Forty Fifth Income Report – December 2016 ($104.37)

Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.

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My biggest takeaway in December 2016 was networking. I found in my journals traces of several calls with other authors, my readers, and guys from The Community.

But the calls were just a tip of an iceberg. I regularly visited a few Facebook groups and shared (and absorbed) some tips and tricks.

Most of those interactions were simply fun to have and didn’t change much, if anything, in my life. However, feeling a pulse of an online community happened to be extremely lucrative in at least one case.

Writing

I kept writing coaching messages, Quora answers, and broadcasts to my email lists — and nothing more. Well, it was enough to generate over 35,000 words, my 2nd result ever at that moment in time.

Guest Post

At the beginning of December, Dave Chesson published my guest post on Kindlepreneur. It went back and forth between us a couple times with some revisions before that.

Nothing significant happened as a result of that post. I guest post all too rarely to make a difference in my business. But the post was a pleasure to write, and I helped a few authors to start/improve their Amazon ad campaigns.

Sickness

In the middle of the month, I got sick for the first time since July 2013. I was healthy for so long that I reacted with disbelief. I hoped to be over my weakness within a day or two, and only when I got 39 degrees Celsius did I go to the doctor. Ironically, the next day, when I went to a doctor, was decisive. Anyway, I was sick for 5 days and much less productive than usual.

Lesson:

What got me into catching a flu? Sleep deprivation, I think. I was regularly sleeping less than six hours a night for about a week, and then I got sick.

Get enough sleep. This is Take Care of Yourself 101. My “enough” is at least 6.5 hours, preferably 7 to 7.5 hours a night. Most of the time when I get 7 hours of sleep, I can function optimally for the whole day.

Don’t take anyone else’s “enough” for yours. You have to experiment, track the amount of sleep, and journal to figure out what is the optimal amount for you.

Coaching and Revenues

I got a few more clients in December. I still did almost nothing to advertise my coaching practice. My clients were finding me via Coach.me.

Sometimes you are simply too good to be ignored. 😉

The trick with overpricing my paperbacks was still working, and I earned a few thousand dollars selling over 300 paperbacks. Timing was my ally. A lot of people visited Amazon in Christmas fever, and discounts on my books looked really attractive.

KDP Select

On 1st of December 2016, I read in an authors group on Facebook that Amazon changed the rules for advertisement, and now your books didn’t have to be in KDP Select to participate in the advertising program.

I immediately created three new ads for my three books that were out of Select.

In the same group, I found the advice to ask KDP support for cancelling my participation in KDP Select. I renewed subscription for my advertised books just a few days ago. If not for that advice, I would have had to wait three months before taking my books out of exclusivity on Amazon.

I very quickly discovered that Kindle Unlimited severely cannibalized book sales for my nonfiction books. My sales increased significantly practically overnight.

I shared that discovery in the authors group. That was my way to pay forward the priceless advice I got there.

Lesson:
You cannot plan the outcome of your networking efforts. It’s simply not possible without mystic powers. People are too unpredictable to force them in a way you prefer to cooperate with them.

As I’ve said, most of my networking efforts have no direct financial outcome. I was just nice to people and vice versa.

But this one visit in a FB authors group when I read about abolishing of restrictions for Amazon advertising, and the tip to ask KDP support for cancelling my books’ KDP Select subscription outside of the normal terms, paid off handsomely.

I could get my books back to other retailers (iTunes, Kobo, B&N, etc.). Well, this provided only a trickle of profits. Direct increase of my book sales on Amazon was more impactful.

Amazon Ads

I almost doubled the number of my advertising campaigns again. It was almost effortless. I used the keywords I researched for my previous books. It took me only several minutes to create a campaign for each of my books that were out of Select.

And I had seen immediate results. Three books – Master Your Time, From Shy to Hi, and A Personal Mission Statement – literally skyrocketed.

The initial surge of sales was temporary indeed, but then the sales stabilized on a new level. Books that were selling a few to several copies a month started selling a few copies a day.

I added more keywords to my existing campaigns and found more keywords on Amazon.

Plus, all of this took place in the most sales-friendly month of the year. Amazon ads gave more exposure to my books and increased sales ranks, which in effect brought even more exposure when my book covers landed on the first pages of bestselling rankings.

When the traffic on Amazon is lower, it’s not the case. You may be #1 in some good category, but if you have no method of sustaining the sales, this rank will drop like a stone.

Thanks to Amazon ads, my books kept doing well. I sold 989 Kindle copies and earned $1,539 – more than the overall cost of ads ($998).

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:
Amazon royalties: €525.59 ($551.87)
CreateSpace royalties: €1222.54 ($1283.67)
Coach.me fees: $171.47

Total: $2007.01

Costs:
$36.9, View From the Top Community fee
$29, Aweber fee
$20, InstaFreebie fee
$265, Business on Purpose mastermind
$194.93, royalties split with co-author
$1000.31, Amazon ads
$60, RA’s (RA = Real Assistant; my son 😉 ) remuneration
$254, Know Yourself like Your Success Depends on It audiobook production
$32, Know Yourself like Your Success Depends on It audiobook’s fee for uploading to ACX
$10.5, second-hand Office 2013 license

Total: $1902.64

Net Result: $104.37

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Previous Income Report: November 2016