Reach a New Audience with a Kindle Blog
Creating your own Kindle Blog is a great way to reach new readers you might not otherwise, make some money, and allow people to read your blog while offline. Let’s say readers subscribe to your blog for merely 99 cents a month, a common price on Kindle. You’ll get about 30 percent of the subscription revenue. If 1000 readers subscribe to your blog, that’s roughly an extra 300 dollars a month you would not be making otherwise. What writer couldn’t use an extra 300 dollars each month?
Getting your blog on Kindle will also help to increase your reach and exposure. While it won’t improve your blog’s SEO rankings, having your blog on Amazon will mean readers searching for relevant keywords will see your blog on one of the most respected sites on the internet for both readers and writers.
Readers will also have an opportunity to rate your blog on Amazon, giving another opportunity for a potential boost for high quality content.
Is this a good option for you? If you choose to put your blog on Amazon, you will need to deliver content somewhat regularly, even if the posts are short, if you want readers to stay subscribed. It’s a great option for writers who really feel they have something to say, or for someone putting a novel or other book into serialized form in a blog. There is a level of commitment needed to earn your blog subscribers on Kindle. If this applies to you, you should certainly look into the possibility. The process is easy and free for anyone.
Starting Your Kindle Blog
1. Create a Kindle Publishing account. A standard Amazon account won’t work for this, and it’s a different account than for the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform. Setting up an account is quick and free.
2. At that URL, click on “Your Blogs” at the top of the page, then click on “Add Blog” off to the side. Click the plus sign and you’ll go to a page where you will add your blog.
3. RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is a format for delivering regularly changing web content such as blogs. For this step, Amazon will ask you to will enter your RSS feed and validate it. You can find instructions for finding your blog’s RSS URL here. When complete, you should see a green check mark that says “Feed validation successful,” indicating your blog is now connected to Kindle.
4. Enter information about your blog, including a title, an engaging description to bring in readers, and the blog’s publisher and/or author, which most likely is your own name. You’ll need a screen capture of your blog, at a minimum of 800×600 pixels. Upload a banner image, which can be a GIF, JPG, or PNG sized less than 430×650 pixels. You’ll enter your blog’s URL, and language of choice.
5. Choose categories, of which you can choose up to 3. Make sure they give a good idea of your book’s topics and content.
6. Next, you’ll enter keywords for your blog. This is particularly important when it comes to helping readers find you on Amazon. Appropriate keywords will help connect your blog to the readers who will actually subscribe. Again, make sure they represent your book accurately – this will help readers find the book who will have an interest in what you have to say. This is key to building a following.
7. The form will ask for your blog frequency, or approximately how often you plan to publish new posts.
8. Now, hit the save button, which should prompt a dialogue box that says “Your information was successfully saved.”
9. Then, click on “Generate blog preview.” If your blog looks the way it should, keep moving forward. If not, go back and make the necessary changes.
10. Next, if everything looks the way you intended, click the button that says “Publish blog to Kindle.”
11. After that you’ll be prompted for more information such as address, phone number, and other information about your business.
Publishing Your Kindle Blog
That’s it! You’ve published your blog on Kindle, allowing you to reach a whole new set of potential readers who can now read your blog on the go, all at no cost to you whatsoever. The site will determine your price automatically based on the content, but it usually prices blogs at either .99 cents or $1.99. You’ll only receive a fraction of that revenue (about a third), but considering you invested no money and barely any time in publishing on Kindle, this is a great deal.
As long as your content is of high quality, and you’ve chosen your description, keywords, and categories well, readers will find your blog and subscribe. This option is still unknown to many smaller bloggers, so your competition won’t be overwhelming, beyond big names such as Huffington Post and New York Times.
It is a great way for bloggers and writers to get their content to readers, and to make a little bit of extra income while they are at it.
