As usual, I walked into the Starbucks for my morning coffee.

Enjoying my morning coffee in Starbucks has been a routine since a year back. Now, everything in that particular Starbucks seems so familiar. Even the customers looked similar.

Just as I was walking to my favorite table with my warm coffee, I notice a lady meddling with her personal computer while sipping her drink. I took a glance and swore that face looked familiar. Anyway I thought my memory might not have fully awakened and so continued my walk towards my table. Now, I sat facing straight to this demure lady and suddenly it struck me, she was a well-known internet marketer, let’s call her My Rich Mum. I was planning to start my own e-book business and have been surfing for more information and her picture always seems to pop up in e-book sites.

I knew I needed a mentor like Rich Mum if I wanted to start a successful e-book business. I was usually a shy person but at that moment, some part of me told me to get my back off the seat and walk towards her. Well, I did just that. I approached Rich Mum and started a conversation. I introduced myself and told her I was planning to start an e-book business and asked if she had any tips or advice. All she did was to pull a card out of her purse and told me to only open the card when I reached home. The “namecard size” card was wrapped in a light blue wrapper. Rich Mum then wrote her personal contact number on the back of the card and told me to read, adsorb and understand the contents of the card. Her instructions were for me to understand the contents and to call her the day after.

Not knowing what else to do, I thanked her and went back to my now cold coffee.

That day after work, I went home all excited, ready to unveil the contents of the card. As I carefully removed the beautiful blue wrapper, I saw the contents of the card:

My Personal Guide to an E-Book Business

1. Choose my topic

2. Write my E-book

3. Create my website

4. Accept payments

5. Promote my website

That was all the contents on the card, simple and logical and yet so divine. I started to break down the contents one by one and tried surfing the internet for more information and voila, that was it. The 5 steps are all I need for my e-book business.

I couldn’t wait until the day after; I had to call Rich Mum the following day for a meet up. I wanted to know what the contents meant to her. Rich Mum, being the kind lady she was, agreed to meeting me for lunch. This time, I armed myself with a new pen and notepad.

Finally at 1.30pm, I got to meet Rich Mum again. This time, she started her speech with a serious tone: “Jay, if you wish to understand more about the contents on the card I gave you, you will have to pay me $1000.” I wrote Rich Mum a cheque on the spot. Hey, she was a famous internet guru and people would pay up to the thousands for by the hour consultation.

Soon we were discussing about e-books and I was busy trying to jot down everything she said, word for word, sentence for sentence.

The moment came when she started to explain the contents on the card she had gave to me earlier the day before. This was it, I specifically told Rich Mum to speak slower. (My hands were tired by now!) The following was what Rich Mum said exactly:

“Choose my topic

This is where most people would take tons of time during their creation of their e-book business. Trust me, people climb onto the e-book wagon with only one objective in mind, making as much money as possible. Your first priority should be adding as much value as possible, when you do that, people will automatically part their money with you. Before you plunge into choosing any topic, always ask yourself the following questions:

“What do I do for a living?”

“What are the types of knowledge I have?”

“What am I interested in?”

“Are there secrets I have that people might be very interested in?”

The above questions should lead you to adding value to a certain group of people and earning money at the same time.

Write my e-book

Once you have the above step covered, once you already have your topic, writing your e-book should be a breeze. You do not need distinctions in English to write an e-book. People love e-books which are written in a more casual tone and not a stern go by the book tone. I always create my table of contents first, and then simply proceed to elaborate on the points I wish to bring forth. It’s really that simple. After completing that e-book, I almost always convert my e-book into a PDF file, so that more eyeballs will be able to read it. The PDF format is friendly with most desktop platforms.

Please always format sentences to be of 1.5 spacing and try to use larger fonts. This is because of the fact that it is always harder to read on the computer screen as compared to a hard copy.

Create my website

Your e-book website is not going to be a complicated website full of programming jargon. All you really need is two important pages, namely the Sales Page and the Thank You Page. The sales page will be where you show visitors your sales letter; it is the showcase of your e-book business. The thank you page is where you will have a link for the download of your product; in this case your product is your e-book.

You can be a total computer idiot and yet own e-book businesses. A great tip to creating that website is to reply on friends who are well-versed in web designing. There is absolute no need to hire expensive web designers to do the same job a student web designer would do for a lunch treat. That was how I started my first e-book business back in 1997.

Accepting payments

A lot of people start their e-book businesses to make money, you need to start your e-book business to add value and then to make money.

An E-book business always accepts credit card payments due to the fact that the credit card is the number one paying tool over the internet. To accept credit card payments, you will need a merchant account that will process your customer’s cards and make sure payment is made. There are a few third party merchant accounts that will handle all credit card payments for your e-book businesses. The best part is you do not pay until you make a sale.

Promote your site

This is going to be the most difficult part of your e-book business. The hard fact is that Sales is directly proportional to Traffic. The most traffic you can get to your site, the more sales you will make.

There are a couple of great ways to generate traffic to your site. One of these ways is to create a free e-book, report or course.

All you do next is to send out the free e-books, reports or courses in anywhere possible and see the traffic pouring into your site. Remember, people are always looking for free information over the internet, so if you are able to provide great free information to people, they will spend on your website.”

There you have it, the 5 steps to an e-book business unveiled. My hands were trembling by now. After an hour of hardcore e-book coaching, Rich Mum was ready to leave for her game of tennis, leaving me to adsorb the notes I have just taken.

* For your information, Rich Mum tore the cheque and before leaving, she whispered: “People will always be more committed after parting with their money.”