$1k Blog

Those of you bored enough to read my blog will know that I’ve set myself a goal to be earning a stable $6,000 a month within 365 days.

The way I see it, that should get me started on my ultimate life goal - a Piaget watch for my girlfriend and freedom to play World of Warcraft for me. Hey, a guy’s got to aim big in life, right?

But, here’s the deal - when I first posted on WF about my goal, people told me that I was barking mad to be focusing on e-books to accomplish that. For example, Steve Celeste pointed out that e-book profits are based on sales, and that means they don’t make a good source of residual income. Vince Runza (Vince, if you’re reading this, you are very inspirational) suggested looking at putting together a membership site (a PLR site could work well in my case, since I’ve got some writing experience to begin with).

So, here’s the choice I’m looking at - e-books vs. memberships. An e-book is fun to write and all, but a membership site will probably mean more reliable income (ultimately, I could write an e-book and sell it to my site’s members). However, it also means constant maintenance and provision of new content, which, if not outsourced, will lead to me working 20h a day just to keep everything going.

Steve Celeste writes that he successfully flipped his first-ever membership website when he realized that he just couldn’t keep up with all the work. After earning his first $2,000 from memberships, he sold the site via SitePoint forums for another $6,000.

What do you folks think? E-books or memberships?