...And Earn a 6-Figure Passive Income for Life
So much for that hiatus. Since you're one of the brilliant, charismatic followers of this blog and podcast, you know I just gave you a complete brain dump of a marketing sequence just last week. Half an hour of content, all in one huge checklist.
And then I said I was simply going to get busy implementing it and so you wouldn't hear from me for awhile.
That old phrase I like comes to mind: “Man plans and God laughs.”
What I did was start double-checking my research – which then simplified the process.
That is why I'm back with you today – to help make your life simpler.
Scott Sutton showed me a better way to Amazon my books.
I mentioned in my last post that I'd found out that Kindle books weren't normal books which would run 300 pages in text. They should be short, compiled versions of blog posts. Well, I did some study on Scott Sutton – actually paid for his collection of three books (“3 for the price of 2” was the marketing hook.) [link]
Then I digested this last night, which was true to its word – short, bullet-heavy, and full of action steps. Not a lot of fluff.
While this is how he has made as much as $50K per month – he's leaving money on the table and isn't organizing this for real production by re-purposing.
The other point to ignore his ideas about KDP Select. This simply doesn't work anymore. Hasn't since 2012. He covers this with his “.99 is the New Free” report – but doesn't revise his earlier books to take that into account.
Overall, it's a nice read to get started earning some real income from just books.
76 books in a year, really?!?
Well, it could actually be more than that. And it doesn't cover all the peripheral products you'll also be creating as you go along.
Theory
- You essentially blog once a week.
- Turn that into an Amazon single, plus peripheral marketing pieces.
- Combine 5 of those singles into a title.
- Combine 3 of those titles into a collection.
- Bundle at every combining step.
Counting this up gives you:
- 50 singles
- 10 titles
- 3 collections
- 10 title bundles
- 3 collection bundles
And then equals:
76 properties on Amazon, your own site, and BitTorrent. (Plus the rest of the major distributors and anywhere else you want to port these.)
Note: the word “book” applies at every step, since a book is an idea-container. But to be specific, we will be talking about
- singles (a 2K blog post converted into a short ebook.)
- titles (a 10K collection of 5 singles)
- collections (3 titles together)
- bundles (ebooks plus audio, visual, and any other digital offering you have that adds value.
Basic Plan
You research for a profitable niche that you can blog about for the next year.
(Note: The starred items aren't covered by Sutton.)
*You blog every week.
*You podcast that blog.
*You create a LinkedIn article with 8 images from that blog post (and link to it.)
*You create a presentation on Slideshare from that LinkedIn article (which links to and is embedded in the blog post.)
*You use that podcast and images to create a YouTube video (which links back to that blog post, and is embedded in it.)
You edit that blog post into a standalone single for Amazon with front and back matter – and post it. (Lots of work here with cover and description.)
*You then port that Amazon single through Lulu and Google Play to the other distributors with updated links (front and back).
*When you have five which are on the same topic and complement each other, you edit these into a title and port to Amazon.
*Then port that title through Lulu and Google Play to everywhere else.
* That title can be published as a hardcopy through Lulu to Ingram provided it's longer than 32 pages.
*Next, create a bundle for sale on your site and through BitTorrent Bundles with the extra A/V items you have, plus anything else – like related PDF's. Go back and update links on all singles and titles about that bundle.
*When you have 3 books that complement each other, you compile these into a collection and port to Amazon, Lulu, and Google Play.
*Then port that collection everywhere else.
*Next, create a mega-bundle with all the A/V and other extras, and post to your site and BitTorrent Bundles.
That's a year's worth of work, all nicely organized to create 76 products in a single year's time.
What Sutton had was a way to get a book out every 3 weeks.
My improvement on this is to get a property out every single week, and another 8 properties as well.
Schedules
This is the rub. It doesn't count for “everything else” that can happen in a life. But roughly, here's how it could go:
Daily –
- Writing in am, and nothing else. 2K words as a target.
- Editing in the afternoon.
- Email and business in the evening.
Weekly -
Mon – Fri
- New blog post.
- Edit into shape and post to blog.
- Create the Linked In article from it and publish there. (Remember this has 8 images.)
- Create the podcast from the LinkedIn post. Embed player on blog post and as as enclosure.
- Create the video from the podcast and images. Post to YouTube. Embed on blog post at top.
- Create PDF, post to Slideshare. Embed video in presentation there.
- Edit this into an Amazon book with front and back matter, as well as cover. Consult your research for title.
- As time and content available - build your titles, collections, and bundles.
- Post to your list (preferably on Monday or Friday – best email open days) with what you got published the week before, as well as anything coming up. This becomes your newsletter. It links into your blog, your podcast, and your video channel – and to Amazon for exact properties and also to your author page there.
- Do daily analytics on each of your properties sales – at end of day.
Sat – Sun
- Do market research on upcoming content.
- Do longer analytics on trends, at least monthly.
- Do daily analytics to see weekend sales.
- Study up on other authors and their strategies.
- Layout your M-F posts.
Monthly
Analytics of sales and trends.
Update your publishing schedule.
Discussion
How this fits into public domain and PLR publishing is fairly simple. Once you have your niche area worked out, then you find your existing books already published and write a review about them, or excerpt them to be a good single for Amazon.
As you have your 5 book reviews, then these can be combined into titles, and so on.
This brings more links into the books you discussed.
PLR can't be published on Amazon, but can be re-written as your blog posts. Sutton brings up some very good points in his collection above about how to write for Amazon buyers. Most PLR doesn't come up to that quality or precise targeting.
Again this has to be tested. And so I've just laid out a year's worth of work.
Why? It took Sutton 4 years to create a stable of 58 properties which was pulling in $30-50K per month. I think we can do it faster, by creating singles for .99, titles for 2.99, and collections for 4.99. It's possible to have 76 properties by the end of a single year – my next goal.
This is also starting without a list in general, and implementing the various strategies Sutton has for list building as you go.
The real key is to not do as I have done. Keep your research and writing separate. Keep to a schedule as much as possible. Play catch up with the priority of posting a single every week at least.
The other key point is that Sutton left money on the table all over the place. I've covered multiple times how the other distributors will bring you income while you wait for Amazon to take off. As well, he uses CreateSpace, which doesn't get you into Ingram's catalog, so your hardcopy only sells on Amazon. He also doesn't mention creating “spoken word albums”, although elsewhere he does say he's publishing audio books on each one. (More than likely, he's publishing them exclusively on Audible, which is even worse financially than publishing to KDP Select.)
Why all the videos, podcasts, and such?
Marketing – which gives you additional discovery points. People who listen to podcasts are not necessarily heavy readers. Same for video viewers. So giving them a way to find it all out without having to go outside their own preferences makes it possible for them to get the version they want.
That's the point of the “spoken word album” and even creating DVD's from the videos – but probably more realistic to use them as part of your bundle and give a handful away for an email on BitTorrent Bundles, or your own embedded Ganxy script. People have preferences – and if they'd rather buy the audio or video to get through the same content, fine – you're ready with it.
This post is to lay out how to organize taking a single blog post and creating multiple discovery and sales points from each one.
The Breakthrough
A few actually:
1. Working backwards from the buyers – researching Amazon as the starting point for greater passive income.
My approach so far was to build on any (residual) brand awareness for that PD author and/or their book title. What's popular as downloads doesn't necessarily translate to sales. Researching Amazon then shifts the mind set and allows you to leverage Amazon for all its worth.
2. Pushing singles gives you instant properties. Combining these gives you more properties with little more work.
While Sutton opened my eyes to the idea while Amazon wants original content, Kindle readers want short and low-cost books they can read quickly on their favorite device (like a smartphone – which is what I mostly used to read his.) What Sutton didn't do is to take this back to the basic business plan of generating a ton of singles and the building them up into books – but instead set up for books and then would shift gears to write singles.
(In looking this over, it's obvious that if you took your most popular singles, they'd make your best title – or a lead article for that title.)
3. Adding the extra oomph of publishing everywhere possible builds on publishing to Amazon first.
The PD problems built into Amazon have kept me away from this platform in How to Publish 76 Books In a Year and earn 6-figure passive income for lifegeneral. The world-view shift of writing short works not only opened up PD publishing by giving the annotated extra Amazon wants, but also then created new books by combining those short singles.
(This was the inspiration for last week's long post. But it's simple to post an “annotated” version of a PD book if it's not already up there – since you now have the annotation-article to add.)
4. Multiple eyeballs wins out over being Amazon-centric.
As I mentioned, Sutton is leaving tons of income on the table by publishing mostly inside Amazon's kingdom. His use of CreateSpace underscores this, since they only publish to Amazon, really. If he's using Audible, that is a reason right there why his audiobooks aren't bringing him income.
You will most always make more money from paperback sales as royalties than you will from ebooks – even though they sell far less. Again: “both” is the best solution.
By also publishing everywhere else, this gives you additional passive income sources – as well as bringing you buyers directly to your site for the added value. And passive income is that which will sell from here on out.
By publishing “spoken word albums” through CD Baby, you're now selling through music stores – as well as through Amazon, on a back-channel.
This solves the social network problem Sutton fudged on.
He only really uses Twitter. And in his books doesn't really nail this down – practically giving advice that would mire down your week in just communicating on social media.
One approach I appreciate – he says his approach doesn't market, but lets Amazon do his marketing for him. Smart. Right down my alley.
As I've mentioned before, the two content-friendly social networks are LinkedIn and Google+ – and it just makes sense to point a writer to places where their skills can be best put to use.
By researching Google, Amazon and then LinkedIn, you'll wind up with the keywords and approaches which will bring you well-heeled clients. Search engine optimization on all three platforms can (and should) be built into each article so that they'll all bring you all possible interested viewers.
Then IFTTT takes care of all the updates everywhere else.
Your primary job is building a backbench of properties which routinely sell well. Your metrics are income vs. overhead. You want to get one-and-done approaches ongoing so that you can concentrate on the next book.
That said, you may want to spend six months building properties and take a month to just tweak everything to see how that affects sales. If that gets too boring, then maybe expand your analytics review to three days, and expect to get out new properties every other week.
My own opinion would be to simply get all this done now, and then at the end of the year do a complete review where you sort out what isn't selling well and why. Once you get them all selling well, then start your next year with a new niche.
The Perfect Graduation or Retirement Gift
What this current plan does is to give you a graduation present for your young high-school grad. Get them to follow this, and you're giving them a business they can grow forever, one year at a time. Infinite income – and financial freedom. (Yes, you could give this to your college grad – but practically, they should be writing their books long before that – and making 6-figures before they graduate. Anyone with a writing talent (or wanting to develop their own) can do this.
Give this plan to someone with experience (who's retiring, for instance) and you have a built-in retirement plan they can will to their heirs after they have no more use for it.
The Self-Funding Opportunity
This pays for itself as it goes, and so will leverage into even higher quality.
Even without a lick of writing talent, it's possible to create these books by hiring it out. You just have to know what you like when you read, and do precise research on Amazon. Hire out the writing. Hire out the cover. Hire out the editing. Hire out the conversion. You can even hire someone to post the book for you. Pay off your bills from the income.
Once you get done creating the original content, you can then pay someone to port all these books over to the other minor distributors and leverage your income even higher. Oh, and of course, the bundles make great Affiliate sales products. (Pay that person a percentage of sales to take care of the Affiliates for you.)
Sure, it would take an investment. But the only books that don't sell are those which a) have a bad cover, b) are poorly written, c) aren't edited into good shape, d) are not researched to begin with, and/or e) have poor CTA's in their descriptions.
The solutions to these are to study bestsellers, and study the basics of copywriting – so you know. (Eugene Schwartz' Breakthrough Advertising [link] is the key to this.)
Combine this with your membership enrollment activities and you have a real winner.
Do a few years of this and a 7 or 8-figure income should be attainable.
OK?
Testing this now follows...
Luck to us all.
