I had the good fortune recently to have my brother publish a Kindle book on Amazon for the first time. In light of his endeavour, I can now report how simplistic it is to publish on Amazon (much easier than I reported in my prior article on self-publishing), and I’ll even give you a tip for how to get your cover page made professionally for next to nothing.
Additionally, I have been reading The Laptop Millionaire by Mark Anastasi, which delves into how to make a fortune with online marketing. I will get my hands dirty by actually testing out one of the book’s recommended sites by signing up and actually setting up shop as a seller.
Kindle Book Publishing? Easy as Pie
In one of my prior articles on Kindle publishing, I reported on how to publish based on the how-to official Kindle book. It recommended that you have some HTML know-how and subscribed a very specific way to make your table of contents.
Well, I’m delighted to tell you that all you need is the ability to type your document (preferably with no extra return spaces) and the ability to make a table of contents based on heading styles (and the adding of links to the table of contents). No HTML needed. You just take your formatted Word document (with Table of Contents) and load it up on the Kindle site as is. Shh! It’s our little secret.
As for your cover page, you get a professionally done cover for $5 on fiverr.com (link). That’s right. You heard it here. You can search under the tab for graphic design and peer at the book cover designer’s portfolio until you find the best fit. Some of the designers even claim a 24 hour turn-around time. You will likely need to supply a graphic image which you can purchase for cheap on sites such as istockphoto.com (link). Be certain, however, to ensure that the designer has good customer ratings, which are also available on the site.
A good video on how to make a Table of Contents is available on YouTube. To ensure that it allows hyperlinks, be sure to choose “insert table of contents” from the Table of Contents drop-down menu on the References tab and select “use hyperlinks” (at least, it is that easy in Microsoft 2007).
And did I fail to mention that a current trend is to write 30 page ebooks on a topic you are passionate about? They can be either non-fiction or short stories. Plus, the more books you write, the more money you make.
Easy as pie! Now go get some cover art, hire a cover designer for cheaper than five chocolate bars, and load up your writing for sale. Be sure to let The Voice Magazine know if you’ve turned a profit.
Wait! There’s more ways to benefit from fiverr.com.
Reading the book Laptop Millionaire proved enlightening. Some of the best ideas pertained to Fiverr.com, such as paying $5 for a Fiverr gig to promote your business or affiliate link through tweets, emails, Facebook, or other social media sites.
First, I’ll ensure you know what it means to be an affiliate. Affiliates sell certain products on sites such as Amazon or Clickbank through their own sales channels for a percentage of the price of the item. That means, you make a profit just by selling pre-existing products. Amazon or Clickbank will give you a link for that particular product, and the link will recognize you as the purveyor of that sale; meanwhile, your affiliate account with either Amazon or Clickbank gets credited. That means, you make money passively.
The Laptop Millionaire book encourages you to buy the Fiverr gigs that promote your blog on their social media sites. Your blog should contain the affiliate links (as by just listing your affiliate link in a tweet or other social media post can be hammered as spam ).
Fiverr can even serve as your gateway to profitable gigs.
Yet, a more creative way to make money off of Fiverr.com is to consider what you do well and what you can do in a small time frame, and post that service for sale on Fiverr.com. The services that Fiverr.com offer range from graphic design to computer programming/IT to editing services. Are you a fantastic writer? Offer to write every 500 words of a book or article for $5. A larger size book could add up in no time. Are you a gifted graphic designer who can craft a compelling cover in a matter of minutes? Make book covers for $5 a pop. Can you whip up a 3-page WordPress site in a less than ten minutes? Sell WordPress setup for $5 a gig. It’s that simple.
The Laptop Millionaire ensures you are aware of the profitability, of getting, say, even just 5 gigs a day. That is $25 a day, which adds up to extra monthly income of $750 or yearly income of $9,000. You will likely need to build up your Fiverr business with lots of good customer ratings in order to get higher exposure on the site.
I took the plunge.
To test the concept of Fiverr, I decided to set up an account. The process for getting started couldn’t be simpler. The set up site first offers you the anonymity of a username and password of your choosing. The site then allows you the option to set up a gig. In the gig set-up screen, you enter items such as a gig title, a cover photo (1100X260px), a gig gallery of images (if, say, you are designing book covers, you can load up 550X370px images of your artwork), tags (3 words or phrases), a description (totalling 120 words), the duration it will take you to complete the job (one day, two days, etc.), and instructions that you can customize for the purchaser. Voila! You are all set to go.
As I’m in the process for designing a cover photo, it will be a bit of time before I’m up-and-running on Fiverr. But, hey, nothing is stopping you from purchasing a Fiverr gig to design your Fiverr cover art. It’s a great way to cash in on services you do best in as little time as possible.
