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

Rough Draft Finished! Phase II Starting

I've finally finished the rough draft of my Kindle Ebook! Yay! I started writing it on the 7th of September and finished it on the 9th of October, so just a couple days longer than a month. I'm actually pretty proud of myself, even though this is just the rough first draft, I started and completed a project. My weakness continues to be my own habit of procrastination, but there were a few times I made myself work anyways (and a few times I didn't). Of course finishing up the rough draft means that I'm now enterig what I'm calling Phase II of writing this ebook. So we'll go over some rough numbers from the rough draft, and then a quick recap of what Phase II will look like.

First things first, lets go over some numbers from the rough draft.

• It took me a little over a month to complete it
• However, I actually only wrote for 11 of those days
• The average time to write was 2 hours, with the longest being 3 hours and the shortest only 1 hour
• Total Hours Spent Writing - aprox. 16 hours
• Average amount of words typed - 2,000 words
• Final Word Count - 24,405

To be fair I can type pretty quickly, so that does account for the fact that I could average 2,000 words each time. Once I hit around 4,000 words written in one session. The fact is that looking at the above stats there really isn't reason, except my wacky schedule, that the rough draft couldn't be completed in 10 - 14 days. Next book I think I'm going to shoot for a complete rough draft in 14 days. Again, this is a rough draft, which means that I did not stop to edit, add photos, do any formatting or anything like that. The point was to get the words out of my head and onto "paper". Which leads us to Phase II, which I think is going to take a lot more of my time than Phase I.

For a quick recap Phase II is:

• First editing of rough draft
• Formatting the book for Kindle
• Starting the creation of a Email Newsletter
• Creating a Squeeze Page for readers to sign up for my Newsletter

The first thing is pretty self explanatory. Now is when I'll start going through what I wrote and cleaning it up. Check spelling, and punctuation, and grammar and make sure what I wrote makes sense and flows well. I fully expect my final word count to drop after this initial edit as I suspect I repeated myself often. I also changed the layout of my book, so I need to go in and edit my table of contents and double check that chapter titles match what's written in the ToC. There are also a few photos that I need to create, edit and insert into the book. 

Either once I'm through with editing, or while I'm doing it I'll begin to format the book so that it is compatible with the Amazon Kindle publishing platform. Luckily for us Kindle Direct Publishing has published a small and FREE ebook called: Building Your Book for Kindle that tells you how to format your word document for Kindle Publishing. I started to read it just to see if it seemed overly complicated and what little I read seems fairly straight forward and they gave clear directions on completing it. It's also not a very large ebook, so hopefully that means that there's not a whole lot of formatting to be done :)

As you can see not everything in this phase is directly related to publishing a book on Amazon through Kindle. However, it's just as important to do correctly as it is to write a content filled ebook. In my last post I go into more detail about what I'll be doing in this phase and more about my email newsletter strategy. You can go here to read it if you'd like. Since then I have done a small bit of research into this, and squeeze pages, and what email service to use, and I found this great little article that explains (and labels) what I want to do much better than I did.

He calls is EMAIL BLOGGING and just click on those words if you want to read his post. If what I'm trying to do is intriguing to you he does do a great job of explaining it and how it's different from regular email marketing. Heck, it even helped clarify a few things in my mind about it all after reading it.

As I mentioned in my previous post I will write out the first 2 or 3 months worth of emails to have ready. I also read Steve Scott's ebooks on Amazon and he also has a great website called stevescottsite.com , again I highly recommend you read his website if you plan on trying to write for Kindle and if you want to have an email list to go with your books. He had some interesting articles on frequency of emails and such, so I think I'll try out his method, which will require me to write a few more than I had initially planned. However, we're talking an email here, so while the content must be quality it shouldn't be long winded. Short, sweet and to the point. Easier said than done for me. 

Lastly, I've decided that I will not be going with Mailchimp for my email service for one simple reason. They don't allow affiliate links in their email. Bummer. Considering that, other than promoting my own books and sales, my main monetization strategy will be the occasional affiliate recommendation. So, while Mailchimp is free, it's not going to work. So I'll be going with Aweber, which is highly recommended, and really isn't that badly priced, but I was trying to avoid spending anything out of pocket on this book. The good news is that they offer their first month for $1, and really what's $1 investment in a future business. After that it'll be $19.95 per month, of course they have special rates if you buy 3 months or 12 months, but for now monthly it'll have to be.

 I'm not going to sign up until right before I publish though. I'll write up my emails in Word and save them. That way I'll be starting that $1 trial as close as possible to when I may start to actually make money. I would sincerely hope I would at least make $20 in a month to at least pay for the email service. Of course there is a 60 day delay in payment for Kindle royalties, so I'm going to pay for that second month anyways. 

So there you go, finally made enough progress to move into Phase II. It seems like such a small list, this phase. Truthfully though it's slightly overwhelming to think of everything that has to go into this part. Still, if it's done correctly this time around much of this work I won't need to redo for every book. The email marketing is a one time thing, once it's all set u and ready to go then all I have to do is include the links to my squeezepage and let it go. So that's some good news. 

Honestly though I fully expect this phase to take a lot more work than the rough draft did! I will need to really push myself past my laziness and try to consistently work on this. It's the only hope I have to get it done before the month is over. It would be nice if the book was published early enough that I actually received payment for it this year. We'll see. Meanwhile I'll continue to take yo along with me as I stumble along and hopefully if you decide to ever do the same it'll help you out a little.

Phase 2 of Publishing A Kindle Ebook: Plus Making a Newsletter For My Email List

Well, I'm almost done with my rough draft of my kindle ebook, and that means that I've been thinking ahead to the next steps. After thinking about it a little I realized that I have quite a bit of prep work to get through and that phase 2 is going to take me  a bit longer than I anticipated to start. Still, if I put in the work now, upfront, then it will pay off in the long run and I won't have to do it later.

I'm considering Phase 2 to be the first editing of my book and the formatting. See, although you can write your book in a word document there is still some formatting that must be done to make it compatible with the Kindle platform. Things like adding links to chapters so that people can use the bookmark function, and if you have any links within the book you must make those workable, and I'm sure more that I just can't think of right now. Luckily, KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) released a free little ebook that you can download that walks you through the basic formatting that you have to do. It's called "Building Your Book For Kindle" and again it's free, and it walks through what you need to do. I'm going at this first book with a ZERO budget, meaning I'm not paying for a thing. Not editing, cover art, or formatting. So this little ebook should save me a little heartache, time and frustration since I have their official instructions for formatting.

Of course there is the fact that on top of formatting my ebook I'll also need to edit. I'll admit that editing is NOT my strong suit, and down the road I do intend to start paying someone to do this for me, but that's the future, this is now. For now the budget is 0, so I'll have to do it myself. When I do finish the rough draft I'll step away from the book for at least 2 or 3 days. During that time I'll read up on some monetizatioin strategies, and work on my email newsletter (we'll get to that in a minute), and maybe even start to brainstorm more my next ebook. Okay, so that's a lot for a couple days, and no I will probably not do all that, but the point is to step away from what I've done and do something different. This way when I go to edit I'll be going in with fresh eyes that are more likely to catch mistakes.

Lastly, I'm going to build a newsletter for my future email list that I will grow through this, and other, ebooks. I've been looking into monetization strategies for ebooks and having a solid email list, that you can share deals and new book releases with is key to continued selling. Any business person will tell you that it's easier to keep a customer than to get a new one. Your email list is your ticket to repeat sales. There are also extra ways you can monetize your email list, like affiliate sales, but those I will use sparingly, as I want the main focus to be my book(s). As you can see this is a long term strategy. I plan on releasing at least 3-6 books in the next year, and they will all be related in some way. This means that customers who were interested in one book will likely be interested in another I'll publish. Hence, the email list that will allow me to update those customers when I release a new book, or perhaps run a sale on one I previously launched.

Now, people aren't just going to sign up for my email list for nothing, and if I don't keep in touch with them they'll likely forget me and my book before I publish another. Meaning when I do send the email announcing a new book launch they'll probably just trash it without reading it. So I need a way to keep these customers engaged, give them something of value in return for their email address, and ideally it needs to be something fairly automated. A lot of the experts and gurus will tell you to have a blog or website, and that's a great idea. I have a blog already, but unfortunately this blog doesn't really "go" with my subject matter (couponing). This isn't a deal blog, or coupon blog, or even a money saving blog. It's a blog about making money, which is somewhat related, but enough that I want to link it to my ebooks. So what does that leave?

A newsletter. It's been a couple years, but on another blog (sorry can't remember which one) the author talked about how they built their newsletter to be automated so they didn't have to constantly work at it. In a nutshell he signed up for an email service, and typed out his first 2 or 3 months of newsletters, then set it so that when a new person signed up they automatically began receiving those initial emails on a set schedule. So the emails that I received a couple years after he started his blog, where probably the same one's as someone who had signed up a year ago. A few hours work on the back end saved him a ton of time and work down the road. The plus is that when he wants to send a special email, say for a promotion, or contest, he still can and it doesn't mess with his scheduled emails at all. How awesome!

Now, I don't have the time, nor do I want, to start a coupon or deal or money saving website at this moment. This is the only blog I have time for, and the only one I want to focus on for awhile. So having an email attached to my blog or website isn't going to work, not with this one or with a new one. Then I remembered that recently I stumbled across two different people that had done something slightly different with their email list. Through an article on a blog the writer had recommended checking out a website of someone that helped them. So I clicked through to check it out, and all I found was a one page website dedicated to having you sign up for the email list. You received some little ebooklet for free for signing up. I signed up thinking I would be redirected to a website, but no, just the email page, that was it. Sure enough I started receiving emails from this person, some where like a blog post in that they contain information for me, some are reviews and such for items that I can buy related to the subject matter, etc. I bet his is automated as well ;)

Somehow my poor brain managed to cough up the idea that I could combine these two things, into one and make it work like a charm for my author email list. So the plan is to have people opt into my email list through my kindle book, not 100% sure HOW to do this yet, but I will find out as I know others are doing it. Next, there will already be at least 2 months worth of emails pre-typed and ready to go for when they sign up for them to receive. I plan on sending one email a week scheduled, and that will allow for special emails announcing future releases, sales and any affiliate emails I may (or may not) include. These emails will be full of helpful tips and tricks for couponing and tips for saving money on food in general, along with budget friendly recipes.

These types of emails will have a two-fold benefit. First, they will give my reader a ton of useful information on a topic I already know their interested in, saving money on groceries. Secondly, these topics are all tied to into future ebooks that I would like to create. By showing them little tid bits it establishes to them my authority on the subject, and makes them more likely to purchase those future titles when they are finished. It's a win-win for everybody, my favorite.

Okay the explanation was long, and hopefully it made sense, but the reason we went through all this is so you can understand why I want a newsletter ready to go before I release my book. That's why the last part of Phase 2 is going to be setting up my email list, and pre-writing at least 2 months worth of emails to be sent out. Since I am doing the formatting in this Phase it makes sense that I will be adding whatever is needed to make my sign up page, so it just makes sense to have the emails ready to go. In a couple months time this semester will be finished and during that time I can focus on getting a much larger chunk done, that way the focus can be on writing more books, not emails.

For a recap of Phase 2:

1. Formatting
2. Editing
3. Setting Up Email List and Newsletter

All this is going to take time, and I realize that I'll be lucky to have this book published by mid October, but I'll keep pushing and see where I get. The good thing is that the email work only has to be done once. So on my future books this is a step that I won't have to take again, and hopefully as I get more books under my belt formatting will become easier for me as well. As soon as I can afford to have someone else edit my books believe me I will. This all adds up to a lot of time and effort now, so that I can save that time and effort over and over again down the road. When I finish my rough draft and start Phase 2 I will write another post and keep you all updated. 

Don't Compare Your Success With Others, Here's Why!

I've been recently thinking a lot about all the numbers I've found floating around the internet. All the time I see people bragging that they've made XX amount of dollars in XX amount of time. How they quit their job in three month, one year, or just do this online stuff part time and work full time. It's hard sometimes to not have your head spinning with the numbers you'll see. On blogs, on facebook groups, in books you read, youtube videos, the list goes on and on. However, it's a good thing to remember that there is a danger in comparing numbers, and getting to hung up on how "other" sellers are doing.

Don't get me wrong, it's inspiring to me when I see a post or comment from someone talking about how they make (insert large sum of money) a month, or how they just started 4 months ago and already quit their job. I'm talking mainly Amazon FBA and ebay sellers here. Things like that are what spur me to keep moving forward with my FBA plan and give it all a go. The knowledge that the potential is there is like the carrot dangled in front of the donkey, it keeps me plodding along. Sometimes though, well sometimes it just has the opposite effect on me. Sometimes it intimidates me, or it makes me feel like a failure because I can't show numbers that impressive yet myself. Then I remember, don't compare myself to them because I don't know their whole story.

Here are some things to bear in mind when you come across those profit posts. Some questions that you should ask yourself of the poster.

• How long have they been doing it - If someone has had a blog for 10 years, or been blogging, then yeah, they are probably making thousands every month. Someone selling on FBA or Ebay for more than a year or so has a lot of money and inventory invested in their business, so yeah, they're making a lot of money.
• How much money do they have in it? - How much money have they spent to get to this point. If they are selling $100,000 worth of stuff, how much did they spend on inventory? $30,000, $40,000, more or less, because you take that out of their sales to get profits. How much money are they spending on web domains, hosting and email services for their blog? It's all relative, and sales are not the same thing as profit.
• Is that gross or net? It's easy to be wowed by those big numbers, but stop and ask yourself, is that profit (net) or is that sales (gross). There's  big difference between the two that you should keep in mind. If it's sales numbers then yes it's still impressive, but it doesn't reflect their personal costs incurred. The money spent on the inventory, overhead costs like shipping, fees deducted from the sales, etc. Profit on the other hand is the number you get when you take your sales and deduct all those things from it to get to your profit number.
• How much did they have to invest to start with? I'm working with a shoestring budget, no credit cards, cash only operation for right now. So when I see that someone just started 4 months ago and quit their job already, or has sent in 10 shipments in their first two weeks it kind of makes me feel like I'm lacking. Like I'm doing something wrong that I'm not there too. Then I remember, I don't know their story, how much they had to spend on inventory right out the gate, how much they spent on ebooks and courses and everything else to shorten their learning curve, I don't know where they live and what kind of sourcing they have available around them. 

Really there are so many things that go into starting your own business, whether online or offline that to compare your story with another persons story is a risky thing. We're all different and because of that we'll all do things slightly different than the next person. Now, I'm not telling you to never read another "Monthly Income" report, or a post where a person is celebrating their success and sharing their numbers. I personally read The Smart Passive Income Blog's monthly income reports all the time, and have for the last couple years.

Why? Because they continue to inspire me. I love his reports too because he goes into a lot of those pesky details like expenses, things that affected his business, what went right, and what went wrong. He also clearly states he's been in the blogging business for a long time and it took him years to get to where he is. Knowing all that I still read his reports, and they still inspire that one day down the road I'll pull in even a third of what he does a month. Sometimes I just fantasize, what would I do with money like that? Buy a home, investments, pay off debt, and there's nothing wrong with that. If I didn't indulge myself every once in a while it would be easy to burn out and forget why I'm trying to do all of this. So don't avoid posts like this, but remember to let them inspire you only.

As long as you remember to take everything you read or hear with a grain of salt and take away only the inspiration the you'll be fine. Remember to question it if you start to feel bad about your progress and you'll likely realize you don't have the whole story. Lastly, use those numbers to help push yourself, dream a little, and have fun. You don't want to burn out early in the game and give up. You want to be in it for the long haul, you're ready to improve your life and your families life (if you have one) and gain the freedom of self employment! Or at least the freedom of an easy secondary income to help ease financial stresses. Whatever your reason don't let the numbers game get in your head, and you'll be fine.

Writing a Kindle Ebook (Part 2)

Photo Credit: 365::115 - write

So it's been a couple weeks I think since my last post on writing a Kindle Ebook. In my last post about it (Writing A Non-Fiction Ebook Part 1) mostly I talked about some general information on publishing, pay outs, platform, etc. We also discussed a little bit about my general idea for a launch plan. Much like you write an outline before you begin writing, it was a kind of outline for getting this book written and moving on. So, since I wrote the last post I mentioned that I would love to have this published by October, Well, I doubt I'm going to make that, but I'm pushing myself as much as possible to get close to that. 

So I mentioned in my last post that I was reading an Ebook on publishing in 21 days, and following the general plan of that book. Since then I've also started reading another book by S.J. Scott called "Writing Mastery - How to Write 2,000 Words In A Day". I'll admit that I haven't finished it, I've been to busy writing! However, I read the first 1/3 of it, and plan to read the rest, and it already has helped me write more. Today we'll go over a couple of tips that helped, what I'm doing to get around my schedule handicap, and how far along I am into the book.

First thing that I took away from the book was something I knew, but had forgotten about. Write your rough draft edit free. That means you don't stop to think while you're writing. You let the words flow from your brain to your paper, or keyboard, or whatever. You continue to do this until the book is done. If you think of something you want to add, or edit down the road, go back to that section, put in a quick note to yourself, and let it go. If you want to add graphics, or pictures, or anything that's not writing related, insert a note to yourself in that spot and move on. If you misspell a word, move on. Are you catching the theme here? Just write, get it out there. It really is freeing, and after all you're not going to publish this first rough draft. 

That's why it's called a rough draft, not a final draft. Likely you'll go through at least two more edits and rewrites before you can call it a final draft, so don't worry about your mistakes. You're the only one who's going to see them. In the past I was terrible about doing this, but I decided to try my hardest this time, and you know what, it's really working. I've already wrote around 8,000+ words, and it's also helped me better format the book. Because as I've been writing I've realized that how I thought I was going to arrange it to begin with just didn't work, and there was a more natural way to do it. A quick change to my outline, a few notes to myself in previously typed chapters, and I continued on. Still, if I had been plodding along, writing a chapter, then editing it, then writing a little more, then editing it, I don't know that I would have caught the flow issue like I did. So, just get it out there, no worries on the rough draft just get it written.

Another tip that is great, but unrealistic for me, is to set aside a consistent time everyday to write. You know what, I think that's a grand idea, and if I could I would. However, I've mentioned before that I have two schedules. When I'm working, I work 12 hour shift all night, then sleep, then a small amount of time with family and cook supper, then it's off to work for another 12 hours. When I'm off I'm up all day and I sleep all night so I can be with my family, and feel like a normal person. This means there is not a single hour in the day that I can say for sure I will be up and available to write every single day. So, I'm trying something different, and so far it's working. When I can schedule the time I just write as many words as I can for as long as I can. So far this has gotten me past the 8,000 word mark, and probably around half way through my rough draft. Not to shabby considering. Still, if you can do it, the way of scheduling a time and writing a certain amount everyday really is the best way to do it.

Despite my lovely schedule I'm about halfway through my rough draft as I mentioned. Each time I've sat down to write I've managed to do at least one chapter if not two. The rough draft will go the fastest since I'm not editing or stopping, but hopefully I'll have it completed within the next two weeks, if not sooner. That leaves me about half a week in October, so I'm not likely to make my early October launch date with this, but mid-October is doable I think. I figure two more weeks for editing after the initial rough draft, and a day or two for converting it to Kindle and make it live (hopefully it won't take that long, but it'll be my first time so it'll take longer than usual I'm sure). So, mid October is realistic. 

When I get to the editing stage I will take small 2 or 3 day breaks in between editing. This allows you to go back to your work with clear eyes to spot mistakes. Often if we read something we just wrote we miss mistakes because we "know" what we were typing and automatically fill it in. So, be sure to step away for at least a day or two before you begin to edit. I plan to spend this time further researching and learning about Kindle publishing of course. I found a book about copy writing that I would like to read, and I also have another Steve Scott ebook that is about selling more Kindle non-fiction books. A good way to spend my "off" time I think.

So, that's pretty much it for now. Nothing to glamorous, just focusing on writing right now. Really, that is where the focus should be too. A book isn't a book without words, and this rough draft is all that matters right now. It is the cornerstone of the polished little ebook I hope to put out, and as such it's getting the attention it deserves. If you're starting your own book try to remember to just write that rough draft without editing, schedule time to write everyday (or almost everyday), don't let stuff get in your way and find a way to get around it. If you want to read the book I mentioned above it's a good read so far, and I can't imagine it gets worse! It does have a 4 1/2 stars out of five rating, so it must stay good. In fact, I'll list all the books I've read or am reading currently for you, maybe you'll find one or two helpful yourself. Plus, if you have Kindle Unlimited everyone of these books is eligible for free download :)

• Writing Habit Master - S.J. Scott
• Why Authors Fail: 17 Mistakes Self Published Authors Make That Sabotage Their Success - Derek Doepker
• How To Write A Non-Fiction eBook In 21 Days That Readers Will Love - Steve Scott
• 
  

My Amazon FBA Strategy

If you've followed the blog at all you know that I've been talking about selling through Amazon's FBA program for a few months now, at least over the summer. I haven't really gotten started on it though because frankly it takes an initial investment, and I just haven't had the extra income to invest. However, I'm actually glad that I didn't jump right in, because being forced to wait has made me research and read about this far more than I would've to start with. Doing all this research, and finding all these great groups and blogs has made me realize that I'm going to switch my strategy from what I initially thought I would.

Initially I planned on focusing on retail arbitrage, if you're not sure what I'm talking about you can read my post What Is Retail Arbitrage? here. The basic concept of it is to buy low and sell high. Generally walking into a retail store, like Walmart, and finding an item that sells for more online than they are selling it in store. Usually it's clearence and/or sales prices in the store, and you can make money with this strategy, and good money as well. Still, it takes a higher investment up front, because you're still needing to buy items in store and pay semi retail cost. The return on investment (ROI), which is how much you'll make off your initial investment, seems to be pretty low for this category. Most people shoot for at least 50% ROI, and that's still a good profit, but it means you dig a lot more for those hidden gems. Again, this is not a bad strategy, and many sellers seem to do very well doing this. Down the road I intend to try this out myself, but that's down the road, I needed a plan for what I'm going to do now.

So what I'm going to focus on to begin with is selling books through Amazon FBA. I'll admit that at first I had written off selling books, and let this be a lesson to never hastily write off a potential income stream, but I found a great blog called FBA Mastery that I highly suggest you take the time to read through and dig around in. This blog is by a guy named Peter Valley, and he makes a substantial (six figures a year) income selling books and media (mainly books) through Amazon FBA. It's through reading his articles that I've come to realize that there is a great market for these items, and as long as you know what you're doing the potential to make money is huge.

So why books? Well here's why:

• The initial investment is low - Ever been to a library sale, yard sale, estate sale etc. and seen books that are selling anywhere from .25 to $3 each? If you haven't than you should go into a thrift store or garage sale in your area sometime and just look at the prices they have their books. It's cheap, cheap, cheap. These are highly donated, throw away type items, that many places and people are just trying to get rid of. Ten or $20 can easily get you the same amount of items that you spent, if not more.
• The ROI Is Fantastic - Because you're spending so little to purchase these items upfront your profit margin is just that much better. For example, I just spent $2 on 4 books at my library, after researching I'll make around $20 on these books, after fees, shipping, etc. That's 20X my initial investment. That same $2 in a retail store will likely only net me $5 or $10 through retail arbitrage, if I'm lucky. 
• They are everywhere - Like I said, books are a common throwaway for most households. They take up space, most people only use or read them once or for one semester and then they don't want them anymore. So they donate by the boxes, or sell dirt cheap just to get rid of them. 
• There are NO long-term storage fees - Amazon charges storage fees for holding your items in their warehouse, and a more heftier fee for something that's been there a long time. They don't want a bunch of widgets sitting in their warehouse taking up space forever, so they discourage this through long-term storage fees. There is one exception, and that is long-tail items. That means it's a one off kind of product, that will take that special buyer to find it, and they realize that it may take more time for that buyer to come along. A single book will not incur this fee, but if you have multiples of that book it will. 

My reasoning, based on the above factors, is that with a small amount of money upfront I can double or triple my money if not even more. I've seen examples of books that were bought for $1 selling $25, or bought for $20 selling for $200. It's an easy to find product for me to find, considering I live in a fairly rural location and sourcing will likely be one of the hardest parts of my business. So a minimul effort and investment that gives me a greater return. Yep, that's what I'm all about with this business ;)

There are two main drawbacks that I see with books though. They are heavy, and will likely cost me more in shipping than most retail items. Secondly, most are not going to be quick sellers, it's likely that you will have a majority of your books in the warehouse for at least a month if not more. This isn't a quick way to make money, at least in the beginning. Building up a full inventory will be key to this strategy, and the way to daily sales I think. Personally I'm okay with both these things. Shipping is always going to be a cost, and there's really little I can do about that, and with the higher profit margin on books I'm comfortable knowing I'll spend more sending them in. I'm also prepared to be patient with this, I'm in it for the long haul, and knowing that I spent little to start with makes it easier to wait on sales. If I walked into a store and spent $100 or more on items then I would be much more concerned about how quickly I recouped my money and made some to boot. 

With all that being said I still can't get started until October, and there is a reason. October is when my family will be receiving a small amount of extra money, and with part of that money I'm going to invest in my family and get my business started. Now, that's not to say someone couldn't start without getting "extra" money, because they could, and I could too. It's merely that this makes it far easier for me to start and allows me to hit the ground running. So I'm taking $500, and I've already mapped out what I will be spending that money on.

1. Smartphone - This is the main reason I'm waiting on this money. I do not have a smartphone at this time, and you need one for the scouting apps that are available. Having a good scouting app is key to finding profitable books to sell. It allows me to scan the barcode and see the rank of an item, what it's selling for, and if other FBA sellers are offering the same item. 
2. 3 Month Unlimited Phone Plan - I am not getting a contract with a company as I think they're a waste of money. Straight talk lets you get unlimited text, minutes, and web browsing for only $45 a month, or $130 for three months. The plan is that by the time the three months is up profits will be coming in to the point that they can pay for the phone plan after that.
3. Book Sourcing Secrets Ebook - This is written by Peter Valley and is the most comprehensive guide to sourcing books for FBA out there. It's only $47, at this time, and I was honestly surprised it's that little compared to prices I've seen on other FBA books. Well worth the investment I hope.
4. Profit Bandit Ap - This is a scouting app, and at this point is the most recommended one at that.
5. Barcode Scanner - These are relatively inexpensive, around $25 - $30 and simply allow me to enter items into my Amazon FBA inventory quicker. Rather than entering in each ISBN by hand I can just scan the barcode and it'll populate it into the inventory for me. This isn't really a necessity to start with, but I've got the money, and the more time I can save the more time I have to find books!
6. Friends of the Library Membership - There is at least one library around me that offers a special sneak preview of their books sales (and their having one at the end of Oct) to FOL members. It's only $20 for a year, and the advantage of being able to get in early to find books is worth more than that.
7. Sourcing and Inventory Items - It's likely I'll only have around $200 left of the $500 for sourcing products, but that's okay, because we're talking items that are a couple bucks or less, so that's a lot of inventory that I can find. Really there's no reason, other than finding the items, that I can't get around 200 or more items to add to my inventory with that amount of money. 

As you can see the bulk of my initial investment is going to tools, ebooks, and apps, less than half is going towards sourcing. Again, if I was going the retail arbitrage route I would be way more concerned about that, but with books it's a little safer to do. Since January will be right around the corner when I do I would love to find a good selection of textbooks to add to my inventory as well. These will cost me more money, but the ROI on them is even better than average books most of the time. It also means that at a time, post Christmas, that many sellers see a slump in sales I will see a boost as the winter semester starts in January. 

Will I ever sell retail arbitrage? Probably, and it's likely that I'll use RA to scout out some books, think the clearence isle at a bookstore. While books are great, I hope, and seem the most promising I'm a big proponent of having multiple revenue streams. So while my items will all be through the same seller avenue, Amazon, I feel it's smarter and safer to offer a wider range of products than just one thing. Not to mention I like to change things up, I don't like to become bored with one thing or product. Bundling, retail arbitrage, "thrifting for profit" all these things intrigue me, and I'd love to try them out down the road. Of course when I do I'll share my experience with all of you so you can decide which route you would like to go.

So for now that's my game plan, and I feel pretty comfortable with it. Other than the suspense of waiting of course! I think in between I will try to take $10 or so every payday and pick up a few books. The nice thing about my library sale is it's ongoing, it's a room that's always open I can go into. That means that I could go in, find some interestig titles, write down the name and ISBN and then go home and research them on Amazon. Not the most efficient way to source inventory, hence my need for a smartphone and scouting app, but it'll work short term to try and build up a little inventory. Whether or not you can start right away with what you want to do it's a good idea to have a plan.

Writing A Non-Fiction Ebook On Kindle Direct Publishing (Part I)

Photo Credit: Jain Basil Aliyas

If you read my earlier posts on teaching a class locally for money you'll know that I'm hoping to launch a complimentary ebook to go with it on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. Even thought I'm doing the two together, in a sense, it is a completely different process and platform for each. So I'm splitting my posts, one set will follow the class aspect, and this set of posts will follow publishing on KDP.

As I covered in my old post (Can I Teach A Class For Money) I've wanted to self publish for quite awhile. Of course I thought fiction, and I still plan to fulfill that dream someday, but when thinking about my class idea I realized that it wouldn't be that much harder to take my class material and turn it into a non-fiction, how-to type book. A couple months ago, completely by random searches, I discovered a free ebook by Kindle Direct Publish on how to publish using their platform. I downloaded it, since I knew I was interested, but I hadn't read it. Still, I thinking finding that little ebook had planted the seed once again in my subconscious. So I made my decision to dive in, but of course I need to do some research, and that's what this post will cover. These were the first questions I had, and I would think that they are probably common questions asked. 

Mainly I was looking at a few different things: How hard was it to publish, what are the royalties, pricing, payments, etc like, some general tips and tricks on how to write the book and get it out there, and pricing my book when I was ready to go live with it. A couple days of some google searches, and a few ebooks (3 to be exact) later and I have a better idea of what to do and where to go. 

Publishing

• After reading their small ebook, Publish on Amazon Kindle with Kindle Direct Publishing, it really hit home that it can be a very simple process. Basically a person writes the book in a word document, there are other programs that are compatible but Word is what I have, and then you transfer the document to KDP, and they turn it into an ebook. Simple, yes. Will it really work that way? We'll see, I'm sure there will be formatting issues when the document gets changed from word document to an ebook. For this reason I'm going to keep my document VERY SIMPLE. Minimal pictures, basic text and font, and easy style designs like bullets and asterisk. Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of hiccups during the transformation process.
• Publishing with KDP does come with some limitations on the part of the author. For one they have strict rules on pricing and royalties. Above a certain price gets a higher royalty, below that price gets a lower one. You also are not allowed to offer your book free forever, or even as often as you want. I'll cover these two things further in the post. Overall though the advantages of using KDP far outweigh the few concessions you make so I'm going to use them. 
• They also have another ebook that I just found,  Building Your Book For Kindle, again put out by the KDP people. I haven't had the chance to read yet, but it's suppose to walk you through creating your word document to be converted to a Kindle Ebook. This should help with those formatting concerns I had. It's already downloaded to my Kindle library and it's next on my reading list. 

Pricing and Pay

• Obviously I want to make money off this. I don't know if I'll make a lot, a little, or nothing (hopefully I'll do better than nothing though) but money in the bank is the end goal here. If I were just writing for the joy of writing I would be starting with one of my fiction ideas. So one of the first things I looked at was their royalty structure and payment system.
• If you price your ebook $2.99 or LESS than you are ONLY eligible for a 35% royalty on sales. If you price your book at $2.99 or ABOVE you are eligible to receive a 70% royalty. I don't know what the standard royalties are like for authors who are published traditionally, but to me these seem like fair numbers. That means that if your book is priced at $2.99 and you choose the 70% royalty you'll make $2.09 off each sale. Amazon only takes .90 of that sale. I like those numbers.
• If you are NOT enrolled in the KDP program than you can not price your ebook below $2.99
• The payment system is pretty straightforward and easy to understand, just don't think you'll be getting that bank deposit or check within a week or two. Amazon has a wait time on paying you the money, and it's because they wait for refunds and returns. The wait time is 60 days after the end of the month that you hit their payment threshold.
• If you have a bank account linked to your KDP account then you are eligible for payment when you reach $10 in sales. 
• If you do not have a bank account linked to your KDP account then you must reach $100 in sales. I highly recommend you have a savings/checking account linked to your KDP account.

• It credits the money to your KDP account every 30 days, unless you have not reached the threshold and then it will credit it 30 days after you do hit the minimum payout threshold.
• So that means that if you reach your payment threshold in the month of October, you would be issued your payment 60 days later, or around early December.

Writing and Launch Strategy

• I found a really interesting ebook called "How To Write A Non-Fiction Book in 21 Days" by author Steve Scott. Since my goal is to have this book published by October they title caught my eye and I decided to get the book. I've read through the beginning and kind of skimmed through his 21 day plan. I like what I see, and he seems to have solid advice, so I'm going to try and follow his plan as much as possible. I may take longer than 21 days though as I don't have a "traditional" schedule. Really, I have no schedule, when I'm working I'm up all night and sleep through most of the day (I work in a hospital) and when I'm off I flip my schedule over to being up during the day and sleeping at night so I can be with my family. This makes it hard to carve out a specific block of time everyday to dedicate just to writing, which is what he advocates, but I will do my darndest to follow it as much as possible. 
• Some might consider it putting the cart before the horse, but I like to have a full plan, or at least idea of what, when and how I'm going to do something. That meant that I wanted a plan in place for my book launch, and pricing my product. Again, I found another Steve Scoot booklet called "Is .99 the New Free? The Truth About Launching and Pricing Your Kindle Books". It's a pretty small booklet, and I read it in around an hour or so. Still, the information was good, and enough that I have a plan in mind. 
• I will launch my book free for 5 days, this will hopefully garnish me some exposure, recommendations, and good reviews. After that I will price it at .99 for a short time, not sure how long yet, and hopefully that will get me some legit sales. After that I will go to my regular price of $2.99. I'm hoping the reviews from the free period, and the sales from the .99 period will be enough for Amazon to recommend my book and bump it higher in the search results. 

So there's the "grand plan" of my future non-fiction ebook. It's a pretty basic roadmap, but I don't want to get bogged down in to many details before I've even written the thing! My goal with this is to get it done, get it published, and see where it all goes. While I plan to create a quality ebook with quality content it's an experiment as far as a revenue stream. This is the initial testing of the waters, and I fully plan to take what I learn from this quick run through and apply it to my next title, and the next, and the next and so on. Of course I'll be posting regular posts on the process and progress and maybe I'll help someone else down the road launch their title. How cool would that be!

Teaching A Class For Money (Part 1)

I've toyed with the idea of teaching a coupon class for a the last couple years, but it wasn't until recently that I finally decided to take the plunge and start getting the ball rolling. The thought behind this blog post, and the ones that will follow, is to outline the process and how well it does. If you think about it I bet there's something that your friends and family are always coming to you to ask questions about. Or there's something you can do that they constantly ask you do for them, like change their oil or knit them a hat. If you can't think of something, because it's often harder for us to think of what we're good at, than ask your friends and family. The answer may surprise you, but once you have it, start to think about how you could make that into a "class" you could teach.

I already have that step covered, I know my skill that everyone wants, it's coupons and how to use them. It's not that surprising really, any skill that helps people save money is huge at the moment. So if your skill has money saving potential then be sure to highlight that! The next step is to start brainstorming your class, what do you need to teach? What are the steps they should follow? Will you have handouts, examples, etc.? Here is where you just let your brain mull things over and spit random information and thoughts at you and you write them down, or type them, whatever you like to do. Get it all down, don't worry about order, or if it "goes", just free flow it. Again, I've already done this step. I kept my notebook next to me for a day and everytime I thought of something I just wrote it down and went on.


Then you should take all those random thoughts and make a nice tidy outline of your class with them. This is where you put items and steps in the right order. Weed out the information that is irrelevant, decide what handouts and such you want to use. Below is a handy link to an article about Outlines, it's an English article, but I've found outlines to be useful in much more than the english classroom. There's really nothing better for organizing your thoughts, it's a short article so take a second and check it out.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/2/

Why should you bother with an outline? Well, as mentioned above they are one of the best ways to organize your thoughts into something that makes sense. It also provides you wiith something you can take to class with you and use as a reference as you teach. Make sure to save it too, when you are done with your class you can just pull it out every time you want to teach the class again. This can make this a recurring income, which is my end goal with this class, to teach it a couple times a year for a small income boost. Especially during holiday and birthday time it would be a very nice little bit of extra cash!

Currently I need to work on my outline. I have all my random thoughts and such down, now I just need to get them in order and move on. Here I'm also going to suggest doing a little bit of extra research. The reason for suggesting you research something you already know is because sometimes when we KNOW how to do something we forget how to explain it to other people. We miss those obvious and newbie questions that people have. Ever read a ____ For Dummies book? They literally include every. little. tiny. step! But there is a reason they are such well sold books, and they're attention to detail is part of it. In fact, if you can find a For Dummies book on your topic I suggest checking it out of your local library and giving it a quick scan. Likely you'll find a few things that you do automatically and wouldn't have thought of including in your class. If you don't have a for dummies book to read, just google (insert your thing) for beginners and read through the results. You're looking for all those FAQs that newbies ask so that you can include them in your class.

From there is nothing to do but make out your class. Really a well done outline should be all that you need to teach. You just need something to remind you of the highlights and steps of what you are covering, the rest of the information is in your brain. Make your supporting materials and have it all ready. Now comes finding a place to teach your class.

Every area is going to be different as to what they have to offer, so you'll have to do a little research. Ask around, make some phone calls, talk to friends and neighbors. Chances are good you'll find out some places you could hold your class. You may have to pay to "rent" the space for the duration of your class, so keep that in mind when looking into your options. Personally I know I can get the community building, senior center, and I think I can hold a class at our local library. I just need to research some prices and whether or not I can at the library. Personally I feel that the library would be the best place as it lends a certain credibility to me just because of where it is. That's me though.

Once you have the class made, decided on a place to have it you need to set a date and time to have it.You should also decide how much are you going to charge for the class. Take into consideration how much time you spent making the class, materials used, money spent on the venue and advertising and go from there. Once you have the date and time, you've rented your class space, and all your materials are ready (and so are you) start advertising. There's facebook buy/sell/trade groups for your area you can advertise on (for free), craigslist (for free), word of mouth of course is always free, and you can invest in a small ad in your local paper if you want to, and can afford to, as well.

Then nothing to do but teach it when the time comes. It may be small the first time, but just push through and learn from it. Have a Q&A at the end, get an idea for questions that you didn't already answer in your class and mark them. Ask the people that attended if you did well, what suggestions for improvement they may have, etc. A quick and small survey for them to fill out at the end of class would fulfill this function well. Then just take what you learned, tweak your class accordingly, rinse and repeat.