This week we look at how creating Amazon Kindle eBooks can lead to a sustainable recurring income. My long-time friend and wildly successful online entrepreneur shows how he built a publishing empire with Amazon Kindle Books, writing everything from romance novels to how-to books. You will learn how his students have made $10,000 a month or more selling everything from romance novels to cookbooks using the Amazon Kindle Publishing platform. Even his family have been involved in the business, getting his son to publish his first Kindle book at 15 years old!
We discuss what are the best selling niches and what are areas to avoid. If you are looking to build a revenue generating asset (RGA), Ty says this is one of the easiest ways to start. Get his Newest Book “Kindle Publishing Secrets” for Free: TyCohen.com
Transcript:
Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. I am super excited for this call because I’ve got one of my oldest friends on the internet marketing space. Joining me today. He’s an accomplished internet marketer, entrepreneur. Who over a decade ago, took a major gamble with his life by financially quitting his corporate job and starting a business of his own.
That story kind of resonates with me. He became an offline and online success. He now generates millions of dollars in sales, transforming people’s lives. And he does it through something which is known as Kendall. He’s the founder of the Kindle Cashflow system. He’s going to talk all about it today. One, welcome to the show, Mr. Ty Cohen. Ty, how you doing today?
Ty Cohen: Mike, I’m doing fantastic. Even better to be here. I’m excited to hear what we’re going to talk about. So
Mike Woo-Ming: I was trying to think before we did the interview, I’ve known you at least what? 10, 15 years. Something like that.
Ty Cohen: No, dude. It’s gotta be… So my son, Tyler is going to be 18 in March.
And I think I met you just before we moved from Connecticut to North Carolina. Wow. So we, that was he was a year old when we were in Connecticut. So we have known each other at least 16 years, at least 16. That’s how I remember. I use my kids’ birth dates as a timeline.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Yeah. I think also cause a COVID that like adds like five years I dunno anything like prior to COVID.
But we were in I got to know you really well. We were on a cruise ship because we were both part of a mastermind group with Russell Brunson. And that was really cool and got to meet the families and just get to know and over the last few years it’s really been a pleasure. rEally appreciate you taking the time and joining me here, because I know you’re really busy. You teach these courses and you do a live events, so thank you again for coming onto the show.
Ty Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. There’s nothing like being stuck on a cruise of someone for five or seven days, where you get to know them a little bit more.
Mike Woo-Ming: Have you been on a cruise since,
Ty Cohen: You know what, coincidentally, so we’re going on a cruise next week. So we actually sell out on Sunday. So that was our last cruise. Which was that had to be what, two years ago? Two years ago. So it was right before COVID really hit. And then now we’re going on a cruise where we’re selling out Sunday. And this has been my first time since,
Mike Woo-Ming: Okay let me know, as it goes, I still can’t give it to my wife to get her on a cruise. So…
Ty Cohen: That was me. That was me. So we had a couple of books then we said, do you know, we’re going to hold off? So that’s it.
Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about it. Now I talked a little bit about your background, but I know you’ve been involved in this for quite a while, helping authors now I told them a lot of my clients and students If you’re going to make money, probably the one thing you can’t really make money in is having a book, is being an author. Most authors are starving authors, but you’ve changed that, thinking a bit about, maybe talk about first for those who don’t know what is Kindle and really. How did it kind of change for you? Because I’m sure you’ve heard that same a message too that there’s a lot of starving authors out there. Yeah.
Ty Cohen: Yeah. 100%. And we hear it every day, from traditional authors and writers that are trying to still follow that traditional route. So for me, so I got involved with Kindle Publishing almost, I want to say 16 years ago. I got invited by Amazon to become a beta tester and they were releasing the Kindle the KDF platform, Kindle direct publishing platform.
And that was their way of competing with the Barnes and Nobles, the Borders bookstores, and all of the other bookstores that were out at that time. And honestly, Mike, I thought it was the silliest thing. I thought digital books? Who are going to want to go in and buy like digital books? We’re used to physical books that we can dog air and mark up.
So I said, you know what? This is Amazon. I’m going to humor them. And at that time, 16 years ago, can you believe it’s been over 20 years that Amazon has been around, but at that time, right? So Amazon wasn’t the huge giant that it is now. It was a major player, but not where it is now. And I said you know what, I’m going to humor him because I was selling a lot of physical books through what was known as the Amazon advantage program at that time.
So with the Amazon advantage program, it allowed people who were authors and publishers who had physically printed their books up independently to ship out 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred books to Amazon and Amazon would store them. They would ship them. They would take the orders, fulfillment, handle, customer support and everything.
So that’s how they kinda got in contact with me and said, Hey, you’re selling a lot of physical books. We’d love to have you beta test. I reluctantly jumped in. I took the digital format of one of my physical books, which was a book for a musician, it was a book that taught musicians how to start their own independent record label.
I took the word format of that, uploaded it to Amazon and walked away, forgot about it because honestly I didn’t think that there was going to be much to it. About two months later I checked myself and I had just under a thousand dollars worth of sales that came in. Through the digital sales of my, a Kindle book.
And I said to myself, I said, you know what? I was wrong, but this is one of a few times when I don’t mind being wrong. And you and I have a mutual friend, Greg Cesar. And Greg was like, dude, there is something to this. Like you need to really just hit this thing hard and teach it to other people. And I reluctantly decided to teach it after about a year or so of Greg and one of our other friends hammering me really wanting me to go in and teach this to other people.
And I said, you know what? I’ll do it. So that was my beginning of Kindle.
Mike Woo-Ming: You talked about the traditional route and maybe you could talk about that. Most people when they get a book, they go to a publisher. So how is Kindle different than the traditional publishing?
Ty Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. Good question. So the beautiful thing that Amazon did was they said, okay, so how can we remove. And the middleman was basically a bet publisher. So the traditional route, typically someone will get an idea for a book. Someone tells them, Hey, you’ve got this amazing experience or you know how to do this extremely well.
You know how to decorate homes, sell houses, buy houses, whatever it may be. And they say, okay I’m going to go in, I’m going to write this book. I’m going to submit my manuscript to a publishing house. And hopefully the publishing house thinks that my idea for a book is viable enough and I’ll pick me up and I’ll call.
So that’s that traditional route. Now I have a problem with that is there’s a few things. Number one, publishing houses, they get a ton of submissions, right? They get tons of submissions. The second thing is publishing houses. Don’t pay good royalties. So you’ll see royalties in a single digit percentages.
So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6%. So Amazon said, here’s what we’re going to do. We have this platform, it’s a global platform. We’re going to open it up for anyone that has content. So content being a book. And the beautiful thing about that is they said it doesn’t even have to be in a traditional lamp.
So it doesn’t have to be a a hundred page book, a 200 page book. You can come in and upload a 25 page report and sell that on our site and we’ll make it available to our audience. And at this point, Amazon has just over 600 billion customers. We’re not talking about just people that go in and just serve, but actual customers and credit card numbers.
So we did that. That was the first beautiful thing that they did. They made it available to just anyone, any country, any experience, as long as you have content, the second thing is they made this available for free. So you can go in and you can upload your content for free. The third thing is the percentages.
So they changed the playing field with the percentages. And instead of it being signaled digit percentages that a traditional publishing house would get would give out, they give you 70%, which is insane and they keep 30%. And they handle everything. The aim in doing that was basically saying, how can we get as much content as possible and beaver planet’s largest books.
Do you remember that was Amazon’s really bill of rights, right? His backstory before he started selling things like B12, vitamins and hand sanitizer and tires and everything else. So he said, how can we do this? Like, how can we really shortcut our way. There. And they basically said more, let anyone come in and publish content and we’ll give them a lion’s share of the royalties that come in. And I think it was a beautiful idea.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah! And I think too, it made eBooks legit. Yeah. Cause I remember back in the day before Kindle, I was selling eBooks. But I was doing like pay-per-click advertising when it was cheap to do, but still there was this stigma of I don’t want to get a file.
And I’m sure that’s true for a lot now it’s made it so much easier. Now we don’t even think about it with Kindle or I love reading it on my iPad because I don’t want to wait for the book. I want to instantaneously want that information.
Ty Cohen: Yeah. We’ve normalized it. Because, and that’s the exact mindset that I was in. Because like you I was used to ebook. Being a marketer and selling eBooks online, but no, it didn’t seem as authentic as a traditional book would be. So that’s what Amazon did. They came in and they made it to a point where my mother-in-law who’s 70 something years old legitimately can go in and purchase an ebook… and instantaneously do that and for a very attractive price point. I think that one of the advantages was that if you suggested a book to me, Mike, I was just reading… Dan Sullivan’s book who not, how who not? How, and then I just, he just sent me this one, right? So this is the newest one gap in the game.
So let’s say if you had just read Dan Sullivan’s book, and you said, Hey, Ty, just read this amazing book for me. I would want it because I appreciate you. And. I know that you’re a man of authority, I would’ve instantly want to go in and buy that book. Amazon has given us that opportunity to be able to go in and pick up our phone and just literally in 30 seconds type in the book and hit click. And we now have access to it. So we no longer have to jump in our car, go to the mall or go to Barnes and Nobles if we can even find one now, because of Amazon and make that decision. So they’ve shortened the that gap between the customer wanting it and the customer getting access to it, which is a beautiful thing on all sides.
Mike Woo-Ming: Now, I know people are, who are listening here. They may be, have written in a book, but most of the people haven’t, or they may have had that book in their head. I had like my first book that I wrote and it took me like six months to write it. And then I didn’t come with my second book until 10 years later.
And… You tell me you’re making money with writing, but how long does it take to get a book written? And I think there are people that still don’t understand that I can get my book, but it’s gonna take me too long to write a book. What would you say to those folks?
Ty Cohen: So just to make you feel a little bit better, right? So I was talking to a customer who dude, it’s been 30 years, it took her 30 years to finish her. It was a memoir, so 30 years. So you’re actually in good shape there at 10 years. But so one of the things that we’ve been able to master it and help our students, and these are people that are traditional right.
That may have a little bit of publishing experience, but for the most part, most of them are folks who have never written anything before haven’t ever even thought about the possibilities of writing a book. So we’ve been able to show them how to take an idea if they have an idea or find an idea, if they don’t have an idea, it really go from idea to finish book in less than two weeks.
So for my idea or no idea, to finish a book in less than two weeks. And having that book totally created having it edited, having it formatted and published on Amazon and available to the marketplace. So that’s the thing it’s like speed of implementation. So that’s why we’ve been able to master that coupled with what Amazon offers allows anyone to just be able to go in and every book available to.
Mike Woo-Ming: Now I was actually having a pleasure of attending one of your workshops. And we’ll talk about that because I believe you still have these workshops. And really, I found there was two sets of people. There was one who wants their story out there, get their book marketed. And then there were people who were more like the publisher side, because here’s a little bit of the secret sauce we’re going to reveal here is:
You don’t write all of your books.
Ty Cohen: I don’t write any of my books.
Mike Woo-Ming: So tell me how that works.
Ty Cohen: So besides the first two, but I uploaded it to Amazon 16 years ago. I haven’t written anything after that. There’s so many people that are out there that just love writing. And there’s ways to go in and hire those people for very little. We call them ghostwriters. We call them freelancers. Outsourcers, there’s a ton of different names on there’s sites where you can go in and you can find these people in droves, like in droves. So there’s sites like upwork.com or the, do you have one is google.com. So you can literally go in and say, “Hey, I’m looking to have an idea or a book created.”
You know how to herd cats. We’ll give you an example, right? We’ll give you a funny example here. And you can go in and say, my budget for having this 50 page book created is $150, $200. You set the budget and we sh we show you how to set a structured budget so that you get attractive bids. And then you’ll get people literally from across the planet that will come in and bid.
Mike Woo-Ming: I just want to clarify that too. That’s not $150 a page.
Ty Cohen: No, it’s not $150 a page.
For 50 pages, 100%. So 50 pages. And it’s good quality. So one of the things that we stress is you want good quality. So whether you’re writing it yourself or you’re having an outsourcer, you go in and you vet these folks, you can vet them just by looking at their ratings because other people have hired them and using.
Dozens of other people that have hired them. And it’s very similar to you go on Amazon and I want to buy some hand sanitizer. Normally what’s the first thing that we do. We go in and we look at the reviews, right? Because we want to feel comfortable in the fact that we’re buying something. That other people have rated highly, right?
You typically will never go in and buy something. That’s got a half a star or two stars, three stars. It’s gotta be four or five stars. And usually multiple stars. So when you use these freelancing sites like Upwork, the same thing applies here. You’ll find people that will come in and bid on your projects that have amazing feedback.
They’ve written tens of thousands of pages! They have degrees, very journalist majors, and they just have the experience and more importantly, a very great at researching and they love writing. So for them, it’s a win-win because one of the questions that I often get as well, listen type, why would these people come in and write content for me for a couple of hundred bucks and allow me to sell it?
Why don’t they just do it themselves? And that’s something that I’ve thought about when I first got started with it. And the answer is simply that they’re not entrepreneurs and not that you have to be an entrepreneur to do this. The answer is simply that they just don’t have the desire. The answer is simply that they over-complicate it.
And we see that a lot people overcomplicate the simplicity and things. And then the answer is simply that they just don’t know how to. They don’t know how to do it, or if the answer is simply that they are doing it for themselves. And then the other answer could be, and you could choose any of these, that bay are doing it, but they’re on year two of that 10 year journey of writing that book because they want to make it so perfect for themselves.
And they’re looking to publish it. So there’s a variety of reasons as to why people who have the skill and whoever the ability to do it, won’t do it. We see it all the time. Listen, my son is an amazing basketball player. Incredible! He could possibly be in the NBA. And I’m not saying that just because he’s my son.
But he has no desire to do. As much as I want him to go in and get the multimillion dollar contract, he has no desire to do it. And we see that you probably see that in your field, your industry with people who are just, they have the ability, if you have the scale, they just don’t have the desire. So that’s it. And also to a very similar question that you get to is.
They don’t own the content. You don’t have to put their name. So people ask about that. Do I have to put their name on the book, but it’s you own the content, correct? 100%. So you own the copyright, right? Which gives you the legal authority to say, this is my book, I own the copyright to it. You own the byline, and a byline, is simply the name that you’ll put here to author’s name, right? Or you could put a pen name if you want to. We’ll talk about that in a minute. So you own the resell rights, which gives you a right to take back content and resell it and make a profit from it. So byline, byline rights, copyright resell. So now when you come in and you hire a ghost writer or a freelancer to write your content for you, all of that is discussed. So once you pay them, you own the content. You own those three rights right there, but you can pretty much use to do anything with, so you can go in, you can give it away if you want it to.
Not that you would do that, but you can go and you can sell it for whatever price point you want. Now, the thing with Amazon. And in order to qualify for about 70% commission at royalty commission, you have to price your books between $2 and 99 cents and $9 and 99 cents, which coincidentally are the best price points, right?
So you want to price it in between those two price points, $2 and 99 and the 9.99, because those are price points that sell rapidly right there. Then what I like to call no thought price. Someone sees a book priced at 7.99. You’re not going to put thought into it, it’s not do I pay my mortgage?
Do I buy groceries? Or can I afford this 7.99 book? So you can go in and you can buy it, but he had, so that’s a great question. So what do you do as far as depending if you want to go in and put your name? I personally, don’t put my name on any of my books and I’ll tell you the reason why I don’t do that because I published books and under different niches, I published both fiction and nonfiction, and I don’t want to be seen as the Jack of all trades.
So if I’m publishing a book, a romance novel event, I’m publishing a book on how to buy houses or book on how to homeschool my children or how to grow Japanese tomato garden, Japanese tomato. You look at that offer and you’re like, wow, this guy is doing everything. Which one is he truly good at?
So you can use a pen name, which about 50% of my students actually choose to go in and use a pen name because they do publish multiple pieces of content. And then there’s the students who come in and they’re writing their own. Or if you’re hiring a ghost writer to write their content and they just want to have their name on it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
So they can go in and they can put their name on it. And both ways are totally legal. Both ways are totally allowed by Amazon. And as a matter of fact of Amazon, you can have multiple pen names if you want to. So you can have maybe Jane who wrote this book, if you want it to, and then you can have Betty Sue who wrote this book, if you want it to.
And they both are under your publishing.
Mike Woo-Ming: Now I want to get back to something that you mentioned, because again, I know I know what some of the questions that you’re going to get. You said Amazon, that seems like a lot of money that they’re taking 30%. Yeah. But when you think about it though, Amazon is the largest website.
In the planet and that’s what we don’t have, we know maybe you’re going to have it in the next few years talking about right now, in terms of shopping online, that’s the place to go, right? They’ve got the credibility, they’ve got the name and there was no cost to joining Kindle publishing, right?
Ty Cohen: It is not. And think about it. One of the examples that I like to use is if you’re going to open up a hamburger, and you have a choice between opening it up just anywhere and your neighborhood and opening it up in a neighborhood where you have folks who traditionally have been known to love to buy hamburgers.
Every hamburger stand that’s in that area is totally booked out, right? Like meaning if there’s lines, right? The prices are just amazing. They get great reviews. They have that customer base in that area. You prefer that area where there’s traditionally been people who love to buy hamburgers, right? You want to go with marketplaces and that’s what Amazon gives us versus trying to look.
We both sold eBooks at a pass on our own websites and what you have to have. In order to do that is you have to have a customers. And I think you talked about running ads, right? So you would have your website and then you have to go on Facebook or Google or whoever it is. And you’ve got to send customers to vet product.
One of the advantages with Amazon is you can go into you publish that book to Amazon. And Amazon has this built in loyal customer base already. That’s purchasing. My wife just bought something earlier off of Amazon, a couple of hours ago. I just got reminded, but I have to go in and buy something. I’m going into buying some supplements earlier.
So over later when we finish this interview, so it’s like do I go to the grocery store? Do I go to CVS? Do I go to Walgreens? Or do I just pick up my phone or just go on Amazon? And right. So they give us this unfair advantage here by being able to publish content to various. And then having this built-in customer base of people that have a ton of credit cards.
I want to ask you a question, Mike, I wanna flip it real quick for you. How many of these do you have listed on your Amazon account? This is a credit card right here. How many credit cards do you have listed? On it? Let me ask you a question before I even get there. Do you have an Amazon?
Mike Woo-Ming: Yes.
Ty Cohen: Have you ever purchased off of Amazon?
Mike Woo-Ming: I haven’t today? But generally every other day, this month?
Ty Cohen: Have you ordered anything off of Amazon?
Mike Woo-Ming: Yes. I have an account, my wife has, actually we got two accounts. My wife has an account. Yeah. I like Amazon delivery. Delivery person. They probably hate us because we have this long driveway and it’s gated and it didn’t really turn it around, but they have to drop off our package at this one spot. They don’t get credit for it, but yeah, they’re there they’re almost every other day.
Ty Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. And just like here. If I look out I’m on a col-de-sac I live in, so I can easily see three or four houses here and Amazon, they stay in this circle. They stay in this circle here. And typically what happens is if you’re like my household, we don’t have just one credit card listed with Amazon.
So I got my personal card and then I have my business card. And sometimes people will have a spouse will have their card, right? The other spouse has a card. Maybe the kids might have a card. So Amazon has done a masterful job in being able to really build up this loyal customer base that orders multiple times.
And it’s not just books or things that are not books, the same thing. I’ve got so many Kindle books that are on my phone. So I have a Kindle app on my phone. I’ve got so many books that I have not even read because Amazon has made that process of buying books. Easy. Mike tells me about a book I go in and I type it in, even if I don’t even have it in my schedule to be able to read this book for three or four months dowb. So it’s craziness if you think about it.
Mike Woo-Ming: And to answer your first question. I there’s probably about five or so cards, but 20 expired cards, but I even have an Amazon credit cards. Yeah. I’m in their eco. But let’s talk about it. Cause could, cause you mentioned the books 9.99, but yeah. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I know you and your students are making a lot of money with this. You want to show some of the numbers?
Ty Cohen: Yeah, actually. So I do, and I’ll give you some of my students numbers, right? Because sometimes. When you give numbers that are out there, it becomes a little bit unbelievable.
And I don’t want people to think that this is something that’s beyond the believable. So I’ve got a student Michael Joshua, this guy publishes children’s books. And I’ve got an interview with him on YouTube and in our community. He generates $10,000 a month just publishing children’s books. I’ve got another student. Her name is Caroline Trainer. She’s over in the UK. She purposes romance novels. I’ve got a student name Andrew Young. This guy’s 20 years old, he just turned 20. So he makes about $10,000 a month publishing books around public speaking. So here’s the beauty of this. So he took, he reluctantly took public speaking classes in high school because he was really introverted and he wonder why his dad says, Hey, listen, take debate class. Take the bait class. That’ll get you out of your introversion. It’ll get you used to talking to people and debating. He ended up taking that class and his sophomore year. And loved it so much, he took it again. And Ben also started publishing Amazon Kindle books around the art of debating and public speaking.
And now he’s doing over $10,000 a month selling. So you can do this with both fiction nonfiction. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, as long as you follow our market research process. So that’s the one thing that’s mandatory. So the first thing that we teach people is to conduct market research and that.
So that you’re not guessing about what actually will sell. With a scientific sense of degree there, that the topic that you’re going to publish has more certainty and selling van had you not done your market research. So it goes back to anyone that started a business before you go in and you started traditional brick and mortar business or any type of business.
Hopefully, hopefully you’re going to find out if there’s people that actually want the product or service that you’re buying, you don’t start manufacturing, these B12 vitamins and everyone on a planet. Has like this allergy to be 12, because that wouldn’t be a great business to start there. So hopefully you go in and do some market research, and that’s why we have students that are so successful because we teach that aspect of doing the market research first and making sure that you stick to exactly what we show you how to go in and and do,
Mike Woo-Ming: And in your training, you really go down in this, but just to give a to better understand is what you’re talking about is like niches that people will want people will want, but people will want continuously, because I think the thing that, what I really love and I mentioned we’ve been talking about what I call RGA or Revenue Generating Assets in that you’re creating this thing one.
And it’s continuing to generate revenue for you over and over again. And it reminds me of with the mad and John Madden recently passed away. Time, the game comes out you had to purchase it 20, 19, 20, 20, 20, 21. And because they know their market and they know that it can be sustainable.
So when you’re looking at niches, you want to look at things that are going to be sustainable. If you came out with a book, I don’t know, you’re probably may or may not remember Y2K?
Ty Cohen: Yeah, 100% had everyone on a tip of seats. Wondering what’s going to happen at new years.
Mike Woo-Ming: How many books do you think they sell on? Like how to beat Y2K? I’m like, okay. In 2022, probably it doesn’t sell anymore.
Ty Cohen: Yeah. Not at all. Yeah. And that’s the other thing. So we teach people… how to avoid the fads, right? So you don’t want to go and publish a book around fidget spinners.
I don’t know how old your kids are, but yeah. So fidget spinners, right? It was all a rave for maybe about a year, maybe 18 months. And almost any… dude. We could go into grocery stores and you would see shelves of fidget spinners. Yeah. You could go into target and you would see fidget spinners. You can go into the Dallas store and you would see fidget spinners.
Now you would have to hunt. You would have to literally probably go into 50 stores before you able to find a fidget spinner because it was this fat, it was this thing that, you know, yes. It sold really well, but it was short-lived. So we teach people how to avoid. The fats, but short-lived ideas, and instead going and publish content that’s evergreen. And the beautiful thing about it is there’s so many different topics that could be considered evergreen. If you look at something like there’s so many health topics that could be considered evergreen, right? A relationship and dating. Material can be considered evergreen.
If I want to learn how to become a better husband, there’s probably a book that was written 20 years ago. That’s still relevant. And I can go in and read bad. Instantly become not instantly budgeted. You get the idea, become a better husband. If I wanted to go in and be a better dad or we were having our first kid, I can go in and read a book on how do you raise your first child?
So those are the types of topics that we teach people to publish. Evergreen content thast is going to be around for the next 10, 15, 20 years. And again, fact or fiction, so we can go in to publish a romance novel. My son, Tyler. His first books when he was 15. And I think you actually got to meet him at arts media.
So you got to meet him now. Tyler, he’s gotten a lot bigger since you attended a event, because I think that event was right before COVID. I think it was in February. That was in February, but just before COVID. So now he’s on a football team, the big guy, right? A manly man. But guess what he publishes and you may already know the answer to this because you were at the event, but I won’t spoil it, but he publishes romance novels.
So he publishes romance novels. And it’s because not because he just loves sitting around and reading romance novels. That’s the first stable too, but it’s wherever money is. They asked at one point they asked one of the world’s greatest bank robbers at one time. This was back like in the sixties or seventies. Why do you rob banks? And his answer was because that’s where the money is. So luckily now we have to help around design. You don’t have to go robbing a bank. You can go in and you can publish content, right? That is already in demand. That’s evergreen. That’s going to continuously sell you, upload it once as you alluded to, and it continuously sells and you follow this process and you can publish. That leads you to the money.
Mike Woo-Ming: And the thing is too is like there’s always money. You can leave on the table. Yeah. Because when I went to your event, it was like realizing Amazon is a global company. And with that there’s Amazon cause. I know you not only get paid for English, but you have Spanish and French chairman and all these different language. So you get your books and you tell your students to get them translated, correct?
Ty Cohen: Yeah. Yep. So we get them translated. So now the process is once you get a book that’s selling well, so the first step what we like to teach our students is, and this is how you go in and you can create multiple streams.
Yeah. All right. There’s a few ways. So you can create multiple streams of income by simply just publishing additional books because each book becomes another stream of income. But the other way is once you get a book, if I publish two books, I’ve got both of these books and coincidentally, this is my newest book, Kindle Publishing Secrets.
And we can give your your listeners, your viewers, a free copy of this, if you want at the end of this thing. But if I publish both of these books and one of them tends to like really sell. Really so well, what we teach our students says, the next thing you want to do is you want to go in and have it translated into Spanish.
So using Upwork, using Google the same freelancing sites that I shared with you earlier, you can go in, you can find someone that is highly proficient in Spanish that does translations for a living and they can translate your book for a couple of hundred bucks. And now you’ve reached an additional market that traditionally would have been outside of your reach because they don’t read English or they’re not comfortable in reading English. So that’s, once you get a book that’s selling well, using our processes, we doing tell you, say, we say, Hey, go translate this thing into Spanish. And then the next thing that we do is we’ll say, Hey, go in and have it converted over into an audio.
And now you can sell it on Audible. So now if you go over to Amazon and you pick up this book, you’ll see in the same books listing on that same page, you’ll see the English version. You can see the translated Spanish version and you can see the audible version. So the audio book version of it and that doesn’t cost a lot to have done either.
So once you have your book translated like I said, that’s a couple of hundred. To get it converted over into an audio format. That’s a couple of hundred bucks and now you’ve created two additional streams of revenue out of one. So out of that, Kindle.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And it’s true because my, my wife she, sometimes she she makes fun of me. Cause I said, Hey, I just read this book. She said you don’t really read it. You listened to it. But. I don’t have time to, to read, or I when I read I’ll fall asleep easy, but if I’m going to one of my clinics, or like I said, I’m driving to Las Vegas in a few days, I’m going to load up a few Amazon Audible books. And now you’re getting an audience that you may not have been able to reach before.
Ty Cohen: 100%. I’m like you. So I’m always super busy. I like reading, but I just don’t have the time. So another thing that I’ve found is that my retention. Has changed. So I’ll read and then I’ll start to wander. Now think about the podcast interview.
I’ve got to do whatever it may be pick up the kids from school. So now my focus is wandering, but I can go in and I can download. The app from Amazon and Amazon owns Audible. Coincidentally if you’re watching or listening to this and you’re wondering, are these two different companies, if then I can go listen to my audio book.
So my wife and I would drive him down to the beach later on this afternoon. So we’ve got a three hour drive. We’re driving down Animoto beach. Guess what I’m gonna do? So like you on your drive to Vegas, I’m going to go in, I’ve got a couple of books already that are already in my account that I’ve been meaning to get to.
So this gives me three hours now to go in and listen to an audio book and I can knock that out. So the way Amazon has put everything together, I think it’s been brilliant because they didn’t own audible. Audible was a separate. When years ago they went in, they purchased audible and they said, this is the perfect add on.
So now we can give people another outlet to go in and publish to just like publishing to KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. You can also publish to Audible.
Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And everything kind of cross promotes. Cause now I have it like where, if I’m on the audible, I’ll get this message to say, Hey, do you want to get the digital book as well to accompany it? I recently listened to a guy, really bright guy. And when he wants to retain things he has the audio book and the Kindle version together, listening to it and reading it. Yeah. And he’ll retain more information.
Yeah.
Ty Cohen: Happy coincidence. I’ve actually tried that a couple of times and it definitely works a hundred percent.
Mike Woo-Ming: So this is amazing. And again, I know you’ve got a few things coming up. You not only you have the book, but you’ve got a training program. Would you like to talk about it please?
Ty Cohen: Absolutely. So we’ve got the book and anyone who wants a copy of his, you can go in, this is my new book called Kindle Publishing Secrets.
Les Brown has actually wrote the forward to this book. So many of you guys may have heard of Les Brown before. Great motivational speaker. And I gave him a early copy of preview copy of his book and he loved it so much. He said, you know what, let me write the forward to it. So he did that and you guys can go in and get a free copy before it even hits the stands.
So this is not available on Amazon yet, but you can get a copy by going here.
Mike Woo-Ming: This is one you wrote? You didn’t hire somebody.
Ty Cohen: This is what I actually wrote. This is the one I actually wrote in here. I talk about the entire Kindle publishing process, and how myself and my students do so well with Kindle publishing. And a lot of the things that we talked about here on this podcast, but I go into much more detail in the book.
So you can go to Tycohen.com. And get a free copy of his book. You can also go to Kindlecashflow.com and get a free copy. So even one of those websites, Ty Cohen, T Y C O H N a.com or Kindlecashflow.com and get a free copy. Coming to our live event, our three-day event.
So with COVID, what we’ve done is we’ve gone virtual, right? So we’ve done these virtual digital events and people love them. So we get people from across the country, across the planet that come to these events. We actually had a couple of people at our live event that came in from like London. I think it was like Bangladesh and Canada.
So we had a very wide audience that came to the live event that you were at, but you can attend our virtual event for free. If you guys want to go in and grab a ticket by going to KCFlive.com/mike. And that’ll get you a free ticket to our virtual event or three-day event. That’s coming up here.
Mike Woo-Ming: Wow. Wow. So that, that’s gonna be great. And let you guys know it is intense content. You’re going to get so much out of it. Thank you, Ty just for sharing with this and just opening our eyes and ears to what’s possible or what you can do with it.
We didn’t go into your backstory, but I I know your history came from a kind of a rough area and just made you became a self-made multimillionaire and it just so honored to know you and calling my friends. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Ty Cohen: Likewise, Mike, this is beautiful. And I think for anyone who’s looking to supplement their income or create these additional streams of revenue. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to do it. Come into our community and you’ll see that there’s someone. Has a similar background as you who has a similar profession, or that looks like you talks like you, regardless of where you come from.
We’ve got over 20,000 people that are in our community that come from over 126 countries, Mike. So it’s a very eclectic community. We help one another. It’s a family environment and you guys are welcome to come in and join us. So this has been beautiful. Thank you, Mike.
Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you, Ty. Thanks for everything. And again, if you’re who. Is looking to generate revenue. You’re busy working in your practice, but you’re you want to do something on the side or a side hustle. And that’s one thing tied to before we go, this doesn’t take a lot of time or does it?
Ty Cohen: No, it doesn’t it. So it’s what I like to call it. It’s like at your pace. Because we teach this online. You get access to a, an online community, you get access to the online membership area. So you go in at your own pace. We’ve got our videos broken down and very short bites. So some of the videos are five minutes. Some might be seven minutes. It might be 13 minutes.
So you’re able to go in, consume the information, apply it and get results. Continue to move forward. And in terms of monitoring your books you can do it or you can hire somebody to do it, but it’s not a 40 hour a week job, not at all. You know what, Mike’s I published books 12 years ago that I don’t ever go back and look at.
It’s awesome. Honestly, it sounds weird saying that now this books, I have a, we’ve got a. I’ve got a plaque that we’re sending out to one of our students actually, let me grab this. I want to show you something really quickly. I think you’ll be very cool.
So this is Linda Allen. So we send these milestone plaques. We like to call them milestone, plaques out to our students. I don’t know if you could see that. Can you? Yeah. So Linda. Got started with Kindle publishing. Very same training, but I’m sharing with you guys here and she’s generated over a hundred thousand in royalties so far.
She got started over 10 years ago. She got started over 10 years ago. She published books that are celebrity based and what I mean by bad is the books that talk about the lifestyles of celebrities and you can actually do that. So one of the celebrities that she published a book around was the singer Jennifer Hudson.
So Jennifer Hudson, she fixed, she was a winner on America’s got talent, or one of those shows. American idol where you got, it shows you how much. So she ended up publishing those books and generating over a hundred thousand dollars over a 10 year span, right? 10 year, time period. And the beautiful thing about this is she works in a medical field.
She’s a nurse. So she hasn’t looked at her books and yeah. But she continues to get these checks every single month. She gets these deposits into our bank account every single month. And we’re honoring her. She’s over, she’s actually at about 111,000 and that’s one of the plaques that we’re sending out to her.
There’s so much that you can do with this and you don’t need a ton of time to.
Mike Woo-Ming: This is awesome. Good. Again, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing it again. Just another revenue generating asset that you can start, and it’s not just about thinking about it, but it’s about implementing it and following a mentor, like you’re somebody who’s actually been there and done it is the quickest shortcut to success, and it’s all about keep moving forward.