Every product on Amazon that has ever been purchased includes a sales rank on its product page. Now you, who wants to sell your EBook on Amazon will ask, What is sales ranking? The sales rank is a number with 1 to 8 digits. And below are the guidelines (from Amazon.Com):
- The better a product sells at Amazon, the lower the sales rank number. The best selling product in a category has a sales rank of 1.
- The worse a product sells at Amazon, the higher the sales rank number. If a product hasn’t sold for several days, its sales rank will likely be in the millions.
- If a product has never sold on Amazon, it won’t have a sales rank.
- Different editions of a product (like hardcover, paperback, and Kindle books) each have different sales ranks.
- Every product page has its own sales rank.
- Sales ranks are different in various categories. For example, books, Kindle e-books, software, and office products each have different sales ranks.
- Books have overall ranks and also specific ranks within subcategories. Ranking #1 in books overall is much, much better than ranking #1 in a specific subcategory.
Authors, publishers, marketplace sellers, and many other people and businesses use sales rank data to help judge how well their products are selling. They also study sales ranks to help predict how well a product may sell and to help decide whether or not to sell a particular product on Amazon.
Know more about Amazon Sales Ranking by clicking here.
Ty Shares His Top 4 Proven Strategies In Promoting His E-Book. How Many Are You Not Practicing?
Turning an Ebook business to an empire is not easy. However, Ty mentioned that it is not all about hard work. Business success is about having a rock-solid strategy, a strategy that will generate continuous income and year-round profits.
Read below for Ty’s Top 4 proven success strategies.
- Don’t spend a lot of time and money unless it is going to sell. This is one of his essential tips now turned into a strategy. Ty seriously advises to never throw away your money and don’t invest unless you are confident that your E-Book will sell. A lot of entrepreneurs jump in immediately to all the steps of promotion, without testing first if the product is selling or will sell.
- Translate your ebook to different languages. Now that you’re sure that your ebook will sell. Consider now investing toward translating your ebook into another language (most common is Spanish). This will not just expand your market reach but will also increase your sales.
- Create a audio book. Creating an audio book is another way to reach other markets. There’s a lot of people who are not fond of reading an ebook or don’t have time to read, they are always on the go and would like to read a book by listening to one.
- Create a physical book. Like Ty’s wife who is not an avid fan of Kindle, or ebooks -- she loves reading physical books. These are traditional readers or sometimes called “digital natives”, who love how a book smells, they like scribbling in the margins, underlining interesting sentences and folding a page corner to mark a place. If you don’t have a physical book then you’ll instantly lose this market.
An Irresistible Offer That You Have To Grab --Now!
Ty has a program called Kindle Cash Flow in which he will share with you his entire system. This means, he is going to share everything. His promise, whether you’re someone who’s totally new to this business, like the way he started or maybe you’re someone who may have a few kindle e-books and they’re not just selling the way you anticipated --
If you are someone who has always wanted to create serious, passive income from your very own eBook, then this is the program for you.
Ty’s program will tell you everything that he learned and studied about this business. With his program, he will show you how he earned more than $10k per month!
Ty’s program is an awesome place for total beginners, where you can get answers to all of your questions and even get regular updates for the latest in trends and strategies.
For anyone who's listens to the Social Media Business Hour, Ty will give you 50% off the original retail price.
So what are you waiting for, Grab Ty's Offer NOW!
[content_toggle style="1" label="Click%20Here%20To%20Read%20The%20Entire%20Transcript%20Of%20The%20Show" hide_label="Hide"]Ty: This is Ty Cohen from kindlecashflow.com and I’m here with Nile and Jordan for a social media business hour and today I’m going to show you, your business partner, spouse, kids, family and just about everyone else how to create a passive income stream by publishing digital eBooks on Amazon.com. Let’s go.
Woman: In business and know the way forward most include social media. Perhaps you find it a bit confusing. Even frustrating. Well, you have no idea how to make it work for your business. Fear not. We interview some of the best social media experts in business who will share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Plus offer tips and tricks to make using social media a breeze. Leverage the power of social media and grow your business now. Welcome to social media business hour with your host Nile Nickel.
Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did.
Nile: Jordan, it’s not very often that we have the opportunity to have a guest on that is a former radio personality.
Jordan: Yeah. That’s true. That’s true.
Nile: And Ty -- you probably don’t know this. Ty Cohen is joining us tonight. You heard that from the tease folks. Whenever I do a bio or an intro I don’t just read it. I do it very interactively because I think reading it, that’s just boring. I’m doing this long introduction for you. I’m going to do a long introduction anyway but we’re just going to have fun with it. We’re going to do it interactively so I want to ask you. You’re a former radio person. Where were you at, what did you do?
Ty: I was actually on a business talk radio show here in Raleigh, North Carolina and I was invited to co-host the show and I did it for about a year as a way of just stretching myself, right. And getting out of my comfort zone because prior to that I was just this totally introverted guy and I said you know what? this would be something that will not only help me but it will help other individuals by me being able to share some information so I did that for about a year and got it out of my system and that was that.
Nile: And nothing wrong with that. I haven’t got it out of my system yet. Who know? I might but everybody says I like to talk too much anyway so I’m not sure if that will be the case or not.
Ty: You might be fake introverts.
Nile: Yeah. Well, no. I think I’m more of an introvert in person and better behind a microphone which is quite the opposite for a lot of people.
Ty: Awesome.
Nile: Well, Ty is an accomplished publishing expert, an internet marketer, personal development coach, mentor, internationally known speaker, former morning talk show radio personality and an author who took a major financial gamble by quitting his corporate job and starting his own business and that’s a huge step. That’s a scary step.
Jordan: Yes, it is.
Nile: So kudos to you Ty for that.
Ty: Absolutely. It’s so scary but it actually took me three years to quit that job. The security of my job. Three years after I had created my business and I was doing well I still wasn’t mentally secure enough to say let me leave this thing.
Nile: That happens to so many of us. It really is amazing so I’m glad you’re sharing that with us because I know we all struggle with that and some people just don’t like to admit it so I know that as we talk about it here it’s just absolutely encouraging to all of us that we hear something like that, that we’re not alone in this journey. But I know over the last 11 years since you made that transition you’ve taught tens of thousands of individuals how to successfully market, promote and sell their books on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Platform and we’re going to be talking about that a lot and I know that all of us are interested in that so I can't wait to hear it but before we get into that, I was reading a little bit of your background and one of the things that jumped out at me immediately was you really said you should’ve been dead by the age of 17 and so you’re really grateful and surprised that you’ve made the transition and been as successful as you have. That caught my attention so tell us about that a bit.
Ty: Absolutely Nile. I actually had two obstacles going against me. Probably more than that. Two major ones, right. I was born with a disease called sickle cell anemia and just to give you a short on it sickle cell anemia is actually a blood disorder that affects people of African American descent, people from India, couple of folks from Italian -- not Italian. Italy, from Sicily. And I lost a sister to the disease when she was 27 years old and it’s one of the most painful things that you can ever experience. As a kid I spent weeks and sometimes months in a hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut where I’m from and it was during one of these stents in the hospital -- I had been in a hospital for six weeks and outside of my bedroom door, my hospital room door I heard my doctor tell my mom as clear as day Mrs. Cohen, you shouldn’t expect your son to live past the age of 17 because this disease is going to kill him. And I was about 10 or 11 years old at the time and it just stuck with me. To this day I can just -- I can still hear those words, I can still literally see, smell and just feel everything that was taking place in the room. So that’s how much it was cementer in my memory. About two years later my sister had died and as I said she was 27 when she had died and it was just -- out of eight siblings it was just her and I that have this disease, that we’re born with it. so by that time when she died I was 15 and I’m really -- I’m just totally shaken up because I’m still thinking about what the doctor said and I hear my sister had passed away from it and on top of that we didn’t grow up in the best neighborhood. We actually grew up in the worst neighborhood. Now, when you think of Connecticut you’re probably thinking that there couldn’t be any such areas, a bad area in Connecticut but during this time we had the highest crime rate in the nation and we were second in the murder rate in the nation behind Louisiana. So I thought that either I would die from a disease or I would die like so many of my friends at the time, young friends who were in their teens that were dying just from gangs and drugs and just all the other elements that come with growing up in the hood. So that was -- and as you said, when I hit 18 I said wow. This -- okay. Well, maybe there’s a difference here. And it was a few things that lead up to that shift in my mindset that got me to say this is not going to be my destiny. There’s other options for me.
Nile: Yeah. That’s really inspiring. I know it touches me. I’ve had friends that I’ve watched deal with that and it is scary because you just don’t know. And I understand things have gotten better but I’m not sure. Is that true?
Ty: Health wise, yes. Absolutely. Things have gotten better and my neighborhood has changed big time. It’s done a total 360, right. Health wise I have not been in a hospital for two years now.
Nile: Wow.
Ty: Whereas before I would be hospitalized let’s say every six months.
Nile: Wow.
Ty: And the difference is knowing how to cope with things and knowing how to condition not only your mind but your body and how to better understand -- how to train yourself to eat so that your body accepts certain foods and then is able to use those foods to help nourish itself and also to avoid things like stress and just a few other things that can promote a sickle cell anemia attack.
Nile: That is absolutely -- that’s great to know and I really appreciate you sharing that with us. I have to ask you and we may have just got some insight into that. we’re going to talk about obviously your success with Kindle books and what you’ve done and all of that and I think that’s outstanding but with all of that, I always like to know what’s your big why, what is your reason, what has motivated you to teach so many people how to become successful and you’ve been doing it through publishing eBooks on Amazon but what’s that bit why?
Ty: The biggest why for me is probably twofold. Number one, because I want to be able to give someone -- my goal has always been to give people genuine information. Okay. when I first got started with marketing in general one of my first businesses was an offline business where I would sell old Disney windups and GI Joes from the 60s and 70s and things like that and I didn’t have the resources at that time so I would literally take the bus to downtown bridge port and visit the library and pick up copywriting books by guys like Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy and just read everything that I could on marketing. So there was no YouTube, right, at that time. There was no Google, there were no -- there were probably seminars but at that time I wasn’t aware of them. Probably couldn’t afford them. So it was a long process for me. And then as things got a little bit better as far as my understanding of being able to go out and get access to resources I started to attend different seminars and events and a lot of the seminars and events that I attended and even spoke at -- excuse my French but a lot of it was BS. I mean, the presenters would sell information that really was a bit outdated or it didn’t work or they had no true knowledge so I said if I ever get into a position to be able to teach people I have to make sure that if I get up on stage or if I get in front of a group or if I get in front of an audience that I can teach those individuals the same information that I would be comfortable with teaching my mother, my wife, my daughter, my son. So I don’t ever want to be in a position where I have to just sell something just for the sake of making money or to present something to someone that is not something that I am legitimately doing. So that’s my why right there.
Nile: And that’s a great why. That actually is much more than I know we expected so I appreciate that. It gives us great insight into obviously why you’re doing things and what your motivation is. So let’s jump into it just a bit here. And we haven’t talked a lot about eBooks so I want to start real basic. I talk about eBooks and I throw the term around. You probably do as well but I know not all of us do that and so just so that we’re all sort of on the same page -- no pun intended since we’re talking about eBooks. But since we’re all on the same page, tell us what your definition of an eBook is.
Ty: Yeah. Absolutely. An eBook is just a digital version of anything that you would want to have more information on or anything that you would want to use to be entertained so just like you would pick up a book, a physical copy of a book like Think and grow rich or the Alchemist or whatever it might be. A Millionaire’s notebook. Those are physical versions but now digital versions -- because of companies like Amazon and even Apple and Barnes and Nobles is even in the game, right. But because of companies like the companies that I just mentioned digital books are becoming more and more popular. So much so that they actually outsell physical books. I was reading a -- there was a piece by Jeff Bezos who’s actually the CEO of amazon.com a couple of years ago and at the time he said that eBooks were outselling physical books two to one. Two to one. And it just shows you the direction that we’re going in which is similar to the direction that the music industry went in, right. Before we used to primarily listen to music in physical formats. We had eight tracks. I know I’m dating myself, right. We had vinyl records, we had cassettes and now how do we primarily listen to music or audio books and things like that? In a digital format. And we’ve got our iPhone, we’ve got our iPod, we’ve got some type of a mobile device that we’re listening to music on and the same thing now applies to books. If you look at individuals at an airport they probably have a Kindle device or some type of a mobile tablet, right. Like an iPad or an iPad mini and they’re just consuming eBooks and they’re reading their eBooks on these devices. So that’s where we’re at.
Nile: As we end the first segment here we’re getting ready to jump into this in a more heavy way so I want you to join us into the next segment. But in the next segment we’re going to talk about how to create an eBook. Obviously we’ve talked what they are. Let’s talk about how to create them. Join us in the next segment.
Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did.
Nile: Hey, thanks for joining us once again. In the earlier segments we got to know Ty Cohen a bit and we talked about what is an eBook, what motivated Ty and if you haven’t listened to that we absolutely need to go back and listen because it was a great foundation there. But Ty what I wanted to talk about in this segment is -- we talked a little bit about the eBooks and we understand the transition. How do we go about creating an eBook because that sounds like it probably has some special formats and special process. What’s the process you teach people to go create an eBook?
Ty: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s actually several different ways that you can create your eBook and it depends on what you’re after, right. And I want to step back for a moment just to briefly, quickly explain why you would probably want to go about creating your own eBook. Amazon who right now is the planet’s largest book store has done something amazing for authors, writers and just individuals who are looking for a way to create a passive income stream. And what they’ve done is they’ve created this platform called the KDP platform and that’s short for Kindle Direct Publishing platform. Now what Amazon has allowed you to do is now they’ve allowed you to take your written material, your content, turn it into an eBook, a Kindle eBook more specifically and make it available to all of their customers, their Kindle readers. And it’s just a great time to be able to go out and do a little bit of research, find out what people are after and create an eBook that will provide them with a solution to a problem that they’re looking to solve or actually even entertain them, right. If you’re looking to go in and create a fiction eBook. So the process for creating an eBook is to -- if you go in the nonfiction realm and nonfiction sells incredibly well especially when you’re creating how to titles. How to create a rose garden. How to go in and redo your back patio. How to buy a car. How to sell a house. If you’re creating a how to title the first thing that you would do is to go in and do some market research and you do that by going on amazon.com and typing in a few keywords that are related to the topic that you’re thinking about publishing your eBook on. And then just go out and take a few minutes and look at some of the eBooks that are selling. You can always tell those that are selling because you’ll see where they’ve got a good number of reviews and then you’ll see where their sales rank is -- it’s lower than 20000. So if you scroll down to the left you’ll see a sales rank number and if it’s lower than 20000 then that’s a good seller. The lower of a number, the better of a seller it is. So that’s the first step is to go in and find out what people actually want because you don’t want to create something that they’re not -- that’s just not going to sell, right.
Nile: Absolutely. But I’d love to stop you because I didn’t understand something there.
Ty: Absolutely.
Nile: But you mentioned it and I’m really interested. What is the sales rank number? How is that derived? I’ve never seen that so I’m unfamiliar with it. I know I’m not alone.
Ty: Absolutely. So Amazon has this algorithm that they use and basically depending on how many units your book sells, your eBook sells a day it will be assigned a sales rank. So if you’re selling -- let’s say if you sell a 100 copies a day which is a pretty high number for someone that’s just starting out, right. So don’t get your hopes up high here if you’re listening. But if you’re selling a 100 copies a day then they’ll assign you a sales rank of about 1500. Alright. That will be your sales rank. If you’re selling like 75 copies a day then you’ll have a sales rank of about 2000. And these numbers are not set in stone because it changes from time to time. But that’s how they calculate their sales rank there because Amazon literally has millions of products that are sold from their site. And it’s just a ranking system.
Nile: So it sounds to me like the sales rank number is how you’re ranking of all the sellers on Amazon.
Ty: That’s right. That’s it exactly.
Nile: Okay, okay. I could understand that.
Ty: And it becomes a game. You do things to help promote your books and to get your sales up and it’s just really exciting. So we were talking about -- I think your question was how do you go in and create your content so --
Nile: Yeah. And you were talking about the market research which is where we got on the sales rank and I interrupted you so we’ll jump in.
Ty: Good question.
Nile: We’ll jump back in together and go through the process now.
Ty: Alright. Awesome question there. So now if you’re going in, you found a topic that you want to go in and publish your eBook around. Let’s say you want to publish an eBook on how to create your -- how to increase your energy levels throughout the day. So the next thing would -- you have two choices. You can either go in and write it yourself, right. Now, when I say write it yourself, some of the individuals that are listening right now may be thinking I don’t have time, I don’t have three, four, five, six months a year to go in and write an eBook. Well, here’s the good news. Your eBooks don’t have to be long. I find that some of the bestsellers are eBooks that are 40, 50, 60, 70 pages. In fact, I never publish anything that’s more than 75 pages. EBooks traditionally of this sort especially nonfiction are shorter than what you would normally find in a book store. They’re shorter than what you would normally find in a physical book so you don’t have to go in and pet 200, 300 pages. So that’s the good news especially if you’re writing this. The other option of getting your eBook created is to hire someone so to hire a ghost writer. Now there’s several different outsourcing sites that you can use to go in and hire a ghostwriter and usually for 50 to 60 page eBook I’ll pay about 150 dollars to have someone write that eBook for me. You can find a ghostwriter on sites like eLance which is E-L-A-N-C-E.com or Guru which is G-U-R-U.com and then there’s another site called Upwork U-P-W-O-R-K.com that I like to use. And I’ve actually hired dozens and dozens of ghostwriters to write eBooks for me over the years, over the last five years actually of doing this and the beautiful thing about this is it’s a win-win situation so you have people that are on these sites that love writing, that are awesome researchers, right. That are great when it comes to grammar and punctuation and spelling and all of the stuff that I’m terrible at and you pay them and they provide you with a finished product. So it’s -- like I said. It’s an awesome win-win.
Nile: I know. I’m drooling at the process. I’m drooling at the process. So we were then talking about after we sort of get the content created, then what? Because I know that there’s some format stuff that goes on but I don’t understand all of it so --
Ty: Absolutely. So once you go to kdp.amazon.com if you’re listening right now you might want to write that down. kdp.amazon.com. That’s Amazon’s -- that’s actually where you can go in and sign up for your Kindle publishing account. It’s free. They don’t charge anything to go in and sign up. once you’re in you’ll see that there’s an area where you can actually upload your eBook so in most cases, nine times out of 10 you’re going to have your finished product returned to you in a Microsoft Word format. Okay. On some of the same sites that I mentioned, you can also go in and hire someone to format this eBook for you. Amazon has specifics when it comes to formatting and it’s -- there’s a ton of different things that you can do as far as formatting. You can upload the Word document as is which I don’t recommend or you can go in and hire someone to format it for you which is very inexpensive. It’s about 20 bucks to do so. You can also find folks on Fiver that will do it for you for about 10 bucks. Fiver is F-I-V-E-R.com and on that site you’ll find folks that have actually formatted hundreds and thousands of eBooks so very specialist in formatting. And the formatting, I actually -- I don’t do myself. I wouldn’t do it unless you have a good amount of time. I would also outsource that as well. And then once you have it formatted the other thing that you’re going to need is a cover. You can find a graphic designer on any of the three sites that I just mentioned as well as on fiver.com as well. And the covers are not expensive either so you can get this entire thing done for just about 200 bucks. Now, the beautiful thing about that is once you make it available on Amazon if it’s a seller because not every single one will be a home run but you can create a monthly residual, recurring income stream. I have eBooks that I published four and a half years ago that are still generating me income every day to this day. So that’s a bit of a process. The first thing is step one, go in, do your market research, find out what people actually want to buy, what they want to learn about, what they want to read, in what ways they want to be entertained. Step two is to go in and create the actual eBook and you can write it yourself or you can go in and outsource it which I would -- I prefer to actually outsource it. And then step three is to actually go in and after you’ve had it formatted, you’ve had your cover created, go in and publish it to your Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing account. And then the next thing is to watch the sales roll in and that’s where the addictiveness of it starts to kick in because for the first three years of me doing this -- I’m not so bad now. I went to a couple of meetings. But the first three years of me doing this, I would literally get out of bed in the middle of the night, login into my Amazon account, hit refresh to check my sales and I’m just looking at the sales coming in and it’s a beautiful thing to wake up in the morning and you’ve made money because someone over in the UK or someone in Australia has purchased an eBook that you’ve made available for sale.
Nile: I have to ask you Ty. Do you mind if we get really personal?
Ty: Let’s do it.
Nile: Yeah. I’m curious about two things. The first thing is the most money you’ve made from an eBook. That may be too personal of a question so if you want to give us a vague answer that’s fine. But I’m curious about that because you’ve told us sort of the process and the investment. So let me ask that question.
Ty: So I’ve got an eBook right now. One single eBook that makes me about 4200 dollars a month.
Nile: That’s not small change.
Ty: No, it’s not. And again, I want to put a disclaimer out there. Not every eBook will do that because I also have some that make me about seven bucks a month. But once you do this and -- the key is the research, right. That’s the key. The key is to find out what people want and then the second thing is to not overcomplicate the process. It really is -- now, there’s a few things in between each of those steps but it really is as simple as doing the research, having your content created and then publishing it. And the reason why it’s that easy is because you’re dealing with Amazon. Amazon is a multibillion dollar company and if you think back to when Amazon first got started. Their initial goal was -- do you remember what their initial goal was Nile or Jordan?
Nile: I really don’t.
Jordan: I think it was just to sell books.
Ty: It was to sell books but it was to become the world’s largest book store.
Jordan: Oh, that’s right.
Ty: Okay. And you can't do that alone. Like you can't do that with just the published authors that are out there and just the folks that are submitting manuscripts so the way you do that is if someone over there is really smart -- I don’t know if it was Jeff Bezos or if it was sort of his cabinet members, right. But someone said why don’t we just open up our platform to anyone that has content?
Nile: I love this and I know that we’re going to learn a whole lot more about this. This is where you need to hang around, go with us to segment three.
Jordan: Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did.
Nile: Ty, you’ve been blowing us away with all you’ve told us and I understand that some of your books -- you said it’s as little as seven bucks a month. I suspect some of the books it’s as little as zero but you’ve also encourages us where you’ve had some books that have been making thousands a month.
Ty: Absolutely. I went from nothing to 50000 dollars on average. Now I do between 40000 to 50000 a month especially during the holidays. You’ll see those numbers shoot up. And it’s been a journey but it’s something that if you get involved and you stick with it and you make that first sell. The first sell is all that’s required. Then you’ll see the possibilities.
Jordan: I’ve got a question for you. Actually, I have two for you Ty.
Ty: Let’s do it.
Jordan: Early on in segment one you mentioned picking up some marketing books and then you went about mentioning as far as I’m concerned the holy trinity of direct marketing Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga and Dan Kennedy. We didn’t stop Ty by the way to let our listeners know what kind of huge gold nugget that is right there. I mean, we want to talk about using anything that those guys read as a bible. I do that all the time. I think those are incredible, incredible copywriters. My question is do you -- how much of their influence do you include when you are actually building the actual content of your books? I mean, they’re sales copywriter guys and I think most people without really knowing who they are and what they’re about they’d say okay. Well, great. You can use them to sell but can you really use their techniques and their strategies to actually write the content? I’m curious.
Ty: And that’s a great question. I love that. No one has ever asked that so I can tell that I’m talking to someone who really loves marketing, right. And I love that. But as far as the actual content, no. I don’t use any of their techniques to write the content. But where I do use their techniques is in writing the title for my eBook, right. Because your title has to be something that’s attractive, it has to be something that stands out to a degree without being just totally overblown. It has to be something that answers the questions that your prospects are subconsciously asking themselves in their head, right. when we’re looking at these eBooks on -- when we’re looking at something on Amazon or when you’re just shopping in general online you don’t know this but you’re looking for something specific and it’s the title or it’s something about that item that you click onto and you ultimately buy that has grabbed your attention. So it might be the title, it might be a description and the description is basically sales copy so that’s where I’ll use a lot of these principles. In the title and then in my eBooks’ descriptions. I’ll go in, I’ll use bullet points, I’ll use some of the _____42:31 principles. Attention, interest and things like that. And then I’ll just talk about how the prospect is going to feel after they’ve read this book, what can they accomplish, what can it help them with. So you start to inflict those emotions. You get the emotions involved there so if they’re at the point where they say okay. This is definitely what I want. And then you’ve got to back that up by making sure that the book actually delivers on what you’ve written in that description, right. what you’ve written in that sales copy because if not Amazon has this amazing review system where if your book doesn’t match up to what’s written in the description you’re going to get negative reviews. But if it does match up you’re going to get positive reviews and the more positive reviews, the more sales you’re going to get because people are going to look at those reviews and they’ll say this is awesome. This is what I’m looking for. Most of my purchases when I buy on Amazon -- I bought a USB extender today and I bought it based off of the reviews. It had like 3000 four and a half star reviews and I’m like this has to be good.
Jordan: Man, that’s great. All of that is just solid, solid great advice. So speaking of sales copy and how you actually write your description I’m curious and maybe I’m jumping ahead a little bit Nile. I’d like to know how you promote your books.
Ty: So here’s the things. I don’t put -- and I want everyone that’s listening including you and Nile -- Nile and Jordan. I don’t put a lot of time, I don’t put a lot of money into any one eBook unless I know it’s going to sell. So with that said, I don’t go in and market and promote them until I see where I’ve gotten at least 10 sales. Alright. Because at that point, if I get 10 sales I know that I can get 10000 sales. It’s just a matter of me making it available, me making more people aware of it.
Jordan: Wow.
Ty: And that’s it. And then what I’ll do is I’ll go in and start using some Facebook advertising and that’s probably -- at this point that’s the most what I do. And I actually just started using Facebook advertising about a year ago. Before that it was all internal. I mean, all of my sales just came directly from Amazon because Amazon -- they’ll promote your eBooks especially if it’s something that’s selling. If it’s something that has a demand you’ll see where -- and you guys have probably noticed this, right? When you go to Amazon, you buy one item and it’ll say people who purchased this item also purchased -- so Amazon will start to promote your books and that way they’ll send folks that buy eBooks that are of similar content, emails and they’ll say we noticed that you purchased this book. Here’s something else that you might be interested in. so up until last year I really didn’t do any marketing outside of Amazon.
Nile: So do you currently work exclusively with Amazon? Do you use any of the other eBook publishers or do you just stay with Amazon?
Ty: Great question. I do. I actually do publish to Barnes and Nobles NOOK platform and Smash Words as well but that’s only again after I’ve gotten 10 sales. Can I share something with you that I think will be pretty beneficial to your listeners?
Nile: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we’re all hanging off the edge of our seats waiting for it so yeah.
Ty: Awesome. So here’s the process, right. Again, I said I don’t like to put time and too much money -- I’m a -- I hope this doesn’t offend anyone. I’m a black Jew. Alright. My name is Ty Cohen. Alright. So I hustle like hell and I save like hell. Alright. So the black part hustles, the Jewish part is the saver, right. So I like to make sure that I’m not just throwing money away and I think everyone that’s listening should do the same thing. So with that, you don’t put a lot of time, a lot of effort into this stuff until you know that you’re going to get a seller. Now, once you get 10 sales, right. And I like to say 10 sales within a one month period. That’s pretty lenient because it takes time for your eBook to get into the system and for it to get visibility. But once you get those 10 sales then you can open up the floodgate. Alright. The next thing I do is I start promoting it using Facebook ads. And again, I’m very, very cautious with how much money I spend, right. I’ll set my daily budget to about three bucks initially a day. I’ve made a mistake of setting my daily budget to a 100 bucks, 200 bucks a day when I first started and it was just a nightmare so you don’t want to -- I’ve made the mistake already. Just don’t follow my path in that regard. The next thing I’ll do is once I start to get about a 100 sales, right. I’ll have the eBook translated into other languages so Spanish, right. I might have it translated into French and there’s a few other languages. But I always start with Spanish first. And then the next thing I will do is I’ll then have it turned into an audio book version and you can make that available on Audible and that’s a whole another call. And then the next thing I do is I’ll use Amazon’s sister company which is called Create space and I’ll turn an eBook into a physical book. So now, why am I doing this, why am I turning it into an audio book, why am I translating it into Spanish and why am I turning it into a physical book? Because if you have the interest in new digital book, you best believe that there’s folks that are Spanish speakers and they don’t know how to read English, right. And they want to buy that book too but they just can't because you’ve just made it available in English. You best believe that there’s folks like myself who -- I’ve got about 400 audio books on CD that are around here that drives my wife nuts because I just don’t have the time to read physical books, right. So if you don’t have an audio version of it then you’re losing out on those folks. If you don’t have the physical version of it, you’re losing out on folks like my wife who just loves to read physical books. She won't read a Kindle book, right. And I know a lot of this can sound like it’s a lot and it could be overwhelming but each of these steps are actually very easy to do. You can do each of these in a day, right. And it’s just an awesome way to continue to add onto those income streams. I would never have an eBook that’s selling and is doing well without adding the other components onto it because it’s just -- you’re just missing out on money that’s just sitting there for you to take it.
Nile: That sounds like when you’ve found where the fish are and they’re biting you want to make sure you put more lines in the water and give them more things to bite on.
Ty: I love that. That’s exactly that. I’m going to steal that and I’m going to use that as Ty Cohen original.
Nile: Ty Cohen original inspired by -- there you go. Well, I appreciate that. I’ve looked at a number of links that you have on your website and your website will be shared out on our social media business hour page as well as our Facebook page. It’s episode 120. But you’ve got a lot of great things. You’ve got great training, you’ve got some YouTube videos and all of that that we will also share links for. But I’ve got one final question I want to ask because we’re getting close to Halloween. A lot of people are going to listen to this right at that time or maybe even over the Halloween holiday. Do you do seasonal books just out of curiosity?
Ty: I do not.
Nile: So that’s something you don’t do. I know some people that have been successful with that. I was just very curious. There are people that specialize in that.
Ty: Yeah. There are. And there’s a lot of money that could be made in seasonal books. I mean, the Christmas stuff, the cook books and -- I mean, it’s just a ton of things that are out there, right. But so I don’t publish books that deal with fads, right. And I don’t publish books that are seasonal because I want to make sure that the effort that I put in is going to generate me year round profits.
Nile: I love that. I love that. All the way around the year.
Ty: That’s right.
Nile: Well, I know that you’ve got a special offer for us. We’ll have the link shared up for the special offer. Just go to socialmediabusinesshour.com remember again this is episode 120 where you’ll find all the details but share with us this great special offer you have. I can't wait to hear.
Ty: Absolutely. I have a program called Kindle Cash Flow in which I share this entire system. I mean, I share everything. Whether you’re someone who’s totally new to it the way I was when I first got started or you’re someone who may already have a few Kindle eBooks that are up and they’re just not selling the way that you anticipate them selling or if you’re someone that’s even more advantaged and you’re already doing well. You’re making five, six, seven, 10000 dollars a month doing this. This program that I put together has actually taken everything that I’ve learned, everything that I’ve studied and it’s just totally, totally just one package. And why I put this together. When I first put it together I said to myself -- my daughter as 14 at the time. She had just turned 14. And I said I want to be able to structure this thing in a way that my daughter Maya -- that’s her name, Maya. Would be able to take the course and without coming in my office and bugging me and saying dad, how do I do step six, how do I do step seven. Be able to take the course and follow along. So you get to actually look over my shoulder and you watch on my screen as I do things and you see what I do and why I do it. The rhyme and reason behind it. So I put this course together in that manner so that Maya could take it and get results and it’s actually worked. I’ve taught it to just literally thousands and thousands of people. We actually have close to 700 members in our Facebook group, our private Facebook group for members only and we’ve got folks in there that are doing 20000 dollars a month. I’ve got a guy Darren Devery who’s one of my students. He’s -- Darren’s about 67 years old. I’m really proud of him. He’s from Perth from Australia and he’s just killing it. And then we’ve got folks that are just total beginners that have just come on board and they’re just finding their way. And it’s an awesome place to come in and ask questions and get updates when things are updated. So with that said, that is the entire program and for your listeners, for the social media business hour listeners I’m going to give anyone that wants it 50 percent off of the original retail price that I normally sell this program for.
Nile: Man, that is absolutely awesome and really we can't thank you enough Ty. You have shared just extremely valuable content and I know that I’ve learned a whole bunch. I know that I’m not alone so I want to thank you for joining us but to the listener, I want to thank you too. Hopefully, you’ve learned a few new ideas or concepts, maybe you were just reminded of a few things you already know but you haven’t been doing to improve or grow your business. Our desire is that you take just one of the things that you learned or were reminded of today and you apply it to your business this week. We know that a small change can make a big difference and I’m committed to bringing you at least one new idea each week that you can implement. So go back and identify just that one small change that you can make and see what a big difference it will make for you. So until next week, this is Nile Nickel. Now, go make it happen.
Woman: Social media business hour is powered by linkedinfocus.com. For show notes, updates and to pick up the latest tips and tricks head over to socialmediabusinesshour.com. Until next time. Thanks for listening.
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