Hopefully by now you have determined what you will be writing your eBook about and what your main purpose is for creating an eBook and now we need to get you kitted out with the right tools for the job that will get you started.

There are just two tools that are required to create your eBook – a Word Processor and a PDF Writer. Let’s begin by taking a look at these tools and what they can give you.

Word Processors

A Word Processor is a computer application that gives the ability to type and manipulate text on a computer. This may sound simple and some early word processors for the Microsoft Windows platform were fairly straight-forward, allowing text to be typed, typefaces to be highlighted with bold or underlined text and the text size changeable from large to small. There was also the ability to assign different colour to the text. The files could be saved and printed and that was basically it.

As time progresses things get more advanced and these days word processors allow us to create a multitude of documents with embedded images, weblinks and even allow the import of information from other applications like spreadsheets. With all of the advance in word processor technology though and all my years within the IT support industry, I have never come across anybody that uses these applications to their full potential (both the application and the persons potential!). On the whole, word processors are used just to type letters and envelopes and maybe be used to carry out the odd mail merge, yet businesses still insist on paying the thousands of pounds in licensing fees in order that their staff have the best possible packages.

It has always led me into disbelief as to why companies would pay so much money just so their staff can type letters, when there are other solutions available. This however, is a discussion for another time and a mentality that we can learn from.

Let’s first take a look at some of our options of word processor and then make some educated decisions as to what we actual need to produce our eBook.

Please be aware that prices stated are only guide and are provided from the manufacturer’s website. Prices may of course vary.

Microsoft Word

One of the most popular word processing applications on the planet is undoubtedly Microsoft Word. This application has been around for years and has established itself as the market leader in word processing applications.

Available as a separate application or provided as part of the Microsoft Office Suite of programs, this word processor is the application of choice for most businesses. This has given it the most deserved title of an “Industry Standard” product and other software providers write software that can easily integrate with Word.

With a range of products available providing solutions from “Home & Student” up to Professional Corporate editions, there is a product for everyone.

From around £160 ($250) you can buy the Standard Edition of Microsoft Word. You may opt to purchase one of the office suites that also provides a spreadsheet application (Excel), a presentation package (Powerpoint) and a database application (Access), among others. These suites range in price from around £75 ($149) for the Home and Student edition to £360 ($500) for the Professional package.

Microsoft Word is available for both the Windows and Mac operating systems.

Corel WordPerfect

WordPerfect was the industry standard word processing application years before Microsoft Word was even on the scene, but has been replaced since Microsoft Word has taken the lead during the late 90’s.

For some, WordPerfect is still the application of choice and from my experience, seems to be seen to be more commonly used in smaller businesses.

Not as expensive as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect can be purchased as part of one of Corel’s WordPerfect Office suites from Home & Student, through to Professional for around £57 ($89) to £250 ($399). This will of course also provide other applications for spreadsheets and presentations. Also the type of office suite may vary depending on your country.

WordPerfect only seems to be available for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Apple iWork

For Apple’s Mac series of computers, their iWork office package provides a word processing application (Pages), a spreadsheet application (Numbers) and a presentation package (Keynote).

Not being overly familiar with Apple software applications, I am not too sure of the functionality. iWork is available for the slightly cheaper price of £75 ($116).

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice is the open-source office package of choice and is available as a free download from the OpenOffice.org website. Supplying all common office applications such as word processing (Writer), spreadsheets (Calc), presentations (Impress), databases (Base) and a drawing package (Draw), OpenOffice is a serious contender for business, home office and personal use.

I have had uncountable conversations with bosses over the years who, wanting to cut costs, would not even consider using OpenOffice to provide their word processing solutions, just because it is free of charge. I have been told that it could not be much good if it was free, even though it seems to be the only application that I have found that will open a corrupt Microsoft Word document and be able to import and use 3rd-party databases and has allowed me to adequately support those same companies.

OpenOffice provides advanced functionality comparable with the top-end word processor packages and is available for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris operating systems.

PDF Converters

The other tool that you need is something that will create a PDF file from our word processed document once you have written it. PDF stands for Portable Document Format and is a file format that can be read on any computer that has a PDF reader application installed. PDF reader applications are generally available free of charge, the most common of which is Adobe Reader, supplied and downloadable from Adobe Systems.

A PDF reader will be required to read your eBook so be sure to download and install one. But before you are able to read your PDF eBook, you must of course create one.

Here are some applications that are able to create this type of file.

Adobe Acrobat

Created by Adobe Systems, Acrobat allows documents created in a word processor to be opened and then saved as a PDF document. This application allows a whole host of configuration options way greater then you will ever need to create an eBook. It is the industry standard offering for businesses that need to create PDF files and opens the most popular word processor formats.

If a file cannot be opened by Acrobat, a PDF file can still be created by printing to Acrobats virtual printer. This in effect creates the file rather than prints it.

By experience, Acrobats output quality is very good, but there are some oddities at times. Quality can be adjusted.

Acrobat is priced at around £170 ($260).

Microsoft Office PDF Plugin

Shortly after the release of Office 2007, Microsoft released a plug-in that allowed PDF files to be created using their software. This is not available with the default Office Software that Microsoft provide, as far as I am aware and is required to be obtained by a separate download.

This does the job of creating a PDF file, but options are virtually non-existent and security options unavailable.

This addition to Microsoft Office is available free of charge, but you will need to have a Microsoft Office product that supports it. In this case, at least Office 2007.

PDF Printing Utilities

There are a whole host of PDF printing applications and facilities that allow you to create PDF files. These utilities are sometimes provided free of charge by companies that also sell more advanced software. The idea is that you will use the basic software and then as your needs grow, go back to them in order to purchase the more advanced versions that they provide.

PDF Print utilities were one of the only ways in the early days that people were able to create PDF files cheaply and without having to buy Adobe Acrobat. These provide a solution but security options are usually limited in the free products.

Applications such as PDF995, CutePDF, doPDF, PrimoPDF and HelloPDF all work in a similar way and utilize virtual printers in order to create the file. Their output quality does however vary considerably and if you are considering using one of these options, then it would be best to test each one and choose the best option for your needs.

To create the PDF all you need to do is install the software, then open your document in whatever application you desire and then print to the virtual printer that has been created. It sounds simple and it truly is very straight forward.

If you decide to use one of these utilities, be sure to check the license agreement.

OpenOffice.org

Since fairly early on in its creation, OpenOffice has provided the functionality whereby you can export a document as a PDF file. It does not need to be routed through a virtual printer and the functionality is already inherent in the software and therefore doesn’t need to be installed separately

Security options are available to prevent copy of text, or password protect a document, as are a variety of options designed to configure how the PDF reader application will be presented on start up.

The resulting PDF file is very clear and satisfying and even larger documents are created fairly quickly and accurately.

PDF Output Issues

One of the things that I have learnt during my career in IT, is that when creating PDF files it sometimes pays to have a few options available to you, depending on the content of document that you are trying to create.

I have found that both vertical and horizontal lines can be rendered differently in some PDF creation utilities, especially when there are multiple lines that appear very close to each other, like say in a spreadsheet document or word processor table.

Getting around these issues means playing around with the documents format and sometimes changing the line width and/or colour can resolve these issues. It may be that you need to produce the document using a different PDF utility to get the results you are after, or even reformat the layout of the document completely.

By all means just play. You can’t do any damage and you will learn a lot in the process!

Capability Requirements of the Chosen Software

In order to create your eBook, the word processing software that you decide to use must be able to undertake simple word processing tasks, this may be obvious.

It ideally needs to provide:

1. Addition of Headers and Footers that can be different on odd and even pages.

2. Automatic page numbering facility

3. Insertion of tables

4. Insertion of pictures & images

5. Section and/or Page Styles

6. Master Document & Sub-document handling

The good news is that these days, most of the top word processors provide these functions. Master document handling is not a definite requirement, but if your intended eBook is going to be quite large, contains a lot of graphics or is being written by more than one person, then this functionality will make your job of creating your eBook much easier.

Above all the software that you use needs to be able to accomplish the task that you have set out to attain, in the case writing an eBook. It doesn’t need to be able to function as a coffee maker or a personal assistant. Remember to keep it simple!

The Internet Business DiY Tool of Choice

I have always kept to the view of using the tool that provides the best solution within my specified budget, that provides the functionality that is required to do the job at hand. I really do not see the point of shelling out hundreds of pounds to buy the latest application, especially when it is overkill for what is required.

For this project I am going to recommend using the Writer application provided in the OpenOffice Suite, in order to create our eBook. I have been using this application now for over 7 years and it goes from strength to strength. I also use Microsoft Word but find that I tend to use this much less now that I do not work within a business environment that insists on using it.

OpenOffice may not look as pretty on the screen as some other applications, but it does exactly what I want it to do and more and is also very reliable. It can be installed on your computer in addition to other office applications and does not adversely affect any of them.

The reason why I have chosen this application for this project is because I use it myself as my office package and to create all of my eBooks (and everything else that a word processor provides, letters, invoices, etc.), and it is available for almost all operating system platforms. This makes it much easier for those of you who use different operating systems to follow along with the project and allows me to give guidance and instructions for just one application. What’s more, it provides the abiity to export documents as PDF files without needing to install additional software.

If however, you decide to use an alternative product you can certainly still follow along with the project. You will just need to find out how to do some of the things that may be slightly different. I shall of course, attempt to point you in the right direction along the way.

Get Prepared to Start Writing

Now that we have gone through some of the tools available to use, if you do decide that you wish to try OpenOffice, then head over to their website at www.openoffice.org read about the application and then download a copy of their latest offering for your operating system and install it on your computer, being sure to read the license agreement prior to doing so.

Start playing and get familiar with some of the common tasks such as general typing, typeface adjustments (bold, italic, etc.). Have a look at styles, page numbering, tables, frames and adding pictures and get familiar with how it all works.

Like most new things, it will feel a little unfamiliar at first, but the more you play, the more you get used to it and the more proficient you will become.

Next Week

In the next instalment of How to Create an eBook, we will discuss getting a base template created within OpenOffice Writer that will become the base document for your eBook. This will prove to be a big post as I will be taking you step-by-step along the way and showing you what I do to create my eBooks, together with some of the considerations as to how you will lay out your eBook, depending on your ultimate goal.

Until then, your task is to learn and play with OpenOffice Writer in order to get familiar with it.

Have fun!

Just relaxing and kicking back after putting down the telephone to the holiday company, I thought that I would share my experiences with you. This is the first time that I have arranged and booked a holiday whilst running an internet business and I must say it was a very rewarding experience.

For those of you who have read my eBook “Internet Business and a Life of Freedom”, (If you have not yet read it, then be sure to subscribe and download a copy), you may recall me giving an example of the way that most people working a 9 to 5 job would go about booking their annual holiday. In the chapter entitled “Freedom to Make Decisions and Do What You Please”, I refer to having to make a choice of booking your holiday when you find it and then asking your boss for the time off, or asking for the time off first and then finding a holiday to fit into that time period. This is the way that I have always booked my annual holiday – until today!

Honeymoon Hunting

At the beginning of March this year, my fiancée and I are getting married after being together just over 7 years. We had to cancel our previous honeymoon plans after having to put the wedding off for a year. During that time the price of the honeymoon had literally doubled which would have made it virtually impossible for us to afford. So, we have been keeping an eye out for an ideal honeymoon location in a nice warm part of the globe, that is more affordable for us. My newly started internet business is not yet bringing in a consistent stream of income, so it was important that we kept within our very limited budget.

But here’s the thing. After my fiancée had located the ideal holiday (I can’t stand holiday hunting on the internet – it takes absolutely ages!), I was able to book it immediately without even needing to consider if I could have the time off work or not. This to me is a big part of having the freedom to do what you want to do.

It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I realised that we had arranged the wedding and the honeymoon, without me even needing to get any time off approved, or worry about what kind of state to leave my workload in. Usually, having been working in IT, I would need to get all my outstanding work complete and then explain to an external consultancy firm how to run my servers! I had to stop for a moment to take in this experience as it just happened almost without being noticed.

My fiancée is still working her 9 to 5 job, bless her, and she has had the pressure of sorting out her workload. She sees clients and she has had to contact them to let them know that she is going to be away from the office for 3 weeks and seeing as it’s getting close to the end of the tax year, she has got the added pressure from her boss to ensure that she has billed her clients to-date, in order to get funds paid in before the end of the financial year! What a hassle.

A New Way of Life

Me? Well, I have it slightly different now and I must say it is much less stressful. Admittedly, I may have to sit down a couple of times a week for and hour or so whilst on honeymmoon and while sipping a nice ice-cold beer on the sun terrace, in order to type a blog post or two, but that’s what I enjoy and it wouldn’t seem like work to me anyway. All I will need to do is put my laptop in my bag and go! We are due to go to Egypt for a few weeks for some time alone to get over the shock of tying the knot and wondering how our lives will be changing! All I needed to do was to make sure that the hotel that I am staying at has an internet connection. That is all the requirements that I need, oh, and sunshine and my new wife, of course. What more could I ask for?

I know that weddings are never small affairs and even though ours only has a few carefully selected people (I think around 25 in all), organising it has been a 2 year experience. When we started to make the arrangements there were concerns about me getting the time off work, but needing to put it back a year has led me to this point in my life that I am at today. I feel so lucky and enlightened being able to move quickly and travel on any date available, due to the fact that I can just get up and go without the need to pass it by the boss first and wait for his agreement. What an eye opening experience!

This is the freedom that I talk about. The freedom that allows me to be flexible in my approach to work and work from virtually anywhere in the world. I have worked hard to get to this point and it sneaked in the back door without me realizing it. But now as I write this, I can be sure that my dream is coming together piece by piece, designing my ideal lifestyle is on the right track and I have been able to claim the first piece of freedom only four months in to my internet business. This is not only proof that I am on the right track, but also proof that you don’t need to be making extreme amounts of money in order to benefit from the lifestyle flexibility that internet business brings.

I look forward to sharing more events like this with you in the coming weeks and I hope that you can get some form of motivation from this experience in order to take your life to the next level, by running your own internet business.

So now that you have the “Why” under your belt, we can now move forward and explore the “What”, in particular, what is it that you could write about.  I know that when I wrote my first eBook, I struggled for a long time thinking of which subject I could write about and questioned myself so many times as to why other people would want to read my creation.

In Part 2 we explore some options to get you thinking about what subject to choose and address the quality of the content that you should be looking to achieve.  Let’s get started!

Deciding What to Write About

Before we dive in and explore some of the subjects that you could write an eBook on, let’s stop for a moment to consider the question: “Why would somebody want to read my eBook?”.  This is important, and for me was more important to answer before I even looked at what to write about.

It is human nature to want to both give and receive information.  From the many legends and myths that have been told for centuries to the more modern social networking websites on the internet, sharing information is something that human beings tend to do all of the time and sometimes, whether you want them to or not.  By sharing this information we can expand our knowledge in new areas and learn how different people live their lives around the world.  People just want to share.

Each person’s life is completely different to the next.  We all experience life in different ways depending on our environments, our social circles and our beliefs.  It is virtually impossible for two individual people to have had exactly the same experiences and thoughts as each other throughout their lives.  This makes each one of us unique.  As a result, we all have experiences and ideas that we can share with others they have no idea about, that could in fact, change the way they live their lives forever.

What Can You Offer Your Readers?

Understanding that we have all had different experiences in life opens up the possibility of sharing our unique information with other people.  Let’s look at the 3 main areas that are more commonly addressed in both eBooks and physical books and what they offer their readers.

Solving the Reader’s Problems

If you have read any information at all as to what to write a book about, you will come across this area the most.  Solving a problem for your reader is a sure-fire way to get people interested in your eBook from the outset.

Maybe you have a top-class solution as to how people can overcome shyness, stop smoking, sleep better at night or become a better parent.  Perhaps your readers want to know how to get rid of acne, warts, how to be more confident or want to lose 20 pounds by the time summer comes around.

When people have problems they want to know how to solve them, usually quickly, effectively and using unique methods.  Maybe in your life you have been in these situations and found a good way to accomplish what you set out to achieve or perhaps you know somebody who has?

Teaching the Reader Something They Want to Learn

Another way to share information with others is to teach them something useful and that will add value to their life.  Having been in IT for many years, I taught people all the time.  Teaching is one of the only ways of sharing your information where teaching concepts are familiar to others, so that they too can benefit from our knowledge.  After all, we have all been conditioned since school to the way that teachers pass their knowledge on to us.

It could be that you have learnt something in your personal or professional life that will be valuable to others and that they will want to learn.  Maybe you have got a technical skill that you could share, or maybe you have discovered a new way to cook a chicken that makes it taste extremely awesome!

In my own personal life, I trained as a martial artist for many years.  I was also interested in the power of the mind and what it could accomplish.  After trying out a few techniques, I constructed a solution where I could perfect new moves overnight and teach myself to react fast to situations that I had never before experienced, with extraordinary results.  I used to teach these techniques to my students and what would normally take 10 weeks to learn and perfect, could be learned in a day or two.

There are an inexhaustible number of subjects to write about from sport, stamp collecting and computers, through to kayaking, skiing and ice-fishing.  Each one of them has its own challenges and each one of them has a solution where somebody has found a different way to do things that make life easier for them.  Why would it not make life easier for others?

Entertain Your Reader

The last area that we will look at is entertaining your reader.  You may have some funny situations that have happened during your life that you want to write about, or maybe you are a good comedian and a master of writing jokes and anecdotes, perhaps you are a great magician and can handle a pack of cards with eye-popping speed.

Maybe you have a good story to tell, whether it’s a life-changing personal experience or a fictional, romantic, murder-thriller with a gripping twist.  It could be that you just have different ideas about things that you would like to share with others.

People like to escape from life by reading novels and stories that they can get engrossed in.  For many it’s a way to relax and de-stress after a hard day’s work.

Choosing a Subject

So now that your brain is whirring as to what you can offer your readers, we now need to look at some of the things you could write about.

What are you Passionate About?

The first thing that I would encourage you to explore is find out what you are passionate about.  What do you talk about to others all the time and what keeps you awake at night.  Being passionate about something means that you probably already have the knowledge to start writing about your subject, or readily know where to find the information.  It also means that you will enjoy writing your eBook and it won’t become a task.

If you’re not sure what you talk about all the time, ask somebody you talk to a lot.  The next thing that you need to do is find an angle that you can use to share this information with others in your eBook and something that’s a little different to what others have already written about.

What are you Learning About?

A lot of people write about what they are learning.  It is not always necessary to know everything and be an expert.  It has been shown time and time again that when people write about what they are learning about, then others who are in the same boat and learning the same thing can easily identify with the information.  Furthermore, for those people who are just starting out on the same road as you, you will become a great source of information for them as they read about the struggles you had and how you solved them, in effect, making their life easier.

Maybe you have some information to offer with regard to how to best learn a particular subject.  It could be that you have found a way to do it faster, cheaper or more efficiently that other people are unaware of.  Perhaps you have just finished learning about the subject and you want to share your experiences of your learning process with others.

Personal Experiences

Our lives are ever changing but we all go through similar events such as getting married, having babies, coping with illness and building family relationships.

Other people are eager to know how others are “doing it”.  New mothers may want to know about some of the problems and challenges that motherhood brings, as well as tips and ideas on bringing up their newborn baby. 

Getting engaged and preparing a wedding is always a subject that is shared among brides-to–be and maybe you have some valuable information that can make the preparation or the actual day, easier and more memorable, or a “DIY Guide to Your Perfect Wedding”.

Illness is another subject to write about and even though it may seem a bit negative initially, people want to read about other people that are going through the same problems as them.  Maybe you or a close family member or friend has had a hard time recently due to losing a parent or child, maybe you were depressed or maybe you suffer from migraines.  Identifying with somebody going through similar experiences is a natural process and something that human beings tend to find comfort in.  However, people do not just want to read how depressed you are, they want to find out how you overcome your challenges and went on to lead a powerful and fulfilling life.

Keep it honest and truthful and you won’t go far wrong.

Professional Experiences

Just like our personal experiences, we also share similar experiences to others in our workplace.  We are employed in similar roles and are expected to achieve similar goals.  Seeing as we are all individuals with different ideas, it may be that we have discovered alternative and more efficient solutions to our work.

Personally for me as an IT Manager for a few different companies, I was required to provide top-class solutions with minimal budget.  It would have been practically impossible to accomplish these goals using industry-standard solutions and so over the years I became adept to providing alternative solutions that kept within the provided budget and provided the same results.

Perhaps you have similar knowledge that you could use for your eBook?  Maybe you have learnt something by experience or just finished a course on the latest “bio-mechanical robotics techniques” (if there is such a thing) that you could share with others or even something a bit simpler, like “How to Grow Humungous Marrows!”.

There is a wealth of knowledge that we learn in our workplaces that we use each and every day and take for granted.  By paying attention to the things that we spend time doing and how we do them, we can look for tips and ideas that could become the main core of our eBook subject.

Interview Others

Perhaps you know of somebody who has something interesting to share that would make a great book?  You could set up a few sessions with them where you could interview them about how they accomplished something and then write your eBook using their experiences.

This is seen quite often and one book that springs to mind instantly is “The Snowball – Warren Buffet and the Business of Life”.  This book was written by Alice Schroeder about one of the World’s greatest investors.  From interviewing Warren Buffett on various occasions she compiled all of the information she needed and then wrote a book about him.

Use Unique & Valuable Content

A lot of the teachings that I find on the internet on how to create an eBook seem to focus on creating an eBook without writing a word.  There are products out there known as “Private Label Rights” products that allow you to purchase content that has been written by another author and publish it as your own.

The result of this is that a lot of eBooks out there have exactly the same content as each other, just with different titles.  Just think how annoyed you would be if you purchased a book titled “The Basics of Investing” and then went on to buy “How to Get Maximum Return on Your Investments” and they had 100% exact same content.

Although it may be tempting at first when starting to think about your content, to purchase this type of package, it is not something that I would never recommend doing.

Your eBook needs to provide value to your readers and therefore should contain original content that you yourself have written, in your own words.  The information needs to be of good useful quality and deliver on its promise.

“How-to” style eBooks need to contain the correct information which is repeatable by the reader.  It’s no good writing about “How To Make a Hovercraft”, if you haven’t been involved with such a project, have gotten the information from somewhere else and not even tried to build one yourself following those same instructions.

Technical books need to be technically correct and comedy books need to be funny!  I know that you know all this, but it is amazing how many people that write eBooks do not pay attention to this at all and provide eBooks with no quality in them.

By ensuring that your content is unique you will create an eBook that is not available anywhere else and one that hasn’t been written before in the way that has been written by you.

By paying attention to these few points, you will ensure that the information in your eBook will be of value to your readers, keeping them coming back for more when new books become available.

Make Your Content Engaging

It’s no good selling an eBook if your readers get bored after the first page or two.

By keeping your content engaging and interesting, you will ensure that your readers will enjoy the book.  Draw in your readers by giving examples, setting tasks, telling stories and adding humour at appropriate times during your book.  Each chapter should leave them wanting to read the next one, then the next and the next.

Getting Ideas for Your Subject

Go and visit a book shop over the next week and take a look at the types of books that are being sold.  See how many books solve problems for their readers, teach them something or just provide a method of getting the reader to escape the realms of reality into the fantasy world contained within the book.  This will be almost every single book in the shop!

Think about things that you have read and have thought to yourself “I could write it better than that”.  Think about the challenges that you have overcome and what you have learnt from your life experiences.

Finally, get in touch with your passions.  What do you love to do and what drives you.  Speak to those people who are close to you and get their thoughts on what you talk about often.  What are your hobbies and interests and what could you be interested in learning?

Make a list of a few ideas of eBooks that you could write, their subjects and what they would contain.  Think about what quality information that you could provide to the person who reads your book and the different angles that you could use to get the information across to your readers.

Finally, get on the internet and surf.  Find out if there is an interest in your potential subjects by searching for other eBooks on similar subjects and try to find forums where people are discussing the issues surrounding them. 

If others have already written eBook on the same subjects in a large market, don’t immediately get discouraged, find a way to explain the information differently or offer your readers better quality or even more information.  A large market means more competition but it also means more readers, embrace the challenge.  If you are addressing a smaller market and writing a book about “Brass Button Polishing”, you may want to rethink your idea if you are not able to find a lot of information on the internet.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are the only person writing about that subject so you have to have the monopoly, there is probably a good reason as to why others haven’t ventured down this path and perhaps it isn’t really that popular.

Coming in Part 3

That’s it for this week. Next week, in Part 3 of How to Create an eBook, we will look at a few of the tools that you can use to create your eBook.  The main tools that are covered will get you started on your road to getting your fingers tapping those keys and starting to write your very first eBook.

Until then.

Before we get too involved in the mechanics of actually creating the eBook itself, we will take a step back to one of the very first questions that you should ask yourself before even starting to put pen to paper, or fingers to keys.  This question is not “How to Create an eBook” but rather “Why Create an eBook?”.

Different people will have different reasons for creating an eBook and it would be impractical to cover all of the ideas here and what’s more, I doubt if I know every single situation where a person may decide to create an eBook.  Instead we will take a look at a few of the more common reasons that people decide to write and eBook.  This should get your creative juices flowing in the right direction at least.

To Help Promote your Business

Many people, me included, decide to produce eBooks to market their business.  This is a very good way of giving away high quality information to potential customers.  By communicating what your business can offer, together with your views and some tips and ideas that will give value to others, you will give your readers an insight to what you and your business are all about, pass on some valuable information and can attract the right type of people who are interested in your subject, to your website.

Obviously, the information contained within your e-book will need be relevant to your chosen niche or area of business.  It’s no good producing an e-book about your Fly Fishing interests, when your internet business concentrates on providing information related to computer and Video Gaming.

When you create an eBook to market your business, it is important to bear in mind that the material that you put in your eBook will reflect on you and your business.  Using foul language or consistently running your competitors down would not be a good way to encourage people to read, let alone part with their precious time in order to check out your website.  Create content that will allow others to perceive you as you want to be seen and more importantly, live up to the picture that you create.

Your eBook does not necessarily have to be very long, but it must provide useful information.  A 10-page high quality eBook would be perfectly fine as a marketing tool as long as the information is to the point and of interest to your target market.

An Eye for Quality

There are so many eBooks out there that have just been cobbled together without much thought and look extremely basic indeed.  In my opinion, there is nothing worse than just starting up your word processing application and starting to type using its default settings, without first paying attention to how you want your book to look.

Most of the time it’s because of ignorance that people don’t bother to take the time to plan out the visual appeal of their creation and I don’t mean that in a nasty way.  People just don’t know how to do anything different or choose not to spend the time learning.

These days though, it is very simple to create a good looking publication.  By paying attention to typefaces, by using colour and holding back from putting everything in bold in order to highlight them, it only takes a small amount of time to produce the look that you are trying to achieve.  By spending time looking through other books and magazines, you can very quickly get some ideas that you could use when producing your eBook.

The result is a high quality looking book and more customers being attracted to your site.

Marketing your eBook

Once created, your eBook can then be circulated across the internet in order that people may read it.  In this instance it is probable that you would want to give your book away, as it would be a pointless exercise selling a book in order to market your business.  Your goal should be to get your book circulated as quickly and as easily as possible in order to attract new potential customers to your website.

Maybe instead of sending your new eBook all over the globe, you wish to use it as an incentive for people to sign up to your newsletter and announcements.  This is a very good way of tempting people to part with their precious e-mail addresses and getting them on your mailing list.

Due to the vastness of the entire internet marketing subject, we will address this in a later project and so it will not be covered within this one.  However, if you want to learn more about marketing your eBook, a quick Google search should provide you with some information of how to go about this.

If you haven’t yet signed up to the Internet Business mailing list, do so now and download your free eBook “Internet Business & A Life of Freedom”.  You can then get an idea as to the way that I have chosen to lay it out, give my views and opinions on internet business and why I started Internet Business DiY.  I am sure that you will find it a good read and you may learn a few things that you didn’t know!

To Make Money from Sales

Another reason that you may want to write an eBook is to make money from selling it.  In this case your eBook is likely to be much larger than one that has been created to market your business.  Maybe you wish to write a “How-to” style book instructing people in the dying art of finger painting, or may be a technical book an configuring the newest piece of software.  You could decide to write a course on your chosen subject, or even a novel if that is what you desire to do.

This is exactly the same as the types of books that you see and buy in the book shops and the only difference is that it’s in electronic form.  However, you can still publish your book using self-publishing and can even apply for an ISBN number for it!

The aim at the end of it all though, is to sell your eBook.  It goes without saying then, that the subject you choose to write about needs to be in demand to a certain degree, otherwise you will never attract any buyers and ultimately never make money.

There are a couple of ways that you could choose to sell your eBook; sell it yourself or get others to sell it for you.

To Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Field

This is similar to marketing your business, but in this instance you are effectively marketing yourself.  You may decide that you will write some excellent content and instead of selling your book for a standard price, you will supply the book very cheaply in order to attract buyers.  Once your customers have read one or two of your publications, or maybe a series of them, they will get to see you as an expert in what you talk about.

It may be that you coincide this with the business promotion idea and just give away your eBook to others.  Or maybe you will give away a small portion of it, say one or two chapters, to entice people to buy the full version.

Consistency will be the key and once you have defined yourself as an expert, then people will stay with you for as long as you provide quality information to them.

You Have Always Wanted to Write a Book

This is one of my favourites.  I know a lot of people who have said to me that they have always wanted to write a book, but none of them ever do.  Why not?  “I’ll never be able to get it published”, they say or “It won’t be good enough”.  In this day and age these excuses are rubbish!

It is possible to write your own book, circulate it digitally for people to read, provide it in digital format for those with eBook readers and computers and even self-publish it into a physical product – all for either nothing, or such a small amount of money that it’s not even worth talking about the cost.

The bottom line is, if you want to write a book there is nothing to stop you.  Indeed, this project alone will get you in a position where you can write and produce an entire book on your most passionate subject.  Saying this, I would encourage you to let people know about this particular project, if you know that they have always wanted to write a book and didn’t know where to start, even if they do not have an interest in internet business.

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

You will hopefully have a few ideas buzzing around you head as to why you would want to create an eBook.  Why not surf the internet for a while and see how other people are doing it?  Sign-up to a few websites, download and read their offerings.  You will get some great ideas of why others have produced an eBook.

For me it is two-fold.  To start with I wanted a way that I could market my business and provide a way to let my potential customers know where I am coming from and secondly I have a passion to teach people what I know and help them on their way to success.  For you, it may be completely different.

Coming in Part 2

Next week, in Part 2 of How to Create an eBook, we will look at deciding on what to write about.  This is an area where some people get stuck and the stage where you will need to give some thought as to the overall content of your eBook.

See you then.

Looking back on the year just gone, isn’t it just amazing how fast the time goes? I cannot believe that it’s been around 2 months since I first put Internet Business DiY up on the Web. I also recognise that I haven’t added any content to it either since then…..so what have I been doing?

Well, after I put the website up I thought that I would start to write some content. I was very attuned to the fact that I did not want to put up rubbish content as I really did not want people reading my words to categorise me that same as I have categorised a lot of other people on the internet that speak about internet business. Most certainly, I did not want my website to look like something that I had just chucked up on the net and hadn’t paid too much attention to.

With this in mind I started to pay more attention to what I wanted to achieve and what I wanted to share with others. It is important to me to help people get their businesses up and running with more than one choice available to them and that the information that I provide is not missing major sections. To this end, I started to commit more thought as to how I could accomplish this without letting people down.

As I was thinking and planning everything down to the last minute detail, my future wife asked me when my “perfect” would ever be “good enough”. I paused and thought back to when I first put the website up. I had all this knowledge to pass on to people and help them and I was trying to get it perfect. But perfect to me and my perfect would never be good enough to me. I took a step back and saw that it was this strive for perfection that was holding me back from sharing the information that I already had and some that I am still learning.

After a new Mister Man was created on my personality; Mr. Exactly, I decided that I had waited long enough, thought hard enough and that what I had to share was indeed good enough.

So to get things off to a good start for 2010, I have decided to cover two of the aspects that people tend to concentrate on when thinking about starting an internet home business. These two areas are “Creating a Website or Blog” and “Making an eBook”. Let’s look a bit closer at these two subjects and what’s in store.

Write & Create Your Own eBook

When people look to create their own product they may get directed, or start to think about creating their own eBook. Writing an eBook is a great way to share your knowledge & ideas and although they have been around for years and been written on hundreds of thousands of subjects, they are still going strong and it is a very good place to start.

With the introduction of Kindle’s and other electronic book readers, it has never been easier for people to carry around their favourite books to read on the go. Whether you intend to write a book simply to satisfy a long-term itch, you intend to use it to market your new business or you intend to sell it for profit, this 9 week project will have you creating your vision confidently.

We will be looking at some of the tools that you can use to get started writing and explore some of the options to create a portable electronic version of your book.

I really hope that you will find this not only an exciting adventure, but also both a challenge and a rewarding experience.

Quickstart WordPress

Creating a website has never been an easy task for many and even today some people still shudder over the thought of creating one. Blogs on the other hand are extremely popular and it would appear that a large number of people are adept at starting a blog. I even know of someone’s granny who has started a blog at the ripe old age of 86!

The good news is that blogging platforms are now so versatile and powerful that they can be used to create websites, almost with ease. So if you want to start a blog you can and if you want to create a more functional website or storefront, you can. Almost all of the tutorials about starting an internet business online, concentrate on setting up a website and signing up for affiliate programs. The first thing they have you do is to sign-up for a web hosting account, then set up a website and finally market your affiliate products.

This is great if this the area that you wish to enter into and there are extremely good profits to be made, but what about learning? By signing up for a webhost account and putting your site live without “playing around” leaves you high and dry in both the familiarity and knowledge departments. If you choose to get familiar with adding content and configuring your new website, you face the chance of messing it up or totally breaking it bringing your site crashing down. It’s common knowledge that no site equals no money when you’re in the internet business business!

In this forthcoming tutorial, we will look at setting up one of the most popular content management systems around – WordPress – without the need to spend a penny. You will get familiar with setting up the software, configuring WordPress, creating and managing content and of course backing up your new website in case disaster hits.

When you finish, you will have a good basic working knowledge of WordPress and be confident in using it, have a test setup where you can try things and get them right before uploading to your website and have a development platform that you can use to build your perfect website or blog.

Build Your Internet Business Knowledge

I am really looking forward to starting and hope that you will come and join me next week and start your journey to building your internet business knowledge, your website and your own eBook.

Of course for both of these projects we will stick to one of Internet Business DiY’s key aspects of “Low Cost and Effective” and keep the cost of producing both the eBook and a website development platform to a minimum. In fact, if you already own a PC you will have to spend exactly nothing, nada!

Until next week…

The Benefits of Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle

By paying attention to the type of lifestyle that you want to lead prior to building up your internet business, not only do you get to run your own successful business, you also get to live the life that you have always dreamed of living.

We have been conditioned in life to accept working from 9 to 5 each day in order to get paid the money that we need to live on.  The problem that I have always had with this Time for Money scenario is that we end up living to work, rather than working to live and our dreams stay where they are, firmly rooted in dreamland.  This is where lifestyle design comes in.

I address this topic in more depth in my free eBook “Internet Business & A Life of Freedom”, which you can receive immediately by subscribing to our newsletter.  In summary, we end up wasting the prime of our lives going to work in order to earn the money that we need to live on.  As a result, we receive just a couple of hours each day to do what we really want to do and end up living for the weekends.

When we retire, we have the time to do those things that we’ve always wanted to do, but by then it is likely that we no longer have the physical ability that we once had and our pensions probably wouldn’t cover it anyway.

Taking all this into account, here are some of the Key Benefits that lifestyle design can give you:

1. Reduce the amount of time you work each day by increasing efficiency and automating procedures so that the main bulk of the work is done for you.  You can reduce this time to a few hours a week, rather than 40.
2. Give you the freedom to travel the world, if that’s what you want to do, before you retire.  Why wait until you retire when you no longer have the agility that you need?  You can do it now and run your business in the process.
3. Allow you to spend more quality time with those close to you, when you want.
4. Time to enjoy your life immediately and do the things that you’ve always dreamed of doing, rather than having to wait and hope that you still have both the ambition and fitness that you need.
5. Time for Yourself.

Each and every person will have their own priorities and things that they want to achieve in their lives.  If you were to think about the things that you would do in your life, if you had the time and the money to do them, you could easily expand this list.

Goals – The Way To Design Your Ideal Lifestyle

I think that the whole idea of goal setting is looked down upon by a lot of people and when I mention the process of goal-setting to others, the response I commonly get is along the lines of, “That doesn’t work, I’ve tried it before!”.

However, when applied correctly and consistently, putting the process of goal-setting into lifestyle design can bring into your reality the life that you dream of.  Lifestyle design need not be complicated.  In simple terms, it is the process of deciding how you would want your life to look, deciding what steps you need to take to get there and then building your internet business around that lifestyle.

Business teaches us that in order to achieve certain things, we need to set goals in our work and manage our time.  NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) teaches us similar techniques in goal-setting to achieve our goals.  However, NLP gives us additional resources that can be used in order to ensure that we reach our outcomes.

Defining your goals and applying the actions that you need to obtain them works, period.  You just need to know how to effectively define and consistently apply them, to give you the edge that you need to make life happen the way that you imagine.

Lifestyle Design and Internet Business

I know that this has been a very basic explanation of lifestyle design and it is a very necessary overview, as it’s important to keep focused on why you are looking to start your own internet business in the first place.

For me initially, I would have been quite happy just working the same hours as I was at work, but for myself and at home, in order to bring in enough money to match what I was earning in my 9 to 5 job.  I soon found though, that I was able to concentrate better at home on individual tasks and I could finish an entire days work in less than 5 hours, that’s already a saving of 15 hours each week, without introducing any efficiency or automation!

Some of you may be looking to work every hour of the day in order to build up your business empire and have thousands of people at your beck and call.  Others may only want to work and hour or so each week.  We are all different and our dreams are different and whatever dream you have currently, lifestyle design concepts can certainly help you to achieve them.

We shall be covering more on lifestyle design as we progress with building our internet businesses.  At this stage, it may be worthwhile just thinking about the life that you really want, rather than the life you have come to, or think that you should, accept.  Explore those dreams once again as you start to consider the type of lifestyle that your internet business could give you.

A lot of hard work has gone into planning the launch of this exciting site and although you may think that it doesn’t look that exciting at the moment, I can assure you that it will develop into a place that you will hopefully want to “hang out” and learn all about starting and running your own Internet business.

I am truly excited in working with you to create your ideal Internet Business.  I just hope that I’m not “talking” to myself for too long!

Let’s get going…

Where to Start?

This was a big question in my mind.  “How should I start the website?”.  Should I fill it all with content first, fill it partly with content or start out with a bare-bone website and build it over time?

There’s no doubt that some people will come to the site early on in its development and go elsewhere thinking that it hasn’t got anything to offer for them.  However, my thinking was, that seeing as this is the start of a brand new, no fluff site about starting and running a new Internet business, that the best place to start would be at the beginning.  This way, you can start and grow your business as the site grows and help each other every step of the way by offering feedback and opinions on the topic areas covered.

For you, the starting place is simple:

1. The best place to start would be by reading Our Story.  This will give you a good overview of where Internet Business DiY hopes to position itself in this very competitive market and how it came into being.
2. Next, take a look at Our Vision.  This discusses the 4 Key Elements to cost effectively make the most out of your business.
3. Take a brief look at our Comments Policy and Privacy Policy together with our Disclaimers to get familiar with our operating procedures.
4. Finally, take 5 minutes to subscribe to our Newsletter “Regain Your Freedom” and claim your Free 75-page ebook, written personally by me, on how an Internet business can change your life.  In addition to receiving this original ebook, you will get free entry to our quarterly competitions and be the first to hear of exciting new happenings with Internet Business DiY.

Create Your Own Professional Website in 14 Days

Having been in IT for a number of years, I have spoken to so many people who have asked me how they could set up their own website and have it look professional, with minimal knowledge.  One of the best ways, I’m sure, is to pay for a web designer to do it for you, but this can get a bit on the expensive side and is not the first route that people tend to look to because of this expense.

When people are first starting out with their own business, they can be quite unsure as to whether it’s going to be successful and although they may go all-out to ensure that they have given it their best possible shot, it makes a lot of sense not to spend too much money making that shot happen.  At best, it will work out and they won’t look back, at worst they will lose every single penny that they’ve invested which will impinge on them starting up their next business idea.

With this in mind, we will be launching a 2 week course on how you can get a professional looking website up and running, live on the Internet.  We will cover areas that other courses miss out completely and give you a good overview and working knowledge on all of the technologies that are required to make your ideas a reality.

Create Your Own Professional Website in 14 Days is aimed to be available towards the end of the year.  If you would like to be notified of its availability, please ensure that you register your interest as soon as possible.  You can do this by subscribing to our Newsletter and claiming your free eBook.  On the eBook download page you will be given the opportunity to register your interest in the course.

Coming Up!

In the next post, we will start our journey in our Lifestyle Design section, where we will start to look at what type of lifestyle you hope that your Internet business will give you.

This is a logical place to start as your business needs to support your lifestyle.  We will look at what you are hoping to achieve, what you really want and how you can start to tailor your new business to support that lifestyle that you dream about.

Until then, think about your ideas for your new Internet business, prepare to have fun, join in the discussions on each of the topics that we address, take consistent action and make your dreams become your reality!

That’s all for this time, but be sure to add Internet Business DiY to your browser bookmark and subscribe to our RSS feed.  New post announcements and information as it happens will be available on Twitter, so remember to follow us there.