I have mentioned a few times how a friend of mine made $400K USD from selling an insanely simple eBook. Quite a few people have asked me how, so I wanted to share the exact steps he took, given I once was curious myself.

While I didn’t decide to sell an eBook, my friend did inspire me to write a free eBook which has been downloaded more than 40,000 times.

The book that inspired my friend’s eBook was called “Crush It,” and it led him to share how he started his own blog and the basic tools he used to market it.

Flow States in an Exotic Location

My friend didn’t have the time to write an eBook. He was like me and always wrote short blog posts. The idea of creating an eBook was always there, but he never did it.

While holidaying in an exotic location (I think it was Bali, but I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter) there was a power outage. My friend was without power and had nowhere to be. This seemingly tragic event for a blogger gave him the time and excuse to sit down and write his eBook.

Over the course of a few days, he started writing his eBook thanks to the power outage and didn’t stop. The exotic location, combined with the flow states it produced, pushed through the resistance for him to get started.

Once the book was written, he proofread it, got a cover done for a few bucks online, and posted it on his WordPress blog.

He didn’t believe for a second that his eBook was good. I was one of the early readers of his eBook. While it didn’t change my life or anything like that, it had one subtle thing going for it: It was helpful and gave a novice all the steps.

Ready? Let’s go. Here’s what he did to make $400K from that book.

Set a Decent Price Tag

The price tag of this eBook was $19.95 USD, which was high compared to many of the other eBooks that bloggers were selling for a few dollars as a lead magnet (essentially a cheap purchase that leads to an upsell).

Twenty dollars for an eBook is about the same amount you’d pay for a decent book written by a famous author like Tim Ferriss. (He was no Tim Ferris, but he didn’t let that belief stop him from charging as they do.)

By setting a decent price, he was able to earn his way to $400K a lot faster than most bloggers in his niche.

Believed in Himself

Part of the reason he made $400K from a simple eBook is that my friend believed in himself. After the success of his book, he later went on to charge up to $1,500 per hour for coaching. This was his belief again that separated him from your typical blogger, like me.

He wrote his eBook without any ego or without telling everybody he was better than them. The book was humble, insightful, and useful.

What he believed about his talent was that he could teach people, not that he was special or better than them.

People who can teach something useful online have the opportunity to make $400K as he did.

Acted Like an Expert

There were no “I think” or words of doubt in his eBook.

He demonstrated he was the expert and used evidence from his own blog to back up his point of view. At the time, he wasn’t a well-known blogger but that didn’t stop him from feeling as though he was an expert.

We’re all experts in something even if we’re not the Bill Gates of computers. You don’t have to be a household name to be an expert and write an eBook that makes $400K.

Spoke From Experience

It wasn’t just the steps that he gave amateur readers like me. He inspired you by talking from his experience. It was his thoughts and feelings that connected you to what it was going to be like to go through the process of starting a blog.

eBooks that do well speak from experience and share a few stories to help prepare the reader for what it’s going to be like.

Kept It Short

You might be thinking his eBook was long and took years to write. It didn’t.

The book took a few days to write and a couple of hours to read. It wasn’t a marathon read, and it’s length made it attractive. The price tag of your eBook and the value it brings has nothing to do with its length, only it’s usefulness.

Sent It to His Mailing List

The first step he took was to send the eBook to his mailing list. A few people bought it, and then the people who enjoyed it shared it organically to their friends.

There wasn’t some fancy marketing campaign or agency led social media promotion for his book. His marketing strategy was simple like his eBook and that’s all it needed. The eBook’s usefulness was his marketing angle, not the size of his email list or his marketing prowess.

Made It Inspiring

The eBook was about the dry subject of setting up a blog, and he made it inspiring. No matter what topic you write about, adding a touch of inspiration leads people to action, and it’s that action that makes an eBook valuable.

How he told people to set up a blog was pretty standard — but the fact he got you to actually take action was remarkable. He’s the reason that I became a blogger. Inspiration might sound stupid or shallow, but we all need a bit when it comes to being moved to take action.

Disclosed All the Steps

All the steps were included, including screenshots. He didn’t leave anything out of his eBook or hide bonus information in an upsell.

You can’t trick people with only giving them half the story. If you’re going to make six-figures from an eBook, you better be damn well prepared to give all of the steps and back them up with detail.

My friend’s eBook was literally a guide to setting up a blog and getting started. Without the guide, you’d be stuck searching Google and following opinions from people who have never done it or have made a life out of being a commentator rather than a doer.

People will tell you what you can’t do; they’ll rarely tell you what you can do.

Made It a Feature on the Homepage of His Blog

One of the places my friend’s eBook was most visible was on his blog’s homepage. When you went to his WordPress blog, on the righthand sidebar, at the very top, was a link to his eBook.

If you liked his blog, you couldn’t miss his eBook. The people who found his eBook on the homepage, like me, made up the bulk of the $400K in earnings.

Promoted It on Podcasts

As a blogger, he was often invited to do podcast interviews. The rodeo of podcast interviews is mostly unpaid, so my friend came up with a brilliant strategy: He would do the podcast interview and give up his time as long as he could have a link to his eBook in the podcast show notes.

This tiny little request led to people who had never read his blog to find his eBook and buy it to learn about what he had to teach.

Accepted PayPal

There are endless ways to receive money online that will waste your time and make you overthink the process.

The straightforward idea my friend had was to choose one payment method that the most number of people around the world were likely to have access to. Instead of introducing the complexity of having a shopping cart with a merchant facility, he decided just to accept PayPal.

This decision was another reason he was able to make $400K. He made it easy for people to pay him through a method they were used to and gave them the protection that PayPal offers.

This way of accepting money is not the cheapest, but it did allow him to reach more people, which was far more important.

Wrote Evergreen Content

The eBook my friend wrote was timeless.

You could have read it a few years ago or read it today, and it’s still relevant, minus a few of the software plugins being out of date.

When you write an eBook, if you make it evergreen (meaning it’s hard to tell when it’s written and always relevant), you can keep earning money from it for years to come. Last time I checked, this eBook made $400K.

It’s highly likely it’s still making money years later because of how it’s written. (Homework for Tim: find out how much the eBook has now made.)

Created a Path to More

Despite the $400K the eBook earned, what it did (that made even more money) was to give my friend clients for his coaching business.

The people who read his eBook reached out to him and started conversations. Some of those conversations led to coaching sessions of $1,000+ per hour. It’s impossible to track how many hours of coaching came from the eBook, although it would have to be more than the $400K.

Having an eBook gives you a conversation starter that can fuel your business and give you clients. Or you can just make the money from the eBook and walk away — that’s fine too!

Understood It Took Time

His eBook wasn’t an overnight success. It took time. The $400K took a couple of years to accumulate, and he allowed it to compound further by investing some of the money in his own development.

He paid world leaders for coaching and attended events like A-Fest. These investments led him to expand his network and find ways to partner with like-minded people — thus making the $400K grow further.

Didn’t Monetize Every Channel

One of the reasons the eBook earned as much as it did was that his audience had many other free channels they could access his work through.

The temptation is to monetize everything, and that will only cause you to severely limit your reach.

What works well is to have a couple of channels you earn money from so that you can give people a break and let them have something for free. It’s through your free resources that people find you and any eBooks you have written.

If all you do is charge people, they may never get to come into contact with your work.

People read my friend’s free blog posts, and a percentage of those decided to go further with their learning and spent the $19.95 on his eBook.

Gave Some of the Proceeds Away

Making $400K is nice. What my friend taught me through his eBook, which I still use today, is to give away some of the proceeds.

Some of the money he raised was used towards charitable projects and giving back to the people that supported him. Keeping all that money for yourself can make you forget the gift you’ve been given.

When you get what you want, help others get what they want.

That’s how you derive an empowering meaning from making that much money from a short, insanely simple eBook.

Never Took It Down

A well-written, evergreen eBook doesn’t ever have to be taken down. My friend resisted the urge to keep writing a new eBook and left his original one up for many years.

There were other projects, but his eBook always stayed live and hummed away in the background.

Resisting the temptation to take down his eBook was one of the reasons it made $400K. The eBook had time to simmer like a good stew and build momentum and flavor.

Here’s What I Hoped You Learned

• Be useful
• Patience is key
• Inspire people
• Help other people in the process
• Everyone starts by being inspired by another person

That’s how anyone can make $400K from an insanely simple eBook.

The world is changing. Millions of jobs are being lost due to automation.

In fact, according to a McKinsey study, an estimated 73 million jobs are going to be lost due to automation by the year 2030. You don’t need to look that far to see how the changes are already effecting the current economic landscape. In 2015, McDonald’s restaurant started implementing automated kiosks in their U.S. stores — they plan to have these rolled out in all 14,000 locations by 2020.

The fears of automation extend beyond the marketplace. In order to confront and offer counter measures to the onslaught of job loss looming; we even have a 2020 United States Presidential nominee whose campaign platform combats the issue with Universal Basic Income:

The redistribution of certain tax dollars (gained through a value added tax) as a basic citizen stipend of $1,000 to be used by the recipient with no questions asked in order to create monetary movement throughout the economy.

Like many modern technologies, there are both positives and negatives associated with these innovations. We see this with many of the things that have entered the marketplace in the last decade or so:

• Social media and its ability to keep tabs on one another through social messaging while simultaneously creating division and a feeling of isolation for its users.
• The ability for mega corporations like Amazon and the like to provide a consumer with an inexpensive and seamless buying experience while simultaneously providing its workers with substandard wages.

All of this brings us to the looming fears of automation and how that will strip away millions of jobs for hard working individuals.

But all too often when broaching this subject do we note the negatives of the technology. We often let fear get in the way of the opportunities that may lie in this encroaching technological and economic metamorphosis.

The jobs that are going to be lost with the onset of automation are jobs that are automatic in their own nature. They are monotonous, repetitive jobs that require mindless work that’s incompatible with creative human nature.

In this article, we’ll uncover how despite the looming fears of automation, it is actually a good thing. With the right tool set and strategies you can take this opportunity and develop an entrepreneurial endeavor with it.

How to Become a Badass Entrepreneur (In Today’s Economic Landscape)

I come from a small business family.

My grandfather, who was first generation American, decided to take a risk with his brother in the 1960s and go into business for himself and his family. They started a modest masonry business.

As things took off, he and his brother decided to part ways. My grandfather knew someone in manufacturing and in 1979 he started another business in metal finishing.

Straight out of high school, my father went work for him. In 1997, my father decided to break from his father’s business and started his own metal finishing enterprise.

The classic method of becoming an entrepreneur back-in-the-day went a bit like this:

You get an idea to start a business

You create a business plan of how you are going to actualize said business idea

You interview with banks in order to secure a business loan.

This business loan takes into consideration your operating costs, building rent, utilities, widget creation and all associated costs with getting your business off the ground.

You receive your business loan

You put yourself in debt to the bank and any other lender

You work your ass off to make a name for yourself

You have started a business — now you hope that you can sustain it

Sure, in that description, there are liberties taken. However, the overarching points of having a massive influx of tangible responsibilities (product, space and financial) make it hard to go into business for yourself. This doesn’t even take into consideration that 82% of businesses today that apply for a business loan are denied.

Compare that to today’s landscape where starting a business is as easy as:

Have a great idea

Use the internet to get that business idea out to the globe

Sell your idea

You see, with the automation of the repetitive job, the global economy is going to be looking for human creativity to solve its problems and fill its needs.

Let’s unpack the three listed steps above and how those steps can lead you to developing yourself into a badass that creates passive income…

1. Have a Great Idea

“Good artists copy; Great artists steal” — Pablo Picasso

Many people get stuck at this step (and we haven’t even left the runway yet) because they think that they need an idea that is completely and utterly unique in its essence.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In tomorrow’s economy, the marketplace isn’t going to be contingent on everyone creating the next Facebook or Twitter.

As we move away from automated and monotonous work, the need for communication and storytelling will create micro-niches of like-minded tribes and within those tribes you will be able to create self-sustaining enterprises that don’t require millions of customers.

Take for instance the idea of 1,000 True Fans, Kevin Kelly’s groundbreaking article on how moving into the future, a viable business can be sustained through the adoption of a product or service by 1,000 True Fans (fans that have literally and figuratively “bought-in” to a company or individual’s narrative and business thus creating repeat business whenever a new product or service is introduced to the marketplace).

The premise is simple:

You have a product that sells for $100 and you have 1,000 True Fans (as defined above). Those 1,000 fans buying a $100 product will lead to $100,000 in revenue. You can take it further by increasing the product price or the audience and the number of times you create, release and sell a product.

Your own idea that you are going to turn into an enterprise can be within a number of niches:

• Self improvement/personal growth
• Personal finance (though be well versed in personal finance legalities)
• Physical health/exercise
• Diet & cooking
• Beauty and fashion
• Lifestyle/homesteading/travel

To be clear, it’s not the uniqueness of the idea that is going to set your idea into monetary-building-motion, it’s the way you share and tell that idea.

Millions of people are into cross-fit, but perhaps on a few hundred or thousand might be attracted to the way you share the ideas associated with the discipline. Same goes for many other areas of interest.

Let’s now take a look at how to get that idea out and to the masses…

2. Using the Internet to Get That Idea Out to the Masses

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
— Robin Williams

The internet is the epitome of game-changing technology.

While we’ve had the internet for many years, people are finally discovering the true potential of what it allows for us to do.

One of the biggest opportunities of the internet is the ability to connect like-minded individuals and groups with one another at extremely low costs and easy accessibility.

Through the creation of a website or through social media and internet forums, humans have the ability to find like-minded individuals engaging in discussion, discovering and examining their mutual interests.

The most viable route, considering the methods above, to becoming a badass that creates passive income is through purchase, creation and promotion of one’s website.

Consider your website as a modern day store front or manufacturing plant. It is your most valuable tool in becoming a modern day entrepreneur. In fact, new research notes that 87% of all consumers begin with their product searches online.

If you’re not online with your business idea and product or service, you’re not going to last in the future economy.

There are many avenues one can go with creating and hosting a site. The purposes of this article aren’t going to go into the specifics of how — on a technical level to do that — for more on that, check out this resource:

Once you have your site built and you begin to gain traction on the internet, it’s time to turn your site into a business.

3. Sell Your Idea

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.” — Daniel Pink

As stated earlier in the article, the problems that are going to be solved in the future economy are going to require human ingenuity, spirit and creativity.

All of those human attributes are going to be shared through educating one another.

Did you know that national college enrollment has declined the last seven years in a row? While there are many factors that contribute to the decline in enrollment including:

• Lower birth rates
• Higher tuition costs
• Consolidation of enrollment to lower-acceptance rate Universities

One culprit is due to the ability of self-starters to be able to glean their education from utilities such as YouTube. With over 100 million hours of content being uploaded on YouTube every minute, it (and the rest of the internet) are turning into education machines.

This is where your opportunity comes into play…

Why put your content up on YouTube for the world to learn via your expertise and experience and have YouTube take home the spoils with the help of their advertisers?

In order to take home your piece of the pie in terms of your entrepreneurial pursuit, you’ll need to utilize the E-Learning marketplace and all of it’s available opportunities. E-Learning is an industry geared towards building educational content to audiences looking to increase skill share, knowledge, entertainment and the like.

Market research firm Global Industry Analysts projected E-Learning would reach $107 Billion in 2015 (spoiler alert: it did!). Currently, research indicates that the industry will triple in size compared to 2015 with an expected value of $325 Billion by 2025.

What types of educational products can you educate your audience with in order to solve their complex and creative problems the future will hold for them?

Can you see how this all starts to tie together?

Conclusion

The world isn’t what it used to be. Most of the time when people say this, they get fearful of what the future holds.

Millions of people are going to lose the jobs that they perform today — this is a fact.

But many overlook the opportunities in front of them. Take what passions you have and leverage that into a self-sustaining business, with little financial obligation needed to start it.

Starting a business that builds passive income can be done in three overarching steps:

1. Have a great idea

When you have an idea that helps solve a complex problem for a group of people, you have an enterprising business.

You don’t need to covert the world over to your idea. Using Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans idea — you only need to win over a small fraction of the population in order to make your idea a viable business.

2. Using the internet to get that idea out to the masses

When you utilize tools and modern technology, you can get that idea out to the public without the barriers (financial, distribution, inventory, etc) that stalled people from going into business for themselves in decades past.

This should be done through the ownership of your own site. With your own site, you create your internet store front.

Through your internet store front, you can utilize different strategies to generate traffic and build your audience base.

3. Sell your idea using various mediums

Once you have a platform from which to launch, you can use the growing industry of E-Learning to take your idea and form it into a product or service that will educate your loyal fans.

From there, there really is no limit to what you can create…

You can branch off and open up other businesses (create new websites in different niches) or build a personal brand and see where that takes you as an influencer or thought leader.

The choice is yours.

So stop being fearful of the future and start to see what opportunity lies on the opposite side of the same coin!

I have made over $5,000 on several blog posts that are no more than 3,000 words. There are fellow writers I know well who have done the same.

Like you, I’m no Ernest Hemingway or “Tim ‘4-Hour WorkWeek’ Ferriss.”

My ideas can suck. Some days, I can’t be bothered. I have my fair share of critics. Yet it still happened—and here are a few lessons that might help you along the way.

At the end of this article, I’ll share with you where the $5,000 is likely to come from.

Warning: this is not a guarantee

I can’t guarantee you will make $5,000 from one blog post, but what I can do is help you get a lot closer than you were before.

There’s no magic genie that can grant you your wish and pay you for your writing. Having said that, the commonalities of articles that have made $5,000 or more are hard to ignore.

Even if you fall short, what you’ll learn in the process will help you to get there if you persist. Let’s get started.

Have the Headline Make a Point

Part of having an article that does well is making a clear point in the headline. People will not click your article if they don’t know what they’re getting into.

Your headline provides an overview as to what’s about happen so the reader can decide if they want to sign up or run for their life. Make your headline so clear and simple that anyone can figure out what’s about to happen.

Syndicate Through Large Publications

When you see a bit of traction on an article, one tactic you can use is to syndicate your article.

It’s not rocket science and a lazy dude from Australia (me) uses this exact approach:

1. An article starts to do well.
2. Find a publication that has a large audience and publishes similar content (Google is your friend).
3. Send an email like this to the editor: “Hi Big Name Publication, would you like to syndicate this article to your readers?”.
4. Wait for a response.
5. No response? Try a different publication.

It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to type an email with a story pitch to a publication. The only part about the email that matters is to make it incredibly short and link to the article.

If the article is a quality piece, editors will say yes.

Say Something Different

It’s cool to cover a topic like waking up that’s been covered by every writer seeking to become the next Mark Manson while Not Giving A Fuck.

Articles that make money say something different. The topic can be generic, but the writer’s ability to say what hasn’t been said or repackage their thoughts in a way that has never been written before makes all the difference.

It takes courage to say something different and it’s how you find the readers that finally sit up and listen to an idea that they’ve heard hundreds of times.

Be Unbelievably Helpful

The best articles are helpful. You walk away having felt something, or been entertained, or had a laugh, or learned something, or gained a new skill, or been inspired to consider an alternative point of view.

To be helpful is to create value — and that value transforms into dollars that can be spent in the real world by writers who remember to do so frequently.

Every one of us has at least one way we can be helpful. There’s something that you know that I don’t. There is a story that you know off by heart and that has never been shared before, which could help someone in desperate need.

If you have one goal, make it to be helpful.

Find a Problem People Are Currently Having

Solving problems is one of the shortcuts.

When people have a problem and you help them solve it, they share your work — and that’s what can lead to earning $5,000 or more. There are several ways to find a problem people are having. For me, I use the questions readers ask me most frequently to see common patterns.

If you don’t have an audience just yet, you can go on Quora and look at the most popular questions people ask in your field of expertise.

Writers that find a big problem and solve it go on to earn a healthy income from it. That problem can then be solved again and again through more articles that seek to unpack the problem further.

Research the Heck Out of Your Piece

Brilliant articles that make $5,000 are rarely thought of and published in ten minutes.

Consider researching your article or choosing a topic that you have been thinking about or learning about for a while. Spend some time choosing quotes that support your article or reading articles written by other writers that add meat to the bone of your piece.

There’s no need to rush your piece and you have time.

Include the Small Details

There are plenty of articles that make big promises, but then forget to include the small details that the reader can use and that makes the story helpful.

The difference between two writers that have covered the same topic is that the one who goes the extra mile will do better than the writer who is lazy and thinks people will figure out the details themselves.

Make your work simple by giving all the details.

Why are the small details left out? Because as a writer, you can fall into the trap of believing that if you share all of your secrets about a topic, you’ll have nothing left to give — or worse, nothing to charge for.

I say screw that. Tell people how you did the thing and give them everything you know.

Give all the small details that nobody else has taken the time to include in an article that has similar advice.

Use a Decent Image

Articles that do well don’t have dumb-looking dudes in suits high-fiving each other in a dimly lit office with a plain white wall in the background.

If you’re going to write a killer article that’s helpful and then select the first image you see in Google Images without putting any thought into it, you’re selling yourself short, amigo.

Take time to find the right image. The right image speaks to you and it sits nicely next to your headline.

Insert Your Experience

Repeating facts or making a point is not enough.

Share your experience with the topic and describe what you did or how you felt at that time. Humans crave experience because it tells us that if someone else has done it or experienced it, then we can too.

Without your experience, what you’re saying sounds impossible to normal people.

Have a Lot to Say

The topics that have made me $5,000 or more have all been about subjects where I’ve got a lot to say. The safest bet when it comes to a topic is something you care about.

Topics that frustrate you are good too, as long as you can draw something positive out of it all by the end. No one wants to hear your frustration that leads to more frustration and feeling like shit.

Show a Bit of Yourself

I’m tall, slim, have big ears, am an Aussie, eat too many frozen yogurts, have yellow teeth in-between visits to the dentist, doubt myself, and lost my job earlier this year before finding a new one.

That’s the truth, and as you can see, I’m not afraid to poke fun at myself or point out the not-so-glamorous parts of my life.

This rawness is what makes you relatable and people read the work of people that are just like them.

Fuse Storytelling With Actionable Advice

I can’t say I’ve seen too many articles that have made more than $5,000 and not had at least one actionable sentence in them.

You can go off on a tangent and tell a story if you’d like. Just don’t forget to include one bit of actionable advice. That actionable advice can be something as simple as a thought for readers to ponder at the end.

Tell stories, by all means, just make it actionable in some small way. Give us a takeaway or some homework to do so that the article lives on when it’s forgotten in a month’s time.

Make Your Work Evergreen

Evergreen writing means that if I read an article today, it’s hard for me to know when it’s written.

The easy way to achieve this goal is to avoid referencing the current political leader or the movie you watched last week.

Evergreen content can be helpful at any time. Think about Mark Manson’s piece “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck.” It could be 2065, and you’re sitting on your rocking chair going, “You know what, Mark’s right — I’m going to stop giving a fuck and visit Mars next month.”

The best writers have been doing this for years and it’s something I only discovered recently by spending the time to do the research.

Where Does the Money Come From?

That’s your decision. You get to choose how the money makes it into your bank account. Here are a few ways to get you thinking:

• Sell an eBook on your website for $20. Link to it in the article. (My friend made $400K from this idea.)
• Sell a course that gives readers a path to learn more about the main concept of your article.
• Submit your article to the Medium Partner Program.
• Ask to be paid from a major publication.
• Sell coaching services through your website that help people with the same concept you present in your article.
• Use the audience from your writing to find a few new customers for your side business.

Or you can make zero dollars. You can bask in the glory of reaching lots of people and being helpful.

You can delay making $5,000 from an article and decide to make money from your work later on. (This was the option I took for the first few years.)

Final Thought

It’s entirely possible to make $5,000 from one single blog post. Many writers have done it through their WordPress blog, Medium, or by being featured in a major publication. The ways to earn money are only limited by your creativity and your ability to be helpful.

Find a problem or tell a story, be helpful, enjoy the process, put everything you have into your work, learn from those who have made money from writing — and maybe, just maybe, like me, you’ll discover that $5,000 is only the beginning.