Selling Via Kindle- Worth It?

Right, you won't use PPC when promoting Kindle.

Also, authors don't make $4-$5 off of each sale! It depends on what their price point is, but Kindle books range between 0.00 - 9.99. Royalties are 35% flat or 70% AFTER Amazon deducts all of their fees and charges.

You're often making less than $5 per sale. Especially since your max price point is 9.99 with Kindle. You're not gonna sell a $47 eBook on Kindle...ever.

One thing I can't stand {neither can Amazon} is the guru system mentality of "hire outsourced writers to create a crappy non-fiction self help books, publish them on Kindle, make bank!" It's flooded the market and Amazon is cracking down on it thankfully.

If you're actually a writer who produces good works of fiction, fantasy, etc then that's great. If you're just a me too marketer trying to game a system, or publishing non-fiction or self-help how to guides, then stay away from Amazon.

I never understood why marketers would publish their self-help and how to products on Amazon vs Clickbank. You can't sell anything higher than 9.99 with Aamazon whereas CB you'll sell between 17-97.

Amazon = fiction, fantasy, novels, entertainment.
Clickbank = self-help, how to, info products.

But the gurus will persist and I'm sure someone will jump into this thread talking about their "suck-cess" from publishing self-help on Amazon. Lies.

But OP, the short answer is that you should choose the platform based on your proposed product. Which I don't thnk you mentioned what it was in your OP.

If you're writing a novel, then I'd advise you to go with Amazon. If you're writing a how-to product, then Clickbank/etc all the way.

Selling via kindle is the most effective way and less time consuming. This would help in better usabilty of the products..

Even though I am definitely falling on the side of going the Ebook route rather than Kindle for a number of reasons 1/ Can sell at higher prices than Kindles. 2/ Are open to more JV/Affiliate avenues (not restricted to just selling on Amazon) 3/ Higher priced product as an ebook allows you to use PPC campaigns and so on. It wouldn't be worth running a PPC campaign on a product you stand to make a couple of dollars off.

HOWEVER the big advantage of Kindle is as I think Larry Paul was alluding to. The usability. I love reading on my Kindle. I hate reading E-books off a computer screen. But I can read a Kindle for hours and take it on journeys/ keep it in a bag for 10 minutes reading here and there. I would love my customers to be able to have that.
Although I guess iPads and the like are getting better at solving this.

I would not recommend you focusing on Kindle... Focus on computer based products.

If someone really wanted to use "Kindle Books".. There are apps for Android and iPhone, so thats not really an issue but i really don't recommend someone to just focus on kindle.

The big advantage of using Clickbank is how it gives you instant access to top affiliates who can promote your product. These affiliates have a good incentive to promote heavily as they will be earning so much more than if they promoted your Amazon Kindle ebook as an Amazon affiliate.

Also, with Clickbank it looks like YOU are the one selling the product, not a third party site such as Amazon. That's good if you want to be out there on your own and can actually establish trust with the potential customer, but not so good if you can't. The trust factor is up with Amazon as they have done all that hard work of 'relationship building' on your behalf before you even publish your book.

Though there's extra work involved in publishing there, it might be an ideal platform if you want the trust factor working in your favor.

However, you could just as easily build your email list (directly off your own Clickbank sales page) and build trust via the emails. That works too, but it takes more time. A very good payoff for the effort though.

Hi,

I have sold Ebooks since the beginning of the amazon kindle story. I get $100 per month selling Ebooks on amazon.



Amazon propaganda:
I think that amazon did a huge propaganda using media about the success stories of writers. I am doubtful about it because i know many writers who wrote very good Ebooks that are very well ranked in the Kindle store. However, None of them make enough money to live on their Ebooks. The stories about the writers who are millionaires are here to encourage you to exclusively sell on amazon.

The bad reviewers
Your competitors may leave bad comments about your ebook to reduce your sales. For this reason, it is good to directly sell from your website without linking to your purchase page on amazon. If your Ebook is too cheap, some people may buy 10 of them to leave 10 bad comments.
You can spot that something is wrong in the comments when you see that 10 comments have been posted in the course of 1 week and nothing during months. Also, when the users behind the comments only commented ONE product (yours). Also, when there are false facts about your ebook, it means they didn't read it.
People who like your ebooks will perhaps not talk about it. It is not easy to explain why you liked an Ebook with many information in it.

Alternative to selling amazon kindle ebooks, sell it yourself
Interestingly enough, i have a website and people who come to my website ask me more and more to sell my Ebooks directly from my websites in a PDF or EPUB format. So, now, i have decided to implement Woocommerce to my wordpress website and sell directly from my website to my paypal account. OH surprise, i make more money selling directly from my website & good reviews too!

It is interesting considering that i don't use facebook, google+ and tumblr.

A format issue:
I would like also to say, i had hard time creating interactive table of contents and bookmarks for Kindle format. On the other hand, building a PDF from libreoffice is a great thing. The layout does not get crazy, the links are working, the bookmarks are working, the table of contents links are working... it is fast and it works.

Ebooks on kindle don't look that good. The text is often too small or too big compared to titles. sometimes, the pictures are not at the right place, in the good position. etc.etc.etc..

Bottom line:
I am french but i think there is the same issue all over the world. Whether you want to sell a novel or a self help ebook, it is really time consuming. If you want to make money out of it, you have to write many different ebooks. It takes a lot of time. Perhaps, there are faster ways to make money.

Kindle is DEFINITELY worth it. I'm going with this project where I'm making 40 Kindle books and putting them up for sale. I may also use a FB page to promote my books and may offer blog posts/banner ads to get more viewers for my kindle book.

No, I don't think PPC is a good option with such small margins..

I actually think PPC is a good idea in the long run. It sounds like a crazy idea since the profit margins are so low but there are ways to monetize your Kindle books that make the PPC seem like pennies. I'm going to be implementing PPC with my 30 Kindle books that I'm going to create.

After careful planning, I'm hoping to make around $8k a month from my Kindle books.

Of course, worth it.

Why?

Because it's a search engine where your prospects are ready to buy.

If you publish your own sales page on your website and wait for traffic via Google, it can be much, much harder.

But in Amazon, people are searching only eBooks and what's more, you have got categories that restricts down the search even more.

Having said, it's still not easy.

In any case, you have to promote, promote and promote.

My suggestion, build a following alongside.

I like Kindle. I have one book on Amazon and it's earning me about $100 a month. And I get leads every single day from my e-book.

I plan on writing a couple more books and putting them on Kindle.

I put them on KDP Select for the first 90 days and after that, I can stop it so I can also sell my book elsewhere.

My guess is that it depends on what type of book you're trying to sell. Basically, what Roth said is correct, Amazon is more for novels and entertainment, but you could try selling via Kindle though, do some heavy promoting and see how it goes.

Kindle publishers use free as well as paid advertising to promote their books. However, if your book is not good neither free nor paid advertising will work because people who buy your book will leave negative reviews. Once you have more negative reviews than positive ones not many people will buy your book.

So the first thing to do is to produce good content. Once you succeed in doing that you may focus on promotion and drive traffic to your kindle store sales page.

I use blog ads to get more exposure. Key is to get views. People like to buy bestsellers and my goal is to be on to the HOT NEW RELEASES page. Well, it is not so easy. First, it has to be a book that is brand new. Also, you need to sell a lot of copies. However, once you make it to the top of the heap, the rest is easy as they say.

Unfortunately, you need to market your Kindle book like you will promote your site due to saturation.

If you haven't read the ebook "Kindle Killer's Day Job" by Martin Kerrigan then you may want to Google it. It practically tells you how to create a Kindle and make a success out of it. It's no fast rules.

How are you promoting your Kindle?

Have you make a good video trailer?
Have a good script written?
Find short and long tail keywords relevant to your book?
Publish your Kindle on top book publishing sites
Do you have a list of ardent readers? That could set the ball rolling if you have a good book.
Do you have a website dedicated to your ebook and been work to the top of SERP for the right keywords?

The list is endless.