Are you thinking of self-publishing a book on Amazon KDP?
KDP is Amazon’s self-publishing platform, which controls around 80% of the eBook market in the U.S. alone.
Book publishing is a beginner-friendly and inexpensive business model. In less than 24 hours you can set up an account, upload your book and have it selling on Amazon's platform.
I believe that publishing books on Amazon are one of the best opportunities to get started making money online.
If you want to know a few different strategies for making money publishing books, read this!
Watch the video below:
(Click here to watch on YouTube)
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Do you want to know how you can create $10k per month in passive income with book publishing? CLICK HERE to get access to my FREE video training!
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Amazon book publishing was how I got my first taste of success.
Before I discovered book publishing, I was a dating coach. When I was 21 years old, I started my first company called Lifestyle Transformations. I coached thousands of men on how to build confidence so that they could attract a partner into their lives.
Even though I loved my work, it was challenging to market my business and find clients. On top of that, I was trading my time for money. Therefore, there weren't a lot of opportunities to scale my business.
When I discovered the world of Internet marketing and learned about passive income, the game changed. Instead of helping just one person, I realized that I could take my knowledge, package it into an information product and sell it on the Internet.
With this route, I quickly learned that there was no limit to how many people I could reach. One of the first products I ever created was a dating eBook called Creating Success With Women. Inside the book, I shared my story and different strategies that I was teaching through my 1:1 coaching. I spent a year writing that book.
At the time, I didn't know about Amazon book publishing. I put my book together as a PDF and published it on my website. At first, I tried to sell my book to my clients. I made a couple hundred bucks from it, but it wasn't life-changing money. However, it proved that publishing books online could be a viable passive income stream.
I came across Amazon book publishing while trying to figure out how I could make money online through blogging and affiliate marketing. I would write high-quality articles that promoted affiliate products.
To be honest, I never thought that I could make a lot of money from Amazon.
I thought that I could make more money selling my books on my website. Amazon is a search engine. People type in keywords and look for products and books. The only difference between Amazon and Google is that people go to Google to look for free information, while people go to Amazon to buy products.
I decided to take all of my blog content, compile that knowledge into a series of eBooks, and publish them on Amazon. I soon realized that it was easier to rank a book on Amazon than it was on Google. Surprisingly, I started making money right away.
To make the publishing process easier and scale my business faster, I hired ghostwriters via Upwork.com to write my books. Also, I found designers on Fiverr.com to create book covers for me. During this process, my goal was to experiment and gain a lot of experience in a variety of niches.
I published over 100 books. That was my introduction to Amazon book publishing. Over the years, the popularity of Amazon has exploded. More people buy and use Amazon than ever. As such, the potential to make money on Amazon is much greater.
However, Amazon has become more competitive in the sense that there are more book publishers. The good news is that Amazon's platform has grown over the years. Today, they have a lot more tools and analytics to help you succeed.
I want to share with you a few strategies for making money by publishing books on Amazon. Let's dive in!
Strategy #1 – Build A Book Publishing Business
With this strategy, you're creating and publishing books in a certain niche or a variety of different niches. The goal is to make passive income from your books. If you love writing, you can write books yourself.
However, when you're writing a book yourself, it will slow down how many books you can publish because everything is dependent on you. Conversely, you can just focus on publishing and marketing your books. By hiring a ghostwriter you own 100% of the rights to your books.
You have the right to publish your books with whatever name you want. Also, you collect 100% of the profits from your sales. The goal of scaling in a business is that you want to work ON your business instead of IN it. In my opinion, this is how to work smart.
Kindle books are a growing market. A lot of people prefer reading eBooks instead of paperback books. That being said, the biggest market is paperback and hardcover books. There's also a growing market for audiobooks, especially with the emergence of podcasting.
Keep in mind that you get paid differently on each platform. You can make the most money with paperback books. Realistically, you can charge anywhere between $20-$30. Conversely, with Kindle books, you can only charge between $2.99 and $9.99.
You want to consider publishing all three – Kindle, paperback, and audiobook.
A lot of books on Amazon might make you a couple hundred or a couple thousand bucks per month. However, it's hard to make a full-time income from publishing books. Nonetheless, it can be life-changing for some people to make some extra passive income.
Strategy #2 – Use Your Book To Generate Leads On The Backend
If you don't care as much about the money that you make from a book on the front end, you can use your book as a way to generate leads. If you have a call to action inside of your book, you can funnel people into the product or service that you want to promote on the backend.
A book can be looked at as a form of in-depth content that builds a relationship with people. If your content adds massive value, a percentage of people who buy your book may become customers.
For example, I published a book called 67 Morning Ritual Habits on Amazon. In my business, one of my niches is morning rituals. Back in 2012, I published a video on YouTube that went viral.
I decided to publish a book and made a list of everything that I do for my mind, body, and spirit as part of my morning ritual. I worked with a ghostwriter who wrote about these 67-morning ritual habits.
At the end of my book, I have a call to action that takes people to my website where they can buy my Morning Ritual Mastery course if they want to. Also, inside my book, I share links to affiliate resources and products that I use as part of my morning ritual.
My goal is to get as many people as possible to buy and read my book to acquire customers. A book is a great way to build your credibility and your brand. If you need help starting, growing, and mastering your online business, I encourage you to check out my Online Business Mastery Accelerator program.
Tips To Make Money on Amazon KDP
1. Identify Your Niche
If you want to tap into Amazon's search engine, you must do research to make sure that there is a high enough demand for the book that you want to publish. Also, you want to look at the other books that show up and see their Amazon Best Seller Ranking. This will help you determine how much money they are making.
If you publish a book that nobody is searching for on Amazon, you won't make money from it. There are keyword research tools like KDSPY that can help you determine how profitable a niche is.
Keep in mind that you should market your book outside of Amazon. You've got to build your marketing channel to funnel people into your book. If you do that, Amazon can simply be a platform where you sell your book, and then drive traffic to your book elsewhere.
The way that you stand out from the competition and ramp up your reviews will be through the implementation of marketing strategies. If you want to learn my in-depth marketing tactics and techniques that will help you sell more books, check out my course, Mastering Book Marketing.
2. Design An Eye-Catching Title & Cover
You can have a great book in a great niche, but if your title and cover don't grab people's attention, they won't click on your listing. Your Amazon listing is like an advertisement.
A big mistake that people make is that they don't test their title and cover. I like to create three different covers to see which one converts best. I do the same thing with the book title and the price. You need to constantly test, track and optimize.
3. Write A High-Quality Short Book
When I first started publishing books on Amazon I thought that a book had to be 300 pages long. This is what stops a lot of people from starting. What people don't realize is that you can write a book that's 30-50 pages long and it can still be high in value.
This is a smart strategy in the short term because it allows you to see whether or not your book is selling. If it does, you can go back, make it longer and charge more money. A lot of books that have impacted my life were shorter in length. The best way to perfect a book is to publish something short, get feedback and refine your book over time.
4. Master Marketing
If you master marketing, you can sell anything online. The most important skill is getting people's attention, whether that's through running advertisements or creating content. My main skill has been creating content. When I have people's attention I always make sure that I over-deliver.
When you consistently add value to people they will naturally want to buy from you. There are many ways to market your book. You want to utilize what Amazon gives you, which is Amazon search and Amazon ads.
However, what will help you rank in Amazon search is marketing outside of Amazon. Amazon wants you to promote Amazon and help them make more money and get more customers. If you have a money-making book, Amazon will rank your book high in the search results because that book is making them money. In effect, if you scratch their back, they'll scratch your back.
This is how to make money publishing books with Amazon KDP in 2022.
This is a great business model. Look at it for what it is. Don't expect to make millions of dollars from it. Rather, think of it as a passive income stream that can generate leads for your business while building your credibility. It's a win-win.
Do you want to know how you can create $10k per month in passive income with book publishing? CLICK HERE to get access to my FREE video training!