Passive income with Kindle eBooks – Part 2

April 9th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

This is an update on my effort to make Passive income with Kindle eBooks – See Part 1 here.

Welp, I’m now a (self-) published author. It’s thrilling.

It’d be more thrilling if anyone actually bought the book. See my eBooks page, if you’re interested.

I set up an account with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which was a breeze… The most difficult part was finding the routing number for my business bank account, which, honestly… wasn’t actually difficult at all.
For a cover image, I turned to the lovely folks at Fiver. I searched for “book cover” and ordered from the highest-rated provider. Two weeks later, I was given a shitty-ass clip-art cover that looked like something Debbie made. Debbie works in my office and she thinks she’s good with computers because she knows how to use clip-art in Microsoft Word. She only uses these astounding powers for good, by leaving passive-aggressive messages on the refrigerator in the lounge.

So I made my own cover. It wasn’t clip-art, but it was still terrible.

So I learned a few things in Paint.net and made another cover, which isn’t world-class but it’s totally passable. No, wait. Compared to the shit I paid $5 for, it’s a fucking miracle.

Anyway.

The book is about 10,000 words and it can be found in the self-help section. I didn’t have much of a strategy when choosing the subject… I just wrote about something I’ve given a lot of thought over the years. Whether or not anyone will buy it and, if they do, whether or not they’ll like it is up in the air at the point.

I’m doing a little marketing to see if I can make that happen sooner. I’ve registered on several self-help forums and I’ve been mentioning the book here and there, in a very casual and non-spammy way… Only to people who I think might actually benefit from it, and then I offer to send them a free copy. The goal here is to get a few readers and hopefully some reviews.

I’ve also utilized http://bookreviewbroker.com/, which is somehow related to BookGrow (which I’ve signed up for but haven’t used yet). Bookreviewbroker.com sends a link to your book to a bunch of Amazon reviewers. Ideally, some of those reviewers want to read it and write a review, and ideally, some of those reviews are good ones. Once the book has some good reviews, you do a “free” promotion on KDP, and your book rises in the rankings and sales begin in earnest.

Ideally.

We’ll see.

I’ve started on my next book already, and I’m contracting the majority of this one out to thecontentauthority.com. My next update should include notes on the quality of their work, and more on the first book as well.

No actual income from eBook sales yet, but the book’s been live for less than a week! Stay tuned.

The Heights by Great Men Reached and Kept

March 21st, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

hwl

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Hard work: It’s the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person.

But what if you’re swamped with other obligations? What if you spend 11 hours every day working or commuting to work? What if you’re also pursuing an advanced degree? What if you’ve also got a wife, a baby, and a dog, and three chickens? It’s not long before you start to feel like you don’t have time to make any progress on your dreams. (The Onion had a hilarious article about this recently).

Every night when I get home, I say goodbye to the nanny. Then I take the baby and the dog for a walk. My wife gets home later than I do, and when she arrives we give the baby a bath and put him to bed. Then, dinner. By the time our food is ready, we’re both completely exhausted. No matter how often we plan to play a game or work on a project, we usually end up crashing in front of the television and going to bed. Weekends are filled with chores and other obligations we couldn’t get to during the week.

Doesn’t leave a lot of time for reaching and keeping heights, does it?

One of the big reasons I want to quit my job and work from home (or, better yet, make a passive income from home) is that doing so will free up more of my time. Giving up my daily commute will save me two hours. Waking up later will give me more energy. And, of course, doing something I’m passionate about will help lift the numbness a decade of office work has saddled me with.

The problem remains, though. When do I put in the effort to reach great heights?

I tried staying up late. It’s no good. I can do it once or twice but then I’m even more useless for the next few days. I tried working in the evenings but I started losing my emotional balance without consistent relaxation time (not to mention the very small window of time I could spend with my wife). I did manage to get a bit done on weekends, but not much.

I needed some consistent time to work, time that I could find almost every day.

And I found it.

At work, of all places.

(Obviously I won’t be using my real name on this website until I quit my job!)

My workday can be a little tedious. In a lot of ways, I’m lucky – nice private office with a window, minimal managerial oversight, relative peace and quiet – but the work I do has become unfulfilling, inefficient, and repetitive. As a result,  my productivity is fairly low. Don’t get me wrong, I still get everything done that I need to do, and I do it well… But I could probably get my job done in seven hours a day instead of eight.

So wait… An hour a day… That’s an hour every weekday that I spend procrastinating or plodding through tedious work. An hour a day that I could put towards my dreams, if I got a little more efficient with my other work.

Is it ideal? No.

Is it ethical? If you have to ask…

Is it the best option I’ve found so far? Yes.

And frankly, if I can make some consistent progress toward my goals, I’ll stay a lot more positive in the other areas of my life. I’ll stay more motivated, because I’ll be able to see some progress instead of just think about it.

It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now.

 

Passive income with Kindle eBooks – Part 1

March 20th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

I’ve been working on a bunch of different things, but this week I’ve been focusing on just one project:

Passive income with Kindle eBooks. 

I started after hearing this podcast: http://onlineincomelab.com/session022/

Basically, the guy who’s getting interviewed in the podcast is making a couple grand per month writing eBooks for Kindle, and he’s only been doing it for about four months. Not bad.

Can I be that successful?

We’ll see.

The basic process seems to go like this:

  • Research the market – Look at what eBooks are selling well on Amazon. Find an under-served or niche.
  • Have someone from ContentAuthority, Elance, or a similar site write your ebook. Charge $150-$200 for 6-10K words.
  • Have someone from fiver create a cover for you.
  • Format the book yourself
  • Upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing
  • Find people to review your eBook (forums, etc)
  • Offer the book free for better visibility and rankings
  • Increase price anywhere from $0.99-$20.00 
  • Bank

Of course there are a lot of other little details, like writing a book description, editing the book before you upload it to Amazon, keeping track of the book rank and adjusting the price to maximize visibility, etc. But it seems pretty straightforward overall, and very passive once the book is in place.

So far, I’ve done a little research… but not much because I already had an idea for a book. In fact, I already had a bunch of content put together. So I’m mostly just hoping that this niche works out alright. Not the most airtight plan, I know, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also spent the last few days putting together the content I already had and writing up the rest… My first draft is finished as of this afternoon, and it’s about 10,000 words total.

Next step: Edit the book for flow and cohesiveness. It’s a little cut-and paste in places. I’m hoping to have a “final” draft in place by the end of this week, and then I’ll start putting the eBook together!

 

The Manifesto: Earn a Living Online with Passive Income

March 18th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

That’s it, I quit.

My job is killing me. I spend eleven hours every weekday at work or commuting to and from. I get up at 5:00 every morning and by the time I get home in the evening I’m exhausted and all I want to do is veg in front of the television. I don’t do that, of course… I spend time with my wife and my son. We make dinner, we play games… But it’s not enough.

I want to spend the majority of my time with my family, not at the office.

I want to wear comfortable clothes and not worry about shaving every day. I want to be able to schedule a dentist appointment without worrying about missing work. I want to wake up to the sound of my child’s voice, not my alarm clock. I want to schedule my vacations without feeling like I’m frittering away my allocated “vacation time.” I want to work on my own terms, in my own time, in my own home, for my own profit.

And I want my income to be tied to my effort… No more spending 40 hours twiddling my thumbs because I’ve already completed all of my work, but I have to be in the office anyway. I want my time to be useful. I want my time to be well-spent.

Of course, I can’t quit yet. I’ve got a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed. I need to have insurance against accidents and illnesses. I need another source of income before I can drop the one I have.

 

So here we go.

 

I know it’s possible to earn a living online with passive income. People are doing it right now, all over the world. With a little bit of smarts and a whole lot of effort, it’s absolutely an achievable goal.

I have two concerns:

  1. Lots of the people who claim to be making a living online with passive income are shills, selling the dream. Lots of people recommend tricking customers into buying products, using mind games to convince people they need a thing they don’t need. Lots of people are sleazy, and I don’t want to go that route. If I sell anything to people, I want it to be a high-quality product that I’d be proud to put my name to.
  2. I don’t have much time. I can eke out a few minutes here and there, but I can’t spend even two hours a day on this initiative. So I’m going to need to be efficient, and I’m going to need to stay focused.

 

So here we go.