KINDLE = $ ?

[Andrei Rotariu]

Whats going to happen with this in terms of it being monetized?

Obviously Amazon are going to make a killing but, whats in it for IMers though? How are Imers going to monetize it. Self publishing? Affiliate's?

[Frank Bruno]

Originally Posted by Andrei Rotariu

Whats going to happen with this in terms of it being monetized?

Obviously Amazon are going to make a killing but, whats in it for IMers though? How are Imers going to monetize it. Self publishing? Affiliate's?

Marketers are already making thousands each month on Kindle. Silently making auto-pilot profits. Even with Amazons 70% take.

Remember marketing online is a numbers game. The more the better.

The more links you have out there the better. It doesn't matter what your selling.

It doesn't matter if your an affiliate marketer , promoting your own stuff, or doing JV's each one of these requires to be putting lots of links in front of people.

Frank Bruno

[Andrei Rotariu]

From what i understand Amazon is the sole distributor of ebooks for the Kindle format. Amazon obviously dont write these themselves, authors write and sometimes publish these themselves then what?

Say i have an ebook and i want to sell it via amazon on their kindle formats, how do i do that?

Or do you specifically create blogs, sites etc. Targeting Kindle users and then place affiliate links on the site back to Amazon?

[Paul Coleman]

Originally Posted by Andrei Rotariu

Say i have an ebook and i want to sell it via amazon on their kindle formats, how do i do that?

Or do you specifically create blogs, sites etc. Targeting Kindle users and then place affiliate links on the site back to Amazon?

Both. You can directly market on Amazon's forums:

Amazon.com: Customer Communities

And of course an authority blog can grab buyers -- but affiliate links are just the beginning. You can sell your own guides, build your own email list, promote other author's books, promote yourself. It's endless. And don't forget iPad and Smashwords.

Paul

[PaulaC]

Originally Posted by Andrei Rotariu

From what i understand Amazon is the sole distributor of ebooks for the Kindle format. Amazon obviously dont write these themselves, authors write and sometimes publish these themselves then what?

Say i have an ebook and i want to sell it via amazon on their kindle formats, how do i do that?

Or do you specifically create blogs, sites etc. Targeting Kindle users and then place affiliate links on the site back to Amazon?

The beauty of the Amazon Kindle store is that you don't have to do any promotion. It helps of course if you do, but Amazon does the promotion for you.

We have put up a few public domain books to test it out and once the book is up we don't have to do anything. The books sell on their own.

However, some books do better than others so whilst some books get sales others might get nothing. It's a numbers game - the more you put up, the better the chance of making sales.

[nigelwhittaker]

I agree with PaulaC, Amazon is definitely a numbers game, my success rate with books is roughly 40% and 60% flops.

[thrigrri]

I'm a new publisher on Kindle... Just put 2 books up on Kindle... Waiting for them to publish it fully (including the description). I'm completely new to Kindle... Purchased Paul's Kindle Revolutions guide as well as BJ Min's Autopilot Ebook guide (both in Warrior Forum, and they are great guides, especially for beginners who want a good step-by-step guide on getting started with Kindle publishing). The information there, on top of help from fellow Warriors, are all the information I have to get started...

The thing is that, if we don't try, we will never know... This is what I always believe...

Anyways, I'm very optimistic about the money making opportunities being a Kindle publisher... Perhaps I should create a post to talk about my adventures on Kindle as I'm doing it... I think it will definitely help those who are sitting on the fence thinking whether or not they should go into it... Also, I can share what I did right, what I did wrong (and what I learned from it), etc.

What do you guys think?


Cheers
Jun Yuan

[Paul Coleman]

Originally Posted by thrigrri

Perhaps I should create a post to talk about my adventures on Kindle as I'm doing it... I think it will definitely help those who are sitting on the fence

Absolutely. Excellent idea. And it will motivate other Warriors.

Paul

[Tanner]

Kindle is a great way to build a passive income as well as an easy way to build brand awareness and funnel buyers into your back end funnel. Just make them an offer in the back of the kindle book and send them to a website with a squeeze page.

Kindle selling is all about volume, Amazon does take a huge chunk of the sales price as mentioned above, but what is left over still adds up to a nice monthly income when your books start selling.

The thing to remember about Kindle buyers is that they are notoriously cheap regarding how much they will spend for an ebook. I have Kindle books priced from $9.99 down to $.99 and across the board the ones that sell the most copies are priced from $0.99 to $2.99.

In my Amazon course, I share the story of a guy who was making $3,000+ a month (more now) just selling $0.99 kindle books....most of them are reworded PLR.

[Cash37]

Originally Posted by Frank Bruno

Marketers are already making thousands each month on Kindle. Silently making auto-pilot profits.

Do you personally know someone doing this or are you just assuming? I'm skeptical. 70% overhead is a lot.

[Tanner]

Originally Posted by Cash37

Do you personally know someone doing this or are you just assuming? I'm skeptical. 70% overhead is a lot.

I don't know about Frank, but I do know several someones making that kind of $$ from kindle.

A 30% profit margin is still pretty damn good when you are not incurring ANY costs to make the sale. Many companies would kill to make a 30% margin.

We as IMmers are spoiled with our 50%-90% margins on our $97 info products.

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Cash37

I'm skeptical. 70% overhead is a lot.

Don't be, there's plenty to be made.

Also, if you choose the right royalty option and sell your Kindle book for $2.99 to $9.99 USD, Amazon pays YOU 70%, not the other way around. Seventy percent royalty, not overhead.

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Tanner

A 30% profit margin is still pretty damn good when you are not incurring ANY costs to make the sale. Many companies would kill to make a 30% margin.

We as IMmers are spoiled with our 50%-90% margins on our $97 info products.

Or you can make 70% through Kindle. I'll take seventy.

[Cash37]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Don't be, there's plenty to be made.

Also, if you choose the right royalty option and sell your Kindle book for $2.99 to $9.99 USD, Amazon pays YOU 70%, not the other way around. Seventy percent royalty, not overhead.

Now I understand. Pricing it at the $2.99 minimum for the 70% royalty makes a world of difference. It's amazing how one little nugget of info changes your whole view on something.

[Tanner]

Originally Posted by Steven Carl Kelly

Or you can make 70% through Kindle. I'll take seventy.

I agree with you completely. This is how most of my kindle books are priced, but I was just making the point that the 30% royalty model was still profitable and doable.

[GameVoid]

Do they have content restrictions on Kindle books? Like adult titles.

I'm asking for a friend

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by Tanner

I agree with you completely. This is how most of my kindle books are priced, but I was just making the point that the 30% royalty model was still profitable and doable.

Ok, gotcha.

[seasoned]

Originally Posted by Cash37

Now I understand. Pricing it at the $2.99 minimum for the 70% royalty makes a world of difference. It's amazing how one little nugget of info changes your whole view on something.

They said "Amazons 70% take". THAT means that Amazon keeps 70% of some value, but the value isn't specified. 70% royalty means they PAY that much.

a 70% royalty on $2.99 is 2.09 that gives amazon .90. .90 to do advertising, storage, downloads, charge fees, and profit? that doesn't sound like much. HECK, just the TRANSFER fee could EASILY be .10! or the phone company could get greedy and charge over .45! And those numbers weren't random numbers either. They are about the lowest and highest retail fees I have heard of for one unit(one minute or less) of connection time. I imagine amazon has a MINIMUM profit they set.

Don't forget the phone company, network, card processor, card company, maintenance, employees, etc... ALL want THEIR share!

Steve

[Steven Carl Kelly]

Originally Posted by seasoned

a 70% royalty on $2.99 is 2.09 that gives amazon .90. .90 to do advertising, storage, downloads, charge fees, and profit? that doesn't sound like much. HECK, just the TRANSFER fee could EASILY be .10! or the phone company could get greedy and charge over .45! And those numbers weren't random numbers either. They are about the lowest and highest retail fees I have heard of for one unit(one minute or less) of connection time. I imagine amazon has a MINIMUM profit they set.

From Amazon:

The Royalty will be equal to 70 percent of the amount equal to the applicable List Price for the Digital Book less the Delivery Costs (as defined below) for the Digital Book. But if we sell the Digital Book at a price below the List Price to match the price at which a third party sells any digital or physical edition of the Digital Book or to match the price at which we sell any physical edition of the Digital Book, the Royalty will be equal to 70 percent of the amount equal to the price at which we sell the Digital Book less the Delivery Costs for the Digital Book. Our determinations regarding price-matching are final and non-reviewable. If you object to our price-matching determination with regard to one of your books, your sole and exclusive remedy is to switch your Royalty option for future sales of the Digital Book to the 35 percent Royalty Option as described below.

iii. The Delivery Costs for a Digital Book will be equal to $0.15 multiplied by our determination of the number of megabytes your Digital Book file contains, once uploaded by you and converted by us into our then-current Digital Book format. One megabyte equals 1024 kilobytes. One kilobyte equals 1024 bytes. We will round file sizes up to the nearest kilobyte. The minimum Delivery Cost for a Digital Book will be $0.01 regardless of file size.


iv. Example: If your book has a file size of 0.400 megabytes and a List Price of $8.99, the Delivery Cost will be $0.06 (0.400 MB x $0.15 = $0.06), and your Royalty will be $6.25 (($8.99 – $0.06) x 70 percent = $6.25).

So the only thing Amazon charges for beyond their 30% is the fairly minimal delivery costs. A good deal for publishers, I reckon.

[jamesburchill]

One of the first lessons they teach you in writer school is to write for a buying market. I recently considered publishing some of my material in the Kindle format (I actually buy Kindle ebooks and read them on my iPad using the free kindle viewer app ... anyway) the fun thing about the money opp is cranking the numbers.

Take a look at the non-fiction count. Then drill down in to the section of interest. Amazon tells you how many have been published in the last 30 days, the last 90 and what's coming in the next 30.

I checked this past weekend and there were just under 5000 kindle format ebooks in the marketing section. And here's the kicker... many were under the $2.99 price point which means they get sold at the lower commission (you get 35% instead of 70% if you stick to their $2.99 to $9.99 pricing scheme.)

Anyway, bottom line is this... while you can certainly make some extra money republishing your content in to the kindle market, don't give up your day job.

Oh, and as for publishing on the iPad (I looked into that as well) you'll need an ISBN for your book and that has some costs associated with it. The payment structure, royalty payouts and all the other hoops to jump through, will slow down the content to iPad adoption IMHO.

Anyhoo, publishing to the Kindle is a no-brainer and the market is currently still wide open.

[Hoopatang]

I see some folks mentioning putting up public domain books and PLR books.
I looked at dozens upon dozens of public domain books and when I went to Amazon to see if someone else had posted them already, I always found at least two dozen different copies of the books. Ranging in price from about $15 down to free. Sometimes by the same publisher, lol.

Same thing with PLR books. I looked at... *thinking*... at least ten different PLRs and went to amazon - there they were, titles not even changed, being offered by many different people.

So I'm curious how you guys are finding these PD works and PLR products to actually make money with, that someone else hasn't already posted for $.99 or free?

[Tanner]

Originally Posted by Hoopatang

I see some folks mentioning putting up public domain books and PLR books.
I looked at dozens upon dozens of public domain books and when I went to Amazon to see if someone else had posted them already, I always found at least two dozen different copies of the books. Ranging in price from about $15 down to free. Sometimes by the same publisher, lol.

Same thing with PLR books. I looked at... *thinking*... at least ten different PLRs and went to amazon - there they were, titles not even changed, being offered by many different people.

So I'm curious how you guys are finding these PD works and PLR products to actually make money with, that someone else hasn't already posted for $.99 or free?

You find some good PLR and then you rewrite/add/remove to make a new book and then you publish it. The PLR just gives you a starting point. If you publish it as is, you won't make a dime.

[kenj]

Originally Posted by GameVoid

Do they have content restrictions on Kindle books? Like adult titles.

I'm asking for a friend

Game Void

You are a genius - I have laughed for a solid 5 minutes at this post - keep them coming

Kenj

[Hoopatang]

Originally Posted by Tanner

You find some good PLR and then you rewrite/add/remove to make a new book and then you publish it. The PLR just gives you a starting point. If you publish it as is, you won't make a dime.

Thank you, Tanner! That's the link my harried brain was missing.
(I think I'll trademark that: HBML - Harried Brain Missing Link)

[thrigrri]

Originally Posted by Paul Coleman

Absolutely. Excellent idea. And it will motivate other Warriors.

Paul

Sure! I'll work on it and put up a thread on it soon!

After I've set it up I'll let you know... Perhaps you can give me your thoughts on how you find it, and how I can improve it... Thanks in advance!


Cheers
Jun Yuan

[nyrsimon]

Originally Posted by Hoopatang

I see some folks mentioning putting up public domain books and PLR books.
I looked at dozens upon dozens of public domain books and when I went to Amazon to see if someone else had posted them already, I always found at least two dozen different copies of the books. Ranging in price from about $15 down to free. Sometimes by the same publisher, lol.

Same thing with PLR books. I looked at... *thinking*... at least ten different PLRs and went to amazon - there they were, titles not even changed, being offered by many different people.

So I'm curious how you guys are finding these PD works and PLR products to actually make money with, that someone else hasn't already posted for $.99 or free?

So if you try and sell a common Public Domain book that is from Gutenberg for example there is massive competition. Plus Amazon are cracking down on it.

BUT if you get creative (isn't that always the way!) and find less common Public Domain material or if you package them up (MASSIVE hint) you can still sell them quite nicely....

Simon

[imon32red]

I love the Kindle. Not only do I sell my ebooks on the Kindle platform, but I also use it to read as well. I still read a lot of physical books, but more and more of my books are going to the Kindle. In fact the last paperback I bought only because it wasn't offered in the Kindle format.

By the way, there is plenty of money to be made at Amazon. My ebook sales have paid my bills throughout 2010. If you are interested in selling your book at Amazon I suggest listing it before Christmas. between Christmas Eve and New Years day my book sells spiked through the roof.