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Charnell's eBook Progress Thread [Here we go, it's getting serious!]

Charnell

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Between 1/11-1/17 sales dropped roughly 3.55%, so that made last week the second best week ever haha.
128 sales and 450 borrows for the week.
Total for January: 1519 Units Sold

I'm also "trimming the fat" from my team of freelancers. I ended one contract today from easily the "weakest" writer. Strong use of quotation marks. The writer I ended contracts with always wrote in a cryptic/mystical style of writing that just didn't fit with the genres I was requesting.

If anyone's looking for a damn amazing way of keeping track of sales, send me a PM. Dollars earned per word, book, total everything, daily sales, work tracker, a whole lot of numbers. Growth rate tracking and extrapolation. Very colorful and beautiful.
 
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Charnell

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Between 1/18-1/24 sales dropped roughly 7.20%. Still a downward trend, but sales/borrows have started to level off around 60-70 sales per day.
140 sales and 375 borrows for the week.
Total for January: 2010 Units Sold

Bundles are still making a bulk of sales. Somehow I can get a ton of borrows during the 5 day free promo, people must be clicking the "read for free" button as opposed to "buy now", even though the price is $0.00.

It takes me a little less than 15 minutes to make a bundle. I've created templates for everything, and keep any information in one place. I have spreadsheets that contain every book description and keywords used for each book. If I spent 8 hours of non-stop bundling, at 4 bundles an hour, I could make between $89.60 (one copy sold, my lowest amount) and $13,242.88 (my highest revenue amount, times 32). $10 an hour to $1655 an hour.

I couldn't do that though, because it's very blackhat-ish. I don't like have two similar stories in the same bundle, so slow and steady is the case.

My goal for the next week is to publish at least two books a day.
 

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I've toyed with doing this in my head. Finding a niche in erotica or romance and trying this... but the idea took a backseat. But your thread has me interested in this again. Awesome job so far. How many books have you published up until now? Not including bundles, but simply individual stories. :)
 

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This thread is definitely an inspiration.....

Awesome spreadsheet by the way...totally Jaleous :)

I always wonder though...why do people work as writers for outsourcers while they can write the books and put them on amazon themselves xD
 

Charnell

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I've toyed with doing this in my head. Finding a niche in erotica or romance and trying this... but the idea took a backseat. But your thread has me interested in this again. Awesome job so far. How many books have you published up until now? Not including bundles, but simply individual stories. :)
So far this year I'm at 18 individual books, last year was around 70.
This thread is definitely an inspiration.....

Awesome spreadsheet by the way...totally Jaleous :)

I always wonder though...why do people work as writers for outsourcers while they can write the books and put them on amazon themselves xD
Probably the instant payment versus such a delayed theoretical residual income. They probably need the money now as opposed to two months later and only if the book sells.

Also, I wouldn't doubt that they were publishing their own stuff as well. It's like the user @Jakeeck. He has his own ebooks on Amazon, and at the same time was freelance writing for companies.
 

Charnell

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LEARN HOW TO FIND KEYWORDS
I can't stress this enough. If you want to make any sort of moves in the game, learn to find keywords. On December 28th, I started using a keyword program. On December 29th, sales made an all-time high, then again and again a few days later.
KW.png

I can attribute a portion of the increased sales to Christmas (new kindles/kindle unlimited/gift cards), but I feel like the month would have continued much like December 27th/28th. A bit better but nothing to make a post about.

This month my average sales are where my average borrows were last month, and my average borrows are 3 times that.

KEYWORD TIP (Amazon)
Amazon will auto-populate the search bar with commonly searched for strings of text. If you use ebook as a keyword (which I strongly encourage you not to) you will be in a sea of over 6.5 million books. Instead, you would want to use ebook on amazon (which I strongly encourage you not to) which only has 3.2 million books. eb.png
You'll definitely not want to use such a broad keyword like ebook.

13/30. 13 out of the top 30 search results for a keyword with over 180,000 results are my books. Of those, 10 are on the first page. I also hold the number 1 spot.

Keep a spreadsheet with your keywords in it. If you have a series all on how to read ebooks, there's no reason to type out all those keywords for each book. Especially if you're writing/outsourcing a lot it's a whole lot easier to keep track of in one spreadsheet as opposed to opening up their individual book details page.

In fact, I keep everything minus the actual content in spreadsheets/files. For my fiction I have a spreadsheet with all titles, subtitles, niches, and book descriptions. For my nonfiction I have individual folders where I have their cover, cover file, "raw" book, final form book, and a word file with the description copy and keywords.

If anyone wants to know anything else, leave a reply.
 
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Charnell

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@Gabriel I guess what I should have said was learn how to find keywords. You're given 7 different searchable keywords to use when you submit your book to Amazon. Find out what the best ones to use are.

Every topic is going to be different when it comes to keywords. The key is to rank highly in the keywords you pick.
 

Gabriel

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@Gabriel I guess what I should have said was learn how to find keywords. You're given 7 different searchable keywords to use when you submit your book to Amazon. Find out what the best ones to use are.

Every topic is going to be different when it comes to keywords. The key is to rank highly in the keywords you pick.

There you go hehehe. What's are your tips for ranking for those keywords? I try to look for low competence key words, but besides that nothing else comes to my mind.
 
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Based on my limited experience on Amazon, I'm forming the opinion that SEO is the number one factor for commercial success.
@Charnell, do you have any resource on it? What do you mean by "keyword program"?
 

Charnell

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There you go hehehe. What's are your tips for ranking for those keywords? I try to look for low competence key words, but besides that nothing else comes to my mind.

Honestly, I don't look for the most amazing keyword I can possibly find. I think about what I'd search for, see if it's worth it, and go from there. You can always update keywords later, so publish now, do more research later.

Based on my limited experience on Amazon, I'm forming the opinion that SEO is the number one factor for commercial success.
@Charnell, do you have any resource on it? What do you mean by "keyword program"?
Oh hell yeah. How else are people going to find your books unless you actively advertise. That helps them find the product, but having a high quality product makes them stay.

I got my hands on AK Elite. All it really does is does the Amazon auto-populate what other people search for.
 
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Cantona7

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Great thread so far! Surprised it hasn't gotten more attention

@Charnell, got any tips on researching niches?

In the future, do you see yourself writing more yourself vs. outsourcing? I'm a good writer but the find it difficult to trudge through the writing process. I'm wondering if the time saved by outsourcing > the quality of me writing my own books.
 
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Charnell

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Great thread so far! Surprised it hasn't gotten more attention

@Charnell, got any tips on researching niches?

In the future, do you see yourself writing more yourself vs. outsourcing? I'm a good writer but the find it difficult to trudge through the writing process. I'm wondering if the time saved by outsourcing > the quality of me writing my own books.
I appreciate the compliment, thanks for the good vibes!

All the non-fiction I've outsourced are outside the realm of the big selling niches, and I'm familiar with the topics. The big selling niches are health & fitness, self-help, and cookbooks. All of mine are career/business related. They don't do CH numbers, but a few have done $XXX months back to back, with the average I want to say around $XX a month. I can get a more accurate average on the 15th of Feb.

I like to create things, so I could see myself being a full time author. Unfortunately, outsourcing has sort of skewed how I see that playing out.

My advice to you, like I gave to @Gabriel earlier in the thread, is if you want to write your own stuff do it before you start outsourcing. After paying someone to do it for you, it sort of kills the willingness to sit down and bust out a few thousand words. After paying the neighborhood kid $10 to mow your lawn, how excited would you be when you have to mow it yourself?
 

Durete

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I got my hands on AK Elite. All it really does is does the Amazon auto-populate what other people search for.


I never heard of AK Elite so just googled it.

Questions for you:
What options of the AK-Elite program are you suing?
Is it worth the investment of the $150?
Do you think that this is a Must-have program for anyone using Kindle or just for mass-publishers?
 

Charnell

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I never heard of AK Elite so just googled it.

Questions for you:
What options of the AK-Elite program are you suing?
Is it worth the investment of the $150?
Do you think that this is a Must-have program for anyone using Kindle or just for mass-publishers?
The only thing I'm using it for is the keyword "finder". It doesn't find keywords, just fills in the autofill that Amazon does anyway. Basically it's a big time saver, because I wouldn't be going through for hours trying to find the best keywords. As you can see from the graph a few posts up it basically paid for itself in one day. Plus it's a tax write-off...

I didn't do any advertising, up until about 18 hours ago. The only way people could find my books was through searching, so keywords were very important. If you're paying for advertising and getting good results it shouldn't be completely necessary.
 
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It depends on whether it is nonfiction or fiction.
All of my non-fiction writers get $10/1000 words.
For fiction, I would pay them $3/1000 words. I would have them write a 3 part series, and then pay them the average of the three at the end as a bonus, so it really came out to about $4.5/1000 words.
I also have one guy from Sri Lanka that brings me short stories for $9. They are a $9 story, so I have to spend a bit of time cleaning them up, but for the time being it's worth it.

oDesk seems to only have two options. Pay per project or per hour. How are you negotiating per words?
 

Charnell

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oDesk seems to only have two options. Pay per project or per hour. How are you negotiating per words?
I always do pay per project.

You just have to chat with the freelancer and get an agreed upon rate. Say I want a 5,000 word minimum book and we agree it can be done at a rate of $10/1000 words. I'll setup the project for $50, then if they submit say, 5124 words, I'll add on a $1.24 bonus.

You can also go about flat rate. Same scenario, 5,000 words minimum at $50 flat. So if they submit 5124, you just send the agreed upon $50.

I've done and am doing it both ways right now, it largely depends on the freelancer.
 

Charnell

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Between 1/25-1/31 sales increased roughly 9.44%. This further proves to me that the Christmas rush is over, and these numbers are getting stable.
139 sales and 439 borrows for the week.
Month in Review: January
602 Sales + 1,922 Borrows = 2,524 total sales

I did 2,651 in all of 2014. I made around a c-note less in January than I did in all of 2014. I'm going to make more from this month than I've ever made in a month working (excluding terminal leave from the military). It's pretty wild to look at, especially considering it's barely part time work.
It's making me feel some type of way.

In other news Calculus is whooping my a$$ right now, John Stossel is starting to become interesting, and I bought an AR-15.
 

Charnell

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Great job Charnell. Sounds like you are well on your way to internet riches.
Thanks @Journey2Million$, I appreciate it. Slow and steady.

This week I'm going to continue re-branding. I made another pretty sexy template for my book covers, to make them uniform. That and I'm dividing my pen names between freelancers. I was putting everything under one or two names, but their writing styles are vastly different so I'm 86ing that.
 
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Charnell

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Plan for February

A few things I plan on doing, a little braindump if you will. Someone keep me accountable.
  • Separate books under different pen names. Don't want them getting so cluttered. 10/27 exchanged
  • Update backmatter of two new pen names. Include links of all books at the end with descriptions. Include small cover to save space as well as descriptions. 0/Loads
  • Update mailing lists. Only configured a few items, want to make them as beautiful as possible. 0/4
  • Setup new page for mailing list. I found a pretty good method that automates gaining new subscribers a few weeks ago. Slow but steady. 0/2
  • Research VA's so I can hire one to do advertising for me. Someone in my mastermind group sent me a huge list of websites that offer advertising, FB pages that do advertising, ect. We'll see if the return>cost.
I'll update these weekly on Sundays when I give my previous week's numbers.
 

Charnell

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Between 2/1-2/7 sales increased roughly 10.5%. Oh yeah, still on the rise.
145 sales and 473 borrows for the week.

This last week was pretty productive, just not in my business. If you've read this thread, you know I'm an old a$$ freshman. I had 3 tests and a quiz this week, and came to find out last Monday I didn't know a damn thing about Calculus. So I took to Khan Academy and basically learned the first month of class in a few days. I'll get test results on Tuesday. Should get a pretty good score, it felt pretty easy.

I have one more test this week, then it's back to the daily learnin.

All of February's extracurricular activity is still at the same place it was last Tuesday.
 

Charnell

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Between 2/1-2/7 sales decreased roughly 30.4%. Woof, I'll take the loss. I heard it was a pretty poor week for most, what with the holiday. What a polar plunge.
104 sales and 322 borrows for the week.

In other news, borrows came out to roughly $1.38, which sets January's grand total earnings to $3906.60! I know some cats are doing bigger things than that, but that is the highest amount I've earned in 1 month (before taxes) in my life. That's more than I made all of last year with Kindle books. Another interesting thing is my top 6 books for January, which amount to over 50% of total revenue, were created based on 0 research or foresight of any kind. Just an afternoon of let's see if this works.
 
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Concratz on getting your best month to date.

You say (Before taxes) in your post.

How did you set up your taxes?
As a business, or as personal income etc? Or will you pay twice taxes over it?(Business+Salary)
 

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Awesome progress. I don't intend to get into publishing, but regardless, your progress and focus on simple growth metrics is truly inspiring.

Also, what school in the Midwest are you attending? I recently graduated IU, and if by chance that's where you happen to be, I'd gladly put you in touch with some successful entrepreneurs so that you can maximize your time there.
 

Charnell

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Concratz on getting your best month to date.

You say (Before taxes) in your post.

How did you set up your taxes?
As a business, or as personal income etc? Or will you pay twice taxes over it?(Business+Salary)
I'm going to take a loss this first year, but I have a friend who's an accountant that I'm going to sit down with to talk about what the best course of action would be.
Awesome progress. I don't intend to get into publishing, but regardless, your progress and focus on simple growth metrics is truly inspiring.

Also, what school in the Midwest are you attending? I recently graduated IU, and if by chance that's where you happen to be, I'd gladly put you in touch with some successful entrepreneurs so that you can maximize your time there.
I'm going to South Dakota State now. I know a few people that want to start something, and even fewer people doing something. I'm by no means making massive moves, but I would put money on it that I'm in the 1% of people here that are full time students. That excites me.

I'm putting my mom on the game as well. She used to write for Hustler back in the day, and has a few books out now that she wrote. She just hired her first freelancer yesterday and has around $40,000 to play with. I have no doubt she will be doing 5 figures very soon. Now I just need to teach her keywords.
 
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Charnell

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Week 7: 2/15-2/21
Sales
: 94
Borrows: 378
Change from last week: 5.78%

Valentine's day really goobered up my sales from last week, luckily I'm coming back up slowly but surely. Even today is starting to look like the beginning of the month: a whole lot better than the last 2 weeks.

In other news, I bought a new domain name, and am decided between hostgator and bluehost now.

@Vigilante @MJ DeMarco, could one of you change the title of this to something like "Charnell's Self-Publishing Journey"?
 

Charnell

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It's been a few weeks since I last updated. I've decided that in March I'm not going to track daily/weekly sales. When I start getting on a roll, I start getting lackadaisical. Complacent. Can't have that. I'll see where I'm at at the end of the month. Need to just put in work and not try to coast of previous successes.
 

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