Inspired by Tracey’s first month’s sales report – I thought that I should peak a look at my own sales figures for my shiny new eBook. Yes I have been quite good and haven’t logged on more than one a week – after all it took me 9 months to make my first $100 on Adsense – so I wasn’t holding my breath on Amazon – particularly because I have issues around being a non-American and having to deal with the US tax system for the first time (maybe – I will check with my accountant re Tracey’s suggestion to get around this). BTW why the heck do they not treat authors the same as affiliates – bloody weird the US tax system.
Anyway back to the point – I have sold a million copies and am retiring to Thailand on Thursday. Hmmm not quite. But I’m not unhappy. This is not a get rich quick scheme (yeah you might as well unsubscribe now – sorry). So the bottom line is that I have sold
- 3 paid on Smashwords (plus a couple of freebies);
- 7 on Amazon @ 70%
- 2 on Amazon @ 35%
That comes up to a grand total of $16.59 from Amazon and $6.63 from Smashwords.
The bonus was the additional $28 of Amazon affiliate earnings I earned from the book site – which was not for the book (well 20c was) but for other travel gear…
So its a nice start – but really unless I get myself ranked I expect this month to be worse as I know some of my friends were helping me out with sales – thanks guys.
The stats that I really need work on though – is ranking the book site in Google and associated sites which are also selling it.
And getting signups for my email list. Help guys – I’ve never done list building seriously. I have the sign up form on my “brand site” – http://listraveltips.com/ but should I also put it on my book site: http://vacationpackinglistbook.com/ as well? Do I want them to sign up for the list more than I want them to buy the book? (I suspect yes for the longer term – but short term its hard to distract people from buying the book LOL).
Also I am heading to Thailand this week – purely a research trip you understand … It won’t be fun at all checking out the beaches and pools of Phuket, but you know, someone has to do it!
17 replies on “First Month’s Sales: Non-Fiction Indie Book”
Well I am one of your August sales! Want to see you do well with this to give us all hope – Did not notice it was for sale until yesterday. Have fun on your research trip 🙂
Thanks Eileen! You were hanging out in the spam filter – Askimet got it wrong again!
Hey Lis,
Awesome first month! You are much stronger than me, I have to check my stats daily 😉
Have fun on your ‘research’ trip.
Tracey 🙂
Pretty similar in terms of visitors Tracey – I’ve been hitting up the old FB and forum marketing – tedious and not passive but it works !
I want to officially welcome you to the world of marketing, Lis 😉
Seriously, though, you may want to test your mail form to find the sweet spot. Use something like google website optimizer (it is free and you can grab a plug-in for it). Other than that…..congratulations! Awesome.
Yeah I’ve hit the dark side haven’t I Leo 🙁 – oh well – at least I know people love to read travel books – just have to convince them to read mine LOL – anyway who care – deducting the price of a trip to the beaches of Thailand – priceless!
Lis you annihilated me in sales – I managed a paltry 2 so far!
But I’m not daunted – I pulled 92 clicks on the affiliate banner for July, so its getting seen. I just changed my Amazon sale page description to be more “sales copy” and less descriptive, so maybe that’ll convert more of those clicks this month.
I’ve got two non-fiction books live and ready to roll with no3 – but I feel I’m dragging my heels a little as I can’t stop myself practically rewriting each chapter a dozen times before I format the damn book! Gah, damn perfectionism!
Good luck with the list building – it should work well in a real niche.
Yeah heaps more competition in your niche too – you are beating me on the book writing front – I have lots of ideas and very rough outlines – does that count – maybe not LOL
I, for one, am impressed 😀
I am definitely of the mind that you should be building an email list on every site, as long as you can think of some way to use it. I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the long term, especially for those who may not be ready to buy the book yet. I know Kindle sends out samples but you could also do so with the email list in case people don’t realise they can get it from Kindle or just end up getting it from you first. That way you have their email for future 🙂
And so jealous of you heading out to Thailand. Hopefully I will be there in a few months time. Be sure to post some pics to make us all jealous. Or, in my case, to kick my arse into gear so I can make sure I get to go too!
Basically the name of the game with ebooks is that you need lots – so the idea of the list is that you can inform your buyers /lookers of new buying opportunities LOL
Have a Pad Thai on Me Lis, drooling just thinking about it.
Congrats on the sales. There is definitely a lot of potential in this and I can see it being a very good and very real passive income once the momentum builds and a number of books are released.
Back to proofing over 14K words for me, sigh.
You OK if I have Singha with the Pad Thai Dave? Yeah momentum is everything in this game – as usual LOL
Only if you accompany it with a pack of Krong Thip!
Congrats on your first month’s sales! Hang in there. : ) My second month of Kindle sales for my book: The Moonlighter’s Guide To Online Writing For Immediate Income, was the same as the first. By the third month, enough people had bought my book that Amazon was showing it more often in their ‘other people who bought this book also bought Connie’s book,” algorithm. My fourth month saw a 40% increase in sales from the third. The only marketing I do for this book is to my own FB and twitter friends which amounts to a status update a few times per month. Good luck to you.
Hi Connie and thanks for commenting – yes I was wondering how long it takes for the “other people who bought this bought this book” line kicks in – that’s a very powerful marketing tool (works on me – must be )!
Hey Lis! Congrats on getting your book out there. As you know, just getting the book finished and out there is an accomplishment in and of itself. I think you have a great plan to market it and I have no doubt that you’ll do well.
Congrats on getting started Liz! That’s the main bit, and a month out of the way is a month closer to selling 1000 copies 🙂
I’ll be following this experiment closely