In recent years I've been interested in exploring ways to sell electronic books ("ebooks"), either directly through my site or through a third-party site that handles all of the details of sales while taking a cut of each sale. The link above will take you to ClickBank, which is a site that you can use to sell your electronic products for immediate download, but it's not the only site that offers this capability. A major benefit of using ClickBank is that they have a built-in system where you can build an "army of affiliates" promoting your work for you. A downside of ClickBank is that their marketplace has its share of shady products and services that might cause "guilt by association" problems.

I've read that selling ebooks can be a significant source of income, but a lot of what I've read looks like self-serving hype and it's tough to sort out what's real and what's not. That is, without trying it myself. So I'd like to give it a shot, but I have two obstacles. First, I've never bought one myself, so I don't really know how they should look, how long they should be, etc. Second, I'm not sure what topic I would write about. Obviously it needs to be mainstream enough to have a large audience, as well as something that I know well enough that I can not only write accurately but hopefully share information and/or insights that won't be readily available elsewhere.

To get past the first obstacle, I'm thinking about buying one or two very inexpensive ebooks through ClickBank. For obvious reasons I won't want to "invest" too much in this research, but I want to get some idea of what I should be shooting for when I create my ebook.

To get past the second obstacle, well... I'm not sure. I guess I'll do some brainstorming, ask friends and family for input, etc. If you know me personally and have an idea about what I should focus on for writing an ebook, feel free to leave a comment here or just send me email.

More on this project later. Maybe.