Many people dream of lying on a beach, without a care in the world. You may be one of them – I know I am!

One of the hottest theories to hit the Internet in recent years is that of passive income. The idea is that you set up a business or money-making opportunity that runs pretty much on its own. The money rolls in while you relax, on the beach or otherwise.

If you’re interested in reading more about becoming a ‘lifestyle entrepreneur’ and making money through passive income and other minimal-involvement strategies, be sure to check out Timothy Ferriss’s book and blog, “The Four Hour Work Week.”

What can you do to create passive income, and how can CybaSumo help?

The most common forms of passive income are royalties and automated sales systems. Think of creating a new invention and being paid a small amount every time a company sells a product based on the patent. That’s one example of royalties – and it requires you to not only come up with something completely original, but also negotiate with large companies.

Automated sales systems are easier to create and manage. You create a digital product once, and then sell it multiple times. The effort required to sell the first copy is the main work you need to put in – advertising your product, and setting up the sales system. Copies #2 through 1,000,000 take virtually no effort and no cost.

CybaSumo is the perfect automated sales system for your business. We handle catalog management, transactions, and digital fulfillment for you. All you have to provide is the product, and market it. We do the rest.

Now you may be wondering how you can automate the marketing of your product. It’s possible, and Tim Ferriss’s book goes into further detail. Here are some ways to automate your marketing:

• Put our CybaSumo store widget on your Facebook profile, blog, and Web site.
• Advertise on Google AdWords
• Insert a link to your CybaSumo store in your email signature.

Some of the biggest-selling digital products online are ebooks. Our Bookbarn section is an ideal place for you to sell your business ebooks online. Since our fees are so low, you get all the benefits of a full-functional digital store with none of the aggravation of managing it.

Passive income takes some time to build up, and we’re not saying that you’re going to be lazing on the beach doing nothing by next week. What we are saying, though, is that CybaSumo is an excellent platform to sell your digital goods unattended. As Ron Popeil would say, with CybaSumo you just ‘set it and forget it.’

In the Prepping Your Work series of blog posts, we’re going to give you suggestions as to how best to prepare your digital work for sale on CybaSumo and SumoStores.com.

Making sure your digital goods are in a convenient, accessible, and attractive format can make all the difference between a sale and a prospect passing you by. In this first entry, we’re going to look at the BookBarn - where you can sell eBooks and other documents.

File Formats

eBooks and other documents come in wide variety of file formats on the Internet. The most-supported file formats are:

• HTML - obviously everyone who buys your eBook through a browser will be able to view an HTML file in that browser.
• PDF - Most Web users have a PDF viewer on their system. There are over 200 million PDF documents on the Web in total. PDFs provide an attractive visual representation of your work.
• Plain text (TXT) - This is the most compatible and compact solution, but also can be the least attractive, since no formatting is available.
• Rich Text Format (RTF) - This is another widely-used alternative to plain text, which allows some formatting. There can be incompatibilities between RTF readers (Microsoft Word can read RTF, for example).
• LIT, PDB, and other eBook formats - These are formats specifically designed for eBook readers. For some, you can download free software to create the files; for others, you may have to pay to buy an eBook creator.

What we recommend: A PDF file gives you the most control over formatting and presentation.

Free PDF software

Out of the box, Mac OSX enables you to print directly to PDF from any application. For Windows users, there are several freeware applications that do this:

• PrimoPDF (Windows) - www.primopdf.com
• CutePDF (Windows) - http://www.cutepdf.com
• Go2PDF (Windows) - http://www.go2pdf.com/product.html
• PDF4Free (Windows) - http://www.pdfpdf.com/pdf4free.html

* Please note: These software links are for reference purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement or guarantee.

Linux users can save to PDF directly from OpenOffice.

Templates

Every book you find in a bookstore will have an attractive layout, readable fonts, and an eye-catching cover. You can do the same with your eBook to make it more saleable and to make reading easier.

If you use Microsoft Office, be sure to check out the templates at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/default.aspx. Mac users who use Pages will find a variety of attractive templates included with their software.

What about copy protection?

Copy protection, or Digital Rights Management (DRM), is a hot topic today - especially with regards to music and videos. Many companies which distribute media are concerned about piracy and put DRM into their files so that you need a special player or other software to view them.

At this point we do not believe in DRM. DRM only makes it harder for legitimate customers to view your products. Pirates will always find a way around DRM, which simply leads to an ongoing, costly, escalating mutual arms race between encoding something and decrypting it.

The best way to manage this is to insert a statement in your document that the work is protected by copyright (since almost art is automatically protected by copyright once it’s created), and that customers should respect that.

Next time - preparing your videos for CybaSumo. See you then!