How to Actually Make Money Selling eBooks. While mostly eBook sellers like Amazon or Barnes only accept submissions from major book publishers. I use to make money with Amazon by tracking IDs. 20 Tips I Used To Make $90,336.65 With Amazon. Like an ebook. Not only does the post itself. Recently, I heard a great quote: “Amazon.com is teaching people to buy a lot of little things.” This is a great statement because it emphasizes how we’re witnessing the death throes of the traditional eBook. With Kindle books, Amazon.com provides people with instant access to downloadable information. So it’s getting harder and harder to charge premium prices for eBooks. ![]() At first, I was disturbed by this emerging trend. But now I realize there is a completely untapped market for anyone to make money with Amazon Kindle books. Two weeks ago, I jumped into the Kindle market with my book: What I discovered is it’s really easy to make a Kindle book. The trick is to do it in a way that leads to long-term income. In this post, I’ll go over my experiences with publishing on Amazon. Plus I’ll detail a few strategies I’m personally implementing that will (hopefully) maximize the income potential from this business model The Mathematics of Creating a Kindle Book Let’s start by talking about my total investment for publishing on Amazon. Here’s how it breaks down: • $75 to a writer to collect, format, and edit the content. (More on this later.) • $22 to a designer to create a flat eCover image. ![]() • 8 hours of my personal time to change a few links; do a final edit, and format the Kindle book. So overall I spent a day’s work and almost a hundred dollars to make a Kindle book. That’s a small investment considering this book has the potential to generate income for many years. Pretty awesome, right? Get Started by Doing Keyword Research Personally, I think the success of your Kindle book depends on keyword research. We all understand the importance of optimizing a website for certain keyword phrases. ![]() How to Make Money ($2,700/Month) Publishing Amazon Kindle eBooks with No Writing — Passive Income Case Study. Here's how I make money online with ebooks and how you can too. But nearly all of my promotion work is done by leveraging Amazon’s algorithms to do the work for me. Can you really, honestly earn money from self. Most of my e-books have sold a few thousand. Ten Steps to Formatting Your E-book for Sale on Amazon. You can take this strategy and apply it to publishing an Amazon Kindle book. There are two important rules to remember: • Google LOVES Amazon pages and gives them preferential ranking • Amazon is a search engine that is used by BUYERS Seriously, these two statements are the most important things you should know about Kindle publishing. Keep them in mind and you’ll be one step closer to making money with a book on Amazon. Case in point My product content came from a series of old posts on generating online income. So I started by doing basic research using the. After five minutes, I found that these phrases had a lot of searches: Let’s recap the demand for these keywords: • How to Make Extra Money: 9,900 exact searches • How to Make Money Fast: 49,900 exact searches • Make Money Using Your Computer: 320 exact searches • How to Make Extra Money Fast: 480 exact searches Those are just the exact searches. Include the broad searches and we’re talking about more than 500,000 requests for information related to making money online. Now, here’s where things get interesting Like I said Google loves Amazon products. With a little bit of backlinking, you can get a Kindle book to show up in their organic results. As an example, I’m already ranking #10 for the phrase how to make extra money fast: I’ll admit 480 exact searches won’t make me ‘Oprah rich.’ But this result is after one week. Give me a few months and I’ll rank high for this phrase and the larger demand keywords like how to make extra money and how to make money fast. In addition, Amazon has a vast search engine used by book buyers. Their results are largely determined by reviews and overall sales. Get enough people to buy your Kindle book and you’ll rank high for top-quality keywords. For instance, I’m already ranked #9 in their books section for the phrase how to make money fast: Unfortunately, there is no way to track keyword research in Amazon.com. So it’s hard to get an exact number of keyword searches people do on this site. But I’d estimate there is at least a couple thousand searches every month for make money keywords. Imagine having 1000’s of people searching for YOUR book topic and easily finding it on Amazon.com. Now you can see why it’s important to do keyword research. How to Write a Kindle Book Running an Internet business is all about leveraging your time and assets. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every new project. In fact, one thing I recommend is to package some of your best content and put it into Amazon Kindle format. Awhile back, I wrote a series of posts about different ways to generate income. I feel these posts made a great topic for a Kindle book because they’re designed for people who want to make money but don’t know how to get started. So instead of writing a Kindle book, I paid $75 to a writer to collect my old blog posts and reformat them into a small report. Then I spent a whole day doing additional research, updating the content, and creating special links for readers. The end result is I “wrote” a Kindle book in under a week. My advice is don’t get bogged down in the writing aspect for your first Kindle book. Instead, use great content you’ve already created. Find a major keyword in your niche. Then add articles or posts that tightly relate to this topic. You’d be surprised at how quickly you put together a product for Amazon. Later on, you can write an in-depth book with 100% unique content. But I think it’s more important to learn about the process of publishing on Amazon instead of worrying about writing creating a whole new product. How to Create an Amazon Book – Formatting & Submitting I’m pretty much a techno-dunce when it comes to a lot of things online. So I found the whole process of Kindle publishing to be very simple to follow. Amazon makes it easy by offering a detailed series of articles about. Read over these articles and you’ll discover that anyone can create a Kindle book. You can easily do this in less than 24 hours. But there are a few things I’d like to mention #1. You should write the book in DOC (or.doc) format. Not RTF (.rtf) or DOCX (.docx) formats. These do not work properly when published to a Kindle. Once the book has been formatted, it should be saved as a Web Page, Filtered (*HTM & *HTML) format. You should use page breaks at the start of each chapter or section. This prevents the text from running together and makes your book easier to read. You should avoid bullet points, headers, footers, and special fonts. You can use italics, bolding, and indentations. Frankly, I hate the fact that they don’t allow bullet points because the text doesn’t look right without them. Hopefully this will change in the future. You should spell and grammar check the book. Double, triple, even quadruple check your Kindle book. I made a huge mistake by not doing this with my first published version. So I had to go back and change a few grammatical errors/word omissions I initially missed. I recommend you complete the Kindle book and then wait a day before doing a final review. This will give you a chance to look at it with a fresh perspective. You should use an attractive eCover. This is the same thing you’d do with an information product. Spend a few dollars and have a professional designer create an image that stands out. And I’ve made it easy for you. Like I said, it’s not hard to make a Kindle Book. Just use the links I’ve provided in this section and you’ll be good to go! How to Make Money with Amazon Kindle Books The payout for a Kindle download is pretty low. Basically you get two options – A 35% or 70% royalty on the price of the book. There are a lot of factors when it comes to the payment you receive from Amazon.com. That’s why I recommend you. Really you’ll only make a dollar or two per sale of your book. Perhaps this adds up over time. ButI think there are three ways you can really monetize an Amazon book: #1. Turn Readers into Email Subscribers: People that buy Kindle books are customers. And without a doubt, customers are the best type of list subscribers. That’s why you should offer a “bonus gift” at the start and end of every Kindle book. This bonus gift should lead to a free report that’s related to the topic in your Kindle book. As an example, I offer a free copy of my “Income Trilogy” report and a spot on my early-bird list for the 111 Affiliate Marketing Tips report I’m launching in two weeks: The key here is to offer additional value to what’s published in the book. This will give readers an incentive to check out your personal brand and join your email list. Link to Money Pages: A “Money Page” is any spot on your blog that gives additional content, while also recommending an income-generating offer. So another way you can make money with a Kindle book is to provide a link to a page filled with relevant content. For instance, anyone who wants to make money online might be interested in starting a website. So in the beginning of the book I reference a page where people can learn about setting up a website: On this page is a very light recommendation of a web hosting package. In theory, I can generate additional income simply by sending readers to a spot where they learn how to set-up a website. Use Affiliate Links: The final way to make money with an Amazon book is to include affiliate links to related products. Now I recommend you be very careful with this technique. Include too many self-serving links and people will crucify you with bad reviews. Just look at what happened to one author: Be straight-forward with readers. Tell them when something is an affiliate link. This *should* prevent a lot of bad reviews that many authors get with their Kindle book. Create Backlinks to Your Amazon Page Like I said, I think the key to making money with Kindle books is to rank in Google for high demand keywords. Amazon already gets a lot of link love from this search engine. But you also need to add extra link juice to improve your rankings. That’s why it’s important to create backlinks to your Amazon page. Unfortunately, my favorite backlinking tool does not accept Amazon sites. So I’ve had to get creative with how I link to my Amazon page. What I do know is Amazon gets thousands of backlinks on a daily basis. So it’s pretty safe to be aggressive with your linking strategy. As an example, I’m currently using these two vendors to do a few ninja backlinking campaigns to my Amazon page: • • Both of these people provide reputable backlinking services. Only time will tell if they will help my Amazon page increase its Google ranking. Probably, I’ll do a follow-up post to this article and talk about the results I get from these services. Bottom line is you should do some sort of backlinking to an Amazon page. Google loves Amazon pages. So even a little push will send your Kindle listing to the top of the search engine listings. Final Thoughts on How to Make Money with Amazon So far, I’ve enjoyed my experience with self-publishing on Amazon. I’m amazed at the simplicity of the entire process. Now I’m kicking myself for not getting started sooner. Right now, I’m creating a strategy where I’ll release a new Kindle book every month or so. Hopefully in a year’s time I’ll have a catalog of Kindle books that each make a little bit of money, while pushing people to check out my personal brand. Don’t have a Kindle book already? I recommend you get started right away. Just take some of your best content and turn it into a simple-to-follow report. Before you know it, you’ll have a book that reaches an audience that can’t be found through traditional means like blogging. Steve, I’m glad your covering this topic because Kindle is HUGE right now. I have one book published (actually more of a tiny pamphlet) that is not doing well. That’s ok though because my blog is still small and with only one book up I doubt I’m getting that much exposure. Once I get my second book (one that is more substantial than a little pamphlet) I hope to see some better results. I’ll remember to do keyword research for the second book. One thing I will say is that I hope you didn’t enroll your book in KDP Select. I hear that Amazon won’t allow you to even post excerpts for Select books, and of course if your book is a collection of some of your older posts it’s going to have excerpts all over the place. Daniel, I totally agree. I am slowly coming to the realization that Kindle ebooks really could be the next big thing. Like any advance, people that do not get on board early will either fail in the long run, or have to rush to catch up. I am sure it will take us all a while to perfect the system, but it is important that we all take the time to try. Thanks for the heads up on KDP Select. I think you are right and that should be something to avoid. There is a fair bit of rewritingbut still, as you sais there will be large chunks that could be found online. From what I have seen, they run the gamut. Now I know you deliver qualitybut I think the key is actually delivering what you offer. I know I got one kindle “ebook” once that wasn’t even what I would call an article, being only about 800 words. But I have also seen and gotten a few that were quite robust. I am by no means an expert, but I think a good range probably above 4000 words. But what really matters is that you deliver what you promise. (at least the way I see it) Amazon is a pretty fair system, you burn a few people and they WILL take the time to leave you some nasty reviews. If it can be done in 2000 words fine it if takes 50,000, then that is what it takes. But to answer you questionmy ebook is 13,000 words. Rob thanks for the questions, here goes: My ebook is 13,000 words It sells for $2.99 (of which I get 70% Amazon 30%) Elance is my default for things like this, mainly because I have always used elance (not saying oDesk couldn’t be better) I am surprised that it wouldn’t show you a price, though. Even without having a kindle there are thousand of ways to read kindle books. (cell phone and Ipad apps, desktop/laptop apps etc.) Maybe when you “sign up” with amazon for ANY of those it will give you the option. Actually I was logged in to Amazon.com at the time but I’m in the UK so there is a button where the price should be that says: “Kindle titles are available for UK customers on Amazon.co.uk. Continue shopping on the Kindle Store at Amazon.co.uk.” And then when you click that you are taken through to the main page of the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store! Really surprising that Amazon can’t link you through to the same product from country to country! Anyway, if you search for it at Amazon.co.uk then you can see the price £1.95 GBP. Sorry, can I ask another question? Which gig do you use with salmanaslam on Fiverr? Thanks again, Steve, this has really got me interested. Andy, Yeah this one is a learning experience for me too. I have a feeling that the more you do the better it might become. (giving more people chances to buy and find you) I really think the key is to get your keywords to rank on Google. Once you do that everything else will follow. JUST having Amazon searches means that people have to find it and buybut if they never find it in the first place that can be difficult. I guess time will tell. Thanks for dropping by and sharing your experience. I totally agree as well. Ebooks and especially Kindle and all the outlets that Amazon offer are truly the next big thing. I still love holding a paper copy of a book. But one has to realize that ebooks and Amazon distribution equal a combination that will reach untold hundreds and hundreds of prospective readers. Publishing ebooks is as easy as 1-2-3 and there are a plethora of available means to produce them. Now all I have to do is WRITE an ebook. Get started on one yourself and see where the adventure takes you. Ed, I agree completely. I am old enough I still sometimes have a certain nostalgia for a “real” book myself. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see print books disappear as my generation gets to the point where we are not a marketing factor (say 30-40 years). But ebooks will continue to grow in value until then. (since that is the major distribution hub of the younger generation. I also agree that the hard part is to actually write the darn things. It takes time and effort. My best advice is to break it into manageable chunks. Make yourself do just 30-40 minutes each day. But put that time in each and every day, come hell or high water. Soon enough it will be done. Hey Steve, It’s kind of entertaining to see that a few of us bloggers like you, Tristan and I have worked on Kindle books behind-the-scenes, hivemind! In my approach, I was writing an uber long post for one of my websites and by the end it was already pushing nearly 7,000 words so I decided to convert it, upload it and push it onto the Kindle marketplace instead. Got a few sales but haven’t been doing too much with it but it’s still a really interesting experience. I think there’s a lot of potential here especially since you can do smaller books that could just be the “best of” posts from the blog, imo. Now that’s a great post Steve. I always appreciate how much detail and information you share with us in your posts. I’ve been reading a lot lately about Kindle books and how easy it really is to publish. I guess I just have not gotten around to it and really didn’t know what I’d write about. Grabbing some of your older blog posts and creating them in a report is an awesome idea. I keep having people tell me that I need all my posts on a certain topic put into a report anyway. Why not just sell it on Amazon. So you’ve got my head to thinking now and I guess I just need to break down and do it. One thing about it, I’ll be reverting back to this post for help. Thanks Steve, as always, you come through for us in a big way! Morris, I agree, SEO is essential. Without having keywords that rank on Google, I don’t see how you could ever get your ebook found on Amazon. Sure sales drives books upbut you need those sales or no one will find you on Amazon in the first place. So certainly you need a huge base to launch from, or some killer SEO. As for linkswell that is something I am working on. So far I have tried a couple of links from blog blueprint, links from this blog, some social networking/bookmarking and a couple of “fiverr” gigs for link wheels. Hopefully I will create a good amazon link building campaign and may have a more specific article on that in the future. Hey Steve, Loved your deep analysis over Kindle and Amazon man. I wanted to know what I needed to publish directly to Amazon and I honestly was expecting a lot more technical stuff to do so it is surprisingly easy I guess. However, I’m not sure I like that restriction with bullet points, how do you format a list for presentation then? I’m also wondering how many affiliate links could that poor guy used to get some nasty reviews in return (so we could avoid doing it like that!). Great post Steve, you never fail to surprise me with your articles, so keep them coming man and take care! I think that in the first keyword graphic, the right result for Make Money Using Your Computer: 320 exact searches Should be (58 searches) as that’s what’s in square brackets and getting the ‘exact search’. Steve, aloha. Thanks for the detail in this post. Seeing the steps and the analysis is extremely motivating. Thanks too for the links to your vendors. As it happens, I am starting a new project which I believe will lend itself perfectly to this. The wheels inside my head are a turning and a churning. When I release my first book, Steve, I will send you a complimentary copy. Again, thanks for so generously sharing your knowledge and experience with us. Best wishes for the success of what I know will be the first of many ebooks. Interesting resources you mention for backlinking and Kindle covers, Steve. I have made a note of them. I have published my Detox eBook on Kindle but I have only sold about 10 so far. I have neglected the backlinking aspect and also notice that flat covers are being used on Kindle and mine is the usual 3D ecover. Great idea about creating a book from old blog posts. I have plently of those that I could put to good use. I have listened to several webinars about making money with Kindle books and it seems you have to have hundreds of books on Kindle to make any real money. They talk about outsourcing books for about $20. I don’t know if it is possible to get a good book written for this amount but I am seriously thinking about expanding into Kindle book publishing. Sandy, I could be wrong, but I don’t think it is necessary to have hundreds of e-books to make money on Amazon. I have heard those theories too, and as for ranking internally to Amazon and basically trying to sell low-quality stuff by volume. ( something I’m not interested in) I think the secret is in making sure that your link also ranks on Google those specific keywords, then the Google traffic drives the Amazon sales which in turn increases your position for your main keywords on Amazon, having more sales and creating backups which in turn drives up your Google position. Like many things there is numerous ways to skin a cat, but hopefully this is the best way for fairly decent products. Hi Steve, You’ve written another first class post detailing everything we need to do when we start Kindle publishing. I love the way you’ve broken it all down and detailed every step you took and the results you’re getting. I reviewed a Kindle Publishing product last year and in the process I re-worked a PLR and loaded it onto Kindle. Needless to say in their PLR clear out the product of mine was removed. However I have 2 products that I have written so I do aim to get back over there with those once I have worked through them and formatted them for Kindle. That shouldn’t be to far away now as I’m slowly getting through some of my other projects and when I do I will be sure to come back and go through your advice here with a fine tooth comb I’m holding a video challenge over at my blog, starting next week for 4 weeks. I am hoping to encourage people to start creating videos and adding them to their blogs as well as giving experienced people the opportunity to show off their skills. I’ve also been challenged to get 100 people on board so am on a bit of a mission. Would you be interested Steve? Thanks for the post, I know it’s going to help me a lot in the near future Barry. Steve – one word – excellent (idea)! I particularly like your concept about being able to rank your Amazon offering by gaining top rankings in Google for very competitive keyword phrases. I tried this with eBay stores recently, although with somewhat mixed results, has to be said. I too used a number of fiverr.com gigs for backlinking. Fact is though – not everyone will want to opt for an investment in an eBay store, whereas – everyone can in fact create an eBook about some topic they are interested in. And to then gain rankings in Google providing you use Amazon as your “vehicle” so to speak, is a whole lot easier than it is if you are trying to rank a fresh website. Great idea Steve, it really is! Joseph, First of all I want to thank you for the shout out in your last autoresponder email. I am glad to see that you are taking the minimalism idea and running with it. Hopefully it keeps working for ya! As you well know (probably better than I), it still will take a lot of effort to rank for your ebook keywords on Google. But the big G really does seem to love Amazon and those links just seem to rise in the ranking “easier” than I suspect ebay would. Thanks for another great comment! I hope your weekend is going splendidly. 880 is a tad on the low side. (I aim for 1000 min.) but could be worthwhile to “see how it goes”. Of course if you can target a “couple” at 880then it is great:). I would certainly go for the lower ones at first. Then in time you can always make an effort for more competitive ones. Specifically starting out it is better (IMO) to get some easy success than to bite off more than you can chew and not get to the point of seeing results. Good luck man! When you release the ebook, let me know and I will swing by and give it a review (since I have read most of your articles). Sorry I have been gone for so long man. But I picked a crazy time to visit your blog again. It’s funny because I literally just opened up an “add new post” on my blog to write about making money as an Amazon eBook author before I decided to go and visit some old friends first. Then I come here, and here you are with the same kind of thing on your blog. Here’s my take man. I have 9 books on Amazon. 4 of them are in my own name, and 5 are published using a pen name. It’s important to use pen names because #1 it protects your reputation in case something goes bad, like what happened on the example you shown above with the reviews. Of course, you are going to get bad reviews no matter what you do because someone will always bitch about something. That’s just how it is. But if you write a good product, the others will recognize it and defend any bad reviews you may get. In the case of writing on different subjects, it’s wise to use pen names for the different subjects. That way you will not look like a know-it-all. In addition, you will get referrals from the “customers who bought this also bought” feature. It’s good to keep niches separated with pen names. I have found that the higher your price, the lower amount of sales you will get. If your ultimate goal is to make a $2,000 or more income from residual book sales (and borrows if you are signed up with KDP), then it’s wise to just put out 20-30 page eBooks at 99 cents a piece. One of my books actually racked in $1,000 per month on it’s own with sales and borrows at the 99 cent price. Brandon, First of all nice to see you again! It has been a while. (I will certainly swing by your site to see whats going on there!) Second, thanks for all the insight on your experiences writing in different niches. I can certainly see where some less than honorable guys might go and write trashy reviews to sink a competitor. It is sad to think that people would stoop that lowbut I have no doubt at all it happens. Also good tips on writing for multiple niches. Specifically if you are prolific. For this niche I am using it partially as a branding tool, so going with all the same name. But If I were to ever write something about traveling (or another of my interests), I would think long and hard about going a pseudonym route for those reasons. Again, thanks for dropping by and leaving an awesome comment! Thanks for the very informative and helpful article. I’m thinking of grouping together about six to eight of my blog posts together to make an e-book to upload on Amazon for the Kindle (I usually write 1,500 word posts). I was thinking about removing the blog posts once I do that. I don’t think I’ll be adding too much extra content to the e-book. Do you still leave up your old blog posts or do you remove them? I’ve decided to not have ads on my site, but I would like to earn some money from my writing. I was thinking of telling my e-mail list that any post that is six months old, I might remove from the site to repurpose for a later e-book. What do you think of this idea?
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