As far as traffic generation for introverts go, Kindle Publishing from Amazon deserves some discussion on its own. If used correctly, it can drive substantial amounts of traffic, and do so at no cost whatsoever.
Firstly, why should you care about Kindle?
For those of you who are not familiar with Kindle Direct Publishing: It’s an electronic platform from Amazon where you can sell your ebooks – fiction and non-fiction – without any fixed costs. Amazon takes a percentage of the revenue to make it worth their while.
However, what makes it different from many other platforms is the fact that a large percentage of the people visiting Amazon do so with buyer intent. Either they go there looking for something to buy, or they go there to look at stuff they intend to buy in the “not too distant” future.
In addition to that, a very large percentage of the buyers on Amazon buy more than one item at a time.
As such, if you can siphon visitors from Amazon, it makes for high quality traffic. Most of the visitors you get will be people who has either already purchased something online, or plan to do so. This means that your average visitor or subscriber obtained from Amazon will be worth more that people visiting from say, Facebook, or even Google.
If course, that fact that Amazon is an incredibly busy website does help. I remember at the height of the recession, after the market collapse in 2008, Amazon recorded (what was back then) its best ever festive season – at just over 73 transactions per SECOND. Keep in mind that was nine years ago, amidst a global recession – and many of those transactions included multiple items.
Today, Amazon is busier than ever – and even though there is some competition, there is still some room to get in.
Lastly, publishing on Amazon allows you to piggy-back off their authority, and publishing on Kindle will add just that little bit to your credibility (credibility by association – your credibility is measured against the company you keep).
So – you can use Kindle to get traffic, increase your credibility, and even make some money if you choose to do so.
If you do it right, you can get some reasonably consistent and lasting traffic from your free Kindle book for a while to come.
How to get traffic from Amazon Kindle:
Firstly, you really, really should be siphoning your Amazon visitors onto a mailing list. Considering the quality of those visitors, and their level of buying intent, you would be stupid not to.
So – you will need at least one book to give away (more about how to do that just now) on KDP, and some relevant freebie you can offer the readers to opt in to your list. In time, you can simply add more books to Kindle to add more traffic.
Next, of you haven’t done so already, create an “ideal customer profile”. What would he or she be interested in? Have a look at the questions asked in forums and on social groups. Then go and see which of those questions remain unanswered (in terms of books about it on Kindle), and create a shortlist of potential book topics.
Take a look on Amazon Kindle at what sells at present (optics and rankings of top sellers in categories relevant to you) – and create a useful book of 20 pages (of content) or more.
Important: Add your optin offer to both the start and the end of your book. Consider your wording – because the wording you use there will determine how many people click through to your optin page. Fortunately, Kindle allows you to update your book at any time – so you can always improve it later if you feel it doesn’t perform well.
When you upload it to Kindle, set the price at any point you would normally charge for it – just in order to have it submitted.
Pick your actual title, description and keyword tags carefully. Amazon is a search engine like any other, and if you want to get people to see your book, you will need to do some basic search engine optimization just like you would do for Google (Kindle is just easier and less work, though).
Afterwards, go and submit your book to both Smashwords, and Nook from Barnes and Noble. On both these platforms, set your price to zero.
Once everything is in place and showing up where they should, simply contact Kindle support and request a price match. Just be open and tell them you are running a free promotion (don’t go into the details). Once they verify the availability of your book for free elsewhere, they will match the price.
So – why is the price such a big issue? Free Kindle books are downloaded up to 150 times more than paid books – even if you compare it to using all the available free promotions days (6 per 3-month cycle) on Amazon.
In conclusion:
The only drawback to this method is that it requires you to create an ebook of 20 pages or more (and a good-looking cover), which can be challenging for some people.
If, however, you measure that effort against the value per visitor, it will be time and effort (or money if you outsource it) well spent. People who have employed this method have seen drastically improved optin rates, and also substantially improved conversion rates – when selling to subscribers originating from Kindle.
Lastly – you can, of course, at any given time, put the price back up to where you want it to be. So at any time you feel like you have an idea for a better lead magnet, you can simply make the old one a paid book, and give the new one away for free.