BlogMutt Review: Can You Make Money Writing BlogMutt?

Photo credit: SEOPlanter

We're finally all moved and settled in, mostly, so that means I finally have a little time to devote to the blog again. For my first post since the move I thought an honest review of BlogMutt, a content writing mill, would be a great way to kick things off.

I actually starting using them at the end of November and wrote through the first half of December for them. Then life got in the way, I had our third child, and then we moved. For that reason I've just started writing for them again this past week. The honest truth is that I love it! It's a great way to quickly and easily earn a side income. I'll go into all the nitty gritty details but first let's talk a little bit about what they are.

BlogMutt is what's called a content mill. This means that blog owners who, for whatever reason, can't/won't write for their blog pay a monthly fee to BlogMutt. In return BlogMutt offers these writing "jobs" to their members for a flat payment rate of $8 a post. It's a triple win situation, the blog owner gets quality posts without having to write it themselves, BlogMutt makes a profit, and we get paid (well) for doing something we love already. 

DO YOU NEED TO BE A PROFESSIONAL WRITER?

The short answer is: NO. When you first ask to be one of their writers they will have you take a writing test. It does actually require a little thought, and I actually failed it the first time. They're super nice though and gave me a chance to re-do the test. The next time I did a little better grammar research and passed. There is also a plagiarism test you will take, really simple multiple choice.

DO YOU NEED A LOT OF SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE?

Again, the answer is : NO. Many of the posts can be easily written with a small amount of research online. Now to be sure there are also plenty of posts that I don't touch because you do need a little knowledge on the subject, or it would require a lot of research on my part. I've never found it to be a problem though, there are plenty of clients to choose from.

HOW DO THEY PAY?

Their payment structure is different from other content mills I've tried, like iwriter. There is no per word payment. Instead writers get a flat $8 per post that they write, and the minimum word count for most posts is 250 words. A customer gets the chance to read your article, and they can accept it, reject it, or ask for an edit. If they accept it then it goes in their que, most customers post 1 to 2 posts a week. So if they already have 2 posts, and post 2 a week, yours will post the next week. If it's first then it will post that week. You get paid ONCE IT POSTS. This means you may have to wait a week or two, but it's worth the pay. 

They pay weekly via paypal and there is no minimum payout. You simply file an invoice, which is super easy, and you will get paid. Usually it's been around 3 p.m. (central time) on Monday's. So you can get paid every week, or wait and let your money add up. 

CAN YOU MAKE MONEY?

YES! Once you get used to the payment system, and get into a groove with them the money will start to quickly add up. To date I've written 21 posts that have been accepted, 3 are waiting to be published, and I've made $136 and have another $24 coming when my articles post. My average is around 2 blog posts per hour, which comes to $16 an hour. I don't know about your job, but that's more than I make currently with mine! Eventually over time you'll get faster, which means that the earnings will be even better.

In short I love BlogMutt for making extra money. The jobs are plenty, the pay is stellar (for the field), and payment has always been consistent. This is a great way to earn $20 a day and with little time investment. I don't know if you could do it with this alone, but it could definitely be the bulk of what you do to hit that mark. 

Add on the fact that there is a great support community, the other writers are largely polite and not cut throat, AND the management is very writer focused and it's a nice place to write. Soon I'll follow up with a tips to make more money with them post and a pros and cons post. If you are interested in signing up for BlogMutt you go can go HERE, and that's not an affiliate link.

Tips For Earning Christmas Money With Survey Sites Faster

Photo Credit: David DeHetre

In my last post I said that I wanted to earn $200 by December for Christmas with survey sites, and in this post I'm going to talk about my strategy so far for earning that Christmas money using those sites. It's a pretty simple one mostly, and combines some multi-tasking to maximize my time and earnings.

To recap I'm using swagbucks, ipsos i-say, cash crate, insta gift card, and while I started with Opinion Outpost I've not had a lot of luck actually qualifying for their surveys, so I've also been doing Inbox Dollars as well. Since I'm having such bad luck with Opinion Outpost, and so having a hard time earning points I've decided to merely shoot for their $5 Amazon Giftcards, which only need 50 points. To get a Paypal cash out of $10 I need a 100 points, and at this rate I doubt I'll get there. Besides, this is for Christmas, and who can't use Amazon Giftcards at Christmas time?

When you very first start out doing this the first thing you should do is take a little time to read any FAQ pages they have, guides, and any other information you can get on the site. This will tell you things like if they have a loyalty program, referral program, when you cash out, how much time it takes you to get your money, how you cash out, and more. This is information you need to know to decide if a site is a good match for you, and while I'll be doing reviews of each of the above sites if you want to start now take that extra time to read through all this. I would even suggest making a quick cheat sheet somewhere on these things, so you can reference it when you need to, instead of looking for all that information again.

I also suggest taking a few minutes to create an entirely new email that is ONLY for survey sites you sign up for. I also use it for any free trial offers I sign up for through these sites so that all this information is in one easy to find spot.

So here's a breakdown of my strategy so far:

1. I go to swagbucks.com and go to the watch section, I choose a category of videos to watch and start doing so. As I'm working on other sites and taking surveys I keep this window open and keep watching videos as I go along. You get 3 points for every 10 videos you watch, and it's super easy to quickly rack up 100 or more points in an hour or more without doing anything other than going back and clicking on the next video to watch.
2. Next I go through and do the Daily Crave, NOSO, and Poll on Swagbucks (make sure you open in another window so your videos are still playing). While this, and the daily point for using the toolbar only nets me 5 points, it literally takes me a few minutes and I'm done.
3. Next I open my survey email in a new window and check for special emails and surveys that have been sent to me. It seems that the surveys that are emailed to you are more likely for you to qualify for, so do these first.
4. Next I work my way through each site and look at free offers and see if there's any opportunity for me to earn extra points this way. A few of these sites also offer points and rewards for signing up for free trial offers, but for now I'm not focusing on these. Don't be afraid to check them out yourself though, just remember to set reminders for yourself of when you need to cancel your trial so you don't wind up paying.
5. Lastly I end with Instagc and go the Clicks section. Looking under each category I do as many of these as I can. There are a lot of offers where you get 1 point just for clicking on the link and going to the website. Some give you a point for clicking on the link and "interacting" with the website, which can mean just hanging out for a few minutes, or clicking around a little to show you looked. Others offer you 2 points for watching a quick video. It doesn't take long to get quite a few points simply doing these simple things.
6. I've also been exploring their Tasks page. While in the beginning the tasks pay a very minimal amount of points, if you can level up to level 2 and 3 you begin to get tasks that offer more rewards. I'm not sure yet if this is worth my time, but I want to give it a go and check it out.

There you go, not a whole lot to it, and it usually takes me around 2 hours to do all this. Meanwhile it easily racks you up a good amount of points on a few different sites. Feel free to tweak this to meet your own needs, and time available. You could break that up into 30 minute chunks, you could do it for more time when you have it. Whatever, it's your goal, just set the goal of what you want to make and work hard to reach that goal. I've done this for around 6 to 8 hours so far and with all the different sites combined probably earned around $5. 

Not a spectacular "wage", but I've spent time learning the sites and learning what I like to do for each one, so there is the learning curve to take into account. Once I get really settled into this I can see making more, and making it faster. Down the road I will start completing some of the free trial offers as those seem to really make the most on any site that offers them. With this strategy in place, and completing trial offers down the road I don't think I'll have much of a problem hitting my $200 target by December!

Can I Pay For Christmas With Survey Sites?

Photo Credit: David DeHetre

Christmas is right around the corner it seems, and like most people we're feeling the strain in the budget,so we've been looking for ways to make some extra cash for the holidays. As it seems to happen so often with me I was doing research on one thing, and stumbled across another. At this point I don't remember what I was actually researching, I think Amazon Affiliates program, and I found a blog, and through that blog I found another blog about taking surveys for money. I was intrigued, mostly because the article I read was an earnings post, and they had managed to make $400 in the last month with different survey companies!

If you want to see the website it's: www.surveychris.com

Now, I've tried these survey sites before, and I'm sure most of you have at some point as well. Most of them have ended with me becoming discouraged quickly and leaving, never getting to "cash out" as it were. However, through the surveychris website I realized that a more structured, and deliberate approach would be needed with these sites if I really did want to make money. Immediately I thought about this blog, and how it would be awesome to follow this little experiment on here and let others see how it can (or can't) be done. This is potentially a great way for someone to make a couple hundred dollars a month on the side. There are a few reasons this could be great for anyone:

• No skills needed - You don't have to prove you can type, or listen, or anything, just fill out surveys and offers truthfully.
• Small time dedication - Taking just a couple a hours a day should be enough to allow you to make a decent little chunk of change. 
• Lots of Choices - There are a bunch of websites dedicated to having people take surveys for different rewards. Most are legit, and some are very generous to their members.

There really isn't any reason that somebody couldn't be able to this themselves as long as they have access to the internet and laptop/computer to access the websites. Plus, if you have  a smartphone (I don't) some sites even offer you extra perks for using it for different tasks. Lucky ducks. Despite all these pros this is not a long term revenue stream for me, and there's a few reasons why.

It sounds very impressive when you see that someone made $400 in one month through different survey companies, but you really have to start breaking down the numbers. While he never specifically mentions how much time he spends a month on this, he's hinted that he spends around 2 hours a day. So let's do a little math.

2 times 30 (average days in a month) = 60 hours a month he spends on this.

He earned $400 divided by 60 hours = $6.66 hourly "wage"

Ouch, that's less than minimum wage. Of course the trade off is he says he likes to watch tv and do this, and I know I've been doing it in my "down" time as well. So there's the convenience factor that you don't get with a J-O-B. You can see why you wouldn't really want to do this as a long term thing though. There are a lot of other ways that you could invest that money that would net you a much higher return on your investment. Like building your own website, or selling on Amazon, or Ebay, or whatever you find you want to try. Short term however, it's a pretty sweet way to earn a little extra cash fairly quickly. 

The key to this is to be as consistent as my wonky schedule allows me. Making sure that I find that equivalent of 2 hours a day and dedicate that to different sites and surveys. Since it is towards the beginning of the month it'll be a good way to see how well I can manage to do with this. My hope is to at least have a $200 after 30 days and get it before Christmas for that little bit of extra money. As I'm going along with this I will write a few reviews of the different sites I'm using and let you know how they are, pros and cons of each. 

Another key strategy, along with consistency, is to have around 5 sites that I'm using. The reason is that each site is different, some offer faster payouts, some offer cash, some offer a check, some only give you gift cards, while others will make you wait 2 weeks, and still others will direct deposit your money immediately. By spreading around the survey love, so to speak, I'll be maximizing my earning potential. After messing around for a couple days, and based off of a couple of survey chris' suggestions, I've decided on the following sites:

• Swagbucks - I've actually used them for years, mostly to print coupons through, and I already know they are trustworthy, quick to deliver egiftcards, and easy to use. They've added  a lot of features over the years too that make it even easier now. If you want to join you can follow this link: www.swagbucks.com/ to sign up. It's free, and I do get a small referral bonus if you sign up, but if you like them you can refer your friends for that same bonus.
• Opinion Outpost - This one is mostly a straight survey website, meaning you only earn points through surveys. I know the other guy really likes them, and he seems to get into most of their surveys, so far I have had very, very little luck myself. I may wind up dropping this one and focusing on another. You may have better luck yourself, just go to, www.opinionoutpost.com.
• Cash Crate - This one is pretty highly recommended by the survey chris dude and so far I've found it easy to use. Not having as much luck with the surveys so far, but I've already gotten $1.50 just messing around. They have a ton of different things you can do to earn money other than surveys as well, including a referral program. If you would like to try them out you can sign up through my referral link (or not): www.cashcrate.com
• Ipsos Isay - This was another site that was recommended, and it's one that I've had quite a bit of luck with so far. Again, I've only had a very small time, but the surveys seem to have a good payout for a minimum amount of time. It looks like it's a straight survey site, but if you want to sign up you can go to i-say.com, no referral link.
• Insta GiftCard - This is one that I found through a Facebook group and I've really liked it so far. This is a site where you can earn rewards through a bunch of different ways, including surveys, signing up for offers, completing tasks and more. What really makes them great is they have a darn good support system, with multiple ways to get help from other users and the makers of the site. They have a referral program as well, and if you'd like to sign up and try them out here's my referral link: www.instagc.com

Over the next week or two I'll write up some more detailed reviews of each of these sites, after I've used them a bit more. There'll also be some tips and pointers for earning more points and get help if you need it. This should be a fun and interesting little experiment, and I really like that it's something that could have quick results and anyone can follow along with it. 

Phase II DONE! (Mostly)

Well I just kept plugging away at my editing and I finally finished Phase II of writing my Kindle Ebook with KDP. I also finished all my formatting; although I'm pretty sure there will be things I find when I convert the book with KDP that will need fixed. You'll notice though that I said "mostly" done with Phase II.

That's because I did not finish my initial emails for my email blogging campaign that will go with my Kindle books. Surprisingly, at least to myself, I've been struggling a little with one. I've only written 4 emails in around 3 hours. I did map out my initial 10 emails that I want to write, and which would have any form of monetization, and that helped me a lot. I wrote 3 emails in one night when I finished up my outline.

Lesson: a good outline can help save you a lot of heartache and floundering around, and they are NOT just for books.

I'm not completely worried about this though as I already realized that this would bleed into Phase III once I started to get into it. There is a lot that goes into an email campaign.

• How often will you send an email
• What service will you use, how will drive visitors to your list to sign up, will you have a blog, etc. etc.
• Will you monetize your email campaign, and how will you do it?
• How often will you send emails that are montized?

Those are just a few of the questions I found myself trying to answer and figure out when I started to plan my email blogging. I did read a great book by Steve Scott on my Kindle called : Email Marketing Blueprint - The Ultimate Guide to Building An Email List Asset. It was a great read and helped me map out the how, and when of my email campaign. It's a great read for anyone who would like to build an email list. So, while it's not done, I am gaining steam with this and I don't think it'll take me much longer to finish up the initial 10 to 15 emails I would like to have pre-written.

As I was editing I found a few more things that I need to add to my book as far as content goes. I have not added them yet, I just made a note to myself and moved forward with my editing. Mostly because I wanted to focus only on editing and I knew that I would be going through the book again for a final edit. In the end it took me around an hour to format the book. I've spent around 3 hours on writing my emails, and I've spent 11 hours editing. So what's next?

Phase III

1. Finish prewriting my initial emails
2. Create a squeezepage so that people can sign up for my email list
3. Add in the content that I feel is needed
4. Final edit
5. Convert book to KDP
6. Double check that all links in book are working correctly and that it looks good.
7. Create a cover
8. Launch

That's a very simplified list of what I have left to do, and I'm sure I'll find a million little things that need to be done in between those steps. Sadly I don't have much of a marketing strategy for launching my book, and I know that will hurt me. This is all so new to me, and I'm really testing the waters here, so hopefully by the time I get to book two and three I'll be able to focus more on that aspect. As I work through converting the book and creating the cover I'll put together some tutorials on how I did it for the blog with screenshots to help everyone help. I'll also do some more posts on creating my squeezepage and launching my email campaign. 

My goal is to finish all this and launch my book within the next two weeks. This should allow me to start collecting money for this project by the end of January. I was really hoping to finish in time that I would start collecting by the end of the year, but unfortunately it just didn't happen. Still, I've pushed hard, and I've made good progress. The next book should go faster now that I have a better idea of how much time this actually takes, and I can push myself even harder to get it done. My goal with my next book is to have it done by January. 

Editing Sucks & Phase II Update

I'm halfway, yes only halfway, through my first edit of my first kindle ebook, and it sucks! Editing is definitely my weakness in this process. You would think that it would actually go faster than writing, but so far it's taking me longer. I'm pretty sure I've already put in close to the same amount of time editing as I did to writing the initial first draft.

This is one task that I will immediately hire out when I start making money and can afford it! It has, however, been great for pushing me towards getting over my procrastination problem. I've always been bad about putting off the tasks that I don't like or want to do until "tomorrow", or, you know, next year. Sometimes, never! This time I've managed to keep myself on task pretty well, and I'm quite proud of this fact.

A couple things I've been doing is when I have something I want to do, like read, and something I need to do (but don't want) like editing; I make myself do the editing first. So if I mess around and waste a lot of time doing the unpleasant task, then I don't leave any time for the thing I want to do. I've also quit labeling myself as a procrastinator. As in saying, "I'm a procrastinator." While it is important to acknowledge your weaknesses so that you can begin to work on them, it can easily become a crutch as well. A cop out if you will.

By labeling myself as one thing it's like saying that it is an unchangeable part of my identity. Like saying, I'm a woman. If I say that I have a procrastination problem though, then it's suddenly not so set in stone. A problem has a solution, and a problem can be fixed. This all ties into my last post where I talked about changing my state of mind, and taking the time to improve myself as a person and not just focusing on the business aspect of things. Still, editing sucks!

Of course part of the reason that editing has been taking so long is that I've been making myself take it slow. Reading each line slowly once, out loud, making any edits, then reading it again. Yes, this is tedious, and boring, and takes a long time. However, I'm doing it this way to fight my urge rush through this unpleasant task and in the process do a substandard job. I want to deliver quality content to my future readers, and they deserve a well written and edited book. In return they'll hopefully pay me (of course!) and recommend my books to others, because the ultimate compliment would be to know that I helped them enough they were willing to endorse my products to the people that trust them. Editing was only part of Phase II two though, the other was formatting and email blogging.

I'm happy to say that with the little ebooklet KDP supplied for free I powered through formatting in around 1 hour. Since I had read the beginning of the book to start with some things I had already done as I was writing and this saved me a bunch of time. If you plan on self publishing through KDP I highly suggest you do the same thing. As far as my email blogging plan to pre-write around 10 emails, I haven't gotten very far.

I took the time to read book called the Email Marketing Blueprint, by Steve Scott and it really helped me focus on what I'd be doing in my email blogging campaign. From there I've decided that I actually need around 15 emails to start with, and so far I've written one. I outlines, roughly, what kinds of emails I would send, when I would send them, and how many would be monetized and HOW they would be monetized. I need to clean up my rough outline though and go into more detail in it. Once this is done it should be easier for me to knock out the emails I want to get written to start.

Usually when I sit down to start pre writing the emails my brain goes blank. Then I flounder around in my notes and research until I stop and start on editing instead. We all know already how I feel about editing, so this shows how much I'm struggling with this. A better outline should help me focus on the core things I want to write about, and how I want to write about them. The pre written emails for the email blogging is probably going to spill over into Phase III.

Phase III is a bit murkier for me, as it will include the finally product and getting that product published. Here's a general idea of what it will entail though:

1. A final edit - yes I'm going to edit again!
2. Finishing the initial wave of pre-written emails
3. Setting up my email service and getting the email blogging campaign set up.
4. Transferring my word document into the KDP publishing
5. Checking for bugs in my formatting, especially paying close attention to my links. 
6. Making any formatting changes that are needed so that everything is clean and works.
7. Finishing up the final product, including the cover.
8. Publishing
9. Launching a free release and trying to market my free ebook
10. Watch the results closely, and take notes.
11. Switch to a paid product @ a $2.99 price point and again take notes.

I suppose that launching the book, and tracking the results of my downloads is really a kind of Phase IV now that I think about it. Likely I'll break that down into it's own separate Phase once I get to that point. I also know what book I'm going to write next as a kind of companion to this book, and I've already started a very rough outline. Likely during one of the last two phases I will finish my outline, and hopefully begin writing again. 

The good news is by the time I start writing the next book it should be close to my breaks between semesters in school. This should allow me around two months to focus on getting the second book written, finished and published. The second one will be probably be smaller than this first one, so I'm thinking the price on it will be more like $1.99. As you can see I'm already thinking a few steps ahead on everything.

So there's the update on my progress. If you have any specific questions about anything just leave a comment and I'm happy to try and answer it for you! 

Changing My State of Mind: Why It's Important

I've mentioned before that I've been trying a lot of different ways to make money, specifically online, for the past few years. Probably around 3 at least, seriously for about 2 years. I've learned a lot during that time, about blogging, selling, buying, business, etc. I've devoured books and blog posts on these subjects and kept an ear to the ground for new opportunities all the time. Yet, I haven't actually managed to succeed the way I want to. I've had some small successes, but my ultimate goal of working for myself and being able to work from home. Maybe you've been doing the same thing, and maybe, like me, you're starting to wonder what you're doing wrong.

I mean, other people are doing these things, like blogging and selling on Ebay, and they're doing well. They've managed to succeed and accomplish their dreams, so why can't I? I know I'm not dumb, and I know that I've done the research on this stuff. So there must be an elusive something that I'm missing. These are some of the thoughts that were rattling around in my brain this past year or more. They were sucking away at my confidence and resolve, and tempting me into just quitting the whole thing and sticking with the 9 to 5 grind forever. But.......... I just couldn't ever get it out of my mind, this siren call of online marketing.

I kept checking the blogs, and reading free ebooks on my Kindle, listening to podcasts and so much more. While I still haven't realized my goals, yet, there's been shift these past few months, and it's been with my mind set. There is a sense of confidence now that I was lacking before, and a willingness to push myself, and work really hard where before I couldn't/wouldn't. So what's changed?

Nothing very much, and everything at once. All along I would read posts and such and sometimes the authors or bloggers would talk about books that inspired them. Most blogs have a resources, or must read section on their blog, that will list different books they've read and services they've used. I've read quite of few of them over the years myself, but they've always been the books that were about the business end of things. Not the mental end, and one of the biggest things I've learned this past year is having the right state of mind is crucial to, well, everything.

The honest truth is that towards the beginning of the year, starting around Spring time, I was in a terrible place. I was angry, and unhappy, and I took a lot of that out on the people around me. I felt so much bitterness, and helplessness, and just anger and sadness that I didn't recognize myself anymore. That just isn't like me, I've always been resilient, happy, easy going and ready to keep moving forward. Somewhere though, I had lost all my spunk and was just running on fumes.

Realizing that this was not good, and that this was not the kind of person I wanted to be, I turned once again to blogs and books to help me find a better state. I became interested in meditation, which I still don't do, I just can't sit still that long, but that lead into a fun ride that led to a book called Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I've seen this book recommended o many times, by such varied people that I finally caved and bought it. Okay, the truth is that I've only read half, and to warn you there is some kind of new age stuff in this book.

Don't let that deter you though, because this book also talks a lot of habits, and thoughts. Through this book I realized that while I worked on growing my knowledge of the nuts and bolts of online businesses, I was not taking the time to learn how to be successful. I'm not talking about monetary successes, or business, I'm talking personally. I need to learn how to allow myself to fail, how to continue to push myself, and just improve myself in general. This, I think, is the elusive something that I had been missing. The fact is that my mind was never really in the right place for me to succeed at this stuff. Since reading that book I've read many others that deal a little more with the abstracts of business rather than the solid and real.

When I started writing my kindle book I decided that not only would I read books about how to sell your ebook, and start an email list, but also on good writing habits, and creating better habits. I think it's because of that fact that I focused on both the project and my own state that I managed to finish the rough draft, and I'm currently about a 1/3 of the way through Phase II. It's because of what I've learned that I've mostly been able to consistently post to this blog and keep up with it, when in the past I didn't.

Taking to the time to learn some self improvement is NOT a waste of time. When I started out I would read suggestions by people for this book or that book and when I realized it was a "lifestyle" type book, one that was more about HOW to live than how to make money; I would just stop. I kept thinking that when I was making more money I'd take the time to read those books. I couldn't see that investing in myself was even more valuable than investing in a domain name or website. So while I realize I still have a long way to go; I also realize I've come a long ways as well.

The point of all this is that you shouldn't ignore your own personal growth while pursuing your business. Learning how to grow and improve as a person is the single best investment you can make. There is a very definite state of mind that entrepreneurs need, and you ARE an entrepreneur even if you're blogging, to succeed at their goals and live their dreams. It's tough to start and build your own business, no matter the kind, and it's even tougher to keep going sometimes. Your state of mind, or attitude, or whatever you want to call it, is what will carry you through all the tough times.

I know I'm not "successful" yet, and that I'm still not working from home. Again though, I can feel the change this time. This time I feel far more confident in myself, and it's probably because I've been proving myself, to myself. I've managed to keep myself on task better, complete projects, and procrastinate less. My mood has improved and I'm less likely to become easily discouraged and not want to continue working. I'm still not perfect at these things, but I'm still working on myself to get better and better with them. Especially the procrastination/laziness thing!

So if you decide to go down this journey for yourself please don't ignore your own self improvement on the way. You ARE your business, and fail or succeed, it's all on your shoulders and decisions. The investment in yourself is one of the cheapest and easiest you can make for your business, and it can have the most profound effect on it. Don't make the mistake I did and ignore yourself thinking it's not important. It is important, just as much as all that technical stuff you need to learn about to. There are so many blogs, and great ebooks that you can read on the subject to help you. Don't waste a few years chasing your tail like me, be smart and learn from my mistakes.

Thoughts On Selling Books Through Amazon FBA

If you've been following this blog than you know that I'm pretty focused on selling books through Amazon FBA. I have a few reasons for this:

• Low Sourcing Cost
• Higher Return on Investment (ROI)
• Little to No Long Term Storage Fees
• Easy For Me To Source

Those are the top reasons reasons I want to sell books on Amazon fba, and there are a lot of people who make a good living selling nothing but used books on Amazon. Now, if you start to research selling books at all you'll see a lot of people talk about the sales rank of books. Specifically, you'll see a lot of people talking about how they never buy a book with a rank under 1 million. Why? 

Well, let's go into sales rank a little on Amazon. First off it's a number that Amazon assigns an item that, supposedly is an indicator of how well and how fast an item will sell. I say supposedly because frankly, no one really knows exactly how Amazon figures sales rank, and they are keeping that secret tighter than Fort Knox. While no one other than them knows the exact algorithm they use to figure sales rank, it is a decent indicator of how well an item will sell. General wisdom is anything above 1 million will NOT sell fast. So the thought is they don't want to "waste" their time and money buying, and listing these books. I personally have a couple problems with this "general wisdom".

The first is that, as mentioned above, there are no long term storage fees for unique items on FBA. That means if you only have one of an item, like one book, than they aren't going to charge you those extra fees. So, you're not incurring extra fees by having the inventory sitting around. Besides, it's not like it's sitting around your house taking up space. They're sitting in a nice Amazon warehouse, safe and sound, and out of your sight. 

The next is that while you may not sell the book fast, chances are you WILL sell it eventually. It just isn't going to be a "quick" (as in under a month) sale. It may be in 3 month, 6 months, or a year later. However, who cares! You're not incurring those extra fees, although you are paying normal storage fees still, and if you bought the book cheap enough, you're still going to make a profit. Likely a good one at that. I'm sure that eventually you will have to choose to destroy some books because they just don't sell, but again, likely the majority will sell. Eventually.

Now I'm not telling you to rush out and buy every book you find with a rank that's above 1 million and send it in. I still think it's smart to have a healthy selection of books with a rank below 1 million that will, hopefully, be fast sellers. The thing is, you're building a business here, and any business has a long term and short term profit strategy. In my mind the 1 million and under books are the "short" term profits, they're the books you're going to send and hope to see sell within that first month. To me though, those books that are 1 million and above, those are the long term profits. These books are the extra profit padding each month. It's just going to take you awhile to start seeing those profits. But if you continued to source consistently over the course of a few months, and then hopefully years, you'll see those numbers continue to grow and grow each month as more and more long tail items (above 1 milion) sell. 

My strategy, and obviously I'm not an expert (yet), is to buy books with a "good" rank for quick sales so I can funnel my profits back into buying more inventory AND buy books with "bad" rank ( above 1 million and under 3 million) and patiently wait for them to begin selling. It seems to me that leaving those "bad" ranked books on the table is just like taking money out of your wallet and leaving it on that same proverbial table. Recently, on a blog I follow I had my theory somewhat proven.

I'm signed up for the emails from a website called booktothefuture.com and a few months ago he went to a book sale, and bought a large amount of books. Many of these books had a rank above 1 million, clear to 6 million. He recently published an update on his little experiment with buying so many badly ranked, you can read it HERE. It's really quite interesting, and while I won't go into all the details, if you want to read them just follow the link above. What interested me was the sales of the books above 1 million.

The gist of it is that 30% of the books that he sold over the last five months, from this one sale, were books with a rank above 1 million. A couple were even 5 and 6 million ranked. His profit from the books from that sale that sold was around $725, now 30% of that is around $217. For some people that may not seem like a big number, but you have to remember is that this is from 1 book sale this person attended.

You know that he's attended and sourced far more than just that one sale. That means that if he were to continue to buy those 1 million and above books, and they continued to contribute and 30% to his sales than it's easy to add more and more money to that pot. There are of course other factors to consider, many of which we can't know.

We can't know how many books that he will eventually have to choose to destroy because they aren't selling. We know how much he spent in total for all books, but we don't know how much the badly ranked books cost. Although I suppose you could just divide what he paid by how many books he bought total and get an average cost per book. Yet even with these things to consider I still think it's important to note what he found out in his experiment. Those extra "bad" books sold, and they sold fairly well. Adding an extra 30% to your sales is nothing to sneeze at.

So what I've taken away from this is that those "bad" books are a good investment, when used wisely. Again, I'm not going to rush out and buy nothing but badly ranked books, or even a large majority of badly ranked books. However, if there is a good profit margin, and there are only one or no other FBA sellers for that book, and it seems unique enough that it won't be easily sourced by other sellers, than yes, I'm going to buy it. I'm still looking for those books with a rank under a million, because again, I do need sales that are fairly quick so that I can continue to source for more books. Hopefully after a few months, let's say 6, I'll start to see more and more of those long tail books selling out of my inventory and padding my profits.

There is one more thing to consier with this strategy though, and I'm actually adding this section a couple months after writing this post. It's something I "missed" in my initial musings but have thought of since. That is the time you will spend sourcing books. If you are going for more books to sell, and more that are a higher Amazon ranking, than it's likely you will spend more time sourcing. Some people use this as the reason they won't buy anything above 1 million, and it's a legitimate reason. However, if you are scanning books you're probably going to come across a few of the "bad" ranked books along the way. A few quick seconds to check other sellers and profit margin and you can still add these books to your selling portfolio. So I can't really see how it would add that much time to what you are already doing. Especially in the beginning when you will be scanning tons of books until you start to get a feel for a "good" book to sell.

So there you go, my "strategy" for selling books on FBA. Buy the quick sales for more sourcing money, and buy the long tail books for higher sales down the road. I'll be sure to update you as I go along as to how well this is working for me, but obviously it's going to take a few months to realize. In the meanwhile you can chew over what we talked about and decide for yourself, are you only going to go for the books that are under a million in rank, or are you going to supplement your inventory with a selection of books that are above a million? Only you can decide that. If your curious about sales rank numbers for the different categories on Amazon and what's considered "good" than here's another good article I found that will give you a rough idea; just go here to check it out