Review: a clever Ponzi scheme
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 04 26, 2014
Amazon is now inundated with ebooks on how to make money by selling ebooks. The author in question is pitching you the latest money-making idea: write an ebook a week (but at the same time, make sure that you sell only quality ebooks)! The author "discovered" that you can increase quality of a book if you dramatically slash the time you spend working on it.Look at the sales rank of his ebooks and you will see that this author can successfully sell only ebooks on how to sell ebooks. The real secret to making money in ebooks is the Ponzi scheme where the income of the author grows because he claims that he knows how to sell ebooks, and you start to believe the claims because he shows you (truthfully) that his income and web traffic are growing exponentially. In other words, to sell more ebooks you need to write ebooks on how to sell more ebooks. Thus, to make more money in epublishing, don't listen to Alex Foster's advice; instead do what he and similar authors are doing.If you wish to follow this unethical "formula of success," then publish some ebooks on how to market ebooks. After that, generate several dozen fake reviews by swapping reviews with other authors (there are threads in the "General" forum of the KDP community website and the Community section of the CreateSpace website, or just contact random indie authors and ask to exchange reviews). The advice you are selling should be general, basic, and different from what you yourself are doing. Alternatively, it can be detailed but still different from what you yourself are doing. Entice new customers with free ebooks or documents (in exchange for an e-mail address), sign them up for a newsletter, and invite them to visit your blog where you show them your growing income and web traffic as proof that you "know" how to sell ebooks and how to make money online. To increase your blog traffic, blog about how to increase blog traffic and give away free ebooks on this topic (with links to your blog). The most basic principle that you need to keep in mind is the following: To make money online, you need to sell advice on how to make money online. (It doesn't matter that the advice is useless or that you know very little about the topics you are writing about.) On your website and in all your ebooks, advertise to the visitors/readers your ebooks about ebook success and making money online. Keep publishing ebooks on various topics related to self-publishing success and online income and continue generating fake reviews for each new release. Eventually, you will be making a nice living by selling the idea of ebook success to the naive (most of your ebooks should be about selling ebooks, writing of bestselling ebooks, and making money online).If you try to sell an honest (not fraudulent) ebook, you will discover that the ebook is making only a few bucks a month or less and none of the B.S. advice that the authors such as Alex Foster are selling makes any difference. Your ebook can start to make real income only if Amazon's editors like it and start promoting it (AND it takes off), which happens roughly to one ebook in ten thousand. There is nothing you can do yourself. Even if you publish several trashy ebooks a day, the chances of one of your ebooks hitting a jackpot will become realistic only after 10 years. Then again, trashy ebooks are unlikely to catch the interest of Amazon's editors.If you are still curious about the "how to make money in epublishing" advice, then buy such an ebook, read it within seven days, and return it for a full refund. Don't fall for this scam.