There are a two main reasons why I wanted to make the eBook so cheap:

1) Think of the $1 eBook as a minimum viable product. I hypothesized that our visitors would be willing to pay us for premium content, but I wanted to test it first. Given how few people were willing to pay $1, I decided my hypothesis was wrong. I realize that sometimes raising the price can actually increase demand, but I really doubt that's the case here.

2) I didn't know how long the traffic spike would last, so I wanted to get something out as quickly as possible. There wasn't time to create a real eBook worth $30.