My KDP Self-Publishing Income Report For March 2022

How much did I make in March 2022?

I didn’t know what to expect from March. The first quarter of the year (January, February and March) are quite slow months in general. I also hadn’t made many new books  last year and that was a big mistake!

I feel it’s important to add to your book list and keep things fresh and interesting. However, other commitments meant that I hadn’t really found the time to make more books and I only created two children’s picture books.

So I was very surprised that my income last year was still a very respectable amount, more than I had earned in previous jobs. And December really blew me away, I was over the moon with the results. Most of my sales are from the UK and I don’t know why as my books are not specifically targeted at the UK market.

All this proves that publishing books on KDP is a great passive income, even if you stop creating more books. I couldn’t be happier.

So in January and February I still made a good income, although lower than other months. I didn’t know what to expect in March but I am really happy how it turned out.

As you can see, I have 518 books now in total which are mainly in evergreen niches that sell all year round. My best day was on the 12th of March where I made $227.41 in royalties in one day.

Did I run Amazon Ads?

I did run ads and I admit I should really switch them off as my ACOS was over 40%. This means that my profit was minimal on the ads, and on some books I even made a loss. However, I feel that when I run ads my organic sales are steadier, so I’m letting them run for now. I am going to study ads a bit more closely to improve and optimise my ads strategy. So far, I only run ads in the UK, they are all manual ads targetting keywords, and my overall ad spend was around $400. I find that if I run ads in the USA, they cost me a lot more than the UK ads and I get less sales per clicks.

Other expenses include subscriptions to Creative Fabrica for graphics, Canva for design and I also subscribe to EZPub profits and other tools that help with design and research. All of these tools ad up to less than $100 a month.

My strategy going forward

I have to say that all of this is still passive income as I had not produced any new books. Of course some months are better than others and I hope that by publishing more books I will add to this income and increase it. I have already started publishing new books but I take my time with them, so it’s a slow process and I don’t focus on quantity, I rather focus on quality. So the books I have published recently are in niches that are already doing well for me, but this time I have experimented with full colour interiors. I like to try new things.

I will be publishing books in existing niches but changing their format. So that could be adding hardback covers to existing paperbacks and making some of my children’s books into eBooks. And I will also be exploring new niches.

How was your March income? I hope it was what you hoped for, let me know if you’re also developing new strategies for your kdp business.

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