Even though you may have watched my videos or watched other online
videos or even done a course on publishing KDP no content and low
content books you may still not be getting those sales. In fact,
it's one of the most common messages I get.
And many people that might be yourself included,
are in complete despair because you put in all that work,
but nothing to show for it. So that's what we're going to address today.
And I'm going to give you my top three tips for making sales.
And even if you are making sales, then what I'm about to tell you may well,
give your books a boost. Now,
if you've not been here before then welcome to the channel.
My name is Paul Marles and I do videos on how to make it, keep it and grow it.
And that's your money I'm talking about. And if you do like videos like that,
then please do give it a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button,
and also smash that notification bell to receive notification of when I produce
more videos like this. So,
when creating books or learning this KDP business,
there's a lot of information to take in, from graphic design, niche,
research, keyword research, to marketing and pricing.
And even though you may have followed everything to the letter,
you can still overlook some of the crucial points that are vital to making
sales in your KDP publishing business.
So let's look at these three tips in more detail. Now,
if you've watched any of my previous videos,
then you might've heard me talk about this little equation,
but don't worry there's no complicated maths.
And I can't stress the importance of it. In fact, it's so important.
I have it up here on my wall. I'll just grab it as a post-it note.
It says sales equals traffic plus
conversions. Traffic is the amount of customers to your book.
And conversions comes from someone clicking on your book and buying it.
It's relatively simple but complex to master,
which is why I'm going to try and simplify with these three tips.
So, first of all, let's think about what I call the customers journey.
They have something in mind they want to buy.
They are not sure what and are looking for suggestions.
So they type something into the Amazon search bar and Amazon offers to
them what they think they will like.
And also what have others have bought and also liked.
This is the first part of the equation, the traffic,
then they will scroll down until something catches their eye that they find
attractive or that they think someone else would find attractive and meets their
needs. So they will click on it.
Now you've got the customer hooked and the sales will then depend on the
titles, description, interior and price,
but it's getting those initial clicks where most publishers,
probably like yourself, fall down on.
So the first tip is this,
and this is vital for the traffic part of the equation and for your book
appearing, when someone does a search and that's keywords,
they are the lifeblood of virtually all businesses.
People go online and search on Google or search for things to buy on
eBay, or in our case, Amazon using keywords.
And whether our book shows up when a customer searches comes down to the
keywords we select. But the biggest problem I see most people do,
when I'm reviewing books,
is that they are targeting a keyword that is far too competitive.
Too much competition means the book doesn't show up.
Here's an example here from my last video I did on a very lucrative
niche. The bucket list journal,
I've done two searches here with two different keywords.
The first has 14 search results and the other has
10,000 search results. If you were to target the first keyword,
you would have very little competition, but with the second,
you would have a lot. Now the less competitive keyword may receive less traffic,
but you have more chance of making sales.
If you were going to run ads on your books then you might reasonably target more
competitive keywords,
but this is a business where you don't need to run ads in order to make those
sales. Now, listen to this.
Many people think that book is special and is sure to get sales because it
looks so good.
So they are tempted into using a keyword that is too competitive to try and make
that extra money. I've done it. It's easily done.
But all that happens is their book never appears and they never
make sales. And they're at a loss as to why.
That's when I get the messages asking, why am I not making sales?
How to overcome this and get low competition keywords that are getting searches
are with three main ways. Number one,
manual keyword research. That's how I started and still do a lot of my research.
It takes longer, but it's free.
And I also get a feel for the market. I'll leave a link below to a video,
which explains in detail, how I do this. Number two,
buy ready-made lists. For example,
I have a Gumroad store where I sell many lists of keywords in a variety of
niches. Again, I'll leave the link below. Number three,
keyword research tools.
My two favorites are Publisher Rocket and Helium 10 publisher.
Rocket is a one-off payment, which I like. And Helium 10 is a subscription,
but it does give you more keywords. If you are starting out,
go with the manual method, it's free and you'll learn a lot.
I'll leave a link to all of these below, under a heading called keywords.
So that's tip number one covered now to tip number two,
and this is related to keywords and that is the title and subtitle.
Even after you've found good, low competition,
potentially good traffic keywords a lot of people then waste that research by
burying the keyword at the end of their subtitle or not even using it at
all. Amazon gives great strength to front loaded keywords.
That means the earlier on in the title and subtitle a keyword appears the
greater weight it has.
So my tip for this is put your main keyword in the title.
Nothing else. Okay,
you could add notebook or journal if it helps with it looking natural,
but this title must appear on the cover or spine of your book.
So remember that. If for whatever reason you feel,
you can't have your keywords on the cover or spine and wants a
different title then put your main keyword at the beginning of the subtitle.
Once you've got your main keyword in the title,
then a second or third keyword can go in the subtitle, but make it look natural,
no keyword stuffing. Alright?
One more important thing about the title and subtitle that's a killer for a lot
of books and that's punctuation, spelling,
and capitalization of the words.
Get a native English speaker to check it or use a tool like grammarly at
grammarly.com.
So those are the main aspects covering traffic.
And now we're onto tip number three, and that is cover design,
which affects the conversions, a big one,
which comes a close second to keywords to be successful.
You don't need to be a graphic designer designer. In fact, in some cases,
I think it can be a disadvantage because many graphic designers don't look at
what is selling, but create what they think is a great graphic design,
but not necessarily commercial. Remember,
there are many starving artists out there. Now I'm not a graphic designer,
but I've looked at thousands and thousands of covers and published around
2,400 books.
So have a reasonable idea of what works.
Not to say I have the skills to create them, but if I can't,
I'll get someone who can or I'll learn.
The biggest mistakes are cover designs, not in keeping with the niche. i.e.
A flowery truckers' log journal. I know a bit of an extreme example,
but a good example. A font that doesn't match the design.
Fonts that are too small and hard to read.
Remember many people buy on their mobile devices.
And so the covers are shrunk down, which makes small fonts and reads unreadable.
Lastly, colors that are poorly saturated or don't combine well.
That is the colors don't really pop off the screen.
Here's an example of a book I reviewed in the past.
You can see the colors are vibrant and work really well. Well,
hope you can see that on this video.
Now this is a tougher one to address than keywords, which can easily be taught.
For covers you need to study and look at covers that are selling well on
Amazon. Not copy them.
I get so many of mine copied it's ridiculous,
but use them as a guide and inspiration. Look at the colors,
used the fonts and the positioning of the words on the cover.
You also need to learn. Watch YouTube videos on color designs,
color theory, and fonts. Take courses on Skillshare or Udemy,
I'm always doing courses and learning new stuff all the time. Yes,
they cost money, but consider it an investment in your skills and your business.
You never know you might use these skills to go onto creating other items or
create other businesses such as t-shirts and other merch.
I started actually the other way around.
I started on merch and then went into books. So if you take on board,
these three tips,
you will go a lot further than most publishers to addressing the issue of
traffic and conversions, and ultimately getting those sales. Now,
if you're wanting to find out which niches are currently making the big money,
then watch this video here.
Or if you want to know more about how I do keyword research,
then click this video here.
But don't forget to click the subscribe button if you want to learn to be
successful in this KDP publishing business. And thank you for watching.
And until next time, goodbye.