A Lack of Focus Costs + My Expensive Experience.

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This post was written early in my affiliate marketing journey, but I think it has valuable lessons on focus entrepreneurs can appreciate.

Recently, I learned a hard lesson about focus. Lack of focus lost me thousands of dollars this year. Previous to joining Wealthy Affiliate, I had published 15 books that were giving me $350/month in royalties. I thought my results were bad because I'd been seeing people making lots more (comparing my beginning to their middle), so I was stressing myself out trying to find a solution without knowing internet marketing.

I still think I could do better than $350/month for probably 200,000 words of time and effort.

I decided to diversify rather than staying exclusive to Amazon. Up until that point, I had been exclusive with Amazon, using horrible keywords, and infusing no ad budget. The book publishing process was fairly simple for me: write the book, create the cover, and upload the book. When I decided to diversify, my royalties dropped immediately to $10-$15.00/month, but I stopped paying attention to my book royalties because I'd gotten frustrated with them.

Two days ago, I decided to look at my royalties and see how I could get them up. Don't laugh, but my keywords were like "marriage book", "sex book", and so on....

HORRIBLE KEYWORDS: HIGH COMPETITION

With the knowledge from WA, I thought to myself....Wow, I was using these horrible keywords and still getting $300-$350/month organic passive income?

I decided to remove my books from all of the other retailers, go back to exclusive with Amazon, and hammer more books out. I published my first book since 2016 this morning at 7AM and I published my article for the day by 11AM! I'm on the roll!

The new book will be live in 72 hours and I can't wait to see my royalties start amping up since I've optimized my keywords on a few of my books. I really feel passionate about the things I wrote about too, so I'm excited to see more people positively impacted from my writing.

For the last 2 years, I've thought my books weren't selling well because of my writing skill level. I've taken coaching programs, hired editors, gotten formatting done, and so on, but the issue was none of those things. I've gotten good reviews (even from coaches).

The problem was I didn't have the knowledge freely available to WAers. This is great training guys! It's going to make me money in so many ways. I've been getting messages about commissions it seems like every other day from somewhere or another: $1 here, $1.50 there, $8.70 somewhere else, and before, I'd think to myself, "I can never make it off of this", but now I see how it can add up.

Now, I can appreciate an additional $300 royalty check because I can see how it would compile with ad revenue, affiliate income, freelancing (if I want), and other product income.

I'm excited!

Thanks to Kyle, Carson, and WA for the amazing training and community support!

I love you guys!

P.S. - Who are the authors here?

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Recent Comments

35

Hi Tiffany, you've written a very interesting article and I was just on a webinar the other day with Dixie Carlton who was teaching us about the use of keywords with Amazon. I've written one novel and am working on my next book now. Great to connect with you here on WA. I'd also love to connect with other authors - and have started a thread here: Cheers, Karen

Id love to connect further!

Great post Tiffany.
It just shows how transferable these skills are.
The 200.000 words, is that the total for all 15 books?
It seems to me that if you wrote another 15 books, your commission would double. You obviously have a skill for writing.
Good luck with your books and well done for using the keyword skills.

Thanks Viyee. Youre right! The 200000 was just a guesstimate maybe not even a good one. Each book is 17000+ words so you can do the math. Ill make sure to do the next 15 better.

Ooh, Thanks Tiffany! So much to think about in this post. Congratulations on your 15 books, your $300 to $350 a month in royalties, your take aways, your turn around and for sharing your fascinating trailblazing journey here... As an aspiring writer with no books to my name yet, I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to read your next chapter. I have the distinct feeling you are about to astound yourself and all of us with the results of your keyword optimised books!

I would love to share a story like that Lauren and some training if I find what works! Thanks for your encouragement!

What a great post, enjoyed reading it

Thanks Dave!

Your welcome.have a great day

Great post I enjoyed reading it very much. I am a published author of a children's book and it went to Amazon and I have not yet received anything in royalties yet, so I am changing publishers as soon as I can get the money for it. I see what you are saying I thought about doing a site for it but I am not sure about it. Maybe you can give me some advice about that if you don't mind. I would greatly appreciate it.

Mary

Ive never worked with a publisher before so I dont know the math of your royalty share agreement. Im open to helping anyway I can. Let me know your questions and Ill do my best.

That's awesome! I'm a freelance writer, but I do have plans for some Kindle publishing, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. Then if the Kindle sales are good enough, I might consider some print copies. But for now, I'm trying to move out of freelancing and more into blogging for my own sites. It's taking forever, because freelancing has been paying the bills and I can't cut back on it yet, as much as I would like to, in order to speed up my WA ventures. But I know that in time, it'll happen. The thing is, after what we learn here, we KNOW there's a formula for making this all work. To the non-writers and non-authors we know, none of what we do looks like it could work, because it doesn't fit the mold of the only way they know of to earn a living. But we've all been there. Now we know there's a better way, lol!

Best of luck to you! Glad things are looking up!

Mark

Mark,

I was paying my bills freelancing also. That income ended abruptly when my son got very sick and my clients couldnt afford my absence. Since then, God has been making everything come together but my situation is still kinda fragile. Once I stabilize, i can share more. My results are amazing thus far, so I keep pressing. Stay encouraged! It'll work out.

Congratulations on your new book! I wish you much success with it.

Nick

Thanks Nick! Im hoping for the same and working on the next one at the same time.

Hello, TDomena. Nice post. Carol

Thanks Carol!

SEX BOOK? High competition? Shocking! Ha!

Thanks for posting. Great people like you is why I'm so glad I'm here!

LOLOLOL! If only I knew about keywords or that people were competing for them...Man! I could've made much more money. Live and learn.

It's a brave new world out there for us Tiffany!

Now let's go make us some money!

YAAASSSSSS!!!!!

You are right, learning new developments and comparing one to another two are never the same, You stick with it and know up and downs come and go.
Shields High
reese

Thanks for the encouragement Pinclip!

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