You’re considering the development and sale of your personal planner – that’s brilliant! This isn’t only a pastime – it can indeed be a genuinely gratifying business venture.
With a global planner market worth over $1 billion, there’s room for you to make your mark. And guess what? You don’t have to start from scratch or invest tons of money upfront. Thanks to platforms like Amazon KDP, where even newcomers can get into the game easily.
Amazon KDP is more than just a self-publishing platform for books, it’s also an excellent avenue to create and sell planners. Plus, selling on Amazon means tapping into a customer base of over 300 million people. Talk about reaching a broad audience!
But before you dive headfirst into this venture, there are a few critical steps to consider, like choosing the right niche, designing a planner people will love, and figuring out how to market your product effectively.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through each step, offering tips and resources along the way to help make your planner business a success.
Some Quick Resources:
- Book Bolt – Best All-In-One KDP Tool
- Publisher Rocket – Best Advanced KDP Keyword Research Tool
- Creative Fabrica – Best KDP Interiors & Graphics
What Is Amazon KDP?
If you’ve heard of Amazon KDP, you might think it’s only for people who want to publish ebooks or audiobooks. Well, you’re in for a pleasant surprise!
Amazon KDP is also a hotspot for creating and selling planners. All you have to do is create a KDP account, and you can upload your planner file in a snap. Want to sell a physical version too? No worries, their Print on Demand service has got you covered.
Why Selling on Amazon KDP is A Good Idea?
So why should you consider selling your planner on Amazon KDP? First off, think about the reach – Amazon has a jaw-dropping customer base of over 300 million people. That’s a lot of potential customers waiting to buy your planner!
Plus, Amazon’s built-in search engine makes it easy for people to find exactly what they’re looking for.
And let’s not forget, once someone decides to buy, Amazon’s reliable delivery network will get your planner into your customer’s hands fast.
The only thing you need to worry about when selling planners on Amazon is creating and publishing them. Once it’s done, Amazon will take care of the rest, including printing, shipping, and delivering your products.
What Are Planners?
Maybe you’re wondering, “What’s the big deal about planners anyway?” Well, planners are more than just a bunch of pages to jot down your to-dos. They are tools that help people manage their time, tasks, and basically life.
Whether it’s tracking fitness goals, planning a budget, or organizing a big event, planners serve various purposes. You can find them in paper format, as digital downloads, or even as online apps. With the global planner market valued at over 1 billion dollars, there’s definitely a demand for these handy tools.
To prove this point even more, you can see below that “673,000” people search for the term “planner” every month on Google, and the demand for this term does not seem to go anywhere.
Planning Your Planners:
This section will guide you through identifying popular niches, conducting effective market research, and leveraging social media insights to create a planner that not only excites you but also fills a market gap.
Choosing a Niche
You’ve decided you want to make a planner – great! But what kind of planner will you make? The niche you choose can make a big difference.
It should be something you’re passionate about because you’ll be spending a lot of time on it. But you also want to make sure there’s a market for it. You don’t want to jump into an area that’s already swamped with similar products.
For that, analyzing the market carefully and choosing the sweet spot for your planners is crucial.
What Are Popular Planner Niches?
The top niches in the planner world right now are productivity, goal-setting, and budgeting. That said, there are other niches too, like travel and gratitude planners. These are just the starting points, and you can carve your own niche if you find a gap in the market.
In addition to selecting a niche, there are also various types of planners to consider. By combining the right niche with the appropriate planner type, you create a product that’s not only unique but also highly marketable.
To give you some ideas, here are some profitable planner types that you can consider selling:
- Bullet journal
- Gratitude journal
- Dream journal
- Manifestation journal
- Goal setting journal
- Habit tracker journal
- Mood tracker journal
- Productivity journal
- Time management journal
- Travel planner
How to Research Your Niche to Find a Profitable Topic?
Okay, you’ve got some ideas, but how do you know they’ll sell? Research is the key. Start with Google Trends to see what people are looking for over time. It can show you whether interest in your niche is growing, steady, or declining.
Next, check out Amazon Bestseller Ranks. This can tell you what’s selling like hotcakes right now.
To conduct your research even more effectively use Amazon low-content book research tools, such as Titans Pro.
Titans Pro is a keyword research tool that helps you find high-volume, low-competition keywords for your Amazon KDP books, including planners.
It also provides data on keyword trends, historical performance, and estimated monthly search volume. While this tool recently became a paid service, it has a valuable free Google Chrome extension that you can take advantage of when researching the market.
Here’s how exactly Titans Pro works:
Creating Your Planner:
So you’ve picked your niche and done your keyword research. Now comes the fun part – creating your planner! A planner people will love should be easy to use, packed with useful content, and pleasing to the eye.
When creating the planner, think about including templates for easy planning, inspirational quotes to motivate users, and monthly or weekly spreads to suit various planning needs.
To create your planner from start to finish you will have to focus on two parts – planner cover, and planner interior pages. Although creating planner pages from scratch can be a quite difficult and time-consuming task, there are some smart shortcuts you can take in the process.
Let’s discuss the first one:
Using Done-For-You (PLR) Planners
Done-for-you or PLR planners are already-created planners that come with Private Label Rights (PLR). PLR is a licensing type that allows you to not only resell the existing product but also modify it to suit your needs.
PLR planners are a quick way to get started but be careful. Make sure the PLR planner you choose is high-quality and aligns with your audience’s needs.
Here are the best sources where you can get editable done-for-you planners:
These sources provide planners that you can resell on Amazon, but before that, make sure you turn them into unique products by customizing them. For that, customizable files like DOC, PowerPoint, or Canva links will be included with your items.
Best Tips to Edit a PLR Planner
Alright, say you’ve chosen a PLR planner. How do you make it your own?
Here are some ideas:
- Change the fonts and colors. This is a quick and easy way to change the look and feel of your planner.
- Add custom illustrations or graphics. This can make your planner more visually appealing and engaging.
- Change the layout. If you don’t like the way the planner is laid out, you can change it to fit your needs.
- Add or remove pages. If there are pages you don’t need or want, you can remove them. Or, if there are pages you would like to add, you can do that too.
- Personalize the planner with your name or initials. This is a great way to make your planner feel more unique.
- Add your own quotes or affirmations. This can help you stay motivated and inspired.
- Create a custom cover. This is a great way to make your planner stand out from the crowd.
Using Ready-Made KDP Interiors:
Apart from PLR planners, there’s another way to speed up your planner creation process, and that is ready-made KDP interiors.
These ready-made templates are customizable and designed to suit a variety of niches, ranging from bullet journals to travel planners.
Instead of spending hours crafting each page, you can download these templates at a low cost, or sometimes even for free, and tailor them to your specific needs.
Websites like Book Bird, Creative Fabrica, and Book Bolt offer a wide array of options, each with its own set of design elements and customization features.
This not only saves time but also ensures that you’re leveraging proven, market-ready designs to enhance the appeal of your low-content books on Amazon KDP.
Create Planners by Yourself
But maybe you’re the creative type and want to start from scratch. In that case, tools like Canva or Book Bolt can be a lifesaver. Canva offers you the freedom to design each page just the way you want it.
You get to decide on everything, from the layout to the color scheme. Plus, you can add any special features that you think your audience will love, like habit trackers or budget calculators.
When you build it yourself, you have complete control over the process, and that means you can tailor your planner precisely to your niche and audience. The average person spends over $50 a year on planners, so you want to give them every reason to spend some of that money on yours.
Here’s how to create the entire planner using Canva:
Finalizing and Uploading Your Planner:
You’re almost there! Before you hit that “publish” button, make sure everything in your planner is top-notch. Check that the layout is clear, the content is useful, and the design is eye-catching.
Remember, a high-quality planner is more likely to attract buyers. Once you’ve double-checked everything and you’re satisfied, you’re ready for the next step.
Upload Your New Planner to Amazon
Now it’s time to get your planner out into the world. Log into your Amazon KDP account and start the upload process. If you also want to offer a physical, paper version of your planner, don’t forget to use Amazon’s KDP Print on Demand service.
This allows you to sell printed copies without having to stock inventory yourself, making the whole process easier and more efficient.
Choosing the Right Keywords
Here comes a crucial part: selecting keywords. Amazon’s search engine is incredibly powerful, and the right keywords can make your planner easily discoverable.
Use tools like Amazon Bestseller Ranks or keyword research tools to find the terms people are using to search for planners like yours. With over 300 million active Amazon customers, getting the keywords right can mean a whole lot of eyes on your planner.
Writing Compelling Descriptions
Last but not least, your description has to pack a punch. It needs to be both enticing and informative to grab the reader’s attention.
Highlight the unique features of your planner, the problems it can solve, and why it’s the best choice for your target audience. Make it a description that you yourself would want to read and that would make you want to hit that “Buy Now” button.
And there you go! You’re ready to publish your planner and let it find its way into people’s lives. Congrats on making it this far, and good luck with your sales!
Marketing and Selling Your Planner:
Ready to make your newly-published planner a hit? This section dives into the essential strategies for advertising and promoting your product on Amazon and social media.
From budgeting to tracking performance, you’ll learn how to give your planner the visibility it needs to thrive in a competitive market.
Running Amazon Ads
Once your planner is live on Amazon, you might wonder, “How do I get people to actually see it?” One fast way is to use Amazon’s own advertising platform. Although paid advertising is not necessary to succeed, it can give your planner that initial boost in visibility among Amazon’s massive customer base.
How to Create Amazon Ads for Your Planner?
Creating an ad on Amazon isn’t too complicated. The key is to be smart about the keywords you choose. These should be relevant to your planner and the audience you’re targeting.
Also, don’t just go for the most popular keywords; sometimes, less competitive keywords can give you a better return on investment.
How to Set a Budget for Your Ads
Money matters. You don’t want to spend a ton and not see any return. So, start small. Test different keywords and see what’s working.
Once you have some initial data, you can adjust your budget based on what’s actually bringing in sales. Remember, the aim is to get the most bang for your buck.
How to Track the Results of Your Ads
So how do you know if your ads are doing their job? Amazon provides built-in tools that let you track how your ads are performing in real-time.
You can see metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and more. This information is gold; it tells you what’s working and what needs tweaking.
Promoting Your Planner on Social Media
But don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Social media is another powerful tool to get the word out about your planner. Use platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to reach different audiences.
Share high-quality images of your planner, and use relevant hashtags to make your posts more discoverable. Content marketing can also play a vital role here. Write blog posts or create videos that show the benefits of using your planner, and share these on your social media channels.
In summary, marketing is a multi-step, ongoing process. By using Amazon Ads strategically, keeping an eye on your budget, tracking your performance, and utilizing the power of social media, you’ll be setting yourself up for success.
Don’t forget to be patient; building a successful planner business doesn’t happen overnight. But with consistent effort and smart strategies, you’re well on your way.
Conclusion:
In wrapping up, creating and selling your own planner on Amazon KDP is more than achievable; it’s a proven way to tap into a booming market.
From choosing your niche and crafting a planner that resonates with your audience, to leveraging Amazon Ads and social media for marketing, each step is crucial.
And remember, with tools like Canva and Amazon’s robust platform features, you’re never alone in this venture. Keep tabs on your performance, adjust your strategies as you go, and most importantly, be patient. The road to success may have its bumps, but with dedicated effort, the journey is well worth it.