Self-Publishing, from $0 to $24,000 per Month

[Funke]

Thank you for your support @mws87 and @Rawr !
@EricZ I use Aweber, no problems so far

This is all normal. Welcome to the game.

Actually I entered the game 3 years ago and since then I felt pressure constantly growing. It was very hard to manage my 'states' back in 2014. Lots of ups and downs. I survived the battle, its much better now than it was then, but there is this fear of failure and fear of having to go through those moments again (this creates motivation). Though I think it is not possible with the experience I have gathered.


I just finished a very looong e-mail giving lots of value to my subscribers. Surprising thing happened just after finishing the e-mail. I needed advice if I should split it into two and how to test things.
And what? 6 minutes later I got a response on the issue from e-mail marketing guru Noah Kagan Got enough confidence.

That's another reason I'm looking at Gumroad, much easier to sell your videos through them.

Is it? How many videos have you sold?
I wouldn't use gumroad for that. It's like programming Windows and Internet Explorer to surt the Internet.
If I would want to record a course now, have more profits and have it on my domain, I would go with http://usefedora.com/ But marketing is the hard part usually...

It's easier to sell to existing audience, and later with experience try to step up and build your own traffic sources. You can get existing buying customers from Udemy and drive them to your site on Gumroad for the next "module" or video. I wouldn't have such sales on my books without the leverage of distribution channels of Amazon and Createspace.

There is a reason people do guest posting on blogs, they use someone elses traffic.
The same case is for Udemy which is growing amazingly fast, over 5 000 000 students is worth building a position there.

It's good that the entry level is higher than on KDP, creating a video course is not that easy as outsourcing short ebooks to Philipines. It's also very good that they have quality requirements and things like having content in chunks (people love quick consumables).
I've recorded a test video in 720p and it passed without problems, encoded in Camtasia.

I've got some notes from a webinar with a guy who released 6 courses on Udemy, it's not a rocket science:

• Create original course. Create good sales page. Make sure first 15% is awesome (previews).
• Give it away for free every 1-2 months whenever you want your "popularity" to get higher. (Popularity is a number of new students within given time period (week), and its default search sorting)
• Get reviews for social proof, again giving it away for free, those who liked it will recommend it to other buyers from the niche. (When you send someone to Udemy with a coupon and they buy something else you get aff $$$)
• Triple displayed course length by adding PDF's
• Have 12 modules, it's a "sweet" spot.
• Have the course enrolled into Udemy's promotions and they will get you $1000+/month minimum (with a course priced at $47-$57).

Of course all depends on what you create and the pricing. I will definitely have something there later on to try it, for money, for more leads, but most importantly for fun of doing it

 

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[Funke]

p.s I almost forgot, what is your pricing structure?
Are you hitting the "proven" amazon sweet spots of $2.99 and .99 ?
According to Mark Coker of Smashwords $3.99 is now the sweetspot for indie authors (see his awesome slideshare!)

I am doing $2.99, it worked for me to get bestseller labels and I want to maintain them as long as I can so I won't experiment with that on current books, maybe later.

$11.49 - $12.49 on paperbacks to have them discounted to $9.99.
As mentioned before, having increased retail price on Createspace gives me $5.60 royalty instead of $3.80 (I may be wrong with numbers here but close). The price on Amazon is the same for readers, because Amazon discounts it automatically.

 

[EricZ]

That's gold Funke!
I'm going to have to give Udemy another try, it's just so frustrating when your video and sound quality is good but they have different screen requirements. That is my problem, I'm a Linux user and have a different size -everything- !
What is your Email list?!

Brgs
E.

 

[edward222]

Would you mind if you share one of your
works?
Just an introduction will do

 

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[Funke]

I don't want to share it right now publicly, maybe in a couple of months. I don't really need competition of kindle gold rushers there until my finance situation gets more stable and I build bigger audience.

I've seen one copycat yesterday, he published two weeks ago. He even took part of the book description from me and he has gotten a few top reviewers to post, but he failed miserably, they have been downvoted and he got many bad reviews, he is behind me in rankings.

My plan is to dominate it fast with a couple more books, and have 100+ reviews on each one, so it won't be easy for anyone to catch up

 

[edward222]

I don't want to share it right now publicly, maybe in a couple of months. I don't really need competition of kindle gold rushers there until my finance situation gets more stable and I build bigger audience.

I've seen one copycat yesterday, he published two weeks ago. He even took part of the book description from me and he has gotten a few top reviewers to post, but he failed miserably, they have been downvoted and he got many bad reviews, he is behind me in rankings.

My plan is to dominate it fast with a couple more books, and have 100+ reviews on each one, so it won't be easy for anyone to catch up

Cool!
I understand.
Hope you can dominate as fast and as early as you can
Good luck

 

[Cesare]

You need to get reviews on them.

Absolutely! I believe that's the key to success right here. It's all about social proof. I succeeded in selling E-Books without reviews on payhip but I'm convinced that if you want to make serious money, you have to use Amazon Kindle because it is popular (social proof) and as you mentioned, you need to get reviews on them (again social proof).

 

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[webcomber]

I have 24 non-fiction and 4 short romance books (+bundles made from those).

Hi Funke,
Thanks for the thread! How is your romance performing compared to your non-fiction? I have found that since KU2 my non-fiction outperforms my fiction even though I left some fiction in KU2 (non-fiction is not in KU). On Apple fiction still outperforms non-fiction but I am curious how yours is panning out. It seems non-fiction is less vulnerable to Amazon changes since pricing is more firm and there is no need to use KU (but I do have a bit more fun with fiction but non-fiction clearly outsells them now in Amazon but not Apple).

 

[Funke]

@webcomber I only "touched" fiction so I don't really have any meaningful stats. Those 4 short stories have 3500+ words each and they are priced at $0.99 each.
They cost me around $170. They are selling from time to time, slooowly getting it back, but this was bad idea. They are simply too short. It would be much better to have one longer book.


If I would to do it again, I would go with much longer books (10k-20k words) which would be related to each other, and the story would be carefuly designed.
And then have one perma Free, one e-mail address magnet, and one and more coming out every two weeks for $2.99, with ocasional promotions.


I am signed to one erotica mailing list (cause I watch what others are doing all the time), and here is how to do it well:
http://postimg.org/image/5mrxcx0jf/ <- This is whole e-mail.

 

[Cesare]

@Funke When you promote your books in Facebook groups, do you use a fanpage or a normal Facebook account?

 

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[Funke]

@Cesare I don't think you can post with a fanpage on groups. I use normal account, which also does not have anything business related in its name. The only call to action there is book download link, I make it simple with a catchy one liner and of course image is a must.

 

[Funke]

Assuming that Amazon will pay $0.006 per page, and getbookreport works okay...

My total income for July is approximately $3043,75 !

Which is way better than expected

• Books Sales $2725,82 (Createspace + KDP)
• Amazon Associates $154.01 (US) + $4.57 (UK)
• JVZoo $104.25
• Clickbank $30.38
• Payoneer Referal Bonus $25

But... because I have my entity in Poland, Amazon will withhold 10% from USD income, which will probably be around $280. I haven't figured out, if I could get this back or have it reduced to 0% by moving the business to another country.


This month I want to increase the income by doing the following:

• Publish 2 more books targeted at my niche.
• Publish 1 permanently free book to drive more traffic (I will have to take time to figure out other platforms).
• (Publish 5 of my books on Ingram Spark.)
• Write more e-mails for autoresponder with included Clickbank offer, finish Autoresponder Madness course, create more value and reciprocity.
• Improve landing page, choose a theme for blog and create 1-2 blog posts (+page with books, +sign up pop ups).
• Create one "viral" giveaway and one goodreads giveaway.
• Research competition and potential partners, write it all down and analyze.
• Set up membership with Wishlist Member + Clickbank.
• Continue free promotions on older books.
• Continue publishing content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram.

 

[GuestUser116]

My total income for July is approximately $3043,75 !

That's solid, good job. How much of the $ is from Createspace?

 

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[Funke]

@Glacier - 70%, as I get $5.20 per book. And much less on Kindle...

I think I should try and increase prices on Kindle, but I am scared that number of sales will go down and I could lose #1 Bestsellers tags.

 

[GuestUser116]

@Glacier - 70%, as I get $5.20 per book. And much less on Kindle...

I think I should try and increase prices on Kindle, but I am scared that number of sales will go down and I could lose #1 Bestsellers tags.

Use the KDP pricing support, it works good.

I meant how much $ from $3043.75 came from Createspace. Looking to see if getting print versions is worth it.

 

[Funke]

@Glacier
KDP $817.27
Createspace $1908.55

Last month I sold 328 copies on Kindle, 24091 pages read, 451 paperbacks.


All of my books have paper version, I don't know why most of the "Kindle" authors don't do the paper version. They are going through teached schemes and courses, they don't do anything more than that and they lose.

The back cover can be just blank, and formatting is less than one hour (depending on experience and book length).
Even my romances, which I consider poor, are being sold in paper - I had to put 2-4 blank pages inside to meet the 24 pages minimum requirement.

There are many keywords where the top 10 search results have only Kindle version books and no paperbacks.
That is why I want to expand to Ingram Spark, but I don't know yet where and how they collide with Createspace's distribution, need to read on it.



The pricing support suggests:
$3.49-$3.99
Typical impact for similar books:
Author Earnings: +10%
Books Sold: -25%

I think I will stay with my price to maintain the rankings, the risk is not worth the +10% on kindle earnings.
Thank You for the tool suggestion @Glacier, I thought that it always shows the same graph.

Edit: And paper + audio versions are giving the book more credibility.

 

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[GuestUser116]

KDP $817.27
Createspace $1908.55

Damn I thought kindle was the big dog and Createspace was nothing. Is that all non fiction? I'm a publisher and most of the titles I have are non fiction at $2.99 40-80 pages. I'd earn more for sure getting print versions.

 

[Funke]

It's "book publishing business", there are many parts of the system, it's not Kindle only.

Yea, non-fiction. Romance paperbacks earned me $17.57 in July But as mentioned before, I've done them poorly, and they were targeted at KU 1.0.

 

[GuestUser116]

I'm convinced. Gonna get print versions.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Damn I thought kindle was the big dog and Createspace was nothing. Is that all non fiction? I'm a publisher and most of the titles I have are non fiction at $2.99 40-80 pages. I'd earn more for sure getting print versions.

To chime in here, I actually make more per copy on my Kindle versions than on my printed CreateSpace versions. Once the printing costs are factored in, sadly, there isn't a ton to spare, royalty wise for the author. But I still think the CreateSpace versions can be worth doing, because it makes your book listings look more official, meaning more like a traditionally published book.

 

[Funke]

My CS royalty is that big mostly because I have increased the prices to $12.49. To be exact I get $5.34 per sale.

 

[Alan LT]

How many words do your books contain? Considering the people writing it are good writer; I would assume the more words the more value.

Also, I've had a book that would rank very high in the free ranking on amazon, but once the promo finished it wouldn't rank so high in the paid rankings. What could I do to fix this?

 

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[ThinkDifferent]

My CS royalty is that big mostly because I have increased the prices to $12.49. To be exact I get $5.34 per sale.

Hey friend,

I love following your progress. Please update us again soon.

I have many Polish friends and they are all into business, the grinding is in your blood.

powodzenia mój przyjaciel

 

[TedM]

All of my books have paper version, I don't know why most of the "Kindle" authors don't do the paper version. They are going through teached schemes and courses, they don't do anything more than that and they lose.

The back cover can be just blank, and formatting is less than one hour (depending on experience and book length).
Even my romances, which I consider poor, are being sold in paper - I had to put 2-4 blank pages inside to meet the 24 pages minimum requirement.

There are many keywords where the top 10 search results have only Kindle version books and no paperbacks.
That is why I want to expand to Ingram Spark, but I don't know yet where and how they collide with Createspace's distribution, need to read on it.

this is a very powerful insight.

 

[EricZ]

Damn I thought kindle was the big dog and Createspace was nothing. Is that all non fiction? I'm a publisher and most of the titles I have are non fiction at $2.99 40-80 pages. I'd earn more for sure getting print versions.

My kids books also make 3x more money on Createspace than on KDP, if you're not doin' createspace you're leaving money on the table!

 

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[Gregory Diehl]

Interesting was to quantify and measure your progress. I'm working on my first book right now, and honestly profiting from the sales hadn't entered my mind at all. I have enough independent income and I live very cheaply. For me it's almost entirely about branding myself as a real expert, and using that position to leverage myself into better and better professional positions in my work for myself and with other people. I'd actually like to write several books all related to the theme of identity. In this way, I think I can successfully make the leap from business identity branding to personal identity branding, and other forms of coaching, etc. Time will tell though.

 

[Gregory Diehl]

Interesting was to quantify and measure your progress. I'm working on my first book right now, and honestly profiting from the sales hadn't entered my mind at all. I have enough independent income and I live very cheaply. For me it's almost entirely about branding myself as a real expert, and using that position to leverage myself into better and better professional positions in my work for myself and with other people. I'd actually like to write several books all related to the theme of identity. In this way, I think I can successfully make the leap from business identity branding to personal identity branding, and other forms of coaching, etc. Time will tell though.