7 Little Known Secrets For Making Money and Saving the World on SCRIBD
When a friend first told me about “Scribd” I didn\’t quite get it. Although I use the internet, mostly for research, reading, and e-mail, I\’m not very savvy about networking and “new technologies.” But when he told me you could easily upload just about anything—books, e-books, articles, research studies—to Scribd and sell them in the Scribd store, he got my attention.
I\’m a writer, researcher, and psychotherapist and have been helping men and the women who love them for more than 40 years. I am founder of www.MenAlive.com, where I share information about male menopause, irritable male syndrome, male-type depression, and how to have successful relationships of all kinds. I\’ve written 8 books including international best-sellers Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome.
Making money as a writer isn\’t easy. Every time I write a book, I\’m sure that it will sell a million copies. But the odds are against me. According to industry statistics there were 1.25 million books published last year. Of that number 850,000 sold fewer than 99 copies for the year. Only 1.2% of the total new titles sold over 1 million copies (Think Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Grisham). I do sell more than 99 copies a year and you can find me in most bookstores including Amazon. But when I sell something on Amazon, I may make 8% of the $20 cover price. And I have to give 15% of that to my agent. And I have to wait 6 months until I get my next royalty check. But, listen to this. Selling on Scribd, I make 80% of everything I sell and I get paid immediately.
You can\’t believe how excited I was when I got my first e-mail from Scribd telling me that someone had purchased one of my e-booklets. I had uploaded it, just a few hours previously. The e-mail said, “Your document “Six Simple Ways to Cure Depression: What Men and Women Need to Know” has been purchased for $1.99. The total earnings to date for this document is $1.34.” Now $1.34 may not seem like much, but it was my first sale and I was proud. Selling something you\’ve written, hours after you\’ve written it, is like nothing else I\’ve ever experienced. I\’ve gotten many more notices like this one and each one is a source of excitement and joy.
But wait, there\’s more. Not only do I get quick cash from selling e-books and articles in the Scribd store, but I also get a chance to try out new ideas and see what people find most interesting. I wrote a two page summary of some research I was doing on relationship addictions. I titled it: Is It Love or Love Addiction? Within a week after posting, it has been read by over 1,000 people. My power point summary of a study I conducted on depression, Male vs. Female Depression: Why Men Act Out and Women Act In has gotten 642 reads in the last week.
Within two months after I joined I have developed a following of more than 2,000 people. Each time I post a new article or make a comment, they receive my post. It\’s a great way to reach people who want to know more about the things I\’m writing about. It\’s also a great way for me to learn about other people\’s work that relates to my own.
Here are the 7 Steps I followed. I\’m still learning as I go, but wanted you to have the benefit of my experiences so far.
Like learning most things, I started with a Google search. The first link I checked was www.scribd.com/about where I got a quick summary from the Scribd site. Scribd (It rhymes with “ad libbed.“) began with a simple observation — that the desire for self-expression through the written word is as old as humanity itself. But even with the proliferation of blogs and other self-publishing tools, there was no easy way for average people to publish to a readership of millions. Scribd founders Jared Friedman and Trip Adler felt that everyone should be able to share what they know.
Today, Scribd is the largest social publishing company in the world — the website where more than 60 million people each month discover and share original writings and documents. Scribd\’s vision is to liberate the written word — to turn everyone into a publisher and create the best possible reading experience on the web and mobile platforms. With Scribd\’s iPaper document reader, anyone can easily upload and immediately share their original works on Scribd.com or any other website. iPaper transforms “print” files like PDF, Word or PowerPoint into web document — with all the fonts, layout and artwork that makes your document unique.
Your work can be shared with Scribd\’s community of passionate readers, and because your document is indexed for search engine optimization, your screenplay, novel or even sheet music and recipes can be discovered by the world. At Scribd, we built a technology that\’s broken barriers to traditional publishing and in the process also built one of the largest readerships in the world.
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