Earn Supplemental Retirement Income by Writing a Book
By Don Seibert
One way that retirees can earn a healthy level of supplemental retirement income is by writing and publishing an electronic book. If the book is interesting enough or helps to solve a problem for a certain group of people, then it will sell on the internet and a nice revenue stream is possible.
Last week, I met a lady who had done some marriage counseling during her career. A couple of years ago, she and her husband had met with financial troubles and they were on the verge of bankruptcy. She decided to use her career experience to write a book on saving a marriage. She spent a month writing the book in which she told of the issues related to marital problems, the emotions involved and the techniques that she had used to assist people having marriage problems.
Her husband devoted his time to creating an advertising program to create an email list and to market the book, which sells for $29.95. He uses the Google AdWords program to create little, 3 line ads that appear whenever someone does a Google search on marriage problems.
At first, the sales of the book went rather slowly. Then they tried to improve on their Google advertising programs and to improving their 'sales page' website at which people were sent to purchase the book. Over time, the sales increased each month to a point where last month, several hundred of the books were sold.
Since the book is distributed in electronic format as an e-book, they have no printing costs at all. Their only expenses are for the Google ads and some credit card processing fees. Needles to say, the project is profitable and now they are adding other, complimentary products such as DVD's, Audio CD's and coaching classes, all of which will enhance their business opportunity.
My purpose in relating this story is to show how a person can use the knowledge and skills learned in a career and put them to work to generate some decent income for themselves. Not every book will be sought after by so many readers as one to save a marriage, but there are many thousands of Google searches each day where people are searching for information and are not finding appropriate information.
Do you have some knowledge that others might be searching for? I'll bet you do. If you will consider writing an E-book on the topic of your passion, chances are you could make it earn some income for you, too. Why not give it a try?
Start off by creating an outline of 10 chapters on the topic of your passion. They should include the Background Chapter to define the problems that the book is about and should wrap up with a Summary Chapter to summarize the book. The 8 chapters in between should segment the issues and provide an answer or solution. Next, break each chapter down into a minimum of 5 items.
Now that you have the outline, begin to fill in the blanks! Each day, take a chapter & item and write about it. These can be done in any sequence. This is not a non-fiction story; one thing does not have to follow another. Just continue to ship away at the individual chapters and items until you basically have it all there. Then, it will be a matter of reading through the book from start to finish to edit it and to ensure that it flows correctly. Having a third party read through it next will be very important. They will likely find several areas for improvement.
You now have most of the work done that it takes to create an electronic book for sale! Now all that remains is to create a sales page and a Google ad and you will be in the electronic publishing business. Good luck with your publishing venture!
Don Seibert is a retired business executive who, as an Expert Author, writes timely articles on many issues concerning sources of retirement income. Having retired three times, he now is the host of http://www.RetireToEasyStreet.com - Visit the site for a complete discussion of Retirement Income Options
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