175: Turn Digital Products into Physical Profits With Amazon Print on Demand

Foreign.

Welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today and my special guest today is Julie Hall. Julie is the creator of the KDP Creators Club and she loves talking to anyone who will listen about how to publish low and medium content books on Amazon KDP and guys, I am super excited about this conversation with Julie and we were chatting just a little bit before we started recording today. I've never had anybody on this podcast that does exactly what she's doing with digital products and I personally am super interested in this conversation and possibly even exploring doing this myself. So I'm super excited. But Julie, before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Hi Destiny. So thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I am so excited about it. So yeah, how did I get into Amazon kdp? My background actually is a digital marketing trainer. I teach corporates and small business owners and I've done that for many, many years. And I entered the world of KDP when I was looking for a side hustle business as you do. I was going to look and create templates to sell them on Etsy and I was doing my research around different niches and discovered this KDP template niche. I was like, hu, that's interesting. I could create templates for KDP people. I don't really know much about it, but I'm going to create some templates. And then I created my first couple and I was like, I don't want to give these away, I want to publish these as my own books. And I did. And I was. I honestly have so fallen in love with the process of holding products, physical products that are my creation. And so I have gone on to create many books. We can talk maybe about some mistakes I've made as well, but many books along the way including including like you know, this is a coloring book that I did so just that gets printed and sold on Amazon. I've got diaries, kids activity books, journals, gratitude journals, notebooks, social media planner, all that and it just never gets tired for me. And I run a membership where I teach others how to do the same called the KDP Creators Club. And I have a now I have a template membership which I'm happy to give away those templates called Royalties Accelerator.

All right, so for those of you who are listening to the podcast episode, in the background of her office, she has some printed books. You know, I think she's created them on Amazon and we'll let her tell us a little bit more about that. And they look absolutely beautiful. So I want to delve into this with you a little bit more. But for those of us who are listening today and we're not familiar with Amazon kdp, can you tell us a little bit more about how that works? Exactly.

So Amazon KDP is Amazon's print on demand publishing army. So it works by you create an account. Usually it's the same as your regular Amazon account email address. So they do like you to use the same email address. And you create a book as a PDF. So I use Canva is my tool of choice. People use Affinity or Adobe or PowerPoint even. And you create your book, you download it as a PDF, you create your cover. So there they tell you how big the COVID template size needs to be, and then you upload it and you choose your price and Amazon reviews it and it then is ready to be bought. And so I tend to, I always buy every book I create because I don't know, because I love them. I love them so much. And you can, I tend to just order mine on Amazon, you can order author copies. So if you want like 100 of your books, if you want to go to a craft sale or use them for clients or whatever, you can order them yourself at a discounted rate. But I tend to just order mine on Prime. And my little secret trick on this is to make it so that it's absolutely no cost, like no royalties. I don't make any money from them, but I can order it and then change the price and then I will get money from them when anybody else buys them.

Oh, I love that. I love that. So I want to kind of walk through, let's say somebody's interested and get started on this. And I'm gonna put myself in this category because I'm definitely interested in this. We have a ton of products on our hello, content shop, our Shopify stores, our, you know, my hobby school stores. And I'm thinking as you are talking, I'm like, I think there's a lot of these products that I could put on Amazon KDP and start making that print on demand and start making money on them. So can you walk us through if somebody is interested in getting started with this? Where do you suggest that they start.

So the obvious place I'm going to say is my membership. But you wanted to, if you wanted to just find out more about it, you can go to, you can go to YouTube and search for KDP and you'll find loads of trainings on there. I've actually got a beginner's guide to Amazon KDP on my website, which you can look at and that's free. And also I've got like a, you know, a notebook template and notebook cover template that you could use to create a, your initial design and upload it if you wanted to. So, so you can start there. I think the, the thing is to really just make it for your first book, just create something really simple. So I always suggest to people that they start with a notebook because it means you don't have to get caught up with the interior being perfect or you know, having to think about text to write or any of that stuff. So start with a notebook and then just create like, create a cover that you would love to own your note, like have your notebook, you know, like it doesn't have to be anything special though. They always are a little bit special. Just have some creative fun with it, play with it, upload it and honestly you will be amazed at how great it feels to hold one of your books in your hand. Like, I've always wanted to be an author, but I don't have the patience to write a book this way. I kind of feel like I get a little bit of that by, you know, creating loads of books. They just don't have a lot of content on the inside.

Now I'm looking at the books that you have behind you are those covers. Did you create those in Canva?

So yeah. So let me show you. So this, well, this one here, this one here, that's an AI generated one.

Okay. It's beautiful. I absolutely love it. What AI, can I ask you what AI system did you use to do that?

Journey Loot.

What is it?

Mid journey.

Mid journey. Yes, I'm familiar with that. So we'll make sure that link's in the show notes so people can check that out and familiarize themselves with that.

Yeah, for sure. So this one here, this is just a diary. So 2024 diary. And, and I just created this in Canva. So this was. And in fact I'm for your bundle. I'm doing a, submitting, a training on how to create a diary in Canva. This one here is like one of my kids activity books, so.

Oh, it says I love dogs. Activity books. Oh, that's so cute. Oh, we're gonna have to include like pictures with everybody on the website so they can go and see these. Did you create that one in Canva or did you use.

Yeah, yeah, all of it. I do all of it in Canva.

That is awesome.

With this one. My favorite resource for graphics is Vecteezy because the licensing is really clear. But a lot of the graphics that I used in here are Canva graphics. You just what you need to be really careful when with the licensing is just to make sure that you've got the rights to use the images. And there's a lot of confusion about Canva licensing. I will say that I don't buy into the fear mongering that we can't use Canva elements but what I would say is you have to create a unique page. So the page design that you create has to be of your own creation. You can't just take a template off canvas Amber and put it on. You need to modify it, you need to adjust it, you need to, you know, add different pieces, make it your own design. And then I, then it's fine. This is like my, one of my little gratitude journals. I have many gratitude journals and that's just like a repeated page of daily gratitude. So those are just a few examples of some of the books that you can create. And so I create what's called low content and medium content books. And a low content book is a book that has lots of repeated pages. So a planner, a diary, a journal, a logbook, a tracker, things like that where there's like there are all the pages are the same but there's a number of kind of lots of space for people to write things in. The activity books and the coloring books are actually considered high content books because every page is different. So they tend to like get, they get approved faster. They obviously take a lot more work. But my best selling books are really simple planners. Okay, well not, you know, not like a dated like a couple, I've got a couple of dated and a couple of undated books. I knocked them up in about three hours and they've just done really well and they, they, you know, sell particularly around Christmas time obviously is a really hot period for Amazon. So for anybody that is looking to get started with Amazon, kdp my adv, the best time to start probably is August, September. I mean you can start any time. But if you start publishing your books in August and September they can start getting established and by the time Christmas comes then you can, you know, start making great money over the Christmas season.

Well, and that's right around the corner. So if anybody's interested in it, now's a great time to get started in there. So let's say that we're, we're sold. We want to jump into this. How do we figure out what the hot market is like? What, what, what are people going to buy, I should say on Amazon? How do we do the research on that?

So there are a number of tools that you can get get. Some are paid and some are free. So I use a couple of paid tools. I use a tool called Book Bolt and another one called Book Beam. They both tell me how, how many searches are happening for a particular book. They tell me how many. I'm gonna try not to get too complicated, but they sales a book is getting. So there are also a couple of free tools that you can use. So you can absolutely do it for free on Amazon. And the way to do this is there's a, a tool which is called. Oh, I'm going to forget it now. It's something, it's something like DS Amazon Quick View I think is what it's called. But I will confirm that and give you the link. And when you look at it, when you install, it's a Google Chrome extension. And there are a couple of clues about books that sell well when you go into the Amazon toolbar. And I would suggest going into the privacy screen when you start typing in something like Gratitude Journal, right. You'll see just like on Google, it will fill out the long tail keyword. So it's a gratitude journal for women, gratitude journal for kids, gratitude journal for teens, Gratitude journal with prompts, etc. You know when those search terms are being completed, that those are keyword terms that Amazon is fulfilling. And, and it, they're kind of better sellers than like, I don't know, gratitude journal for dogs, for example. Right. Or whatever. Like if it's being filled out then, then it, then that's a sign when you go to the landing page, when you get to the landing page for that particular keyword term, if you see it as a vertical list, that can give you a clue that, that perhaps it's not one of the most popular topics. If you see it when it's in a grid view, so you have four or five boxes that would, is an indicator that it is a hot topic. So there are lots of books in that area. And Amazon thinks it's important as a category of books or a group of books. And then the other thing the last thing that you want to look at is if you install this DS Amazon Quick View. When you see the books listed now, what you get is a lot of information underneath the book. So it will tell you how many pages it is, it will tell you the title, it will tell you the publisher, and it will tell you what the BSR is. And the BSR is the best seller rank. And the lower the bsr, the more popular that book is. So if you've got a number of books with a bestseller rank under a hundred thousand, which is tends to be what I look for, that is an indicator that that is a hot book. Like there are lots of books in that field that are selling. The last thing is when you do your search on Amazon, there will tell you how many books are competing for that particular term. So ideally you want to have maybe 10, 20,000 max, because that tells you how competitive that field is. Now there are people that will say, like in the old days they used to say 2000 or 3000. That's just not practical today. But if you've got 10 to 20, I think, unless then you're, you've got a chance. So that's how I would do the research if I was doing it for free. But if you do want to go in a bit deeper than using a paid tool like Book Beam or Book Vault or both of those are really useful as tools to help you just get a little bit more data.

Now, Julie, I do have one last question for you. I know a lot of people out there are interested in using PLR type products, so they don't have to create all of this from scratch. What would you recommend to them? Can they use PLR type products and then, you know, sell those type of products like on Amazon? Katie?

So I would say yes, absolutely, you can use PLR products. My advice would be. My advice would be twofold. One, just check the quality of what you're getting, because we know quality of PLR products can be variable.

Yes, absolutely.

So you want to make sure the quality is good, make sure your margins are the same, that your font sizes are the same, that things line up when somebody's flipping through their book, you know, like this, it looks like it makes sense. So make sure you're using the same fonts, font choices. I would say limit your font choices to two, maybe three maximum in your design and then customize it slightly so you don't have to customize it a lot, but maybe change it from black to gray, maybe add a couple of elements to it that's going to make it slightly unique. You don't have to redo it completely. Another idea is to blend pages together like from different. If you're buying from the same supplier and they've got, they've got a range of products, try and blend some together so that they, they look and feel like they are part of the same group, the same book. And, and I think you should be good. Now what I will say is. And the other thing. Well, there's a couple things I'm going to say. You can publish notebooks on Amazon and they're all the same pretty much. There's not a lot of difference from one notebook to another. If you do diaries, again, they're all pretty like there's a lot the same. Right. So I like some people will tell you don't do the same interiors. I don't necessarily think that Amazon is that smart. But do know if you're taking something from a PLR store, other people are going to be doing the same. And what you want to make sure is that you are creating a book that is just a little bit unique to you. And obviously part of that's going to be your cover, but part of it also will be your interior. And my style is very minimalist. I don't actually do a lot of flourishes. I don't have a lot of graphics or things that I add to my books. And then that finds its audience. It finds the audience that likes minimalist stuff. But if you are, if you like florals or you like more crafty based things or doodly styles, you know there is an audience for your books. If there's an audience for your products, there's an audience for these in books as well. So just have a little bit of fun with the creativity. Like take that PLR as your foundation and then turn it into something that you love.

And Julie, I think those are some great tips here. Now before we hang up, can you let the audience know where they can find you and also let them know where they can join. Join your membership.

Thank you, Destiny. So yes, you can find me at Julie hall online.com and because Julie hall is an incredibly common name, I've got to say it is unlike Destiny Cop, which I'm sure is not very common.

Not very common. But we'll make sure that your link is in the show notes so everybody has that for you.

And then if so, if you go to kdpcreatorsclub.com you will get directed to my membership page and you can find out about that. And royaltiesaccelerator.com you can find my KDP template membership.

Tell us a little bit more about that. Is that a PLR type membership or what do you have in that membership?

Yeah, so it's. We do. We do a weekly drop. So we've got clip arts, we've got logbooks, trackers, journals, coloring pages, word searches. We're going to do some mazes this month. So we're kind of just creating different kinds of interiors that you can then customize and use for your KDP books. You're not allowed, you're not allowed to sell the templates. No surprising there. No surprises there. But you absolutely can use them to create a commercial book of your own. You can actually use them to create products that you'd sell on Etsy as well if you wanted. But yeah, mainly they are designed for books because most of them are this size, which is six by nine. So they're not designed typically for printing. They're designed to be a book. So yeah, and it's $7 a month.

Wow, that's great. So we'll make sure that all of those links are in the show notes. I know that I'm going to check them out personally. And thank you so much, Julie, for joining us today and sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with us.

Thank you so much, Destiny.

Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.