Guy on reddit claims to make $1k a day on amazon and never did any advertisement

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aruna

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While the claim of 80 projects in 8 months is an almost insane amount of work, I can certainly understand the idea of remaining anonymouse.

-Evil


So can I, absolutely. If it were me I'd definitely want to be anonymous, just to keep the whole "celebrity" thing at a distance from my real life and identity. I think it's a certain mindset. There's nothing sinister about it, and doesn't necessarily mean he's faking it.
 

Hiroko

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I wanted to comment on this thread a few days back. I understand the idea of not wanting to share my pen names. I have made the bulk of my money on the Kindle under a pen name that I don't share with anyone.

That was the point in having the pen name, I didn't want people to know it was me doing the writing and have to deal with the baggage of being "Me".

While the claim of 80 projects in 8 months is an almost insane amount of work, I can certainly understand the idea of remaining anonymouse.

-Evil

Also agreed. When I see authors telling readers their pen names, I feel like the whole point of having the pen name is defeated.


On another topic, I liked the one comment on the "Seek and Destroy" tactic for "was" found in a manuscript; I've started using it with editing one of my 'scripts, and I think it's making a great difference. Has anyone else tried it out?
 

J. Tanner

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Keep in mind no one wants to connect the pen name back to the author's real identity. People simply want to know which pen name is related to a specific also-anonymous discussion.

It will be obvious to anyone following that pen name that it is doing well based on the sales ranks so nothing is necessarily being revealed that isn't already public--it's just connecting the dots.
 

aruna

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I'm referring to remaining anonymous while discussing your book sales etc on the internet, in a community where you are not known for who you are (ie the books you have written). Apart from AW, I'm a member on two or three other forums. I never tell anyone I'm a published author. It's like a huge secret I need to keep. And if I were to join a community AS an anonymous published author, I'd want to keep that anonymity. I always hate it, for instance, that when you want to post a comment on some forums it's automatically set to connect back to your Facebook or Twitter account. Since my Facebook and Twitter accounts are in my penname, I always need to change the setting. I'm aware that people who "hide behind" anonymous user ID's are regarded wth some suspicion (as in this case) but, in my case at least, there's not necessarily anything sinister behind it. I guess you could call it discretion.
 
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I'm aware that people who "hide behind" anonymous user ID's are regarded wth some suspicion (as in this case) but, in my case at least, there's not necessarily anything sinister behind it. I guess you could call it discretion.

Yep. You have "pseudo anonymity"; you're not trying to hide things, just trying to keep Aruna the Person with A Life and Friends and Family separate from Aruna the Professional.

That's just smart.
 

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Also agreed. When I see authors telling readers their pen names, I feel like the whole point of having the pen name is defeated.


Keep in mind that in the last twenty years or so pen names are more a matter of "branding," than of a desire for anonymity.

Notice how often the book lists as copyright © The Real Name of the author.

Nora Roberts, for instance, made no effort to hide that she was writing as J. D. Roberts.
 
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escritora

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Notice how often the book lists as copyright © The Real Name of the author.

Can the writer request the copyright under the pen name?
 

shaldna

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Also agreed. When I see authors telling readers their pen names, I feel like the whole point of having the pen name is defeated.


People have pen names for different reasons, and it's not always to keep thier own identity secret.

Some authors use a different name for each genre they write in, this is purely to distinguish one genre from the other so the reader has an idea of what to expect. For instance, Anne Rice also writes erotica under another name, readers buying those books know what to expect.
 

Keyan

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The foundation would appear to be a classic pyramid, but it's not a scheme in the sense that he's scamming anyone. One work builds on two others which build on four more, etc. With 80 works out he's built an incredible pyramid of interlinked works all leading straight to the first work.

This sounds sensible, but how does he do this? Is there a place in Amazon where you can link your work back to another book?
 

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Keyan, no. He says he's doing it inside his books. Each successive book links back to the first book, so that's the anchor to the pyramid. It's one straight line leading directly back to the first book published - a sort of continual pipeline back to that book so to speak (but a link back with 79 different anchors).

The other part is where I get confused. He says that it's based on choosing a secondary category for the work. I can see, partially, where this might form a partial basis for a marketing pyramid, but I think it might be even more effective to put the links, and multiple links, into the body of the works themselves.

That should present a more effective marketing pyramid, or more effectively, a marketing web that leads to greater sales of book's higher up the ladder (ie published earlier).

Unfortunately, unless you have your sh@t together, this will become confusing very, very fast and the link load will grow geometrically over time as you have to cross link this work with every other work (it might even be incremental rather than geometrical progression-wise).
 
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J. Tanner

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This sounds sensible, but how does he do this? Is there a place in Amazon where you can link your work back to another book?

It's done in the book itself. Like an ad at the end for other books in the series.

Imagine a 10 book series. Each is "categorized" on Amazon in a different way. Let's say it's its a thriller with sci-fi elements. So you put one in SF, one in thrillers, one in mens adventure, one in short fiction, etc. If you've ever put a book on Amazon you probably were torn about which category is "right" given you have to boil it down to 2 max. This guy doesn't care because he hits everything remotely relevent over the course of the series rather than only using the "best" two for every book which is the typical method.

All 9 sequels have an ad for book 1 at the end: "if you liked this book, check out Book A, the first in the series."

Book A gets pushed up onto the bestseller list which snowballs into more visibility and purchases.

Book A lists every other book in the series in its ad at the end, driving traffic to the rest of the books.

Then he has multiple series in different genres under different "brands" (pen names) that all work the same way.
 
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J. Tanner

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Yep, or even a compromise since it likely doesn't work all that well until you have a few books up. Start with 3-4 at once to get the ball rolling, and then write another set of 3-4 over the next month, update Book A, and put the next batch up along with the collection of the first batch.
 

James D. Macdonald

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J. Tanner, exactly right. It does, however, mean that you will need to continually update Book A to keep all the links current.

This is trivially easy.


-----------------

It's also really basic book marketing, in use since Time Immemorial. (See all the regular paper books with lists of Other Books By This Author at the front (hard cover and paperback both) and publisher's ads for If You Liked This Book, Check Out This Other Book at the end (generally in mass-market paperbacks).)

Under the heading If I Knew Then What I Know Now, I'd put an About the Author with a link to my website, and a complete list of Other Works By at the end of every one one of my e-books.

I will be going back to add that, in my Copious Free Time.
 
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J. Tanner

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Agreed. It's simple.

The part that is counterintuitive is that he recommends NOT putting every book there. Just ONE. And the same ONE in every other book. Only the "hub" book gets the full list.

If you spread your traffic out among all your books, none might get enough exposure to make a bestseller list.

Put pushing 9 books toward 1 exclusively might accomplish that.

That's the bit of marketing advice I've never seen anywhere else.
 
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PeteDutcher

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I suspect it's part of the notion that publishers are evil and that they steal your money and will leave you a poor starving artist while they roll naked in the money that you earned. While if you SP then YOU shall be teh one rolling naked in money!

I think this particular case is a lot of fluff, but one thing I do think is that paper books will mostly be gone in twenty years. So I think the authors that make names for themselves by self publishing eBooks now will reap the most rewards later.

I doubt paper books will ever be completely gone, but will become rare as time goes on.


But what would the motivation be to lie here?

Note: I'm not saying he isn't or is telling the truth. Maybe later he's going to be all shy and "oh I'll just write a book about it" but so far, I don't see that he's doing that.

I'm a Tampa Buccaneers fan. I go to JoeBucsFan.com all the time and there's a guy there...he claims he's an attorney and former prosecutor. His real identity was discovered and he is none of that. So why lie? He had nothing to gain.

Except the feeling that people think he was important or his opinion counted.

Me? I'll tell people the truth. No pen name. What people see they get. Right or wrong. But there are people driven by the need for attention.


I'm an internet marketer. I've been doing websites and blogs for about three years now. When I started out, I had one website. It made about $5 a month. I wasn't number one in google for any of my terms. It was all a bunch of different longtail keywords that brought in traffic.
By month two I had three websites. I didn't just double my income (which was about $11 btw) back then. I quadrupled it. It's not a lot of money. Just a little.

Guess what? Now I have sixty-five websites. That's how I make my living monthly. I still am not number one for any of my main terms. All my traffic comes from longtail terms (except on one website where, oddly it gets loads of traffic - ironically (or coincidentally), it's my worst money maker ). Many of my websites aren't inter connected. Many of my sites are not the same .

My point? Volume. Volume is what made my sales. Every website increased my volume and my income and my traffic.

That's what this guy is saying. Every book increases his sales exponentially. Internet marketers worldwide could tell you that's how we've been earning for years.

In fact, that's what every successful self-publisher has said. Konrath, Hocking, Locke - volume volume volume.

I spent over ten years as an owner of a Print, Internet and Multimedia Desgn Agency. In that time, I built up somewhere close to 50 on-going clients and some odd clients that ordered stuff once a year or every other year.

I also owned the first Internet Comic Company before anyone else thought to do animate comics on the web (actually I was co-owner with 2 others...I wrote the content and developed the ideas).

The comic website got over 30,000 hits per month at a time when that was a lot. (over ten years ago).

My design website was...and at times still is listed on the first page of google if you search for Bradenton Print Design. And it was for years...I only had one website for most of that time (the design one; sold the comic site and they have since gone under). Most of the time, the design site was listed as #1 in google.

How did I do it? Easy...I gave every client $50 off a project if they let me put a banner ad on the bottom of their homepage. Never got a single client from it, but it put my name in many locations.

I dispersed the company in May 2011...not because didn't have business...but I turned 45 at the time and I wanted to be a successful writer before 50. So I write full time now.

If you do a search for Pete Dutcher, you will see me all over the internet...from amazon to smashwords (I only just created the smashwords page this week), former client websites, profile pages, review sites that recommended my services, Sports websites, and tons of other places.

I had someone call me the other day to hire me for desgn work...and my website ONLY sells domains and hosting now. Turned him down.

6 months ago, I had a wrestling company call me asking me to work for them as lead designer...I was very tempted on that. $2500 per week is hard to turn down. I told them I needed payment in advance each week and they still wanted me. I still had to turn them down though.

Now, I say this not because I want attention, but because of your own comments. You do not have to have 60 websites of your own...you just need to have your name and website on other peoples websites.

And as far as making money? My comic website sold animated advertising at $4,000 for a 6 month run in an animated comic at the time.

My design site and my services offered landed me clients throughout the US, from IT companies to Diving Gear manufactures. Zeagle Diving systems had a budget of $40,000 per year with me...and I was the ONLY employee.

You don't have to buy tens of websites. You just need to offer something of value...

...and show people it has value.
 

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So, question for anyone who might know the answer: Is it possible to do live links from inside Kindle books to other books in the Kindle store?

I don't have a Kindle, but I just tested a book in the Kindle Cloud Reader. Clicking the hyperlinked book title in the cloud reader opened another tab in Google Chrome, showing the linked book on its Amazon sales page.
 

merrihiatt

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I've only linked to my website, but the link worked. I don't have a Kindle, but I'm using the Kindle app on my iPad. It would seem logical if one hyperlink worked, so would another.
 

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So, question for anyone who might know the answer: Is it possible to do live links from inside Kindle books to other books in the Kindle store?

Absolutely.

It will open on the Kindle as a regular Web page. That's great on the software viewers, but a bit cumbersome on the Kindle device itself.

I'd much rather have it go to the simplified page (regardless of software or hardware viewer) that the Kindle device uses when you search the Kindle store for a particular book.

I have not figured out how to get to the preferred page yet.
 

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... my question: It's possible to put out a ton of mediocre works, but is that a potential detriment in the future?

Excellent question but I think THIS is the reason why he wants to be anonymous and why he uses multiple pen names - just so the crap work doesn't tarnish the reasonably good stuff.
 
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