Amazon is a great place to put your self-published books and earn money off of those books. Let me tell you how much you can make self-publishing on Amazon based on my experience.
Today's question has three answers and the third answer is a secret as to why when you start making money, it can cause you to get lazy and that can cost you a lot of money.
The question that was sent in today was, how much can I make self publishing on Amazon? This is an excellent question.
Whether you are considering starting to self-publish on Amazon or you are self-publishing and doing terribly on Amazon, both of these reasons can sort of getting into your head. It will make you decide, "maybe, I shouldn't go this route".
Because you may look at the average number of books that are being sold and thinking this is pretty low. Or you have talked with other authors who have tried to sell on Amazon and haven't done very well.
Now, you've heard of some people who have done really well. So then the question is, but what about for you? How much money can you reasonably expect to make if you start publishing your books on Amazon?
These are what we are going to answer today. But before we get into the answers, check out my free Self-Publishing Checklist that has the secrets that are necessary for you to start earning on your books today.
So, how much money can I make self publishing on Amazon? Well, let me tell you a little bit about my own story. When I first got started self-publishing in 2015, I came out with my very first book.
I discovered, wow I was able to make a sale once a week, once every other week, or something like that. It was actually terrible on the sales front, I was making a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Barely enough but it was enough to pay for better tools.
To pay for better covers, better editing, and a lot of the necessary things. So, in other words, my initial money that was coming in, it was helping me to make more money off of my future books. But initially, we are talking about maybe $2 to $10 a week or something like that.
Check out this related article: What Are Self Publishing On Amazon Pros And Cons?
You put a book out there and you are not really doing all that well with this non-optimized book. You're using poor tools and you're paying more money than you need to for services that are simply unnecessary.
This is very very common and I even reached a point where I was like, well, is this even really worth it? Is it not a better way to make money on the internet? Then I came across some courses that I took and one of the problems I did find with the courses that I took is that they are so complicated.
Everything is all over the place and they are giving you thousands of things you need to do. It becomes way too much and that was one of the reasons why I decided to create this blog. It is because I felt that it would be helpful to share with people.
Steps You Shouldn't Miss Doing
Many of the traps you can fall into the overwhelm but simply by breaking it down and keeping it simple so that you start earning serious money on your books. Without getting demotivated and simply dropping out before you even get to that point.
So, how much can I make self publishing on Amazon? Let's get into today's answers. The first is you can earn quite a bit of money.
Now, I've known people who made $40,000 from all the books they had in a single month. In fact, I think it was Steve Scott who made $60,000 in one month. Now, this was during the golden age of Kindle Amazon Publishing.
It's a little bit different today than it was back then. It is not so easy but when I first started and I wasn't making that much money, I discovered some tricks. It is regarding optimizing your books to make sure they are going to be making sales in the first place.
The combination which I have discussed before, but I think it is so important is that you need to ask yourself, are you doing these steps? To make sure that your books will sell when you are doing it in.
Check out this related article: What Are The Steps To Self Publishing?
All the way from the beginning of before you have even started writing your book or paying somebody else to write your book for you. Are you sure that you're making the request the right way? That is where it comes down to, you need the right market.
We need a hungry market that's ready to buy your books. We need to make sure your book is optimized, the title, the cover, the contents, the description, and all the other things. I have discussed that in my other blogs and you can check them out.
The next is you are running ads against the video. Another one I didn't even mention here which was building an email list and pulling in those emails so that you can ask them to review your books.
Then, you are putting out your book on as many platforms as possible. Getting it distributed to every single area of the internet. The final thing is that we are going to put it in multiple formats.
So we are having it in audiobook, paperback, hardback, eBook Kindle, EPUB, and maybe even PDF. You have a whole series of different formats that we're going to want to sell our books in. To ensure that we can maximize the sales on those books.
But today's secret answer is once we start making money on Amazon, let's say you are pulling in a thousand dollars a month which is what I think of, I was getting it $1,000 to $2,000 a month on my absolute best books.
I still am pulling in even on some books that I put out years ago. I'm still pulling in hundreds of dollars a month on a single book. So it's amazing what you actually can do within particular niches if you choose that correct niche.
Now, this is the secret, it is that each book will drop in sales like I said the books that we're selling, making me a thousand or two thousand dollars a month, they are no longer making me that much money. So what can happen is people get lazy.
Take Advantage Of The Good Times
You put out those books or it could be any product you're putting out. And you start seeing the money coming in. You're thinking, wow now I can go sit back on the beach and start earning passive income and this is not true.
Those books will indeed continue going for a very long time but what happens is each book that we put out becomes part of our tail. The more books we put out, it becomes a long tail.
The older books stop making as much money but during periods for example during the current crisis that we're in right now some of my older books suddenly start skyrocketing in sales because the topics are relevant to today.
Check out this related article: Is Coronavirus Killing Book Sales?
So people who are staying at home all the time are realizing there are things around the house they can do. Which means those books become very interesting suddenly. So they were already in good markets.
But now the market becomes even better because of shifts in what's going on in the world. So, that's something else to remember. But the fact is if you only put a few books out and they are making a ton of money and you just sit back, you hit the lottery right on that.
This is going to cost you a lot of money because you're going to get lazy and forget the techniques. You are going to quit putting out those books so we have to keep on putting out books.
What happens is we create what's called that long tail and the long tail will even make you more money for the long part of the tail. That was it's no longer making tons of money.
But these little bits of money that are being made across all of the different platforms for all the different books, they can outsell your most current books. That is a very important lesson that I hope if you haven't heard it from somebody else, you've heard it from me.
It is that you can't stop not getting lazy on this process. We can however increase what we're doing. As the money increases, we can increase what we're spending.
We can come up with better tools and increasing the number of books that we're ordering. This is a very important strategy that will help you make more money is using good times to put more books out there.
So when the bad times come, we're continuing to see those sales on Amazon. You definitely can make quite a bit of money. So, how much can I make self publishing on Amazon?
What have you found? What has been your best month? What is your worst month? How much money do you consider to be a reasonable amount of money that would be worth investing in on Amazon?
Go and let me know below in the comments. I respond to 100% of all comments that come in. I would really love to hear what exactly you've learned. Check out my other blogs and videos answering your self-publishing questions.