Adventures in Monetization via e-publishing.

For months, my personal time was spent thinking of ways to generate Internet cash flow. I refused to employ methods espoused by Internet marketers and wanted to see how far I can go using only open sourced tools and some free websites.

Employing only Open Office Writer was quite a challenge as I realized that there is a need to relearn all the user interface features of new software. When it got to desktop publishing, I used Scribus, a free product which had difficulties importing from Writer tables I spent days churning out. The open sourced world gets your done eventually but the learning curve is much higher and it encourage a sort of "work-around" mentality which is crucial in the IT industry these days when things are very dynamic everyday.

Anyway, my e-book broke even within 2 weeks of being on sale on a specialist online RPG store. It's not a lot of money, about $20 US dollars which confirms that my short project was a success. Perhaps within this year I will redeploy my templates to build a few more products to generate more cash flow so see if I can generate a steady stream of $50 a month.

There are some lessons I learn here :

a) On-line businesses are hard to start. Until you can confidently generate income, use only your personal time to so stuff.

b) There are sites which sell generic e-books, odds are that you won't sell anything. A website that caters to your audience will have a smaller traffic but will have more people who will take a liking to your book.

c) Blogging to preview or advertise your product can help greatly.

So far I think the jury is still out on Internet Marketing. I do know that, for most ordinary people, creating on-line products and selling them is an inferior strategy of generating passive income. Far better to get decent work with your qualifications and then aggressively invest them in income generating real estate and equities.

But I going to keep on trying to prove that I am wrong in this regard. I can take my time because i still have a day job.

The result of my game product can be found here :

Noble : A Martial Controller for the 4e D&D game

A blog which promotes my Dungeons and Dragons 4e product is found here :

Noble Design Blog