If you missed the earlier parts of the challenge, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — it will give you the more detailed instructions for the challenge, and let you follow along at your own pace, on your own schedule

Here’s a summary of today’s goals (both groups’ goals are the same today and tomorrow):

There are two things on your plate today — one that applies to everyone, and one that’s optional for people selling their e-books rather than giving them away.

1. Set up your distribution. This could be as simple as uploading it to your server so you can give people a download link, adding it to Clickbank if you plan to sell it, or using a service that protects your downloads. I like www.E-Junkie.com for this personally.
2. Setting up your affiliate program (including a detail page on your site with affiliate information). You only do this if you’ll be selling the e-book and want to entice people to promote it by paying them a percentage of each sale. E-junkie and Clickbank are two options for this.

How is everyone coming along?

If you missed the first half of the challenge, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — it will give you the more detailed instructions for the challenge, and let you follow along at your own pace, on your own schedule

Here’s a summary of today’s goals.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): Create your e-book cover. Write some articles you can use for article marketing to promote your new e-book (if you plan to use article marketing). Start preparing for the rest of your launch marketing.  For example, you might want to draft a press release or create a short bonus product to accompany an e-book you’re planning to sell.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): Again your tasks are the same as those listed above for writers working on new e-books.

Today isn’t the easiest of days. You still have some hard work to do. How is it coming along?

If you missed the first half of the challenge, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — it will give you the more detailed instructions for the challenge, and let you follow along at your own pace, on your own schedule

Here’s a summary of today’s goals.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): You only have one task for today, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy! Today you’re going to write the sales page for your e-book. Not selling it? You still need a landing page that you can direct people to for the download. Write ‘er up!

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): Same for you today — it’s time to put together your sales page or landing page.

If you missed the first half of the challenge, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — it will give you the more detailed instructions for the challenge, and let you follow along at your own pace, on your own schedule

Here’s a summary of today’s goals.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): If you didn’t finish editing your e-book yesterday, get that finished up today. If you decided early on that this would be a paid e-book rather than a free one, it’s also the day you’ll set your pricing. But that’s not all. It’s time to convert your file into a .pdf and distribute the rough copy (no real cover page yet) to people in your niche who might have time to read it and give you a testimonial. You might not get testimonials back by the time you write up your sales page because of the limited time of the challenge, but you can add them later.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): Today your tasks are the same as those for writers working on new e-books. So just follow the instructions above and in the free e-book for the challenge.

If you missed the first half of the challenge, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — it will give you the more detailed instructions for the challenge, and let you follow along at your own pace, on your own schedule

Here’s a summary of today’s goals.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): You’ve finished writing your e-book. Today is for editing and proofreading. I know there’s not a lot of time for “fresh eyes” in a condensed challenge like this, but do your best. I find reading the text aloud helps a lot.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): You’ve probably already done some editing for your e-book. Today it’s time to finish that up or give it one more quick once-over if you think you’ve finished.

Leave a comment and let us know how you’re doing and how you feel about your progress so far!

I personally had a very unproductive weekend for the challenge because I was traveling out of state for a charity thing and family get together, so I hope you got further than I did. That just means I’ll be working even harder this week, and that’s okay.

If you’re just learning about this challenge now, be sure to download a free copy of How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days — you can use it to follow along during the rest of the challenge or you can use it as a self-paced guide to write an e-book whenever you have some extra time.

The goals below are an abbreviated look at the tasks laid out in the free e-book linked above as well as a modified goal / task list for people (like me) using this challenge to finish an existing e-book rather than writing a new one from scratch.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): You spent the last few days working on the main body content of your new e-book. Today you’re going to write the introduction. Why did we save this for the end? You can’t effectively introduce something in a way that’s going to get readers excited about it if you don’t have a really solid idea of everything included, the tone, and what elements you feel ended up being most important. Those things can change between outlining and fleshing out the content.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): If you don’t have an introduction to your e-book, write it now. If you already do, get a jump start on editing. Tomorrow is our only dedicated editing day to make big changes or just take care of basic proofreading, so if you’ll need the extra time, use some of today’s schedule.

Don’t forget to download a copy of our free e-book How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days if you want to learn how to write your own e-book in just two weeks. Challenge participants will get detailed instructions in there, or you can use it as a self-paced e-book writing guide on your own time. Check below for a quick peek at today’s task for those writing new e-books, and an abbreviated task list for those who started the challenge with an e-book already in progress.

Today’s Goal (new e-books): This is the last day scheduled for writing the main body of your e-book. Try to get it all finished up today! Hopefully you set a realistic page count goal earlier in the challenge, and you’re working your way to it quickly. Remember, don’t worry about the introduction yet. That will have its own day.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): Today will be much like yesterday. Finish your main content writing if you haven’t already, or work on editing if you’re ahead of the game.

Don’t forget to check in with a comment to let us know how you’re doing! :)

It’s Day 4 of the e-book writing challenge. You’ve been doing some planning to gear up for writing. Now we’re going to get your e-book document ready for some serious work!

Today’s Goal (new e-books): Today you’re going to move beyond the outline and working TOC and actually setup your e-book file. That means you’ll be choosing font sizes and margins to decide how you want the content to be laid out. You’ll also create some of the “extras” that are separate from the main body content — the title page and author bio for example. Consult the e-book for more instructions.

Today’s Goal (e-books in progress): If you’ve just been typing with no formatting in mind, take some time today and format your working e-book manuscript. Settle on fonts, sizes, colors, heading styles, etc. Also work on those “extras” mentioned for the new e-book writers — title page, author bio, copyright notices, and anything else you want to add for background that isn’t directly related to your main content (if you have specific addenda pieces — like forms or examples — in mind, you can create them today too if you have time and don’t want to work them into your content writing days).

I just wanted to announce that it’s now freely available for download whether you’re subscribed to this blog or not!

You can get it at my business site through the link below:

How to Write an E-book in Just 14 Days.

Download it today!

Note: Email subscribers can still currently access it from any newsletter they receive. In the near future, that will be changed, and those subscribers will get early access to my next free download for freelance writers.

I’m not going to go into the “how to” of writing e-books in this post. If you decide that e-books or reports are a good residual income stream option for you, be sure to check out the more comprehensive collection of posts from our previous 14 Day E-book Writing Challenge.

There are two main ways e-books and reports can fit into a freelance writing career, leading either directly or indirectly to more income for you as the writer:

Selling E-books

This is a no-brainer. You write an e-book or report, and you sell it. In most cases (and what I recommend), you’ll sell your e-book or report directly to end readers (as opposed to selling it once at a higher price for someone else to put their name on and earn an even bigger profit from).

You can write something as short as a 5-page report to a several hundred page survey / study in your specialty area. That’s a key to making decent money with this income stream though – specialization. While I won’t say that no generalist writers can make it work for them, e-book writing works best for specialists who can sell copies on their own authority status (and preferably existing niche audience).

Giving Away Free E-books

Free e-books can bring in income? You betcha!

While it may sound strange on the surface, free e-books and reports can actually bring in a lot of indirect income – they can attract prospective clients, give them a good feel for your work and style, and convince them to buy from you over your competitors.

There are two main things to keep in mind if you go this route:

1. The e-book has to be something that would interest your target clients, and
2. The e-book should include a clear call to action (to let them know you can fulfill a need of theirs, and to tell them how to hire you).

Your call to action can be a simple line in your footer (I do this in my press release writing e-book), or you can have a separate page at the end. It all depends on how much detail you need to go into, and the type of action you’re trying to provoke (visit your site to learn more? call you? email you?).

If you’re a freelance writer looking to add new revenue sources to diversify your income a bit, consider testing one of these methods with a short report or e-book to see if it’s right for you.