Kindle Publishing Series: How To Find a Profitable Niche

In this post, I am going to show you how I find profitable niches to target. I am going to keep things simple and my goal with this post is to give you the steps you can also implement and begin finding profitable niches to create Kindle books for!

Niche research is a vital skill. Without it, you will not make money and the best way to get good at it is to practice and go through the process again, and again, and again.

The process is simple and with practice will become almost ‘second-nature’. We base all our research from the Kindle store as that’s where we will be selling our books.

One BIG mistake newbies tend to make, which I want to annihilate right away, is creating your own niches. A lot of people think because they like or are interested in something, that other people are also interested in that. Others will think they have discovered a new market. They will think of something and then go to Amazon to see that no one else is selling a book on that topic and think that they found a ‘untapped-market’. BIG MISTAKE!

I understand why some might think that is genius, but the truth is, you want to find a niche that is already profitable and that there is already a demand for. Don’t create a book on a niche because it’s something YOU like or because it’s an idea YOU had. Look for what the MARKET likes and wants. Find a niche that is ALREADY profitable. I can’t stress this enough.

Now that I got that out of the way, let’s move on to the practical research:

Being that we are ‘Kindle’ Publishers, I like to get the majority (if not all) of my ideas from Amazon directly. If you didn’t know Amazon has a best-seller section on their site where you can see the top-selling products for each category.

This is also true for Kindle books.

You can see which books and topics are doing well and by doing a bit more research can establish whether a niche worth pursuing and publishing in.

Amazon is basically telling you what is hot and what people are buying so for me that is all the information that I need!

 

So lets get to it…

 

1. First thing is to head over to the Kindle Best Sellers List.

You can visit the Kindle Best Sellers List

or if you want to learn to get there yourself, you simply choose ‘Kindle Store’ from the drop-down menu on the Amazon.com homepage (remember the main market is Amazon.com so we want to base our research on Amazon.com alone. Don’t bother with amazon.co.uk, Amazon.it etc for now. They make up a significantly smaller fraction of your royalties).

 

Select ‘Kindle Store’ from the drop-down menu:

 

Then click the search button:

 

From this page, click ‘Kindle eBooks’:

 

Then on your left, click on ‘Best Sellers & More’:

 

Finally, scroll down and click on ‘Kindle Best Sellers’:

 

2. Now, here is where you can find all the bestselling books!

If you look to the left side of the screen, you can see all the different categories on Amazon. What you need to do is go through various categories and subcategories (categories within categories, i.e. Mathematics > Algebra, etc.) as this will enable you to get more ideas and find specific topics and niches you can publish books on.

 

VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you are looking through the ‘Top 100 Paid’, NOT ‘Top 100 Free’. You want to get ideas from books that people are paying money for. So, make sure you are in the right section by clicking on ‘Top 100 Paid’.

3. Now, what you are looking for here are keywords and niches that you can target. More specifically; keywords and terms that a book can be based on and that solves a particular problem for the reader.

Here is an example of some good keywords in the ‘Crafts & Hobbies’ category:

From the above screenshot, you could write down;

• ‘Recipes in Jars’ (potentially, create jar cookbook for people looking for new recipes)
• ‘Soap making’ (potentially, create a book that teaches DIY soap making)
• ‘Woodworking Projects’ (Potentially create a book that provides DIY wood projects for people looking to build cool things out of wood)

4. You want to go through various lists and categories and note down any potential keywords that you see. You may also get ideas that pop into your head, write those down too, so we can check if they are profitable later.

I would recommend writing down at least 15 potential keywords, to begin with, so that we can later assess each one.

You may be thinking:

What’s the difference between a keyword and the niche?

Good question. It can be easy for you to get confused between keywords and niches. I use the word ‘keywords’ to define keywords or terms that can be actual niches (markets) you can target. For instance, the word ‘Meditation’ is a keyword and a niche as well. When publishing your book, you would be publishing it in the meditation niche, you would target the meditation keyword and other additional related terms such as ‘Mindfulness’, ‘inner peace’, etc. In this section, we are looking for niches and markets to penetrate, not words alone.

5. Now, once you have gone through the best seller list and noted down 15 ideas for potential niches, we want to verify the profitability and the potential for you to also make money from these markets.

To do this, we are going to simply search each keyword on Amazon (under the Kindle Store menu) and go through some criteria that I am going to show you now.

This is the criteria I have developed, combining things I have learned and tested over the past 2 years. As a beginner, this is pretty much all you need to know and practice. You will build an ‘eye’ for profitable niches and will simply be able to tell if a niche is profitable just by accessing some basic factors.

The skill comes with practice and I recommend spending at least 10 mins a-day on niche research. Vital, vital skill.

 

NICHE ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Here are the criteria we follow when assessing a niche. We start by going to Amazon.com, selecting the Kindle Store from the drop-down menu on the search bar and then searching each keyword we have written to check it against the following criteria:

On the first page of the search results you should find 5-6 books that meet ALL the following criteria:

• Those 5-6 books have a Best Seller Rank of 100,000 or LESS (Not higher than 10,000, smaller than 100,000)
• Those 5-6 books are selling between $0.99 and $3.99
• Those 5-6 books have been on the market for at least 2 months (there are expectations as I will describe shortly)
• Those 5-6 books have 100 reviews or less each

Additional Criteria (Not as important)

• On the first page, there are no more than 3 free books ($0.00)
• The search results bring up 2,000 books or less
• At least a couple of those 5-6 books show opportunity for having value added

 

HERE IS THE BREAKDOWN OF EACH CRITERION;

1. Top 5-6 books with a BSR of 100,000 or less

Amazon ranks each book on their site with something called a Best-Selling Rank (BSR for short).

To put it in perspective, let’s say there are 4 million books on Amazon. The number 1 bestselling book in the entire Amazon Kindle store will have a BSR of ‘1’, the 1000^th bestselling book will have a rank of ‘1000’, the 1millionth book will have a rank of ‘1,000,000’ and so on. You can find the BSR in the ‘Product Details’ part of the book page.

We are looking for niches where the top 5-6 books (selling at $0.99, $2.99 or $3.99 and on the market for 2+ months) are at 100,000 BSR or less (LOWER). What this rank tells us is that this eBook is earning roughly at least $50 to $100+ per month from Kindle royalties (excluding paperback sales).

If you are investing let’s say $300 on a book for instance, after the 3^rd or 4^th month (assuming you do everything properly, as taught in this book) you are likely to have made your investment back and perhaps earned some profit already (if we combine that with paperback sales). The more profitable the niche and the higher you can rank, the more money you make. My best book earns me $800 per month (including paperback sales). Not bad for a book my team produced for a few hundred dollars!

But assuming you have multiple books bringing in just $50-$100 every month, it is just a matter of scaling and getting multiple high-quality books out there. That is the power of Kindle Publishing and creating assets, which are your books!

 

2. Those 5-6 books must be selling between $0.99 and $3.99

The 2nd criterion is only analyzing books that sell between $0.99 and $3.99. The reason for this is that books between those prices are more likely to be your true competition. In contrary, the majority of the eBooks on sale for $6.99, $9.99 are books produced by ‘real’ authors or brands and not publishers like ourselves.

The main difference is that those authors and brands are likely to be driving external traffic to their book page. Which means they will have more sales than other books/publishers that are relying solely on organic traffic from Amazon searches. Our approach relies solely on Amazon traffic, so we want to ensure we only analyze books that use the same strategy. This will give us a more accurate assessment of the profitability of a market.

 

3. Those books have been available for sale for at least 2 months

The 3^rd criteria is only analyzing books that have been selling for at least 2 months. The reason why this is important is because when a book is new, Amazon gives its’ BSR a ‘boost’. So, new books may have BSR’s of 20,000, 30,000 when after a few weeks of being on the market (and not getting consistent sales) that may go up to 150,000 or 200,000+. So to avoid being fooled by deflated or faux BSR’s, it’s best to analyze books that have been on the market for more than 60 days and are no longer on Amazon steroids. Avoid getting inaccurate information. I have made that mistake in the past.

 

You can find the publication date in the book title, as well as the ‘Product Details‘:

However, it is good to mention that certain profitable niches will have books that are all really recent (a month or less). These niches are markets that are profitable but HEAVILY competitive, where new people are entering the market daily. I would put niches like that aside and gain some experience in less competitive markets first before going to war. Some examples in the past have been cookbooks. From Paleo Diet to the Instant Pot, I was seeing new books coming in daily and it was extremely hard to maintain rank and compete. Amazon can sometimes give a rank advantage to newer books. Keep that in mind.

 

4. Majority of the books have 100 reviews or less

You also want most of your competitors’ books to have 100 reviews or less. This is so you are still competitive even if you have less reviews than them (20-30 reviews for example). On the other hand, if all the books have 200-300 reviews, then it makes it more challenging for you to compete if you don’t have a similar number of reviews. So, try to go for niches where at least 3 of the top 6 ranking books have 100 reviews or less (assuming they are selling well too). Of course, this is a rule-of-thumb.

You may come across very profitable markets where books may have more than 100 reviews. The objective in those niches is to outrank as many of those books and get to the top 3 places in the search results. (which is our objective regardless)

Then we have the Additional Criteria, which is not as crucial to your decision making. Just something to keep in the back of your mind. The criteria above are the most important.

 

5. Not too many free books on page 1

I do, however, strongly recommend not going for markets where there are multiple free books. Especially in the 5-6 top positions on page 1. If there are more than 2 free books, most of the traffic is going to go to those free books. And if those books are good and have many reviews, the chance of someone paying for your $2.99 book instead of downloading the free one, well it’s a much slimmer chance. However, keep an eye on that market as it may be that the books are running the free promo and not permanently free. (I will discuss the free promo later).

 

6. 2,000 or fewer results for Kindle Store

This criterion is merely a rule of thumb. You should target markets with more than 2k results if the other criteria are met. It’s more of a ‘rule of thumb’, as niches with too many results may be a sign that you are going too broad or that this is a saturated market. On the other hand, I personally don’t like to target keywords with less than 300 results as this can be a sign of you going for a topic that is not in such high demand. Again, these are just rules of thumb and there are always exceptions. Look at those BSR’s and the other criteria we discussed prior and you should know if your topic is worth it or not.

 

7. Can I add value to this market?

This is an important one but it’s something you benefit from more in the long-term. The objective is to see whether there is any value you can bring to readers, to set yourself apart. Now, with very popular niches you will make sales regardless if your book is different or not. There are a high number of customers and as long as you can position yourself well in the ranks you will sell. With less crazy niches you must focus more on setting yourself apart, the quality of the content, the cover, how persuasive is the description, etc. Anything that can give you an edge, not only in the ability to convert a sale but to also bring more value than your competition. That’s what we aim to do for your books at HotGhostWriter.com.

 

Now, these are the simple, basic criteria to find profitable niches. I know it may seem too simple, but shortly I will give you a link to a video I recorded of the process and you will see that it actually works. It takes patience and practice.

However, we are not fully done! I also use other sources within Amazon to find profitable niches. There are other places you can spot good keywords and potential niches.

Other sources for potential niche ideas to shortlist:

Look at the titles:

 

Amazon Search Bar

Check the Amazon search bar: (predictive results that come up, that is an indication that they are commonly searched)

TIP: Use the incognito tab on your browser so that Amazon doesn’t adjust your predictive results

 

Look in the ‘Customers Who Bought This Also Bought’ section:

You will be surprised at the numerous ideas you can get from those 3 areas. Also, remember to check different keywords as keywords can be for the same niche and somewhat similar, but changing words around or adding/removing certain words can be the difference between getting traffic and sales and not getting traffic and sales.

For example, ‘meditation for beginners’ may not be profitable, but ‘meditation for weight loss’ may be profitable (that’s just an example by the way). Keep that in mind!

What Next?

Once you have 2 niches you want to publish books in, place your book orders with us and use the coupon ‘HOT10’ to get 10% off your first order.

Hotghostwriter.com is a book ghostwriting service aimed exclusively at serving the Kindle Publishing community.

Our 2 primary goals are to 1. Produce the highest-quality books that will allow you to skyrocket your royalty earnings and enable you to earn passive income from your published books long-term. 2. Provide the most effortless and enjoyable experience so that you can focus on scaling and growing your profitable Kindle Publishing business, whilst we handle book creation.

We house some of the most talented and skilled writers in both non-fiction and fiction topics and we aim to write books that will blow your readers away and hopefully get you to that best-seller status.

Your books will be written by a Native English writer, be free from plagiarism and fully edited and proofread by our in-house editing team before being delivered. Your books will also be fully formatted for Kindle (and other digital publishing platforms) and ready-to-publish so that you can get your books on the market quickly and not have to worry about formatting. On that note, we can also take care of paperback formatting when you upgrade to one of our packages.

There is no other service or freelancer that is as committed to Kindle Publishers like Hotghostwriter.com. Our entire focus is to ensure that you put out great books and scale your income and library effortlessly.

Click here to get started now or click here to contact us if you have any questions. We will be glad to assist you!

Now, here is a video of me putting the process into action;

Happy Publishing! 
– Delfim Alvaro