well hello everyone and welcome to this
week's Wednesday webinar my name is Jay
Berkowitz and I'm the founder of
internet marketing cloud org and I'm
also the founder and CEO of ten golden
rules comm an internet marketing agency
I'm really excited to have brand Sampson
with us today
Brent you're there right I am here thank
you audio sounds great and Erica Barbosa
who manages internet marketing Club is
with us as well Erica how's your audio
today hello can you hear me okay
sounds great and hopefully slides are
good if you guys don't mind there's an
interface in the GoToWebinar and you can
just type in questions there and we're
going to use that for the question and
answer session at the end of Ben's
presentation if you could just let us
know if you can the audio is good the
slides look good just to confirm I'm
sure everything's working fine but let's
make sure and first I'm going to tell
you a little bit about our sponsor
because we're here today for the
internet marketing Club and this is just
an online networking group and if you
found out about this from maybe a tweet
from Brent or tweets for myself or Erica
the internet marketing Club is
completely free group to join and we
have I think somewhere around 2300 or
2400 members from all around the world
over 100 countries have come to internet
marketing Club and it's just a great
place to learn more about internet
marketing and network with a bunch of
folks who are interested in the same
things that we all are and I'm really
excited today to have Brent Sampson as
our guest speaker and this is book sell
your book on Amazon is probably number
one or two of all books that I've
recommended in the past three or four
years since I read read his book and I
normally go one step further and I if a
friend of mine has a need for a book I
will typically buy them the block so
brandeis I bought at least 15 or 20
copies of your book with you I'm very
welcome really great simple how-to guide
on publishing your book and promoting
your
an Amazon which of course is an awesome
important place to sell your book and
it's just so well written and so crisp
and clean and you guys are going to get
all that once Brent presents but I just
wanted to share that you know really
really I'm very excited and I don't
always say that and I personally
recruited Britt for several months so
thank you so much for doing this
and I'm really excited to see this
presentation a little bit more about
Brent he's the founder CEO and CMO of
outskirts press which is a custom full
server
Shing and marketing firm they've
published over 7,000 books and they are
an ink thousand fastest growing private
company three years in a row so
congratulations on that that's awesome
as well thank you we just heard about
that last one and it was very exciting
for all of us thank you so I'm sure
you're gonna tell us a lot more about
your company as well as giving us great
tips and oh I forgot he's also published
two other books but I'm such a big fan
self-publishing simplified and
adventures in publishing and of course
the book that really turned me on to
this whole area because I have my book
the tingled rules online marketing is
available on Amazon so with that I think
we'll turn things over to Brent and
Erica and thank you for doing this and I
look forward to seeing the presentation
great Thank You Jay and Brent you should
have the controls in just a moment okay
great we can see your screen how's that
look can I minimize that so it doesn't
get in the way yeah your your spines up
great yeah don't don't click the actor
click the little arrow the X lug joke so
click the arrow it makes it small how
about that perfect okay so the slides
look good everybody can hear me I will
start talking about Amazon I'm excited
to be here and talking about it today
published this book sell your book on
Amazon in 2007 and it's been a lot for
our business and for authors in general
it's also basically an exercise in what
I'm going to be talking about today
which is writing a book in the Amazon to
promote the book although it's okay if
you haven't written a book or don't plan
on writing a book amazon is a great
platform to promote you if you're a
speaker it's also a great platform to
promote your business regardless of
whether your business is involved in
selling products or whether it's
involved in snowin services so just in
general amazon offers a lot of tools
that you can use to promote you your
book and your business and we're going
to talk about all of those over the next
50 minutes or so it's going to be a fast
50 minutes jay did a wonderful
introduction to me so I don't have to go
too much more into that I'm the first
question and actually it's more a
rhetorical question at this point is why
would you want to focus on Amazon so I
just found this chart really quickly to
demonstrate Amazon's net sales growth
there are two hundred forty percent
their rate of return over the past two
consecutive years and basically that's
probably telling everyone what they
already know which is Amazon gets a lot
of traffic they've got a lot of business
as companies like borders go out of
business a lot of those consumers are
starting to migrate toward Amazon we're
about to get into a generation where
everybody who's been in the 20s and 30s
they're starting to not know a world
that hasn't had the Internet and soon
we're going to run into people who have
never known a world without Amazon more
and more books are purchased from Amazon
but why Amazon is really exciting is
even if people aren't planning on
purchasing purchasing a book or a
product from Amazon they very often use
Amazon as a source of information they
research a product that going to
purchase from Amazon even if they plan
on going elsewhere to actually make the
purchase and that's really great for you
as we talk about how we can use Amazon
to sell you or your book or your product
because they're going to Amazon to find
an expert find information find an
expertise and what topic they're
interested in we're going to talk today
about how we can make you that
person with that content and then they
may go to your website or to your
Facebook page or to your blog to
actually learn more about you and start
that relationship so they have just a
little bit of time 15 minutes is pretty
fast to cover all that I could talk
about on Amazon I boil this down to
three key points that I'm going to talk
about today we're going to talk about
how to establish your presence on Amazon
we're going to talk about how to
establish your content on Amazon and
what that content looks like different
variety of forms and we're going to talk
about establishing your expertise and
what we will discover is we talked about
these three steps is how they really
they cycle upon each other it becomes a
full circle and once you've established
your expertise you'll see how the steps
of the foundation that you laid at the
beginning of this process when you were
establishing your presence how important
that was because your expertise is going
to feed back into your presence and
that's really what's going to cause
people to go elsewhere actually what you
want to do is motivate them ultimately
to leave Amazon right the way you
motivate them to leave Amazon is you
give them what they want you convince
them that you're the person to deliver
what they want and then they find you
elsewhere whether it's on your own
website with your own domain name or
whether it's on your blog or even at
your physical brick-and-mortar store and
that's how you're starting to turn the
marketing tactics that we're going to
talk about today into what we really
really care about which is dollars right
we want to we want to grow our business
we want to sell our services our product
okay so let's boil down a little bit
more into the steps involved in
establishing your presence on Amazon
we're going to talk about the user
profile that Amazon creates for you and
then you just need to fill it out and
we're going to talk about the author
central profile and it doesn't really
matter whether or not you have a book
yet I'm gonna try to convince you at a
value of writing a book even if it's
just an electronic book through the
Kindle if you sell a service or sell a
product
believe me you have the information in
your head that will make a valuable book
whether it's a Kindle book or a
paperback because other people are going
to be looking for the information you
have whether it's a how-to guide or a
self-help guide or a how to get divorced
how to get out of a DUI how to get out
of a speeding ticket how to hook up your
sound system anything that you sell
whether it's a product or service can be
turned into a helpful guide and once you
have that guide you want to publish it
on Amazon and a lot of these steps will
start to help you find more business and
more customers the minute you have that
book but even if you don't plan on doing
that I'm going to talk to you about why
it's valuable to create an author
central profile ok let's talk first
about the user profile which is this
screenshot here this is a screenshot
from my user profile and I'm going to go
to the next slide here I think this
one's loaded already let's go to the
next one where I see circle a couple of
the key elements of this same slide
you'll see a couple of circles in here
let's talk about the very very top
circle which is in that subheading of
choices along the top and the little
text links the second one from the right
is the circle text link that says your
profile and this is how you can create
your own profile once you've logged into
Amazon as a consumer as a shopper that's
actually a third account that Amazon
creates for you not necessarily a
profile per se but it's just an account
hooked up to your in your email and your
credit card information when you
purchase anything from Amazon now let me
just quickly say that if you've never
purchased anything from Amazon you might
be attending the wrong webinar so maybe
they'll buy something really quick
you'll need to buy something from Amazon
to do any of this stuff amazon needs to
know who you are as a individual and as
a human being
and one of the ways that it validates
your true identity is by getting a
credit card from you when you make that
purchase that way you don't have
multiple accounts and can't start to
abuse some of the tools that I'm going
to talk to you about once you have an
account
you can get to your profile from any
other profile on Amazon and you do that
by clicking on that link once you're on
your own profile here you'll see this
second circular button along the right
upper corner of this screenshot that
you're looking at now it says edit your
profile when you click on that button
you'll get a series of forms on your
Amazon profile screen that you can fill
out and this is really how you customize
your own user profile on Amazon now on
the same screen let's go look over to
the right where I've circled Brent
Sampson and I've also circled a little
subheading that I've put under my name I
didn't necessarily have control over of
my name brent samson and amazon puts
that for me when i buy something look at
my identity when i purchase something
with a credit card but i do have control
over the little subheading what i call a
signature or a headline for my identity
on amazon and in this case I put CEO of
outskirts press com
now for those of you who have another
website that you're looking to try to
drive traffic to you might already get
kind of stars in your eyes but the
opportunity that this prevents it's
really an opportunity for you to take
all of the millions of consumers and
visitors that are going to Amazon and
put your domain name in front of them
without having to worry about
pay-per-click advertising on Google or
even search engine optimization you have
a very specific level of control over
what you put into this field now I had
to space it out in order to get over
some of Amazon's filters to prevent you
from doing that but this is pretty clear
what it's doing here and it's a way to
get your domain name in front of a lot
of people and we're not just talking
about one city here we're also talking
about quality because I'm going to talk
about ways that you actually target and
specifically locate the people on Amazon
who you want as customers and we'll talk
about that when we start talking about
the content that you're going to put and
then the establishment of your expertise
kind of roll our eyes down along the
left hand column of this screenshot a
little bit more and you'll see the
author you'll see the photograph of me
and this is a great place for you to
start establishing a brand identity this
is a boring headshot of me in a suit but
that's okay you know it establishes
prophetic professionalism it establishes
some credibility and some
tee's that i'm trying to personify
through this picture and you immediately
get maybe a little bit more of a high
caliber kind of expectation from me here
than if I were standing in my backyard
you know with Sun glinting off one side
of my face and I'm wearing a baseball
cap I'm a little bit unkempt so I would
recommend and encourage to you to get a
professional shot done and then start to
use that same professional shot everyone
branding whether it be on your own
website or on Amazon on your profiles
and as we go through these screenshots
you'll start to see that face of me of
mine follow us around and and that's
good that means that's a brand identity
that I'm starting to create underneath
that caption that photograph is a
caption brent samson president CEO of
efforts press incorporated now this
means that this is a different piece of
information that i also have control
over in this particular case it's it's
pretty much repetitive from the headline
that i put above my name but the fact
that the wording is a little bit
different demonstrates to you that you
can actually put two different pieces of
information there you can use lend to
promote your domain name whether it be
to a website or to your facebook page or
whatever you're trying to promote and
then in the second smaller caption you
can create something that establishes a
little bit more expertise a little bit
more credibility indicates what your
qualifications are what have you and
that's what i've done here if you follow
down to this last circular section
you'll see where the location is of our
company and also you'll see something
that's very powerful and that is an
actual domain name which links out of
amazon to the company or the
organization that you're trying to
promote that you're trying to market on
amazon then people can click on that
when they come to this profile page and
then click out of amazon to a place
where you're doing business where you're
collecting money if you've created an
e-commerce site or where you're selling
something and that's really powerful so
then the trick obviously is getting
people to view this user profile and
we'll talk about that throughout the
course of this call okay the second way
you establish your presence is through
an author central profile and you do
that at amazon
komm slash authors and again even if you
are not planning on publishing a book
although you should you should set up
this author profile section and the main
reason is because it creates a way for
you to have a website a web page that's
hosted by Amazon it's free it's dynamic
you can hook your blog and your tweet
and Twitter on it I'm going to talk
about how you can do that right once
you've logged into an author central
profile accounts you've created that
account you'll see a page that looks
roughly like this little screenshot from
mine it has some tabs along the top you
can see that the books tab is
highlighted and it shows the books by
Brent Sampson are these ones that are
listed here you'll also see that little
orange ish yellowish button there that
says add more books as you publish a
book whether it be a paperback or
hardback or a kindle edition you'll come
into your author central account through
this functionality here through that
link that I just provided to you and
you'll add that book to your
bibliography and it will appear here and
in that manner you'll start to establish
an author presence on Amazon there's a
whole other functionality which we will
talk to talk about when we add content
to Amazon called sell on Amazon or the
marketplace or seller central they're
known under a variety of terms and they
do slightly different things but they
allow you to sell products on Amazon and
once you create one of those accounts a
sell on Amazon account you have roughly
the same level of functionality and
customization to create a selling
profile on Amazon that you do here when
you're selling books it just as a matter
of user then creating your inventory
you're uploading image shots of the
products you're selling whether they be
TV TVs or blu-ray disc players or
whether whatever it is that you
personally sell and if you're selling a
service you know the best way to have
products associated with your service is
a series of how-to manuals and books and
that's really how you sell we do it
outskirts press service of publishing so
I've written a series of book that I can
put on Amazon so that they can
those services through account that
Amazon offers like this one okay let's
look at the next screen here which is
just one button over still on the author
central profile page this is where you
can fill out your profile on your author
central account now this information is
different from the information we filled
out on the user profile on Amazon this
is going to be more specifically geared
toward a writing but it doesn't have to
be since you have full control over the
content here
you can see here where I circle the
visit Amazon's Brent Sampson page and
I'll show you what that looks like in a
second but directly below that you'll
see this section called Dib biography
and you can edit this biography and put
in content that's geared towards selling
you your book or your business you want
to put in some benefit statements you
want to put in a call to action and you
want to put in some motivation for the
consumer or the reader you know your
hopefully future customer to go
elsewhere and do business with you so
they're seeing some reasons why they
might want to do business with me and
then I end with to watch a video receive
a free ebook and learn the top 7
self-publishing must-haves
visit have scripts press comm slash
self-publishing dot HTML so I've given
them a mechanism a very specific link
that they can cut and paste into their
browser and go get that free stuff so
hopefully that's compelling the people
who visit my author central web page to
learn more about self publishing so you
would want to do that and in people
toward your page whether it be Facebook
or what-have-you
directly below that circled section you
can see where I picked up my blog feed
that's automatic every time I update my
blog through WordPress it's going to put
a feed on to my Amazon page and then in
the lower left
I'm sorry lower right-hand corner it
also does the same thing with my Twitter
feed every time I tweet a new hundred
and forty characters on Twitter it's
going to populate this so you'll see
that section here so what does the
author web page look like on Amazon well
it looks like this okay so this is a
specific way
that Amazon makes available for its
authors so once you've filled out all of
the sections on that Amazon author
central page that we just went through
by filling out your biography or
bibliography your RSS feeds for your
blog or your tweet the page will start
to be populated in a manner like this
and then when people come to this page
they'll learn about you they'll get your
benefit statements they'll see where
they can go outside of Amazon to conduct
business with you you won't have to
worry about updating this page through
tweets them through blogs because the
RSS feeds are going to do that
automatically it's also going to take
all of the books that you've written and
hopefully you're building upon them
through the Kindle digital platform
which I'll talk about in a second you're
adding your content to Amazon it's
automatically adding itself to this as
well every time you add maybe a
different edition book you just quickly
add it to this page and your
bibliography of content starts to grow
now you may ask how do people feed this
page well I will show you in a second
okay
so we've now done the two main step of
establishing your presence on Amazon
which was filling out your user profile
primarily your signature or your
headline that's where it identifies you
by name and then also says who you are
or what you're about if you've written a
book you can say the title of your book
and I'll give you some real-world
examples of exactly what that looks like
on Amazon and how you can see the
benefit okay next we're talking about
establishing your content on Amazon
we're gonna leave some time for
questions at the end so I'm gonna try to
go fast with you as much content and
information as I can and then if we have
questions at the end I will be happy to
answer those here we are establishing
your content we're going to talk about
specifically three ways to do that the
kindle a paperback book and then also
products now if you have a
service-oriented business whether it's
search engine optimization or you know
you're an attorney or a speaker anything
like that the best way to put it
a product on the Amazon that sells that
is by writing something a how-to manual
or a book and then publishing it and
then using Amazon as a platform to not
only sell that product in the form of a
book but to also establish your own
expertise in that field whatever that
field is now Amazon sells way more than
books nowadays it sells electronics and
computer games and DVDs and all kinds of
variety of things so if you're also in
the product oriented business consumer
consumer or business to business
industry Amazon is a great way to add
content to your profile in the form of
your own inventory and then you can
actually sell directly from Amazon and
the trick then is to making sure that
you're not competing with yourself and
there are ways to do that ok let's talk
about that first step there which was
establishing your content on Amazon
publishing a Kindle edition of your book
I presume that we all know what the
Kindle edition --dl though is it's there
ebook reading device and they're saying
that now the e-book editions sold to the
Kindle are outnumbering paperback
editions but one of the primary reasons
that's the case statistically if it is
the case is because the Kindle edition
versions of those books are you know in
a lot of cases free or $0.99 the trick
then is to realize that when you are
creating content for the Kindle unless
you're some of these rare case scenarios
that Amazon loves advertising and
promoting they're successful you're more
than likely not going to make your money
from the actual sell of the Kindle
edition you might you know 70 cents on
the dollar isn't too bad of a profit
margin it's pretty good but what you're
really trying to do is use the Kindle
edition as a for lack of a better word a
brochure it's a very subtle brochure
toward the service or the product that
you really make money on okay so in
order to publish a Kindle edition first
you have to write something and of
course now with ghostwriters you don't
even have to do that I'll just press
offers ghostwriting services you can do
a Google search for Ghost Rider
and you
throw them your notes or your own you
know employee manual or your own how-to
guide from your own company and say hey
can you write me you know 100 page
kindle book real quick you'll have to
write a check but at least you won't
have to write the book you know ghost
writing is not inexpensive but for those
of us who have way better things to do
sometimes it's a really viable option
and then once you have the content then
have to publish it and this is where you
go to do that on the go-to KDP which
stands for Kindle direct publishing dot
amazon.com and you start to create an
Amazon Kindle account can upload that
content directly into it there's a
number of different formats that Kindle
accepts some of them look better than
others so you want to play around with
that and then you start to open up the
distribution outlets on Amazon indicate
what your retail price is and do all of
that legal stuff that Amazon is going to
require it's an online form it's a
little bit daunting when you first see
it but you just go step by step
they're also services that do the Kindle
esthetician publishing process
completely for you also if you're
interested in that okay
the next way to establish your content
is to publishing a hardback or a
paperback book and I've labeled this
slide establish your content paperback
number one not because we're going to
talk about multiple paperbacks but
because this particular screen on Amazon
is so long vertically that I had to cut
it into chunks in order to put them on
to the PowerPoint presentation in a
manner where it was still legible so
this is the top portion of a page of a
screen shot that I'm going to talk about
for one of my books called
self-publishing simplified and I've
circled a number of different areas of
this page now anytime you put a product
whether it be a book or a TV on the
Amazon you're going to get a detailed
sales page which is what I'll call this
here where the product is shown if
you've provided a screen shot for it and
books when they distribute through
Amazon their cover will usually appear
on it otherwise you have a product shot
of a TV that's going to appear in this
left corner here along with what the
device or the book is called its title
which I've circled in red here along
with some reviews and the pricing
and the availability and stop all of
this stuff if you're familiar with
Amazon at all this of course is the page
that you see the most as you browse
through products now I've circled the
title because the title represents one
of the greatest opportunities for
marketing anything on Amazon and that's
making sure that it is keyword intensive
right so I wrote a book in order to do
exactly what I'm talking about today
which is in order to sell a real service
I don't make any money when this book
sells its $5.95 on Amazon which is a
very low retail price on Amazon so I
think maybe we make a quarter but the
purpose of the book is to sell our
services you know to help others
understand how they can publish and
market books through outskirts prep so
when you write a book to sell your
service or your product that's your goal
also I wouldn't recommend thinking of
this particular book as a means to make
money through the book the means
actually is to make the price of this
particular book as low as possible so
that you don't lose money you break even
so that people buy it and then they get
the information that you're giving to
them and the benefit of that information
causes them to look deeper into doing
business with you and then that's where
you really start to make some money is
to your your real source of income
titling this book is very important you
want to make sure that whatever they're
typing into the Amazon search engine or
into Google events and so many products
from Amazon show up on Google because of
their page ranking that the keyword is
going to target those cuts of customers
those potential consumers that are most
valuable to you okay all right you also
see another circle down directly below
the cover which are interior images and
now of knowing going forward that you're
creating a book which needs to have
multiple thumbnails you want to create a
couple of eye catching graphics or pie
charts something that sells what you're
selling visually you know I'm in the
middle of writing another book called
people don't read anymore but how to
publish how to market and sell for them
anyway and it's true in the Internet age
people are browsers people are surf
people watch things or take information
visually much more more than just
reading information so even if you're
reading if you're selling something like
that has them read something you went
there to be a lot of visual information
pie charts graphs videos things of that
nature
so make sure that your book has that
information in it and then when people
click on the fun pie chart the pie chart
can communicate your selling proposition
you know your unique selling proposition
or your competitive advantage may be
much faster than the actual book maybe
they don't even buy your book on Amazon
that's okay the purpose is to get them
to do business with you so maybe they
find out information enough compelling
information from just looking at this
detail page that they click on the
author like click on Brent Sampson and
where do you think they go when they
click on Brent's pants in my case they
go to that Amazon author page where I
had benefits about my company benefits
about my books and that link that takes
them outside to the company I'm trying
to drive them to write so when you have
your link the same thing happens after
you've established your presence on
Amazon when you start to add your
content to Amazon it ties back to your
presence and people go and do business
with you off of Amazon that's the point
okay establish your content paperback
number two we're still on the same paper
back this is screenshot number two this
is the same page I've just scrolled
vertically if we were on Amazon I would
have just scrolled down a little bit and
you can see this next section which that
circled which is more about the author
there's that page there's that
photograph again of me right it's
following us all over and that's good
people are going to start to associate
that with information and in in detailed
content about publishing and marketing
books and there's a link visit amazon's
brent sampson page and it goes to that
page that we created which hopefully is
compelling enough to my potential
customers that they're then going to
want to do business with us people like
doing business with knowledgeable
experts in particular fields that's a
way to start to establish some trust and
credibility and create
relationships and that's the cornerstone
of all the sales of products and
services ok this next screenshot is
still further down on the same page I
said this was a long page on Amazon it
is the detail page for all products is
pretty long so if you keep scrolling
down below where we just were you get to
a section called tags customers
associate with this product and you'll
see here that this whole section is
circled but I've also circled an
interior we're just one word self
publishing now that's the same keyword
that I use to title my book no matter
what you sell when you title your
product and you title your book if we
were selling a product or a service get
your keyword into the title and then
also tag that product or book with the
same keyword and then also similar
keywords that are applicable right here
publishing prints on demand all of these
applicable keywords that either I added
or people who have come upon this book
have added right now what's the value of
that well Amazon has lots of forums and
we'll talk a little bit about forums
later on when we start talking about
establishing your expertise but let's
look really quickly at a screenshot from
what happens when you click on that self
publishing tag link you get to a page
here that's organized by popularity
these are the products or books that are
organized based on popularity that have
that self publishing tag okay you can
see that the product in this case it's a
book that we're talking about is
appearing on page one of this self
publishing tag keyword now what is nice
about this is it takes millions and
millions of competitors with millions of
products so they could have done
amazon's that are all trying to get
eyeballs and consumers and dollars and
it's really narrowed it down with sniper
like precision to the people who only
care about self-publishing now for those
people those are really high leads for
me and for your business if you're an
attorney
and you've written a book about divorce
law or about how to keep the house or
how to keep the children or whatever you
know your specific forte is you want to
target down to that specific target and
that way you're not competing against me
your book won't show up on this list but
what it will do is it will show up on
page one of your tags which is what you
want to do and actually if you look
closer at this key at this page you'll
notice that I have two other books also
appearing on the first page under the
same tag and that's really the beautiful
thing about print-on-demand publishing
and Kindle publishing nowadays is
there's a very low barrier to entry to
publishing books and then marketing them
the hardest part and I was writing the
book and maybe that's always been the
hardest part although maybe not used to
be publishing was the hardest part now
you get multiple versions of content
geared just very slightly differently
toward different people and you can
really start to broaden the whole
content spectrum that you have on Amazon
I have a book geared toward marketing I
have a book geared toward children's
publishing book geared toward
black-and-white fiction and nonfiction
publishing but for people who are
interested in self-publishing three of
them are showing up here under this tag
they start looking more and more into
this right ok so that's the trick and
exactly the tactics that I want you to
take for your book for your products to
drive business to your content ok let's
get back to this page this is a screen
we've already seen this is the more
about the author page and then it goes
down to these reviews now you can
establish a lot of content by writing
reviews for products and for books on
Amazon and I write about this quite
extensively in in my book sell your book
on Amazon which is looking for what I
call your competitive circle you want to
find those products or those books or
those authors or professionals who you
are in direct competition with and the
purpose here is not the bad-mouthed
hammer to belittle them no the purpose
here is to well for lack of a better
word piggyback upon whatever success
they're having write because the more
you kind of can associate or at least be
in the same room with you know in my
case the Dan pointers and John Kramer's
of the world
my seth godin zuv the world and then the
more people who are learning about them
they have a much higher percentage or
ratio of appearances and people are
finding them much more readily than they
are you or me then if I've put my finger
into their pool people will stumble
across me my content my person my
presence on Amazon or your presence on
Amazon in your case and then they'll
start to fun to do business with you to
you you you put yourself into the room
right you're at the party now you're
trying to go up and introduce yourself
to the customer and that's what these
pages do they allow you to do that
electronically well a review is a way
for you to introduce yourself you write
a helpful
articulate professional diplomatic
content filled review for your
competitors information and it says who
it's by
well that byline is exactly what we
filled out on our author profile and on
our user profile page right we're going
to talk about that a little bit more
when we talk about establishing your
expertise which is almost next now the
last section of establishing your
content is selling on Amazon and that's
not referring to my book although the
title is similar now this is referring
to selling products on Amazon this is
two screenshots captures actually all
kind of sharing the same space here this
one in the background is the very bottom
of every Amazon page it's the footer
that Amazon currently has and in the
second column here it has a headline
called make money with us well that
sounds great right and the very first
link under the make money with us column
a spell on Amazon and when you click on
that you open up the Amazon services
portal here where you can create an
account to sell your stuff right you're
either selling less than 40 items a
month or you're selling more than 40
items a month and then you open up the
applicable account and that's where you
can start to sell your own
on Amazon in that one how I've hopefully
demonstrated through just an example of
a book the same tactics and that same
detail page holds true when you have any
product on Amazon you want to use the
same tactics of driving those people to
your content and then having that
content information drive people to do
business with you and they find out how
to do business with you by going to your
Europe your user profiles which have
links outside of Amazon to your business
okay so we've established our presence
and we've established our content so the
last thing we need to do is we need to
establish expertise there are a number
of ways to do that on Amazon there's
more ways than this but for sake of
brevity we're just going to touch upon
these four items there's five bullet
points there becomes ones that repeat
and that's because I want to demonstrate
the full circular nature of these three
steps they build upon each other you
don't do it doesn't really matter which
one you start at actually kind of go in
a circle and do step one step two step
three around and around and around
that's what I call the virtuous circle
in my book talk about Amazon's forums
first which is this screenshot that
we've already seen we talked about tags
already and you saw the benefit of when
clicking on that self publishing going
to three screenshots in three different
books of mine but down here lower there
are customer discussions this product
forum and I created a discussion called
five tips for catching errors in your
manuscript so this is a way that you can
start to establish your expertise on
Amazon is you can piggyback upon your
own products detail pages by opening a
discussion you can also do this from
your competitors detail pages by opening
a discussion perhaps those pages are
getting more viewers and more eyeballs
than yours that's okay open a discussion
in that page if it's related and
applicable Amazon will populate that
discussion across multiple products and
services as you see here right directly
below active discussions in related
forums so this is what Amazon determines
are related to the content of my
particular book your forums are going to
be different but the concept is
is the same you want to start to
participate in these forums have
discussions with people who are actively
engaged in the community okay it's not a
shotgun blast this is a sniper precision
toward potential customers who have
searched for your content your services
your product they're starting to
establish your expertise in that arena
by participating on Amazon in this
manner okay
okay this next shot is one we've already
seen too but I told you I was going to
talk a little bit more about product
reviews and really the benefit of
writing a review in association with the
signature or the headline file that we
talked about at the very beginning of
this webinar let me switch to the very
next slide I just put a kind of a cut
and paste graphic over this reader
review with an arrow pointing out what a
review that I've written looks like and
I've drawn where it would appear so you
can see when you write a review and
you've established your signature
headline in a manner that promotes
whatever it is you're trying to promote
everywhere that you write a review it's
Amazon is going to promote whatever it
is you're trying to promote so in the
case I'm promoting outstretched press
com also indicating my qualifications
for that by stating my position you may
want to see the author of and then put
the title of your book there or you
might have might want to be the owner
and founder of some other domain name
whatever it is whatever you're selling
you may want to be an established
attorney or a speak motivational speaker
whatever it is you put that information
in there and everywhere you interact
with Amazon that headline signature
follows you around
now here's really one of the most
beautiful parts about this is you will
notice that I wrote this review
beautiful unique artwork I wrote that
review on October 24th 2007 well I can
tell you that I'm on October 24 2007
Bren Samson CEO of Oscars press com
wasn't the signature file that I was
using at the time I had something else
in there
but the review stays I can go into my
user profile and I can change the
sections of something else and Amazon
dynamically updates everywhere that it
appears well that Annelle allows me to
do what's called a be testing right I
can start to do a/b tests on what the
most effective signature headline on
Amazon is and the way I do that is I
change it on my user profile on my
content everywhere all my reviews that
all stays the same and I can see for a
month perhaps how much business or how
much money I make based on signature
file a and then the next month I can
change that just to my user profile all
the content is the same all my reviews
stay the same but I change just these
seven words or six words right and I put
it to something else and that's my B
test and if I make more money or I get
more customers than I know that my B
test that wording is better than my a
test right and then I have a new
baseline and then I tested see I touched
it again right a B testing probably
something we're familiar with
well Amazon makes that really easy to do
by dynamically updating this but just
you can see where it's really beneficial
to put information actually sell
something in this headline right here
when people click on that they go
straight to my user profile where they
see the benefit statement they see
information about me they see all the
reviews I've written but they also see
most importantly that link to my website
right you want them to see that link to
your website get off of Amazon go do
business with you that's what you want
them to do ok let's talk really quickly
about the your profile again we've
already seen this page with the circled
your profile where you get to it right
when you click on anybody's review for
instance you'll come to their page that
looks like this their profile page some
are more filled out than others but to
get to yours you just click that your
profile link right you can learn about
them through all of these things that I
talked about most importantly the
outskirts press com
you can also see what they've
contributed the reviews they've written
the list menu lists the guides they've
done and we're going to
talk about this next because list mania
lists and guides are the next way that
you can establish your expertise on
Amazon this mania list really are like
top 10 lists or top 50 list or some
number of lists that identify products
that you think are going to be of use to
other people so you want to establish a
list of products or books that you feel
will be beneficial to your potential
customers and you create a list for it
you create a list mania list and you
want to pick books or products that are
popular because lists that you create
will then appear on the detail pages for
the popular products sure you might want
to throw in one of your books too but
the point here is to throw in popular
books or popular products that
everybody's seen so that statistically
you have a better chance of showing up
on those detailed pages people will
click through because they want to find
top three books on self-publishing this
is just an example of a list that I
wrote really quickly you would want to
have a much more comprehensive and much
more compelling title and a much more
compelling list than them but the
concept is the same which is getting all
of these products that are associated
with yours you're dropping yours in
there sure but the goal really is to get
people to read your list click on who
wrote it and get to this page and get to
this right here write the domain name
where you want them to go you're
establishing some trust and a
relationship with these people and then
as a result of that they're going to
want to do business with you right the
next tab over under contributions is the
guides slightly same concept although
this really is more comprehensive in
terms of its content if you've written
an article it's not quite long enough to
publish a Kindle edition really Kindle
edition maybe as the compliation of 10
or 20 articles that you've started to
write but if you're writing articles for
your business and a lot of you as
internet marketers probably are you know
the value of doing that then you publish
those articles as guides on Amazon and
you drop in associated books or products
into that guide also so that your
it appears on the Associated detail
pages for those books or products that
you mentioned in your guide the result
being people who are learning or
researching content or your product and
looking at some of your competitors too
will come across your guide they'll read
your guide to learn about you they may
see you dropping your product in - that
guy - that's okay but then they'll find
ultimately about you and they'll want to
learn more about your service by coming
back to here so this is an example of a
guide I wrote as an example so you'd
like to publish your book I didn't have
any control over the so you'd like to
part that's what Amazon puts there so
the name of my guide let's publish your
book but you'll see right below it a
guide by my name and that's signature
that same scheme of outskirts press com
that you want to have follow we knew
around this is where you can put in that
and then alternate it with a be testing
see what best right here's the guide
that you write it's an article you write
it drops products in there this guide
appears on all of these detail pages
from time to time so people who are
looking at writers market publishing
their book traditionally they're going
to run into me and my services about how
you can self publish your book and keep
way more of the money right and then way
over here on the right upper hand column
I've circled the about this guide
section right that face keeps following
us around right all of that good good
way of branding yourself establishing
your expertise in your topic or your
business okay you may ask how to create
your list mania or so you'd like to
guides and that's what this screenshot
does this is the same screen from the
detail page for the book we were talking
about before we've just scrolled down a
little bit further below customer
discussions to a list mania section
nearly every product on Amazon has a
with mania section right here right at
the very bottom of the list mania
section is a link that says create it
list mania list and that's where you
list mania guys with mania list directly
below that is a so you'd like to where
you see the guides section and directly
below three guides you'll see another
link that says create your own guide
that's how you create the list name
list and also you'd like to guide okay
so just like that we have established
presence established content and
established expertise Jay did a good job
of talking about the books I'm not going
to talk too much more about that
although I will mention that you can
save 10% on it by going to our website
at outskirts press comm flash bookstore
it's easy enough do a search for sale
your book on Amazon you can buy it we
sell all our authors books at ten
percent to fifty five percent off
directly from us and the author still
makes 100 percent of their royalty which
is great another resource just really
quickly that I want to talk about don't
want to do that is this which is the
Amazon extreme package we offer these
services that I've talked about in
detail as a convenience you know will
create the Amazon Kindle for you will do
that search inside if you have a
paperback on Amazon will establish your
keywords and will actually throw in a
free paperback copy of this book you can
save 25% on that off all a cart pricing
you go to outskirts press calm slash P
flashes string of course I'd be remiss
if I didn't mention just in general that
we help writers and professionals write
publish and market their books
regardless of what stage they're in or
even regardless of where they're
planning on publishing and outskirts
press calm I think I've left time for
questions okay great well thank you so
much for that Brendon a lot of great
content and we'll just go ahead and jump
right into the questions now so we can
get to as many questions as possible so
the first question is from Gustavo and
he'd an ISBN number and if so power how
do you go about on obtaining that number
that depends what type of content you're
trying to sell on Amazon if you're just
selling a Kindle edition of your book on
Amazon they do not require an ISBN they
will assign what they call an AI FN
number which is an Amazon identification
number so they'll do that for you if
you're planning on selling a paperback
book whatever publisher you choose
willeth an ISBN for you or you can get
your own ISBN from the ISBN entity in
the United States which is
Pal curse you can get is be ends either
individually or in blocks off as little
as 10 we have a private-label is beyond
service without skirts press that you
can go to outskirts press comm and click
on the writing tab and you can get your
own private label ISBN which is
registered to you so you're the
publisher of record and it's actually
cheaper thrust and through powder so the
short answer is it depends what you
publish the long answer is I'd certainly
always get an ISBN it will help you have
the most flexibility for your book the
next question is from Ana and on it
asked if you could clarify again what
was the first section that you mentioned
where you create an Amazon profile and
not the author central yep so you create
a useful file on Amazon by going to any
product on amethyst waiting for you
would create your own so first teen add
Harry Potter you scroll down to the
reviews of Harry Potter you click on one
of the blue links for anybody who's
written a review for Harry Potter and it
will take you once you click on that
link of reviewer it will take their user
profile and you follow that little
subheading and let's see if I can find
it right here it will take you to the
subheading and then you click on there
your profile if you can still see my
screen I'm circling I'm pointing to it
with the mouse you click on that your
profile link and that's how you get to
your profile and that's a very important
section to fill out when you want to
start establishing your presence on
Amazon because the your profile page is
what gives you the power to put great
advertising content like this on
everything that you write or promote or
do on Amazon I hope that helped answer
that question she said thank you so much
the next question is from Brian Stevens
and Brian s do you recommend the DRM for
ebook Kindle has a mechanism to either
enable that or not enable that and this
of course is a personal preference for
you you may we wonder it worrying about
you know kind of the proprietary nature
of a copyright nature of your content
the way that I would answer that
question was it
depends upon what the content is and
what its purpose is if you're writing a
book like self-publishing simplified
we're clearly the purpose of that
content for me is to get it into as many
hands as possible because in the book
I'm not so in doing as I'm selling the
services that I want to prove I wouldn't
want to have DRM for that because I want
people to take that book and share it
with other people right I'm I'm selling
the information I'm giving that away
because I want them to do business with
me so if your content is intended to get
them to do real business with you
separately from your book and I wouldn't
suggest DRM if you're writing something
that's very sickly proprietary or
secretive or your the value of the
content itself and it has a retail price
of you know thirty nine forty nine
ninety nine dollars or it's an e-book
that you're selling on a website for you
know four hundred dollars or it's a
seminar or some of those really packaged
things then your content is what you're
protecting and in that case DRM is
probably a good thing to do digital
rights management okay the next question
is from Paul and Paul asked how do you
edit the tags I'm an Amazon author but
the option to edit tags does not appear
on my product page when I edit other
content your ability that edit the tags
is going to be pretty limited you can
add new tags for those of you who are
still looking at the screenshot I've
gone to the tags customers associated
with this product you can add tags here
you're not going to be able to rip the
tags so the way that Amazon and just
kind of the social community in general
is kind of called crowdsourcing the way
they control and self-regulate that
information is through popularity of the
tag so if a not applicable tag has been
added to your book what ultimately you
hope happens is other people don't click
that little bubble to vote for it so it
becomes more and more non applicable so
then it goes away because you can see
that out of all these tags that are
showing up on mine it's only a small
sampling it's the most popular
applicable ones there are 63 total tags
including one or two that probably I
hate right I don't want them well
he sees those because they're hidden by
lack of popularity so that's really kind
of a self-editing mechanism for the tags
if there truly is something that is
popular and not applicable you can try
to plead your case to Amazon customer
service it will tell you right now that
they're not very accommodating in this
regard but you can try by writing a very
nice diplomatic professional email
referencing your ISBN or your AIFS and
number if it's a product and here's the
email address that you can send it to
community - help
at amazon.com and you can ask them if
they'll remove it say you have two
percent chance of success with that and
great thank you the next question is
from sheriff and sheriff we recently
listed a book on Amazon but because of
the food chain priority the listing
arrangement searches via our keywords
result in the book showing up at the
variant of two thousand plus book four
way other than sales to move the book up
on those search cents I'm glad that you
mentioned other than sales because
because you have identified one of the
main components of Amazon's search
algorithm which is Amazon reward
successful books I talked about this in
my book quite extensively the virtuous
circle again which is once your book is
starting to establish its popularity
with readers with getting reviews with
actually selling products because Amazon
is in the business to make money once a
product whether it be a book or a TV is
making Amazon money
Amazon's algorithm is more inclined to
list it up in the rankings so that is
the best way to get your ranking higher
is to get people buying your product or
your book and you do that a lot of ways
through all of these tactics that I've
talked about there's not a shortcut way
to do that per se you can't buy a higher
listing through pay per click or any of
those things it's just a matter much
like search engine optimization there's
there's not a pay-per-click shortcut to
it you have to do a kind of the
old-fashioned way which is through time
and elbow grease unfortunately what you
could try doing is taking that
same content reconditioning it in
another manner now that you know what
you know about what's not working with
that old first version try to title it
in a manner which will apply to a
different set of maybe more applicable
or at least slightly different keywords
try publishing it again than making it
different trying some of the other
tactics and starting at Ground Zero and
maybe you'll be way further along with
that second version something that I
suggested some authors who have that
same problem okay great
unfortunately have time for one more
question so the last question from Brian
and Brian asks what if you are a
publisher promote an author if they are
overawed by the marketing sure actually
if you look at when we see if I can find
the screenshot really fast of my author
page Amazon is prepared for this for
authors and publishers to do exactly
that I don't know if I'm gonna be able
to find it
oh sure here okay seconds have gone by
where you guys are able to see this this
big circled area in the middle of my
biography and my author page the wording
that you can't read down here below I
guess you probably can't read any of it
it's kind of fuzzy but way down here it
says this biography is provided by
either the other representative in that
case that really means in a lot of cases
the publisher or the agent so Amazon
wants you as the publisher to do a lot
of this stuff or authors so you just
establish that account and that's why
the author central account can actually
be a different access email and
different access password than the user
profile that's one of the reasons
they're separate okay great well thank
you so much for joining us and today
Brandt Brent it's been a pleasure having
you unfortunately we can't get to the
rest of the questions but if anyone
wants to follow up with questions either
by posting it in the forum in the
internet marketing Club or you can reach
brunch at outskirt press com
thanks again for joining us my pleasure
I've had a great time excellent and
thank you for everyone who attended the
web
look forward to seeing all of you on
next week's webinar hi everyone