I do this. I have been since about 2004. I don't make eBooks though. I'm a programmer so I make software, usually things to help with web-design, and then sell it using a similar site format.

Its been my sole source of income, and its not a bad living, although I personally know people who are making $1-$10 million a year in profit from sites like this.

They're not one-man shops though, they usually have about 5-10 employees to help run everything, but its still very profitable. Digital goods cost pretty much $0 to copy and distribute, so the profit margins are amazing.

It really amazes me how a lot of people, especially in a community as open-minded as this, are quick to label everybody who has a strange-looking site a scammer. I use the salesletter format for most of my sites, and it works. I don't care what it looks like as long as it gets results.

As for the Parrot guy, I know nothing about him so I have no idea if he really does ignore refund requests. I use http://www.clickbank.com/ as my payment processor, and they handle all that. They honor all refund requests, with or without an explanation, so I couldn't even deny one if I wanted to.

I'd be happy to answer any questions anybody has about this market. It's basically an evolution of the direct mail market from before the Internet. Its looks a little strange to the Web 2.0 people here, but its a valid market.

I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling digital products since '97. It really works.

However, the challenge for folks new to the game -- is NOT the product. Product is simple.

Repeat after me: don't worry about the damn product, worry about the salesletter.

It is that salesletter that separates the winners and lowers.

Often, it takes me longer to write the salesletter than it takes me to create the product.

I jest not.

And that's why we are all discussing the parrot's salesletter.

I've seen many folk stumble because they can't twist their brain to write good long-form salesletters.

If you want to win at this game, print out dozens of these letters, get out your pencil and highlighter and study them like your life depends on it.

Follow this simple step and I promise you can make money in the info-product game.

Most of you won't follow that simple step, will go out and create "the most amazing product ever", crank out a lame salesletter and won't make a nickel.

Seen it over and over and over and over.

And then you'll poo-poo info-product marketing the rest of your days.

(Notice how you are more apt to read a post when it's short paragraphs? That's just one "hacking for humans" technique we use.)

Actually, I just skipped to the last paragraph. Short paragraphs are one thing, but one-sentence paragraphs are just annoying. Of course, other people may react differently.

It's really weird that you say "you are more apt to read a post when it's short paragraphs". I was actually annoyed by the short paragraphs as I was reading and ended up skipping to the end.

You'll never succeed at selling if you can't recognize that the world is full of people almost entirely unlike yourself.

Does the sales letter format really convert better than a normal site format (menu items at the top and a big buy link at the top and nice layering).

I looked at the parrot site and I had a hard time finding the buy button.

Amazingly, it does. Trust me, I'm as surprised as you are. I've tried both designs, run split tests, the salesletter always wins. I know plenty of other people who have also run tests, same result.

I have no idea why. Maybe people like to read?

The same tests also show that the less graphics the better. You'll notice that the Parrot Secrets site has almost none. Not even a logo or a header graphic. That's on purpose. The tests I've seen show that fancy graphics just destroy the conversion rate on a site like this.

I have no idea why this is the case. But I'm going to do what works, not what looks fancy.

Related: have an informational site that is monetised by AdSense. It's not that attractive, but was doing OK. One day, I upgraded the design to make it look more slick, and the CTR dropped to half of what it was. Left it for a week just in case it was a single-day anomaly, but it wasn't. Switched back to the ugly bland design and CTR jumped back to where it had been.

Could it be because a significant percentage of them are on lower bandwidth communications?

Did you qualify your niche the same way - by reading newsgroups?

I don't think so, I'd have to check my server stats but I think that most of them have high speed internet access.

And I never did any research or anything to get into my niche. I found myself helping my friends to set up simple websites and I realized that other people might want the same help. I'm not a writer, so instead I just wrote software for the same group. It worked out for me.

Yes, it does work.

The long copy is about building excitement. You're trying to stream the user down to the buy button -- but make them read the testimonials and the bonuses so when they get to the call to action, they'll have no reason not to buy.

The key to it working is getting interested parties to read. If you don't care about parrots, no amount of copy is going to convince you to buy the book. If you've got a problem parrot, you'll be hooked after the second paragraph.

When I used to work for IMC (http://www.marketingtips.com -- company that teaches these techniques), I remember reading an internal news letter about a successful client. The site was about fitness/building muscle -- something I was interested in at the time. I clicked to his website and started reading. I knew about all the tricks in the sales letter, yet I still found myself wanting to buy his product. I 'snapped out of the trance' and didn't buy his ebook, but that was the day I realized long copy really works.

Bingo. That "trance" is exactly what good long-form salesletters do. That's why they out-convert anything else. It's hacking for humans, and it works.

Are there any books on the subject of writing good marketing letters that you could recommend? If not, is there a specific name for the technique that I could Google?

Jay Abraham might be the reason why so many sales-pitch websites look the same (giveaway: red text headlines)

Example inspired by him: http://salsadancesecrets.com

Some of the best sales letters I've seen are direct mail.

For example, get on the Nightingale-Conant mailing list. Their 'This audio program will change your life' letters are supreme examples of the genre. And once you get on their list, I think you will get more examples in your mailbox (BottomLine Personal, Jay Abraham)

I don't know of any books that you could buy from Amazon; I learned 'on the job'. It kinda hurts me to do this, but check out 'the course' from http://www.marketingtips.com.

What kind of software allows you to sell via the newsletter format? I though the reason that format works was because the buyer were non-techies (i.e. grandmothers who have parrots etc). Does it work on techies as well? If so, pretty amazing.

I would characterize my audience as non-techies who want to become techies.

Basically, the software programs I have let people create and run websites very easily. I also have some hosted solutions for those who don't even want to have their own server.

That's how I started in the niche basically. I found myself helping my non-techie friends set up a simple website for themselves and figured others would need the same help too.

A little over a year ago, we created a DVD and companion ebook on the topic of SEO for photographers. We serve that niche market and were finding that most photographers a) had Flash sites and b) had no clue how to get on Google at all–let alone rank well. We were doing service work for people and they were lining up faster than we could help them. So, we decided to sell the info.

I decided to do a DVD because I wanted to include a lot of screencasts. The companion PDF is more of a checklist/workbook. We did a 1,000 DVD run at DiskMakers and also let people access it online.

We're pretty much sold out of the initial run of DVDs (I have a few left in my closet) and we've sold the online version to a lot of overseas photographers who didn't want to wait for it to ship. We charged $79 for the DVD so you can do the math there. http://www.photographyseo.com.

One thing I want to emphasize is that we did absolutely no marketing other than linking to it on our main website and blog. No AdWords or other online campaigns. If I had tried hard, I imagine we could have sold 2 or 3 times the amount we have by now.

I'm considering doing a revised version that is an online/ebook version only–or possibly doing a version that has a slightly broader audience ("SEO for wedding vendors" for example).

If anyone wants to see the PDF or browse the videos, drop me an email.

How long did the DVD take to create?

About a week of planning/writing and 2 weeks of recording screencasts ... all side/extra time, though

How did you advertise your site?

I will tell you my story. A few months ago, I got all excited about these ebooks and all. So, I picked up a topic I could write an ebook on 'How to Start An Online Business' http://paraschopra.com/business/

First I tried launching it as a premium ebook, priced at $65 with some 6-7 pages long copy (see the source code of the page, the long copy is still there)

I didn't sell even a single copy. (Though I must admit, the traffic was really low, not even 5-6 visitors per day as I didn't do Adwords)

Then I dropped the price to $5, and did a short copy of the sales letter. Still nothing happened.

Now I am offering the ebook as free download and I get 2-3 downloads per day thanks to Google First Page Result for the term 'How to Start an Online Business'. Nothing sells like free stuff!

Maybe it was the ebook or maybe it was the sales letter or maybe it was both, but the fact is that I didn't sell even a single copy. With stories of an ebook making a million, there are a million (untold) stories of ebooks making zero.

I'm no expert, so take this with a grain of salt:

1. Find a niche. "Start an online business" is not a niche.

2. Try affiliate programs and SEM to drive targeted traffic. These work best in a smaller niche (see #1)

3. You've got a lot of links on your page that take people away from the page, which drives down conversion, which drives up your cost per conversion, which hurts your ability to do #2

4. You're selling the steak, not the sizzle. Why do I want to start an online business? What's my core goal? What problem does your book solve?

5. A "huge list of resources" sounds like a lot of work. Google provides me with millions of links on this subject for free. What's valuable to me is that someone has culled those millions of links down to just what I really need to know, not 11,000 links that I then have to pick through.

There are other issues, but fixing those would be a big step in the right direction.

Why not try again with a long sale copy but this time use adwords and have an affiliate programs...

Having an affiliate program is good because it gives you a chance at seeing how someone who is used to do this kind of marketing works (at least that's what I imagine, I haven't launched my website yet but was planning to have an affiliate program where people get a percentage of sales right from the beginning).

It seems to me that the most important to get sales is not the book but the ad copy and the use of sem to get the traffic there...

That said thanks for the book I'll see how it is :-)

Nice book. Even if it is mostly annotated hyperlinks, the resources seem to be of good quality and organized well.

Personally, I don't. I've worked very closely with someone who does (managing their campaigns and websites)

Here's what I know.

Pick a niche, be an expert, outsource everything but the content creation, and spend your efforts selling.

Pick a payment gateway that handles charge back procedures well, even if you can get it cheaper somewhere else (use paypal)

Price Higher than you think it's worth.

I've seen some really incredible results. Lots of money being made here. People do buy this sort of stuff, but I think that most of us at HN...don't; which is why it seems foreign.

I sell software, digital images, digital videos and digital audio files. Do they count as digital goods?

Could you (and others) elaborate a little more? Are you a reseller for for a large number of titles? Are you a generic site or a very focused topic specific site(s)? Are your materials self produced or exclusive?

I am interested because I am looking for different monetization models for my GF who is a fine art painter and photographer.

I plan on writing up some thoughts about this in a series of blog posts over the summer. However, maybe I should make it a paid e-book? I kid, I kid... maybe.

But do you make money?

Yes.

Have a look here - there is a whole interview with the CEO of ClickBank (the company that specializes) on this subject that might be useful to you:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516821

The value of services such as ClickBank is that they provide you access to a large established affiliate network - something that is very hard to build yourself...

Where do these people get the testimonials? Are they even real or is it another Betty Crocker?

I would think that faking a testimonial is a snake oil salesman tactic.

Testimonials are mostly real (from what I know), exchange free copies for testimonials (and use the good ones); use 'personal' testimonials over again, rather than 'product specific' testimonials. Those are just a couple tricks.

I'm actually releasing one in 1.5 weeks, so we'll see how it goes.

I've also done affiliate marketing and that's done well also.

But I view this as means to cash rather than means to a true business. More like a springboard, I suppose.

(On my classified website) I only see scammers active in MLM who are making money with ebooks... ;) Sad...

The perception of ebook is pretty negative (low quality)... Amazon will improve this perception I hope...

Could you elaborate? I know people here are looking for positive models, but advice on how to avoid the perception of being a scam could be useful.

Why don't you filter out the MLM scammers?

Just like everything else, it can work, but most people don't put the requisite effort into it to make it work. That means research and understanding people / the market first.