A couple weeks ago, I sent out an email about my history making a living, for a few months at least, by writing and selling $2.99 books on Kindle. To which a reader wrote in and asked:
Every day, I get inundated with ads about ‘building passive income with kindle ebooks.’
Is this one of those overblown opportunities that resembles a once pristine reef teeming with life that’s now been trampled into oblivion?
Curious to hear your thoughts, as you’ve actually been in that space.
My answer is something marketer Rich Schefren likes to say, which is that opportunity doesn’t come in a sales letter.
The implied or overt promise for any make-money thing is to get rich in just 78 days or less, and then retire if you want to, so you can start worrying about how to spend all that free time you’ve suddenly saddled yourself with.
It makes sense to sell this promise to people because that’s what we all respond to. But it’s not something you want to buy yourself.
That’s not to say that Kindle publishing has become a dead and fossilized reef, with only a few pale and hungry blobfish still swimming around and trying to eek out a bit of nourishment from it.
It doesn’t even mean that it’s not worth paying for a course to guide you through the technical work of picking a niche, writing up and formatting your first book, getting the cover done, etc.
That information can easily be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to you, if it saves you time that you would have spent to figure out the same stuff.
Or it can be worth infinitely more — if it makes the difference between you getting overwhelmed and giving up on a project and sticking with it and ultimately having success with it.
My bigger point is that if you decide to buy a book, course, membership, mastermind, coaching program, whatever, be mindful of what you’re buying… and figure out how to make that thing pay for itself.
Apply the ideas you’re getting exposed to. Work harder. Do things you wouldn’t have normally done.
It might not be as sexy and colorful as a pristine reef teeming with life… but it’s a guaranteed opportunity to succeed, in just 78 days, or a few months more.
But back to Rich Schefren. I have a offer for you today:
Last year, I regularly promoted Rich’s Steal Our Winners. That’s where Rich interviews a handful of successful marketers each month, and gets them to share a tactic or idea that is working for them right now. You can think of it as a bunch of opportunities, but not in a sales letter.
Steal Our Winners used to be an attractive offer and an easy sale to make — you could try it out for just $1 for the first month.
But then they changed the offer. The $1 trial disappeared, and was replaced by a lifetime-only subscription. So I stopped promoting Steal Our Winners.
But now, the $1 trial is back. So I’m promoting it again, because I still think Steal Our Winners is a valuable source of new marketing ideas.
The only issue is that the layout of the Steal Our Winners site has changed, and for the worse. It’s been redesigned to become more confusing, more YouTube-like, and less monthly newsletter-like. I personally find that annoying, but maybe it won’t be an issue for you, particularly if you didn’t get used to the old site.
In any case, if you are curious to find out more about Steal Our Winners, or even to try it out for $1, here’s the link: