How do you like using Amazon for shopping or for selling your self-published books? Here are the 3 surprising facts about Amazon that I bet you should know.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the absolute most surprising thing about Amazon employees that you don't know.
So what we're discussing today is 3 surprising facts about Amazon, in particular Amazon.com. By the end of this article, you're going to know exactly what those three are. You are going to know the role they play that you can use as a self-publisher.
You're going to have the steps necessary to implement and learn from them. You're going to feel great knowing that you are personally an author implementing the strategies that Amazon is using that you don't know already.
Check out and grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist. To make sure that you are not skipping any of the important steps necessary to get your book self-published and selling lots of secrets on the list.
So from my own story, when I first got started, I followed Amazon very closely right from the start. Just like a long time ago like when Amazon first came out in particular. I found them amazingly useful, not necessarily because I did buy books from Amazon but also when it came to Christmas every year.
Because they knew exactly what the perfect gift would be for boys or girls between this age. They would tell you here is exactly what you should get for them because they are going to love it. And I did exactly that.
They would wrap it, put a little greeting note on it and send it. I did nothing other than just simply say what's the top gift for this age group on this agenda. That was amazing how powerful that was.
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Every Christmas, Amazon made it so easy for me to do the shopping that I needed to get done. The other thing was that I quickly realized that Amazon makes a lot of decisions. As a self-publisher, this was something else as they grew in size and scale.
When I started putting books on the market, I started seeing that they let their robots make a lot of decisions. Some of these decisions can be incredibly dangerous for you. I saw people's accounts getting shut down.
Even to this day, people are getting locked out of their accounts. Some of my viewers even here have this as an issue. One of the lessons just as a side note is if that ever happens, make sure you tell Amazon. You notify them immediately and explain yourself or whatever you've been doing.
Whatever you think you might have been doing, you want to make sure you get in contact with them. But I saw that as they grew in size and scale, it started a lot of robots doing the decisions. I also discovered that some of their service centers like in India would say one thing if you'd call them.
Then you call them the next day and they'd say something else. So if you had an issue, they could usually help resolve those issues. You just keep calling and speaking to somebody different.
Play The SEO Game
They did have some quality issues because one of the things when they're scaling so big, it makes it a little bit tricky for them. The final thing was that I saw a lot of hate from authors go their way.
Because of all of this stuff, whether it's this or that. But my thing is that I can agree. But if you're just getting started, they are so huge that it's hard to ignore them.
Maybe there are better ways. If you become huge and popular with your writing, then move to a different platform. But in the meantime, I never have got my start if it were not for Amazon. They do not sponsor this article either.
I wouldn't have gotten started in business, they simply made it very easy for me to put some products on the market. They made it easy for me to play with them and see if I could get some sales. And it worked, it started to sell.
This has just been such a wonderful experience for me with using Amazon. But I know for other people, you have different experiences. How they deal with their employees and things like that.
You should consider whether or not you wish to publish with them. But I would say that if you're getting started as a new author, this is what you're going to want to definitely at least consider.
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So, 3 surprising facts about Amazon? The first one is the name Amazon was chosen because the alphabet order websites were generally listed in alphabetical order which makes no sense today. Remember the old days of Yahoo being the dominant leader?
And the way they did their categories and then the alphabet for the companies and the websites that would be underneath it. Originally they considered calling themselves Cadabra like as in Abra Cadabra.
But that would have involved putting the letter C. So here's the key strategy, we look at what's happening and how things are doing. And then we think strategically through the choices we make.
Whether it's the keywords that are being searched. They knew that if they were at the top of the alphabet just like a classroom where the kids with the first letter of the last name that goes first, they get called first. It has an impact and so you see they're getting page one results.
Whatever it would be, they were playing SEO games right from the very start. So my question for you is why aren't you should be playing the same mindset? The same games that they were doing from the start.
We figure out what people are searching for and how they're searching. We set our book right in that path so that organic traffic will come straight on through to our stuff. Number two, the warehouses are the size of ten thousand Olympic swimming pools.
They have a massive market. They have tons of their audience with their credit cards out and ready to buy. The reason why this should matter to you is that we want to sell our books where the markets are ready.
Get Close With Your Customers
We do not want to create a new market. We do not want to create a new store. Because we think we're going to sell thousands of our books if we create our store. We want to find where the markets are and we want to use them to our advantage.
You can take all of the millions of dollars you're earning off of your books. You can give it to causes that would counteract perhaps Amazon or whatever else. But the point being is that there's a gigantic market with them and this is something we should not ignore.
There's a reason they have gigantic warehouses, it's to stock all the books that we wish to sell. So this is just another point that we want to consider when it comes to Amazon. But our third and most surprising fact of the day is that all employees are required to spend 2 days at customer service desks.
That's right, every year including the CEO. The reason why is because they need to be close to their customers. You know I keep pounding the drum using content marketing where we are trying to get as close as possible to our readers.
That is through email marketing and content marketing. We're close to our readers so that we are going to understand what they want that drives them and motivates them. We're going to put out better books.
We're not just putting that out but we're going to market our existing books. We will market in a way that serves them up so that our readers would buy them. So that they would read them from cover to cover and would leave us positive reviews on these very same books.
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This is something that is so often forgotten. I know you are out there, you think you can write a book, a high-quality book. Run it through a thousand rounds of editing. Put it on the market and everything should be fine.
The answer is you're going to hear crickets. We need to be close to our audience. We need to know what it is that motivates them and not. Notice that I didn't say audiences, it's one audience.
Choose your niche to choose your sub-genre and stick with it year after year. Putting out content and doing content marketing as I teach in the Content Marketing Course that I have following the tricks and the strategies.
These advanced strategies that I teach you here on my blog and my Youtube channel. We're taking a lesson from Amazon here with regards to it. So that's something you're going to want to consider
My question for you today is what about Amazon is most surprising to you? Do you already know about the 3 Surprising Facts About Amazon that were mentioned above? Let me know below in the comments. Check out my other blogs and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.