If you've been following the business and economic news around the globe, you should know about how unemployment rates have hit year lows. The recent economic downturn was one of the worse in history and has affected loads of people. In fact, companies were cutting cost for any small reason and retrenched numbers hit more than 1 million worldwide.

My best friend of 10 years, Mark, was a manager with a listed company. About a year ago, he got retrenched and suffered from depression. Just recently, we met up for some drinks and he has started his new career with much success, earning a hefty 5 digit figures monthly. I got him to write the below article which describes his career path.

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It was 4th of April 2002, and after having a light breakfast, headed for work as usual. While I was driving along the busy streets, my eyes kept twitching, and deep inside I knew something was going to happen, I drove real careful that rainy morning.

Upon reaching my office, I was told to make a stop over at my superior's room. The moment I stepped into her office, I knew instantly that something was wrong. She went on and told me about the company's difficult moments, how I have performed during recent years and finally came the final stab, "Mark, I'm sorry, our company no longer needs your service and feel you can crave your own career somewhere else." Even though I was kind of prepared, my heart sunk.

I was making almost $10000 per month, and suddenly I'm left with nothing, the only relief was that I'm alone in my family, no one else had to suffer with me. For the next few days, I was trying to drown my sorrows with drinks. That was my life for the next few weeks, until one day, I flipped through the morning papers and saw a seminar which caught my attention: "Quit Your Job, Make Money At Home!" Okay, I thought to myself, "It was a free preview and I had nothing to lose, why not."

I attended the seminar and my life took a 360 degree turn. Although the seminar only briefly introduce about the concept of Ebook Businesses, I had made up my mind to start my first Ebook Business. I couldn't spend on boot camps, expensive workshops with my current situation. That didn't stop me though, with a little savings, I cooped myself at home learning all about building an ebook business. I spent tons of time, in fact almost five months before I came up with my first Ebook business. Unknowingly, I had spent thousands on learning to build my ebook business. My savings were seriously depleting to a point that I might not be able to feed myself any further. Fortunately, that point didn't never came and I'm hoping it won't.

After I successfully created my first Ebook Business, I made some money and went on to build a couple more businesses. I'm proud to say that I can build my ebook business with much ease now. In fact the following 5 steps is all anyone really needed to build an ebook business.

Every time I plan to start another ebook business, I follow my 5 step formula:

• Choosing a Topic
• Creating the Ebook
• Creating the Site
• Accepting Payments
• Marketing my Site

Most people back off when they try to come up with a topic for their ebook. For me though, it's one of the simpler steps. I ask myself a few questions:

"What is my Passion?"

"What do I know about, my knowledge?"

"What am I interested in at this instant?"

These three questions usually immediately give me a topic that I would love to write on. I have written on a few subjects I was totally alien to, but my interest in the subjects allowed me to write about the subject and at the same time learn more about it.

Creating the Ebook:

This is also real simple, once I've decided on a topic, I simply elaborate on the points I wish to put across. I write my ebook in Ms Word and then convert it into a PDF format, because I want more people to be able to read my book. There's some common logic to writing an ebook. For example: Its much more difficult to read from a screen compared to a printed copy, for this reason, I always format my sentences to be of 1.5 spacing and try to use larger fonts.

Creating the Site:

I was a total computer idiot when I first put my mind to starting an ebook business, in fact I still am one right now. When I first started, I didn't want to use professional web designers (they cost too much!). So I approached a few web designer friends and asked them to come up with templates that I can just edit and use. Of course, I didn't know anything about loading the site and all, and til today, I'm still grateful to my friends who created those templates with detailed instructions to using the templates. Now, whenever I plan to launch another ebook site, I simply use an HTML editor and edit the templates according to their documentation. I spent nothing on creating my sites, my friends only requested dinner for their work and I truly appreciate that. Technically speaking, I haven't spent a dime creating my sites.

Accepting Payments:

This is the whole point; I wanted to start my ebook business for one simple reason, to make a living. I was downsized, I had no money, and I needed money!! I didn't have particularly good credit history and couldn't get myself a 1st party merchant account, (I didn't want to spend thousands on those anyway!). Still I am able to accept credit cards in all my sites, and I spent a one time fee of less than $50.

Marketing my Site:

This is where I had to work really hard on. No wonder they called it Internet "Marketing". Marketing makes or breaks any internet marketing site. I learnt that first hand with my first ebook website. I only made a tiny amount simply because of ineffective marketing. Now, a year later, I"m able to generate targeted traffic, some of them totally free. One important equation I learnt was that Sales was Directly Proportional to Marketing!!

It has been almost 20 months since I was downsized, and frankly speaking I went through some of the most difficult times of my life. The Internet literally brought me back to life and I"m real grateful. Now, I live comfortably off my ebook businesses and have plans to marry the woman I have loved all my life.

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