5 Proven Online Businesses That GUARANTEE Financial Freedom

Hello today we are going to go over uh, five potential business ideas Um, I was actually supposed to meet with sophie howard who's an entrepreneur I'll leave a link to her but I haven't heard back from her today this this commonly happens on saturdays Um just with oh sophie is here. Oh awesome. So we're going to talk today Um again audience I am on the lookout for different ways for you guys to make money online Goal for my channel is to help average people achieve financial freedom And so we have sophie howard here today. Let me bring her on Um, if you're in the audience what we need from you hit the like button Do you have any questions as we're going feel free to ask would love to uh, Get your feedback. See what questions you have for sophie. Let's let's bring sophie on Sophie, welcome to the channel. So nice to meet you. Thank you so much for hopping on. Um, Yeah, great great to have you can you start with an introduction I think i'm pretty familiar with you I found you I think on twitter and i've been looking at all your stuff and looking through all your stuff So I feel like I know you pretty well, but can you do a quick introduction for my audience? Just a little bit about you and your story Sure thing. Well, thank you for having me on. I love talking to anyone who's exploring the world of online business I'm looking to make some changes Um, so I started doing this 10 years ago. I had a newborn baby and a toddler I didn't want to go back to work So I thought I'd get my skates on here and think of another way to earn money. I had a good job But didn't want to go back And um, I live in new zealand and it's very bright and early in the morning here and late your time And what I do is make money by selling ebooks on amazon I started out with physical products and i'll explain later if we have time or want to go down that track Why I think it's the best bit of amazon, you know, everyone's got their favorite game plans But I really like the fact it's all digital There's no shipping containers getting lost in the high seas or Stock to pay up front. So there's some big perks with the business model itself, but I just think it's really accessible Easy to understand easy to have happy customers without actually having any customer contact. So That's the business. But um, i've got two children and a dog and uh I do lots of running and yoga and I have a very nice lifestyle So, you know, there's people that go and try and build an empire. That's not me. I've got a really nice lifestyle business And uh 10 years in I can't imagine doing anything else. I think i'm unemployable now No, I totally get that i'm the same way It's like once you have the freedom the time freedom and the financial freedom. It's very hard to go back Even a really really good job. It's hard to go back to just being kind of in in that Jail cell that's probably a little dramatic but uh, yeah, uh one question for you Who do you love more the kids or the dog? Oh kids I say this because I just found a deer leg in my living room Well, that's the right answer because the dog can't ever listen to this so you'll never hurt the dog's feelings So the kids might and uh, that could be a problem They're just seen out there. So Yeah, yeah, so be careful what you say I have an 11 year old a 10 year old a 7 year old and sometimes i'll see my 10 year old hop in the comments On my video and i'm like, oh I better be really careful what I say right now. So Awesome. Well, can you tell us a little bit about your journey? Um, i'd like to hear too what other business ideas you have I know you're I know you're like me where it's like I want as many income streams as possible and i'm looking around for just Anything I don't really care It's like if that oh that could be an income stream that could be an income stream But can you tell us a little bit about your journey getting into kindle direct publishing? Yeah, sure. That's a good one to start with. So, um, as I said, I was at work on maternity leave Basically had a newborn baby and didn't want to go back and a toddler And I live in new zealand where there's not many people so I thought you know Obviously this has to be something online and I watched every webinar out there and I actually had one really horrible false start With some really scammy site with some five thousand dollar course I won't name them But I won't even say what it was because there are good people with good courses on that subject. But anyway, I got ripped off I had a bad start nearly stopped nearly went back to the day job and then Um a lady I went to baby yoga with her husband Was selling stuff on amazon and we live in the same tiny neighborhood. It's the capital city of museum So he was making this quite good income stream selling stuff on amazon So I found out more about what he was doing because it was like a real person. I knew was for real making money rather than somebody i'd never met or Couldn't trust so Um looked at that and then I did a course, uh, which was pretty good Uh sort of taught me how to drive amazon But the bit I didn't like in their course was what products to sell so they said just go and get some cheap Plastic tack from china and Stack it high sell it cheap put a zero on the end of you know, whatever you pay to buy it And that'll be fine Don't like the sound of that very much. So I ended up doing a really nice quality kind of handmade product And it sold really really well and I made 1.6 million dollars in the first year And I launched a thousand more products and there was probably some beginner's luck because you know I was testing an idea rather than going off hard data or a proven model But anyway, I had a great time. I really enjoyed it The profit margins were fantastic and I sold that business. So then I knew what I was doing did it again sold another business and then um during covid I was meant to be off to india to source some products because i'd managed to Get this clever system where i'd go on tropical holidays a couple of times a year, but also visit a trade show And i'd take clients on the trade show bit and we're about to go to india and the border's closed Wonder if my products can get it in out with these closed borders. I better start something just in case So i'd written a little book about how to sell on amazon more to stop answering the same questions every time when people Said how do I do what you're doing on amazon? So i'd written this little book And and I was teaching people what to do as well. I was taking clients on these trips, which was really fun So I thought well this book's been selling quite easily on amazon and I haven't done anything just wrote it in a day It was just kind of bullet points and I had someone help me tidy it up Um into a short book. It wasn't anything super special It was just like a summary of what I do on amazon And so I thought well, maybe I should do some more books like that. So, um Rather than books. I'm the subject matter expert on like let's just see how other people are making money by selling on amazon So the advantages I had doing it was that I'd come in from the product side. I'm not you know, a A fine arts degree author struggling artist trying to work at night Do a day job and then try and write my craft by night and publish it and get approved by a publisher I knew all about amazon And amazon loves selling books. They started as a bookstore So I kind of basically mashed together the knowledge I had about getting products ranked and selling on amazon With how to outsource the writing bit to a team And you know, it's keyword research to choose the right book topic just like a product And there's no shipping and logistics it's about one percent of the workload of a physical product um To be fair the people who've got a really successful products business probably have a bigger business than an average book business on amazon with kindle Um, but the kindle stuff is so simple and easy and stress-free So I really like the model and I like that you can just have lots of books if you want it to be bigger So there's no there's not many people within a million dollar book, but there's quite a few million dollar products out there But they've got to compete really hard. They've got the cost of goods. They've got more advertising. They've got shipping. They've got inventory storage um So I still have a few products and I still know people who do really really well with their products But if you want something easier than that, um Uh, then the kindle platform is very nice. I like it a lot And so that's where I spend my time putting books up on amazon. I just did a new one yesterday And um, I was actually recording it on my screen as a teaching demo And yeah, it's very straightforward. So do some keyword research Hire a writer don't do the writing yourself and then load it up Okay, I love this. I have a whole whole slew of questions for you So, uh, but first off I really like what you said um, you said with your initial business you got lucky right and What I tell entrepreneurs a lot of times is the only way you can be lucky Is if you're out there doing something because the reason that you were able to be lucky A lot of times people tell me. Oh, yeah, this person's successful because they were lucky with this They were lucky with that But in order to be lucky with that they had to go out and do that And then that's where luck comes luck tends to follow where people are actually doing things And uh, so I would encourage entrepreneurs don't use. Oh, I might not be a lucky one Don't use that as an excuse to not do something because you can only be lucky if the products were out there and Yep, so I really like that. You said it and I like that You worded it that way because there is luck involved like there's no entrepreneurs I know who were just so brilliant that they were successful without any amount of luck I mean even just being born in the age of the internet is lucky, right? Because we couldn't have done this, you know 50 years ago or so. So I love that you said that Um kindle direct publishing Can you talk about how many books that you put out there? And if you want to talk about how much you've made I just want to give people an idea of Like how much you've done how long you've been at it those kind of things sure Okay, uh, I won't have very precise numbers off the top of my head, but just to give you the picture Uh, so I started in 2020 Uh, so four years in Um, i've tried at times to do a book a week That was a bit fast could have been a tangle too many tabs open in my brain Uh, so I kind of go through little bursts and do a bunch in a batch and then have a break from it Um and do something else for a while Um, but i've got a few hundred books up and selling and I get a very steady five figures a month Um, very nice six figure a year income I could live off That's all I did I have got all sorts of other little projects on the go because I just always will Um, but this is sort of the big solid backbone. That's just being really steady and doesn't you know The downside is quarter four. You don't get that huge bump in sales that the e-commerce and the amazon people love. It's a steady It's really boring But I like it. It's very predictable and there's no overhead. So once that book's up and selling there's nothing else to do There's no restocking. There's no more, you know managing supplier and more product Um, just keep selling so the advertising side is quite simple. It's easier than products or You know because the books aren't particularly expensive the budgets for the advertising aren't that big And there's not too much competition One of the big advantages is that it's a very low competition time and strategy to be doing this, you know, there's um people killing each other to launch a yoga mat or something but Not that many books on yoga to compete against if you turn up with one of those to sell. So um Yeah, it's uh What was the other part of your question books income time? Yeah, and so i've got a little team that helped me. I mean, I don't employ them They're just freelancers, but i've got the same person who does all the cover designs the same Agency who does all the writing? And so over time just got into a nice rhythm with the whole thing and can speed it up We'll have a break from it But every book I sell, you know is still selling years and years later. Not a week later or one season or one holiday Season spike of sales, you know, they're really steady Yeah, no, I love that. No, um a couple questions that I had about that Um, were your first books successful because I think one thing i'm worried about for people who start getting into this Is they hear okay. Sophie's making five figures a month I'm gonna put my first book out there today and they put something together. They put it out there No sales for the first week and then they're like, well, this is sophie's a scammer. What's she talking about? I didn't make any money from my book Can you talk about kind of the timeline of when? You know where your first few books were they successful or were they kind of flops? And kind of talk about the experience getting into it Yeah, the first one did pretty well actually. Um So that ruins my point sophie. So can you can you lie and change the change the story? It was on day one So it was it did really well, but not on day one You know, there's a lag because amazon's a search engine and so a customer searching for a book Say how to sell on amazon, which wouldn't be a good example for somebody new because that's me as the expert So say somebody wants to buy a book on making sourdough bread And the title of your book might be sourdough bread There might be a picture of a sourdough loaf on the front cover of this book But amazon doesn't know the second your book goes live that that's what your book's all around It needs to have a bit of data flow through the amazon system and the amazon algorithm watch and learn for a bit Which keywords describe your book in its brain not the customer's brain, but like the amazon Algorithm has to know these customers want that book and then as soon as they've got that That lag just sort of needs to work through the system for a bit and then It might be days or weeks. It's not months or years or anything, but just takes it's not like an overnight You launch and you've got millions of dollars coming in. It's definitely a Accumulative sort of steadier business model than something where you do a massive launch Which is good because there's no other cost or marketing stuff to do um, you know, some people might go and do big social media things or Um Have big email databases to launch a book to but I don't I see my students don't we just play only on amazon And just that's the only place the book's for sale keeps it really easy. Amazon's got all the customers looking to buy And so everything's just optimized for that one platform. So the keywords how we write the title kind of images on the cover um It's all done to be successful in the long term and to keep on the good side of amazon So I'm in various facebook communities of people that publish and anyone who ever has issues in this space are doing things like buying reviews or putting the word bestseller in their title or Not following some instruction about something, you know, amazon's very fair, but very clear And so you don't mess with amazon if you want to be on their platform And so I think if you just follow the amazon rules use a good research tool to pick the right book topic The book production bit's quite mechanical, you know, there's not a lot of original thought required in that piece of it You know, you're just outsourcing to expert writers Um, it's really nice because there's lots lots of people there who want to write the book for you And we'll do all the research whatever the subject And do an amazingly high quality job for around a thousand dollars or so so the book production bit of it's the easiest bit actually the thing you need to pay the most attention to is choosing the right book topic because you want there to be plenty of demand and over the long term but also not too competitive so you don't want to be trying to do ketogenic diets or Something that's sort of a fad then goes, you know, you want something evergreen subject And not super popular. Don't try and be a bestseller just have a hundred quietish books or ten You know just steady steady. Yes. Yep. I totally I uh, you know in uh, I don't know if you guys do base Yeah, you guys do baseball. Sure. Um, but a bunch. Oh, no baseball. Okay Well, then you might not get this reference but a double several doubles is better than a home run Um, so being consistent with you don't need to yeah get a new york times bestseller book I mean that would be amazing if you if you could but uh, you don't need that in fact I have a I had a gentleman on a few weeks ago who he's done 37 books and each of them does You know 50 to 100 bucks a month. So none of them are huge sellers, but he's like hey I've got my you know 3 700 bucks a month that I make from kindle direct publishing and I don't do anything And that's my business and it's working great, right? Yeah Um, can I ask you for kindle direct publishing? So my audience a lot of my audience is looking for business ideas, right? Um, do you find is this something that you think anyone can do or are there certain people that oh no This wouldn't be good for you if you're not willing to do x y and z No, there's very few constraints on it. Um You don't need a lot of time. Uh, it's probably the lowest upfront cash Cost, you know the capital required to do this would be the lightest of anything I can think of Just about apart from maybe running your own writing your own blog or something But then you would have to put lots of time in Um, so it's pretty quick to monetize. It's um easy to learn the system You know You don't want to be kind of guessing on how to do books need to learn that's the little hump of getting into it a few days of getting your head through some training sessions and learning how to use the research tools pick a good book topic and then How to write the instructions for the ghostwriter to do a good job of their bit. Um And then uploading it to amazon's easy. So there's no tech bits, which is good because i'm horrible at that Um, no techie bits. No being a writer. No big budget. So those are the Negatives should say the simple positive way easy Easy on the tech side easy to upload everything easy to outsource everything um There's no kind of approval process if you were trying to get a normal book published through a publishing house, you have to get approved by an editor and Shop your money around it's up to you. It's your account. You can upload and sell anything you want um, there's a really nice little service industry around it, you know people that do a good book cover design or Use an ai tool to double check your formatting, you know There's lots of little bits of help out there if you don't want to do any of it yourself I don't do any of it myself Um, and if you end up with a really big portfolio of books then um Maybe you have a little part-time freelance virtual assistant who manages the production line But even I barely need that and i've got quite a lot of books. It's quite simple if you've got Sort of a step-by-step checklist for each bit So it's not a creative exercise even though it's producing books. I only do non-fiction books And someone's asking do I have other people write them? Yes, I do so you don't need to be a writer um, it is um Yeah, that's right. So I don't write the books at all myself. I choose the topics based on a research tool that we own and my students access to And that tells you how much People are searching for that keyword and how much in dollars per month the other books on that subject is selling Um, and then you know that there's real demand and then you check out the competition is everything else on there because it's on oprah's book club this month or um you know, it's a big celebrity who's just written a book on that subject and it sort of skewed the data as long as it all Looks like normal books that normal people could do and you haven't heard the name of the author on those subjects You're off to the races time to uh, hit go on the the production team and get them to do a new book Awesome now Did you do your own books at the beginning or did you have you hired it out ever since the beginning? Only the first one and I never even teach people how to write their own book It's only because I was an amazon products expert that i'd put together this really little book on how to sell on amazon And I put that up on kindle Years before covert and it was during covert I had that spark that maybe I should do more of these books because it was selling quite well I did nothing and I didn't know what I was doing. So I just uh Figured out the gaps and the bits of the amazon land. I didn't know about and it was much more fun over there So I still do like products. Don't get me wrong You know people with a good products business are doing the very best thing ever because those things are huge And just crank so good on you If you manage to get the right product to keep your competitors away and get it ranked on amazon, that's an amazing achievement um, but the Uh was a question about the process My I'm getting to an end level. Yeah. Yeah I came up with an idea that I have no idea if it's any good But go and check it out on a keyword research tool that we own So we've developed that in-house it draws all the data out from amazon tells you Number of sales the keywords the size the number of reviews. It just gives you a snapshot of is this tool? Kind of competitive. Is it going to be challenging or easy? Is it easy because nobody's buying books on that subject? um And so make sure that there's demand on amazon and not too much competition And then we write an outline. So, um, there's some tools to help with that as well um The outline bits sort of the hands-on bit that even I still do myself. I never even outsource that to my team It's like your quality control setting the direction for this project Fits on one page. It doesn't need to be perfect beautiful prose. It's just a few bullet points to the writers saying Have a look at this listing, you know, there's one here that's doing well, but I want ours to be different and write it for Teenagers not for adults or something a slightly different demographic or um, it's about sourdough bread, but You know gluten-free recipes or something. I don't know if that's not a very good example But you give your writers their instructions and um, once you've worked with your writing team for a while You'll be able to kind of do that in pretty short shorthand Just what the brief is and then I hand over to the writing team pay them um And they get to work and a few weeks later It's usually four to six weeks 30,000 word book comes back and they're amazing. They're really good You know, there's not often much to do with it It's usually formatted proofread edited ready to upload in the right format for amazon So I open my kindle account press the paperclip key upload save set the price And pop the title and book description in And then it starts selling and then amazon pays me every month to my bank here in new zealand One morning I wake up and there'll be a block of 10 emails in a row from amazon one from each country So they sell in all the different amazon countries all around the world And your kdp payment is on its way times 10 and that's uh, very nice okay, so it's been really fun to um, get the system up and running and Students who are doing this with me are doing really really well um There's lots of people at different ages and stages of life. Some people are doing with their children. Some people are retirees Some people are building an empire bigger than mine And just absolutely, you know throwing everything at it all day every day Some people are making it kind of like a nice thing on the sort of the side of a day job I'm keeping the day job for now, but they'll enjoy putting more time into this later. Um, but doing the work now Um and it's about a thousand dollars or so to produce each book and that's for the really professional ghost writer a really really good job that you will not need to meddle with or Micromanage them on, you know, just second forget, which is good Okay, so guys we've had other kindle direct people on so sophie This is quite a bit different because they were teaching how to write the books So this is going to be a different this is even less work You know, we always talk about how easy kindle direct publishing is but doing it this way is going to cut take even less work So it's a little bit more capital You know, you have to that up front paying the ghost writer, but um, I love this so again, if you've been looking for a business idea and This is this is a good one This is what a lot of people are doing a lot of people are having a lot of success through this um, sophie, do you want to tell us just a little bit you don't have to use names or exact numbers or anything, but just How have your students been doing in this like what are some of the results that you've seen from from some of your students Oh, well, there's people who are traveling and at home with their kids and you know just really making the most of the fact that you can run this business from anywhere you're earning u.s dollars and It's very liberating So the nice thing is just seeing people who there's one guy who's retired and he's now started this and He's in canada And I won't name names some people have sort of checked. Can I use your story? And I can't remember off the top of my head live whose names i've got that promotion from so anyway I'll just give some general stories Um, but he now has started, you know Producing quite a few books and they're doing really well and he's got sort of the whole social life out of it And he goes off and he talks to people about being a publisher and he's got these books and it's like giving him a whole new lease of life And then there are younger people who are traveling there's people who are kind of young mums like when I started with my first online business, you know, they Really motivated at that stage in life to find something that you can just do from home And that income stream starting to make a real difference and then there's uh People who are going at it really seriously like not dabbling none of this side hustle stuff, you know full-time Let's gun it and just you know, make it as big and good as we possibly can um so A few questions there just about other costs. So not really. No, there's um the cover design I use somebody on fiverr. It's sort of thirty dollars or so ago It's not a big expense but worth outsourcing whenever my students use canva threaten to kick them out the program You are not to do your own cover. You are not a designer. Here is the proof. You are not a designer But it's the first impression your readers get It just is awful. If you've got an amateur looking cover, it's just so bad. So I use fiverr designer and You can do all sorts of variations, you know You can do a non-fiction book and then do a workbook that goes with it. You can do um There's these things called low content books. So we teach that as a strategy as well That's if you've got a tighter budget but quite a bit of time on your hands you can do the sort of more design led Journals and planners and workbooks log books that kind of thing We teach a strategy called public domain as well, which is for the old classics And that's a really nice one. If you've got time on your hands, they aren't going to be such big sellers And there's not really anything Tricky about that model which makes it kind of quite accessible to even more people But I quite like them some of my public domain books do really really well So that's been fun. So we teach we just teach all the things that you can pick and choose from Go as big or small as you like We've got a really good support team So the coaches on the program have contact with lots of people have their own successful businesses And so if something in our strategy Is working really well, we'll share that if something's not working as well anymore We'll say keep out of this category or Amazon started being really strict about this rule Make sure you know it when you upload your public domain book because this has always been the rule But they've started to really enforce it. So we've just got the finger on the pulse for exactly what's going on and what's working And it's really nice seeing all the success stories. We get really nice students They want to do a good job of their books, you know, it's quality kind of business And they want to get good reviews from the readers So everybody's focused on making the book as good as it can be by having a professional team produce it basically not through their own work on quality control, but just Doing it in a professional way start to finish. So it's Pretty much unlimited top end you can start really really small But if you wanted to make this massive you just produce more books And with every book you can do the ebook like a kindle ebook A paperback which amazon just prints on demand and ships for you And an audiobook so you get three income streams just in one language from each book And then you can start translating it and selling it in germany My italian books do really well for some reason. I don't know why But anyway, it's been quite a blast. It's been really really fun And I know there's you know Hundreds of students now making a hundred thousand a thousand over a thousand students not of mine, but um people selling on kindle I know this from amazon sometimes Puts out these statements. There's over a thousand people making over a hundred thousand a year selling on amazon. So that's very nice I know some of them taught them and one of them's me, but there's a lot of people doing this I don't know how many more there are since amazon made that statement, but it's a Really nice business model. It's sort of digital. It's straightforward And i've never had any dramas with it, you know, there's other businesses your facebook ad account gets suspended and it's disastrous or um, there's some rule about sending emails changes and oh my goodness can't use my email list like they used to or something like that, so Um, I like that you're in control of the product and the platform's really clear what they allow and what the rules are And if you stick within those amazon rules, it's really really good. And uh Yeah, um the first book you do is the hardest of course because you don't know the terminology and you've not worked with a cover designer before and you haven't Opened a kindle account. So there's a lot of one-off things You need to do the first time and then once you've done that you just keep repeating it as many times as you want And it's really straightforward And you can keep the same team and just you know feed more books into that pipeline and out they pop and start selling Rinse and repeat, right? Yeah, exactly Um, we have a facebook user is your coaching direct contact with a coach like is there any one-on-one time with a coach It sounds like you have coaches who work with your students. Yeah, we do live weekly calls in a group Um, and then we've got kind of a help desk where if there's any individual issues We'll get back to people one-on-one in that format Um, but yeah, the the main course is set up. So everyone's self-sufficient really quickly Lots of encouragement lots of contact time with the coaches And the rest of the community every week we do a live call and then sometimes we'll do a big weekend event or um Bring in some guest speakers sometimes. So we keep the program nice and interesting And lots of help and everything's up to date. I need to re-record a section here or tweak a template we use to assess books there or Um do a case study of something that's happened that's worked really well for somebody in the community that kind of thing so it's been uh Really fun never a dull moment okay, so I hope you guys can see how How important kindle direct publishing is and how good of an opportunity I think it is because this is the third Video i've done on kindle direct publishing because I just I really want you guys if you're looking for an income stream I get questioned every day. I need an income stream. I don't really have a lot of skills I don't have a ton of capital up front. What should I do? This is the answer in my opinion right now, this is this is the best one right now um, one of the things I love about it is Um, it's kind of low risk too You you can fake you know You can put something out there and it kind of fails or flops and it's like you didn't really invest that much And um, I love that part of it. Um, sophie, maybe I would like to get to a couple other income streams I don't think we'll get to five because I spent too long on this particular one because it's my favorite right now Um, but can you what would you say to anyone who's watching who thinks no, I probably can't do that Yeah, sophie did it and a thousand other people have done it. I don't think that I can do it What would you say to somebody who's in that situation watching right now? Oh Sounds like a bit of an excuse for not giving it a go because I do think there's probably not anything much easier than this i'd say any online business you've got to Get your content or product out there in front of customers The beautiful thing about amazon is that all the customers are there on one platform ready to go shopping for something and so um If you want to put yourself out there and start a business and have something to sell Amazon is definitely the easiest place to start out because you're not buying traffic You're not trying to run a social media thing and pay facebook lots and ads or pay youtube lots and ads To bring customers in front of your product plus those people on facebook or google or on youtube or google Aren't sitting there looking to buy something whereas on amazon. They are looking to buy something right away They've only gone on amazon to buy something And if they've got a problem A toddler who needs to be body trained and they can buy a book three dollars kindle ebook is there immediately That's a really good solution to their problem. So on those non-fiction books, they're very practical. They're instant resource for the customer They're really easy for you to produce. They're really low cost and high value to the person receiving them And I actually can't think of an easier business model if you were to say become a blogger You have to deal with the google stuff the seo stuff and all the writing or pay an agency to write which is just as Expensive as a book plus that content sort of comes and goes, you know The book's there forever earning money every time someone wants to read it Um, so you only make money on your blog through the affiliate links or the ads You've got to kind of work all these other platforms and stay current and there's people competing with you on Google and then google changes the algorithm so I can't think of anything easier if you were really tight on budget I would say Still do the kindle strategy But maybe do a little bit more of the work yourself maybe Start with the low content books or the public domain books until you can afford to outsource a whole book to be written for you Or you could learn the system and then set yourself up one or two days a week As the assistant to someone else who's got a bigger business because you know the skills, you know You project management the book's coming out of there proofreading Writing editing cover design team put the whole thing together as a service You know earn 10 20 hours a week working for someone else and in a few weeks You'd be able to pay for your own books And then once your book's earning you just roll that income stream straight back into the next book and the next book and i've got Students who do that, you know put up to dozens of books From the initial income stream of the first book which they've then rolled back in to put into funding the next book And suddenly there's two income streams and then they keep scaling like that so if money's a constraint, I still think it's a good strategy, but maybe just sort of tiptoe your way in and learn some skills and then And do some other earning using those skills on the side, you know Something like being paid to do something to get really good at it as well and so that's the thing I would say to do if you are Not going to be able to afford your first book But you still want to learn and then the public domain and the low content strategies are still taught in that main um main program uh, so you could pick and choose sort of what level you start at and then I still don't think you should ever write your own book because um It's definitely a skill to be a professional writer and you want your readers to receive A really professional book that they're going to leave good reviews on um There's other bits of amazon like print on demand mugs and things like that which um are also um Low cost of capital to get started. Um But if you think you're saving money by being on a free platform like facebook You've still got to catch the attention of all those facebook users. So you've either got tons of time creating content hoping to catch someone And they get their attention Um and that work that time you'd be better actually working on something else and then funding your kindle business, I think So it's a bit of a long answer, but I do really think it's the best strategy whether you want to start really small Or go really big you just start at the beginning and then turn up the dial when you're ready Okay I love this and I would love to I just want to keep pushing people Towards this because I think it's a great way again The goal of my channel is to help average people achieve financial freedom and it's like oh my goodness This is like the perfect way for almost anyone to do that So i'm going to encourage everyone watching to go over here kindlepublishingincome.com slash next level. I'll leave a link Um, go sign up and at least check it out and just see you know If you have questions, you know get ask those questions, but this is something I would love to see everyone in my audience uh take advantage of Um, and we've got mbp here says looking young james radiant energy if I may Um stream yard has a new touch up my appearance feature that i've been taking advantage of so it looks like I had a professional Makeup artist. Uh, I don't my skin is not actually this clear. It's ai But yeah, thank you. Praise the lord for technology. I'll say Um, maybe we could do I don't we're not going to get through five Which is totally fine five's too many people don't need five business ideas. They need really one business idea I would you know focus don't try five things at once try one thing at once but maybe we could do one other one so If you had people an average person who was like i'm tired of my nine to five I'm, really looking for a way to kind of start a side hustle that I turn into a business to escape my nine to five Um kindle direct publishing is probably number one in my in my opinion probably in your opinion What would you say is the number two? Oh, that's hard. It depends on yes that but I do quite like affiliate marketing because again, you can start quite small you don't need a product or an audience, but you sort of chip away at the you know the products or services you want to promote and then the people that provide those there's a bit of relationship and connection and Then it's one of those nice business models. You can run from anywhere Build your audience on a platform that suits you if you're happy on screen get on screen if you're Good at writing emails write lots of emails or start a little blog um So there's a bit more work, but that can be quite a nice model. Um The thing I don't like it's probably easy to say what I keep clear of and why without naming names or anything I don't like those sort of um Speculative business models. I like something where you create something that you own and control so Um something like an ebook's great because you own the content of that ebook forever and amazon wants to sell ebooks forever So that's easy But even if amazon changed a rule or wasn't there You still own that ebook and you can sell it on wherever people buy ebooks or audiobooks or paperbacks from in the future So it's sort of a nice long-term thing There's nothing worse than doing a bunch of work and then it's done and gone and you've got to do another bunch of work There's no recurring revenue, which is why the book's called recurring revenue playbook, so Um, yeah recurring revenue is good. I think if you've got Uh lots of resource as in close to full-time availability and a big budget a software business is very cool because That's recurring revenue and no cost of goods, you know, just a digital product. So i'm all about digital wouldn't uh wouldn't be able to beat that for lucrative returns But very challenging and a huge thing to get it up and launched and selling. I mean, that's not an easy start But it's the biggest game in town. I would say is to have a successful software business I would I would agree. That's actually how I My entrepreneurship I wrote some software that I ended up selling. Um, and so I totally agree Um, and I loved software for the same reason. I had six Failed software before the one that really took off But since I was doing the programming myself, it didn't cost me anything I mean it took my time, but my time was worthless at the time Um, and so I would just you know, okay, I wrote this software Oh, nobody wanted it, but I learned how to code better than the next one Oh, nobody wanted it, but I learned to code better than finally Um again, I was lucky is what some people say, but this is my sixth time building something Um, and then that took off so totally agree Um as for affiliate marketing, um, so obviously I have a youtube channel and that's what i've kind of Excelled at is i've developed an audience through youtube and then when you have an audience Then there's all sorts of ways to monetize that through affiliate sales and things like that Um, can you tell a little bit about your affiliate journey? How did you build your audience? Um, I don't think you did youtube, but how did you kind of build your audience? No, well i've got very limited affiliate marketing experience So i'm not the person to ask about that, but your question was what's another good online business model? so it is a good one, but I just focus on these books because um Yeah, I think uh, you can't do too many things at once, you know I've actually got a little chart on my whiteboard next to me with all the different things i've got running I've got some content sites. Um, and they do have affiliate links in but they're more like product affiliate links Um, i've got some software because um, you know always dreaming That hasn't launched yet, but hopefully it will and then um I've got a few other like newsletter businesses Um, but the main thing is always the ebooks, you know I just like to have a bit of a dabble and stay current And also sometimes I learn about something and then see the opportunity for a series of books around that thing. So um i've actually published some books on things like affiliate marketing because you can study up and the Writers can research current best practice. Here's some examples of really good well-done channels Here's some examples of a newsletter based affiliate business and you can actually research and write these things as a book and keep selling the book forever more so it's kind of uh selling the um Selling the when there's a gold mine sell pics, you know instead of doing the thing teach. Yeah Oh, I see that all the time I love I love too that even your other income ideas end up feeding back into kindle direct publishing. It's like When you find something else, oh this made some money Let's write a book about it and then we'll get our kindle direct publishing. So all roads lead to kdp Oh, that's amazing, I love that Um, maybe maybe we'll kind of close with this Um, if people would like to get to know you more see more of your stuff What's the best way to if they possibly want to get a hold of you? I don't want to blast your phone number out there to the to the world or anything like that But what's the best way for people just to get more of you see more of your content get to know you better What's the best way for them to do that? Well, I do a free masterclass on how to sell on kindle and in there i'll go a little bit Like full detail, you know over the shoulder watch the whole thing about how to produce a book Uh what I look at driving the research tools, you know working with the ghost writers. What kind of outline do they need? What? Uh What do you do to actually upload the book? So there's a um a training session that you can join for free and if you think this might be for you But you can't quite picture yourself doing it or not sure if it's the right thing for you That would be the way to see more of how I go about it the kind of criteria. I have the workflow that's involved The exact costs, you know, see how it all steps through and um and that would be the way to get into it and then um When you wonder like who is it for and who is it not for I think it's got a very broad appeal and certainly the Students who joined already and who do well, there's all sorts of different characters demographics young people students retirees and People who are really busy with a day job and they just have to do even more outsourcing people who are on a really tight budget and do it all themselves with um, you know a little bit of professional writing still but they basically You know have turned this into their main source of income um And yeah, there's a nice sort of nice community very constructive Uh calls once a week to really stay focused and keep up with best practice Um, but the first thing to do is really just to watch that Free master class and i'll take you through the whole thing Start to finish And answer some questions on that as well. So, um, we've had a few questions here today, which have been really good ones um Got a very nice audience who follow you. So you should write a book on affiliate marketing and youtube There you go. Hey, i'm i'm i'm getting geared up to really start this kindle direct publishing journey And I want to film the journey as I do it like go through the process show Hey, here's the here's how I did the keyword research. Here's the book I wrote. Here's how it did marketing wise Oh, no, this one flopped. That's embarrassing, you know things like that. Um, so would love that. Um also Sophia's website aspiringentrepreneurs.com. I would advise you guys to go check that out. There's a lot of cool stuff on there Um, I just love the way that you think and I love people that are just they've enjoyed the freedom of being their own boss and so They want to continue to grow that and they also I see this in almost every Entrepreneur is there's a desire to teach other people and say i've just enjoyed what i've been able to Achieve and what i've been able to how i've been able to design my life And I want other people to do that. It's such a different world than a nine to five and you know being being kind of Stuck in that which you know entrepreneurship's not for everyone. Okay, but Um, if you're interested in it go check out aspiring entrepreneurs. She's got a lot of free resources some books of course, you know that there weren't books there i'd be you know, kind of uh Questioning if you're legitimate Um, but we will go ahead and wrap up their audience You guys are amazing again. I'm so thankful for you guys watching because that's what lets me connect with all these amazing people Again, that's why i'm able to connect with sophie's because I have this youtube channel And was able to connect with her and say hey, do you want to come on the youtube channel? But then I get to meet her and uh, so appreciate you guys and sophie. Thank you so much for Sharing your expertise not keeping it to yourself You know, you could have found this gold mine and been like, okay i'm there i'm set my family's set I'm gonna leave it at that Um, but thank you for sharing with others and thank you for coming on the channel here today and sharing with us Well, thank you very much the opportunity to talk about james. It's been really nice You've got lovely comments there and people asking questions and you've built something really valuable that lots of people will get The big break the entrepreneurial idea Maybe someone's got a book in them. Everybody's apparently got a book in them, you know This will be the moment where they make the decision to go and get it out there. So, uh, Hopefully, uh, it's been useful for the listeners and watchers Thank you so much and enjoy so it's morning there now, is that correct? Yes morning Okay, so it's one it's 1 p.m here. So enjoy the rest of your wait now, is it? Sorry, is it february 25th there right now then? Yes, it's my sunday morning 7 a.m. Okay Still the 24th here that always blows my mind. You're a different day. Um, that's crazy So awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much sophie and have a great sunday and uh, we'll we'll stay in touch and uh, We'll talk to you later Lovely. Thanks james