Speaker A
I have been receiving a request since I started my "I Tried It" series to do this specific side hustle that I'm doing in this video. I can tell you right now I've done a ton of research on this one. I've started it up myself, and this video is going to be packed full with behind-the-scenes information that you may not hear in all those other videos that you're watching. Yes, it is true people are making thousands of dollars a month selling blank books on Amazon, but there's some missing information out there, and my goal in this video is to kind of fill in some of those missing blank spaces and to answer some of those behind-the-scenes questions that you may be having before starting this specific side hustle. There are two major important things that I've learned and that I'm going to really be focusing in on in this video, and that is product research and also product design. So the very first thing that I had to do in order to get started with this one is to sign up with two accounts. The first one is a Book Bolt account, and the second one is an Amazon KDP account. In total, it took me roughly 10 minutes to sign up with both of these accounts. I don't have anything negative to report about this. It was super easy, simple, and didn't take much time at all. Now, the second step that I learned to be crucial and vital whenever trying this out was to not jump right in and start creating books like a lot of these videos tell you to do, but to step back and do a little bit of product research on the Book Bolt software in order to know what is the best thing to sell on Amazon right now. I'm going to show you exactly what I did so that if you want to do this as well, you know exactly what to do for yourself. Two things I want to point out here on Book Bolt that were really helpful for me are the live calls. They're over here up on the top right; you can find those. Those live calls are filled with questions and answers of other individuals who are also doing this and making money from doing this. And so if you cannot join the live calls, they're recorded and then they're put up here on the Book Bolt website, so you are able to go in, watch those, and have a lot of your questions answered. The second helpful tab is over here on the left, where it says tutorials. This has everything, everything that I needed to learn about the Book Bolt software, how to create these books, how to do the product research, all of that. So all of that information and learning that you need to do is here on Book Bolt. I found that really useful, and so I definitely wanted to mention those two things for any of you out there who may want to try this for yourself. Now, to start out with the product research, the tab you want to click on is here where it says products. This is where I started my research on the product, and this is where you're going to want to research the book ideas you have. So, for example, if you want to do a notebook, which is like a blank book, select notebook over here, which is what I did initially. And then on the left, I needed to input the keywords for ideas I had. So think about a notebook you may want to create and input a relevant keyword on this side, and then it's going to give you some results that are currently on Amazon for you to get some ideas. For me, my son's starting kindergarten in the fall, and so I've been researching ideas for gifts for kindergarten teachers. So I knew that that was kind of in the back of my mind, that something recent that I had been searching for. So that's what I input: kindergarten teacher notebook. And this search really provided a lot of really helpful information about other people who are selling books to this audience, how many sales they have, how many reviews they have, what their titles are like, and then also what their books look like, so you know kind of what you're competing with. This one right here has 410 estimated sales. Over on the right, it is giving related keywords for your products, so funny, kindergarten teacher, teacher, kindergarten. All of this is extremely helpful for when you are going in and creating your product. I went over to the keywords tab and I input some of those relevant keywords to kind of see what's being searched on Amazon so that I know what to include in my title and my description and also to kind of give me a gauge on how good of an idea this book is. So after doing my research on those couple of things, I did decide on going with the kindergarten teacher notebook because I found it didn't have a ton of competition, but the search volume was relatively high. Now, I'm into the step where you go in and actually create the notebook. So in the Book Bolt Studio, where you select create, you're going to be prompted to create a new project that you're going to have to name, and then you're going to choose whether you want paperback or hardback. The most standard is paperback, and I've already created two paperbacks and they're already published. So for this, I'm going to go with the hardback cover, and I do suggest keeping the size fixed on the 6x9, which will be your standard smaller notebook size. And then I also suggest leaving it on the bleed. Anywhere from 100 to 150 pages would be good for a notebook. I would honestly say that this part is one of the easier parts because of the Book Bolt software making it really easy to create that notebook, the cover, and the inside of the notebook. Right here, once you click on this little image, they have copyright-free options for you to go in and choose a cover for your notebook. So let's say you're going to be creating a simple notebook just for example. All you need to do is choose a cover for that notebook by typing in something relevant according to what you want your cover to look like. So I sort of want to go with something that is vibrant, colorful, so I just typed in orange. I'm scrolling down here. I really love this one right here that's kind of like a paint texture, so I'm just going to select it, and then all you have to do is scale it to fit the book cover. Next, in order to put the words on the front of the book, I'm just selecting this tab here, and then heading it automatically will put those words on the front of the book, and then you're just going to need to go in and edit it so you can switch up the font, the color. For example purposes, I'm just going to use the simple word of notebook. I also want to point out that over here under effects, you can kind of switch up the effects on the notebook, so the lettering, adding a drop shadow to it, making it look more 3D, and then you can also change the color of the shadow, things like that, and you would do that under effects. Now, after you're done there, I also want to point out that you should always ensure that your lettering is away from the edges because I did run into making it a little bit too close to the edges, and I had to go in and edit it a couple of times. Now, all I had to do is go in and add that inside of the notebook. In order to do that, you're just going to go over here under the templates button here. I'm selecting the simple line pattern, select all, unselect the cover, hit next, and then just select submit, and that's going to add it to every single page of the notebook. And then from there, all you're going to need to do is go up here on the left and just download the entire project onto your computer. That took me about 20 minutes in total to complete that entire book. Now, keep in mind I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now, so I have the hang of it. For you, it may take just a little bit longer in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, it's going to be super simple for you as well, and it's not going to take that much time. Now, after I created those books initially, the only thing I had to do then was to upload them onto Amazon KDP. So I'm going to give you a walkthrough of me uploading this specific one onto Amazon KDP and some things to look out for that I've learned. One of the main things I want to point out is your title. Now, when you're creating your title, I...
