My Ebook is Released and Available for Download!

Hi Caroline, congratulations with the finishing off your e-book. I’ve just came across it by accident on the frontpage of Twitter. Just downloaded it and will have a look; first impression is that it looks very good!

I am also working on my own e-course at http://www.open-of-course.org/courses/course/view.php?id=6
(you can login as a guest if you like)

btw, haven’t we met once at StumbleUpon?

This is a small thing and I only quickly went through the ebook, but you talk about changing the permalink structure in the book, that is great, but on your niche site the first post Welcome to Fishing Facts is still using the post slug from the hello world post from the install. Would it not be better to make sure the post slug is edited to reflect the title of the post. Or instead of editing the hello world post, delete it and create a new post that will have the post slug created to match. Just a quick thing I noticed. Overall it seems like a very good quick guide.

Caroline, nice job. I have quite a bit of Wordpress experience, but I definitely found some useful tips as far as the niche angle goes.

One thing that I immediately noticed as I read through the first several sections was that the permalink section was a little bit sparse. I think less experienced users could benefit from some additional coverage beyond being pointed to the place in the Dashboard to change them. Maybe a helpful example or two of what they could change it to and some additional tie-in to post slugs?

Keep up the good work!

Congratulations Caroline on launching the book. My honest feedback is that this is great for people who have no idea how to launch a wordpress blog or have little I.T experience. After reading through I found myself skipping a lot of chapters mainly because I have done all this and much more myself. I am a however a professional I.T person and so probably not the target audience for the book.

One other thing I have noticed about your site. Why do you not redirect http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com to http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/ especially as your blog now has a new theme and this the homepage the old one.

Hi Caroline,
Well Done!
I will read your ebook this weekend.

As for promoting it, maybe this will help:

You have been given a ROAR Award. Enjoy, and pass it on!

Cheers,

Mitch

Seems like I’ll have a loooong day of ready :)

Thanks Caroline!

-Mike

Caroline, I can’t wait to check out the book. You’re the tech translator I’ve been waiting for!

I am :

Downloading
Printing
Gonna Read
Gonna write a review
Gonna post review on one of my sites
Gonna post on BloggingZoom

….and maybe you’ll keep track and let me know what kind of response you get!!!

Good work! I’ve long been recommending self-installed Wordpress to anyone who will listen and this will be a wonderful resource that I’ll be able to pass on to those I convince!

One question, do you want us to wait until the edited version is out to start spreading the word?

As for marketing ideas, (if you weren’t already planning to) look creatively at targeting some newbie markets that aren’t labelled as “newbie blog developers or IM’ers” but would have an interest in taking their blogging to the next level (ie off Blogger, groan!) and perhaps gaining an additional stream of income. Eg Creative writers, teachers, work at home mums (or parents in general) etc, etc. And because you aren’t competing in the same niche, it may be easier for you to get a link from a high profile blogger in the area.

Will have a quiet read of the guide and let you know if I see anything. :-) At a glance, in the reasons for installing WordPress rather than going with a hosted version (p4), I’d add ownership/control and the ability to customise. I also suggest not assuming that readers of the guide haven’t already purchased a domain name (and so will be using the free one from BlueHost - p6) - it would be helpful to provide alternative instructions on how to get your previously purchased domain name hosted.

So far the content looks great - easy to read and very polished looking. I think this could really convince a lot of people to take the leap from 2nd party blog hosting to starting their own domain using bluehost/wordpress, and in that endeavor I wish you great success.

I do have a question about what you refer to as “niche sites” …. Are they really any different from Adsense arbitrage sites? And if so, I noticed that you made $8.45 in the month of December from your niche site. Do you project this number to grow? I’m still trying to wrap my brain around how creating these niche sites (which are heavy on ads/light on content) is actually a good business model.

Just a quickie typo that leapt out at me on Page 5 (I think it’s page 5 - it would be helpful if the pages were numbered). Fantastico is spelt Fantasico in two places.

I would have left the comment till I had read right through it but may not get back to it till tomorrow.

Looks great so far!

Absolutely fantastic, Caroline. What a phenomenal job. I’m a huge WordPress fan, and I think this is a great resource.

Just a few errors I saw were the Fantastico misspelling (although I think I saw it in more than just 2 places) and one instance of “side-wide links.” Also, AdSense should have that middle S capitalized. (I know that’s pedantic, but it’s who I am.) Also, I have no idea what a “doddle” is :D

For areas like AdSense where you admit you can’t give much advice, I’d take the opportunity to link to great resources elsewhere — and if they pay an affiliate commission, even better!

One thing I absolutely disagree with, though, is this statement: Sneaky? Absolutely! But that’s the whole point of a money making niche site!

If your plan really is to build a five- to ten-page site and then trick people into clicking on AdSense and affiliate links to make money, you’ll always struggle. It’s just short-sighted. i could create a fishing site that wouldn’t require that much more work, but that would not only give me a much better monthly income but would also result in a site that I could sell later for a huge payday.

It’s much better to spend 2 or 3 years of dedicated work creating high quality sites in 2 or 3 niches (if not more) and end up with assets that you can sell to make you financially secure for the rest of your life. And you can still do that with WordPress — just with a focus of creating a content-rich site that’s really worth something rather than a thin MFA site that’s worth nothing.

I will definitely do a review and post it on my blog. Good for you!

I will download it and if I like it I will try to write a review on it in my blog too (I don’t get much traffic…yet, but it’s the thought that counts and I am probably not the only one who is going to do this!).
Thanks for:
1-Giving me a blog post topic (and maybe an article idea on AC);
2-Letting us know what softwares you used to publish your e-book; I might give it a go someday for a gambling e-book!

You can try and sell it on eBay for 1c, submit reviews on it on different review websites, write a good article about it that you submit to free article directories, but you probably already know all this!

Caroline - I read the whole thing and loved it! I have a wordpress blog and I learned quite a few things and look forward to exploring BlueHost for some other blogs I’m thinking about.

Loved your tip on the permalink - one tip you might want to share is that once you pick it DONT change it. I naively did that recently and 1/3 of my content now when found in google says “sorry this page not found” - what no one explained is if you change it - it doesn’t go from that time forward - it changed EVERY existing permalink - so if your links were indexed by google (our goal) they no longer point to the place where the info is.

Feel free to include any of this in your ebook as well - if I can save anyone else from making that mistake it would do my heart good.

I’m not sure if words are spelled differently there - I found Finalise and Realise - where I have always spelled them with a “z”.

Anyone thinking of starting a wordpress blog should definitely read this first!!!

Thanks for sharing - I also will be doing a post to help get you some well deserved “eyeballs” - Cyndee Haydon

Caroline,

Just downloaded the book. I haven’t read it yet but i would have to, in part, agree with Shane. I do not think the make money online niche is sneaky. By the same token I have to disagree with him. There is a difference between building sites for expediency and building long lasting sites. As an example; building a website to take advantage of the wave in popularity of the iPhone is expedient. Or, a blog that is specifically design to do product reviews is also expedient.

But, building a gadget based site that becomes a true web property, marketable for sale, will take several years.

Both tactics are legitimate and should be used. However, in of themselves neither is sneaky. Both can be profitable and ethical.

Beau Hooks

Hi Caroline,

I’m going to go a little against the grain here …

First off, you’ve presented some good concise, clear guidance for people who are interested in learning how to set up a site using WordPress.

But …

I honestly think that this topic might have worked better as series of posts (similar to your Twitter Guide), as opposed to an ebook. The main reason being that posts would be much easier to update as you, yourself gain additional knowledge and information. (for example, when a new version of WordPress comes out).

I also think it might be cool if you were to add video tutorials to go along with the chapters … I don’t know what it is about us Americans, but we tend to very much enjoy English accents … I’d be willing to bet that if you were to ever produce such tutorials in your own voice, they would be very well received.

… and again, this would be much easier to do with a series of posts.

I have one final minor quibble with the title you’ve chosen.

Why include the words “Money Making” ?

In reality, your ebook does a pretty good job of helping people set up a niche website … but, there’s very little in the way of practical advice about the kind of things that people would need to do to actually make money with such a site.

For now at least (until you’ve actually made “Loads of Money” with your niche sites; and are therefore able to share practical, first-hand advice on the subject; you might want to consider just using something like “How to Set Up and Develop Niche Websites Using WordPress”

Just my opinion … take it for what it’s worth … hope you find at least some of it useful though.

Keep havin FuN!
Todd

Nice work, a lot of useful stuff in there and very readable. Will email you with typos etc - I used to work in newspapers, so I should have picked up most of the problems (at the price of possibly sounding terse and picky, it goes with the job…)

Hey Caroline,

Great book so congrats on that. A good read and some info I’ve learnt from it. Just wanted to ask though, why the lack of plugins promoted? Was this so the ebook didn’t become that long, or ease of use, as I have quite a few more ‘essential’ plugins that list a little longer than those in the book?

Looks great.

Possible typos. P.9 “Now that you have your new site setup . . .”. Should this be “set up”?

p.19 “You will need to upload the plugin files to your server to checkout Appendix 1 . . .”. Should the “to” be “so”?

A couple of suggestions.
1. p7. “Choose a sensible password obviously.” Give some guidance on what would be sensible.
2. p.26 Perhaps insert a sentence saying what a “widget” is.

TzuVelli (or Beau), can you expand on when you would choose expediency over long-term gain? Unless I was just desperate for money, I think I’d rather invest in the long-term rather than trying to just catch a brief wave. Obviously you’ve put a lot of thought into this, though, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

good to see it’s finally out…but if you’re only promoting it through your own blog, it should atleast have had the download link near the top of the post. on a bad day i (and i’m sure many other too) just skim lengthy posts (for me lengthy is > 1 screen), and in that case i’d have missed the link altogether. since this is the only way for people to get at your eBook, i guess it should be of concern to you :)

if you ever come up with another post related to your ebook (which i’m pretty sure you will, sooner or later), you can put the download link in a callout-style box near the top of the post. that wouldn’t stop you from putting an inline link wherever you feel like in your post too, so i guess it’s win-win for you :)

Right here goes, for someone not especially into all this techie side of blogging it was a ruddy good read and bar a few interruptions to annoy the dog I read it all the way through in one sitting.

Votre Corriges
Setting up with Fantastico part Step 1 you wrote Fantasico

Pg9 Remove the links in your blogroll - Is it meant to say SITE wide not side wide. I don’t know if that’s some clever techie term ’side wide’ (plus slightly disadvantaged by being a tad inebrie innebre…drunk!)

Wordpress plug in installation page 19 “you will need to upload…..so check out..” is it meant to say TO check out? (Above excuse still in effect).

Pg23 Create your site content - “I’m not going to tell YOU what to write”
Also ” If you have……can become a time sink …update YOUR blog (not ‘their’)

Your calculation on page 24 of 48 potential blog updates per day leaves no room for the aforementioned annoying the dog, constant hair fiddling, icecream breaks - which reminds me ….bought a carton of Walls finest yesterday…unnecessary phone calls to friends, aimless online surfing and dull staring into the distance. If you are to maintain the level of honesty and integrity your readers have come to expect I would change this to a more reasonable figure of 3.

First of all Caroline its good to see youve got your mojo back and being productive. Your ebook is awesome and is the best read by far on the topic. I’ve bought many ebooks on this topic (blogging-wordpress) but this is amazing. Your ebook shames books that i’ve purchased for $50. My suggestion to you is (you might be aware of this already) Go to Clickbank and sell your ebook there, also get their affiliates to promote it. This ebook could potentially be worth 100K in a months time if a few good affiliates get a hold of it. By selling it on clickbank you still get your affiliate links out there. Win-win situation. Anyway, thank you so much for the book.

Here is a question Caroline,

Regarding the Blogroll. What happens when you have 100 articles in the blog? How do you plan to add them up in the sidebar? Do you, at that point, plan to use the Widget?

Second, why precisely do you prefer pages over posts?

Thanks
Al

Hi Caroline,

you sure have a talent for writing. I just set up my own German Wordpress Blog. It worked out quite well but I still found lots of very helpful advices in your Ebook.
Great Job!
Thank you for all your effort.

I still think you should have sold it - it contains very good and very helpful information, so why not ask people to pay for it? I wonder how many hours of work you put into it. 100? 150? Maybe even more?

Being self-employed means you have to pay for your health insurance, your social security, you need a home, you need food, not to forget your business costs (e.g. internet access, hosting, etc.), taxes, and so on.

I think an hourly rate of 50,00 US$ is reasonable to cover it all. So it is easy to measure how much your ebook should bring back at least (50 $ x 100 hours - or more = $ 5.000).
Let’s assume half of it will come back from affiliate links then you still have to cover $ 2.500. Thinking about selling 100 issues of your ebook you could have charged $ 25,00 (or to make it look more marketing-like $ 24,95).

Your ebook is defenitely worth it and I am pretty sure most of your readers would have paid that amount.
So, don’t be shy next time - give it a try. You really deserve it!!

All the best from very frosty Germany
Kirsten

I’ve had so many questions about WP, have paid countless people to make minor changes that I couldn’t figure out how to do, and torn my hair out over tiny things that only needed a tweak to get fixed.

Because I’m more savvy with it all, I’ve asked my husband to work through the book setting up a new blog, so that he can review it for my site, where I am encouraging my target market (who are not technologically experienced) to set up their own blogs.

What I really liked was the section on using Blogroll for other purposes, and the clear way you explained how to set up a blog on your host. I also use Blue Host so that may have helped. As a beginner, I would have liked to have had a brief explanation of what ftp means. If you are targeting absolute beginners you might want a glossary of terms and processes like how to set up a domain name. It took me weeks to pluck up the courage to change name servers when I started out because I didn’t know what that really did, and I worried I might be changing something too drastically!

I love the presentation of your book - it is easy to read and the live example is a great way of demonstrating actions. I too think it is worth selling it and will be looking out for the affiliate programme!

@Clog Money, I tried redirecting my main domain but I didn’t have much luck with it. However, now that I am toying with the idea of starting a second blog, I would really want to keep my main domain and then promote both blogs from there. I might get around to that one day :-)

@Mitchell, thank you for the award :-)

@Kitty, yes please. At the moment I am just scanning through the comments and emails but I will wait until the end of the weekend before working through them in details and then I’ll do a proper edit and re-release on Monday. I guess I should have called this a beta release or something.

@Beth, I have heard the term Adsense Arbitrage but to be honest I’m not too sure what it is so I can’t answer that question! I guess when I talk about a niche site I’m referring to a small website that is fightly focused towards a particular topic.

@Internet Junkie, I love the ebay idea, I hadn’t thought of that!

@Todd, two points you’ve raised. First of all, I wanted to write and distribute an ebook for the sake of doing so and learning the process involved. At this stage I am experimenting with lots of different things in the world of IM and I am in a learning phase so its not a matter of trying to pick the best method of distribution. The next ebook I write will be a paid one, again, just for the experience of doing it.

Secondly, in an earlier post for the ebook project I discussed my thoughts behind the name of the book. The words money making are included to make it more enticing to potential readers and to get more downloads.

@Nick, I only included those plugins which I really thought were essential. This book is designed to be short and to the point and not a big guide to WordPress. I could very well write another ebook along the lines of “Top xx Essential WordPress Plugins” or something like that.

@Kris, yes I intend to put the cover graphic and short blub in one of the top sections of the blog. However I was in a rush to get it out yesterday so this is something I shall work on next week.

@Thomas, the next one will be on ClickBank. But I really wanted to release a free book simply so I could experiment with lots of free distribution methods.

@Learn Web Analytics, the book is designed to be a guide to creating small, targeted niche sites. If you have 100 articles then you have a massive authority site and that is beyond the scope of this book - in that case you would want to develop a proper navigation structure and that is another book in itself!

As to why I prefer pages over posts - it’s not that I prefer them, but a post is chronological and a page is stand alone and has no date attached. I like creating stand alone articles as pages to give me the freedom to ALSO add a proper blog with dated news articles.

@Kirsten, gosh nowhere near that long. In the first weekend I spent about 8 hours on it and spent perhaps 4 hours on it yesterday, that is all. I will sell the next one, promise ;)

@All the people that have sent me typos etc - I will be collating all of these in one go and will be doing a major update on Monday :-)

Hey Catherina - why are you developing a site you’ll never be able to sell? I love the idea but shouldn’t you do all that work for yourself?

Caroline,
Just got finished reading the ebook. Loved it. Of course I have some comments.

-chapter 1-hosting-third para-Bluehost GIVEs, not give
-chap 1-setting upstep 3 fill in-install in directory. You recommend installing in root, and then go ahead and install in directory.?????
-cap 2-remove the links. You are dead wrong on META section. Delete it on every wordpress installation. END OF STORY. If you have 50 pages and 5 links per page you are giving away 250 links. The 5 links per page devalues every link on the post. Why keep it. It has nothing to do with our readers.
-chap 3-Adsense-second para on, not own. Also, might want to warn about max of three insertions, even though you can put more on!!!!!
-chap 6-page slugs-second papa. is, not it. same chap-Displaying-first para. crappy, not crap.
-chap 6-Setting the front page-first para. home of site, needs something like home page of your site.

You did an excellent job! I know a little bit on this subject, and I learned a few things. Thank You.

Funny story-I didn’t read the appen 1 because “I know how to do that”. Then I see a comment about it, and I’m going to go back and see what I didn’t read….or what I didn’t KNOW.

GREAT JOB!

Hi Caroline,

Congratulation on your first ebook, I’ll use the information on it for the Thirty Day Challenge Catch Up, and I’ll also recommend it to my group their.

Many thanks

Hi Caroline, I just gave your new ebook a quick read thru and I have to say I’m impressed.

You thoroughly covered all the essentials for anyone even thinking about blogging… finding a webhost, setting up Wordpress, using plug-ins, widgets, finding a niche, etc…

I also like the presentation & graphics, it’s very easy to read & pleasing to the eye. Excellent job!

Hi Caroline,

Great job !

Looking forward to any other eBooks you write
in the future…

Regards, Pete

Hi Carolyn, Great job on completing the project, I plan to read it this weekend. I’m also featuring your new ebook in this week’s Sunday Seven, so hopefully you’ll get afew download referrals from me.

WOW! Just saw a great idea for you. A Virtual BookTour!

cool, I found it just at the moment I’m browsing info for the one I am writing lol