- Publishing low content books such
as diaries, journals, notebooks, planners, coloring books
activity books, puzzle books, and so much more.
It's been long touted
as a dead simple way to make easy money.
Yet a vast majority of aspiring publishers have
their hopes dashed when they find
out their low content books are dead in the water.
Why is that?
Well, they're not going the extra mile.
Instead, they're relying on intuition alone, or
worse yet outright stealing people's intellectual property.
Side note, that's not a good look
so just stop doing it if you're doing it.
Now, if you want to make a true impact
in your self publishing business
you must take a few preemptive steps to validate ideas
and make informed decisions.
Therefore, you better your odds
of success over blind guessing, and of course
chasing someone else's creative IP.
Again, scumbag move.
Hey, this video is sponsored by the fine folks at Book Bolt.
More about them later in the video.
The two key factors in validating ideas are niches
and relevant keywords associated to the niche.
For instance, a niche denotes products
or interests that appeal to a small specialized section.
Though you could continue publishing line notebooks
let's face it
unless it has something unique or extraordinary about it
why would a browsing customer want to buy it?
Couldn't they just go to their local Walmart or Dollar Tree?
Heck, they might even save a few bucks in the process.
It's what you put on the covers
and in the pages that makes the difference.
But we couldn't possibly describe a niche
without first saying a few relevant terms
or phrases that evokes an instant understanding
of what they're talking about.
That's why keywords serve the greatest importance
in the lifetime success of your publication.
Choose the wrong keyword and you end
up with no customers or in a fistfight
with perennial sellers on the Amazon platform.
Naturally, your book will languish and obscurity thereafter.
When you find the right keyword or keyword phrase
with a good balance of competition versus customer demand
that's where the magic happens.
So why don't we take a look here
at a practical application of keyword and niche research.
I'm gonna show you the hard way and then the easy way.
Now, let's get the hard way done first
because you'll get a better understanding of how
Amazon functions as a delivery vehicle
for your self-publishing business when used right.
What you'll need first is DS Amazon Quickview.
Now, this is a little plugin that you can get.
It's an extension for your Chrome browser.
Just go over to the Google Chrome store
use the free version.
I've never paid for the premium version
and it still serves its purpose.
Now, the purpose that it serves is manyfold over.
You're able to quickly see information
about books that you wouldn't otherwise see on a
just a raw search.
So when you go search up something, sure
it's gonna give you all
of these products related to that keyword
but you won't know the actual data that to
make an informed decision, things like the rank of a book
or how long it's been published or how many reviews it has
on it, all that stuff is condensed down
and that's what DS, Amazon Quickview does.
Now, the next thing is we're gonna need to make sure
that that is enabled for incognito mode.
First of all, go over visit settings
in the top right hand corner
of your browser, then extensions
then locate the DS Amazon Quickview plugin, click details.
Then scroll down and turn on the allow in incognito option.
Now this segues perfectly over into incognito mode.
And why the heck would you need that?
If we go and do research on a raw browser
In other words, something that you've already
been browsing through, you've been buying things
you've been searching things on Amazon.
The problem is when you start to do research
Amazon's thinking you are looking for you.
So it's going to try to serve you things based
on your previous buy patterns and search patterns.
We need to go as pure as possible
so that's why we're gonna go open up incognito mode.
By the way, I think it's control shift
and the letter N when you're in a regular browser
that it will pop open incognito mode, at least is
for Chrome.
If you don't know what it is for your browser
just Google that up.
And also, one thing really quick here is set
up a hyperlink to the Amazon bookstore.
Now, you can do that simply through a Google search
and it'll give you a link that you can kind of go
into the Amazon bookstore and then just bookmark that
because it's gonna have the category dropdown
for books automatically set up.
So when you go in, everything's ready to go when
you are gonna do your niche and keyword research.
Now what you do is going to be this
use the incognito mode to visit the Amazon bookstore.
Now you're gonna start with a fresh idea.
You might have, it could be back
to school planners or fitness trackers or blank sheet music.
Type out a keyword phrase that comes
off the top of your head or that you're most interested
in, now, jot down the ideas.
You're gonna narrow down your list
by doing a search of each one of these things.
So I'm just gonna go ahead
and I'm gonna start to type it on in
and it's gonna populate it on up there
and it's gonna give me some different recommendations.
Note those things down.
All right, put them down and say, okay
I'm gonna come back and look at it later.
We're not gonna do the search until we have our list.
And as soon as you have a list of say
three dozen or four dozen different words, let's go ahead.
We're gonna narrow it down
and what we're gonna do is we're gonna search
for each one of those things.
Now, ideally
you want at least 12 to 24 solid keywords when you're done.
So that means when you're going
through this next vetting process
you're gonna wanna make sure you have
at least a dozen or so that you can use on your publication.
Now, what are you watching for when you do the search?
We're looking for the number of products
which it's going to be listed
in the top left-hand corner here on Amazon.
It's not a magical number, and less sure is better
but if there's no one buying, is it even worth publishing?
So just know that
you know, sure, less
than a thousand products is a good starting point
but from time to time, you're gonna notice
that sometimes there's going to be other products
that are gonna be tossed in there that are not
really that relevant to that specific keyword.
So I don't try to live and die by the amount
of products there, but if you see it says something
like 80,000 or a hundred thousand products or more
maybe that's going to be a tough niche or keyword to break
into, now, this is where the fun
of DS Amazon Quickview comes into play because
they're going to show you the Amazon bestseller rank.
Now, briefly speaking here
the Amazon bestseller rank is a real-time report
that sharing what products are being sold and how
they compare to the other products on the marketplace.
The closer that a book is ranked to number one
in the overall bookstore, the more sales it has.
Now, the further out that it goes, the less it has.
Now, let's push forward here because you also
want to be mindful of what categories they're using
because these are little hints that help you
out in understanding, okay, where are my competitors?
Where can I be able to get some good ideas
as to what's the best step forward?
The next thing is keywords.
Keep an eye out for keywords that are being used
in titles and subtitles and series names.
And in some instances, if you go on the product page
the book description, also be mindful of the covers.
This is going to help you
out when you get ready to publish a low content book.
If you know what the general feel of it is, the typography
of it is, you'll be able to make an informed decision
on how you'll construct that cover design.
And last but not least, of course, is gonna be the
what you're gonna wanna look
at is the average Amazon bestseller ranking
for the first 16 products that are pulled up on that page.
Now, generally speaking, I wanna see
in order to use a keyword that's worthwhile
I wanna see a rank of anywhere
between 10,000 in the ABSR to a hundred thousand.
Now, you're probably saying
what the heck does that mean, Dale?
That's about roughly one to 12 book sales per day.
Now, if for some reason it goes closer to number one
that's no problem.
Just understand it's going to be a fistfight to
actually get any type of relevance for that given keyword.
And of course, keep an eye
on the pricing for each one of those things.
It's gonna help you out.
Now, there's going to be some deeper exploration
things you can do
and I'm just gonna kind of gloss over them.
You wanna look at reviews.
How many do they have?
What are they saying?
And of course, be mindful too.
There's more and more pictures
and videos that are being served up
with the reviews that you want to take a look at.
You want to, of course
see what is working for some publications
and what is not working for some publications.
Find out where that gap is and try to fill that need.
Now, here's the big problem here, folks
after I've told you the hard way
you still have to rely a lot on intuition
and that'll only get you so far.
Yes, you can keep publishing books
until you hit a good idea, then double down on it.
Or you could vet the information a little more thoroughly
with some hard to access intel on Amazon.
And that's something that we really can't do
with some of these means that are free.
You can easily spend hours researching the perfect niche
and keywords only to find out your idea just doesn't stick.
Then you're out of time and money
and whatever resources you have to publish that stinker
of a book that isn't drawing any money.
Now, let's go ahead and look at the easy way.
Now, I mentioned that today's sponsors' book bolt
but don't tune me out just yet
like I'm busting into an ad spot.
This is the part where I show you how
Book Bolt does the research for you much faster.
Might I add and gives you one of the most important metrics
in your future decision making processes?
Search volume.
Yeah.
How many people are actually searching
for these things?
Just because products are showing
up inside search doesn't necessarily mean
that the customers are searching for those things.
So are people searching for your type of content?
What are the keywords they type the most often
when looking for something?
And also, how many actual competitors do you have
beyond just the first page results?
Yeah, that's only scratching the surface.
It's very well thousands
or more depending on what you're plugging in there.
And are customers buying the products associated
with the keywords.
So there's two specific features that I like to use
over in Book Bolt, and the reason is with Book Bolt
we really get into the nitty gritty of low content books.
We just toss out the things that are fiction
and non-fiction books.
Those won't serve us any good.
We need to see what's working for low content.
So let's break into the products feature.
Now you're gonna narrow down your search base on a category.
Now, book Bolt will sift
through all the search results to give you the cleanest data
for low content books.
Now, let's face it, there are a lot of products on Amazon.
So having the inessential search results sorted
out helps a ton.
Once you have a category selected
for the type of book you're interested in publishing
you can hit search or enter a keyword word
or phrase related to the niche you have interest in.
Now, book Bolt brings you back all the relevant data
including the total results, the average ABSR
the lowest and highest price.
Also, the average price to make it easy
for you to price your book later on based
on the lowest and highest price.
It's just doing the math for you, if you will.
Now, the books showing
up are the best selling for the search.
So they're just gonna show you the ones that are
the heavy hitters, the prize fighters
the ones that are crushing it.
You'll want to look at the same information
with each title like we did the hard way.
Ha ha.
Hopefully you're not a cheater who skipped forward just
because you couldn't be bothered with learning the hard way.
Now, note the keywords on the right side
giving you what is currently in use
and the number of times they appear in the search results.
Scroll a little further down
and you'll find related keywords
and the search volume for those keywords.
But what if you want to go even more granular?
Because we'd like to see how many people actually search
for a term on Amazon, proof of concept, if you will.
So that's where we go over to the keywords feature.
Now, let's go ahead and take one
of the keywords maybe that we unearth.
You're gonna type in that keyword
whether it's a single term
or a full phrase, it doesn't matter.
Keyword can be any number of those things.
Then hit search, within a moment or so.
Book Bolt brings back all the relevant
and related terms in some form of a broad keyword match.
Now, pay close attention
to the first column where it shows Amazon's search volume.
The higher the number
the more customers search for that term.
You can even see the search volume for Google
which if you can get discovered there
you can get discovered anywhere.
And also looking at what it costs advertisers
per click shows buyer intent
meaning that if it's awful high
that means there's definitely an audience ready, willing
and able to purchase your products.
Now, there's also the cloud feature, book Scout
and other options, including the new book Bolt Studio
with an all new customizable templates for your interiors.
But let me save that for another video.
Whether you do it the hard way or the easy way
you'll build out a low content concept based
on the niches and relevant keywords, be it a puzzle book
journal sheet, music, or whatever else, trips your trigger.
For now, use the keywords in your title, subtitle
backend keywords and more.
And also let the keywords
and examples inspire you to create something unique
that customers wanna buy.
Now, the question comes down to what way do you want to go?
Would you rather spend countless hours relying
on your gut instincts and hope for the best
or invest a little with Book Bolt and save yourself the time
and energy you could otherwise devote
to creating more quality low content books?
Customers will be clamoring to buy.
Visit our affiliate link at dalelinks.com/Book Bolt
and use the coupon code DALE20 to get 20% off indefinitely.
By the way, it's all caps.
DALE20, like you're shouting at 'em.
You gotta shout it.
Now
what do you do with your keyword and niche research data?
Stay tuned for the second part in this four part
video series of publishing low content books on Amazon.
In the meantime, let me tell you about the 10
best low content book publishing companies out there.
Yeah, there's even more than just Amazon KDP folks.
I'll see you there.