Podcast 126: How Dave Chesson Used SEO Traffic to Launch Kindle Books and a Software Business

In today's episode, I conduct an interview with Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur.com and KDProcket.com.

Kindlepreneur.com teaches how to write and sell Kindle ebooks.  In addition, he is the creator of KDP rocket, a software application for self publishers to help them find Kindle keywords.

Dave is actually a long time reader of Niche Pursuits and started out by creating a couple of niche websites and then moving into publishing Kindle ebooks.

During our discussion, Dave shares how he got his start building niche sites and then moved to selling Kindle ebooks.  The strategy that really made his Kindle business successful was driving the existing traffic from his niche sites to his Amazon Kindle listings.

Driving all the outside traffic helps his books start selling well, which in turn made Amazon rank his listings higher…which led to higher sales.

One point that Dave really drives home is just how important it is to fully monetize your site when you have good traffic coming to certain articles.  Dave has a great way of explaining this concept by drawing an analogy with Monopoly, boardwalk, and building hotels.  I’ll let Dave go into all the details.

Dave has used the same concept to launch and grow his software business, KDP Rocket.  He noticed that one article in particular on Kindlepreneur.com was getting lots of traffic about how to find Amazon keywords for your kindle ebooks.

So, he first tested the idea of selling a software product as an affiliate.  Even though the product he was an affiliate for wasn't that great, it still sold.

This gave him the confidence he needed to invest in creating KDP Rocket.  Once the software was completed, he used his high traffic article to sell his own software.

This article, and his ever growing email list, has driven consistent sales for KDP Rocket and grown a substantial business.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

Read the Full Transcript Here

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Spencer:       Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits podcast. Before I jump into introducing today’s guest, I just wanted to do a quick update on how my marathon went. I mentioned a couple of times on the podcast that I’ve been hoping to run a Boston qualifying time. For me, that is three hours and fifteen minutes. 

                    Well, a couple of weeks ago, I ran the Mt. Charleston Marathon in Las Vegas, Nevada. I wish I had good news to report. Unfortunately, I did not run under the 3:15 time. I got quite close and finished in just over three hours and eighteen minutes. 

The race time is actually bitter sweet for me because it is the fastest I’ve ever ran a marathon by about six minutes. However, I was still just a few minutes away from qualifying for Boston. Hey, I didn’t hit my goal. Maybe you found yourself in a spot where you haven’t achieved your goals too. However, I haven’t given up just quite yet. My goal was to run a qualifying time in 2017, so I’ve signed up for another race that takes place here in just a couple of months. 

As difficult as it is for me to pick myself up after my failed attempt to qualify for Boston, I’ve figured that if I’m ever going to do it, now is the time. I’m in great shape and I really am pretty close. Anyway, thank you for letting me indulge you for a few minutes with my personal running goal. I’ll now move on to the regular podcast here. 

It’s time to introduce today’s guest. Dave Chesson has a really interesting story that he will share with you today. Dave is the founder of kindlepreneur.com. That’s his blog that will teach you how to write and sell Kindle ebooks. In addition, he is the creator of KDP Rocket which is a software application for self-publishers to help them find Kindle keywords. 

Dave is actually a long time reader of Niche Pursuits and started out by creating a couple of niche websites and then moving into publishing Kindle ebooks. One point that Dave really drives home is just how important it is to fully monetize your site when you have good traffic coming to certain articles. Dave has a great way of explaining his concept by drawing an analogy with Monopoly, Boardwalk, and building hotels. I’ll let Dave go into all the details there. 

Overall, I love that Dave is walking the walk. He’s built up great websites with good traffic and has applied some unique strategies to then take those websites to the next level beyond just affiliate marketing. 

To get things started, I wanted to understand where Dave came from, what was his work experience before he ever started kindlepreneur.com. 

Dave:           Sure. Before that, I was active duty military. I got the idea of becoming an online entrepreneur when the U.S. military sent me to South Korea without my family. My wife was like, “Hey, is this going to happen often?” I’m like, “Yeah, probably.” We realized that I wasn’t on the path towards success. I didn’t want to be an admiral or anything like that. 

I started looking for some type of exit strategy from the military. Being on the other side of the world, I couldn’t start my own brick and mortar business. I was limited in the things I could do. That’s when I discovered online marketing. I started getting into building niche websites because for that, I could do that on the side, in the mornings or after work. It didn’t require me to respond to things, so when I go out to sea on a South Korean warship, no need to respond to anybody. 

I just fell in love with that type of business and so I started building these niche websites out. The first thing I realized was, “Okay, I’m either going to have to scale this up a lot in order to get out and then earn to make enough to get out of the military or I’ve got to find a better product.” 

Again, limited in Korea, I realized that I just wrote a complete niche website on a particular topic, why not just compile that into an ebook and sell it on Amazon. When I made that one move, I quickly, exponentially increased my monthly income. I thought, “Ah, this is it. This is a good thing for me.” I started really building that up. 

Spencer:       Awesome. To clarify, had you just built one website or had you built several and you just had one that you put a lot effort into? 

Dave:           No. I actually started building several. I had my criteria that I was using. I was going for low hanging fruits since I was new at SEO at the time. I saw that the numbers were increasing but the amount of money that I was making from AdSense and from Amazon associate wasn’t exactly enough that I’d be able to get out of the military soon enough. 

                    At that time, I’d had about seven niche websites. I realized I could probably build more or I could put more effort into them and try to get more out of it. When I realized that I could start creating my own products and get more out of the limited traffic I had, that’s when I saw big return. 

Spencer:       You took your niche website and essentially compiled it into an ebook. Was that one ebook or how many ebooks did it take before you’re able to feel comfortable quitting your job? Did you have to do more besides the books themselves? 

Dave:           I’ll give you some of the numbers that I have. This started about four years ago. In that four years, I have only self-published nine books. Using the niche websites to funnel people from Google to my Amazon sales page and buy my book, I have made over $140,000, from just that. 

Spencer:       Nice. That’s impressive. 

Dave:           The big thing about that was being able to do that and consistently make that money over the four years. This wasn’t something where I had some big giant spike because I did this hard core amazing marketing push. This was just continuously. 

                    The first book I ever published was making $1,700 every month and has for the past, I think it was three and a half years by the time I finally got it published. That’s an asset. What that allowed me to do was just build another asset and another asset and start to increase the amount of monthly income that I was gaining just from efforts that I’ve done years ago. 

Spencer:       Right. This is a key point that I know we’re going to focus on a little bit, but you mentioned here that you’re essentially driving all the traffic yourself. You’re in control of that traffic from the traffic comings of course from Google to your website, but then you’re directing that to the Kindle platform other than purchasing your book. 

Dave:           Exactly. 

Spencer:       We’re going to dive into this a little bit more but to give people a big picture overview of where you are today and where your business is today, I know you’ve gotten into a lot of things since just the Kindle ebooks. Just give us an overview of what you’re involved with now, the different pieces of your business, and any success that you’re willing to share in relation to those different pieces of business. 

Dave:           After having created all these niche websites and the ebooks connected to them, I decided that I wanted to create an authority website. Having a unique experience and background in SEO and online marketing, I started to really enjoy looking at Amazon not as a shopping website but as a search engine that provides products. 

                    When I applied that, I had a unique perspective. From that, I created my website, kindlepreneur.com which is advance book marketing. We go in real detail on the things that we like to cover. I hope to help authors be able to take from an article, turn around and see results. From there, it’s just grown wonderfully over the years. Only 2 years older and we’re about 100,000 per month coming to the website. 

From there, we also built out software that helps. It’s funny talking to you about this but it’s like the Long Tail Pro for authors on Amazon. From there, it’s just continuing to go onward and upward. I’m now out of the military, at home in Franklin, Tennessee with my family. Mission accomplished. 

Spencer:       Living the dream now, that’s awesome. 

Dave:           Yes, sir. 

Spencer:       You did mention a we. Do you have a team that’s helping you build out Kindlepreneur and KDP Rocket? 

Dave:           I was a solopreneur while I was in the military. That was because at the time, when I got out, I was stationed in Sri Lanka. After having come home, I started to focus on the idea of creating a team, not just having virtual assistants. I started giving members of my team responsibilities and areas. 

That was a big step. It was hard for me personally, I’m not going to lie, but it was a great step towards helping the business to grow, by not having to do everything myself as the solo guy. 

Spencer:       I think that’s something that a lot of people struggle with to realize or to take that step. I know for myself, I was a solopreneur for a long time. Even though my business is doing very well, I always felt I can do everything myself. 

Dave:           Oh yeah. 

Spencer:       It’s really just been more recently in the last of couple of years for me that I finally said, “You know what? It just makes a lot of sense to hire people, to get a great team in place, and be able to grow the business even quicker.” I’m glad that you realized that early on because that is something that a lot of people struggle with as solopreneurs. 

Dave:           Most definitely. When that time came that I relinquished some of the ratings to certain parts, that’s when the team members could take it to a new level because they could focus on that one particular area. Now, instead of me having two tasks, it ended up becoming more of there were always suggesting, recommending, and implementing before I could even hold them back. It’s been wonderful. 

Spencer:       There are two areas I want to dive into. Let’s first tackle this similar strategy that you use for your Kindle books. You had a website  getting a lot of traffic so you said, “Okay, how can I monetize this traffic better?” You went to Kindle and you published your product there and you’re driving traffic there. Can you explain how you’ve essentially done something very similar with Kindlepreneur and KDP Rocket? I’d like to dive into that strategy. 

Dave:           Yeah. One of the things I learned about looking at the analytics of my niche websites was that about 95% of all of my book sales came for one particular keyword that I rank for. It wasn’t like I created this giant conglomerate of keywords. There was just one keyword that was super important and critical to my success. 

These were money making keywords, these were the types of keywords that somebody who’s looking to solve a pain point is going to Google and then I’m convincing them that, “Hey, to really solve this, you need to get a complete book on it. Click here to buy.” I started looking at these keywords as then this one particular article site as what I call Boardwalk on Monopoly Board. 

                    In Monopoly, when we start the game, we start buying up real estate. We buy this one and this one and so forth. The fact of the matter is that you only make a little bit of money when somebody lands on that real estate of yours. It’s not until you start building houses and hotels on those properties when you start to see the big bucks and you start crashing the competition. For me, when I found that money making keyword that I could rank number one for in Google, I just bought Boardwalk. When I created my book, I now had a hotel there. 

This process stuck with me when I went to Kindlepreneur. A lot of people when they create their authority website and they start ranking well, they start doing this whole thing of, “Okay, I’ve got a product in mind.” They start creating that product but they don’t really know what people are wanting. Instead of doing a whole, “Hey, survey your people and see what they want,” what I did was I looked up my properties or the articles that I have ranked in number one in Google, and I solve which ones are bringing in the right traffic. 

In this example, I had had created this article on Kindle keywords, How to Select the Best Kindle Keywords. The article itself was bringing in about 1,000 people a month. What’s really cool about this is that if somebody is selecting Kindle keywords, if they’re trying to figure out how to come up with the right way to get Amazon to show their book more in Amazon, they were ultimately probably going to need a tool for that. 

I created this article, it ranked number one in Google, and then I had an affiliate to somebody else’s software. This software had a lot of problems. It only worked for PC, half the functions were broken, it was clunky, hadn’t been updated. There were a lot of problems. Here’s the cool part. Because I rank number one in Google, I could see that I was selling a lot of this software so I knew that I had had a Boardwalk right here in that article. All I needed to do was build a hotel there. 

My team and I got together and we created KDP Rocket which is the Kindle keyword tool, kind of like Long Tail Pro is for Google. It helps authors to figure out whether or not their book idea will succeed, it tells the estimated Amazon searches per month, the amount of money that books are making that rank for that keyword, and those sorts of things. And then we just switched out the recommendation from that old broken software to our own. 

When we did that, what’s beautiful about it is that I didn’t have to do this giant product launch. To tell you the truth, I’m not going to lie, I really don’t know how to do product launches. But just by having that continuous traffic, I had a product that was selling every day even though I was being an idiot on email. I was not utilizing my platform. I was just letting the sales come in. 

Spencer:       That’s huge. I just did a quick Google search related to finding Kindle keywords. I’m sure enough Kindlepreneur shows up number one. I assume this is the article, all about how to choose Kindle keywords here. 

Dave:           That’s it. 

Spencer:       I was just going to look through here to see if there are any specific strategies on this particular page. Maybe you can walk us through this particular page. How are you selling it? Is it just a button? Are you getting people on an email list that pre sells them? All of the above? What’s some good strategies? Once you have that property and you’re getting that free traffic on Google, what’s the best way to sell from that page? 

Dave:           My favorite tactic is being open and honest on how they can do it for free but make it obvious that this is a lot of work. When you do your Kindle keyword search, if you do everything that I recommend, it’s going to take you hours upon hours. But then it’s kind of the solution is, “Okay, now you know how to do it.” And you’re probably scratching your head thinking yourself, “Oh man, this is going to take forever.” “Here’s a tool that will do it for you with a couple clicks of a button. Check out how it does that.” 

                    What’s beautiful about this is that most people are hesitant to either buy a course or buy a software if they don’t fully understand what they’re getting involved. They may think to themselves, “Oh, you know I should have better keywords.” But now that they’re familiar with the process, they’re much more likely to buy because they understand what the software is going to do for them. 

They came to this article trying to figure out how to do it, and they did. They realized in the process that they wish there would be something that would be more effective and efficient than them trying to do with themselves. Viola, here’s the answer. That’s the basic strategy to that article. 

To go even further though, I have a content upgrade for that page. On top of that too, if somebody signs up from that page or has been to that page, I’m able to track that. I know that a person that’s on my email list is somebody who understands what keywords are. I don’t bore them with an email that’s like, “Hey, did you know that keywords are important?” Instead, I’m going to the next step from where that article was and continue to reiterate that there’s a tool that does this but I’m teaching them as they go. 

To recap this, I believe the most important thing you can do is show them how to do it themselves. But more importantly, how they can do it more effectively and efficiently with what you have to offer. 

Spencer:       Absolutely. I agree. This page is a great example. People are listening in, they can go check it out at Kindlepreneur but it’s exactly that. It’s a very in depth article, that’s a nice tutorial of how people can do all the steps themselves, which is really valuable for those people that just want to go ahead and put in that effort. But then towards the end you say the faster and better way to find KDP keywords, and you jump in to KDP Rocket, have a nice video, a button where they can go and purchase that if they want too. I think it’s a great example that people can check out if they want to build that hotel on their own Boardwalk property. 

In addition, something that fascinates me is that you seem to have implemented a lot of really great SEO strategies across all of your properties. I know my listeners, we talk a lot about SEO and different strategies that people can implement. Is there anything that you’re doing really well with either Kindlepreneur or your niche websites in terms of SEO? 

Dave:           One of my favorite strategies is always going back to some of my more popular articles and republishing them, updating them and republishing them. We at Kindlepreneur, we only do two articles a month and that’s it. The truth is is that a lot of my readers feel as though the book marketing world changes just about every month. They’re hesitant to read an article that was created a year ago. Why not beef it up and put it back at the front? 

                    Every time I’ve done this, I’ve seen amazing jumps in the traffic. That’s without doing backlink, outreach, or anything like that. That’s one of the strategies I’m really enjoying right now is republishing other content. To go further with that too, sometimes we choose to republish content. When we went through our analytics and we saw that, “Hey, we’re only ranking number four for this particular keyword. Let’s go ahead and republish and see it.” It’s incredible how that happens. 

                    Another thing too that I think a lot of people don’t do and they should, is it’s about developing a network with the people that are in your own industry. I’m in the self-publishing world. There are a lot of people that focus on how to sell a published book. Like we said at the beginning of the podcast, I teach people how to sell more books, how to market their books. 

I reached out to a lot of these self-publishing authorities and I said, “Hey, you’re writing about this, we can combine. I’m doing some guest posts and I’m going to make sure to backlink to your article on self-publishing because I don’t have an article on that, because I don’t focus on how to self-publish.” At the same time they don’t focus on how to market their books so when they’re guest posting, they’re back dropping a link back to us. 

It’s like this friendship of saying, “Look, my website is the next step and your website is the next step. Let’s go ahead and coordinate as we do these guest posts, as we get these opportunities.” That’s made it incredibly easy for us to continue to build backlinks to our most important articles without having to work extra. 

Spencer:       I think that is really critical and it’s something that we talk about a lot is building relationships with those within your own industry. I think a lot of people don’t go that full step of really working with the people that are in their industry in a way. It’s hard to come across perhaps when you’re just building a niche website and if you’re building half a dozen niche websites. It’s really hard to build a real relationship with somebody. If you have a real authority website, it gives you that ability to reach out to those people that are leaders in the industry and build hopefully those longer term relationships that result in more links and more mentions that can help grow your site. 

Spencer:      Anything else in terms of SEO, maybe keyword related tips, anything that you’re doing there that is helping you pick better keywords that you can rank for? 

Dave:           One tactic that I’ve really enjoyed is going back to the titles and changing them so that they induce clicks. I used to be in the mind of make sure that you have your keyword in it and then stop as many keywords as possible. We all know that Google is getting a lot smarter about that. While it’s important to have your main keyword inside your title, it’s even more important to prove to Google that when somebody types in that keyword that yours gets clicked and not the ones above you. 

                    I’ve spent a lot more time trying to figure out a unique way to convince the person that this one is the best of them through the title. If I do that correctly, then even without the backlinks, I’ve seen my articles rise above the others because it was the more satisfying title that convinced the searcher that this is what they’re looking for. 

I would recommend to everybody out there to go back. Just like what we do with our email headlines, where we’re trying to figure out how to get them to open it by creating this great headline. You’ll see improvements in your rankings without having to do the backlink outreach. 

Spencer:       I love it. Great tip. How are you doing that? How are you testing which headline works better and what doesn’t? 

Dave:           That’s keys is just the testing. Just making the systematic approach to working with your title and tracking to see where things are going. The truth is that I’ve been reading a lot of blogs on headline copy to figure out how to do my title copy for my articles. Wherever I can find the sales copy for it, how to get people to open up your email, I’m just using that for my SEO, for my title. How to get people to get people to click mine over that guy’s? 

                    A lot of it is playing into emotions. For example, we wrote an article on ebook piracy. There you go, there’s my target keyword for that article is ebook piracy. I know that one of the things that drives my readers nuts is the idea that they can’t fight back, that’s people are stealing their books and there’s nothing they can do about it. 

                    We wrote more of an emotionally charging title that says ebook piracy and how you can fight back and take command. That’s a lot better than the titles that are out there. It’s a new article but I’m excited to see where that goes because I know that if you’re an author and you’re going to see that, “Yeah, I can take command. I can do this.” 

Spencer:       Is it just as simple as looking at your Google Analytics or maybe even better at Search Console to see what type of click to rate you’re getting? 

Dave:           Well, there’s that and there’s also tracking just to see where my rankings are. I’m a firm believer that the happiness of the searcher is becoming a more and more important factor to Google rankings. Things like clickthrough rate, bounce back rate, I think that’s just taking more of a front seat than it used to. I’m focusing on getting people to click, and then I’m tracking that, and I’m trying to work on bounce rate, seeing how long it takes that the person stays on the page. If you can improve those metrics, I can imagine that you’re not going to improve your rankings. 

Spencer:       Yeah. I agree 100%. That’s something that I am certainly doing. I’ve been going back on Niche Pursuits and rewriting some of the titles and updating articles as well. I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re sharing. There definitely can be a lot of big improvements made in that regard. 

Yeah, we talked about SEO, how you’re getting traffic to your sites and sort of why you’re building out products. What would be your recommendation to people that maybe they have a niche website, they’re just monetizing it with Amazon associates, or Google AdSense, what would you recommend the steps they do to figure out what their hotel could be, if you will? 

Dave:           The first thing I would go to is your analytics and see what is the article that’s bringing in the most traffic. What is your most important article? Then you need to ask yourself, “Hey, can I monetize this better?” Sometimes, it’s just putting an affiliate link to somebody else’s product or somebody’s course. 

Use that as way to validate whether or not you can make money with it. If you start to see that every month you’re making a couple of sales to this particular course or couple of sales to this software, then start to ask yourself, can you do better? Can you make a better product? Because now you know that you have real estate that makes you money. It’s time to start building that hotel. 

                    Same thing can go with books too, is that if you see that you have an article that’s bringing in a lot of traffic, ask yourself if this would make a good book. You can go at Kindle keyword article and look at the process that we have to validate your book. See if people are actually going to Amazon and typing in this type of book or if books are actually making money on that subject. 

If you do that and you find out that these low quality books are selling, you know that you can make a better book, you know that you have the real estate, you can put that book on that top real estate and now you have continuous traffic that is continuously buying your book. 

                    One of the things I want to add to this, as we know in Amazon, Amazon is all about what makes them more money. If they see that your product or your book is selling more than the others around it, Amazon is going to increase your rankings and show your book to more searchers in hopes that that will catch fire. Just by sending traffic from your website to your book, you’re actually going to increase your rankings and increase your organic sales on Amazon itself. 

Spencer:       Yeah, that makes absolute sense. I have a follow up question to that but first, are you monetizing the pages that you’re ranking in Google in a similar fashion to the way you’re laying out your Kindlepreneur page? Meaning is it just when you’re driving your traffic to Amazon to buy a Kindle book, do you just tap some buttons throughout the article? Any particular way you’re driving that traffic to Kindle? 

Dave:           One way that I’ve done is that I’ve had the direct approach where I’ll basically compare my book to the other books. Check it out, if you’re looking to improve your knowledge on this, here are the books that are currently on Amazon. I’m talking about 142 pages compared to 32. 5 star, 35 reviews, compared to this guy’s 2 star, 12 reviews. Making it as obvious as possible that there is one book that far exceeds the other. I only do that if that’s absolutely truthful and I can say that. You can be direct and just compare and say, “This is the next step.” 

The other tactic that I’ve used before is like we talked about, which is explain to them what it will involve to solve their problem. Elude to the fact that it’s not going to be solved by just reading one article. “Here’s the full step by step, here’s a great book that covers all of tis in detail and will help you to get from A to Z.” That one really, really converts well. 

If somebody is there to learn about something particular, say for example, you rank number one for weight loss, that’s a terrible example. Say for example you rank number one for Evernote. How do you use Evernote to write a book? Now you know that people are trying to write a book so you’ve got real estate for how to write a book, you have real estate for people who are trying to figure out how to use this for one particular idea. That sounds like a book in itself. 

Spencer:       Yeah. 

Dave:           You can say, “Look, here’s steps five, six, and seven, one through five on how to use Evernote to write a book.” And then say, “If you like more the details on exactly how to implement this and by the way do this, this, and this, check out this book.” What you’ll see is that people will want to take it seriously and they’re going to want to buy it. 

                    I’ll leave with one more thing too is that when it comes to your niche website, when I first created a niche website and I thought, “Okay, I’ll write a book.” I was scared that people are going to be like, “I don’t want to pay for that book when I can it all right here on this website.” 

Spencer:       Right. 

Dave:           You know what’s funny though? Hey, we’re all lazy. I would gladly pay $3 or $10 to have a book that has it all laid out in sequential order all the way and all I have to do is just read it. It is worth my time to just pay that money and read it directly from a book than it is to have to click and search, “Oops, I started at step seven, how do I go back and figure this out?” And so forth. 

                    People are all about convenience. If you implement convenience as the solution inside your article, you will drive them to just be, “You know what, I think I need a book on this subject. Let me just go ahead and purchase this and be done with it.” 

Spencer:       Yeah, great tip. Of course, Amazon makes it even more convenient. People already have their credit cards there, they’re just ticking the buy button, makes it super easy to add to the cart. 

Dave:           I’ll add to that too is that I once did a case study. I switched one of my websites to do its own shopping cart instead of sending somebody to Amazon and Amazon outperformed. Even though Amazon takes a bigger cut, in this case they’re taking about 30% of my book sale, I found that I was still making more if I just sent to Amazon. 

The reason being is that sometimes with these websites, a lot of people are hesitant whether or not they want to bring out their credit card for some no name. They don’t even know who is behind this. Who knows if it’s on the other side of the world or something like that. But with Amazon, A, they know it’s secure, it’s Amazon. B, we all have an account so it’s not like you have to fish out the credit card, type in your address, and yada yada. 

                    Those two things right there drive extra sales. For all those out there, you can definitely test yourself but there’s something great about sending them to a trusted and easy to use book market. 

Spencer:       Yeah, it really is. Hands down, people trust Amazon. It just makes a lot of sense to do that. I’ll be honest. I’m pretty excited about this strategy. I don’t know if you are aware, remember Dave that I published a couple of Kindle books. It’s been two or three years ago in a different niche website that I had. I did something similar but I was really focused on the big launch process, giving away the free books, and having the free period, and then putting on sale, and that sort of thing. 

Once it’s so much focused on the driving traffic from my website although I did a little bit of that. Now, I’m thinking about my different sites that I have and different articles that are ranking well and getting traffic. Thinking, “I can probably put together a book and get that on Kindle and monetize those articles much better.” You got me thinking, for sure. 

                    One thing that I’ve done or that I tell people to do in relation to physical products is essentially the same thing. If you’re ranking for an article, for a product, why not think about creating your own physical product. 

Dave:           Bingo. 

Spencer:       I think there are probably a lot more people out there ranking for more informational type keywords and certainly a Kindle book is less intimidating I guess than finding a manufacturer, shipping that over, and dealing with a physical product. 

                    I think diving into Kindle books is a great way for people that maybe are listening and have a niche website ranking well and maybe are looking for a way to monetize that better. I am going to look back at my websites and think through this myself. Thank you for getting me thinking about my own websites. 

Dave:           Yeah. I’ll add one more strategy to this too, that a lot of people don’t think about until it’s too late. When you take your niche website and you direct your traffic to your book on Amazon, like we said, that traffic and those higher conversion rates increase your ranking in Amazon. What’s really neat though is when Amazon starts promoting your book out to the Amazon shoppers, that’s potential customers that you can drive back to your website. New people are discovering your book and your writing by going to Amazon and searching something in the search bar and finding your book. 

                    For those who are out there, I highly recommend too having a content upgrade inside of your book or creating a course that’s like a free course they can sign up to see you do whatever you’re talking about. That will have a huge, huge increase in your email opt ins. It will drive traffic. 

A great example is Pat Flynn. When he wrote that book of Will I Fly? I worked with him on his keywords and his categories, and we were able to drive his reach on Amazon. The coolest thing about it is that 33% of all people that bought his book signed up for his free course. He had thousands upon thousands of email subscribers. What’s even more important was he took those email subscribers and he then created a paid course later. It was something like on the first week or so, just to that email list, he made over $130,000. 

There is next steps. It doesn’t just have to end on the $3 you make per book sale. If you can plan it, you can start to use that Amazon traffic to either grow your blog, grow your email list, or grow that future product that you’re going to be building. 

Spencer:       Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We’ve really just touched on a lot of the strategies that are related to launching on Kindle, finding keywords for Kindle books, and of course, that’s exactly what your software does, KDP Rocket. If people are interested in learning more from you in particular, I know we talked before the podcast here that you’re putting together some free training. Why don’t you tell us about that and how people can maybe access that? 

Dave:           Absolutely. It’s kind of playing off at the tactics we talked about. One of the hot topics for authors right now is Amazon Marketing Services which is the ability to advertise your books for certain keywords or advertise your book next to a particular competitor. 

Instead of creating this paid course and getting people to buy the course, instead what we did was we’re adding an AMS keyword feature to KDP Rocket, and then we turn the course and we’re making it free so that people can then learn all about Amazon and AMS, and learn how they can get their books out there. 

Again, like we’ve talked about in the article, is that I show them how to physically do it themselves. But save yourself an hour and a half, “See, I just did it in this hour and a half. Now watch me do this in two minutes with the software.” Click, click, there you go. 

Again, it’s the same tactic just being used in a different platform. In this case, I’m using a course to do it. If anybody is interested in learning, again, you don’t need a software to be able to implement what I teach. You can just type in amscourse.com and sign up right there. 

Spencer:       Perfect. Yeah, that would be great. I assume the best way for people to follow along with you or stay in touch with you is kindlepreneur.com, is that correct? 

Dave:           Absolutely. If I went over something a little too fast, just go to my contact page. To this day, I still spend the first three hours of my morning answering all those emails. You can hit me up there and just ask any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer. 

Spencer:       Awesome, perfect. People can check that out over at kindlepreneur.com. Dave, I appreciate your time very much. 

Dave:           Absolutely, Spencer. Again, this been quite an honor to be here. Thank you. 

Spencer:       Yup. Thank you. 

The post Podcast 126: How Dave Chesson Used SEO Traffic to Launch Kindle Books and a Software Business appeared first on Niche Pursuits.

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