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While I share money-making strategies, nothing is "typical", and outcomes are based on each individual. There are no guarantees.
Every few weeks, someone tells me ebooks are dead. The line is always one of two: “That doesn’t work anymore,” or “People will just ask AI for whatever they need.” I heard it twice last week alone.
So this morning I pulled up my dashboard and looked at the last 28 days. $2,665.64 in ebook profit. Up 283%. No launch. No viral moment. No big push. Just a system I built once, running quietly in the background while people argue in the comments about whether it’s still possible.
I want to walk you through exactly how it works, because “I’m proof it works” is useless to you unless you can see the mechanism and copy it.
Here’s the thing I had to understand before any of it clicked: nobody buys an ebook for the information. The information is free. It’s been free for years, and now AI will hand it to you in ten seconds. What people pay me for isn’t facts — it’s the sorting. I took the overwhelming pile of everything you could know about a topic and turned it into one clear path, in order, finished.
AI gives you answers. It doesn’t give you a guide you trust.
That gap is the entire business, and it isn’t closing. If anything, the flood of AI answers is making a trusted, finished guide worth more, not less.
So here’s how I actually do it.
It starts with being seen
I am invisible to almost everyone who would happily pay me. So are you. That’s just the starting line, and getting found is the real job — bigger than the writing itself, because the best ebook in the world sells nothing if no one knows I exist. I give that more of my week than anything else.
Most of my sales trace back to YouTube, and not because YouTube is some magic sales machine. It’s because YouTube builds trust faster than anything I’ve found. Someone watches a twelve-minute video where I actually teach the thing — not a teaser, real help — and by the end, they don’t need convincing that I know my stuff. They’ve watched me do it. The decision to buy is already half-made before they ever click a link.
What makes that turn into money is YouTube Shopping. I connected my store so my products show up right below the video. Someone I just helped for free can grab the deeper guide without ever leaving the page. You do have to be accepted in first: your channel needs to be in the YouTube Partner Program, have at least 1,000 subscribers, carry no Community Guidelines strikes, and not be set as “Made for Kids.”
Once you qualify, you link a store like
Before I make a single video or pin, though, I check what people are actually searching for. I’m not guessing at topics — I pull real search data in Pinclicks so my content lands on demand that already exists. Then I make the visuals that stop the scroll — covers, pins, thumbnails — in Ideogram. Showing up is the job, but showing up on the right topic is what makes it pay.
Then I capture the people I reach
Here’s a mistake I made for too long: I let visibility be the whole plan. But visibility is rented. A platform can change its algorithm overnight and the traffic I worked for just evaporates. So now, every place I show up, I’m pulling people toward something I own.
I offer something quick and genuinely useful — a free guide, a checklist, a short PDF — in exchange for an email. Then the conversation moves off the noisy feed and onto my list, where no algorithm can take it away. To keep that list growing without me posting by hand every day, I schedule weeks of pins at once in Tailwind. People find a pin, grab the free thing, and join a list that’s mine.
I get specific about what I sell
You can’t get paid for something you haven’t decided to sell, and “I help people make money online” is not an offer — it’s noise. I had to get specific: what exact problem do I solve, and for whom? The over-50 creator who feels invisible online is an audience. “Everyone” is not.
This is where ebooks beat almost everything else. I’m not building a sprawling course.
I’m solving one clear problem better than a search bar can — because mine is curated, in order, and finished. That’s the whole case against “just ask AI.” Not more information. The right information, in the right sequence, from someone you already trust. I write these with Claude to move fast on the drafting, but the structure, the judgment, the path a reader walks from stuck to solved — that’s mine. That’s the part people pay for.
I make the path to buying obvious
People need to be told how to give you money. I don’t bury the link, and I’m not coy about being in business. The whole funnel is simpler than people expect: someone grabs the free guide, enters a short email sequence (I use KIT) that delivers real value, and then I make the offer plainly — and repeat it. On YouTube it’s even shorter, because the product is already sitting right under the video. I make it easy, and I ask more than once.
I let the numbers tell me what to do next
Most creators quit right before it works, or they spread themselves thin treating every post as equally important. I used to do both. Now I let the data talk.
That $2,665 screenshot isn’t a trophy to me — it’s a map. It tells me which topics pull traffic, which videos send buyers, which guide people actually purchase. I find the small handful of things driving most of the results, and I pour my time into doing more of exactly that, instead of resetting to zero every two weeks chasing a new idea. I’ll look at which Pinclicks topics turned into real sales and just make more on that proven angle.
And then I do it again
This is the part nobody wants to hear: it’s not a launch, it’s a loop. The reason I can show a 283% jump without some big stressful push is that the same handful of moves are always running. I email my list every week. I stay visible. I keep making the offer. New videos get built on whatever the numbers just told me is working, fresh pins go into Tailwind, and the cycle turns again. The compounding is the whole point.
So — does selling ebooks still work in 2026? My last 28 days say yes. But not because ebooks are magic. “AI will replace this” assumes people want answers. They don’t. They want a guide. Be the guide, build the loop, and let it run.
If you want the step-by-step versions of what I just walked through, I’ve turned each piece of this into a how-to guide over at BallenPublishing.com — they’re the same kind of finished, in-order guides I sell to my own audience. And if you’d rather have me walk it with you directly, that’s exactly what we do inside BallenAcademy.com, my coaching program. Either way, the system above is the whole thing. Nothing hidden.
Income disclaimer: These results aren’t typical and aren’t a guarantee. They reflect my own sales — you may earn less, nothing, or lose money.
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