If you’ve been considering dipping your feet into the world of Kindle Direct Publishing to make money and wondering it’s possible to make a good income at it, the short answer is yes, but at the same time, it’s a business that has it’s own pros/cons worth noting and in this post you’ll learn:
- How the KDP business works
- How much can you really make at it?
- The pros and cons
- Tips for succeeding if you’re new
- Potential alternatives and more
How the Kindle Direct Publishing business works:
The KDP business model is pretty simple to understand: You create digital or paperback books covering one or more genres and sell them on the Amazon network.
The more sales your book makes, the more money you can make and this is usually determined by how well it sells and picks up in the rankings for the said genre.
Getting started with KDP is simple as you can sign up for free and then begin the process of registering/creating your paperback/eBook to then put on sale.
How much can you make with Kindle Direct Publishing?
There’s really no limit and if you take a simple example of you selling a $1.99 eBook that gets 1,000 sales a month, your revenue will be around $1,400 or so (revenue minus royalties). But this is in terms of hypotheticals. Here are some stats on this (source):
Now le’s talk about some real success stories: There are a lot people who run extremely successful businesses in the KDP world and some of them include:
- Karla Marie who earns $20,000 or so a month in this and has a program called Fiction Profits Academy that teaches her method.
- Then there’s others like Laura Marie who also earns similar income from this and runs a program called Kindle Publishing Income that also teaches it.
While these are exceptional stories, most people may earn a little bit or possibly not much from KDP without the right tools, experience and time investment and the truth is that how much you can make through a KDP business depends on several factors:
- The price of your book and the royalty you get from each sale
- How many copies your book/eBook sells
- How much you continue to create/publish books to keep scaling/growing your income
- Your title, genre choice, cover, reviews and content in the book matters a lot as it helps push it up in the rankings and thus provides more opportunity for more sales!
Pros:
- KDP is a legitimate business model
- Your book/s can be purchased by countless people
- Potentially great business and income for anyone who enjoys writing
- Great for creative people in general
- No limit to how many copies can sell (especially if it’s just an eBook)
- Low costs to get started
Cons:
- Your book/eBook is only on the Amazon platform
- Lots of competition in the KDP world
- Writing books isn’t the only factor to success (cover, proper topic, content quality, etc…)
- Not an ideal business model in my opinion for those who don’t really enjoy writing
Tips for success in the KDP world:
Some of the top success stories in this business typically do one or more of the following things:
- They choose popular genres to make book content on (fantasy, controversial issues, trending topics).
- Look at the top trending books and their genres and try to make books on the same topics (but better)
- They typically make (or outsource) great cover pictures (those attract more eyes and lead to more sales).
- Write more than one book (it’s unlikely one book will lead to riches or passive income, writing more books following the above tips can scale your income further).
- Consider outsourcing book content (the 2 case studies above do that and that allows them to create/market books on a massive level thus leading to more profits/sales).
Alternatives to Kindle Direct Publishing:
There are numerous online business models to consider as great alternatives to KDP but since you’re looking into this business, chances are you already enjoy writing and thus a good business model to consider is something that revolves around that and one such business is blogging, specifically blogging on a topic you personally love in life and it’s a business model that can potentially produce greater income results than having a KDP business and here’s how:
- A blog can potentially attract more visitors than a KDP book you put up
- You can earn more through a blog than a single or even many KDP book sales
- There is more than one way to monetize a blog whereas with KDP you are bound to making book sales essentially
- You don’t need to write countless books to succeed. 1 blog (or more if you want) can be enough to earn you a part-full time income.
How making money through blogging works (4 steps):
- Choose your niche: Aka a topic you love in life
- Create a website: That is your blog
- Get visitors: You make content on your passion, people find it on Google, social media and other places
- Earn revenue: You can make money various ways through blogging, including affiliate marketing (promoting other people’s products), putting ads on the site, selling your own products (Couses, eBooks, etc…)
Here’s a real life example (my personal nature blog):
My #1 recommended program for helping you do this:
There’s many blog training courses/programs out there but the top one in my opinion is Wealthy Affiliate and here’s why:
- You can start for free (join here)
- It has tools to help you set up your first passion based blog
- Expert guidance provided
- AI assisted writer included to help you make great content faster
- Beginner friendly training created by blogging experts in the field
- Tons of success stories (2.6 million members)
- You learn more than just blogging
- Highly rated program (4.9 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot)
My personal experiences there:
Wealthy Affiliate is the program that taught me how to create multiple successful blogs and build a successful online business overall.
While they teach people to make profitable online businesses, their main training is helping people create profitable blogs on any passions they have in life and monetizing it various ways (including with affiliate marketing).
So if you love mountain biking for example, they’ll show you how to create a profitable website on mountain bikes. Here’s some of my personal income reports there:
Bottom line: You don’t have to invest crazy money with Wealthy Affiliate (or in general to succeed online).
It’s free to test drive and only $49/month (or for the best membership, $99/month) if you decide to stick around. No other programs offer this much value and with Wealthy Affiliate, if you have any doubts (which is normal), you can try it for free first to see if you like it.
Here’s how to get started (risk free):
- Join here (its free)
- Complete the Hubs set up process (5 steps) which has you create your first passion based blog.
- Start your training (8 lesson course)
The value of the Wealthy Affiliate (WA) speaks for itself and if you have any doubt (which is totally normal), test drive them risk free (there’s literally no credit card required).
Here’s what you get when you try the program today (all included):
- Access to the Starter Membership of Wealthy Affiliate.
- Access to the Hubs platform (5 step business set up process)
- 8 lesson starter course
- Coaching from me, Vitaliy (one of WA’s top experts).
- And much more (join WA today and see it all for yourself).
The program does have 2 optional upgrades called Premium and Premium Plus after the Starter Membership that I do highly recommend, but more than that, I recommend you first:
- Try the Starter Membership (it’s risk free).
- Immerse yourself in the program so you get the most out of it.
- Use my coaching! You can contact me directly inside WA.
Wealthy Affiliate works, but it is also not a get rich quick scheme.
It will teach you how to build a REAL blogging business and beyond of your dreams and if you apply the training they have and work hard, you will become one of it’s MANY success stories.
And frankly speaking, I want to see you do just that. As your coach, one of my goals is to see just hat and I’ll help you along your journey there too).
Thanks for reading this post on Kindle Direct Publishing. I hope it was helpful and if there are ANY questions about either KDP, Wealthy Affiliate or making money online in general, feel free to mention them in the comments below!