If you want to learn how to write an ebook and then distribute it using a proven process then you’re in the right place. I wrote my first ebook in 2012 and that same ebook is still making me a few thousand dollars in passive income every year.
In the first half of this guide, I’m going to reveal to you how I chose the topic of my ebook and the process I followed to write it. I’ll also include a section on how I formatted everything.
📚 Here’s what we’re going to cover:
✍️ Part 2 ebook series:
This is part one of a two-part series on writing, distributing, selling, and marketing an ebook.
Go to part two if you need help with marketing and you want to increase sales.
Then, in the second half, I’ll walk you through a decision-making tree to help you choose a distribution method for your book. To close it out, I’ll teach you how to do it with WordPress, which is what I’ve personally been using for many years. Here’s what we’ll look at:
- Self-distribution vs third-party distribution
- Website builder vs CMS (content management system)
- How to build a website with WordPress
Let’s get started!
Quality matters
Writing an ebook is not a get rich quick scheme and shouldn’t be treated as such. People who crank out ebooks for the sole purpose of making money generally tend to produce piss poor work and it’s because they are starting from the wrong place. Depending on how skilled someone is at marketing, they might make a quick buck or two, but eventually the internet will catch on.
The people who tend to have the best long term results approach the process as a labor of love. Even those who might not be quite as enthusiastic, still make a genuine effort to provide value in other peoples’ lives through the information they share.
As I mentioned in the intro, I wrote my first ebook more than a decade ago. While the sales are nowhere near their peak of what they were when I was actively promoting it, the book still makes money. There are three primary reasons for that:
- I provided a lot of upfront value to my target audience, which helped establish trust.
- I demonstrated expertise in the subject matter, which helped establish me as a knowledgable authority.
- I wrote a damn good book that capitalized on my expertise, and that added even more value on top of the free upfront value I provided.
All three components are clutch, but the first and third would not be possible if I was writing subpar content with the sole intent of making money. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that monetization shouldn’t be a goal, but your starting point has to be the end recipient and not your wallet. Focus on producing quality content for your audience and the money will eventually come.
Oh, and for the love of the Lord, please do not use AI to write your book.
Picking a topic
My topic selection was very organic because it was based on a life experience that I went through. In fact, you can argue that the topic chose me, more so than me choosing it. This is because I made the decision to write the ebook when I was about halfway through the program rather than deciding to do the program so I could write an ebook.
I’m not going to write the specific name of it here because I don’t care for it to be picked up by search engines, but I’ll share a photo of me from the program below to give you an idea:
This approach works really well and has been used by other successful ebook sellers, including Pat Flynn of SPI (Smart Passive Income). Pat used his experience of studying for and taking the LEED AP exam to create a set of ebook study guides [1].
Similarly to me, he did not take the exam with the intention of writing study guides for it. He took it for his own personal career growth reasons. But then at some point he realized that he had valuable information to share with other people who were at an earlier stage in the same process.
How to apply this to you
The idea is straightforward:
If you have direct experience going through some challenging life event – be it a program, an exam, or something else – you can share your firsthand knowledge with others who are getting ready to go through the same experience.
The more exclusive the information you provide, the better. Although depending on what it is, you might want to check first that the info you’re sharing isn’t protected in some way. As a good rule of thumb, if you had to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) as part of your intake, then I would absolutely read the fine print. The last thing you want is a cease and desist letter on your desk or in your inbox. Tread carefully.
Alternative approaches
If my particular approach isn’t relevant to you, don’t worry. There are plenty of other ways you can choose a topic. The main thing is that you should have experience in what it is you’re going to talk about and that it’s going to help others who are at an earlier point in their journey of doing the same thing. This could be any of the following:
- How to start X hobby (e.g., gardening, pottery)
- How to learn X skill (e.g., handstands, juggling)
- How to overcome a personal struggle or life challenge (e.g., illness, addiction)
- How to adapt to a significant life transition (e.g., career change, becoming a parent, moving to a new place)
Alternatively, if you have formal job experience or advanced education in some field, then you can also write an ebook about whatever topics you are considered an expert in.
It really comes down to two things:
- Sharing genuinely useful information with people who want / need it.
- Positioning yourself as someone who knows what they’re talking about (either because of direct experience or formal training/education). If you’ve been blogging about a particular topic for a while then this can also work as a way to establish your credibility.
Brain dumping and organizing
As I mentioned, I made a decision about halfway through my program that I was going to write a preparation guide to help others when I finished. In light of that, I began taking mental notes, and whenever possible, physical notes as well. My notes were about “topics of interest.” Put another way, they were valuable pieces of information that I knew would be very useful to learn beforehand, prior to starting the program.
When I returned home, I combined my handwritten notes with my mental notes and did a giant brain dump. I first wrote down all of the various topics of interest and then over the course of about three days I typed like a madman, filling in the information about each of the topics.
When I finished, I looked at everything I had, and thought about how to organize it into chapters that would have a logical flow to them. I created an initial table of contents and then moved all of my text around to make it fit into the order I decided upon.
After that I added some relevant images and edited some of the content to make sure that it transitioned neatly from one chapter to the next. Finally, I let it sit for a few days before coming back to it to do a final editorial review and proofread.
Alternative approaches
The particular approach that you choose to take is going to be highly dependent on where the source of your information is coming from. I don’t mean that it’s coming from you – that’s a given – but I mean how you obtained it to begin with.
In my case, I had to absorb an extremely large load of information with a very high attention to detail, crammed into a very short time period. I knew that if I didn’t dump all of it as soon as possible that I would very quickly start losing it. This resulted in an avalanche of text flooding out of my brain when I sat down to type.
Most of you will probably not be faced with that same sense of urgency, but you can still follow the general process I described above:
- Create a list of topics related to your subject
- Write content for each of those topics
- Organize your content into chapters
- Add images and make necessary edits to ensure flow and cohesiveness
- Do a final editorial review and proofread to check for grammar / spelling mistakes
The above isn’t set in stone and you can move things around. For example some people might want to organize their chapters before they begin writing. I would recommend this in most cases. The only reason I didn’t do it that way was because I wanted to make sure that I got everything out of my brain as soon as possible.
Converting a manuscript into an ebook
First, let me tell you how I converted my written manuscript into an ebook and then I’ll give you some additional options.
I used the default Mac word processor program called Pages to write everything and to do my edits. When I finished, I simply converted the Pages file to a PDF by using the native conversion feature inside Pages.
That’s it.
In hindsight, this wasn’t the best approach because it was written in a basic format – like writing a paper for a school report or something – rather than being properly formatted according to “professional” ebook standards.
However, these days, Pages also has templates, including ones for books:
Not only are the templates really good (and free), but Pages also lets you save your finished ebook in multiple formats. This includes the popular EPUB format:
Your personal formatting decision will be largely influenced by how you choose to distribute your ebook later on. For example, if you go with a third-party platform like Amazon, then you’ll want to save your ebook as an EPUB file. However, if you decide to self-publish, then a PDF is probably the best choice. I’ll cover this in more detail soon.
Other ebook editors
If you’re not using a Mac with Pages installed or you’d like other options, there are plenty.
One alternative I recommend is a free software called Calibre. This tool has a built-in editor that allows you to edit ebooks in the most popular ebook formats, EPUB and Kindle.
Sigil is another free EPUB editing tool that you can try as well.
If you plan to self-distribute your ebook like I did and you want to stick to the PDF file format while still being able to design your layout, then Scribus is a good (free) option.
For a more robust, premium software, you can try Adobe InDesign. Plans for that start from $22.99 USD per month (there’s also a free trial if you want to take it for a spin).
My two cents here is that the free options work completely fine. Unless you have some particular need to use InDesign, then there’s no need to spend money on it just to format your ebook.
What’s next? 🤔
After you finish writing, editing, and formatting your ebook, you’ll have to decide on how you’re going to sell it. Believe it or not, there are quite a lot of directions this can go in.
The first decision you’ll need to make is whether you’re going to self-distribute or whether you will use a third-party platform to do your distribution for you.
Both of those choices then have their own, multi-level decision making trees below them. The third-party options are a little more limited, but with self-distribution, the world is your oyster as they say.
In the next section, I’m going to guide you through this process. Along the way, I’ll explain the various options you’ll have at each stage and the ones that I recommend.
However, as you can see below, there is no way we’ll be able to go into a deep explanation for each and every possibility.
There are simply too many!
Not only that, but I’m personally not an expert on all of them. I know they exist, so I’ve shared them as a resource, but I also need to be practical here.
What this means is that at each “intersection,” I will continue down the path that I took (and that I recommend based on my experience).
I intentionally ordered the sections in terms of hierarchy. We’ll start with the most top-level decision and work down from there.
Self-distribution vs third-party distribution
This is one of the most important decisions you will make in the entire process of writing and selling your ebook. It will have profound implications both for your profit margins and for the things you’ll do to get up and running.
Let us first look at the benefits of both methods.
Advantages of self-distributing your ebook
- You have complete control over pricing, marketing, and customer interactions, allowing you to tailor your approach to your audience.
- Your profit margins are significantly higher because, in most cases, you only have to pay a processing fee to whichever payment processor you use. In contrast, third-party platforms take a cut of each sale, and it’s often exorbitant. For example, if you pick Amazon, they may take up to 65% of each sale!
- You build and maintain your customer base; in other words, you own your email list, and any successful internet marketer worth their salt will tell you that “the money is in the list.”
- It’s easy to update your ebook or adjust the content as needed without waiting for approval from the platform hosting your ebook. Using Amazon as an example again, they actually limit what you can and can’t update after you go live with your ebook:
These are some pretty compelling reasons to go the self-distribution route, but using a third-party platform also comes with its own set of upsides. Let’s take a look at those next.
Advantages of using a third-party platform
- You will benefit from a built-in audience, which means a lot less work on your part to get eyes on your ebook. Amazon gets more than two billion visitors every month, which averages out to millions on a daily basis [1]. Nobody can compete with that kind of traffic.
- Third-party platforms will accept payment for your ebook and will provide a digital home to store it so that customers will be able to download it after they pay you.
- You’ll get help with customer service if there’s a problem with downloading or payment, since those issues will be directly connected to the third-party platform.
So which method should you go with?
Like many things in life: it depends.
Mainly, it depends on what’s important to you and where you fall on the spectrum of instant versus delayed gratification. Let’s take a look at who would benefit from each method.
Third-party distribution
If you want to start seeing cashflow as soon as possible and you don’t mind sacrificing control and long-term profit in exchange for traffic and exposure, then third-party platforms are your best bet. Three popular options you can go with are:
- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): Dominates the ebook market, offering extensive reach.
- Apple Books: Another major platform with a large audience, integrated into all Apple devices.
- Barnes & Noble Press: Targets Nook readers and offers physical book options as well.
Self-distribution (✅ my recommendation)
I personally chose to self-distribute and I would still recommend this as the best approach today.
If you’re in it for the long haul and you want your ebook to continue making you passive income years after you finish writing it, then self-distribution is the way to go. You’ll need a little patience in the beginning, but it’ll pay off in the long run.
Assuming you take my advice, then at a very high level, you’ll need to decide between two routes: don’t have a website versus have a website. I recommend the latter, but let’s take a closer look at both.
No website + somewhere to store your ebook + payment processor
Going this route means that you’ll need to find a place to store your ebook. This isn’t the primary drawback – since it’s pretty easy to use a free option, like Google Drive, Dropbox, or TeraBox. But it is one additional thing to worry about. The main downside to not having a website is that you’ll have to rely on social media and video platforms to market your work, or possibly pay an influencer to do it for you (via platforms like Fiverr or IZEA).
If that’s alright by you, then you can consider using one of the following:
- GoDaddy Pay Links: This service lets you easily create and share links to collect payments without a website. You can customize pay links with the name of your ebook, logo, or even a domain name. If you end up using this service, I would suggest investing in a domain name since it will look more professional, and if you do decide to build a website later on, then you’ll already have the domain for it. GoDaddy charges a fee of 2.9% of your sale plus $0.30 per transaction.
- Shopify Starter plan: This plan enables you to sell through social media, emails, and other digital platforms without a full online store. It includes product pages, a mobile point of sale, and the Linkpop tool for managing product links on social media. It costs $5 per month, along with transaction fees of 5% of each sale.
- Gumroad: With Gumroad, you can quickly set up a simple landing page to showcase and sell your ebook. The platform streamlines the selling process, allowing your readers to purchase and instantly download your ebook after checkout. It also has a feature called Gumroad Discover where you can request to have Gumroad recommend your ebook across various sections of their website. The fees are somewhat high, though. They take 10% of each sale + transaction fees.
- Taplink: If you’re an Instagram user or are considering using it to promote your ebook, then Taplink should be on your radar. It’ll turn your Instagram from a promotion method to a full-on distribution method. With Taplink, you can create a micro-landing page that accepts payments (via third-party integration). There’s a free plan, but you still have to pay transaction fees to the payment processor (e.g., Paypal).
Website + payment processor (✅ my recommendation)
This is the preferred route.
Why?
Because an ebook is written content, this means that your primary form of providing free upfront value should match the thing that you’re selling. Being charismatic in a YouTube video or Instagram reel doesn’t automatically translate to being a good writer – and you’re not selling a video course. You’re selling an ebook.
It doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t rely on other formats outside of your primary format to showcase your competence on the subject. In fact, I would argue the opposite. But you need to convince your audience that your writing is valuable – valuable enough that they’d be willing to spend money to get more of it. And that means writing lots of quality blog posts on a website, which means you need to build one. Let’s talk about that next.
Website builder vs CMS
These days, you have what feels like an infinite number of options to build a functioning website on the internet. Even though the number is obviously finite, in practical terms, there is no way you’d ever want to spend time exploring all of them.
At the highest level, the first decision you need to make is whether you’d prefer to use a website builder or a content management system (CMS).
Let’s examine both.
Advantages of website builders
Website builders are intentionally designed to cater to first-timers who want to get their website up and running as easily and quickly as possible. To accomplish this goal, they offer the following:
- Website hosting is bundled in with the service, thus eliminating the need to find a hosting service on your own.
- An extremely simplified interface designed for easy site creation via “drag-and-drop” systems. These let you pick various website elements and “drop them” on the page.
- Ecommerce and payment processing capabilities are often native to the website builder platform (especially on higher-level ecommerce plans), rather than requiring the integration of third-party plugins.
Overall, website builders are attractive to beginners because the learning curve to get started is extremely low. However, they also come with some negative trade-offs – namely cost and flexibility.
Advantages of content management systems
These are the gold standards when it comes to building a website to distribute your ebook. They’re marginally cheaper than website builders for what they offer in return. They are also more flexible in many ways.
- The fact that everything is not all bundled into one package might feel inconvenient at first, but down the line, you will most likely appreciate the granular control that a CMS will give you.
- It’s easier to scale your website over time according to your needs. This once again comes down to having more control. With website builders, you might find that one aspect of your site will outgrow your current plan, but your only option will be to jump into a higher plan that has way more than you need (and that you’ll be stuck paying for as part of the deal).
- While website builders have significantly improved in terms of their template offerings and overall design capabilities, they still aren’t as robust as content management systems. Put another way, you’ll be able to achieve whatever look you want with a CMS, versus just settling for something “good enough.”
In the end, if you don’t mind spending a bit of time learning how to navigate your way around a CMS and buying your own hosting, then a content management system will reward you with more control and customization capabilities at a marginally lower price.
So which option should you go with?
I’m going to sound repetitive here, but just like with the decision between third-party distribution and self-distribution, this also depends. It mainly comes down to how much web development experience you already have or how generally tech-savvy you are versus how much time you want to invest in learning new things.
If you have absolutely no experience building websites and you don’t consider yourself a very tech-savvy person, then undoubtedly going with a website builder will make it faster and easier for you to get started. Some of the most popular choices currently available are Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, or Webflow.
On the other hand, if you do consider yourself to be tech-savvy and/or don’t mind a learning curve, then choosing a CMS is the better bet.
Content management systems (✅ my recommendation)
My recommendation is to go with WordPress. That’s not to say that some of the other CMS aren’t good – they are – but unless you already know how to use them, then your time is better spent learning WordPress.
Here’s why:
Nearly half of the websites on the entire internet are built using WordPress [2]. This means you can feel confident that the underlying tech powering your website isn’t going to become obsolete. In addition, if you ever run into any speed bumps, there’s a very high likelihood that whatever problem you encounter won’t be unique, and a solution to it will already be posted somewhere.
I don’t want to turn this into a full-scale “why you should use WordPress” article, but you should use WordPress. 😆
Since WordPress is self-hosted, it also means you’ll need to choose a hosting provider and then install the WordPress software on your own. Luckily, because of its immense popularity, there are lots of options that offer simple one-click WordPress installs.
💡 Quick note: The WordPress I’ve been referring to is the one you can find on WordPress.org. There is also a WordPress.com, which uses the same underlying CMS but bundles hosting into it. While this simple explanation might seem like .com is the better choice (it’s not), there is more to it than that. For a detailed look, check out this comparison between the two on our sister site.
How to build a website for your ebook
When I first built my website back in 2012, I purchased hosting from HostGator. I stayed with them for many years but recently transferred to Namecheap due to an unprecedented and overly aggressive price hike. I went from paying $77.70 USD every six months to $118.74. That’s an almost 53% increase for the same exact service. It was hard to look at it as anything other than a case of price gouging.
Now, let’s build your site!
First things first, head to Namecheap’s website and sign up for their entry-level hosting package. It’s called the Stellar Plan. As part of the registration process, you’ll be asked to connect a domain name to your hosting plan:
The domain name you choose is going to be the name of your website – like www.yourwebsite.com.
Ultimately, it will be up to you what you want to name your site, but I’d keep the focus on the subject matter of your book. For a deeper dive into this, here’s a good way to pick a domain name.
After you finish the process of choosing your domain and paying for the hosting plan, you’ll want to install WordPress on your new site. You can follow Namecheap’s guide to get that done easily.
Setting the foundation
With WordPress installed, you’re ready to log in and set up your basic website.
💡 The default WordPress admin login URL is www.yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php – just don’t forget to replace yourwebsite with whatever your site’s domain name is.
Once you get inside, you’ll be greeted with the WordPress dashboard:
It might feel like there’s a lot going on at first, but you don’t necessarily need to learn everything right away. The two main areas that I want to show you are themes and plugins.
Themes
You can think of WordPress themes as the foundation for your website’s design and layout. They come with pre-designed templates for various pages, such as the homepage, blog, about page, and more. This allows you to quickly set up a cohesive and visually appealing website without starting from scratch. Additionally, many themes are highly customizable, enabling you to tweak colors, fonts, and other design elements to match your ebook’s branding perfectly.
These days, the top-level decision you need to make when deciding on a theme is whether you want to use a block theme or a classic theme.
Block themes are the newer generation of WordPress themes, built around the block editor (Gutenberg). This is the default WordPress editor, which replaced the classic editor in December 2018. Block themes provide a more modular approach, allowing you to construct pages and posts using reusable content blocks. They offer greater flexibility, making it easier to create unique layouts and designs without extensive coding knowledge.
Suggestions: Raft (this is the theme I use for my ebook site), Inspiro Blocks, Jadro, Tove, Neve FSE
Classic themes follow the traditional “old school” WordPress theme structure, with set content areas and predefined layouts. They often rely on widgets and custom fields to add functionality and content blocks. While classic themes are time-tested and still widely used, they offer less flexibility compared to block themes.
Suggestions: Neve, Astra, Sydney, Divi
To access the theme repository, use the left-hand side menu inside the WordPress dashboard. Hover your mouse over Appearance. Then click on Themes, and then Add New Theme.
From there, you can use the search bar to check out the themes I suggested above or simply browse around to see if any other themes catch your eye. There are even specific ebook themes available, but in my humble opinion, they aren’t better than the tried and tested themes I recommended. You’re welcome to check them out for yourself, though.
Plugins
Have you ever played Super Mario Bros? In that game, Mario would run into certain power-ups, and those power-ups would unlock new abilities. Well, that’s basically what plugins are. But instead of letting you shoot fireballs or fly like a raccoon, they let you do things like accept payments on your site for your ebook.
That’s just scratching the surface, though. There are quite literally tens of thousands of plugins in the WordPress repository that will let you enhance your site in ways that you’ve never even thought about. Here are the ones that I recommend to get your site off to a strong start:
- Optimole: This is arguably the best image optimization plugin available, with a generous free plan that will suit you perfectly when launching your site.
- Otter Blocks: The native WordPress block editor has a lot of basic blocks that make a good foundation for your site. Otter Blocks builds on that foundation by adding 30+ new blocks.
- Wordfence: Criminal hackers suck. Wordfence keeps them out of your site. Need I say more?
- WP Fastest Cache: Slow websites also suck. This plugin makes your site faster. Get it.
- Yoast SEO: While the SEO game has recently been hit with some major changes – to the point where many pros today are encouraging people to ignore SEO for better results – the Yoast plugin is still useful for its readability suggestions.
Just like with themes, you can find all of these plugins via the dashboard. From the left-hand side menu, go to Plugins ➡️ Add New Plugin. Then just use the search bar to find the plugins I suggested above. After you type the name of each one, you’ll see it populate. Click on Install Now. Wait a few seconds. The Install Now button will change to an Activate button. Repeat until all of the plugins are installed and activated.
Selecting a payment processor
You’ll notice that in the plugin recommendations I made above, I didn’t mention a plugin to accept payments. The reason for that is that you don’t necessarily need to do it that way. You can also use a third-party platform – which is what I did.
I took this approach for two primary reasons.
First, when I launched my site and before I had a lot of testimonials, I thought that overcoming the trust barrier was one of my biggest hurdles. By choosing an external provider with a good reputation and a built-in refund policy, I felt that it would put potential customers more at ease than if I were processing the payments directly myself.
Related to that, I didn’t know as much about WordPress security at the time, and so I also didn’t feel 100% comfortable with having people enter their financial information on my website.
So resorting to a third-party payment processor felt like a natural choice.
I decided to use ClickBank. This was for four main reasons:
- It’s easy to use.
- It has a trusted reputation.
- It has a very fair commission structure for payouts.
- It has a built-in marketplace with an affiliate network that will promote your ebook (thus increasing your sales).
👉🏻 If you decide to follow in my footsteps, then please see this comprehensive see this comprehensive tutorial that explains how to add your ebook to ClickBank.
I’ve been with ClickBank for more than ten years at this point, and I’ve had no issues. They always pay on time. They have a nice interface with good analytics, and you can adjust your payout thresholds and payment frequency easily. Overall, I would recommend them, but they are certainly not the only game in town. Let’s look at some other options.
Alternative ways to accept payment
You may have realized this already, but this is actually another decision-making intersection where you can decide between using a WordPress plugin and using a third-party provider like I did. I already told you what I did and why, but if you’d like to take the plugin route, here are some options to consider:
I made them clickable links but you can also just use the same search feature in the WordPress dashboard like I described for the other plugins.
Adding an ebook to your WordPress site
After you choose your payment processor, you’re going to want to upload your ebook to your site and provide a way for people to access it – but only after they’ve paid you, of course.
I’m going to show you how to do it with the assumption that you will also choose ClickBank as your payment processor. If you end up using a WordPress plugin instead, the process might be different in some ways. This is because some plugins will have their own built-in methods for generating a payment confirmation screen and for secure file storage, which are the two pages we’re going to manually create.
Creating a payment confirmation page
From the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages and then Add New Page (you can click on it in either the sub-menu or the button up top).
Once inside the new page, you can choose to add some images or other design elements, or you can keep it really simple. The main thing is to put a note that provides a link to the page where the ebook itself will be stored and a password to open up that page:
You won’t have the link yet because we’re going to create that page after this one, but you can either type it in manually (knowing what it will be) or hold off and come back to it afterwards. Beyond that, if you’re going to be using ClickBank, then you’ll also need to add three other required elements to the page. These are:
- Your contact information
- A disclaimer clarifying that ClickBank does not endorse your ebook
- A note that the customer’s purchase will be reflected as “ClickBank” or “CLKBANK*COM”
With that out of the way, scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see the Yoast SEO section on the bottom left.
💡 Remember that Yoast is a plugin you have to install first – otherwise, you won’t see it.
Look for the sub-row titled Advanced. Open it up and change both options to No:
This will instruct Yoast to tell Google and other search engines not to index this page, which is important because otherwise it might show up in search results.
If you install some other SEO plugin instead of Yoast, it should have a similar option (but will obviously look a little different).
That’s it for this step. Just hit Publish on the top right when everything looks good to you, and the page will go live.
Creating a file storage page
Now you have to make a very simple page to store your file. To begin, add another new page in the same way we did before. Once you’re inside the WordPress editor, click on the + button to open up the block search box. Then type in “pdf,” and you’ll see the File block come up. Click on it:
It’s pretty self-explanatory from here. Just click on Upload to upload your file:
After that, you’ll need to password-protect the page. Look on the top right of the screen for a section titled Visibility. Click on Public and then change it to Password protected:
Make sure you put the same password that you instructed your buyers to use on the payment confirmation page in the previous step. And also, if you didn’t manually type out the link to this page on the payment confirmation page, then don’t forget to go back and add it in after you publish this page.
The last important part of this step is to scroll back down to Yoast again to tell it not to index this page in search engines.
In addition, Yoast has a section where you can set the slug for the page – that’s the part that comes after your main domain name (i.e., www.yoursite.com/this-is-the-slug). I recommend making your slug a long string of absolute gibberish so that nobody can guess it:
If you do everything successfully, you’ll wind up with a good basic foundation for distributing your ebook using WordPress. You’ll still need to create helpful blog posts and play around with the look and feel of your site, but your base will be set.
Did you make it to the finish line?
If you made it this far, congratulations! That was a lot to get through. I hope it gave you a solid overview of how to write an ebook and that you understand all of the different ways in which you can distribute it.
Take a look at the entire decision-making flow from start to finish once more – this time with the recommended choices highlighted:
As you can see, the path I took and recommend is only one of many. If, for some reason, it doesn’t suit you, you’ve got plenty of other options to explore and the resources to do it.
On a final note, don’t wait too long after reading this to get started. Take the first step or otherwise you risk losing your motivation and then you’ll never get it done. You can do it!
Be sure to check out the second article in this series, where I review how to design your website to get the maximum possible sales.
