Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

dsavior

I just went back and re-read some of your posts from earlier and I saw that you were struggling a little bit and then a month later really broke out. I feel like I'm kind of where you were back then (getting sales but not really seeing the level of success you, pinger and others are), so I'm just wondering if you have any advice on how you really broke out, was it solely because you were publishing so many books at once (I think you said like 3 a day) or did you just get really good at publishing the right content (niche analysis)? I remember you were kind of skeptical at first at the whole process and were only getting a few sales per book, but then came back strong in December.

You said in your previous post that "getting 40 sales a day is pretty simple if you know what you're doing" yet 5 months ago you seemed like you didn't know what you were doing. Any insight on what changed? Any big discovery? or just more experience? Also sorry if you already described this somewhere else

golaso9 said:

Struggling on where to start because i want to do this properly this time. I dove into kindle last year and researched for weeks about it, i was very interested. In total i made about 130$ with 4-5 books. Most were non-fiction (self help type of books) and 1 erotic fiction. I do not have much starting capital and am wondering if i should write my own fiction (even though i do not think i would be great at it) or try again with non-fiction and produce longer/more high quality books than i did a year ago.

In regards to researching for non-fiction topics, would you say something with less than 1000 results and a few books with low reviews but with under 75,000 ranking in the paid kindle store be a good start for niche selection? It is hard for me to tell what a good niche is that isn't too saturated and am wondering what kind of system you guys have for finding this out.

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I really don't know. I haven't quantified the results of the niche I'm in. I think finding the niche I'm banking in right now was pretty lucky. I didn't do any calculations, really. I would just go to random categories' bestsellers list and look at EVERYTHING and what was related to it. Eventually. I found one. Every book with at least a decent cover in my niche right now is selling like god damn hot cakes! What's funny is ALLLL the covers are variations of the same cover! It's low-key exploitation lmao.


The books I worked pretty hard on and got high amounts of review exchanges from other niches sold alright. Then they COMPLETELY TANKED. They are all in the #300,000 to #400,000 sales rank now. Pity.

Morgadeshou said:

dsavior

I just went back and re-read some of your posts from earlier and I saw that you were struggling a little bit and then a month later really broke out. I feel like I'm kind of where you were back then (getting sales but not really seeing the level of success you, pinger and others are), so I'm just wondering if you have any advice on how you really broke out, was it solely because you were publishing so many books at once (I think you said like 3 a day) or did you just get really good at publishing the right content (niche analysis)? I remember you were kind of skeptical at first at the whole process and were only getting a few sales per book, but then came back strong in December.

You said in your previous post that "getting 40 sales a day is pretty simple if you know what you're doing" yet 5 months ago you seemed like you didn't know what you were doing. Any insight on what changed? Any big discovery? or just more experience? Also sorry if you already described this somewhere else

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WTF. 3 published books a day? I don't even...

Easiest way to break out for me was finding that RIGHT niche. I can't stress it enough. Right niche = you won't even need to deliver super high quality content. Regardless, people WILL BUY IT.

Reviews really helped in the beginning, so I thought, but ultimately I would not rely on it.

I have 1 book that made its way into the ~#9000 sales rank from Day 1. It now makes me 70% of my total income.. By itself I net $600/mo. from it.

I knew I was in the right niche when I didn't even have to get reviews for it and still it went straight to the TOP. To me, a good book is one that sees results as soon as it's published.

Also: a LOT can change in FIVE months man. I started this THREE months ago. First month was alright. I thought back then that it was a "numbers game."
I now disagree with myself.

Month 1: 5 FCKN SALES
Month 2: 8 FCKNG SALES. 3 More than last time WOO. How many books did I have up? EIGHT.
Month 3: 74 SALES+399 BORROWS BIETCH

Month 4: The past few weeks I've been busy. Although I'm finally free again. I'm gonna be atleast 150% better than last month. But by month 5. I wanna double/triple.

Just don't give up. LIVE AND BREATHE AMAZON KINDLE STORE. ALWAYS BE ON THE LOOKOUT. YOUR TIME WILL COME.

I start to dip my feet into kindle not to bad about 50$ a day so far. But You can make more if you hire someone to write books and you just upload shit loads of books daily.

EmailMaster said:

I start to dip my feet into kindle not to bad about 50$ a day so far. But You can make more if you hire someone to write books and you just upload shit loads of books daily.

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I don't have the capital to invest into ghostwriters. I'm also not excited to find THE ONE ghost writer, for me.

Fortunately, I enjoy writing. It's very time consuming, but I actually decided I want to pursue more freelance writing projects later.

alkemist : First of all congrats that's sweet! May I ask are your books fiction or non ?

AlexMax said:

alkemist : First of all congrats that's sweet! May I ask are your books fiction or non ?

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Fiction. I preferred non-fiction, but I took what there was to get.

Whoops I meant he said he published 1 every 3 days, still a lot though! and thanks for the post Alkemist

alkemist said:

I'm in the beginning of my journey to $1k/month via Kindle by May this year.
So far I have 6 books out. All non-fiction. Only the ones with reviews make any sales.

I started the journey 3 weeks ago and have profited $24 thus far, but I know there is more success to come.
The OP and many others labeled Kindle a "Numbers Game". You must publish a lot of books and later will come the success. From my experience, and if you are writing all of the books yourself like I am, you're gonna need a hell of a lot of patience.

Right now I'm moving onto fiction. Which is gonna be even more time consuming, but more fun and gratifying at least.

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$24 a day or total?

Pure Mint said:

$24 a day or total?

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At that time it was $24 total. Diddly squat.

Erotica publishers, how did you get sales on your first book without any pre built audiance? I published my first book in that niche over 10 days ago, It's 25-30 pages and got a GREAT cover, a few good reviews etc but I did the mistake to publish it for $2.99 I belive, so I didn't get more then a few sales in the start and then I put it on free promo for 2 days and got close to 500 downloads. But in total I only have 1 sale and 3 borrows on that book, and I have now lowerd the price to $0.99 but I don't think anyone is finding my book, how do you manage to get sales? How can people even find your book in erotica, it's full of them and impossible to get on a best sellers list without some huge marketing plan or a audiance.

Thanks for the share, great read!

kekmaw said:

Erotica publishers, how did you get sales on your first book without any pre built audiance? I published my first book in that niche over 10 days ago, It's 25-30 pages and got a GREAT cover, a few good reviews etc but I did the mistake to publish it for $2.99 I belive, so I didn't get more then a few sales in the start and then I put it on free promo for 2 days and got close to 500 downloads. But in total I only have 1 sale and 3 borrows on that book, and I have now lowerd the price to $0.99 but I don't think anyone is finding my book, how do you manage to get sales? How can people even find your book in erotica, it's full of them and impossible to get on a best sellers list without some huge marketing plan or a audiance.

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Depressing aint it? How some people make 4 million sales and you make 1

I done the same and will publish an erotica next week.

I m also making a kids series but not a single sale yet

Freakin depressin not to be a Dan Brown of this world

My first book that's in non fiction actually maes good sales, about 3 a day and have done so for almost 2 months now, but there it's not to hard to get some exposure from top 100 lists, but in erotica, you can forget so I don't see how new authors can get much momentum going there unless they have some alternative way to drive traffic to their book. I don't know but I would love to hear someone that has success with Erotice, I've read that a few in this thread do so please get back to me on this one.

Thanks for the post! I have had the idea of writing about eBay for a while! I guess this hits the nail into the coffin!

If someone can make a nice cover like 90% of erotica authors fail to do. I'm sure he'd have a much better fighting chance.

Also Gay/LGBTQ seem to have a good demand with not enough quality supply. I'm straight, but if I was desperate enough I'd go for it. C:

Morgadeshou said:

dsavior

I just went back and re-read some of your posts from earlier and I saw that you were struggling a little bit and then a month later really broke out. I feel like I'm kind of where you were back then (getting sales but not really seeing the level of success you, pinger and others are), so I'm just wondering if you have any advice on how you really broke out, was it solely because you were publishing so many books at once (I think you said like 3 a day) or did you just get really good at publishing the right content (niche analysis)? I remember you were kind of skeptical at first at the whole process and were only getting a few sales per book, but then came back strong in December.

You said in your previous post that "getting 40 sales a day is pretty simple if you know what you're doing" yet 5 months ago you seemed like you didn't know what you were doing. Any insight on what changed? Any big discovery? or just more experience? Also sorry if you already described this somewhere else

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I never published 3 books per day... I was writing roughly 7k words per day or something like that which allowed me to publish roughly 3 books per week. It would be impossible for me to write 3 books per day, haha.

I will say again that I think spending too much time on niche analysis is the wrong way of going. Every niche sells... trust me, as I have published so many damn niches now. I do no niche analysis anymore because it's not necessary. However, it really depends on your strategy. If you're just outsourcing some average quality books and hoping to make a few hundred per month, then I guess niche analysis means something. But if you are looking for hundreds of sales per day and a fast 6-figure income, forget about niche analysis and start writing top-shelf books.

The main reason I achieved breakout success was because I finally let my ego go. I wasn't writing what I wanted, but I was writing what I personally thought was a good book. Around my 10th book, I wrote something that my audience thought was a good book and it suddenly took off. From there I put aside what I personally thought was good and spent my time learning what my particular audience thought was good. Right after that, pretty much every book I wrote earned me lots and lots of money.

This was easy for me because I wrote everything I published and was easy to control the flow of the book and the overall quality. I don't know if you guys have heard, but Amazon is blocking books that get bad reviews, high refund rates, and are sending out warning letters of account suspension. The guys who are saying "Do niche analysis and then publish something without focusing on quality" are steering you in the wrong direction. I don't feel like this is a wise long-term strategy and is going to backfire eventually. Amazon doesn't want the marketplace filled with low quality books and they are starting to take harsh action.

I look bad at some of my older books and realize how bad they were, even though at the time I thought they were golden. Today I unpublished 5 of my books because they did not meet my quality standards, and I'll continue to do so as I refine my pen names. I have lost thousands upon thousands of dollars on outsourcing, only to receive low quality books that are not good enough to be published. At the same time I have made much more from my good books.

I did not do anything different from my very first book to the 10th book, right around when I broke out other than just getting better at writing and letting go of my own personal opinions of what I thought was good or not.

dsavior said:

I never published 3 books per day... I was writing roughly 7k words per day or something like that which allowed me to publish roughly 3 books per week. It would be impossible for me to write 3 books per day, haha.

I will say again that I think spending too much time on niche analysis is the wrong way of going. Every niche sells... trust me, as I have published so many damn niches now. I do no niche analysis anymore because it's not necessary. However, it really depends on your strategy. If you're just outsourcing some average quality books and hoping to make a few hundred per month, then I guess niche analysis means something. But if you are looking for hundreds of sales per day and a fast 6-figure income, forget about niche analysis and start writing top-shelf books.

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3 books per week is a tremendous rate to write by yourself. Would you call those books TOP SHELF?

I was doing 2 books/week, at first. I began giving only the BEST quality 1 book/week, at most. The kind I have intentions to sell paperbacks of in the future (when i get my first check).

I've always wanted to venture into Kindle for consistent passive income. This is a great post, OP!

Thats nice idea, I have also created a book about Adsense Profit Method and didn't update on Amazon Kindle. Now after hearing this i have to upload it on kindle store.
Thanks for suggestion

Like dsaviour, I've lost thousands of dollars on failed outsourcing projects. In my early days, I saw Kindle as a numbers game, and started investing heavily in lots of outsourced books. Ultimately, though, if you want to own a Kindle business -- not just a smash and grab -- quality is key. 32-page, badly written books simply don't cut it. Many of my ghostwritten books never even made it to market as they just weren't good enough. It would take me too much time to edit them into my required quality, so I wrote them off.

When I started, I believed it was a numbers game. These days, I understand that this isn't the best approach.

Think about 5-page micro-niche websites. At one point, they made money, but the market saturated, and the micro-niche websites died. This is the same thing that's happening on Kindle. Why would your low quality book do better than another low quality book? Because you can market it better? Maybe so, but if you're that good at marketing, think how much better you'll do if you have a quality product behind you.

I'm by no means an expert, and I don't have the hang of marketing yet -- I've actually done minimal marketing.

One of my niches has five books and is on track to net me around $1500 this month, which proves success is possible. The reason for my success? I put it down to quality products and the fact that my niche was practically empty when I started, allowing me to establish before the competition came in and saturated the market.

I admit, I was lucky to get that break in that niche, as I didn't do much marketing, but I at least had quality behind me.

My tip to you guys starting out: don't take the scattergun approach. Don't think of Kindle as a numbers game. Produce quality books -- whether you write them yourself or you outsource. Find your niche and grow a business around it. I've reinvested heavily in my successful niche, producing more quality books, and I'm now in the process of building a blog to support my book sales.

Believe me, I'd rather make $1500 from one niche than make $1500 by putting out crap into 100 different niches.

Here's another bit of advice to (hopefully) stop you wasting your time publishing dross. As I've already mentioned, how do you think your book will differentiate itself if it's rubbish? There are authors in my niche who throw together a 30 page book, fake review the hell out of it (100+ reviews), then sit back and expect the money to roll in.

For a few days it works, and I've seen these books outrank me and sit pretty at around the #8,000 mark. What happens? Every single time, they fade into obscurity, and within a week they're ranked #100,000+. Amazon readers aren't stupid, and when you publish those 30-pagers, who do you honestly think is going to buy it? Do you genuinely believe that book will bring you sustainable, long-term success? Of course it won't.

Expect to see Amazon imposing some serious restrictions on the Kindle marketplace soon, and remember that quality always wins through.