Did you know you could publish your blog to Kindle? (And your podcasts, by the way.)
Well, you can and it’s easy-peasy.
I was at Podfest, listening to a talk on putting your podcast on Kindle (transcripts of podcasts, if you want the short story), and the speaker asked who in the room had published their blog to Kindle. My hand went up, the lady behind me put her hand up, and the speaker. No one else in the room even knew about it!
Adding Your Blog to Kindle is about Getting More Traffic
Are you consistently publishing a blog post? Want more eyes to see it? You can create an RSS feed from your blog to Amazon and they’ll put your blog on Kindle for sale as a monthly subscription. Subscribers can have my blog delivered to them for $0.99 a month. (Subscriptions range from $0.99 – $1.99 a month.) And yes, you get a commission for every subscriber – 30%. So no, don’t order that yacht yet; you’re not going to get rich from this. But, even if someone doesn’t subscribe, they may still decide to check out your blog, so it’s yet another way to bring traffic to your website.
Why would anyone pay for something they could get for free? Normally I would say, “Beats me” but I know my own habits too well: People pay for convenience. If you found my blog posts on Amazon and liked them, you might just click that subscribe button rather than hitting MY nice little FREE subscribe button on my site. (You HAVE hit my nice little FREE subscribe button, haven’t you? Scroll down — it’s in the sidebar –>)
This service has been around for years, but it’s still pretty unknown. The big guns use it – NY Times, Huffington Post, PC Magazine – but most bloggers either don’t know about it or haven’t bothered to take advantage of it. Which is silly, because it takes about five minutes to set up and then it just runs.
Setting Up Your Blog to Kindle
You have to set up a new account at KindlePublishing.Amazon.com with a new user name and password. You can’t use your KDP or Amazon account – it’s a separate platform. Then add your blog’s RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. No, I didn’t know how to create an RSS feed URL the first time, either. I had to Google it. Usually you create it by taking your site name and adding /feed to the end of it. Click on the “Validate Feed” button and if the feed is good, you’ll get a Validation Successful message.
Once your feed is validated, fill in the required information such as your blog title, description, the author, etc. You can choose up to three categories for your blog and enter in your keywords and your blog post frequency. Add a screenshot of your blog. I uploaded my logo, too.
Then click “Save” and your blog is set up. Take the time to preview your blog and make sure everything looks good. Then add your account information so you can get paid for any subscribers you have. Agree to the terms and conditions, click “Publish Blog to Kindle” and your blog, if approved, will be in the Kindle store within 48 – 72 hours.
You do need to blog consistently. If Amazon/Kindle is going to sell a monthly subscription to your blog, it’s only fair that you give your readers new information every month, if not more frequently. So, if you need added incentive to blog consistently, put your blog up on Kindle. And, if you need help to maintain consistency, check out my Brilliant Content Planner. It’s what I use to make sure I turn out a blog post a week each and every week.
