Unit 4 - Why not create an ebook?


When many bloggers make their first foray into digital product creation, they make an ebook. And I kind of understand why... and ebook seems smaller, easier and more manageable... but actually this is not such a great idea as it might first appear...

Why?

Courses are generally a better bet than ebooks for 3 big reasons:

1. You'll make much more money

2. You'll get better results

3. It's easier


1. You'll make much more money

The reason for this is because books have a lower perceived value than courses - MUCH LOWER! Ebooks essentially have a ceiling price of about $30. That's because people are used to paying no more than $30 for a regular physical book.

On the other hand, online courses have a very high perceived value. Most people expect to pay hundreds, if not thousands for an online course.

Remember that statistic from unit 2?

'The AVERAGE price of courses sold through the Teachable platform is $177, while almost 25% of schools priced their courses in excess of $200.'

Compare that to the average price of an ebook on Amazon!

Why is this important? Well, quite simply, because you have to sell a lot of ebooks to make a decent income.

Say you wanted to make $1000 a month from your digital product. If you sold an ebook for $20, you'd have to sell 50 EVERY MONTH in order to hit that target. That's a lot of ebooks!

Whereas, if you sold your course for $200, you'd only have to sell 5.

Selling 5 courses is much less effort than selling 50 ebooks AND you will have fewer customer support issues to deal with.

(Funnily enough there seems to be an odd inverse relationship between amount spent and customer support issues - the more people spend, the less they seem to demand customer support... I'm not sure why, but it's something many course creators comment on.)


2. You'll get better results

But it's not just about how much you can charge and how much money you can make. Students who pay for courses are much more likely to get good results, compared to people who buy your ebook.

Why?

Very simple - they have a lot more to lose. If you spend $20 on an ebook and then never get around to reading it... it's annoying but not the end of the world... however very few people will spend $200+ on an online course and leave it gathering dust.

Students who spend good money on a course will MAKE time to do that course... and if they do the course they will get results!

And happy, successful students become great ambassadors for your course! I've lost count of the number of times I've been tagged in a Facebook group by one of my happy students, gushing about one of my courses... and often this has led to a sale... without me having to lift a finger!

Happy, successful students will also give you testimonials and case studies, which you can use in your marketing... resulting in more sales.

AND happy successful students will also want to become affiliates and advertise your course to their followers!


3. It's easier

Creating an online course might SOUND like it's harder than creating an ebook, but actually the opposite is true.

Because you build an online course on an online course platform, like Teachable or Thinkific, the course platform handles a lot of the tricky bits: they sort out the design and formatting, they do the course delivery, they provide the tech for building things like sales pages and storefronts and best of all they handle all the money side of things - including making sure the right customers pay the right sales tax / VAT. (It's far more complicated than you might think!)

With an ebook, you not only have to write the book, you also have to format it and design it, figure out how to deliver it and how to build a sales page for it (this often involves outside tech) and you have to handle all the money side of things yourself... suddenly it's sounding a lot more complicated that it first appeared!

The other lovely thing about an online course is you can jump on a quick chat with the course platform if there are any problems... with ebooks, you're on your own!

Complete and Continue