Not enough people teach the difference between profitable keywords and good keywords in the Kindle publishing community, and that’s because not many people know the difference. 

So congratulations for finding this important resource!

If you have already started publishing or still doing your research about Kindle publishing, then you know the importance of choosing the right keyword. The keyword is the most vital part in leveraging Amazon’s traffic towards your product.

Get the keyword right and that’s already 50% of the work done.

More traffic = More sales

The problem is, most Kindle publishing courses only teach you how to identify profitable keywords. On the surface this seems perfect. Exactly what you want. Profitable keywords.

But profitable keywords don’t mean they are profitable for YOU.

That’s were viability comes in. Your keyword must not simply be making money on Amazon. As a publisher trying to compete within Amazon’s Kindle store, you need find keywords that are suitable for your own skill level and resource level.

Many publishers that fail to make money make this mistake

They don’t understand why their books, which are using seemingly profitable keywords, are failing. The book doesn’t rank on the first page or it doesn’t stay on the first page for more than a month.

They followed everything their Kindle guru/mentor/course said and they’re just simply not seeing the money come in.

If you find yourself in the same situation then you most likely have a bad keyword.

You have made the most common mistake publishers make by choosing a keyword based on profitability, and ignoring your own situational variables that also effect your book’s ability to make money. 

Just because someone else is making a lot of money with that keyword, doesn’t mean EVERYONE who publishes with that keyword will also make money. The person might be famous, the publisher might have a massive marketing budget, the keyword might be seasonal and you just happened to find it at its peak. 

The list can go on.

The two types of profitable keywords that exist

Bad Keywords = Keywords that YOU can’t be successful in

This means:

  • Any keyword that are seasonal trends (such as gardening, fishing, wedding planning etc)
  • Any keyword that are fads (such as new technology guide books, vampire books after Twilight came out etc)
  • Any keyword that will put your business in danger such as trademarks and copyright
  • Any keyword that constantly have new books published under (too competitive to create a stable passive income stream in)
  • Any keyword dominated by extremely high performing books or established publishers (these outliers give the impression of a good keyword when really these specific books are the odd one out)
  • Any keyword that doesn’t get enough search traffic

Good Keywords = Keywords that YOU can make money with

This means:

  • Any keyword that is profitable and not TOO competitive for you to enter
  • Any keyword that is evergreen in nature and the content is stagnant
  • Any keyword that you can maintain your ranking for a long period of time
  • Any keyword that is not saturated with successful publications already

Many Kindle courses show you how to find the most profitable keywords thinking everyone will be able to make money from it. But the easiest keywords that are profitable(in terms of finding them)are almost always never a viable choice for a beginner.

A good keyword is always profitable, but a profitable keyword is not always good

Viability is all based on how possible is it for you to succeed.

Are you going to win against a book published from a famous author?

Are you going to win against a constant stream of new publications?

Are you going to make money once that fad fades away?

Those are some of the questions you need to ask yourself once you find a profitable keyword.

The usual advice of finding a keyword by looking at the top 100 sellers on Amazon and checking if the top 6 books have a BSR of 100,000 or less is simply not good advice.

This method only identifies whether a keyword is making money on Amazon. It doesn’t provide you any critical information on how easy or possible it is for YOU to make money with it.

As a beginner or someone who is struggling; you should take the most pessimistic outlook, and go for the keywords you are 100% sure ANYONE can make money from.

This means your keyword researching time may take a whole day, a whole week or even more. (depending on how diligent and creative you are) It means you need to take into account a laundry list of success metrics when considering a keyword before going ahead with producing the book.

I teach all of this in my course, but to summarise and get you thinking in the right direction. You need to approach the Kindle market in context of your own skill level compared with the other publishers.

Where to go from here

If you already have some keywords in mind, then it’s time to use this post and figure out if your keyword is profitable AND viable. Go through the list of characteristics of a bad and good keyword to decipher if you should carry on with your chosen one.

You should also run it through keyword specific questions. For example, if my keyword was “music producing” I would ask myself if the genre of music matters or not.

If you haven’t even started your keyword research process, then now is the time to start approaching the whole research process with the correct mindset.

The methods you read online, or the usual ones from Kindle courses aren’t going to work. None of them, as of this moment, teach keyword research with viability in mind, except of course, my Kindle course.