was I thinking?) lol
Peter… I’ll send you some sunshine any time if I could have just one rainy day!
Exciting times with the Olympics right around the corner. I’m an Olympics junky.
Thanks G-Ma – you know I’ll share my eBay ID someday. I just don’t want to spook the eBay angels right now. LOL… Actually, I’m tracking stuff and don’t want all of you “fans” to skew my tracking.
I promise – I will share at some later date.
Michelle… Thank YOU! I do seem to be in the zone. Implementing has been a huge key to all this product creation… and creating systems in the process.
Hello Debra I’ve been following your blog with interest for sometime. Great stuff and info on here. There are many approaches to finding which public domain items sell well, but honestly what I do is to find a subject that interests me and then go and find public domain content in my niche. I know this might go against what the niche researchers suggest. But I find that in some of the more unknown niches there may not be many searches per month or significant statistics but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any people searching for content. In fact when you give people that are starved of information some content they soak it up quickly and are great buyers. OK some of my wonderful ideas don’t amount to much, but as I find new interests nearly every week I don’t run out of material public domain material to create products. For instance in the UK we’ve having Wimbledon so how about some vintage tennis books and images to create a CD for a currently hot market. The Olympics are up soon. People are staying at home for holidays due to the recession so how about some vintage routes and maps, there are plenty of them. A bit long, sorry but I hope it gives starting points for your PD projects.
How do you know if a niche product will sell because it isn’t a 5 minute job to locate all the PD books and then create a listing and the art work for the CD?
Hi Jason… that’s a million dollar question. If we “knew” id a product would sell before we create it – We would all be rich. LOL
My best answer is to research and try to figure out what people “want” and then provide it. Spend the time to create the best product and provide much more value than your competitors.
It does take time and effort to create products… something that will discourage a large % of “wanna be’s”.
My opinion is this: If you do the research, create quality products and market the heck out of your products… you won’t produce many duds.
So how do you do the research? Keywords? Traffic? I got a list of hot Public Domain niches, but narrowing it down is another matter. I noticed you’re roman and greek coin collection is selling well, but others not so well. When do you decide to drop a product? Your ebay auction automator seem like a dream come true if I can produce enough selling products.
Hi Jason… I don’t sell a Greek Roman Coin related product. Nice idea… but not my auction. You might be referring to the auctions sold by the guy who took over Logan’s old eBay account. ???
I haven’t been selling long enough on eBay to have a clear picture of when to drop a product. I think if a product is researched well… and you feel that the demand is their… then something
else is wrong. Competition, price, presentation, marketing. ???
Me feeling with researching ebay product niche ideas is this: I’m creating a wide variety of products. Some of them are books I’ve purchased and scanned myself and sell as a one book on a CD product. Some of the
products I’m selling a completely compilations of things I’ve downloaded from free archives. What I like is that I’m not researching a ton for each product. I’m researching entire niches and then creating a variety
of different products within that niche and then I’m watching the analytic in eBay and what volume of sales I get in a given time period.
I’m also working on more “marketing” of the products I already have on eBay right now. I refuse to drop a product until I’ve spent every bit of time/effort to make that product a winner.
