[Photo Credit:  striatic]

Note: The digital product I’ve been blogging about recently, Simple Weight Loss for Men, is finished and the site is up at http://simpleweightlossformen.com. Please stop by and have a look around! If you’d like to be an affiliate, take a look at the bottom of this post! Thanks – JD

Since I started freelancing in the winter of 2007/2008, my professional holy grail has always been to create a passive income. For those who don’t know, passive income is any completely automated stream of money. That is to say, it’s an income for which you only invest a few days or a few weeks into it up front and after that it’s marketed, sold and delivered on it’s own. Some people have had success developing a passive income with iPhone apps or computer software. Others with membership sites or online classes or WordPress themes. Anything that can be digitized can be used to create a passive income.

And for me, that thing was an ebook.

The Beginnings of a Digital Product

In mid-December 2009, I was starting to reach my breaking point as far as freelancing goes. Something had to change. There had to be a better way to earn money than being a mouse jockey for people who didn’t know Photoshop. I wanted something that I could have control over. Something where I could choose the design, I could choose the content, I could choose the mission. Something that people could like or dislike, but that I was ultimately proud of.

In my mind, this clearly meant creating a product. Specifically, it meant creating a digital product since I wanted this to produce passive income. Digital products are ideal because they are so easy to automate. You spend some time up front creating something, whether a video file, audio file, ebook or a combination of the three, and then throw it on a web server to be spit out to any buyers who happen to come along.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the first thing I did was look up blog posts and whatever other resources I could find that talked about digital product creation. Most of the blog posts were really inspiring and did quite a lot to convince me that a digital product was the route I needed to take, but the most complete resource I found was a book I bought by Yanik Silver called Moonlighting on the Internet. As someone who had absolutely no experience in digital product creation, Moonlighting on the Internet proved to be an invaluable resource because it actually took the time to paint the whole picture for beginners like me. I never found myself wondering what the next step would be because I already knew. From brainstorming to creation to marketing to selling, I at least had an idea of what to expect.

In the book, several options were suggested, but it mostly boiled down to this: Love what you want to sell. You have to be interested in whatever you’re selling because you should know what you’re talking about when you sell it. The single best suggestion it gave was to, instead of investing loads of time into brainstorming, outlining, drafting and editing, just package information that is in the public domain in some way that is useful to people. I wanted to get something out there as soon as possible just to gain some momentum in my transition from freelancing to online entrepreneurship, so public domain content was definitely the answer I was looking for.

I spent some time looking through federal government websites for something useful and browsing through whatever public sources I could think of. Nothing really stuck out. It was all either outdated, irrelevant or completely uninteresting.

But the answer I was looking for was right under my nose. When I read that all books published before 1923 were generally public domain, I knew I had found what I was looking for. A few months ago I found a very, very old book. It was published in 1912 and for whatever reason I read it and I connected with it because it was unlike any other book of its kind. It was a weight loss book written in an old-fashioned, sexist and, at times, hilariously racist American English. It’s message, however, was spot on.

Creating the Ebook

I had started following the advice of the book to great success, dropping 5 pounds in the first week. After that the numbers were in the 1 or 2 pound range, but always steady. It seemed effortless. Clearly I was sold on the book. I was passionate about its principles and I would be eager to help out others who were trying to lose weight. This, I decided, would be my product.

As soon as I knew what the product would be, I was set on making it something for regular guys. So much of the bad weight loss advice I’d gotten came from magazines or books that taught men to be miserable wannabe bodybuilders. I didn’t want to torture myself with boring exercises or track protein and every other nutrient under the sun. This book offered an alternative, something for guys who just wanted to get down to a healthy size before they worried about turning into the Incredible Hulk.

I chose to target it to men for two reasons. First, the book itself was written in a pretty masculine tone. It was something I certainly appreciated and something I thought other guys could appreciate. Second, “Weight Loss for Men” gets about 40,000 searches a month on Google compared with 90,000 for “Weight Loss for Women” and 24,000,000 for “Weight Loss” in general. It was a respectably sized niche of a much larger industry.

So, once I knew what direction I was going to take with it I planned what I would offer. First, I knew the sexist/racist language probably wouldn’t work so well for a modern audience. I decided to rewrite the main text completely in a way that would still relate the same message. Also, if you rewrite a public domain work in your own words, it becomes a copyrightable derivative work, so I now own a copyright to a newer updated version. I also added in some advice absent from the original. This consisted of some things I found out worked that weren’t mentioned or things that I found to supplement the original material.

Moonlighting on the Internet suggested that bonus material was essential in order to make the deal sweeter. I found a few more public domain articles that perfectly supplemented the ebook. I edited them, too, and added in some extra content here and there. By the end of the process I had 4 mini-products to complete my digital product package.

Launching the Ebook (And How You Can Make Money Helping Me)

I have spent the entire weekend setting up email marketing lists, writing sales copy, coding, arranging the product, editing the product, setting up a shopping cart and on and on. I just finished a while ago and its 1:44AM on Monday morning. I’m nearly dead. It’s been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I’ve finally reached the last leg of the race and the moment of truth is coming.

I’ll consider the product officially launched Friday when I start running ads on it and talking about it to the general public. For now though, I wanted to take this opportunity to get WSR readers involved as much as possible. I know that most of you have blogs and/or want to make money online. You each have your own audiences, as well as friends and family, maybe even niche sites. And I would love to reach your audiences!

This is why I’ve decided to create an affiliate program specifically for WSR readers. Help me promote this book and make this launch (my first launch!) a success. For every sale you help me make I’ll give you 51% of the purchase price! Write reviews, put up banners, run ads on Google or just tell everyone you know! Be creative.

If you want to help me out (and I would really appreciate it if you would!), I only ask that you take a look at the book first and read through it. It’s not required that you buy it, but I feel that if you know exactly what you’re selling you’ll do a much better job of selling it. So, to encourage my affiliates to read the book before they promote it, I’ll be selling it at a special pre-sale discount until Friday. Go to http://simpleweightlossformen.com, click the Buy Now button and at checkout enter the Discount Code “EAED5” (without the quotations). This will cut the price from $20 to $15. After you’ve read through the book, visit http://simpleweightlossformen.com/affiliates/ to sign up as an affiliate.

I hope every one enjoys the book and I’m looking forward to a successful launch. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, everyone!

JD

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