Introduction to Amazon King
Amazon is one of the biggest retail companies in the entire world, serving millions of customers every year and making unbelievable profits. They have a level of customer loyalty that most companies are never able to attain.
While most entrepreneurs dream of making even a meager living online, few ever do. They try to compete with giants like Amazon, thinking they can just set up a website, attract visitors, and profit. Unfortunately, things just don’t work that way. Amazon is already established. They have established business relationships with suppliers and shipping companies, so they can get better prices than you could ever manage on your own.
You may think, “Why should I even bother trying to start a business online if I could never compete with Amazon, anyway?”
The thing is, you don’t have to worry about competing with Amazon. Have you ever heard the old adage If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em? You can actually partner with Amazon, leveraging their incredible power to build your own business without having to compete against a giant like Amazon.
So why exactly is Amazon a good company to partner with? There are many reasons why such a partnership could be extremely beneficial for you. For example:
- Approximately 5% of all internet traffic visits Amazon.com each month. To put that into perspective, there are approximately 2 billion total internet users worldwide, which means around 100 million people visit the site each month!
- Amazon is the 5th most visited website in the U.S.
- Amazon is the 14th most visited website in the world.
- Amazon has captured one of the most lucrative demographics in
existence – childless women over age 35 making $60,000+ per year.
In addition to these statistics, Amazon is simply one of the most powerful and reliable forms of traffic online. People tend to spend a tremendous amount of time on the site, often making several purchases per visit. They trust Amazon, and Amazon’s liberal shipping and return policies get them to return again and again.
In this report, you’re going to learn how to team up with this global retail monolith, and use their tremendous power and success to build your own online business.
You’ll learn about several different business models you can use to make money with Amazon, and how to choose one that suits your business style.
Amazon’s Profit Hubs
Amazon has many different revenue streams that have made it one of the most profitable online businesses in history. Their strategies have made them the powerhouse they are today.
Let’s take a look at some of the different revenue models Amazon have developed, and how you can use them to your advantage.
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime is a program Amazon debuted a few years ago. Initially, the program’s primary advantage to customers was tremendous savings on shipping costs on products sold by Amazon.com, but it has evolved to offer other benefits as well.
The program lets people get overnight shipping for $3.99 per item, and 2-day shipping FREE! An Amazon Prime membership costs $79 per year, but considering overnight shipping can cost $20 or more for a single item without an Amazon Prime membership, the savings can add up quickly.
One thing that makes Amazon Prime so powerful is that people tend to order a lot more from Amazon once they become a member. It’s hard to order an item from another retailer when standard shipping from that retailer would potentially be $7-$10 and the item would take a week to arrive, when you could get FREE shipping and have the item in two days or $3.99 and have it in 24 hours. This means Amazon Prime members are prone to do most, if not all of their online shopping with Amazon instead of their competitors.
But Prime members get other benefits, as well. Amazon keeps adding new benefits regularly. Here are a few of the current benefits of Amazon Prime
membership: - Access to thousands of streaming television episodes and movies included with membership. Currently, Prime Members have over 38,000 episodes and movies to choose from.
- The ability to borrow one Kindle book each month for free.
- Free 2-day shipping on millions of different items.
- Overnight shipping for $3.99 per item.
These benefits alone could be worth thousands of dollars, so you can see why so many people pay $79 per year to receive them.
While you can’t make money directly from the Amazon Prime program, it will benefit you enormously by making it much easier to get people to buy the things you are selling, because many people (especially Prime members) will already be loyal to the company.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
One of the most popular programs Amazon has developed in recent years is their KDP program. KDP stands for Kindle Direct publishing. Their program allows authors and publishers to make their content available for sale through the Kindle platform and receive huge commissions on sales.
There are two commission structures:
- Earn 70% commission on products between $2.99 and $9.99.
- Earn 35% commission on products between $0.99 and $2.98 and on products $10 and up.
As you can see, the most lucrative prices for your books would be between $2.99 and $9.99, but if you’re interested in bulk sales you could certainly price at $0.99. Just remember that you would have to sell six books at $0.99 to get paid as much as a single sale at $2.99.
You can publish nearly anything on the KDP platform. Here are some examples of products people publish on Amazon:
• Short stories and story collections
• Children’s picture books
• Cookbooks
• How-to books
• Novels
• Poetry collections
Amazon does have fairly strict quality standards, but perhaps not as strict as you might expect. They don’t really pay a lot of attention to the quality of the story or the content itself, but they do care about things such as formatting, length, spelling and grammar. Don’t expect to publish a 5-page report full of typos and get away with it.
Once you publish something on the platform, it will be available to anyone who has a Kindle device, as well as anyone who downloads the Kindle app to their computer or mobile device. The Kindle app is available for both Mac and PC computers, as well as many different devices including iOS (for iPad and iPhone)
and Android.
When people purchase your publication, Amazon will give you a commission. Commissions are paid monthly approximately 60 days after the end of the pay period. So it will be a couple of months before you receive your first payment, but you’ll receive payments monthly after that.
CreateSpace
Amazon also has a program that will enable you to publish your content in print format, as well. This program is called CreateSpace, and it will let you choose from a variety of different paperback sizes and then publish your content in print.
While most people don’t earn as much money with their printed material as they do digital, making your content available in print helps expand your reach to those who prefer printed material, which can increase your visibility considerably.
Amazon Advantage
If you have content you have already published in a physical format somewhere other than Amazon, you can use the Amazon Advantage program to sell it through the Amazon website. This program costs $29.95 per year plus a 55% royalty to Amazon for every sale. However, taking advantage of this program could drastically increase your visibility and it could be well worth it to get such a lucrative new distribution channel.
In order to qualify for the Amazon Advantage program, your content must: - Be in physical format, not digital. (Example, CDs, DVDs, printed books, etc.)
- Have a scannable ISBN/EAN/UPC barcode.
Amazon WebStores
Amazon now makes it easier than ever to open your own e-commerce store without having to spend a fortune doing so. With Amazon WebStores, you can open your own online store quickly and easily at a cost of between $9.99 and $49.99 per month plus a small commission on sales. For this fee, you can create as many stores on Amazon as you like, and you can even supplement your offerings with products from Amazon’s own catalog if you like.
Amazon aStores
If you don’t have your own product(s) to sell on your website or on an Amazon WebStore, you can still have your own e-commerce site by selling Amazon products as an affiliate through an Amazon aStore.
Setting up an aStore is very simple as an affiliate. You just choose some design aspects, choose products, and you get a link to your aStore you can send people to. You earn a commission on sales just like any affiliate.
Making Money with KDP
http://kdp.amazon.com
Making money with KDP is a lot easier than you might think. If you can write (or outsource writing elsewhere) and use Microsoft Word or an equivalent word processor, you can make money with the program.
Choosing a Subject
The first thing you need to do to make money on KDP is to choose a subject. You should decide between fiction and non-fiction, then choose what exactly you want to write about.
Typically, fiction sells better on Amazon than non-fiction. This is a very general statement, however. The right type of non-fiction could end up earning more than a novel. But generally speaking, fiction is more lucrative. However, fiction may also take a lot longer to create, especially if you create quality full-length novels.
Unless you already know something specific you’d love to write about, a good way to determine what would be profitable on Amazon would be to check the bestseller lists. Remember, the bestseller lists for Kindle may not always be the same as those for print books, so be sure you’re checking the Kindle bestseller lists.
Creating the Publication
Once you have chosen your subject, it’s time to create your publication. There are many different ways to do this, but the most common way is by simply creating a Word document in .doc format. You can upload this file to the KDP system and it will be automatically formatted for the Kindle format (.mobi).
Here is a great tutorial on building your book for Kindle:
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2MB3WT2D0PTNK
Creating a Cover
You’ll need a cover image. Amazon has specific rules for the size and other aspects of cover creation. At the moment, you can only submit cover images in JPG or TIFF format.
They recommend an aspect ratio of 1.6, and for best quality they recommend and image size of 1563x2500.
You can find out the most current image guidelines here:
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM
Remember, people do judge a book by its cover, despite so many recommendations to the contrary. Thus, it is critical to create an attractive cover that makes your book appear to be published professionally. Nothing screams “indie author” (and sadly “low quality”) more loudly than a poorly designed book cover image.
If you aren’t great with design, consider outsourcing the design of your Kindle cover or at least buying a pre-made cover.
Publishing on KDP Amazon has a complete guide to publishing your book on Kindle. This guide will walk you step-by-step through the process of submitting your publication to the KDP platform.
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2MB3WT2D0PTNK
Promotion
Once you have published your book on Amazon, it’s time to promote it. It’s not enough to simply publish and move on. If you want your book to sell as much as possible, a little promotion goes a long way.
Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to get a book started. The main things that will help your book are:
• Having a few positive reviews
• Getting a few sales in the first few days in order to push it into the bestseller lists
Do not fall into the trap of paying for things like sales or reviews! This is against Amazon’s rules, and you could lose your KDP account permanently if you are caught! It is not worth the risk, so don’t even try it!
Instead, you can join Facebook groups related to the topic of your book and advertise it once if they allow advertisements. You can post on Twitter. Try using Pinterest to create related pin boards. Once you get a few reviews, sales will probably pick up considerably.
CreateSpace
Once you’ve completed a publication for KDP, you can then format that same publication for print format through CreateSpace.com. This can be a bit tricky, and some people find it to be frustrating, but it really isn’t that hard if you follow their instructions carefully.
In fact, when the book is completed for KDP, most of the work is already finished. All you need to do is create a template formatted for the size of print book you want, paste in your content, and format it.
You’ll also need to have your book cover altered to be suitable for print format. If you’re not a designer, you might want to outsource this to save yourself time and frustration. Even experienced designers often find it tricky to format a cover perfectly for CreateSpace.
Amazon Advantage
The Amazon Advantage program is like a virtual consignment shop for publishers of physical content like printed books, CDs, DVDs and other media. This won’t be products you create through CreateSpace, because those will already be on Amazon. But if you’ve previously published material and you can provide it to Amazon, you can sell it there on consignment.
It takes approximately one week to get a product listed on Amazon using this program. Once a product is listed, Amazon.com will begin ordering them directly from you. They try to buy enough copies to meet current demand as well as enough for several weeks.
To apply for the product, go here:
https://advantage.amazon.com/gp/vendor/setup-sign-in/create-account? ie=UTF8&successUrl=%2Fgp%2Fvendor%2Fregistration
You can see the rules for the program here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.html? topic=200339300
Amazon WebStores
Amazon now makes it easier than ever to open your own e-commerce store without having to spend a fortune doing so. Setting up an e-commerce site from scratch could cost thousands of dollars including design, programming, setup and other associated fees. With an Amazon WebStore, you pay little to nothing upfront.
To get started, go here:
http://webstore.amazon.com/
Choosing a Theme
Before you open your first store, it’s a good idea to choose a theme for it. Don’t just set up a store with random products, because there are millions of online stores people can go to, including Amazon.com itself!
Instead, create a specialty store of some sort. The more specialized your store, the easier it will likely be to get sales. This makes the job of marketing much easier, allowing you to see results much faster.
Here’s an example of specializing:
• Pet store (much too broad)
• Dog supplies (too broad)
• Dog clothes (probably still to broad)
• Dog clothes for overweight Chihuahuas (much too narrow)
• Dog clothes for small dogs (just right)
Make sure to find a good theme that has a solid buyer base. You want to do some keyword research to ensure enough people are interested in the theme, but you also want to check competition to make sure you aren’t competing with hundreds of other websites on the same theme.
If, for some reason, you do want to get into a very competitive area, be sure you have a USP, or Unique Selling Point. This is something that sets you apart from the competition and makes people want to choose your store over another one.
Fees
You can choose to sell on your own website or on your own website plus Amazon.com. If you sell on your own website, you pay $39.99 per month plus 2% transaction fees, along with payment processing and fraud protection fees. If you sell on Amazon.com too, you will only pay 1% transaction fees, but you will be subject to other fees as well.
There are a number of fees available that you need to be aware of if you choose to sell on Amazon in addition to your own website. For example, a “Professional Selling Plan” requires a $39.99 per month fee, but this means you don’t have to pay a per-item fee for every item sold. If you have the plan that has no monthly fee, you must pay $0.99 for each item sold. Additionally, you must pay a referral fee of around 15% depending on the item category, as well as a “variable closing fee” that is typically $1.35 per item.
As you can see, these fees can really add up, so be sure to calculate them into your cost of doing business in order to make sure you’re making a profit.
Sourcing Products
You’ll need something to sell on your store, so you must find products. You could make and sell your own products if you’re crafty, otherwise you’ll need to find something to buy and resell.
One of the best places to find wholesale products to buy and resell is at:
http://www.alibaba.com/
This website has over 2,000,000 suppliers to choose from, and you can search by category or keyword to find specific products. Just be aware that some suppliers are more reputable than others, and you must choose quality products.
Amazon aStores
Amazon also has a program for people who want to have their own online store but don’t want to deal with the hassles of buying stock upfront, dealing with inventory, packing and shipping, and handling customer service.
Amazon aStores allow you to create a simple online store, stock it, and put it online for people to buy products. You get paid a commission on sales just like any affiliate.
To get started, go here:
http://astore.amazon.com/
It’s extremely easy to set up an aStore, and you can create as many as you want with a single Amazon Associates account.
Here’s all it takes:
- Set up the basic design including colors and such.
- Add categories to your store.
- Choose and add products to the store from the Amazon.com catalog.
- Generate your aStore link and start promoting it.
It’s really that simple! It’s a very easy way to make money as an Amazon affiliate while still making it seem as though you have your very own store. This is especially good for bloggers and website owners, because you can brand the store to look similar to your site.
Final Words
Amazon has a number of extremely profitable programs that can make you a considerable amount of money. One of the main reasons these programs are so profitable is because they allow you to access the massive marketing potential of a site that already has tremendous customer loyalty and trust.
You simply cannot find this loyalty and trust in such quantities elsewhere, making Amazon one of the premier websites to partner with for business opportunities such as those listed above.
Choose one and get started today!