In my previous eBay auction tutorial, I talked about my personal guarantee to you that you know something that someone on eBay is willing to pay to learn. Whether it's soup recipes, technical knowledge, fishing tips, or something else, I guarantee you can start an eBay home business just by writing about something you know about. No inventory, no huge startup costs - just writing! And when someone buys your electronic book, or "ebook", you just email it to them as an attachment - so you can sell to anyone in the world without any trips to the post office!

You've got to be careful about how you create this ebook, though, because the easier way may be eating into your profits without you knowing about it.

Some people choose to use a simple word processor program such as Microsoft Word. This method has some benefits in that many people already have such a program on their computer, so you don't have to buy anything to get started. It's a pretty simple program to get started with, since you really don't have to use any advanced features to create a document.

The real problem is that there's no way to protect your work from people who will send it to friends, or worse, put it on a file sharing site to let thousands of people access your work for free! Some of this sharing is malicious, some of it's not, but it's all money out of your pocket.

One part of being in business is maximizing your profits, and part of that is protecting your work from those who haven't paid for it. While Word is a great program to actually write your ebook in, it's not the best format to actually send it to people. In my next eBay tutorial, we'll take a look at Adobe products that can be used to create PDF files, which allow for some protection against unauthorized access. Until then, get to writing and let's get started! Don't wait for someone else to give you a raise -- give yourself a raise by selling your knowledge on eBay!