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5 Reasons Writing Amazon Kindle eBooks Is An Effective Way To Make Money

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About two years ago I published my first eBook on Amazon Kindle. I didn’t do it for the money.

I did it simply because I wanted to publish a book. So I wrote about the basic science of bodybuilding, something I was obsessed with at the time.

To my amazement I made several hundred dollars a month from this book, without even marketing it or promoting it. Fast forward two years and I’ve published six books to date. For the most part each books sells better than the last. At this point I make over a thousand dollars each week via Amazon profits. And now that I’m finally starting to treat this process as a business, I fully expect this number to increase quickly.

I say this not to impress you, but to impress upon you the incredible monetary potential of writing and publishing kindle eBooks. Below are the top five reasons that almost anyone can take advantage of this opportunity.

1. We’ve all figured something out

When it comes to informational products, specifically non-fiction books, people buy them because they’re searching for a solution. They’re searching for an answer to some question, problem, or challenge that they’re currently facing.

And the fact is that someone else has probably already figured this out. Someone else has already overcome this particular problem. It might be how to pick up girls. It might be how to use a particular application, like Evernote, more effectively. It might be how to travel the world with only a backpack. It might be how to gain weight with a particular dietary limitation.

The amazing thing is that almost all of us have figured something out. And if you can identify a specific problem that you’ve faced and overcome, then you can probably make money off of it by turning it into an easy-follow-system and then packaging it as a Kindle eBook.

2. Writing non-fiction is an easy-to-learn skill

If you can explain things coherently, and if you can take the time to organize your solution into a logical outline, then you can write non-fiction. The truth is that improving your writing, like any other skill, takes time and repetition. However, the following two tips made all the difference in my writing:

1. Write as if you’re talking to a good friend. This is usually an appropriate tone that’s not too formal, and also pleasant to read.

2. Proofread your shit. Not having spelling and grammar mistakes goes a long way in making your writing digestible and professional.

People will be buying your book because they want a solution to their problem, so being Mark Twain or George Orwell isn’t a requirement, but writing an easy-to-follow and coherent book definitely is.

3. A baby could literally publish a book on Amazon

The Kindle publishing process is extremely straightforward. If you can format a Microsoft Word document and follow basic directions, it will only take a couple of hours to upload and publish your eBook to Amazon.com.

Because the barrier to entry is so low, the other side of this fact is that Amazon is littered with heaps of bullshit. You must make your book stand out by writing a good book, giving it a catchy title, creating an aesthetically pleasing cover image, and then receiving positive reviews.

4. Amazon will literally market and sell the book for you

This is probably the number one reason that there’s money to be made with Kindle. Amazon is an enormous online marketplace. Countless people go to Amazon to buy a nearly unlimited scope of goods. And eBooks happen to be one of their bread-and-butter products.

On top of this Amazon does a first-class job of selling everything it offers. It knows what you’re likely to buy based on your search and purchase history, and it bombards your screen with relevant, quality products as you go. The trick to selling a lot of copies of your eBook is getting Amazon to recognize it as a quality product. This is accomplished by doing just two things:

1. Selling lots of copies up front

2. Getting good reviews

This may seem daunting if you don’t have a big network or email list to sell your book to. But the truth is that with the existence of so many niche online communities that it’s not very hard… especially if you use this simple, but devastatingly effective strategy: release your book for 99 cents AND then get people to buy and review it. This will accomplish the two things discussed above, and then you can up the price, stop promoting the book on your own, and let Amazon keep the sales rolling in.

5. 70% royalty

The last reason you should publish on Amazon is this: you get 70% royalties. The fact that I only give 30% to Amazon is a giant gift considering that they provide probably 90% of my total sales.

If you’re interested in actually writing a book on Kindle, you should check out my new book Write Book, Make Money. 

Read More: 3 Habits That Every Man Should Practice

58 thoughts on “5 Reasons Writing Amazon Kindle eBooks Is An Effective Way To Make Money”

  2. to be fair man, the reason you are doing well with books is because you have credibility and a good reputation, in addition to being able to write well and having something to say as a result of life experience.
    i found your work when you did a release of domination, and i have to say its been bookmarked extra thoroughly on my kindle.
    but lets be honest about kindle. its not a gold rush anymore jefe. good content, well packaged will make it to the top, but only after people get like 20 five star reviews to start generating some heat.
    having an excellent reputation with a lot of free high quality content that is produced over the days months and years has got you to the position you are in now. you worked damn hard to get there.
    people think that its like 2007-2009 when basically publishing anything would net you gains.
    no its much harder than that. its like actual publishing now. and there is competition everywhere.
    you have to live a life of interest to be able to write a book of interest. that’s what seperates the scam artist life hacker types from the people who have mastered their discipline.
    when i read domination, i read someone who knows what the hell he’s talking about.
    telling people its easy to make bucks without informing them of just how much serious and conscious effort has to be put in diminishes the writing discipline in general.
    I mean matt forney’s talked more about this sort of stuff than i ever have

  3. Ha-ha-ha. When the author confessed to expecting his profits to increase rapidly, I knew he’d be asking for money somewhere in the next paragraph.

  4. I just signed up to the bookbub emailing list, and am now being tempted on a daily basis to buy free kindle books – literally £$0.00. I presume the idea is that you will then buy the author’s next book for actual money (which is unlikely) but I wonder about the economics involved
    So far I’ve been ‘buying’ a lot of books I know I will never read – just because they’re free. Does this actually benefit the author?
    I’ve also noticed what look like project gutenberg type books recycled for kindle at about $0.50 each, typically with terrible formatting / proofing. Is that legit?

    1. I know an ebook author who gives out free books for a short period, mostly to his friend network and asks them to give it good reviews. Then he puts the price at the market level and Amazon does the rest.

      1. Thanks for the explanation. There seems no obvious benefit unless you get good reviews or have another book to sell

  5. This is something that I am willing to try. I tend to hate writing anything over 500 or so words though, which has been the biggest hurdle towards me writing an e-book.

  6. I have wanted to do this, but I find it hard to buckle down and write. I really need to kill my facebook and twitter for awhile. Or get another computer like George R R R R R R Martin that will be solely devoted to writing and not connected to the internet.

    1. ” . . . get another computer . . . devoted to writing and not connected to the internet.”
      For which any old P4 you can salvage, running a stripped down Linux, will do just dandy.
      Or, if you shop Newegg carefully, say around Black Friday, you should be able to pick up an AMD FM2 motherboard, A4 gpu and memory for about a hundred bucks that blows away any old P4.

    2. there is a program called ‘freedom’ which will kill your internet connectivity for x amount of hours, thereby enabling you to work without that particular distraction. Once you instruct it though you literally have to wait for the period of non-connectivity to end.

  7. Say, outside of bodybuilding, are there any other good topics for Amazon? I’ve been thinking of dumping a short sci-fi collection up there or something.

  8. This whole piece is arrant nonsense designed to fool the gullible.
    First of all I have yet to hear of a genuine author who does not include his full name on anything he writes, so that the readers can pop over to his Amazon page and check out his list of publications. (Readers at this point are cordially invited to wander over to my Amazon page at both the UK and USA sites to see that I do come into the category of published author.)
    Now then, I own my own small publishing house, so I do know something about the mechanics of the business. Turning a manuscript into an e-reader ready copy is a long and laborious process, one that is made doubly difficult by the format that Amazon uses. In a nutshell, my advice is to find a professional to do it for you and be grateful if he only charges you about £200. Trust me, it’s worth it. By the way, I do not offer that service!
    Secondly, the notion that you do not have to advertise is tosh of the highest order. The publishing world is full of authors that nobody has ever heard of who sell one or two copies of their work every month or so. Advertising is the key to everything and if you do not have a budget for that then be prepared to spend long hours on various internet fora trying to get yourself noticed. I write about spanking, that is stories about dominant men and women who need upending, and the fact that I have been churning out these tales for over thirty years means that my name is well known. Even so, there’s a lot of competition out there.
    How many copies will you sell? Well, each of my books sells about half a dozen copies a month through Amazon and the other ebook sites such as Smashwords.com. Sorry to disappoint, but that is it, unless you have an advertising budget.
    To be honest, this piece is such utter, fatuous nonsense that RoK should be ashamed that they have published it.

      1. The Americans talk about the hood of a car instead of the bonnet and the South Africans do not have traffic lights, they have robots. The English refer to a herd of cattle and the Australians a mob of cows. I give up with all of you. Face it, I speak English and you speak quaint colonial dialect.

        1. 319 MM (tipping my hat to your quaint dialect) Americans.
          65 MM in the UK.
          Who is speaking a quaint, regional dialect?

        3. You are, since this matters like this are not decided by a show of hands. England is the mother country of English; ergo the version spoken here is the standard form.

        4. You keep dreamin’ Spanky.
          **********
          American English is the standard for the world.
          **********
          Suck it.

        7. A baloney pony, choad, choda, cock, crank, dingaling, dingus, dork, fuckpole, jimmy, joystick, kielbasa, langer, meat stick, one-eyed-trowsersnake, package, pecker, pud, rod, schlong, tool, wang, wiener, willie, winkie…
          There is a reason I call him “Spanky”.

        8. snicker
          Spanky’s head will twist all the way around because of that comment! Just you watch.

      1. I have no doubt that you are right. Similarly, you should be in no doubt that I am right when I tell you that producing a Kindle ready manuscript is damned difficult. Getting your e-book noticed amongst all the others is, if anything, even harder.

        1. It’s funny, because I am literally going through the process now and I couldn’t agree more. I am using Open Office and it is a fucking bitch in every respect, even using a template.
          Not to mention the Amazon previewer has about 6 devices you have to account for. I’m currently torn between releasing my book on Amazon or just tossing it on my blog and selling through ejunkie.
          Gotta build an audience first, but with all great things one must be patient.

        2. Take a trip over to Smashwords and download their style guide. Follow their rules and eventually you will get a clean copy. I have a friend who did it for me, but good luck, as you are going to need it. Alternatively, pay someone the couple of hundred pounds that they charge and let them do the worrying.

  10. Hey Jefe, thanks the practical ideas are appreciated.
    Just wanna say to you and all posters and commentors I definitely get great food for thought from you guys.

    1. This is against Amazon ToS, but just check my books bestsellers rankings on Amazon (or my latest blog post on HowToBeast).

      1. 1. Reviews can be purchased and “best seller rankings” can be gamed.
        2. Your blog has no organic following. Without ROK, you have no audience.
        3. This means your $1,000 a week is coming from Amazon, as you do not have your own organic audience.
        4. To gross $1,000 a week at a cover price of $9.99, you would have to sell 100 copies each and every week, or 5,200 copies a year.
        5. Since you’re only getting 70%, you’d have to sell 142 book a week, or just under 7,400 books a year.
        6. To put those numbers in perspective: The average book sells 250 copies in total.
        7. Without proof, your claims simply aren’t credible.

        1. I’m surprised at the lengths you’re going to try and discredit me.
          1. Reviews yes, not sure about sales rank.
          2. A lot of my referral traffic is rok yes, but still less than 10% or so of overall traffic.
          3-7. You forget that I’ve published 7 books, some in paperback as well.
          Beyond that it’s quite alright with me if you’re still skeptical.

        2. Your Alexa rank isn’t even in the 1,000,000 range. How many page views are you getting a day? 1,000 at most?
          You can screen cap your stats, right? In fact. I have made my own stats public many times. That does not violate any TOS.
          Your traffic and other metrics do not support your contentions. It’s as simple as that.
          There is a lot of Internet Marketing fraud going on, and that’s cool. I don’t go seek those guys out. But when I see it, I say something.
          I and others on “this side of the Internet” don’t lie to make money. Neither should you.

        3. Your numbers are correct… and yet I can still make money on Amazon (hence the article above).
          Here’s a screenshot from one of my first months when I averaged over $1000/week.

        4. Jefe doesn’t lie! He just twists a bunch nonsense together and sells it to desperate men! I don’t doubt he makes a ton of money taking advantage of depressed, hopeless men – his motivational garbage is like religion for the non-religious, it gives them comfort and hope.

        5. Don’t listen to Mike from Dangerous & Gay. He’s an egotistical little victor pride sideshow who tried to go to war with Tim Ferris because of a bug in itunes which he blamed Tim for attacking him because his blog is becoming too powerful.
          Seriously deluded individual who doesnt have the courage to take a stand against racism like I asked him to on his blog. A man without principles shouldn’t go around trying to discredit others.
          Schmuck.

    2. Ugh the whole “give me evidence” thing drives me nuts. Even if he does provide evidence, you or some other cynic will point out one of the following:
      “Well just because you do it doesn’t mean everyone can!”
      “How many people have you successfully taught for free before asking for money?” Your inevitable retort no matter how high the number: “not enough”
      This is the exact kind of cynical b.s. that you warn against on your blog Mike. There’s nothing wrong with making money from teaching someone else how to make money. Teaching about money is no different from teaching about fitness, nutrition, juicing, or any other topic.
      Just because you did blogging for years without asking for a penny, while making boatloads as a lawyer, doesn’t give you the right to run around demanding that everyone else go penniless because it doesn’t fit your idea of the “right way to do things”.

  13. The assertion in the article is true under one important condition: the book has to be written about a topic of great mass appeal.

  14. I released a book on Kindle last year and Its not as easy as it seems to make sales. I do get a trickle of sales here and there for my book, but it’s nowhere near the thousands that Jefe describes.
    You still have to market it to people in order to get it off the ground. The best thing to do is to put it on the ‘Kindle Select’ program and give it away for free for a few weeks.
    Promote the hell out of it on various Freebie FB pages and then eventually increase the price. This should give you enough momentum and reviews in order to increase your rankings on Amazon.

  15. A bit old but good read from another perspective:
    http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/30/self-e-publishing-bubble-ewan-morrison
    In short, it’s absolutely fine to try your luck as a book writer, just don’t expect “a thousand dollars each week”, unless you already have some kind of public profile. I think you have a better chance of success when your main initial reason for trying is something other than making money.
    And make sure you don’t spend more on buying those “how to make money publishing ebooks” ebooks than you actually make selling your ebooks.
    Disclaimer: I sell ebooks (not about writing ebooks) and other stuff (simple software), but not via Amazon (via my own website). I am not making thousands per week (from these things alone).

  16. Does Amazon allow adult works to be published? I often make 3D comics for clients and would like to make additional revenue for the amount of time I put into each of them. I know there is a market for it as I’ve sold numerous copies directly to my viewers.

  17. i’m working on fiction story but i’m taking a break on it…..will it sell in amazon?? i mean is a story not a help book

  19. I hear writing cheesy romance novels is the way to go for Kindle. I’m too lazy to do this, though. Who the fuck wants to get inside the head of a romance novel character? How can the plot you devise not keep you from vomiting?

  20. Jefe, I hate to be a hater, but seriously, you’re the worst. I bought one of your books just to checkout the content and your writing and I have to say I was appalled. You didn’t bring anything new or interesting to the genre, and I would rate your writing as “developing” at best. The number of 5 star reviews touting the book as amazing and unbelievable seem very suspect to me, did you get your friends to write these income generating reviews for you?
    I wandered over to your terrible website and clicked around to get an idea of your blogging also, I am interested in web entrepreneurship after all, enough to throw away 10 dollars. Your website sucks mate, sorry. Its 90% regurgitated and lacking real substance. I cilcked onto one of your youtube videos and I was disappointed further. Your physicality is average, and you come across as a meat-head kid who thinks he’s figured it all out.
    It does appear that you’ve put alot of hours into your website and ebooks, which says something of your willpower and determination to succeed, but Jefe your work shouldn’t be enough to earn this type of coin. 1000 dollars a week of passive income is incredible. This puts you among the top 1% of earners when compared against the global population, and you aren’t slugging away in the real world like the rest of us are forced to. For those who understand the value of free time, $1000 a week for what you’ve put together makes you one of the richest young men alive.
    I am pleased to see Danger & Play call you out Jefe. I didn’t give your book a 1 star review because I am not a total dickhead, but maybe the Manosphere community can come together and put you in your place. It really boggles my mind that you have come this far, if there is any true force of balancing karma in the universe your earnings should go down, not up.
    In the most positive way possible you really piss me off Jefe. <3

  22. sure its easy to publish a book but someone has to want to BUY your book and so far, no one has bought mine and its been a couple of months

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