The $75 eBook: A True Story

Contrary to the title, this talks about how Aaron Wall transitioned from eBooks to a resources/community site model with a recurring revenue component ($300 a month currently -- disclaimer, I moderate for his forums). This is a subject he is very, very passionate about because he spent way, way too much of his time and energy on pathological customers at the bottom of the SEO market, which is filled with scum and villainy.

"Charge more money, get better customers" is a repeatable effect I've seen in my business and in several other ones. My anecdotal sense is that every time Aaron ups the price, the quality of his forums go up. I'm not saying that to shill, its just that when folks got in for $50 we got a lot of "I have a website about Nintendos how do I make $1 on AdSense A DAY?!?" and now that it costs $300 a month it is mostly people with real businesses who have existing SEO strategies and want feedback on improving them. This makes me happy because it means I spend less time writing newbie advice and more time writing intellectually interesting ideas for e.g. how to execute linkbait better.

I think this is probably applicable to most of the SAAS businesses here. Every time I see stats published from a SAAS business -- every single time -- the most revenue comes from the most expensive plan. That and the pathological customer bit suggest that one could probably just ignore the $9 / month crowd and concentrate on more well-heeled customers. Some people will scream bloody murder: invite them to use your $9 / month competitors. Now they're somebody else's problem.

About 8 years ago I helped a friend put together an SEO book he wrote (along similar lines as the old SEO Book) that he went on to sell at $37 a copy - title is "search engine optimization strategies" if you want to find it.. don't want to get accused of linking for profit :-) Revenues well into the six figures by now and residual sales continuing. There's money in them thar hills (though not for me, I got paid for my hours at the time only, oops!).

Successful online poker players have managed to sell their e-books for nearly $1000 (see http://www.balugapoker.com/books.html or http://dailyvariance.com/let-there-be-range.html, for example). I really doubt they're doing the same volume this guy is; however, given the price difference, they only have sell 1/13 as many books to break even with him...

Interesting that he pointed out how Google suggests searches like "seobook torrent". I've often thought that if I were selling things likely to be pirated, I'd plant lots of broken copies my products out there. But you could also SEO those terms and try to steer people to a different landing page instead.