How much I Earned As A KDP Newbie | Brutally Honest Look At KDP Journey For Beginners

hi lovelies welcome back to my channel for those of you that are new here my name is gemma and i discuss everything from saving money to making money to growing money and just my general journey my financial journey as a single parent i how annoying i'm going to be dodging this patch of sunlight this entire video so i apologize for that i hope you're all doing okay anyway that you are all having a wonderful day so far and i really wanted to do this video because in one of my previous videos i mentioned that i do kdp as a form of income kdp is kindle direct publishing and i had a few questions about that and i had a couple of people reach out to me over on instagram who were asking me how i made money on it because they are trying it themselves and haven't got anywhere so i really wanted to give a very honest still dodging this bit of light a very honest account of um my journey with kdp because i think if you watch a lot of youtube videos um you will know that there's a lot of people out there that seem to be earning thousands and thousands and they there's a lot of my first month on kdp i earned x amount of hundreds of dollars and for most people that really isn't a realistic um journey with kdp so i wanted to be brutally honest with my numbers and my figures um so that if you are just starting out then you can get a probably a more realistic view of of what the path might look like and also if you've already started and you're not getting any sales you'll see that you're certainly not alone in that so let's dive straight in with the figures then my i've been doing kdp for um well over a year now um i'm now at the point where i am generating a decent income every single month and that's wonderful but it was definitely a very steep learning curve and it wasn't like that it took me a very long time to get to this point so my first month with kdp i think i created maybe five books i wasn't trying to do it as a full-time job i was just wanting to earn some extra cash and i watched the videos on youtube with people being like it's so easy make a notebook publish it bob's your uncle and i did that and then i sat back and waited for the sales to come rolling in and i got nothing not one sale in that first month now i was quite dissuaded by that but i thought you know it's my first month i don't have very many books so month two i plowed on same thing again crickets not one single sale now what i've learned since then is that that is a more normal um scenario than the videos you may have watched on youtube if people are saying that on their first month they earned a lot of money now my third month on kdp i got my first sale i woke up in the morning i checked my kdp dashboard and there it was my first sale now the mistake that i also made at the beginning of my journey was i priced my books far too low thinking that the cheaper they were the more likely somebody was to buy it it's not always the case in fact a lot of the time it's not the case those people who are after the cheapest of the cheap are much more likely to go and shop in um like a poundland or a dollar tree if they are after a just a plain lined notebook so when i got that first sale i was so excited i thought this is it this the ball is starting to roll now here come the sales and i waited and i checked the following day nothing the following day nothing by the end of the month i had made a grand total of 40 pence 40 but when i keep telling you that kdp is a learning curve and there are no shortcuts to learning it's you learn by making mistakes this is what i was doing those first three months because by month four i had really started to take it seriously i wasn't going to give up i upped the prices on the books that i already had and i started at that point i'd only been doing low or no content books so very basic but niched down lined um notebooks or more or less blank notebooks and by month four i decided that i was going to move it up a notch that actually i may have more success if i try a more medium content book and that is when i started to create um children's books um i created a couple of children's books and i also created a couple of medium like workbook type type books in again in a very very specific niche this was a category that i myself was personally very interested in so i had some knowledge of it and that made it super easy because i became my ideal customer i was who i was aiming that book at which made it very easy for me to be able to create something and this is where it started to pay off because on month 4 i made 116 pounds and 80 pence which is a huge jump from the 40 pence that i'd earned the previous month and that is when i realized that to be successful on kdp it is much much easier if you have more of the medium content books books that require you as the author to put in more effort and in return the customer feels like they are getting something that is more value for money now i'm not saying that you can't make money with the lined notebooks and the very very basic um low content books because you can there are people that are making them i'm just saying that it is in my experience much more worthwhile taking the time to create something that offers value on the inside rather than trying to compete with everybody else that is just doing the lined notebooks so by the time i got to month six um my books were starting to pick up and i was really happy with that month six i made 255 pounds and 91 pence um which i was absolutely thrilled with because this was just um a bit of a side hustle and it just it it kept going on and on um from then now to give you some context this month alone we are uh just into the first week of february and i've earned 407 pounds and 54 pence now that 407 pounds has come from about 10 of the books that i have i currently have around 70 books published and i would say it is around seven or eight of those are my regular sellers those are the ones that i can count on to get sales every single day some of the other ones i'll get a sprinkling of sales in every now and again and even i'm surprised when people buy them because it's not very often the others are just lost in the depths of amazon somewhere and we'll probably never see the light of day and that's okay what i was able to do was with those more um medium content kind of books when they began to sell i made books that complemented the original book and now very often we'll find that two sales will come in at the same time now of course they could be two separate customers but sometimes it seems as though people are buying them um together linked together on the um on the product page so my tips for if you are just starting out if you're thinking about starting out is i think we all have to go through that phase of making those lined notebooks no without doubt that is where you learn the craft that is where you make your mistakes um you learn about sizing about design but i would definitely recommend upping and taking that next step to go and create those medium content books those specific journals those work books um those children's books um like i say one of my bestsellers is a children's book it's aimed at toddlers it has some beautiful artwork in it and it has some words not a ton of words but the whole package together is looks like a quality high quality book for a child something that i've noticed a lot of on youtube and just to stress that my channel is not a kdp channel i'm only discussing this because my channel is about finances and money and kdp is a way that i um earn an income and there are some channels that are specifically dedicated to kdp which is great but there are a lot of them that are i think they give a false view of the reality of kdp there are like i say those ones where they start off and immediately they're earning a great sum of money now if somebody has managed to do that the phrase unicorn poop comes to mind that person has struck gold it's the equivalent of winning the lottery could it happen to you yes is it likely to no um so those channels are either lying about the amount that they're making which i don't want to be so cynical to think that people are lying they are either um doing that or they are spending a huge sum of money on advertisements and not declaring it in their videos i personally don't use ads um i have tried them in the past i failed miserably using ads and you can really find yourself in a position where you've spent an awful lot of money and you get nothing back from them so if you're going to use ads on your books make sure that you do your research beforehand because you really need to know what you're doing or you can you're basically just throwing your money away there are some channels dedicated to kdp um and they probably make more money from making videos about kdp than what they make from actually selling books um and i do not begrudge anybody from trying to make a living or an extra income i'm you know i'm trying to do that myself um what i don't like is when people over exaggerate or fluff their numbers just to get views or like i say they've spent an awful lot of money on ads that they're not declaring they've probably made a loss on kdp because they've spent more on ads than what they've made in sales but they know that people are going to click on the video and they're going to make their money that way um there are some wonderful channels out there though don't get me wrong that really do do justice to kdp as a business one of the channels that i loved especially when i was starting out uh is a channel called the home boss and it's run by a lovely lady called noria i don't know her personally but she is one of those creators who is very very um knowledgeable about kdp but she's also very transparent every month she shows you how much she sent in the previous month she goes through exactly how much of that um is ad spend and just it gives you a very realistic idea of what you can achieve she's very successful um on kdp if you are going to have a mentor that is the type of channel that you want to go to you want a channel that is open that is transparent and that is very knowledgeable because kdp is a path where you are constantly having to learn you are not going to know everything when you start out i mean over a year down the line and i still don't know everything there is to know about it so i would definitely go and recommend to check out the home boss channel if you haven't done already also just be very wary of um i see a lot of videos all the time that say i found this niche here's the next new niche and if you see a video like that and that video has a hundred thousand views on it there's potentially a hundred thousand people that have now just gone and flooded that category with a book because somebody in a video has said to go and do it you will notice um if you are already starting out or if you're starting out when you ask questions to people people are very secretive with the categories that they use with the books that are successful because there are a lot of people that will take your ideas and copy them and yeah it it's just it's one of those things with publishing it it happens so if anybody finds a category that doesn't have a lot of competition that they can make some money off um they're very unlikely to go and share it with everybody if you want to be successful on kdp you need to put in the work and this i know there'll be people watching this that don't want to hear this because wouldn't you know we'd all love to have someone just say here do this is so you make money but that's not reality if you want somebody to walk you hand in hand through this process you're probably not going to see that much success you have to be able to research what categories are likely to be profitable you have to be able to come up with ideas and they have to be unique if you want them to sell you have to be able to design something that is eye-catching and makes people want to click on it that old saying never judge a book by its cover most definitely does not apply on amazon people are literally judging your book by its cover and you're they're judging it against page after page after page of similar books so you have to be able to find a way to make your book stand out if you even want somebody to click on it and that's before they've decided to buy it relying on other people telling you what categories you should be making books for or copying other people's books or trying to use um trademarked you see it all the time people making coloring books using disney pictures and things you're not going to succeed in that you might be successful for a short amount of time but i can guarantee amazon will find out and they will terminate your account and once they've done that you are not allowed to have another another account with them so if this it becomes a big source of income for you and you lose it that's it it's gone forever so you need to be making sure that you know what you're doing and that you put in the work and you get the success that you deserve like i said go and check out channels that are open and transparent if they are all about make thousands and thousands in one category i'm not saying that all of those channels shouldn't be trusted but just be wary because a lot of them like i say will fudge the numbers or show you these extreme books just to get you to click on the video and that's not going to help you in the long run go and look at videos that are going to teach you how to run ads that are going to teach you how to create quality books um that are going to teach you about your keywords and all of that back end stuff that you need to learn how to do and if you have just started out and you're not making any sales don't worry don't panic okay do not compare your journey to anybody else's i hope that by listening to my figures you will see that it doesn't always start off with a big boom and you're off sometimes in fact most of the times you'll find this if you're in any groups on facebook or anything you'll find that most people are saying i haven't made any sales um how are these people doing this you know kdp is not a get rich quick scheme it is a marathon not a sprint whatever other cliche phrase you want to use but it's true the goal is for most of us is to make this passive income but to begin with you are most definitely going to have to put in a lot of hard work there's going to be a lot of failures there'll be books that you love and you upload and they'll get nothing then there'll be a book that you upload and you think i'm not sure about this one and it'll sell and if you get a book that sells make another one that complements that there'll also be times when you can't think of any book idea and that's completely normal too you'll have times where you are full of ideas and you're feeling super creative and then you might have a few weeks where you can't you sit every time you sit down at your computer you cannot think of one thing to do and that's completely normal too you know don't try and force it um even authors that write high content novels will tell you that sometimes they sit down at a computer and they cannot think what to write and you know the old writers block and you'll get that as a designer as well so just cut yourself some slack don't compare yourself to these fantastical figures that you'll see unless they are backed up um and the person is very open and honest and you'll start to get a sense if you look at different channels you'll start to get a sense of the ones that you can trust and the ones that maybe are just in it for the youtube money but just what i'm trying to say is don't give up this is a journey that's going to take your time i hope that you will look at the journey that i've been on and see that my experience is what i would consider to be a completely normal experience on kdp it takes time and don't give up just because you haven't got any sales make sure that the books you are creating are quality books some people will advise just to make book after book after book after book and then you've got thousands and thousands and thousands of books and of course over time you are going to have a huge number of books if you're doing this full-time but if you are doing hundreds and thousands even of books but you're not getting sales then there's a there's a problem there with with what you're creating so take your time to create something that is quality something that people will want to buy something that you would be proud to give somebody else as a gift if you wouldn't hand it over to it to your friend or your family member as a gift why would you expect somebody else to buy it if you guys have any questions about kdp or anything else please drop me a comment down below if you have enjoyed this video please consider subscribing give this video a thumbs up and i will see you all in my next video guys take care [Music] you

Channel: Project Rich Mum

Views: 349,412

Keywords: amazon kdp, amazon kindle direct publishing, kdp, kdp amazon, kdp amazon step by step, kdp earnings, kdp for beginners, kdp low content books, kdp low content books step by step, kdp low content books tutorial, kdp publishing, kindle direct publishing, kindle direct publishing tutorial, low content book publishing, low content book publishing kdp, low content books, low content books kdp, low content publishing, make money online, passive income, project rich mum

Id: V1aT2WtQhsM

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022