Guys: Kindle is the Ticket!

Pinger030 said:

@BadGamer

I totally agree with you that you have to establish yourself as an author/brand with expertise in a particular niche/market for the big and long term success BUT I think that this is not recommended for a newbie. As a newbie you have to make as much experiences as you can (What quality is necessary to sell? What are the possibilities on Amazon? How to analyse the market and what's "my" niche? How can I automate different processes? How to deal with freelancers? etc.)

So if you have made the experiences and you know what's working FOR YOU (and let's say you already make $1000/m) you should use your financial freedom to build up a solid authority/brand to make the big money. And if you're "done" with Amazon/books you should think more long term and maybe build up a website with a course etc. And if you're done with that maybe you have enough money to invest in real estates (= still more stable and long term success).

That's my personal strategy for all business:
- Start with small investments, high output, many products, make fast experiences (= short term, not the big money but you make money and you split the risk)
- Now take your financial freedom and your experience for increased investments, less output/products but high quality. It's more risky but you can afford it. (= more money, stable/long term income)
- Automate the processes and push it to your personal limit. Then think about the next level for even more long term success (maybe other products outside of Amazon, a second or third business in different niches, jv's, business shares, real estates etc.)

A newbie hasn't the experiences and the financials to take the risk to write a high quality book for the upcoming 3 months (just as an example) with the dream: "I want to make $1000+/m with this one book." If he fails he has nothing. But if he starts eg. with publishing 5 small books/m (= 15 books in 3 month instead of one) he splits the risk. Sure he can't expect the big money but he'll make money with guarantee. But more important: He makes experiences (achievements but also failures) to write a $1000-book some days.

PS: I'm in this game since May 2014 and I've published about 100 books so far. From short fiction and non fiction books to longer novels. I've stopped with outsourcing because I think that I've spreaded the risk enough. FOR ME it was no longer worthwhile and I'm focusing only on high quality books. My record is $6000/m with my actual non fiction book last month (completely new pen name without a brand, the book is online since two months, no external marketing). It's not in a hot niche (competition is very high), I don't use any blackhat methods and it's not based on luck because I already have such successful books (not $6k/m but $1k - $4k/month per book).

The key is NOT to produce generic books like a machine because even a housewife can buy a perfect cover, write a perfect product description etc. If you do what everyone is doing you'll get what everyone is getting = no success/no money! A perfect cover, perfect description, perfect keywords, perfect formatting etc. is a required standard. It's absolutely necessary but nothing special today. The only variable is the "creativity/individuality". And I don't mean: Make a completely different cover/description/title etc. than your competitors. It's way more than these obvious things.

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GobBluthJD said:

Seriously. It's the most successful way I've found to make money online. Yes, it has a lot of drawbacks (which I'll mention in a minute), but holy s*** do the rewards ever make up for them! I only seriously started attempting to make money with Kindle 2 months ago. I wrote, prepped, and released a book a week, until I figured out a better outsourcing system. I now have 20 books up and am averaging a new book every 2 to 3 days. My latest book was just released last week and, well, since then it's sold 500+ copies. I know, I still can't believe it when I look at the reports, but it's not going away. At even $2/book profit, that's not too shabby.

Okay, this isn't to say that this is easy or there aren't cons. There are. Lots of them. Which is why, I imagine, there's not a lot of Kindle talk around this forum.

Con #1: It's a LOT of work. Even if you're outsourcing. I started by doing it all myself: research, writing, formatting, cover design, uploading, marketing. Everything. It's a huge time investment, and I suspect this is the step that scares most people off.

Con #2: It's NOT instantaneous. We're always looking for quick money in the IM world. Kindle is not that. It takes time and effort to build up an audience, to learn how to outsource correctly, to streamline the process for efficiency. It's worth it, but it does take a great deal of time.

Con #3: Kindle is not PLR friendly, is not article spinning friendly, is not black hat friendly, etc, etc. This probably also scares a lot of people off. Mess with Kindle, and it will blacklist you. But even playing by the rules has gotten me much more than black hat stuff ever did.

Okay, it's not all doom and gloom. Let's see some pros.

Pro #1: Once you've uploaded a book, it's (nearly) set, forget, and earn. My very first book took me a long time to research, write, format, etc. It was a pain. But you know what? Since I uploaded it 2 months ago, I have done zero marketing, zero promotion, and have spent zero effort on it. Guess what: it's still averaging about 10 sales per day. That's with zero work on my part. IMO, that's well worth the initial effort. A few days pain for recurring money daily - I'll take that any day.

Pro #2: Tied in with Pro #1 is the fact that, if you sign up for KDP Select, you hardly have to do any marketing (unless you want, of course). I have a series of books in a non-fiction, educational sort of niche. I have done zero marketing on them. No blogs, no twitter, no fb, nada. All 4 books are in the Top 10 in their Kindle category. If you create a quality book, Amazon will market it for you. It will start showing up in people's feeds, in "people who bought X, also bought Y", and all that type of stuff. It's beautiful. Set and forget.

Pro #3: Once you get a system down, you can easily produce a book a day. Even if you only make one sale a day, that's $2. You have 10 books? That's $20 a day. You have 50 book? Hello, $100 per day. The possibilities are endless. Literally.

Okay, okay, enough of the rant. Just wanted to share what (I think) is an under-looked market on this forum. Yes, it's not black hat. Yes, it's not quick and easy money. But it's sustainable and, if done right, really profitable.

My tips:

Do your research (I'll post more on this later, if wanted)
Produce (or outsource) quality content.
Enroll in KDP.
Set a goal of 1 book per month, per week, or per day even (if the quality doesn't suffer).
Use the same pen name for similar books, to build up an audience and make each book easier to find.
Put links to your books at the end of all of your other books, to make them easier to find.
Sit back and enjoy.

Any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them. I've only been doing it 2 months, but I've been doing it nearly 24/7 and have learned a lot. Been using this forum for awhile now, and finally have something to give back to the community!

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saltyleaves said:

Who's still doing this and having some success? Just finished a 350 page novel, and I'm ready to publish it, but I want to know if splitting it up in two now would be better with the kdp change or if I should just release it as one novel. Anyone know?

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