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Promote Your Blog on Kindle, Make Money

Promote Your Blog on Kindle, Make Money

The Good News: There’s a new way to promote your blog and make some extra money, and it’s all compliments of the surprisingly popular Amazon Kindle.

The Bad News: In typical corporate fashion, bloggers are not being paid an appropriate amount for their content.

Currently in beta version, Kindle Publishing for Blogs allows any blog owner to sign up. Just fill out an application, fork over your RSS feed and Amazon will take care of the rest – including setting what they feel is a fair subscription price. Blog subscriptions will be priced between $0.99 and $1.99.

Since the Kindle does not replace your portable mobile device, we have a hard time believing too many people would pay to access these feeds on the Kindle. Only time will tell. This blogger wouldn’t be surprised if the price tag disappears in the future.

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Amazon keeps 70% of the subscription fee and gives the blogger 30%. While there’s probably not much money to be made here, a good blogger will never turn away a new distribution channel.

Do you think the Amazon payment model is fair? Will you be submitting your blog?

View Comments (15)
  • I think this is another example of bloggers being ripped off.

    Take a look at the application stores recently coming to mobile phone operating systems. Developers create an application/ebook/ringtone/video/whatever and put it on the application store. Some of these are just glorified RSS reader widgets to a specific blog yet the revenue model gives the developer 70% while the application store owner gets 30%.

    For Amazon to flip this model 180 degrees so they get the lion’s share while we’re the ones creating daily content is bloody ridiculous. Personally I’d say bloggers should keep to the mobile platforms which will at least give them a fair deal.

    Of course, having said that, money is money and it’s not like we get paid to blog anyway, plus my previous widget platform just closed down losing me a few thousand readers. I may look to this in the interim.

  • I am not so sure that the new service from Amazon will get much uptake. Why would I buy access to an RSS feed if I can get it for free on my mobile/browser/netbook etc. It will create more content for Amazon to monetize (the long tail) but I don’t think bloggers should expect to make money from it.

  • I think this is more of a strategic long-term growth strategy for Amazon to increase its rank for potential niche topics and draw in more people to the site by using other people’s content. Good idea on Amazon’s part but why give them my seo when I can reap the benefits myself.

  • I added my blog. I doubt I will ever make any money from it. I just wanted to see if I could get my blog in the store. It is just fun to be able to say that people can buy my content from Amazon!

  • Stumbled on your blog when I was trying to research about Amazon Kindle. I personally feel that Amazon is not playing a fair game by keeping 70% of the subscription fee. Since we bloggers would drive the content, we should at least get 50% (if not more). In contrast – I like the Apple Applications Store model where they keep 30% and give developers 70% of each paid download.

    ~~My 2 cents!
    -Sid

  • Hello friends, I have a blog on the kindle, I’ve had it the kindle for some time now. I’d say the percentage is closer to the standard with amazon which is 65/35 not 70/30. Not that it’s a lot better, but it’s something.

    My blog is called “Holisticfitness4U”, you are welcome to check it out. I think that the cost for the online blog will stay actually, amazon benefits from that immensely. It’s free money to them, why give it away? As far as seo, they already dominate-they don’t need our blogs for that.

    Making your blog successful on the kindle will be up to you, market-market-market. If you want to make money off of your writing, you need to market-market-market. I’m probably not saying anything that everyone doesn’t already know, but your book or blog wont get noticed on it’s own. Quite the contrary, in fact. Your brilliantly written materials will fall by the wayside if you don’t keep them alive.

    My book, “Reality Creation 101” is now doing rather well both on amazon and the kindle as well. However, it is only doing so because of the marketing efforts that I employ on a daily basis. What I’m interested in is learning about other platforms. I would welcome people to share about the apple/mac and any other ways to market their blog or book.

    Thanks for reading!

  • I work for an academic group, non-profit. Having payment for blog posting is really inconvenient in terms of who gets the bucks, which tax ID, etc! I would prefer this a free service as another way to get blog notice.

  • This is definitely an interesting concept and wonder where it is going to lead because there are quite a few disadvantages to this depending on your circumstances.

    On the whole however, Amazon has a fantastic reputation and I think I might be tempted to try it on just one of my blogs to see if you really can make real money online with this.

  • Here’s the thing, I am a former employee of Amazon and to my surprise while working there I came across something very interesting. Amazon has a lot of people wanting to order things, but had no internet connection or access to an computer. How do you order from an Internet based company without internet access right? Well what Amazon did was allow word of mouth build the company up and by doing so they reach a lot of people that are not Internet savvy.

    The majority of the people that are buying the Kindle (especially when it first came out) are the older crowds that are 35 and above (no offense). And a lot of them are not computer savvy so making your blog available on Kindle helps you to expand your reach, but it shouldn’t be used to get rich because it won’t happen.

    I have a friend whose blog is available on the Kindle and he received 652 subscribers in his first 2 weeks. So in his case it was good for expanding his brand and getting the attention of people that don’t even use the Internet but use their Kindle 3G wireless.

  • Hi everyone,

    I have 8 blogs on the internet and 6 of them I have put on Amazon’s Digital Text Platform for blogs (for kindle subscribers).

    I only started blogging in August of 2009 with a blog entitled “Are You Friggen’ Kidding Me?” which I also put on Amazon around September 8th. It immediately went to #1 and produced 1,000’s of subscribers within the first few months. Yes, they only pay .30 cents on each .99 cents they collect, but it does add up over time.Of course, you have to KEEP the readers so they don’t cancel. Which of course means that your material has to be up to date and interesting. We only lose about 2.5% of our readers each month, but gain 15-20% new subscribers each month.

    So, no, you wont get rich doing this, but it sure is nice having that extra cash each month. It’s the “compound effect” that makes the money (keeping current subscribers while each month gaining new ones).

    People DO subscribe to these blogs (a lot of people). And since they get a free 2-week trial subscription, they will sign up for several of them and then keep the ones they really like.

    If you are a blogger and you have some good material, then I recommend putting it on Amazon… It’s a dollar you didn’t have yesterday.

    Good Luck,

    Chase

    BTW – Our other blogs on Amazon are: The Freebie Geebies, The Fishmeister, My eBay Secret, The Man Shed, The Military Post & That’s Funny Honey. Together they really bring in a substantial income ;-)

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