Unless you have been hiding under a rock lately (or are not on any online marketer’s list) you have probably been told countless times that Kindle is the new way to make thousands of dollars every month while you sleep. Just upload some books, sit back and let Amazon support you in the lifestyle to which you want to become accustomed. After all, there are millions of Kindle devices and Amazon has millions of ready-to-buy people visiting their site every day. Just One Click…they don’t even have to enter any information. It is so easy to buy from a Kindle device I am sure most people have bought something without even intending to.
So, how can you lose?
Those who want to sell you the absolute best way to earn a fortune with Kindle forget to mention one important point. Kindle books are very cheap. The same ebook that you can sell online for $27, $37, or $47 (dare I say $97?) will go begging for any more than $2.99 at the Kindle store (unless you happen to be John Grisham, in which case you are probably not reading this). Then you have to subtract Amazon’s 30%, which makes Paypal look like the bargain of the century. They forget to mention (until after you pay them) that they themselves have hundreds or thousands of Kindle books, on which they are fortunate to earn $10 to $20 per month apiece. Of course, if you get $20/month on 1,000 books, you are earning $20,000. But, of course, many, if not most, of your books will not sell anywhere near that much (another thing they forget to mention). Therefore, you might say…
…Kindle is the new Adsense
The only difference is that it is much easier to set up 1,000 adsense sites than it is to publish 1,000 Kindle books. BTW…if you buy something from someone who tells you to use PLR, run for the hills. That has been taboo for over a year now.
So, is it a total waste of time to create a Kindle book? Absolutely not. Kindle has a lot of things going for it, as long as you don’t expect to make a fortune selling your book. It is similar to publishing a paperback book. You have to start by figuring out what you want to accomplish.
If you want to make money, I suggest that you create a PDF and sell it online. Remember that PDFs can be read on the same devices (including Kindle readers) that Kindle books can, they are much easier to create and, for whatever reason, have a much higher perceived value.
Here are a few good reasons to publish a Kindle book:
As a complement to a self-published paperback book that you already have available on Amazon. Since you have the source file already, just have it formatted for Kindle (you can get this done for $5…at you-know-where). You will get some additional sales as well as bragging rights as a Kindle author with very little extra work and expense. With a little marketing you can become a best-selling author as well. Amazon has categories within categories within categories, and the sub- sub- sub- categories don’t get many sales, so it is quite easy to become a best selling author in one of them. I know someone who published a book on social media marketing in Feb., 2012 and made best seller status after only 47 sales.
As an advertisement for your other products or services. You can create a condensed version of the PDF that you are selling for $27 or more on your site and use it to leverage the traffic on Amazon by linking to your site. In this way you can take advantage of Amazon’s platform without devaluing the PDF. You can also create an Amazon author page and increase your online footprint. Just be careful that you are up-to-date on Amazon’s TOS because, as more and more people try more and more ways to exploit Kindle, Amazon is tightening up on what it will allow, and outbound linking is one of their sore spots. One good thing about Kindle…if you are selling a book for 99 cents you can get away with one with as few as 5,000 words. Just make sure that you don’t skimp on the quality because you will get bad reviews. You also cannot publish a portion of the book on Kindle and then say…”for the rest, buy the book on my site”. If Amazon found out about it you would be in big trouble.
If you haven’t published a paperback you can publish a Kindle book as a stand-alone. You will get access to Amazon’s traffic and will be able to create an Author page (right next to John Grisham) to increase your online footprint. You can market the book and turn it into a best seller, so you have bragging rights as a best-selling author. Just don’t count on it making you rich.
Of course, you may decide that you want to become a “Kindle factory” and publish a couple thousand books. If you stick with it you can develop a good income. Just remember that you absolutely cannot buy PLR and use that, even if you substantially rewrite it. Amazon is really on the warpath against it and you could get your account closed. Definitely not worth the risk. And, by the time you finish rewriting it, you may just as well have written a book from scratch.
So, even though it would be difficult to earn an income solely by publishing and selling Kindle books, you can use Kindle to expand your current marketing efforts and increase your income in that way. Once you have determined what it is you want to get out of publishing a Kindle book you will know what you want to do. You may want to use one of the methods I described here. You may think of other ways to use this new and constantly evolving technology. You may also decide that it is not really worth the effort. Just be realistic about what Kindle can and cannot do.
If you have other ideas on how to market with Kindle, please share them in the discussion forum. Just follow the link below this post.
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