I’ve always been fascinated with making money passively because the thought of working ONCE and getting paid MULTIPLE times for the same work is TRUE leverage. That’s why publishing on Kindle is one of those things that I keep hearing about but I never actually do…but I think that is going to change. Rachel Rofe is on the show today to talk about her successes with over 30 books that she’s published on Kindle without writing A SINGLE ONE OF THEM! Watch the interview below to learn about how she does this and her course Hands Off Books.
Watch the show below: Duration: 16:38
[leadplayer_vid id=”5150A92D906C9″]Stuff mentioned in the show
Hands Off Books (affiliate)- Rachel’s course that teaches how to publish on Kindle without writing a single sentence.
Raw transcript
Episode 126: How to Make $100 – $3,434.77 per Book In Passive Income On Kindle EVERY MONTH – with Rachel Rofe
Mike: Hi there everyone! First off, I just wanna say thank you for all the nice emails that people sent me, all the comments that I received after I announced that I just got married last week. I got 84 likes on the post, 5 tweets, 8 Google +’s and then if we look here – let’s go to the post, tons and tons of comments from people. Let’s see, just comment after comment after comment from people just saying congratulations and whatnot. It was really touching actually, to know that you guys aren’t just watching because you are interested in making money online and building a business, but you’re actually kinda paying me back even if you know never buy through my affiliate link ever, you’re paying me back just by being here and by watching and listening and just checking out my stuff. I really appreciate it that, that’s just awesome. So yeah, let’s get into the show today. I guess I should do the normal thing. Hello there everyone! Welcome to Episode 126 of The Mike from Maine Show, the place where we do daily interviews with successful online entrepreneurs. This is your host, Mike Thomas. And today on the show, I’ve had Rachel Rofe on to talk about her product Hands Off Books. Rachel is making tons of money every month, we’ll talk specifically in the interview about how much money she’s making but she’s making eally nice income by publishing Kindle books and she doesn’t write any of it, like it was kinda funny. In the interview, we talked about – I was asking her questions about financial and about how she does this and how she does that and she was like, well I kinda don’t know because my system does it, which is very reminiscent of when I was building adsense niche sites because at first, of course you do it yourself but then after a while, once you perfected it, you can outsource it to someone elsee and make it a true hands free system. So, that’s what this is kind of all about here. There’s different methods of producing content for your ebooks, for your Kindle books, in a way that you – it thinks intelligently and you’re able to get other people to write it for you. Now, it’s not about tricking people. It’s not about stealing other people’s writing or stealing other people’s work but it’s just about doing it in a way that’s gonna be getting – you’re gonna be leveraging other people’s audiences, leveraging other people’s influence in a way that everyone can come together and win. So, it’s really cool if you’re really at all interested in doing Kindle but you got a little afraid of doing it because you don’t wanna write – you’re a horrible writer or you think you’re a horrible writer or you don’t have time to do it, this will definitely be an interesting interview for you today. Let’s get right into it with Rachel Rofe.
Mike: We are here again today with Rachel Rofe. Rachel, welcome back to the show.
Rachel: Thank you.
Mike: Now, let’s get right into it. We’ve already had you on before so I’ll have a link in the show notes if anyone wants to check out that episode where we get a little more into your background but ust give us a quick one-minute explanation of who you are and what you do.
Rachel: You broke up a little bit, one-minute explanation and –?
Mike: Yeah, just the quick version of what you do and who you are.
Rachel: Okay, who I am and what I do. Well, I guess I do a lot of things. One of the things is Kindle marketing. I’m an internet marketer overall. So, I have all kinds of business models and Kindle is something that I’ve been having a lot of. I have like 40 books on there now and I’m constantly adding some new ones and just having a blast with it.
Mike: Okay, yeah. So, you’re really into the whole Kindle thing. You’ve got a lot of different products where you’re talking about many different aspects and from putting a book together or getting it actually published, getting it on the Kindle platform. Out of these 30 books that you have, approximately – and we kinda talked this before but approximately, how much are these 30 books creating an income per month?
Rachel: You know, I actually need to check the most current stats and my finance manager is kinda doing all the work for that. Mike: Yeah.
Rachel: But yeah, but I know that they do anywhere from like a couple of bucks a month to my most popular one is doing I think $3000 a month for a while. And then, aside from Kindle, there’s CreateSpace and putting it into other version and stuff too.
Mike: That most popular one, what was that about? Rachel: It’s on the spirituality niche.
Mike: Is ithat one that you wrote yourself or one that you had outsourced? Rachel: I haven’t written any of the books I sold.
Mike: I love to hear that. It’s amazing that people are out there, making all these money on Kindle and not having to write even really a word of content. You don’t really have to be an author to be an author anymore.
Rachel: No. No, you don’t. It’s great.
Mike: How much time and money do you spend getting a book created in general?
Rachel: It really depends on whatever book creation that I do. So, sometimes if I’m doing like straight outsourcing, like if I’m just outsourcing a book and I’m not doing like my multichapter net or something, I can go anywhere from probably $500 would be the most and there’s a lot of my books I do that is just, that are just free. So, I have ways to like pour content from people and that is pretty quick. So, I would say when I’m doing it for free, it will probably be a couple of hours to complete the work, maybe between 2 and 4. And then when I’m outsourcing, less than an hour or so of work. And then, there’s a whole bunch of strategies, kind of within there. So, yeah. I guess that’s a good one.
Mike: So, the one that you’re – if we’re gonna look at the one that made you the most money, how much did that cost you to get done?
Rachel: That was one of my first ones and so, that one is not — that was I think around $1200. That was more than I normally spend now because I’m now 40 books richer, so I learned a lot.
Mike: Yeah. I mean, it’s – one of the good things about learning from people like you who have gone through all of these is that you most likely, after 30 books, you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to make money on Kindle?
Rachel: Oh, there’s a couple like they’re actually at head. I guess, a couple of them. One of them is like when they put product or book that are very high quality, they think if they can show their book out there and actually work and like develop, and they know that it’s obvious that it’s just like amazing how many people are willing to make that review, etcetera and that stuff. But there’s none of them. And the real thing is it’s not getting the book formatted right. If the book is not formatted right, then you’ll also get negative reviews and that will automatically thrown in distraction from your sale.
Mike: So, how do I got about getting a book formatted correctly? Is there a tool that I need to use for that or is there a service? How can they get that done correctly?
Rachel: Well, I actually have a tool called Content Formatter. I have it developed because I was getting bad reviews myself because I thought I have the formatting right and I wasn’t. But I asked a programmer to create that for me and then, I ended up throwing it to other people. Actually, it’s one of my best-selling products. It sold thousands and thousands of copies, because it’s such a pain to do it the other way. It’s the manual way where you read the Amazon turn it up and stuff. It’s just not cool.
Mike: I heard that over and over again from people when they go out and they create a product that is actually helpful for them and it’s something that’s gonna help their own business, like if it’s gonna help yourself, then most likely there’s gonna be a need for it in the market for someone else as well. So, you have kind of the freedom to go and spend a little bit extra money, get the tool created and then make that money back and more through selling it.
Rachel: Totally, yeah. It works great, everything.
Mike: Definitely. Have you ever had a book that you spent 500 bucks on or you spent a lot of time on, even after you’ve done a lot of books. You thought okay, I’m gonna get this done. I’m gonna get it published and it just bombed.
Rachel: I’m sure. I actually like, I don’t even know all my niches. The process, I just let them write it out and then, they’re up there and they work. And then, I don’t look at my finances very often, so I just — I mean, there was once that I’ll and sometimes I’m gonna be like, oh I thought it’s gonna be selling more. But I realized I’m able to create smaller books first, so without going in like bringing in this whole huge thing, but with small ones and see if they work. And if they do right, then you’ll know where to invest more and make it into a bigger book. So, I’m never really putting too much out there, so when I fell off the ladder it won’t be a big blow.
Mike: It sounds like when you say like you don’t know your financials and you haven’t really checked in the stats, it sounds like you’ve kind of taken everything, given it to your outsources — outsourcers, given it to your assistants and just said okay, just do it. Is that kind of what you’ve done?
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I like to just speak to them about my ideas and like my creation and shake up and writing and things like that. So, if my finance manager says — I’m sure they’ll let me know if I need to earn more money or something. I don’t need to go and get and look at the stuff. I just manage them in my system and we have been working together for years. She created it. I trust her. So, I don’t need to be bothered with it.
Mike: Thta’s fantastic. I would love to have a system like that set up myself. In your — in the Hands Off Book Course that we’re talking about today, you have seven strategies. I like to ask you about some of them.
Rachel: What’s that?
Mike: The first one you have here, strategy number one is get them begging to write for you. In a nutshell, can you kind of explain what that one is.
Rachel: Yeah. Well basically, you know the whole chicken soup series where they’re trying to get people go in and submit their stories to be featured in these books. Do you know what I’m talking of?
Mike: Yeah, yeah. I know that those books are really popular.
Rachel: Super popular. And they’ve been out I think since the 90’s. And they’ve been bestseller that they actually sold more copies than the bible. And so basically, the whole thing is people submit their stories into this big compilation box and they just go off their way. But this is exactly what this is, Try getting them on your niche or finding out how to get access to people in your niche if you don’t have a lot and get them to submit stories that you can create books with their content and basically make them excited to do it because people love to share, they love to talk about themselves. And so, this is just a great way to leverage them.
Mike: And let’s look at number three, cashing in with Craigslist. What’s that one about?
Rachel: That’s a way to get content for your books. So, basically you just go in CraigsList and you interview people that have experience with your niche. You can pay them 20 bucks for having like their time, get the interview recorded and staged and made it into a book.
Mike: So, I could sell our interview right here on Kindle.
Rachel: Well, you have to let me know the brand, so that I actually get paid for it.
Mike: You have to get paid for it. Never mind, then. No way, no way.
Rachel: I hope we give stuff for free but —
Mike: Let’s look at number seven, it’s Kindle blogging for big bucks. Nobody talks about this, you say. What’s that one about?
Rachel: Basically, you can write on Kindle blogging which a lot of people don’t know about and use that to get lots of revenues. Like, every month you’ll be getting money from subscribers. And just like I told you, with Kindle blogging, I can get experts to contribute to your blog or you can syndicate with plug-in and escalate it to your niche on to your blog and have it get on to Amazon.
Mike: Now, all these different strategies, are they once that you have used yourself or are they theories that you’ve kind of come up with and thought hey, this might be a good idea. Where are they standing there?
Rachel: Yeah, I’ve used most of them myself. Other ones that I haven’t use, I have friends that have used them. So, I know that they work. So, I don’t really like to do this theory kind of stuff. It’s either like I know they work for me or I know my friend are doing it and they’re beautiful and they work. I’ve had people that go through the course, that have used the craft and have already started implementing it and it’s been working really well.
Mike: Right now, if you were sitting at your computer and you didn’t have your assistant doing all the work for you and you have to go ahead and you wanted to write a book and get it up within the next week, what method would you use? What way of getting that book up would you use right now?
Rachel: My favorite I think would be number 5, the contest method. I think it’s really a fun way to get people to submit their stories, give them a price, make it exciting and also get them to go and see and promote your work for you too, because they want their friends to know that they’re in a book and they won a contest. So, that’s probably what I would get it. I think it gets people moving really quickly and you can get going really quickly, even if you don’t have a list you can go around to other places to get access to people who’d love to be in your book. So, that one. The Craigslist interview method is really quick too. I don’t know, they’re all cool. But the contest method is just – I’m very competitive so like, it’s close to my heart.
Mike: And it sounds like it would be a great way coz I know from interviewing you before, interviewing other people on Kindle, one of the most important things in becoming a — getting your book to become a bestseller is to get people to buy it for free, like there’s the free download period sometimes and there’s also the more reviews that you get on it. So, the more people — the army of people that you get coming in and promoting and that initial I think boost is gonna have a huge difference on initially how well the book does and with those reviews coming in, if you can get popular reviews from people that are invested in it that have obviously, if you got something in the book from yourself, you’re gonna wanna add a nice review to it. You’re gonna wanna get your friends and families to add a nice review to it. So, I think that can definitely add to the success of it.
Rachel: Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s huge. People make decisions of how many reviews to set up all the time. Mike: Has Donald ever left you a bad review on one of your books?
Rachel: No. He certainly wants to make me better.
Mike: Donald is Rachel’s boyfriend. So, I’m sure that he would never do that.
Rachel: No.
Mike: Well, Rachel. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us a little bit about your Hands Off Books. Is there anything that we didn’t mention today that you’d like to mention before we wrap it up?
Rachel: Nothing at the top of my head. No. Thank you for your time.
Mike: You’re very welcome. Thank you.
Mike: I hope you enjoyed the interview today with Rachel. If you’re interested in checking out her Hands Off Book Course, you can go to mikefrommaine.com/handsoff. That’s mikefrommaine.com/handsoff. Thank you for watching and I will see you all tomorrow.
[wpsharely][/wpsharely]
Excellent post, Mike. Kindle Publishing may seem overwhelming at first. Once you get the ball rolling, though, it can become your biggest source of income online.
I used to focus primarily on article writing (for content mills.) Eventually I switched to Kindle publishing and it is currently my biggest money maker.
Anyway, thanks for these valuable tips. For those of you still on the fence about publishing, don’t be afraid and take an hour to learn how to publish. That ONE hour will earn you back thousands of dollars in the long run. Then, fire up your MS-Word program and write away.
Best of luck.
Elvis