While travelling in South East Asia, I ran into a marketing buddy of mine.
Well, actually, we knew beforehand we would be there at the same time, so Caitlyn and I took a bus to meet him in Krabi Town.
One thing led to another, and we had a couple of badass days together.
Here’s us drunk at our hotel bar:
Lots of laughs, and always fun to meet up with a long distance friend.
The next day, we sat together and discussed business.
And that’s when I learned about a new exciting business model.
Dalton is a Kindle Publisher.
He has published over 400 books on Amazon Kindle, and makes about $14,000/month from it.
The best part is, most of this income is entirely passive.
So now that he’s put in the work, he can enjoy the spoils of his labour.
Lucky for me, Dalton shared his business model with me.
It always helps to liquor a person up 😉
In about 3-4 hours, I learned the exact blueprint to making money with Kindle Publishing.
I won’t reveal everything in this post because Dalton shares everything in his coaching program. If you’re interested in learning more about Kindle Publishing, you can check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkMBiBgdiMt0BPUF-q8GAmQ (no financial affiliation)
I will tell you more than enough to get started. And I’ll even give you an expert tip to make money in just about any market or niche.
So here goes…
There are two ways to make money from Kindle Publishing
- Direct sales
- Links within the book
The convenient thing about Kindle books is that people are usually connected to the Internet while reading them.
This gives you a huge opportunity to cash in on affiliate sales and email subscribers, but more on that later.
What topic should you pick?
I’ll spare you the ramble about why it needs to be a passion.
You get it.
In order to write a full book, you need to know what you’re talking about and it’s also best if you actually give a damn. You’ll go insane if you try and write a book on a topic that disinterests you. Don’t do it!
Getting that passion part out of the way, you’ll want to select something that will actually draw an audience.
The best way to figure that out is to look at http://amazon.com directly.
Try searching for a topic keyword in the top search bar.
Let’s say, for example, “YouTube Marketing”
That will take you to a results page.
All you have to do at this point is check out the books near the top of the listings.
Do you see the second result?
Let me enlarge that for you!
That’s me.
The second result.
Woo Hoo!!
Okay, so let’s click on the top book.
When you scroll down the page, you’ll see the Product Details
Part of the details is the “Amazon Best Sellers Rank”
This will let you know how well the book is selling.
A good amount of sales is a seller’s rank under 100,000
This book has this rank:
The number rolls in at 185,521.
That’s not great, but not terrible either.
The whole name of the game at this point is to look for a topic that gets lots of traffic and sales, but isn’t oversaturated with books.
So next step is to go back to the search results, and check out how many books are created on the topic.
If there’s a full page of books talking specifically about our keyword, it’s a no go.
So, if you’re going for direct sales (alternative strategy later), then you’re best off searching for a better keyword.
Look here! I’ve got one: Organic Lip Balms
That’s a topic that people are searching for but isn’t overloaded with a ton of competition. As of right now, anyways, maybe after the publication of this post, someone will seize the opportunity.
What if small niches don’t interest you?
No problem.
Later in this post I’m going to show you how to get traffic on virtually any topic.
It’s exactly why you’re reading this book right now in one of the most competitive and saturated topics on the planet.
How many words per book?
Any quality book you publish on SmashWords and Amazon should be at least 6,000 words. It’s okay to write a book that length, but any smaller than that and you’re likely under-delivering value on your topic.
What about outsourcing?
Absolutely! You can outsource anything in the book creation process. Go to http://UpWork.com and you’ll be able to hire dozens of writers looking for a job.
The rate I look for is around $1 per 100 words.
That may sound cheap, but you can find a quality writer willing to write books at that price point.
What else is involved?
You need a book cover.
And I don’t say that lightly. Your book cover and title are the main two things a visitor will see before buying your book.
How it appears visually is super important.
Lucky for you, http://fiver.com has a whole whack of designers creating covers for just five bucks.
If you’re determined to do the work yourself, you can use a free service like http://pixlar.com to create a quality cover. Just make sure you use the right dimensions of your cover to add to SmashWords and Amazon.
Why is SmashWords important?
You’ve almost certainly heard of Amazon. You’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of them.
You may not have heard about SmashWords, but they’re very important.
http://SmashWords.com will distribute your book to other important online retailers. Sites like Barnes and Noble use SmashWords to fill their book catalogues.
Not to mention SmashWords allows you to publish free books; Amazon only allows free for a limited time (with one exception mentioned later).
It’s important to publish your book at both Amazon and SmashWords.
How much do you make from direct sales?
If your book ranks for a mid-to-high traffic topic, you can make lots of sales per month.
I’ve seen Kindle Publishers make over $1,000/month from just a handful of books.
But then, it’s really a small percentage of books that make most of your money. So it’s all about testing and getting stuff out there.
What about high competition topics?
This is something I promised to talk about.
It’s an advanced strategy that takes advantage of consumer’s desire for free.
When a book is free, it gets lots of “purchases” and a lot of attention.
Sure, you don’t make any money directly from book sales, however, if thousands of people are downloading your book, it’s easy to make the money back in the links within the book itself.
For example, if I have a book on “list building,” I could offer readers a free bonus on that exact topic; maybe a video series on email marketing or some sort of relevant resource guide. The catch is that in order to get that free bonus, readers need to subscribe to my email list.
I can actually give you an example directly on this post. Right now, go to http://twostep.brendanmace.com and you’ll get a free internet marketing video series.
See how easy that is?
I’m leveraging the traffic I get from free books to make money within the book itself. It really is a brilliant way to get exposure and sales in the toughest of book topics.
In this blog post, I shared list-building secrets in depth. You could easily combine Kindle Publishing with email marketing to ramp up results into overdrive.
How to make a book free everywhere?
This is a little tricky.
Not all distributers allow you to publish a book for free. Amazon, as an example, only allows you to publish a book for free temporarily: three days max.
There is a workaround, though.
SmashWords allows you to publish your book for free, which gets it sent out to other major retailers like Barnes and Noble.
Once your book is listed for free at a bunch of reputable sources, you can contact the rest and request a price match.
Most retailers will allow your book to be permanently free, in order to price match it with the other guys.
Your Action Plan
- Write or outsource a book.
- Create or outsource a cover.
Getting the book created is the first priority. Then it’s time to get it out there.
Before you do anything else, you should publish your EBook on http://SmashWords.com. They’ll distribute it to other big retailers.
Then Amazon is a no brainer.
If you already have your book published on other major retailers, Amazon will allow you to price match your book at permanently free.
You have to make your money in one of two ways.
- Direct sales
- Links within the book
If it’s a niche topic, you can focus on sales directly.
If it’s a competitive marketplace with loads of other options, make your book free with SmashWords, then price match on Amazon, and bank off the insides of the book.
Kindle Publishing is a huge opportunity.
Make it happen!
