TEST A
This is the book(A2) that readers get for free if they subscribe through the link in my first book(A1).
I published it in Amazon a week ago and told my friends (about 15) and 2 contributors, then I enrolled it in KDP SELECT and did a 5 day free giveaway.
We are on day 4 right now and this is what it looks like:
TEST B
This book is in my 200+ unique blog, NO fanfare or emails to friends and contributors, just a link at the top of the blog to the amazon page and a bit of copy text. Additionally I enrolled it in KDP Select and did a 5 day free giveaway which is now over:
Results:
The book (A2) without a blog got more downloads-30-, than the book with a blog -20-!
So it seems FREE works, regardless of the 200+ unique blog.
However, there are some sales for book B and none for book A...hmmm...
Here is a book that I made almost two years ago and totally forgot about, it too is anonymous and at the top of a blog of mine:
OK so it's not a lot, one PAID unit every two weeks on average, but not bad for a forgotten book! I love making money in my sleep!
The sale for book A is still on, it is going to be interesting to see how these 2 books pan out.
LESSONS LEARNED:
PRICING
Damn! I should have mentioned this from the beginning:
The "B" books, are 2.99
There is only one review of the B1 book, a 1 star negative review. This is an English book, it was bought in the GERMAN Amazon.de and he gave it a bad review in German! wtf!? It is also clear that if he would have read the description of the book, that it was a book made from my blog posts and that I am not a doctor or scientist.
Does this mean people (Germans!) are blindly buying books based on the cover art and not even reading the description?
Or did I just "ace" the title and cover and targeting for a super specific niche?
The "A" book is 4.99
No sales yet - I will update in the next posts....
I love "divorcing" my time from money/hourly wages, I am going to concentrate now on high quality evergreen content that I can scale/amplify to make me money forever in my sleep! (does that make sense?)
More 11mar15:
Time for an update!
The free sales are all over, there have been around 5 days of no free deals for all books, here is what it looks like:
Overall:
Book A2 - the target of a the funnel book (A1)
Book B1 - the book at the top of a blog that gets 200+ uniques per day and is a very narrow Niche:
And the forgotten book which is actually #2 among its competitors.
And here is the perma-free Funnel for a website (looking for leads + traffic not sales).
Lessons learned:
1. Again - FREE WORKS
2. The book with the 200 unique blog isn't doin that great, seems like 200 uniques per day and a super narrow niche aren't enough.
- Or I gotta change up my offer.
3. The forgotten book is still selling, somewhat slow, but steadily, I think mostly because I aced the cover and title on that one + niche.
Note, these are only Kindle sales reports.
P.S.
Another thing I have learned is NICHE - NICHE - NICHE...if you can nail a niche, you don't even need reviews.
That "forgotten" book has a better title and better cover than the others in the same category WITH reviews and it's doing BETTER!
But about your first book, I think everyone should be prepared for that 1st day spike -- from being shortly on the first page in Amazon, and then the trail off into oblivion.
UNLESS you are of course Tim Ferris who attacks it and dominates the marketing from the beginning. I like his style, he says "I'm gonna write a bestseller" -- then he goes out and does it!
With the 4 books above I had varying amounts of mediocre to average effort when it came to marketing.
Books A were funnels and target books,
Books B were my lazy blogging technique where more effort goes into the blog and book and almost Zero effort in marketing,
well -- you can now see exactly the results you get with Zero marketing.
It remains to be seen if in the long term I can dig out some more profits and pivot with these books.
You can supposedly make the lion share when you have a fat product palette and the people start digging around in your other books.
So this is a start and I'm glad to have shared it with everyone.
It's a perfect example of what you get with little to mediocre effort.
This is really encouraging for me actually, because now I know the way, and with concentrated effort I can kill it!
Inspiration for this post came from:
Nick Stephenson - Reader Magnets
Noah Kagan - holy sh*t - this guy gives you so much for FREE!
John Locke - Ebook Marketing Master
And Tim Ferriss - look up his posts too, about "how to really make a million with ebooks"
What do you want me to make next? Let me know?>>>https://zbooksco.typeform.com/to/NALmvc
This is the book(A2) that readers get for free if they subscribe through the link in my first book(A1).
I published it in Amazon a week ago and told my friends (about 15) and 2 contributors, then I enrolled it in KDP SELECT and did a 5 day free giveaway.
We are on day 4 right now and this is what it looks like:
TEST B
This book is in my 200+ unique blog, NO fanfare or emails to friends and contributors, just a link at the top of the blog to the amazon page and a bit of copy text. Additionally I enrolled it in KDP Select and did a 5 day free giveaway which is now over:
Results:
The book (A2) without a blog got more downloads-30-, than the book with a blog -20-!
So it seems FREE works, regardless of the 200+ unique blog.
However, there are some sales for book B and none for book A...hmmm...
Here is a book that I made almost two years ago and totally forgot about, it too is anonymous and at the top of a blog of mine:
OK so it's not a lot, one PAID unit every two weeks on average, but not bad for a forgotten book! I love making money in my sleep!
The sale for book A is still on, it is going to be interesting to see how these 2 books pan out.
LESSONS LEARNED:
- FREE works!
- Blogs as FUNNELS work too!
- You gotta ACE the cover and Title
PRICING
Damn! I should have mentioned this from the beginning:
The "B" books, are 2.99
There is only one review of the B1 book, a 1 star negative review. This is an English book, it was bought in the GERMAN Amazon.de and he gave it a bad review in German! wtf!? It is also clear that if he would have read the description of the book, that it was a book made from my blog posts and that I am not a doctor or scientist.
Does this mean people (Germans!) are blindly buying books based on the cover art and not even reading the description?
Or did I just "ace" the title and cover and targeting for a super specific niche?
The "A" book is 4.99
No sales yet - I will update in the next posts....
I love "divorcing" my time from money/hourly wages, I am going to concentrate now on high quality evergreen content that I can scale/amplify to make me money forever in my sleep! (does that make sense?)
More 11mar15:
Time for an update!
The free sales are all over, there have been around 5 days of no free deals for all books, here is what it looks like:
Overall:
Book A2 - the target of a the funnel book (A1)
Book B1 - the book at the top of a blog that gets 200+ uniques per day and is a very narrow Niche:
And the forgotten book which is actually #2 among its competitors.
And here is the perma-free Funnel for a website (looking for leads + traffic not sales).
Lessons learned:
1. Again - FREE WORKS
2. The book with the 200 unique blog isn't doin that great, seems like 200 uniques per day and a super narrow niche aren't enough.
- Or I gotta change up my offer.
3. The forgotten book is still selling, somewhat slow, but steadily, I think mostly because I aced the cover and title on that one + niche.
Note, these are only Kindle sales reports.
P.S.
Another thing I have learned is NICHE - NICHE - NICHE...if you can nail a niche, you don't even need reviews.
That "forgotten" book has a better title and better cover than the others in the same category WITH reviews and it's doing BETTER!
But about your first book, I think everyone should be prepared for that 1st day spike -- from being shortly on the first page in Amazon, and then the trail off into oblivion.
UNLESS you are of course Tim Ferris who attacks it and dominates the marketing from the beginning. I like his style, he says "I'm gonna write a bestseller" -- then he goes out and does it!
With the 4 books above I had varying amounts of mediocre to average effort when it came to marketing.
Books A were funnels and target books,
Books B were my lazy blogging technique where more effort goes into the blog and book and almost Zero effort in marketing,
well -- you can now see exactly the results you get with Zero marketing.
It remains to be seen if in the long term I can dig out some more profits and pivot with these books.
You can supposedly make the lion share when you have a fat product palette and the people start digging around in your other books.
So this is a start and I'm glad to have shared it with everyone.
It's a perfect example of what you get with little to mediocre effort.
This is really encouraging for me actually, because now I know the way, and with concentrated effort I can kill it!
Inspiration for this post came from:
Nick Stephenson - Reader Magnets
Noah Kagan - holy sh*t - this guy gives you so much for FREE!
John Locke - Ebook Marketing Master
And Tim Ferriss - look up his posts too, about "how to really make a million with ebooks"
What do you want me to make next? Let me know?>>>https://zbooksco.typeform.com/to/NALmvc
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