From 0 to $30,000 in 3 months with a Small List – Edurne’s story

From 0 to $30,000 in 3 months, listen to this crazy interview / story with one of my awesome Create Passive Income with eBooks student, Edurne Ubani from evamuerdelamanzana.com. She's going to tell you all about it. She was making $0 on her blog, which I only found out about today even though she shared a lot of her journey, that was news to me. And how she went on to in the last 3 months, create $30,000 worth of revenue with her eBook. Listen in and I hope you love it.

Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript of my interview with Edurne Ubani.

Sylvie:    Hey guys. This is Sylvie, from sylviemccracken.com and today I have a special guest with me. One of my student's from Create Passive Income with Ebooks, Edurne Ubani. Did I pronounce that right?

Edurne:    You pronounce that perfectly.

Sylvie:    From evamuerdelamanzana.com. I'm going to spell that out for you below the video. So no worries about finding those links. You’re going to have them. So I just want to welcome you Edurne. Thank you so much from taking a time out of your day.

Edurne:    Thank you Sylvie. I’m happy to be here.

Sylvie:    We're just going to chat about Edurne story basically, and her success with her eBook that she launched not that long ago, and hopefully you guys are going to get some really good tips out of this interview that you can apply right away. Edurne, I just wanted to start with, basically, your results, I guess. If you can just tell us what happened with your eBook when you launched, and how long it took you, and anything else you want to tell us to start.

Edurne:    My results have been amazing. I never would've imagined anything like this. I launched my eBook in June, June the 8th, and in the launch week I sold, I actually did a soft launch, and then I did the actual launch, I'll get into that a bit later. The first week I sold over 500 copies.

Sylvie:    Amazing. And what's the price point?

Edurne:    The price point was 24.97 Euros. I actually soft launched it for 17, and then I did a launch price at 20.

Sylvie:    Amazing. So 500 right away, right off the bat.

Edurne:    It was amazing, because I think we were calculating how many we were thinking of selling, and because I'd never done anything like this before, because I hadn't actually sold anything through my blog. I have another business, I have a shop, I have a food store, but I haven't sold any digital stuff through my blog, I haven't done any of that. I was a bit scared, lots of mindset issues there, that people weren't going to want buy from me, people were just going to be consuming my free stuff. It could've been anything, I could've sold 100, I could've sold 1,000, I don't know, I didn't know. I was absolutely thrilled. The minute I send the email, just one minute after sending the email, orders started flooding in, and I was in tears.

Sylvie:    Amazing. I remember that post very well in the Facebook group. Because we have a Facebook group for our students, and Edurne's in there posting all the time, and her journey in there is so helpful that I always tell students, “Just search her name in the group, because you're going to see that it's not always roses. There were definitely some stumbling blocks.”

Edurne:    Oh, definitely.

Sylvie:    Probably what everybody wants to know is, okay, you must have had a massive list or a ton of traffic or something like that. Do you remember, do you know?

Edurne:    Yeah, I know the numbers. My list, I hadn't actually been working on my list at all, and I had a list of 2,500.

Sylvie:    Wow.

Edurne:    On the one hand I had 2,500 on my list, and then I had, what I do have is a private Facebook group.

Sylvie:    Yeah, I love that.

Edurne:    Which is the most amazing asset you can work on, I think. I've been working on that. At that point I had, I think it was nearly 4,000 people in the group. What I didn't know, and I still don't know, and I don't know if there's a way of getting the numbers, but I don't know how much overlap there is between the group and the list. I'm sure, pretty much. I'm sure the 2,500 people I have from my list are probably most of my group.

Sylvie:    Right. What would be good, and I guess we'll chat about it later, is how to get those other 1,500 on there. What I love about this is that, a lot of times people, people always ask about those two metrics, traffic and list size. And they're definitely important metrics, absolutely, and they definitely matter, but what I love is that you were like, “Well I have this instead.” The thing is, it's an audience of any kind of, and I think the important thing to note is it's not just 4,000 names, it's not just 4,000 people, but it's, you've built this relationship, you've been nurturing, you've been giving to this community, you've been helping these people, and the minute you put something out for sale they were like, “Finally!” What took you so long?

I love that part of the story, and I feel like there's so many unconventional ways. People come out of, basically out of nowhere all the time saying, “I have this knowledge that I want to share, and I don't have any audience at all.” I'm like, “That's BS, because at the very least you've got five people somewhere.” Everybody started with an audience size of zero, so I love that part of your story. What have been the results since those 500 sales in your first week?

Edurne:    The results, money-wise I imagined that.

Sylvie:    Yeah, people are interested in that all the time.

Edurne:    People are real interested in that. The first month, remember we were launched June the 8th. We had three weeks of that month. The first month was 12,000 Euros.

Sylvie:    Crazy. Your first five-figure month, not to mention your first income from your blog entirely.

Edurne:    Yeah. Champagne everywhere.

Sylvie:    Yeah, that was champagne worthy for sure.

Edurne:    For sure, yeah. That was 12,000 after taxes, and after commissions, so it was clean. Then the next month, which was July, was around 4,000, I think it was a little more than 4,000. And August, crazily enough for Spain, because I know you know the way we live, August in Spain is like, nothing gets done. People are away, people are at the beach. I was, foreseeing quite, I don't know, I wasn't thinking that there was going to be much movement, but I got over 3,000 in August.

Sylvie:    That's incredible. That's incredible, and its kind of cool to see that, you were planning for dips and valleys, and that's part of the thing. I think we should probably tell people what your book is about, and that might have something to do with, maybe, the August thing? I don't know.

Edurne:    My book?

Sylvie:    Yeah, tell us.

Edurne:    My book is a Paleo Meal Plan. It's a two-week meal plan with beautiful and delicious and easy to cook recipes. The idea with this was that people who are always saying, “I want to start eating paleo, but I get bored and I just eat the same over and over again,” and people don't want to complicate themselves in the kitchen. So what I set out to do was, I'm a foodie at heart. I eat paleo, and I'm very concerned about health, and yada, yada, yada, but I'm a foodie, and I love tasty, delicious food. My main goal with this was to have this meal plan, being really, really simple recipes that are made in under 30 minutes, and most of them are under 15 minutes, and really tasty. People love them.

What has been amazing after selling all these books is that people are posting their pictures, they're posting their comments, and I get so many comments from people who say, “I haven't even been in the kitchen for years because I don't like cooking, or I don't know how to cook.” Now people are like celebrating, “how well I'm cooking.”

Sylvie:    Yeah. That's the domino effect that you've created with this, if it's more than just money, is you haven't just helped your life, which you definitely have, but in turn you've been able to help so many more people than you would ever be able to help one on one, right?

Edurne:    Sure. Money obviously is a great incentive, and it's going to be the incentive that keeps me moving with more projects, but the main goal is that, is being able to reach so many people, and being able to change their lives, and being able to just help them out in their day to day lives.

Sylvie:    Yeah, and I think most of the time that's why we started all of this in the first place. It starts as, if we wanted money we would've stayed at the day job and that would've been easier for sure, but a lot of times it's this incredible amount of passion. The fact that you can do that, and you can have this great income that comes in while you're working on other things, is really pretty incredible.

Out of the “Create Passive Income With EBooks”, the eight modules, what do you think is the one that was most beneficial for you?

Edurne:    Definitely the first one, the mindset one. For me that has been huge. It's been huge. In fact I was talking to a friend the other day, and I told him how much joining Create Passive Income With eBooks, and meeting you, has changed me, mindset-wise. It's done everything. I mean, everything. Because I already knew so much about things, I mean I've read books, and I've taken other courses, and I've done things, and things were there, but I wasn't doing them. I wasn't doing them because I was afraid. Complete lack of self-confidence, loads of issues around money mindset, loads and loads of issues around mindset in general. “Who am I to do this, who am I, what do I know, and why are people going to buy from me?” For me, the whole course is really valuable, but for me it's been the mindset change that has really made things move.

Sylvie:    Yeah, that's amazing. I think that that's where people get the most stuck, is if you can really work on that mindset piece, the rest will flow, the rest is easy. Because if you think about it, you've had this eBook inside you probably for years. You didn't learn any of the content that you shared in your eBook last week. You've had it sitting in here, and we just needed to get it out. It's that hurdle of, yes, you can do this, yes, you are qualified, yes, you can help people, yes, they're waiting for it, and yes, it's worth paying a good amount of money for.

Edurne:    My journey with this has been, I actually started working on the book before I signed up for the course, if you remember, my idea for the book was so different. I was just thinking, “I'll just slap a few recipes together and design it myself, and sell it for 5 Euros. That was my mindset then. Then I joined, and everything changed. I've been through a lot of stages, and you know because we've been talking about it a lot, but it's amazing how it hasn't only benefited my business with the book, but it's benefiting me in so many other things in my life.

Sylvie:    How does that translate? Mindset work, it's like we can use it in so many different phases. Obviously in business it's imperative, especially if you're an entrepreneur, where you're really putting yourself out there, and you're putting a price tag on your products and services and all of that, and every step of the way, that mindset piece sort of comes up. The “Who am I” comes up a million times, and you've got to work on it at new levels. How has this sort of translated in other areas in your life? Can you expand a little bit on that, whatever you're comfortable sharing?

Edurne:    Yeah. In other areas, I'm more confident about what I'm doing at every step that I take, both business and personally. I know what I'm wanting to put my time into, and what I really don't have to put my time into, which is big, big, big, because I was putting my time into such stupid things. When I think about it, now it's like …

Sylvie:    Right.

Edurne:    But I didn't see it.

Sylvie:    Because you didn't value your time.

Edurne:    Exactly. Now I'm valuing everything that I do, I'm valuing both business and personal life, and it makes such a difference to how you live your life, how you get up in the morning, and what your goals are. It just makes a huge difference.

Sylvie:    That's amazing. You also hired your first assistant during this time.

Edurne:    Yeah.

Sylvie:    That's pretty huge. That's a huge step. You're going through in all directions.

Edurne:    That's really huge. Because that's another one of those things that I had in my head, and it's been there for years, it's been there, I've always thought, “When things are a little better I'll hire someone.” But when I met you, and when I saw your bonus, I thought okay, things are not going to get better, because if you keep doing the same things that you've been doing, you're just stuck. I was stuck in this hole, and I was always trying to get out of it, and there was no way of getting out.

Sylvie:    Yeah, exactly. I think that that's probably the thing I hear the most, is in terms of, when people are sort of hesitant to start anything really, or to join the course, or to start their ebook, or why haven't they launched one yet. It's sort of, there's always this carrot of sorts. There's always the, “When I reach this, or when this happens, then I will …” Really, most of the time, nine times out of 10, it's mindset. Because you could hire an assistant for even just getting a few hours off of your plate for month, and that's all you need to do until it pays for itself.

Edurne:    Now I feel it's such a shame that I didn't do it before.

Sylvie:    That's the regret.

Edurne:    There's so many things that I've done myself which I really shouldn't have, and I'm not good at doing them. It's better late than never.

Sylvie:    Absolutely. I'm really glad that you had the time today to share this story, because I feel like this will resonate with so many that they're like, “Oh my god, that's exactly what I'm thinking. Oh my god, that's exactly what my excuse has been,” and hopefully you'll give them the courage to get out of that.

Edurne:    It's just an excuse. In all aspects, I've realized that it's an excuse. Because I've always been a real perfectionist, and I still am. I still really value really good work done. For example, you know I had the best designer.

Sylvie:    Edurne hired the same designer I used, and she's not necessarily cheap, but your book looks killer, doesn't it?

Edurne:    Yeah, it's amazing. Since I had a bad experience, I tried to go a little cheaper with the designer at first, if you remember, and …

Sylvie:    Not so much.

Edurne:    Yeah. I saw it and I said, “No, no. Edurne, you have to aim higher.” Because that's what you want. I really, really appreciate detail, and good work done. Perfectionism sometimes, no, not sometimes. I think perfectionism, in the bad sense, is just a way of your own fears not letting you move forward.

Sylvie:    Yeah. I think perfectionism can definitely be a preferred type of procrastination, for sure.

Edurne:        Yeah.

Sylvie:    The two things that seem to, the procrastination can either be mindset, or, it all comes down to mindset, I feel like. I feel like the course could be 80% mindset, and then “Let's quickly teach you how to create the actual eBook.” Most of it, I feel like, is that work. Tell people what happened when you got to, so rewinding a little bit, I remember when you joined, my assistant was on the webinar and she helps me out a lot, because I can't look at the question box and try and deliver content at the same time. I remember she told me after the webinar, “Somebody was asking what happens if she has to write her eBook in Spanish,” and whatever. Some of you might not know, but I'm fluent in Spanish, I grew up in Argentina, so when Edurne joined, she was writing her eBook in Spanish. Of course that's the only time where the whole group couldn't help you as much, it was mostly me and you brainstorming titles. But we got it, we got through it.

Edurne:    We did.

Sylvie:    I totally lost my train of thought, but I was going somewhere with it, and now I'm like, lost it. Anyway, we went through the titling, we went through the design, all of that, everything, in a different language, for a different market, and figured it out along the way. I had a question for you and I lost it. Oh well.

Edurne:    It'll come.

Sylvie:    I guess, can you just leave our listeners with, what would you say to them if they're hesitant to join because they feel like it's too big of an investment for them? Not only financially but time-wise, they're busy, maybe they have a day job, and they're just not sure if their content, or what their knowledge is, is good enough to share in an eBook and actually sell, and make money with it. What could you say to them?

Edurne:    I would definitely let them know that this has changed my life. It hasn't only changed the way that I view doing eBooks, or even courses, because I'm already thinking of doing more things. It's totally worth it, even if it's just for changing that mindset, changing the way that you think about yourself and your work. If you've been at anything for any period of time, you know enough to be able to write whatever you want to write. You honestly know enough. I would definitely recommend it.

Whatever you have, if you have a blog, if you have five followers, if you have 10 followers, if you have 5,000 or whatever number, that's going to keep on going up. For me, I have actually been working on my own list size during the summer, because I've had a bit of a different summer, I was planning to work on it but I haven't been able to, and I've doubled my list size, without doing anything. It's just a question of time. It doesn't matter where you start, things do move forward. I don't see, I wrote to you, I wrote in an email, and just a few months ago for me, the idea of earning more than 1,500 Euros was not attainable. Right now I'm thinking of much, much bigger goals. It's worth it. And writing a book isn't that much work, it just requires you to sit down and do the work. You just have to sit down and do it, and you can do it in chunks, you can do it however you like, but you can get it done.

Sylvie:    Yeah, and once you realize that, if you think about how many hours you spent doing it, which is not that many considering how much money you've already made just in three months, let alone what you're going to make in the lifetime of that book, it's more money per hour. I like to say it's a $1,000 an hour job, which, most lawyers don't charge $1,000 an hour, and this doesn't require going to law school. That's the good news. If you sit down and you do it, and imagine you're being paid $1,000 an hour, you're just not going to collect it until it's done, then you start getting motivated, and all of a sudden you have the time.

Edurne:    You do. For me it's been, these three months, when I average it out, it's been about $7,500 a month.

Sylvie:    Yeah, amazing.

Edurne:    It's amazing. It's just going to keep coming in.

Sylvie:    Yeah, absolutely, I have no doubt. There's so many more things in store for you. I remember what I was going to ask you, which maybe I'll ask my editor. If we're feeling ambitious I'll ask my editor to put it in front of the last question, it was if you could tell people just what happened when you reached that 90% done phase? Remember, you got to 90%, your book was almost done, and then things came to a stop a little bit.

Edurne:    Yeah. That was basically me not wanting to get things out there, because I was scared. That's when I revisited the mindset module. I talked with all of you in the Facebook group, the Facebook group is amazing. There's so much amazing support there from you, and from the rest of the students. You got me to snap out of it. Seriously, I was there, the book was done, things were there, and I just wasn't able to take that step.

Sylvie:    For people listening, maybe people listening are working on their eBook on their own. They're not in the course but they're working on it, and they've found themselves also stuck at 75%, or 90% done. Really it's not a very unique thing, it's a very common thing, because what happens is, this is almost right before you're about to jump off the diving board. You have that last hesitation of, “Oh!” Or you're about to come out on stage and it's like, “But what if they throw tomatoes?” You get that stuff all coming up again.

Edurne:    Yeah, everything comes up. Then for me, if you remember, something else came up after I launched.

Sylvie:    Oh yeah, that was a biggie too. Do you want to tell a little bit about that?

Edurne:    Yeah. In my Facebook community, when I launched the book, everybody was sharing, not the recipes, but the photographs, and “I made this and it's amazing, and I made that and we've loved it,” and they were putting photographs all over the place. There was a couple of girls, they hadn't bought the book, and obviously they weren't ever going to buy it, and they were complaining that people shouldn't be saying, “Look, I've done this recipe” without sharing the recipe. That brought up a whole load of new mindset issues. What I've learned from that is that they're always going to come up. They're not going to stop coming up. It's just that you have to realize what they are.

Sylvie:    Also, you graduate levels. It's almost like, “Mindset level one, complete. Mindset level two, complete.” With success comes a little bit of that every once in a while, and I feel like that's one of those things that, our subconscious helps keep us safe, and says, “Don't go out there. Just play it safe, because what if somebody complains? What if somebody hates you? What if somebody calls you whatever?” We keep ourselves back because of that.

Edurne:    Somebody's always going to complain, and somebody's always going to hate you. That's good.

Sylvie:    Yeah, and if you had held back then you wouldn't have helped these thousands of people that you're helping, and going to continue to help, to change their lives, to change their families' lives, to finally figure out how to eat this way, et cetera. That's amazing. Thank you so much, Edurne. Where can people find your eBook, where can people find your website? We're going to put the links below, but if you can tell them, as well, where you'd like them to find you, that would be awesome.

Edurne:    Yeah. I'm on evamuerdelamanzana.com. I'm sorry, .com. Speaking Spanish there. Then if you speak Spanish, I'd love to have you in my private Facebook community, which is basically Eva Muerde La Manzana

Sylvie:    Perfect.

Edurne:    I'd love to have you in there because we're a really, really nice bunch, and we share a lot of stuff.

Sylvie:    But first join her list. We're going to put those links below, and thank you so much Edurne for sharing your story right now.

Edurne:    Thank you, appreciate it.

Sylvie:    For everyone else listening, if you want to find out when Create Passive Income With eBooks is open for enrollment again I will put the links below. You can find us at sylviemccracken.com. Bye!

I hope you love that interview. I hope it was useful for you. I hope it encourages you get that eBook out of your head and get started on it sooner rather than later, whether you have 5 followers or a million followers and just start helping people out with all that knowledge that you always have and start making money on the process.

 

If you love that interview let us know. Let me and Edurne know that you felt encouraged by her message. Or if you want us to share more student case studies from Create Passive Income with eBooks I would love to do that. I just want to make sure I'm not talking to myself so leave me a comment below and I will see you next time. Bye!