Many authors are wondering what would be the best route in getting more sales out of your self-published books on the market. Check this out, let me tell you about this "Can You Make Money Self-Publishing" to help you succeed in your self-publishing journey.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to the absolute most important thing you should be doing. If you want to make money from self-publishing.
Let's get into it the topic we're discussing today is can you make money with self-publishing? You're going to know exactly what is reasonable to expect when it comes to making money on self-publishing.
You're going to have the steps necessary to start earning your very first dollars from self- publishing. Grab a copy of my Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. So that you know the secrets that other people don't want you to know when it comes to winning at the self-publishing game.
When I first got started my goal was to see if it was possible to make organic sales. That is not people I know like my friends and family. I call them sympathy sales or something like that.
It was the idea that they want you to feel good about the book that you've come out with and so your friends and family. They want to be supportive of your book and so they purchase it. You get this nice little spike in the beginning when you first put your book on the market.
Then after that what happens well the answer is almost nothing for most books. That is what exactly happens and so I was excited when I saw my very first organic sale. Somebody I didn't even know who had read the book I could even see when they signed up for my newsletter.
This process is where it all began it was so exciting. There were people around the world who were sitting and reading my books while I was sleeping. They were sitting there reading away and I thought that was just amazing.
Maybe one of the most exciting aspects of self-publishing the thing is it took a week. I started seeing my very first sale come in that I didn't know where it came from. That was super exciting eventually I reached my second goal which was getting one dollar per day.
I know you're probably laughing because it's like an e-book and then what would be ever if you sell an ebook a day. Then you would be making a dollar a day assuming you price it properly. But by getting my books I was excited.
My goal was to see can I even reach that level one of the things. You have to remember when it comes to self-publishing it is that when we're putting our books out there we don't have to do anything. They're out there, they're selling while we sleep.
Check out this related article: How To Find Success In Self Publishing
This was the exciting aspect of the passive income that I had always heard that you could earn online. In books were a super easy way to go about starting that process. The thing is once I started running ads against those books I was able to get up to a thousand dollars a month.
After that I began pushing getting the right keywords in alignment using KDSpy. You can see my affiliate link below in the description of all of my YouTube videos. In order to figure out the correct keywords, covers, choosing niches and genres.
That were specifically targeted these were what we would call underserved or hungry markets. By putting those onto the market I suddenly started to see the scale. The sales jumping not just a little bit here and there but a huge jump.
Remember the order of all of this, we started with just getting the books on the market at all. Getting past the point of just friends and family buying where we have organic sales pushing ads against those books.
I also was doing Content Marketing against those books once I started building a brand against it. Getting those people in my email list so I could continue to market them. In addition improving the covers and the keywords and the end result was an explosion of sales.
At that point and after 40-50,000 sales I now can say what exactly works great and what has no impact like I will often tell you on social media. Just posting your books in groups of other authors is completely useless. Whereas using a little bit of time and figuring out how to run amazon ads.
That is maybe one of the most important things you can do only second to fixing your cover, your keywords in your title description and so on. Getting your reviews in place building your email list these sorts of things.
In order to trigger the sequence of events where you can start actually seeing a huge amount of income coming in. In fact the books that I put out five six years ago they're still funding the employees that I have.
In order to help them where they're helping me produce these YouTube videos, creating podcasts and creating blogs. This entire sequence of getting in contact with my target audience. Using the books that I've done before to do this.
In other words this is also by the way a very powerful thing you learn something useful. Then you teach that thing further and that gives you even more ability. If you're excited about dog training for example which puppy training by the way is a very profitable niche or was at one point.
I compete also within that niche as well but in that book you know we see sales here every now and then. We'll see an additional sale we run ads against within that particular niche but the thing is you learn how to train puppies.
You write a book on how to do it you put it out there you create content both in video, podcast, and blogs. Then we're running ads against it and then we keep putting new books out. And what happens after a period of time is this market starts to grow and our audiences as it's growing.
Start Building An Audience
They're buying more and more of our books and then in addition you have affiliate sales. That you can do off of products that you're using and testing and you can also sell courses on how to do puppy training. You're pulling people in with those books.
Do you see how this works I wanted to make this very clear some people are not it's seems very confusing. I hope you're understanding what I'm getting at here in other words it's this ecosystem where we're not just talking about. Creating one book we're talking about creating a book.
Then marketing off of it additional sales so that you're building a business and not just a side hobby. There's a huge difference between those two and I hope that these videos are helping you to build your business. But we don't start by selling a million copies of our book.
You really need to work with it I was recently talking with about with someone in the comments below of all of my YouTube videos. On this exact subject of what expectations and I and the best way for you to find out is to put your book onto the market and see what happens.
I had somebody else who commented well look I got a lot of sales from my friends and family. Then the question is well what happened after that if we go a week or two or three in the future. After that suddenly the sale starts flatlining and that's where it's like.
Well, what are your ads? how are your ads doing? how is your content marketing? you know is your book even optimized?. So that people could organically find it if they type in the niche. I don't know let's say your books are on you know cartoon ninjas or something like that for preschoolers.
Well does that even show up in your description and in your metadata like within the subtitle. It would tell us who is your audience? who is this book for?. These people when they search on Google or Amazon which is one of the top search engines in the world.
That your book is going to come up because it has those words in it and not some clever title. You know like Red 34 is the name of your book maybe it's got a dog. You know I don't know a Dog or something but it doesn't nobody is searching for that.
They're not going to find it then maybe they're searching for you as an author. But then again we already said you don't have an audience so who's searching for you as an author. If your title doesn't tell them "what exactly you're offering, what kind of book, who is it for?."
These sorts of things then you really shouldn't expect to start making a lot of sales. That's where we get back to this flat line side so many writers get demotivated on their very first book. They just don't understand the game is about building an audience.
At the same time we're trying to get those organic sales so that money's coming in that makes it gives us more money to spend towards ads. I remember each month I'd have to wait for my paycheck to come in.
I could have the money to start doing the next set of books and ads. After a period of time the engine and the motor began going and so that the books just literally they do their own thing. I don't really have to invest that much time or money.
No time or money and the books continue to produce which is fantastic but let's get into the main points. Can you make money with self publishing? the
first answer of course, yes. This is by far the easiest way to make passive income on the internet today.
If you're looking for a way to go about doing it this is the one. The formula has worked for a decade it's still working some people say I missed the Amazon. The Kindle gold rush and the answer is no we are still in a massive period for this.
And Content Marketing like podcasts in particular or a huge growing area at YouTube as well. In order to drive traffic towards these books that you're writing. But you really need to get them on the market and they do not need to be perfect.
They just need to be good enough that would be you know your average reader who would read it. It would say, "this was an okay book I didn't maybe like the formatting." And maybe there were some errors here or there but and they tell you that you go back and fix these things.
But the key is to building your audience is getting something on there so that your audience can do it. I think some people have a resistance because you're worried about what are other people going to think or feel. If you actually put those books out there and you need to just push that button.
I can tell there's a number of people I'm in contact with and even some students of mine who have gone through this process are still not putting the books on the market. I'm telling you take the books you've done your best at them.
You've tried to edit them you've gone through a sequence on this. Get these books onto the market so we can move on to the next phase of this process which is content marketing and running ads against those books.
That's a very important because obviously you can't make money on books. That are not on the market so let's get to our second point, you need to keep your expectations under control. Until you have the key marketing bricks in place.
And so expectations do not expect to sell millions of copies of your book in fact if anything expect to see flatline. A blip here or blip there unless the marketing side you have you're within a great niche. That is something that I have taught you on this channel.
Regarding how to choose your niches appropriately and also how to use these keyword tools. To maximize the sales that you're pulling through on your books on Amazon. If you're not in a hungry market you will flatline nobody knows who you are but we can increase our chances.
If we're using correct titles and subtitles with those keywords we're using covers that look very professional. You can find my cover designer below of all of my YouTube videos I've moved over to 99designs as my top cover developer.
You Need To Run Ads
You will find that below in the description of all of my YouTube videos the affiliate link for 99designs. Fantastic way to go about getting even multiple designers to do designs for your covers and choose the best one.
But get something that looks just like the best sellers in your niche. This is another very important thing you're going to need to do. Then finally what's going to happen is we're going to run ads against our books.
We're going to instead of seeing this flat line we're going to get bumps. We're going to get some bumps if you're in a profitable market or profitable niche. Then you're going to see a lot of traffic flowing through so for example one of them recently has been cryptocurrency.
My books within this niche suddenly are doing very well there's huge spikes with regards to books that I put out years ago. You know it was an experiment, I saw that there was a profitable niche in some aspects like bitcoin.
I realized just wait a second this is actually a reasonable market to go about targeting. Then you simply put books onto the market on those subjects about 100 pages each. But never less than 24 pages because we always need to make sure it's a able to put it into a soft back book.
Then what do you find happens is well the answer is as these different niches get popular from time to time right now. This will be popular maybe Indoor Gardening or other things like that. Vertical Gardening for example, the very popular Paleo Diet.
There's all sorts of this is in the non-fiction because people are searching for it. That's why it's a lot easier if you're getting started if you can do non-fiction. But if you're doing fiction there's a lot more money to be made in fiction.
It just takes a lot more time to build your audience up. But once you have that audience and that machine going you put a book out there. You inform that
audience and then two people are in there buying.
And when they have a new book that spikes all of your old books they call it the long tail. Same goes with music a new album hits the market by an artist and suddenly their sales of their old albums start to jump as well. This is something that so many authors simply do not understand.
When it comes to putting your books on the market and seeing those sales coming through and that's the reason why you definitely should. But we want to hold our expectations under control I want to get to the secret answer for today regarding making money with self-publishing.
And the answer is you shouldn't go it alone now I can't say this so enough times. Make sure you're in regular contact with somebody who has done what you're trying to achieve. So not somebody who's talking about doing it.
I remember there was a fake guru a while back who was talking about you can make money through self- publishing. And giving all advice but had never published self-published a single book. And was looking to make this great man book and leather binding and stuff.
That would tell you how to win it self-publishing but they had never done it themselves. This happens all the time this is a thing you need to look at with a lot of these fake gurus. They themselves are not actually publishing books at all.
Or maybe they publish something years ago or something right but they're currently not actually devoting time and energy to that. The best way to get around this is to hire a coach. This is the reason I work with many clients going through your exact problems.
And coming up with a specific plan with a money back guarantee so you lose absolutely nothing. Check out below in the description of all of my YouTube videos if you're more interested in that. If not then interact on YouTube with me we can go back and forth.
Look at your situation figure out what is the next step for you. And if not that then find Facebook groups where you would be able to interact. I would be very careful because many of these groups have people who have also not have failed to do stuff.
Everybody seems to have an opinion at what it takes to make money with your books. Then they're sharing bad advice so you should only take advice from people who have actually made it doing. The very thing that you're trying to accomplish.
At the same time somebody who's been around a while not somebody who just shows up. Makes a few videos or whatever and then goes from there and that's and and finally somebody who's enthusiastic about. The subject for me self-publishing is amazingly exciting.
This is something you're definitely going to want to explore and that's one of the reasons why if you're interested. You need a coach then you ought to sign up I don't have too many spots and going into the christmas season. The numbers of spots is very limited.
It's about to go to zero in a very short period of time some people have said "I want to get a you know in contact with you because of this or that I'm switching jobs." I had somebody just yesterday commented I'm like I'm going to be disappearing for a chunk of time.
If you're interested do it now if not we can do it later I'm very busy with self-publishing a lot of other things. I really enjoy these sessions of helping you out where I'm able to see you face to face.
Go through the problems that you have and to be able to come up with some solutions that are going to work for you. And your specific situation that's something you definitely should consider. My question for you today is have you started making money from self-publishing?
If you have write, "yes" below in the comments and if you've never made any money from self-publishing write, "no" below in the comments. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.