This is a series of reports that I will post each and every month summarising my progress. I’ll first mention the major events that may have happened within the month that could have made a difference in my earnings. I will also break down the sources of my income so that I can keep track of how each one is doing. Lastly, I’ll conclude with the most important things that I learned and what I have planned for the near future. I’d love to respond to any questions or comments that you may have. Thanks!
Important Goings On In December
Here are the import goings on this month:
Overview
December was an excellent month for my online business. With it being Christmas I knew that my sales would go up because it always does in November / December, but I wasn’t sure by how much. If you remember from my last income report I was only £120 from hitting my target of £3,000 per month by December 31st, 2016. As it happens this month turned out very well for me. This is what happened this month…
Work
Being completely honest I only did about 12 hours of work in all December. Most of my time was spent on Createspace books. Last month I said that my main goal was to get all of the Kindle books converted to Createspace books by the first week of December. Apart from 2 books, I succeeded in this goal. By the second week in December I had every single book that had been published on Kindle also had a Createspace version.
I did also release 2 more books and order and upload 4 more t-shirt designs. That was all I did. The problem was because I knew I was almost at my goal for the year I took my foot off the pedal and enjoyed life more.
Redbubble
I had an amazing month of Redbubble. I can’t believe how big of a jump this months income increased by. You’ll see just how much further down.
Kindle Publishing
My income from Kindle Publishing actually dropped this month by about $60. I was really surprised by this as I seem to remember that it went up last year. But that’s life (and online business), sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.
How Do I Make My Money Online?
The majority of the money I make online comes from Kindle Publishing. Some income also comes from Createspace, ACX and a small amount comes from selling print on demand T-shirts on sites like Merch By Amazon, Redbubble and Teespring. Plus some small affiliate earnings.
Kindle Publishing
This is my total from Kindle taken from the Book Report dashboard plugin for Kindle. It adds everything up into one nice figure.
Total from Kindle Publishing – $1195.33 (£973.11)
Createspace
Total from Createspace – $2886.60 (£2,348.95)
Note: I take this screenshot before the end of the day so I will get a few more sales as I get most during the night then get reported here. I don’t want to stay up until 5AM to take a screenshot.
ACX
Sold 98 audiobooks
Total from ACX – $162.12 (£132)
Note: This is an approximation as I do not know the exact amount until later on this month (20th). So I’ve made an approximation based on what I have been paid in the past.
Merch By Amazon (Redbubble, Teespring, etc)
Total from RedBubble – $920.96 (£750.10).
Total from Teepublic – $80 (£65.14).
Total from Teespring – $23.40 (£19.07).
Total from Zazzle – $0 (£0).
Note: I’ve only just started selling t-shirts I’ve not even been given access to Merch By Amazon yet. All my sales have come from Redbubble, Teepublic and Teespring.
Misc Income
$0 (£0).
Nothing at all. I’ve been doing some affiliate marketing so hopefully I start to make some income from that soon to add to this section.
Total for December 2016
$5262.56 (£4,288.37)
What’s Next?
Well that was a bananas month, wasn’t it? However don’t be under any illusions my income will drop again in January / February but hopefully, it will remain a lot higher than it was in November.
I’m going to give drop shipping a try starting this month and hope that I can build it up to the point where it is making me an extra £500 – £1000 a month to add to my other income streams.
If you have any questions please ask them below. Thanks for reading!
Well done,
how many designs do you have up on redbubble if you don’t mind answering?
Thanks Jim!
It’s fine I don’t mind answering. I have about 30 designs up on RedBubble at the moment.
Mind if I ask another question? How is January for you with Redbubble? And what kind of designs do you have up? Fancy illustration, text based design?… you killed it in december btw!
Hi Jim,
Yes, it’s fine. I just checked Redbubble and I made £470.93 from it between the 16th December and the 16th of January (Redbubble goes from either the 14th – 14th or the 16th – 16th of the month). So it dropped a bit but I’m not complaining.
My designs vary, to be honest. Some are text based and some have text plus a small design. I wouldn’t say any of my designs are fancy, but I do pay a graphic designer to do my designs for me. Even though I am a trained graphic designer myself I think it is better to pay someone who has experience doing t-shirt designs because generally speaking, they will do a much better job than I would be able to do mostly having experience designing websites and adverts.
Fiverr has some decent graphic designers if you are just getting started. I can even recommend a couple to you if you are struggling to find one.
Nah mate, I’ve gone from $5 to $65 to $95 in 3 months, wondering if I can ever get up to your level soon… I’m a illustrator, so I don’t really need help for designs. Seeing how you went from a few sales in the first few months to your big month in December, do you think it’s just a matter of time before sales increase or does it have to do more with niche selection and good designs… My designs are decent, some have even gathered $200+ in sales in other pod sites and whichever POD site i publish them on, they do sell… but would like to get up to 1k per month soon,
Niche selection & good designs are 90% of it in my opinion. The reason I had a jump in income is because I started getting better designs made. Also, it might be a good idea to focus on 1 or 2 niches. That’s what I do. I see other people just spamming designs on everything they can think of.
Great work! keep it up.
Thank you 🙂
So to make at least 1k on kindle publishing you would need to have 58 books written. I thought 1 book can make good sales. How many books you have for createspace? Is it worth the time to go through all the effort to have 58 books written just to make 1k? I thought you be making six figures from k money mastery. That would mean you need to make at least five figures per month.
Hi Chris, you don’t necessarily need 58 books to make over 1K per month. If you can do good keyword research and pick keywords that make around $100 per book you could make it from 9-10 books. About 10-15 of my books make me less than $20 per month. I’d also say about 10 of my books make 70-80% of my income.
1 book can make good sales but again it depends on the niche and keywords you choose. You will make a lot more from Createspace because that is where the real money is. I have about 50 books in CS at the moment. Like me you will probably make 80% of you sales from a few books and the rest will do ‘ok’.
Stefan who created K Money Mastery does make 6 figures per year ($10,000 per month) but he has over 100 books.
How many words and pages are your kindle books? Do you come up with an outline of content for the freelancer to write or does the freelancer come up with his own outline of content and then writes the book? There are topics we don’t know anything about but somehow I still see it being written.
Hi Chris,
My books are usually about 15,000 words which are roughly about 80-90 pages on kindle. But most publishers seem to do around 12,000 words.
I write a short outline of what the book will be about and give the writer a bullet pointed list of the topics I want covering. Most publishers don’t do this but I think they best way to get what you want is to tell the writer to avoid it being left up to chance.
I tell them that I want each bullet point to be the subject of a chapter.
I also say if there is any information they find interesting they are free to add it.
I’m not sure what you mean by the last sentence??
What I mean with the last sentence is that there are pen pal authors who write books that they have no knowledge or experience about. For example, I want a book written about Leptin Resistance but I’m not a doctor and I have no knowledge or experience about it. You hire a freelancer who writes a book about it. But the book isn’t written to the same level of expertise as a doctor. Buyers in Amazon are now quality conscious and can spot a book if it was written by a professional doctor who has knowledge and experience in the subject matter rather than someone who hired a freelancer for the sake of making money. I was listening to a podcast the other day and there was this person who was writing books in different topics which he had no knowledge or experience about. After the 1st year his sales eventually dried up because buyers in Amazon became more quality conscious with the book they buy and can spot if the book was written by someone who had knowledge or expertise in the subject being written rather than someone who hired a freelancer for the sake of making money.
Hi Chris,
I’ve been publishing books on Amazon for almost 2 years (23 months to be exact) and I make more money now than I ever have before. The writer of a book does not need to be an expert in the topics that he/she is writing about, they just need to know more than the person reading the book. Most people want to learn about a topic but do not want to spend hours searching through Google. They would rather pay $2.99, less than the price of a cup of coffee and be able to learn what they need to know in 1-2 hours by reading a short ebook.
It sounds like the person you are talking about was publishing crappy 10-page ebooks which a lot of people were doing when I first got into Kindle Publishing.
What I do is have a writer write the book. Then I proofread it myself. Then finally I pay another writer $30-$50 to proofread and edit it one final time.
As long as you either proofread your books yourself and/or get them proofread you will be fine.
Ok. Yes, you can make money on kindle but the quality of books being written does matter because it impacts your sales. Crappy books will not sell well. What topics do you write about? Do you focus on How to books? Nonfiction? If I want 100 books published how many topics would I need?
Hi, I publish mainly non-fiction but I also publish some fiction books. But I find fiction can be really hit and miss as far as sales go, one book can do really well and the next book will not sell at all.
Regarding how many topics for 100 books that is a very difficult question to answer because some niches will be bigger (and smaller) than others. But a good guide I would say is 4 topics under 4 pen names for each topic.
Can I ask how many books you’ve published up to now?
It’s been a while since I’ve been on your website. But to answer your questions, I’ve got a few books published since I just started with publishing Kindle books. I mostly sell physical products online but looking to expand into Kindle books as well..
Awesome good luck with your expansion 🙂
Hi Brendan,
Forgot to ask where do you find good cover book designers? Do you also include images on your ebooks or is it pure word text?