I honestly can’t believe this. In fact, I forgot about it. Last year, I offered the Horse Sense and Cents™ blog as a young horse training resource for 99 cents on Amazon as a Kindle edition. Wish I could remember who offered this idea in such an easy to understand step-by-step process that resulted in this listing. In all likelihood, it was Dana Lynn Smith or Cathy Stucker, both accomplished book publishers. If either of you were responsible for this tip, I extend a hearty thanks for the heads-up and tutorial. Please chime in with comments, links to related articles and a shout out for your services for readers who may consider themselves want-to-be authors.
The beauty of horse tips and Kindle
For those of you not familiar with Kindle as a business resource and how it’s structured relative to payment, you can download a document or website at no cost to you, whether it’s a young horse training book, a website blog focused on alpha mares, an e-booklet on transitioning OTTBs, a horse care missive, or whatever you deem worthy of presenting to others related to equine careers or horse care.
Amazon pays 70% of the purchase price to you on items priced in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. For products on the other ends of the spectrum (lower or higher), it’s 30%. This works for e-books too. You can even use their calculator (that’s updated daily) to automatically adjust price for buyers in most European countries.
Frankly, my intent in listing the blog as a Kindle edition was to generate awareness. I wasn’t expecting sales. What fun it was to see money deposited in my account from people willing to pay for convenient access to the free content. If you want to sign up with your blog, simply go here.
OTTBs, Alpha Mares and other horse training information promoted
Since realizing the blog was found and bought by people who wouldn’t have likely discovered the Horse Sense and Cents site otherwise, we decided to load our Reaching Alpha Horses and Bringing Home an Off-The-Track Thoroughbred e-booklets there as well. This requires signing up with Amazon as an author or publisher. That’s easy to set up too. We already had an account because we’re offering the Turning Challenging Horses Into Willing Partners book as a Kindle edition, but you don’t need to have a full length book to offer content for sale. Here too, there’s no cost for the listing upfront – Amazon collects when you sell. If you have valuable digital content that others may find useful, it’s a resource worth checking out. Free or for a low fee, if your content is relevant, people will find it and buy.
Horse businesses can benefit from Amazon Associates
Another interesting option is the Amazon Associates program. If you do book or product reviews, this might be a good tool for you to integrate into your blog or website to collect a little bit (usually 4-6%) on items you recommend that are ideal for your readers. It can be exciting to collect money in $10 increments from content you were developing anyway to help your readers find great tools you’ve discovered.
Of course, we don’t recommend anything or anyone at Horse Sense and Cents (or through our Halcyon Acres® site) that we haven’t vetted and found impressive. If your following is built on trust, throwing ads in without personal proof or context is short-sighted. If you use it to help readers find what they want, however, they’ll appreciate the convenience. As an example, you can buy Denny Emerson’s book, How Good Riders Get Good through an affiliate link to Amazon on this site. It’s a great book for anyone who has wondered how others have become – or dreamed about being – a top level rider. Denny’s also a contributor to our Inventing Your Horse Career audio CD series (as well as the Turning book – the only one featured in both products), so obviously, we’re really impressed with his mindset and message. Offering an easy link to his book helps him, gives us a little income for the plug, but most importantly, creates an easy way for our visitors to find a valuable and pertinent resource for achieving equestrian excellence.
Promote your equine business while getting paid for it
If you’re looking for a way to spread the word about who you are and what you’re doing, Amazon offers a lot of interesting ways to get the word out with products for sale. Of course, you can offer these for free too, but why not consider putting some of your best quality content up there for an inexpensive opportunity to those who seek what you offer and can’t find you otherwise?
