How To Make Money Publishing Your Blog on the Kindle

Making a living as a blogger isn't easy. You need hundreds if not thousands of regular subscribers, and daily hits in the six-digit range. If you're depending on advertising money, then you need people to actually click ads on your page in order to get paid. If you're selling products as an affiliate marketer, then you need to persuade your readers to purchase through your site. If you have merchandise of your own, you need to make a solid case as to why readers should hand over their hard-earned cash.

Wouldn't it just be easier to get paid for writing good articles that provide useful, actionable information?

You want to get paid for doing what now?

Experienced bloggers are currently wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. The reason is because no one pays writers just to put words on a page; writers get paid for selling something. Since blogs are free to read, they need to be used as a vehicle in order to sell something else. No matter how brilliant your writing, or how entertaining your jokes are, they're worthless all by themselves. Unless, that is, you can come up with a way to sell something that doesn't cost anything.

Amazon to the Rescue

As the reigning king of selling people things they don't need, Amazon has begun a service allowing you to publish your blog to the Kindle. This means you get increased exposure, since there are hundreds of thousands of Kindle ereaders on the market, and at least some of those users will be searching for blogs through their machines. Amazon also charges a fee to anyone who subscribes to your blog through an ereader. It doesn't charge much, maybe .99 a month, with the first two weeks coming free of charge. As the author, you're entitled to some of that cash. It's why the Literary Mercenary is now available here, and its sister blog Improved Initiative is available here.

How Do I Publish My Blog With Amazon?

And can I get paid in bananas?

If you already have a blog that's up and running, getting it put up on Amazon takes very little time. Just go to this link and create a new Amazon account. I'm sure you already have a personal one, but that won't fly for this little endeavor. Once you have your new account set up, log in. You'll see a blank window, with an "Add Blog" button on the right hand side. Simply click that button, and then fill in all the details for your blog. This includes a sales description, cover photo, and all of the marketing text you can fit. Once you've filled out all the details, click submit and wait roughly 24 hours for your blog to be available for subscription through Amazon. It's that simple!

How Much Money Can I Make?

Because that's not a loaded question at all.

You can make thousands of dollars a month doing this. You won't. Blog subscriptions are just like anything else in the writing world; the more you sell, the more you make. Just like your blog.

If you get a half a million hits, and every visitor clicks an advertisement on your blog, then you're going to find yourself in a new tax bracket pretty damn fast. The same is true if your novel suddenly starts selling like hot cakes, or if your blog becomes the new "in" thing to subscribe to. You can potentially make a fortune, if you can persuade everyone with a Kindle to subscribe to you. That isn't likely to happen, though. What's more likely is that your blog will pick up a few subscribers, yielding perhaps an extra few bucks a month.

So why publish your blog on the Kindle? Well, on the one hand, it costs you nothing. Even if no one ever hears about you, and you never see a single cent from the endeavor, at worst you've wasted fifteen minutes. Sheer chance says there are at least a few readers out there who will discover you, and decide to subscribe for at least a little while. There's also the outside shot that, for whatever reason, your blog becomes a rolling stone raking in enough cash for you to pay your rent, save up for a vacation, and quit your day job just on the number of subscriptions you get. It isn't likely, but then again a Twilight fan-fiction became a million-dollar industry. The impossible is very, very possible when it comes to writing, for good or ill.


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