I Sold My FREE E-Book for $5. You Can Do It Too. Here’s How.

Selling digital products like e-books, online courses, and apps is a common way to earn passive income. You can make money off them for a lifetime by doing the work once.

I have seen people earning a good income writing and selling e-books. So, I wanted to give it a try.

But I had doubts and fears:

Nobody is going to read it.

How am I going to sell it?

What if people don’t like it?

The resistance was always there. But I made up my mind and decided to go for it this time.

Writing the e-book

I had written an e-book before. It was a compilation of my old articles.

It was a free e-book, and so far, I have received 500+ downloads.

At the beginning of 2022, I wanted to do something bigger. So I decided to write another e-book that would help people make their lives better in some way.

I worked hard to find the topic and write the book. I completed my e-book in about a month.

Then came the hard part: How am I going to sell it?

Selling the e-book

I am from an underdeveloped country where international financial transactions are challenging. We don’t have flexible payment gateways here. And as you might have guessed, I cannot make money on Medium (even though I have 1K+ followers and a top writer’s badge).

Sad, I know.

But anyway, that’s a different story.

Let’s get back to my e-book story.

I researched many platforms that would allow me to sell my e-book. I found out about Gumroad through other writers on Medium.

I tried it. But I came across some problems with the payment setup. So I decided to look for alternatives.

Then, I signed up for Payhip (aff), and luckily, everything was okay there.

I uploaded my e-book on Payhip with a fixed price. I shared the book everywhere — on social media, my newsletter, and Medium.

The hard part was done (at least that’s what I thought).

Number of e-books sold = 0

Unfortunately, I did not receive any downloads for a week.

I was sad and frustrated. I started to doubt myself again, thinking I shouldn’t have written the book. I knew something like this would happen.

“What a waste,” I said to myself.

After the second week, I had given up hope.

Should I lower my price?

But people have already seen it.

What will they think after finding out that I have reduced the price?

They will know that I did not make a sale.

Maybe I should give it away for free.

I will write a better one for a higher price later.

These thoughts kept coming to my mind.

Still, I had no sales.

Hope

I was checking my Medium feed one morning, and I saw a story by

Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi

, “Why Is Nobody Talking About This Passive Income Method?”

I read her story and felt like she had written it for me. It was as if the universe was telling me not to give up.

I had hope.

In her story, Niharikaa wrote about how she made $100+ from her FREE Side Hustler checklist by setting its price to “Pay What You Want.”

After seeing that, I immediately checked whether Payhip had that feature.

Luckily, it did.

So I went for it.

I set the price of my e-book to “Pay What You Want.”

The $5 incident

I tried another round of e-book marketing. I shared it on LinkedIn, Twitter, and in my newsletter.

People saw it, and this time, they downloaded it.

Of course, many people downloaded it for free.

But one day, I saw that someone had paid $1 for it.

I was surprised and thrilled.

Since then, most people have paid $1 for my free e-book.

But a few days later, someone paid $5. When I checked my email, I could not believe it.

Screenshot by author

I was happy and grateful. It gave me hope and motivated me to create more quality content online.

I learned that:

My job is to provide value, which is in my control. But the outcome is not in my control. I cannot expect hundreds of people to download my e-book. They will do it if they find value. So, I must focus on the things I can control and not stress about something that is not in my control.