Producing original content

There are lots of ways to make money online. I use many different paths toward earning a living online myself.  I want to look at one of those ways today, and look at what I’ve done, and what I will do in the future with this income stream.  I am talking about creating content, which you will sell.

What do I mean by “content?”

Certainly, there are all kinds of “content.”

Well, I am primarily talking about three different things:

1. Writing eBooks to sell for download.
2. Writing paper books which I will sell and ship to the customer.
3. Making videos and selling them.

Well, in 2008 I wrote a book (49 Ways to make a living in the Philippines), and I also dusted off a book that I wrote about 5 years ago, updated the content so that it is accurate in current times, and put that book back on the market too.  So, I currently have two books on the market.  I sell them either as downloadable eBooks, and also I print them and bind them to sell as paperback books for those who prefer a book that they can actually hold in their hands.  So, the two books cover #1 and #2 above.

I consider these two books to have been a major success when it comes to my pocketbook.  Even though the number of copies of each book sold is not huge, the amount of money earned is nice.  Because I self-published these books, that means that I get to keep all the money from the sales.  If you use a publisher and go the normal route, you might be getting just $1 or $2 per book sold, depending on the cover price of the title.  Let’s say that you sell 100 copies of a book.  If you go with a traditional publisher, you won’t make much money – $200 or so at the most, in my experience.  However, if you write a book that you self-publish and sell yourself, you will make a lot more.  My “49 Ways” book, I sell for $49.  If I sell 100 copies, I just made $4,900 from the title.  In 2008, with about 6 months of selling (I only finished the book mid-year) I sold around 100 copies of that title.  My other book, I sell for $29.99, and I sold about 50 of them in 2008 (again, only a half year of sales).  Actually, in the past 2 weeks, my sales have really done well, so in only half of a month into 2009, I am off to a great start.

My goal for this year is to write at least 2 new titles, and I hope to write 4 books.  I believe that if I can accomplish that this year, I will easily earn $15,000 or more from book sales this year (remember, I haven’t written the books yet, so they will not get a full year worth of sales).

Now, I also produced one Video for sale last year.  It has not done well so far, so this year, I am going to make changes in how I do the videos.  The current video that I have is a 2-hour video, and I am selling it for $99.  I want to re-do that video into a series of 15 minute or so videos and sell them for $19.99 or some lower price tag like this.  I believe that this would greatly increase the sales of the video.

How about you, have you tried producing content and selling it to make money?  If so, tell us about it by leaving a comment!