Complete Guide to Selling Articles on Amazon

Why Sell Articles

A lot of people are probably wondering why I should sell articles and not something that is full book length online. Here are a few reasons

 They are easy to produce

 They allow you to write on a variety of topics

 They sell well

 People are leaning toward shorter writings when it comes to e-books and e-articles

 They tend to being very narrow focused and easier to write

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Using Amazon to Start

Amazon is one of the best resources to use; you can use them to see what is selling and what is not. After doing a lot of trial and error I have found that if you search for something on Amazon, and there are over 10 products selling for that search term, you'll have a good starting point for writing your articles.

Example: The search for how to fish in a pond brings up 146 results. This is my actual competition which shows me there is a market for products in that niche.

Next, and narrow my results for kindle books. This will show me my true competition. After reviewing the books available that looks like there are no kindle books or articles on this subject. Perfect, this continues to be one of my best Sellers to.

This is one of the easiest and fastest ways to determine what a good subject to write will be about. Though it is a great starting point, this is not the end either.

Google keyword planner

Google is a household name. You do not search for something online, you Google it. Google has the largest search engine traffic on the Internet. They also share their stats that everyone. To

capitalize on the E-books and E article market you have to know what people are searching for. First, type in a broad term to describe your article; example

 Pond fishing

 How to fish in a pond

 Fishing in ponds

 Pond fish

These are some examples of what I would use to search for how to fish in a pond. If any of these were all of these and up to over 1,000 searches a month that a good shot to write about a good topic

SEOBOOK.COM

Another good tool to use is that SEOBOOK.COM you will need to create an account, however their keyword tool is great and it’s free. It uses results from a company called word tracker. With this keyword tool give you is daily, exact search results that. I look for results not returned about 30 – 50 the search results a day. This is a good market to write in.

Top places to sell your articles

Amazon kindle

The Amazon kindle is the most well-known e-reader available in my opinion. The currently dominate the market holding about 85% of the e-book market. If there is one place you should definitely get your E-books published on it should be on the kindle marketplace.

In this section I will go over where you can list your books for sale. I will go over in detail exactly how to list your books later.

IBook’s

IBook’s is an apple products found in the iTunes store. This is currently one of the top contenders to amazons kindle.

Barnes & Noble nook

Nook books are becoming increasingly popular. The mice’s feature is that Barnes & Noble allows you to read up to 1 hour per day any book available when you are in the store. This is a great promotional tool for you.

Lulu

Lulu is a print on demand service many authors used to get their books in print. Lulu also has its own an E book store. This is another great source for you to list your books on.

Smashwords

Smashwords is another great place to list your books for sale. The best part about Smashwords is its distribution channels. Smashwords his eight different places it distributes too currently. Some alone and places include Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Diesel, Baker and Taylor, Libraries, and more.

Outline Your Article First

Before you write you should create an outline. This outline will help you not only stay on topic while writing it will also help you create a table of content, and see where your article is going.

Title Your Article

The title is always difficult to put together for me. What I try to do is first use Google’s keyword tool and use a search term that receives a high volume of searches. Once I get that in the title I try to add some words to describe the article.

Example: Beginning Fly Fishing: Top Ten Reasons Why You Are Not Succeeding In Fly Fishing and What To Do about It. In this example Beginning Fly Fishing is considered my Title and Top Ten Reasons Why You Are Not Succeeding in Fly Fishing is the subtitle that describes what the article will be about. I believe this helps sell the article to potential buyers as they know what the article will be about.

Bonus:

You can use sites like fiverr and have someone else create the title for you if you are having trouble.

Here is my gig where I will come Up With Over 100+ SEO Optimized Ebook or Article Title Ideas for $5

Table of Contents

Creating a table of contents is very important when writing an article because it is what can be seen when a potential buyer views the free sample online. This table of contents will show them exactly what the article is about if they were to buy it.

Creating a table of content

1. Insert a carriage return before the title

2. Use 12 point bolded font for the title

3. Use 10 point italic font for the authors name

4. Use 12 point regular font for the table on contents

5. Insert bullet points between each topic by Clicking where you want to bullet and typing in 2022 and pressing ALT + X

6. Use 10 point font for the copyright

Copyrights

Adding a copyright to your article is required by most online retailers, plus it is a good practice to get into period.

Linking Your Table of Content to That Area in the Article

Creating a clickable link from your table of content is easy using your styles tab following my simple steps below.

1. In your word document make you chapters heading 2.

2. Highlight words in the table of content and click hyperlink button in the insert menu or right click and choose hyperlink

3. Choose a section you want to link to from the in document menu which are the sections you made the heading 2

4. click OK

That’s it. Do that to all you chapters in the table of contents and you will then have a clickable table of content.

Bold

Using bold on your subheadings and section titles helps readers read it easier. This will help break up your article and make it easier to read.

Heading

I use heading on the chapters or sections. This will help in breaking up the content better.

Create subheading

As you can see in this e-book, I have subheading created within each section. This again helps break up the reading and makes it much easier to digest the information.

Bullet Lists

The use of bullet lists is a good option to use when you have multiple topics to describe in a row. I like to start each of my articles off with a bullet list of what is to come.

Links

After providing useful information, it is helpful to also provide a link out to the place where you found that information. I try to link out to about ten places either throughout the article or in the resources section.

Adding Links to Your Articles

I believe that what really helps sell your articles is links out to websites to get more information. I like to use URL shortening sites to make is easier for someone to remember if they wanted to refer to it at a later time. I have used a service called tiny URL before with great success and now I use a service provided by Google found at goo.gl. Both work well and I suggest that is what you use.

Resources List

Always add a resources list to the end of your article. This is where you can link to related articles, books, and products. Your resources list is important and I think people have really come to expect it from an e-article.

To sell your book on the Kindle you will need to go to www.kdp.amazon.com.

Amazon KDP Select

Amazon has a great program for authors. It is called the KDP select program. Within this program you can offer your article in the Amazon lending library in which any Amazon prime member can borrow your article for free. When they do you get a cut of Amazons KDP select fund which at the time of this writing is $600,000 a month. You also get to run five free promos every 90 days. This allows you to give your book away for free and get the benefits of being seen by a larger audience.

KDP Select for at Least 90 Days

KDP select is a good program to get your book noticed the only catch is you need to make your work exclusive to Amazon for 90 days at a time to be enrolled in the program. This means you cannot have your book listed on your own site or any other site other than Amazon as long as your book is listed in the program. I used to use this but do not recommend it anymore because the benefits are so minimal from it.

Smashwords Coupons

When you list your books on smashwords.com you get a really neat feature where you can create coupons, set the amount of them and offer them to friends, subscribers, fans, followers, etc. This is a great tool and you can limit who they go to or list them everywhere you can get them out to.

Amazon Author Page

Amazon is just an amazing company to work with. They offer so much to help authors get their names and their books out there. Amazon has an Amazon Author Page, which allows you to show your recent blog posts, a blurb about yourself and your work. This is a great free opportunity t sell yourself to the buyers.

Squidoo.com

I love squidoo and they have helped me in promoting my books very well. Using them can take some time to learn but once you do you will be hooked. They are very flexible in what you can do, it just takes time to build up traffic and get your lenses out there. Overall though they do work really well.

Here is a link on how to start using squidoo

Forums

Forums are a great place to reach very specific buyers. The best way to use forums is to provide useful answers to questions and leave a signature leading to your books purchase page. Do not spam the forums because they will shut your account down very fast. Use them more to interact and indirectly guide them to your work or website.

To find a forum just head over to Google and type in “subject + forum” for example “fly fishing in ponds + forum” This will bring up all the forums with that word in it. Create an account and start posting. Do not link directly in your posts. Rather have a link to your book in your signature.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is simple. You write free articles for sites such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com and link back to your blog page and books sales page on amazon or anywhere else it is. Your articles should be a minimum of 400 words and not promotional at all. Write to help the reader on a specific topic. You can link to your book page through the resources area. So for example if your book is about building a shed you can write an article about choosing wood for your shed or shingles or whatever is on topic, then at the end link to your book and say for more information about building your first shed read my book for a full detailed explanation.

This is a very simple process. The top article sites are

Ezinearticles.com

Goarticles.com

Here is my book that this course is based off of. Please follow along using this book so that you completely understand the material.