Just so readers of my blog (www.999ideas.com/blog/) don’t think that I do nothing but dream up ideas without ever putting them to use, I’ll tell you what I am doing right now. I am putting to use the idea (not entirely my own) of giving away books to make money. I have tried similar techniques before, with some success.

Before I explain how this works to make money, I’ll tell you about another new idea - one which I actually developed from a brainstorming session years ago. This one also involved giving ebooks away. At the time I was trying to sell an ebook I had written on how to buy cheap homes, based on a lot of research and the experience of my wife and I and the beautiful house we bought for $17,500 in 2002.

I started out at $27, because a lot of ebooks were selling for that at the time. I think it sold two copies the first month. I dropped the price to $7 to try that for a while, and sold a few more. Then I decided to use an idea-creation technique called “assume the absurd.” One of my “absurd” assumptions was, “What if I could make more money giving the book away?”

I worked with the idea and came up with a plan to give away the entire ebook a chapter at a time by email. I set this up in an autoresponder that sends out emails automatically once a person subscribes - in this case 30 mailings total, one going out each week. I actually hosted the chapters on my website (yourcheaphome.com), so each mailing directed the subscriber to the appropriate page.

They really got the same ebook, and if they were impatient they could buy it as a PDF download for $7 - plus get a couple bonuses. Soon I was making more money from the advertising on the pages where the chapters were hosted than I used to make from sales of the book. But - and this is the fun part - I also saw an immediate increase in sales of the book. Apparently people liked what they read each week and didn’t want to wait thirty weeks to get it all.

I later learned that there are several good ways to make money by giving ebooks away. Now, in addition to the dozen or so that I sell, I have several that I hand out for free. That brings us back to my current project, “Mind Power Meditation.”

In the chapter on “brainwave entrainment” I go into the science of meditation recordings that use “binaural beats” to put the listener into an “alpha state.” I also relate my own experiences. Then, based on the six or seven program I have tried, I recommend two. Fortunately, my two favorites happen to have affiliate programs, and of course my links are in the book.

The reader then is hopefully convinced of the value of meditation (as I am), and wants to try it using the technology on these CDs and/or MP3 downloads. I explain how to use them and give a full review of my favorite, called (what else?) “The Meditation Program.”

I just have to give away the book (although I may still decide to sell it at some point). If enough readers follow my suggestion and buy the program, I get paid a few commissions each month. Ideas in action - that’s what all these creative thinking and problem solving techniques are all about. I’ll let you know how it goes.