Amazon offers subscriptions to blogs within their Kindle platform. Every day when your readers wake up, your new content is waiting on their Kindle. Since the Kindle home screen’s default setting is to show newest content first, you could be the first thing they see every time they look at that home screen. How’s that for visibility?

And there isn’t much competition in your niche yet.

Unlike on the web, blogs must be registered to show up in the Kindle blog listings. Whereas a Google search for “arts & entertainment blog” returns 438,000,000 results, on Kindle, there are just 3, 481 titles.

Top-Level Category Blog Statistics

This is your competition today (Feb 11, 2011)

All Blogs: 11,734 titles

Arts & Entertainment: 3,481 titles

Business & Investing: 2,151 titles

Humor & Satire: 1, 535 titles

Industry Focus: 1,753 titles

Internet & Technology: 2, 963 titles

Lifestyle & Culture: 5,592 titles

News, Politics & Opinion: 2,754 titles

Regional & Travel: 1, 107 titles

Science: 760 titles

Sports: 934 titles

Since Amazon lists these titles by largest subscriber numbers, it would be a very smart idea to register your blog and start promoting it now. This will ensure your place on the first page of results.

Do it now, while the competition is still scarce!

Kindles aren’t just for books. People also subscribe to blogs on their Kindles. It usually costs around $1.99 a month (the price is set by Amazon) and is a great way to

• offer your content to all those new Kindle owners
• monetize your blog
• increase the prestige of your blog (‘available through Amazon’ automatically makes you sound professional)

When readers subscribe, every new post you make is delivered to their Kindle (no need for them to remember to check your blog!). You are paid 30% of the fee Amazon charges.

How To Get A Kindle Blog

If this sounds like technobabble, let me help

Register With Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Program

It is cost-free and simple to register with Amazon’s Kindle Publishing program. If you do not already have one, you will need to create a vendor account, which is different from your regular Amazon account.  Read through the terms, because you are agreeing to obligations on pricing, content, timing and termination details. You will agree to terms for both the US and European markets.

At the end of the registration process you will be given a Vendor ID and Amazon will have all your payment details. You’re in business!

Add A Blog

When you have finished registering you will be taken to you dashboard. Click the “Add A Blog” link on the top right hand corner. This is where you fill in all the information that will let both Amazon find the posts from your blog and send them to your readers’ Kindles.

Filling In The “Add Blog” Page

Find Your Feed

If you aren’t familiar with RSS and feeds, don’t worry. Most blogging platforms (not to mention Twitter and Facebook) use feeds to distribute your content. It’s usually easy to findGo to your blog and look for the RSS symbol (possibly in the address bar of your browser) and click on it. It will take you to a page that has an address something like “http://yourdoman.com/feed”. Copy that, and paste it into the first box on the Add A Blog page. Click ‘validate feed’ to make sure Amazon is looking in the right place for your blog.

Enter Blog Information

If your blog didn’t have a snappy title before, now’s the time to give it one. Your blog is going to be competing with thousands of others for Kindle readers’ attention. Just calling it “Julie’s musings on writing” isn’t going to cut it. In fact, you might want to add a tag line too. (for example, the blog I listed is my Story A Day blog, aimed at creative writers. I use a tagline there that addresses a  ’pain point’ for my potential readers — aspiring writers who wish the could write more: “Write Every Day, Not “Some Day”.

Blog Description

Make your description snappy and to the point. Tell the readers what they are going to get out of paying for your blog every month. What concerns are you addressing?

Screenshots & Logo

Upload a couple of pictures, one a screenshot of your blog and the other your ‘masthead’ or logo. People are extremely visual, but remember that most people reading on an actual Kindle device are only going to see these things in black and white. Try to keep the contrast high and the images clean.

If your eyes are glazing over, let me help

Website Info

Very important: enter your website address! You want  your new fans to be able to find your website, don’t you? You’re not going to get rich selling Kindle blog subscriptions (unless you get insanely popular) so the whole point of publishing here is to expand your reach. Let people know where to find you!

Category & Keyword Information

Category and keywords are going to be very important in helping people find your blog.

If you don’t know what keywords to use: steal.

Go to a successful blog online that covers the same topics as you. From your browser’s toolbar select View / Page Source of View Source. A whole bunch of HTML will open up in a text window. Don’t worry too much about it. Just look for the line that says “meta name=”keywords” and then you’ll be able to see what that site is using. Take your inspiration from that (don’t actually steal. That was a joke.)

Language & Frequency

Select your language and tell Amazon how often you’re going to post. Be conservative (you can update it later). If you are new to blogging and/or the sole author on your site, don’t promise daily posts. Unless, of course, you have an airtight plan for how you are going to churn out seven awesome posts a week.

Almost Done

If you’re too busy to do this, let me help

At this point you can save your work and generate a preview of how your blog will look in the Kindle store. (This takes a few minutes, and is optional)

If you’re happy with how everything looks, press “Publish” and wait the 48-72 hrs they say it’ll take to get you set up in the store (in reality it took less than 24 for mine to appear).

Tell People About Your Blog

Kindle blogs are listed by category. Within each category the default view is “most popular” blogs at the top.

Your blog, on its first day, is not going to be there. You’re going to have to tell people it’s there, so they can subscribe and help you move up the charts.

To find your blog: Go to the Amazon store and search for “Your Blog Name” and the word “Blog”. This should bring you to your blog’s sales page.

Copy the address (use an affiliate link if you like) and then go forth and promote.

Good luck!

And don’t forget, you don’t need to do this yourself. Let me help

Watch me rave about Mike Stelzner and his awesome roster of guests at this year’s Social Media Success Summit. 

You have to invest in yourself. Never mind the new phone, the new computer. None of these things will pay you back like developing your own business skills by taking some awesome training from genuine experts.

I can’t speak highly enough about Michael Stelzner’s online conferences. This year’s is called the Social Media Success Summit 2011. No travel required, all online.

Sign up by Thursday, April 14, 2011 (that’s today!) to save 50% on the registration fee.

Even if you miss the discount though, the training will still be great value for money.

And to prove that I believe in it, while that link up there is an affiliate link (meaning I get a kick-back if you sign up), here’s one that isn’t.

Because I really am a fan and think you’ll get a lot out of the Social Media Success Summit.

I just took 30 minutes and came up with 16 blog topics – some of which will become three or four posts as I begin to write – and they are all things that my target readership feels passionate about.

That’s 3-4 weeks’ worth of hot blog topics for half an hour of work – and it was fun, too.

Blog Topics For Your Niche – Free!

It’s a little sneaky, but I don’t mind admitting it: I eavesdropped.

Generating Ideas Through Social Media Snooping

I used my favorite social network of the moment -Twitter – to find out what my potential readers are craving. And here’s how (it’s so simple that if you’re not already doing this, you’re going to kick yourself).

• Go to Search.twitter.com and typed in a keyword (in this case “writing”).
• Read 3-4 pages of complain-y and celebratory Tweets that contained your keyword.
• Make lightning-fast notes about the teeny sub-topics each Tweet represented, and how you might address them.
• Pop them into a mind-map document and add sub-topics to them as the ideas occurred to you (I use IThoughtsHD on my iPad. You could also use XMind or a simple spreadsheet or bullet list. I recommend Google Docs because you can access them from anywhere you have an internet connection, and you never know when you’ll have a spare half hour to compose a blog post.)
• Whenever your typing slows, go back to the search results page and look for another topic. The point of this exercise is to capture only ideas that interest both your and your readers. If you’re bored so are they. Move on.

Why Snooping Is Better Than Surveying

Sure, I could have sent out a request asking my readers what they wanted to know.

The problem with asking people for their opinions is that they

1. think about it for too long
2. want to impress you because you were nice enough to ask for their opinion or
3. are too busy to answer and  you end up only getting responses from the people who aren’t your real customers.

By snooping on social media, you have access to the raw, knee-jerk, 140-character exclamations of your audience when they are delighted, outraged, pissed off, passionate. In other words, you are finding out what they really care about.

And doesn’t that sound like the perfect launch-point for your next blog post?

Beyond Twitter

If you are writing a business blog, you might be better off searching through Linked In status updates. If you are writing for an industry niche, check out the most active industry forum online (you know the one).

If you’re really stuck, really in a hurry, and don’t need topics targeted specifically to your customers, check out Chris Brogan’s Blog Topics Service: it’s not free but it’s not an outrageous amount to invest in your business, either.

If you exhaust this technique and are ready to be a little overwhelmed, take a look at Copyblogger’s 50 Can’t Fail Tecnhiques for Finding Great Blog Topics.

Keep Up The Good Work

Life moves quickly.

Don’t waste your time coming up with more than a month’s worth of post ideas at a time. For all we know, some kind of seismic shift might occur in two months that will change the way you and your readers look at the world. You’ll want to write about that instead of whatever matters to you today.

Commit to doing this idea-generating exercise once a month.

Store the information somewhere that is easy for you to access (Google Docs, or just email it to yourself)

Throw out old ideas that no longer excite you.

Oh, and write the damned articles and post them every day.

Everyone and his dog is writing an End Of Year Round Up.

If you feel like it’s time to start on yours: please, don’t!

Apart from the fact that everyone is doing it (so it’s boring), it is a waste of your blogging time. ¹

Why End Of Year Round-Ups Exist.

End of year round-ups exist to sell newspapers and magazines. Newspapers are (were) ephemeral. Today’s morning edition was tonight’s fish & chip wrapper.

But blogs are not ephemeral. Your blog posts might outlast us all.

Ask yourself: Is anyone searching for an end-of year round-up of my topic? More importantly, will they be searching for it in two weeks’ time?

Do you really want to spend your time writing a me-too seasonal survey no-one will ever search for?

Or would it be a better use of your time to write what Copyblogger calls Cornerstone Content — that is, content that will keep drawing people to your blog weeks, months, even years from now?

Write for the long-term

I have Cornerstone posts that I wrote years ago. They still pull in new readers because they are full of keywords people are searching for. The readers stay because the posts contain information that helps them solve their problems.

Sometimes, after reading one of my old articles, a reader browses the blog, subscribes, trusts me with their email address. We start to create a relationship.

Why Are You Blogging?

Do you want to be able to check a box that says “Wrote a blog post today” or do you want to write something that will help you build a relationship with potential customers?

If it’s the latter, trash the End of Year Round-Up and write some Cornerstone Content instead.

Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) program allows you to compete on a level playing field in the ebook space, even if you have never spoken to a traditional publisher about your title. If you have a business book, a recipe collection, a memoir, a romance about vampires and wolverines, Amazon says, simply upload your title and get it out there.

(Don’t know how? Read my guide to creating Kindle-ready files. Not sure what all the fuss is about? Read my guide to the Kindle. Not sure if you want a Nook or a Kindle? Read a comparison here.)

New Pricing

Recently Amazon announced that content providers (publishers, authors, who ever holds the rights to a title) can opt in to their new pricing scheme that returns 70% of the purchase price to the content provider.

This is way better than the 50% which has been standard fare for ebooks until now.

Of course, this being the book business, all is not as simple as that. There are a few wrinkles:

1. Your book must not be priced over $9.99.
2. That 70% is off the price the book actually sells for. Amazon could discount it and your 70% would be of that discounted price.
3. You, the content provider, pay $0.15 per megabyte as a delivery charge (which saves Amazon or the reader from footing the bill).

Now, before you allow publishing industry professionals to get your peeny in a panic ¹ let’s stop and think about what this means from the perspective of the reader and the independent content provider (AKA self, or small-publisher).

The $9.99 Price Point

I have a Kindle, and let me tell you, it rankles when publishers price ebooks at or above the price they charge for a large-format, beautifully typeset trade paperback book.

The Kindle early-adopters let Amazon know, loud and clear, that they were not  happy when publishers started insisting Amazon price the books above $10. In fact, there was an impromptu boycott a few months back.

Amazon listened.

²

Traditional publishers were appalled. Some of them took their balls and ran away home, or over the fence to where Apple, playing with its shiny new iBooks store and promised to yes, price books at $14.99 if that was what the publishers wanted. Who cares what iPad readers wanted? If they want the books badly enough, they’ll pay, said Mr Jobs and the publishers from their plinth on high.

Amazon, however, responded to YOUR READERS’ CONCERNS by keeping the price of the books low. knowing full-well that few people want any particular title badly enough that they are willing to pay more than they consider ‘normal’ for it.

If you think you need to charge more than $10 for your book, then consider Amazon a place where you offer a deeply-discounted preview and go sell the higher priced version somewhere else. It’s not an exclusive program. (You can check out the terms and conditions here).

70% Of What?

Book people are rarely numbers-people, I think we can all agree on that ³. Nobody goes into the book publishing, editing, agenting or selling business because they love accounts and the concept of percentages.

But even at that it is amazing how convoluted they manage to make the numbers in the publishing and bookselling industry.

Traditionally, publishers offer authors something like “10%”. That sounds pretty poor compensation for someone who put all the actual creative work into a book, but then you realise that what the author is actually offered is 10% of the net proceeds (that’s the money that publishers get after everything is paid — all the promotion and costs to produce the book — and all the discounts applied. With big-box retailers demanding 55% discounts, that 10% royalty comes out to pennies a copy. ⁴

Amazon is offering  70% of the net proceeds

Yes, they may offer your title at a discount and yes you may make less on each copy. Are these numbers you can live with?

100% of list price: 70% of $9.99 = $6.99

25% discount: 70% of  $7.49 =  $5.24

50% discount: 70% of $5 = $3.50

That $0.15/MB Delivery Charge

This is new.

One of the things that confounds non-Kindle readers, when I whip out my Kindle and attempt to convert them, is the idea of how the books get to me. Do I have to attach it to my computer? (No, it’s wireless). Do I have to sign up for a wireless plan (No, Amazon covers the cost of their Whispernet wireless transfers for me)

Well, now the content providers are going to shoulder some of that cost.

If you chose the 70% plan, you will also pay $0.15/MB out of your profit every time someone downloads your book.

For the numerically challenged, Amazon uses this example:

If your book has a file size of 0.400 megabytes and a List Price of $8.99, the Delivery Cost will be $0.06 (0.400 MB x $0.15 = $0.06), and your Royalty will be $6.25 (($8.99 – $0.06) x 70% = $6.25).

Richard Curtis at eReads says they had a look at their books and had:

determined that a typical book is about 2 megabytes: a large one might be 3 MB.

Something to consider.

The Original Amazon Plan, Still An Option

You can still opt for Amazon’s 35% of list price program too, if you can stomach that 35% number.

In this program you get 35% of the list price, no matter whether or not Amazon offers your book at a discount. It’s a lower percentage, but it never varies.

Depending on your circumstances, that might work for you. ⁵

Not The End of The World. The Start Of Something New.

Most people who get worked up about this stuff in media old and new, are people in the publishing business – either publishers, authors or booksellers.

You rarely hear regular readers getting their proverbial peenies all knotted up over distribution deals and rights issues.

Readers simply want to spend a few hours reading a good book, and still be able to afford another book when they’re finished.

To me, as a reader, and a content provider and someone who has been invited into publishing’s gated community for a few cocktail parties but no more, I think Amazon has done a good thing here and I’ll certainly be opting for the their 70% model.

How about you?

By rights, I really ought to hate mailing list service MailChimp.

Their corporate tone is jokey (their mascot is a talking chimp who has something silly to say every time you log in), they admit it when they make mistakes, they put a ‘loading’ page in front of the site after the latest upgrade which slows things down for a minute and stops me getting to my mailing list.

Today, when I logged in, Mailchimp paused the “loading” page and played a really, really silly animation WITH AUDIO.

Normally any one of these things would drive me, their customer, away from any site.

But Mailchimp makes me laugh.

I’ve signed up for their service not only because I like their service (free! Until you get big and start putting a drain on their server. Then they, quite reasonably, ask you to pick a payment plan). I also picked their service because I like their tone. So now I kind of expect a big silly something to leap out of their site at me from time to time. They are consistently silly.

Have Your Customers Bought In?

This is a crucial point.

I agreed to let Mailchimp be my mailing list provider AND continue to be silly. I agreed to put up with (even enjoy) their hijinks, because I liked their service and I liked them.

The first time a customer looks at your site, are you bombarding them with annoyances they didn’t sign up for?

Is your tone consistent?

Does your tone reflect you, even if it does break traditional business rules?

Will you attract the kind of people you want to work with, based on your marketing message?

I use WordPress to host and run my websites.

(It started as blog-hosting software but works as a Content Management System too. The Wall Street Journal’s site is built on its software, for example).

Lots of people more technically-skilled than I have written lots of little programs, called plug-ins, that help me make my website do cool things without having to write the code myself¹. Some of these things I could do myself, but plug-ins make it easier, quicker and automated. ²

Plug-ins let me do everything from put headlines in my sidebars, to helping me track how many people visit which article, to creating sign-up forms, and create those cute little ‘link to me’ buttons at the top of this article. Here are the ones that allow me to build websites that make my clients go “ooooh!”

Must-Haves

Google XML SiteMaps

This makes it easier for Google to index your pages (i.e include you in their search results)

Google Analytics For WordPress

This inserts the “Google Analytics” code wherever it needs to be in your site (usually in the header or footer of the code, which you don’t necessarily want to go digging around in unless you know what you’re doing. Trust me. A misplaced semi colon can bring grown men to tears!)

Google Analytics is an amazing (free) tool that tracks how people get to your website, where they go, how long they stay, where in the world they are, what keywords they searched for to get to you (and therefore what you should be including on more of your pages)…and so much more. It presents the information in all kinds of cool ways: graphs, overlays, tables. Go. Sign up.

Being able to tell clients exactly what’s going on with traffic is really valuable. You can both see what impact the site is having on business, you can see which marketing strategies are working and which are a big waste of money, you can improve the site. Good for you, good for your client.

Social, Sharing and Visibility Plug-ins

Simple Modal Contact Form (SMCP)

I, and my clients, use mailing list services like MailChimp and Constant Contact. While both of these offer form-building options at their sites, sometimes you just want a little more control, but again, with out having to play HTML or CSS.Very easy to use and effective, and no-one has to know you didn’t hand-code the whole thing.

The only problem I have with this plug-in is that its acronym reminds me of that song “SIMP, Squirrels In My Pants” from te cartoon Phineas and Ferb…)

WP-Polls

Thinking about offering a new product or service? Ask your customers/readers what they think. Super-easy single-question polls to pop in your sidebar. Minimalist style. Lovely.

Sexy Bookmarks

I tried gathering button graphics for all the social networking tools (Twitter, RSS, LinkedIn, Facebook) and building a sidebar “Link to me!” plea.

Then I discovered Sexy Bookmarks. You can see what this plug-in looks like at the bottom of this post (unless you’re reading the RSS feed. It didn’t show the graphics, just a huge text list, so I turned it off for you guys. Come visit the original post…)

Social Follow

Sign up at the Social Follow website, enter in your user name at all the social networking sites you use (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc) and they will generate a little button like the one in my sidebar, making it easy for people to follow you wherever you are (if you like that sort of thing). This plug-in builds a widget that you can drop into any widget area in your theme (again, no messing around with your theme’s code files).

WP125

You know how a lot of sites have those little square adverts off to the side? Well, some are powered by ad companies (or Google ads) but sometimes it makes sense to control your own ads.

This plug in lets you sell and manage advertising on your site. You control how big the ads are, where they go, how many show up, what images show up, and it also contains a management function, that allows you to set rates, and expiration dates. It’ll even email your advertisers when their contract is about to expire.

Nice, for getting things how want them to look

Query Post

This allows you to build sidebar widgets that contain just the posts you want them to contain. It has a zillion different ways to filter your posts and pages to allow you to control what appears. It is obviously very powerful and I’ve only figured out how to do rudimentary stuff so far, but it is simple enough for newbs and powerful enough for folks who know what they’re doing.

Category Page and Page2Cat

This is a lovely little plug in that lets you create a page that is automatically updated with all your posts from categoryX (which you define by typing a short code, i.e. a phrase in a square bracket). Simple and elegant. You may have to add some code to your site depending on your theme, but it’s only once and it is well-documented.

Make Things Easy For Your Readers

WPTouch iPhone Theme

Your three-column design might look great on a computer monitor, but it probably irritates people reading on a tiny mobile screen. Thisplug-in automatically converts your blog, when readers access it via a mobile device. It makes your site look like an iPhone app (which is cute if, like me, you love your iPhone). It also has a ‘turn this off’ button at the bottom for people who want to see the original layout, or who hate all things iPhoney. Very, very nice plug-in

Make Posting Easier For You

Flickr Manager

Every time I go to Flickr, I curse the fact that I have to click so often to get to the size and code I want for my picture. Flickr Manager Plug-in works just like the little “insert picture’ button on you WP Dashboard, except that instead of prompting you to upload a picture, it goes straight to your Flickr Photostream. It allows you to choose sizes, alignment etc and add a caption (dependent on your theme). HUGE timesaver.

(update: this doesn’t seem to be finding all my pictures since I upgraded to WordPress 2.9.1)

FDFootnote

This allows me to create footnotes ³ really simply, by using shortcodes (basically,putting something in a square bracket — in this case a number, a period and your note)

So, off you go and explore the wonderful world of plug-ins.

Update (2/22/10): Lucky 13 is:

WP-Table Reloaded

I’ve long been frustrated by having to hand-code tables in the wordpress window. No longer! This plug-in installs its control panel in the Tools section, from whence you can set up tables, add data and then embed the same table (or different ones) anywhere in your website simply by entering a short code. Love it!

Hardly anyone knew anything for sure about Apple’s new tablet, the iPad, before its vaunted launch last week.

Within 13 minutes of the word “iPad”‘s first public utterance it was the top trend on Twitter.

But are you sure you have Apple’s reach?

Not The Apple Approach

Last week, something else happened that got less press, but meant a lot more to me and a few hundred thousand like-minded people.

Author Gretchen Rubin‘s book “The Happiness Project” zoomed up to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers list, and she announced it on her blog.

Her readers (me included) got a real jolt of, well, happiness, seeing that post.

Why?

Because we had been there, reading the blog and talking to each other in Gretchen’s virtual kitchen, long before the book was really a book.

We had tweeted and blogged and emailed and reviewed this book for our ‘friend’ because she had been so open with us during the writing process. We felt like we had a stake in this book’s success.

This is not the Apple model.

It is, however, a large part of the reason Gretchen Rubin reached the top spot in her industry within one month of her book’s publication date.

Can You Afford To Be As Secretive As Apple?

What benefit do you gain from guarding your processes?
Do you need to develop new products and services in secret?
How much would you benefit from a more direct conversation with your audience?

In other words:
Do you need a social networking strategy?

If you think the answer is yes, but you’re not sure, email me, or comment below, and we’ll get the conversation rolling.

Barnes and Noble have released a new eReader, which looks suspiciously like the Kindle with a few “Look I’m Different” features.

(I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Not at all. I just wonder why it has to be white and rectangular and look like a clone. Surely there are other designs?)

Here’s a side-by-side comparison, based on B&N’s site comparison and a Kindle user’s experiences (mine!).

I’m glad there’s competition, because it means that Amazon will have to improve the Kindle and someone else might invent something that breaks the mold and is wonderful. Of course, as an early adopter I’m rolling my eyes at the prospect of that, but I went into this with my eyes open!).

As a reader, I think it’s a good thing, because it probably means that more books will be available in ebook format and in multiple ebook formats. There seems to be a move towards making ebooks multi-platform and maybe more hardware will encourage that.

I’m also not sure if I should be concerned that the booksellers are now also the manufacturers of the device that holds the books AND, in many cases, the publisher of the content as well.