Creating your own product: E-book vs membership site

When I finished writing the Twitter content, I contacted several big bloggers to see what their thoughts on a Twitter product are. One of the comments was something like this:

Why not release a PDF report for free as a pre-sell to something bigger? Like a membership site that costs $30 per month?

Value in membership sites?

I did give it some thoughts, but decided to go for an e-book format instead. A membership site might be a good source of revenue, but is anyone thinking of the customer? Is anyone thinking long-term?

For me membership sites seem like watered down, prolonged effort to try and keep you paying as long as possible. Many bloggers have recently neglected e-books and other formats because everyone wants to sell membership sites which have potential to make money month after month compared to the one-time revenue of an e-book.

Cut the fluff

I am not saying that membership sites cannot be done well, but most of them seem to be just another method of trying to get rich quick by putting the least possible amount of effort into it while milking as much money as possible from the customer.

Most of paid products about Twitter are filled with needless filler. Instead of writing a lot of filler material, my upcoming Twitter e-book is highly structured and organized in a fluff-free manner. It is a short book of 55 pages and 11,300 words. The shorter the book, the less the bullshit. I have tried to remove all the fluff and have omitted all the needless words.

Earning income but providing value for money

I’ve been giving away 100% of my content for free. 110 articles with some 500+ words on average each, over the last seven months. The primary goal of my blog was to spread ideas, build a readership and help bloggers succeed.

Most people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from the blog they are writing. I believe in providing value and giving people a reason to subscribe and to read my articles. The same goes for my upcoming Twitter product. I do not believe in watering down the content, increasing the number of words by including lots of unimportant descriptions, just to be able to charge you a minimum of $30 per month for at least 3 months.

What’s an e-book good for?

People are busy. Time is money. People don’t have the time or the patience to find and organize all the free information on the Internet. Discovering and structuring all the free information into a consistent format that you can learn from is very hard work. This is where an ebook comes into play.

Instead of surfing around looking for bits of information on the different blogs, people can save a lot of time by getting it all in one place – in an ebook. A simple ebook, in a consistent format, with tips in a logical order is a very valuable product, that is very convenient and can save a lot of time for anyone new to the topic.

How do you know what to create a product about?

This was the second article in the series of how to monetize your blog by creating your own product articles. First article looked at why selling your own product might be the right option for you. Next article in this series will focus on how you can find the topic for your paid product.  Keep an eye out for that and for my soon-to-be-released Twitter marketing e-book!

Image by Jenny Downing.