Success, Failure, and Potential Redemption

Hello there folks, I finally decided to make my own journey thread once I stopped trying to sell my IM guide and focus more on legit truth. Here is a short synopsis of my IM career up till now, this is on my website too but I will not be promoting that here. I am just like anyone else grinding it out for that free startup traffic, and I hope I will be able to help others.

I am moving to focus more on residual money, because I realized I was wasting my time with my CPA spam methods. My short story background here will explain that.


MY STORY FROM 2010 UNTIL NOW


I already knew how to build websites in HTML and CSS before ever starting, but I actually found success in 2010 when I wrecked my car, and tried to learn online money making.

I played with forex for a couple weeks, but with no startup captial or actual skills its not worth it. i first started making real money with facebook and CPALead in 2010, and back then EASY money was to be had.

I found the facebook scam viral script on Blackhatworld, and made some fast money with that.

To be honest I thought I was the shit, and that I was going to be successful.

All I did was spend all day reading IM forums, and a few hours doing spam methods, I never built a real business. You guys know how hard it can be to comb through make money online gurus and e-books, and I wasted alot of time doing that.

In the end I never spent time creating real websites and I spent money I should have re-invested into my business on drugs. This is how after 3 years I had given up, I knew money was out there but starting with no legit traffic or websites and trying to make money can be tough.

Its possible to have viral social campaigns, and find good methods after trying hard enough, but I had done that and the methods had come and gone and I never really moved on.



Fast foward to 2016, I had not truly given up on IM but I had not done anything with it for 3 years. I started writitng a book about some of my experiences not related to IM, and in doing so re-sparked that internet marketing flare.

At first I started right back with my go-to CPA fake girl spam method, which is listed on my site. The truth is though, I didn't scale it up to make any real money, just enough to motivate me to spend all day working on it.

However, the truth is that this was going back and doing the same old shit, and also expecting the good old days of fast easy money. It is still out there, but the truth is I also had to once again go out and try and figure it out.

Now im not saying not to do that, but for me things are different. I had somewhat of a spiritual journey when I first got sober, and I realize it is better to give back. It will take me alot longer, I am still not making a ton of money, but I decided to focus more on e-book writing.

The reason I did this was because it had the best results, still not alot but I made alot more off my amazon kindle sales than I did off CPA. It is pointless for me to do CPA spam when I have good ideas for 10+ books, love to write, and already have 2 books on Amazon, that are high quality and helpful.


Where I am NOW starting this journey


The lesson I take from my own story is just because you are the captain doesn't mean you have to go down with the ship. If there is another ship nearby, try hijacking that one. Im not saying that CPA marketing is a sinking ship, I FULLY intend to jump back in once I find a good method, or have money from other sources.

But the reality is that I could easily spend months wasting my time and only making pennies, because alot can go wrong with most fast money CPA methods which involve social media. Instagram can ban your accounts, FB and twitter can too. If you are smart this won't happen, but for example my method died because the offer disappeared. Nothing you can do about that and no other offers worked the same. 3 months and the 100$ a day method was dead.

My advice if you read this is be smart. If you need some fast money and you think it can happen with CPA, go for it. I went for it, but after a few weeks I had to realize my time was better spent planning for the long term, and creating products and websites that will be around for a while. I am here for the long term, and to help other marketers learn without bullshitting them.


My Short Term Plan For This Journey

So here is a list of what I tried already, before I decided to focus on my e-book writing and long term projects.

My same short term fake girl spam method that worked well back in 2010, it still made me instant CPA money but it was small, 9$ OGAds and 3$ with CPALead after getting 5 accounts to a few thousand followers.

I will post a link to the guide explaining this method, as it is completely free and written by me, but I will caution that this isn't exactly the best method, but it always make conversions no matter what. Uploaded file is too large so here is direct .pdf link. - dontsuckatmarketing . com/EasyCPAMethods.pdf

Anyways like I said thats just an example of what I tried, but not much success.



I also tried a bit of a craigslist method I found from a guy on facebook, I won't out him here but it is an old method that doesn't work as good as he says it does, and the truth it I spent the last month not making much, but creating some good websites, good kindle books, and a good internet marketing guide.

My kindle sales for my personal e-book weren't a ton, but still 16$ from no promotion, and my make money online guide sold about 60$ worth. It is actually a really badass guide, for 10$ its 124 pages, but I have decided to wait to keep promoting it again because I need to make some major upgrades, and also I feel like I need to have more success before can confidently sell a MMO product.

What I decided is I am going to focus on giving people value in all niches I work in, I do have 3 major niches 2 work in, but the health niche is my later project, only because there areas are where i have experience.

My Short Term Goals

Right now I have quite a few goals and projects to work on. I am going to mostly tackle them one at a time, but for a little longer I am full time IM so I have all day to get stuff done.

- Put the finishing touches on my two websites, which are already mostly done, just very simply content oriented sites without much fancy stuff or SEO yet.

- Slowly over time SEO them and add content, some of which is already done. Slowly over time I will be building social media presence but I don't expect these sites to really take off for a few months,

- Keep adding content to my make money online site, keep adding to guide which I plan to be very comprehensive, and hopefully re-release it in the next couple months.

- Focus on marketing my first e-book which I will post info about below, since it is really my only active campaign. I have bought a marketing service for it and done my own.

- Focus on writing my next books, I actually have 2 books live on Kindle but one is my personal addiction story, and I didn't do much marketing yet, i realized it has way more potential if I rewrite it.

- Keep my eyes on IM forums and look for CPA methods, but don't get distracted. I plan to have success with my books and websites, and reinvest that money and extra free time into CPA success.

- Get a real job. This one might be a surprise but heres the deal, I quit my stressful serving job after years in September, and have been working on IM since then.

It was good to get shit done since I had all day, and I wrote probably 400 pages of content in various niches and books, and built websites.

However, I have had to admit to myself that my chances of making fast CPA money to pay the bills is not that great, and if I spend all day doing that I won't have time to write my actual books.

I plan on getting a job that I will have to work at for a few months, but in the end this will be the most efficient way. Ill have money to re-invest, and won't be desperate to scam or spam people to make fast money.

I am trying to learn from my mistakes, and build a real business. Anyways I hope you guys enjoy this journey! I will have a reply below as my first official journey post about my kindle journey so far.

Keep in mind thats just where my potential is now, I plan to expand into any areas that work.

This was a good read, thanks for sharing. I'll be keeping up with it.

So anyways sorry to double post but I realize that one was long, and this is my kindle post.

So like I said I first got back into this shit from writing my personal addiction story into a book, and actually saw big dollar signs because I thought I had a great idea. It turns out I did, but I was a bit over-excited by the potential. Still, my next book project is to rewrite it and also have a total of 3 books in that niche, which seems to be a very effective tactic in Kindle.

So I wrote the book, promoted it a bit, and realized that Amazon Kindle is probably the easiest way to succeed at it.

kdp.amazon.com - Kindle Direct Publishing - This makes it easy to upload and sell e-books, but shitty PLR might not work good.

The truth is I was originally selling it as a .pdf on my website, but made no sales. I uploaded the book to kindle, and have made a total of 6 sales since then, but with little marketing.



So those 6 sales aren't much, but it was better than anything else I did in October. So I wrote another book that is in a different niche, and kind of a smaller project, but once again I already have plans for another book in the same niche so they will feed off each other.

The book is called Surviving the Soda Struggle, I don't mind naming it because I want this to be an open guide. If somehow I fuck myself by posting it here, well its just a test project in some ways, learning the kindle ropes.

Here is my very brief description of my kindle marketing experience so far.

You can make a few dollars with basic social marketing, the right keywords, and an attractive title, but if you want actual high earning from your book you need to market it properly.

Formatting from a .ODT openoffice document into Kindle's format was a pain as far as the table of contents goes, so i found that my e-books are best written as an html file and uploaded. The lesson I learned here is not to waste time, I spent 2 days trying to figure out a dropdown table of contents menu. I already had a functional one, so this was kind of unnecessary, and as much as I hated to I will try to fix that issue next go around.

Once you have a qualty book there are ways to market it. I enrolled in KDP Select which essentially means you give Amazon exclusive rights to online sales for 90 days, but you get to do free giveaways and get special preference in advertising I guess. (not 100% on the 2nd)

So the typical marketing strategy besides social media, websites and stuff is to give it away for free for a few days, and try to get as many free downloads as possible. If you get enough, it moves your book up in the free amazon book rankings, when typically if it is new it will be buried. After it switches to paid after the free promo is over, your book will retain SOME of its ranking.

I say some because it is clear it used to count each free download as if it was a paid sale as far as ranking went, but since then it is not the same. It still has an effect.

So this brings me to my own campaign. I set up a free kindle deal on my book that started yesterday 11/2 and ends 11/6. I collected a LARGE list of facebook groups, forums and book submission sites, basically i exhausted every free source for book promo out there (Many are paid) and spent some time submitting my book.

Here is what my bookmarks look like lol. There are lists all over but you have to comb through them to get to the working links.



I was a little late submitting in some cases, but I feel like the effect was negligible, but if you do this do it ahead of time.


My stats show that it got me some higher ranking and increased downloads (mine is # 4,000 total in kindle free, which is still not that good).

Keep in mind though it took alot of legwork to get this list, so I want to state that it is not as easy as you think.

I will admit that if I really cranked it up today and the next few days I could maybe get 200 to 300 downloads, which isn't bad.

But my point stands that stuff like this takes time, so don't expect thousands of free downloads. However book cover and subject is important, it seems like fiction is big on those promo methods I used.

Fortunatley today I haven't spent any time doing it, because I got a 100$ deposit back I have been waiting on and invested it into a service sold here on BHW that gets you 5k downloads, and seems to work every time. I have food and bills paid, so its worth it to re invest because it is the best shot I have at this book succeeding.

My success is not dependent on this book, but you can only do 5 free days every 90 days on KDP, and by the time the next one rolls around, I will have way better books to spend the promo on.

We will see how it goes, I will probably post an update in a few days, the e-book promo I bought is scheduled to run sunday.

People who have bought it have seen sales continue after the free days end, but I am going to not set those expectations. If nothing else, I would have spent the 97$ on dabs and food anyways, which I already have.

For the next few days I am putting some finishing touches on my websites, and mostly focusing on writing a few free guides for my site based on my kindle experiences, to help people get started in the right direction. I am also going to start re-writing my main addiction book, which may take a few weeks as I plan for it to be high quality.

Hey guys small update here. I only plan on updating every few days unless there is something important. So this weekend my mom is in town so I will be working some at nights but the next 2 daytimes I will be checkin stats but prolly not hustlin hard. Tomorrow I have scheduled a 97$ promo I bought here on the marketplace that basically drives thousands of downloads to your free amazon books during the KDP select days.

It promises 5,000 downloads which is way more than I could get without spending money, and if you do spend money on other promotions like that you can drop hundreds and not get that much.

Nevertheless, I am getting alot of downloads today even though it was supposed to be for tomorrow. I am not sure where this spike came from but I submitted my book to so many sites its hard to know where this came from, or it could be the promo starting early.



I also happened to get one review from someone on a facebook group I posted to. Its a 5 star review and its an honest review because it does raise one problem, which for me is even better because if the only review on my only book looks fake it wont be good. I also reviewed his book, and made a new friend so we can help each other. Anyways it sees like it takes ALOT more than 200 downloads to get a review usually, so this is a nice surprise.

Once again I am not making money off these free giveaways, but my book's amazon ranking has gone up alot today, and hopefully the promotion tommorow will help it more. On monday it reverts back to costing 2.99$ for my book, and I hope to be making at least a few sales, but honestly I am not going to set those expectations.

Anyways my websites are almost done being tweaked for graphic changes, so I can just focus on adding more content and doing SEO stuff, I plan to promote those harder in the coming months, but right now I need to write some e-books.

This morning I had a really good idea for the next one, im a recovering heroin addict so my next books are in that niche, and also my first one.

I will probably update tommorow or monday after the next promo runs.

Good luck on your recovery and journey. It's a very interesting one!

Howdy guys so most importantly I have changed my avatar which is a huge deal i used jack vincent from black ops 3 zombies so pretty stoked about that. I feel like he has kind of a blackhat type of look even though really most of what I do is whitehat above board anyways.

I guess I should update since today was the scheduled promotion from the service I bought here from the BHW marketplace. It was 97$ for the lowest package which represents the biggest investment for me so far in IM. Keep in mind not reinvesting profits was a major reason I failed last time, if not THE MOST CRUCIAL REASON.

Anyways these aren't even profits, I haven't even made 97$ yet, but I am very fortunate to have been able to spend the money. Investment in internet marketing can be a waste if you are stupid or get scammed, but the service got me over 5,000 downloads to my free book. You might think, well its free so big deal but the graph shows that with my own promotion efforts the best I did so far was getting 300 downloads in a day, I would estimate if you really built up a social media following you could do a bit better, but its alot of work.

Instead I spent those few days working on finishing some of my www.dontsuckatmarketing.com stuff (if its against the rules to post it then fuck it sorry but its a major part of the journey and at the moment nothing is being sold or advertised there, its just my guides.)

So anyways I kinda chilled on my e-book promo because I expected something like this today.



So the service worked great and got me tons of downloads. Once again I do not make money off it, but if you are a good marketer you can see the potential to lead customers from a free book to a paid one, or a website. I plan to have quite a few books in my niches, linked together. Of couse as I explained earlier the real purpose of this is to get a higher ranking in the amazon store, and get a review or two. Fortunately I got a review before the service, but it would be good to have one more.

When it comes to amazon it is about psychology, seeing even one review makes a big difference. Anyways sure enough, my book shot up in rankings from around 500 to 1000 all the way to #17 overall on Kindle Free Books at its highest. 1# in all its categories, including self-help.



Definitely not bad, now as far as rankings go the question is how high it will be ranked tomorrow and the coming weeks as it goes back to paid. People do usually see rankings transfer over, but lowered usually because it would be crazy for amazon to count free books the exact same as paid. Most people who use the service I used see some sales after the promotion, but it wont hurt me to not see any at this point.

Once again I am not setting huge expectations, in some ways this book was still a learning phase. Still, it is a high quality book compared to the other competitor and I could see it making me a few sales a day, even if not on Amazon because I do have website promotions in production constantly.

What I mean by that is I have 3 websites total planned (2 live, 1 coming) in the same niches my books are in. These are also essentially the 3 niches of life, health, addiction, make money online, where I have passion and experience and can constantly create content. My way of ensuring eventual success is to continue creating e-books and articles and marketing for these niches, so that I will have a steady long term income.

However it is ALOT of work to do all this so I really don't have time for the health niche right now. My book I am promoting right now is health related, but I plan to fully finish the drug addiction niche before i move to that one. I think its important to have a few options in internet marketing, and not only depend on one thing. But at the same time even one method can be very time consuming, so I realized I have to only focus on one or two at a time.

Anyways sorry to ramble, but im hoping to share my tidbits of wisdom over time because things like that can end up being way important than some clever CPA spam method you found. I wish I had known these things before, but armed with new wisdom I shall rewrite history.

OP your journey seems promising...keep at it!

Alrighty so time for an update. My promotion went well I ended up with 5.6k free downloads to my book, but one thing that didn't quite go as planned was that my book returned right back to the same ranking when it reverted to the paid option. It was #19 at free when the free days ran out and was back at ranked #1,000,000 something, which isn't a big deal because I wasn't expecting a ton of sales anyways.

Overall it was still worth it to do the promo, I still plan to sell copies of that book one way or another even if it is through my website, thats the attitude I have in this game. Anyways the only lesson that can potentially be learned is that Amazon no longer ranks your book in relation to the free period once it goes paid, when in the past people usually saw those results. Because of that I quitting IM LOL.

Just kidding anyways the book was a good test experiment so I learned alot and I am not disappointed that I didn't get alot of ranking. I will still rank up over time by selling paid copies, and it has a good review on it that makes it look more attractive. The niche it is in might not get alot of traffic anyways, but the cool thing about Kindle publishing is that the book will always be up there.

I still have gotten some sales the days after that promo but they were on my original book. Its not much but each sale is 2.77 profit, and I plan to have about 5 or 6 in that niche within a few months.



So anyways its not much but its exciting because it sits really low in rank still and my site in the niche barely gets traffic so the potential to scale that up is huge. Originally I planned to split this book up into 2, one much longer novel type and one that is more informational.

Now that the sales which is 7 or 8 have ranked it up slightly, it may be better to simply update this book massively under the same title, and do a re-launch type of promotion to take advantage of the fact that it is at least ranked higher than it would be if it were a new book altogether.

Anyways ive been working pretty hard the last few days to finish some things on my websites and tie up some loose ends. I ended up setting up e-mail forms on both sites but I am not necessarily pushing the signups hard yet. Still, it makes sense to start building that list right away.

I made some finishing touches to graphics as well, and am very happy with how they have turned out, even though I always look for improvements.

My plan is to finish up a few more things tonight, and get ready to start cranking out my next e-book in my main niche. I have been up early because of the time change. Basically when I work I spend all day doing this stuff, while taking a few breaks throughout the day for efficiency and sanity.

Anyways I mentioned needing to get a job in real life for a bit and tommorow I will start putting in alot of applications. If I do this it will make things better in the long run, because it will take a few months to start recieving amazon earnings, and I don't want to rush myself and ruin my good credibility to try and make some fast money elsewhere.

My bills aren't high so I don't have to make much, it will probably be a clothes store nearby. I still will be spending alot of time every day working on stuff, and the faster I make money the better. In fact I have been working hard and waiting to get a job until now to get things setup so I am mostly just writing e-books, building marketing campaigns, and adding content.

Part of this job is efficiency and it is easy to get distracted with all the shiny stuff out there.

My short term objectives are -


- Finish doing the SEO on my two sites for the keywords I found.

- Finish breaking down and revising my old Internet Marketing guide that I plan to re-release within the next months.

- Start researching and writing my next book, estimated 2 to 3 weeks to finish it but it could change. I start that tommorow.

- Start building up the social accounts and marketing campaigns for my 2 sites, some of which is already happening. For example my instagram account in the main niche has over 2k followers but its still not a ton to be really useful. The cool thing is its not a spam account, and I post alot of cool stuff.

- Start adding content to my websites that already have some, and start posting the content on sites.

- Continue to monitor and promote my kindle books, but mostly work on writing the new ones.

Anyways I will probably update again in a few days, but overall I am happy so far. I did not make a ton of sales off my soda book, but it was a good learning experience and I guarantee it will sell plenty in the future. I have gotten a ton done and I have a ton more to go. I estimate within a few months I will be making steady xx$ a day at least off my books.

Great guide bro. I am also into Kindle marketing and I got a new plan from yours.

Please send me the Kindle download service in inbox if possible.

Also very sorry to double post, my wrists hurt lol. I did happen to notice that my soda book is actually ranked 130,000 in paid kindle total, and in the 200-400 range in its 2 categories, which isn't as bad as it was earlier. Hopefully it stays or continues to rise, even though no sale yet. The good news is that if this is the case, I could slowly rank it up through organic sales through my websites.

Wow, this was informative. Thanks mate. I will look into Kindle!

Alrighty folks time for an update. I still have not made much new kindle sales but I wasn't really expecting any yet. The honest truth is that you could upload dozens of books and not make money if they are not done right.

So I would say I have accomplished alot since Tuesday. First of all I finished reading the entire thread here about kindle marketing that is 107 pages.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guys-kindle-is-the-ticket.550442/

I think I spent most of yesterday reading it, which is in contrast to my goal of not wasting all day on blackhatworld. Action is still key, but also research and knowledge is a huge part of that.

I did gain alot more insight from reading the thread, and it makes me much more motivated to publish alot of kindle books. Alot of the guys on there that bank have 30+ high quality books and outsource the writing to make it possible to produce a lot of content.





Why Kindle?


One thing I want to say is that this journey is not limited to Kindle, but its just my best option right now. In fact I wrote my book and posted it on my website before I ever knew the potential of Amazon direct publishing. The only reason I switched to it fully back then was because it was the only place that made a sale. Anyways I think there is a ton of potential for anyone with KDP, but it doesn't seem to be the ticket to easy money thats for sure.

The reason its such a big advantage to me is that I love writing, and literally have so many good ideas for books that its stupid not to write. So why do I not have these books written if I have so many ideas? Thats a damn good question, which is why later in this update I set my goals.

The truth is it is very easy to get unfocused with so many tasks, such as building my 2 websites and stuff. Its not all bad though. Today I spent MOST of the day re-learning SEO stuff, but mostly continuing my education in 2016. I did some SEO stuff back in 2010, but I don't remember making a huge effort with it.

I will say this, as far as my ranking go they are not high but also still 100-200 spots away from page 1 in their smaller niches, which would get sales. I am enrolled in kindle unlimited so I get paid small cents when people borrow my book or read it with kindle unlimited, but it also adds to rankings. So even without sales my rank can change.

My plan for kindle rankings isnt crazy, I will still proably do free promotions like I did although I am not less confident about only using that as a strategy. If i can get initial sales and drive extra with my niche site, it will slowly cause them to rank up. In addition, after I have posted many books in my same niche they will hopefully start to feed each other traffic.




My SEO / Site status



My first and main niche site is mostly SEO optimized for about 4 to 5 keywords. Some are kinda competitive, but the others are not bad. The traffic expected would not be that high though, and some competitors do have alot of juice. Still, it would be stupid not to SEO onpage right off the bat, and start building links even if I don't necessarily incorporate SEO into my goals early on because it is still new for me.

After a bit more work tommorow most of my ONPage SEO will be done, with my main SEO now being link building. I did alot of work and research today and yesterday for my main site mostly, and after tommorow my main focus willbe adding some content. For me it is very easy to get nit picky with minor details of the site so I have to tell myself "Dont make changes for a bit, just write content" unless it is a glaring improvement.

I type very fast (80 wpm but prolly a bit slower IRL) so i can crank out content fast, even high quality unique articles or e-book pages. Im not saying im the best writer in the world, but it is definitely an asset here. I don't want to release 60 articles in 1 week though, so part of my strategy is to just create them at a steady pace.



My Plan



Right now my focus is HEAVILY on my main niche, where most of my first series of e-books will be. I also have my make money site which has been posted here, but its mostly a collection of basic stuff now. I do have optimization for a couple low level keywords, since alot in that niche are very competitive. I plan to maybe release a bit of content for that, but mostly saving it for a month or 2 from now.

So once again I talked about productivity, motivation from the thread, and realizing how to really succeed with Kindle. First of all the more books I release the more I learn, I have learned tons since my last release.

With that being said, my plan is not necessarily to swamp kindle by numbers, but at the same time I am about to really crank things up. The first 2 books were very much learning processes, now its time to really see how much I can optimize the process. Once again I still don't have a job, but I soon will so that will slightly reduce writing time.

I do plan to finish up the on-page SEO and website improvements for my main niche site, but after that site creation will be focused on content.

After that i plan to try to stick to a similar routine each day, because it is very easy for me to waste time.

I plan to spend an hour to 1 1/2 hours tops at the start of the "shift" reading and posting in forums in my 2 niches, which also includes learning as in blackhatworld. I will mostly be doing the forums in my main niche, upping my post count until I can have a signature link. In this same process, I will be updating social media accounts and finding articles / link sources, and just getting the boots on the ground in my niche to start to build links and traffic slowly.

I do not expect it to happen fast, as I already have tested the waters here, but I know I can get steady long term traffic if I build that stuff up. Like I said I plan to segment the time I spend doing these types of things to an hour to an hour and a half max, so that it is a slow daily process and I don't waste good writing time.

I plan to commit the rest of the working day solely to writing, editing or researching my new books, although I may do the research part when I do my social stuff. This will end up being many hours, especially before I have a job because I work most of the day. This won't be much of a change but I feel like if I don't really focus hard my efforts on writing, I am throwing time away. Its time to see what this baby can do.

Setting goals is important, so I thought of some in my head. I want to have 10 e-books live on kindle by 1-1-2017, when I have 2 right now. Honestly compared to some guys thats easy, but they outsource or have much more experience. Still I feel very confident, but keep in mind I am not just cranking out books here. I am focusing highly on quality, and still relatively new as well as it won't be a walk in the park.

That means 1 book a week which is easily doable, even at high quality. The books don't have to be large, but I will be focusing on making them the best they can be because alot of the ideas are my best ones so far and it would be good to build a good reputation early on. I am in this for the long haul. Anyways I think setting that goal as well as the xx$/ day goal by the same date will really help me prioritize and be efficient.

I will probably post back in a few days once I write my next book, which I know I can do in a few days and have been itching to write.


My Motivation

You know not everybody has what it takes to make it in this. Until I make it, I can't exactly say I have what it takes. I do have the motivation to keep going no matter how hard it gets, and the business mindset to make things happen as opposed to getting stopped by roadblocks.

Today my car battery died and I walked home for 2 hours. Couldn't jump the car because 2 cars blocked it in and even hooking up cables after alot of effort was fruitless. It wasn't a huge deal, but it was a general reminder of the fact that I am broke. Of course a job will solve that, and not waiting this long would have improved it, but shit thats just the same old same old.

But at the same time that failure / walk home did not depress me. On the contrary, it just reignites this fire to succeed, and gave me time to plan my shit out as I walked home. i know what I need to do.

I feel like if I just do things the way I am doing them, I get stuff done but I also waste half the day in productivity.

I know what I am capable of, it is simply about mastering my productivity and saying fuck it and just getting shit done.

Things might not look so good right now, but RIchtofen has a plan

Hi there yall I probably wont update this every day but any time it is worth it I certainly will. I definitley feel like its worth updating today. I stuck to the plan so far and got alot done.

Last night I had my usual task list for the next day written out, just extra seo and stuff like that I need to do, but before I fell asleep I wrote under it a note to disregard the list and start working hard on my next book, as opposed to finishing the other stuff and working on the book the next day. Sometimes if I spend too much time making minor changes and additions to my website and stuff like that, I end up wasting alot of time and I just got sick of it and set the goal of writing a ton today.

I was able to start my new book in the main niche, and wrote the first 20 pages of it. So far I am very happy with it and plan on writing the rest of the book mostly tomorrow, with some more possible writing and the main editing / final production occurring Monday. My goal is to upload it to Amazon on Monday, which is entirely do-able if I hustle hard. I won't sacrifice quality for time, but I also have to really keep production going.

I have so many plans and schemes on kindle and beyond so the faster I get this stuff created the better, I fully intend on having 10 books by the start of 2017.

I also wrote the first 5 pages of another book that is a slightly different project. This one is a 30 day project tracking something I am working on, so I will be writing a few pages to that each day as well. This will hopefully make for a high quality book as it won't be rushed, but as long as I start day 1 tomorrow (its sort of a health and wellness quest type thing) I will have a book by mid - december. It is in the health and wellness niche, which is highly competitive with experts all over.

My counter to this is using my favorite thing, my own experience, to give me the unique story that will be appealing. At least thats my theory, but anyways assuming i accomplish both of those things that will leave 4 books already spoken for.

I also added some content to the homepages of both my websites.I had added a bunch of articles lately but found that my actual index pages were outdated, so I added a bit of content to them. Overall I probably wrote 30 pages worth of content today, which I am very happy with. It is alot of work writing that much, but I know I can at least achieve a similar productivity over a long period of a time, at a level that allows me to reach my goal.

Time will tell, but I feel like today was a huge success. As far as actual kindle sales I did sell the 2nd copy of my recent book, it only makes me 2 dollars but its good to see that people are at least interested in the book.

Each sale and kindle borrow seems to increase the ranking of the books, so my hope is that if they can start to get a few sales, they will reach page one in their respective niches.

Once they reach a higher rank on Amazon, the hope is that sales increase and if it is high quality, it stays near the top to generate continued sales.This 2nd book is higher than the first one, and ranks 40 in one category.

My added bonus is that I do not intend on only relying on amazon, although their platform allows people like me to get exposure easily. I plan to drive some sales through my niche websites as a way to boost this, and of course if that doesn't work we will figure something out wont we.

Only time will tell, but I know writing these books will at least pay off enough to be worth it. My hopes are to focus hard on promotion more in the future, but right now I really want to crank out these books. I will update again if anything cool happens, or once this book is finished which will hopefully be monday.

Update again, I been workin my ass off boyos.

I originally intended on doing book #3 in 3 days, but halfway through yesterday I knew I would need at least 5 to really do it justice.

Im not gonna lie guys, I love the idea of the book, and I think it is agood idea but damn

This book is a bitch!

The only reason is because it is a very research intensive book, even though I am already familiar with alot of the subject. In order to really do it justice, it is alot of googling and citing sources etc.
However I have managed to already write 80 pages before the end of day 3, and I will do a few more before it is over.

I am also working every day on my 30 day project, and I am really happy about that one because it allows me to really take my time and add at least 5 or 6 pages per each entry, so by the end I will be above 150 pages easily. Long books aren't always better, but for me if I want to give value it helps when people see that there is alot of content.

Anyways I am literally plowing through book #3, I plan to finish writing tomorrow, I plan to hit 100 pages in the end which is about as long as I would ever want it. I will edit the crap out of it tommowow, and probably more Wednesday before I get a cover and upload it. I will post another update when I actually finish it.

Sales still aren't huge, but surprisingly book #2 actually had 3 days of sales in a row, even though it was 1 or 2 each day. This is compared to it not selling really any in the last month, so it seems to be getting a bit more attention.




Of course its not alot, just 2$ a sale for that one, but my other one is priced at 3.99 so sales of that net 2.75, which is a better profit.

Still thats a good little motivational factor because honestly I wasn't sure that book would even sell, also as your book gets more sales Amazon ranks it higher, which increases visibility. Also kindle unlimited borrows add to the rank too, even though they only pay .5 cents per page. Apparently it gets pooled together, so based on that I would have a few dollars, but im not worried about it.



Its on page 1 for some categories, so hopefully it will stick near the top, but if it goes a few days without sales it easily drops. Of course by the time this is all over I plan to have articles and stuff for each book, ive reserached keywords and have 2 of my 3 websites up already, but once again SEO and website traffic is secondary for me right now against writing a bunch of books.


STRATEGY SESSION GIVES ME MASSIVE ERECTION


I plan to focus hard on writing the get to 10 books by the end of december, but I will still do articles and stuff a bit. I am very anxious to get this project done, because the next 4 book series I have planned will be easier to write, less research intensive.

As far as Book #1 which is kind of a personal story type book, I updated the formatting and decided against rewriting it completely. I actually changed to a better cover, and I still may someday go in and optimize it more after learning this game. It seemed pointless to do what I had originally thought about, which was rewrite it into the story I want it to be. Since some people have already bought it I dont want to screw their copys up, and it seems best to take advantage of numbers here.

My plan for the next 4 books is to basically rewrite certain parts that I feel would appeal as a single book, making it a 4 part series. It will be unique and much more detailed than book #1 since I will be breaking it up, and I will end up selling the set of 4 as a bundle for a good deal. Instead of writing one really long book which would end up being unreadable for some people, it will be easy for some people to target what they want.

Thats my theory anyways, but this is all cool because there are alot of possibilities of ways to market books. Itll be easier to write these next ones.

I will say one last thing before ending this post, there is money to be made on Kindle but it is certainly not the place for a quick or easy buck. Their payout terms are really slow most likely to counter that, but at the same time its perfect for me because I love writing, and have alot to write about. Ill probably post again once I finish this book in a couple days.

Nice journey

11/18/2016


Alright folks time for another update. Thank fucking god I finished Book #3, its uploaded and im not anticipating any rejections its actually my best work so far.

I originally started a week ago and said 3 days, but to be honest I had no idea how much work this book would be. I have 34 references in the end, but of course it is mostly all hand written by me. It ended up taking 7 days which is still my fastest work, but I will say that sometimes these books take longer than you think. This will definitley be one long hard ass grind but I am happy to be actually creating something that will be around forever.

I am happy with the work, it has more pictures than my last ones, its fairly long around 100 pages, and in my opinion my best work so far.

No major sales since last time, I feel like it will take a few more books to see consistent sales. Once I do that will be more motivation. Anyways here is my short term plan. I still want 10 books by new years but if it ends up being at least 8 I will be happy, as it is hard to tell how long the next projects will really take.

Ill be honest i have ideas to at least be able to fill 20 to 25 books once series are considered, the task is just writing them. I do see why some of the bigger kindle masters on this forum use ghost writers, but for me its not an option, and I know in the long run I want it to be my words.


This project was a fuckload of work, I am literally drained right now. My next few will not be nearly as much research, so I do expect them to be easier to write, but will still probably take at least a week each. I plan on switching niches, and alternatiing for the next few books.

I plan to write at least 3 or 4 articles for my website, that are related to the book I just wrote. Website doesn't have much traffic, but I will post the article to many sites to at least build backlinks.

I plan to not start the new book for a day or two, in that time I need to organize some social accounts, I need to start a new IG account for a new idea, related to a future book plan.

I also will be going and optimizing book #2 based on some new experience creating books, and have a cover redesign.

I may optimize book#1 slightly just to see if I can increase sales. It did sell a copy yesterday but still doesn't sell a ton.

I am writing Book#4 ongoing as a 30 day project so I will keep doing that every day, I think it will turn out great.

Finally I just need to keep adding a bit of content to my sites, and start doing a bit of promo but still I am focusing on creating more books, I just don't want to have 30 books in June and not have any traffic to my websites, when I could start building it now.

I will probably post again in a few days once I get some of this done. Should have a job soon but it will be good to get some cash in my pocket, and I still plan on fully running the Kindle Factory (My Room's Nickname) as hard as I can.



Anyways guys, I am happy to have 3 books now, and also happy to be done because I worked my ass off on this book! Lets see if it can pay off!

That is a lot of important information. I'll read it top to bottom.

Whats up homies 11/21 time for an update.

tired as fuck brahs, as usual but I have been grindin like typical. I feel much more productive at IM compared to last time, but I think it will be a year before I accomplish all my tasks lol. This is life for me tho baby.

So as of last update I had finished book #3, and had a massive task list ahead of me. It is not all done, but here is what I did the last 3 days.


- Completely revamped Book#2 with a couple extra chapters, and added pics in many places. Its still the same book, but the pictures and added chapters probably brought it from 56 kindle pages to 80+, and added lots of value. Submitted fiverr order for cover redesign, and waiting on that.


- Had the idea to add another chapter to my new book, which I had not thought of in production, bringing it to above 100 pages, which I feel is a good psychological barrier. It sold one copy in 3 days so far, for a profit of 2.60$. Not much but I am very hopeful about this one after I do promotion.


- Created a couple new instagram accounts, because I was inspired by a bhw idiot with some good ideas that can be used to grow accounts (nature pics, inspirational type stuff). Since I have plans to have books in that niche, I want to start building them now, since I will be doing it slowly and manually.


- Got plans in mind for exactly which social media accounts i need to have, to be efficient but maximize potential, also got new website idea/plan.


- Wrote out a list of all my current book ideas, totaling 20-25, which I hope to reach by June/July.


-Added new articles to a couple sites, and kept working on Book#4 (30 day project).


- Totally resetted my shitty laptop to factory setting, placing my files on a flash drive. This was due to a couple things.


When I bought my lapttop I had not idea I would get back into IM, so I bought a cheap low RAM walmart smalltop. It is not good for doing so many tasks, and got bogged down quick. Also probably looking at porn has contributed some viruses. Also I have on 30gb of hard drive which filled up fast.


Resetting to factory helped and I am good to go. You can accomplish anything even with a shitty laptop.

So overall not bad, I find when I finish a project and start getting caught up on other shit I get distracted easily, and waste some time. I feel like I am getting better.


I feel like I keep making progress, and I am close to being in a system where I have my social accounts organized, and am spending a few hours of IM time promoting, and a good few hours writing my new books.

Speaking of that, my amazon stats still arent crazy but I did take some pics to show that even my small number of books is already starting to at least show results.



Its not a ton, but you can see a couple things. One, if you just upload 1 book it is very easy for sales to drop off for a while. I released book #2 on October 20, but once again went a while without sales. You can also see that now that I have started to really hustle harder on Kindle, sales have returned. My first sale was on Oct 2, where my first book came out Sept. 20. Total sales are at 35$, so still not much yet.

The next chart shows Kindle borrows, it will be obvious for kindle marketers but it took me 1 month to even understand what it meant.


So you see based on this one I had EVEN LESS activity until the start of November, but since then it has changed alot. All I did was start releasing books, and today was a major record and increase. I care more about the steady increase. It does translate to money, but not much, but I will explain how.

It is only available for KDP Select, the blue line shows pages read from people reading it with kindle unlimited, which lets them read unlimited books for a monthly amazon subscription. It also counts for borrows from other people, but honestly I still understand less about that. I get paid .5 cents for each page read. So for each 100 pages read I earn 50 cents. It is not alot, but hopefully it will become much greater after I have 20+ books.

For reference, my higher days were 162 before today, but I noticed tonight it went up to 252 which isn't bad. The important thing for me is that its too early to be dependant on results, but the fact that my efforts are making a difference is really what matters. It shows that I am on the right track, even if it still isn't banking yet.

Also more borrows still adds to ranking, and my books still teeter away from page 1 in their categories.

Of course for me this is more than money, I have always loved writing and helping others, and expressing my experiences and thoughts to do so. Some books are different plans, but having a successful publishing business would be a dream.


Richtofen's plan

I won't get much else done today as it is the end of the night, but I plan to have the rest of the "tidying up" done tommorow morning.

I will for sure start book#5 tommorow, it is switching niches which is a relief.

I dont have high hopes for it, but it will be the start of a series, and I will figure out ways to make it worth reading before I am done. It wont require so much research as the last one, but I expect it to take at least a week.

I will finish my organized list of every social account/ stats, forum and other site names, book ideas, and anything else I need to reorganize.

I will add more articles to my site, and go back to all my forums to re log after losing cookies and stuff, but that wont be too bad.

I will keep adding articles and posts to other websites, and slowly start to promote my social accounts. I need to write as much as possible, but also dont want 25 books and 0 traffic.

I will also start to try SEO for some of my keywords, building backlinks since most onpage SEO is done

I have job applications sent out, and am waiting to get hired as they are easy jobs to get. I need it to fund the IM ventures and secure my money while I wait for these to pay off.

They will pay off though.

I may not end up with 10 by new years, but still am going to try. At the same time quality is key here, so 8 would satisfy me if they are good.

Hows it goin guys, quick update here no graphs or long stories. Things are still going good, sales still low but I get one every few days. My kindle pages read spiked even higher the next day to 300 pages. This only translates to 1.50$ but still not bad. It has fallen back to 70 but it hasnt fallen as far as it usually does.

I am on page 25 of writing my next book. My 30 day book project is 40 pages but I have decided to pause it. bascially its a health transformation type thing and I have been doing good, but I honestly don't have the money to buy the foods I need to really do it. I could easily lie but it wouldn't feel right. I dont plan on pausing it for long, but probably a few weeks to a month.

Part of it is because it really is hard to write 2 books at once, im having trouble staying focused on the writing but I think another day or 2 will help that. I plan to have book#4 done by December 1.

Meanwhile I have been focusing alot more on building social media accounts up. I have 7 IG accounts, 5 FB pages, a few twitter accounts, and a few youtube channels. Some have content, some have over 1k followers already, the FB pages are low right now. I plan to slowly build traffic and content to these pages, and they all will feed to my websites eventually.

I don't want to be stuck 6 months from now with 20 books and no traffic, so I am building it slow. I am also building pinterest and reddit accounts, but the reddit will take a while before it can be used to post links to my sites.

Anyways still going good, I need a few more days to really have my social accounts started and ready to just slowly build, but its mostly done. I will post back in a few days, but things are getting better.

Still not a ton of money but I feel like my opportunities keep growing, it will just take time to get traffic.

Haha, this makes me want to write a book or two.