Are certain low-content book niches out there just too saturated for you to get
involved in and successfully cut through the clutter,
or is it actually possible for you to somehow worm your way in there and get
some of those profits for yourself?
I actually think there are ways that you can successfully compete in very
competitive low-content book niches,
and today I'm going to share to you three ways that I have successfully used to
help me to break into some of those more competitive low-content book niches.
If you're new around here, my name's Rachel Harrison-Sund,
and I help people generate passive income creating and selling journals,
planners, notebooks, and more on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
If that sounds interesting to you then please subscribe to this channel and
don't forget to hit that bell so that you can be notified every time I put out
one of these videos, which is each and every Monday. Generally,
the biggest complaint I hear from those that are either new to the low-content
publishing business model or they're just having a really hard time generating
sales during their first few weeks or even months of their publishing journey is
that Amazon is just too saturated to be a viable way to make money.
I would be totally lying if I said there weren't a bajillion low-content books
for sale on Amazon. There 100% are,
but it is totally false that the market is just simply too saturated to make
money. If that were true,
then there would be no new low-content publishers successfully coming onto the
scene and breaking into the market, and there most definitely are.
If you want to see a really great example of someone who has not been at this
for years and is currently totally killing it making $5,000 a month profit --
with no ads, I might add -- then I recommend checking out this video here,
where I speak with one of my star Low-Content Profits Academy students about how
she got to $5,000 a month, And even her first $500 day,
which she just had a few weeks ago.
The fact of the matter is that people have been saying KDP is too saturated for
years. People were saying it back in 2014 when I first got started yet,
somehow, many,
many people have somehow managed to break through that clutter and go on to
generate hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars a month,
month after month, on KDP.
So what do those people know that the naysayers don't?
The first thing they know is that there is no opportunity to make money out
there that doesn't require either time, effort, and patience, or more money.
Some people are just simply not willing to put in the work, and sadly,
those people are never,
ever going to succeed as business owners because they're going to just spend
their lives fruitlessly searching for some golden opportunity that requires
no time, no effort, no patience.
It's kind of like they're just sitting around waiting for pot of gold to just
kind of fall out of the sky and land directly into their bank account.
Everything worthwhile does take work. And with low-content publishing,
your job -- if you want to make any money with this --
is to figure out how you are going to break through the market and break through
the clutter, rather, and how you're going to be different.
You've got to find new angles.
You can't just do more of the same and expect to get noticed,
and there's no one really out there that can do that for you.
It's entirely up to you to come up with novel ideas that speak to a clear target
audience.
And then you've also got to be prepared for some of those ideas that you have
just to simply not land. That's just part of the process, too.
Let's go through three of the ways that I have successfully used to break
into some highly competitive niches.
You're probably going to notice an overarching theme here with all three of
these methods,
and that is basically to drill down as far down into a niche as you can go.
You're not likely to gain any traction whatsoever by just publishing some
generic daily planner,
but you just might have some luck if you create a daily planner aimed at
dog-loving senior citizens, or highly organized bikers or,
I don't know, gardeners who are also into impressionist art.
Maybe those are a little out there, but you get the point. Number one,
combine niches. For this,
you want to start with a list of low-content book types in one column and a list
of different themes in another column,
and then you're basically just going to start combining them at random.
So you can see here in first column of types of low-content books,
we've got prayer journal, daily planner, gardening log book prompted sketchbook,
and coloring book. And then in the second column
of themes, you've got cats, coffee, mother/daughter,
art teachers, and funerals.
A few of the first possible combinations that we can come up with,
maybe it's a cat-themed prayer journal. We could have a coffee-themed,
daily planner, mother/daughter gardening log book,
prompted sketchbook for art teachers,
and maybe even a funeral-themed coloring book.
These are obviously just the first round of possible combinations.
You can combine these in innumerable different ways and come up with as many of
them as you can. Many other combinations here are possible,
and do your best to write down as many different combinations as you can.
Once you've got a few combinations,
you can go ahead and do some research to see if any of these combinations are
going to lead to you to any corresponding keywords.
Do not worry if you don't see any of these combinations show up as
keywords. If they are really unique combinations,
it's probably actually pretty unlikely that they will show up.
There probably aren't going to be anyone actively searching for "daily planners
with a cat drinking cup of coffee on it." But someone looking for daily planners
who does happen to be interested in both coffee and cats probably would be
attracted to a daily planner like that. So,
combining niches can really offer a fresh take on otherwise,
played-out low-content book type,
and it is a great way to come up with something that no one else has really done
before. This is what I did with my very first self-published book,
which happened to be a recipe book, which I did back in 2014.
And it was a pretty big success for me.
I combined the very competitive niche of the paleo diet with another equally
competitive niche of vegetarianism,
and I created a "paleo for vegetarians" cookbook.
That thing made me about a hundred bucks in that first month,
which I frankly could not have been happier about.
Here's another really great example.
You've got the very competitive niche of adult coloring books combined with the
completely unrelated niche of morticians.
Who on Earth would've thought to combine these two things?
This person obviously did. This book actually isn't raking it in.
The BSR tells me that it is at least, however, making a few sales a month,
and they all add up in combination with all of the other books in our catalogs.
The next trick is to add humor. No matter what the niche,
no matter how serious you think the niche is,
humor is always a great angle to take,
and this is where I have consistently had the most success,
especially when the humor has been completely unexpected. For example,
I was able to get my floral planners noticed in an absolute sea of floral
planners by using some pretty spicy,
pretty colorful UK slang and insults on the covers.
A fancy script font on a beautiful floral patterned book cover is kind of an
unexpected place to see that kind of language,
and the juxtaposition of the fancy artwork and the insults made it all the
funnier. This example is even better.
This is a book for people to get their affairs in order before they die which,
by all accounts, is a very dry,
morbid subject to be publishing in.
But the title of the book totally makes light of this really serious subject.
And the result is absolutely hilarious.
Some people cope with serious subjects through humor.
I'm definitely one of those people,
and this is exactly the type of book that would appeal to someone like that.
Lastly, uncover an underserved audience.
A big thing I noticed when doing research on Amazon is that when a certain book
does well,
the copycats come out in droves trying to piggyback off all the success of that
first book.
And this generally only work if your book is even better than the original.
For everyone else -- the poor facsimiles --
they usually land with a thud at the bottom of the algorithm.
Your job is to stand out, not get lost in the crowd,
so when you're researching a saturated niche like daily planners,
think about who specifically the planners that you're seeing already published
would appeal to.
You can write down that list and then consider groups of people that are absent
from your research. As we already know,
women who love floral planners are already pretty well-represented in the
planner's niche, but what about men who are into sports?
Or women who are into sports, for that matter? Or dog trainer,
or fans of pop art or grunge? Whatever.
There's a never-ending list here,
and most of the planners I see on Amazon are pretty generic,
and generally do not attempt to speak to anyone in particular. So,
despite planners being quite competitive,
I still see a lot of opportunity there,
and it's where I've always had the most success. Activity book --
this is another very competitive niche,
but the vast bulk of them are aimed at kids or they're pegged as being "for
adults," which is a very broad demographic.
Any niche that you research where you keep seeing "for adults" being used is an
opportunity, in my opinion, to dig down a little bit deeper.
Here's a really great example of a book that successfully drilled down into
activity books with a very specific audience in mind: architects. Of course,
there aren't billions of architects out there, but because of that,
they might be an underrepresented demographic in a so-called saturated niche
that you be able to capitalize on. Well, there you have it.
I hope I've got you thinking about ways that you can dig down a little bit
deeper and successfully break into some of those more competitive niches out
there. If you brand new to the idea of low-content publishing,
do please download my free guide,
"3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day." I've
left a link to that down in the description below.
Of course you can also join my free Facebook group, Low-Content Profits.
This is a great way to connect with other low-content publishers and have any of
your self-publishing questions answered by other low-content publishers.
If you liked this video, please don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe,
share it with your friends,
and check out these videos next for some more low-content publishing tips,
tricks, and tutorials. Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you next time.