Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, finally went live, I think. Where are we? Yeah, end of May. So it’s been out there for about three, four weeks now I think. So yeah, very pleased to finally get it out and it seems to be received pretty well from the people who who’ve looked at it and read it and got some few reviews drifting in. So yeah, it’s gone, thankfully been received pretty well. Yeah, so I think I’ve sold three or four paperbacks and similar-ish number of eBooks in terms of sales. So yeah, single digits, so pretty low, but I’ve got about 70 odd downloads through sharing on the Facebook groups and other book funnel type links, so plenty of downloads. And now just trying to chase people up to populate those reviews, which I know I’ve got a whole raft of God knows how many books of people have promised.
I’ll read and do reviews and there’s not enough hours in the day is there. But yeah, so hopefully I’m at the point where I’m trying to just chase up a few people who promised and then I’ll start probably running ads, if not the end of this week, then early next week and just see if that drives any more take up. But yeah, randomly I’m picking up the odd sale here and there, so someone’s seeing it. And if I do searching on Amazon, then I can see that the book’s on page one or in top of page one in certain search terms. So yeah, it must be visible to someone at least. But yeah, so I start running some ads, hopefully that’ll start generating a bit more financial sales, which would be nice. Yeah, so I think this was when I joined the KX 10 program.
I didn’t really have much of an idea about what I wanted to do. I had a few sort of loose ideas, but so this was probably January time as we went through that early process in terms of trying to hone in on some good keywords and some good topics that had good stats in the KD spies. So yeah, sort started off as a crime gangs thing, a more UK based, and then it sort of drifted into this US based organized crime thing. So it sort of morphed and changed a little bit as time went on and it became a little bit more focused rather than a looser, wider, or I guess a wider topic of organized crime gangs and stuff. But the idea was that then I could start to look at others and create a series out of that, but I’m not quite sure if that’s going to work. Now as I look at some of the metrics on the search volumes and stuff for some of these other groups, then they don’t hit anywhere near as high as this, so they might not be quite, so I might have to think again on quite what any series looks like or any sort of follow-ups, but that’s something I’m starting to look at now in terms of what do I do for the next one? A bit of both really.
I drive my wife nuts because all the sort of TV and films I want to watch are all about dark and gritty and horrible subjects generally. And so she likes much more lighter entertainment. So we don’t often sort of find ourselves agreeing on what we’re going to watch, but we do generally sit together and watch stuff and I’ll convince that it’s a good idea and she will generally like it. But yeah, I’ve kind of had an interest in the mafiaa and crime and organized crime and stuff like that. But yeah, the data then led me to really hone in on this particular topic. But, and a few news events with Brexit and stuff like that made me think about the way that I’d seen a few new stories cropping up about the way gangs were doing certain things in terms of how the borders were changing some of the ways they operate.
So it had an interest in it. But yeah, the data was just looked pretty good when we did the metrics searches as well. So I’ve got a bit of a background of dabbling in Amazon F B A with physical products as well, and I’ve joined a program to do that where you’ve got specialist mentoring and stuff like that. So I can see that the benefits of trying to cut down on the mistakes you make, I guess. And it was about speed really trying to get stuff done quicker. Now I dunno whether somewhere between four and five months as it probably took from start to finish to get it out is good or bad or I think that’s generally going to be what it takes to get through all the reviews and all the other bits of stuff you have to worry about.
And again, it was just that specialist handholding packaged service that you get from KX 10. I know you pay handsomely for it as well, but I think as I’ve went through it, I don’t think I would’ve been anywhere near or had anything as good if I tried to do this on my own. I think that’s the genuine truth of the matter. It sounded okay. And I think the K P I materials are great and I whistled through a lot of that at the start and it was really good for the search pieces. So I think I could have done that bit, all right and come up with a topic probably, but I’m not sure I got through the delivery piece so quickly without KX 10, and that was the really appealing bit. It was just getting through the process quicker and more handholding and support through that piece.
But I saw, I think it was actually a D V D cover on a similar topic. It was about the Irish and it had pretty much the flag elements top and bottom and then the film title in the middle. So I didn’t create this on myself, but as soon as I sort thought that, I thought that is pretty good. And then some of the other elements again have sort of taken from other books that are out there in the same genre. So there’s nothing kind of original about it, but that’s kind of what you guys train us to do is they don’t try and be original, just take the best elements that you steal and borrow them from other places and bring it together. But yeah, really pleased with the way it turned out and when you get that first author copy in your hands, you think, oh my God, please look as good as I hope you’re going to look.
And it did feel really good to get it and it looked pretty good. So yeah, I’ve been really pleased with it, so I hope it, yeah, and I think it sort of stands out a little bit on the page as well, so fingers crossed when people do start searching, they’ll be drawn to it. You’ve got to use, do you sort of just do this stuff? You look through the search for the hundreds of films and think, what am I going to watch tonight? And you’re doing it all the time. You’ve just got to consciously be aware of why am I drawn to that one and why did I overlook that 50 that I just didn’t even bother even looking at? And that’s what you need to make mental notes or just scribble ’em down and go, oh, I was drawn to that because of that color or that font or something.
There’s little bits in all of them that make you interested or not interested. Well, I think that’s half the thing because yeah, when the draft is being produced, it is a lot of backwards and forwards and reading the same chapter again and again and you’re finding different things and you’re just making corrections then going back and finding more things. And it’s just, you do read your own book about 500 times it seems, but you hope that as you get better at this, your own proofread gets better and you catch more stuff first time and that bit gets easier. And then as you say, the turnaround time and that stuff should just get quicker and plus your ghost writers will know what you’re looking for as well. So hopefully they’re a bit more attuned to getting it right first time as well. I literally last week started to do some searching on some keywords and trying to find the right topic, but nothing’s really scored that highly yet.
That makes me a hundred percent want to do it. And the other challenge I’ve got is that I’m trying to get this first one sort of out there and finished, and this is where, as you say the coaches help with, it’s not necessarily all the writing bit that now seems like the straightforward bit, the urban writers bit and the cover design, all that, it’s all this extra stuff like the book funnel, the marketing, the advertising. I kind of know a little bit about that from doing the product stuff before. But yeah, newsletters and trying to stay in tune with just being visible, really all this extra stuff under the umbrella of marketing that’s way out of my comfort zone. Anything I’ve ever done before and that just seems to be taking a lot of time, which I’d much rather be spending on doing the market research stuff for.
What am I going to do next? As you say, I’m conscious that this one’s out there now, I do want to kind of hit the next one out if I can within three to four months. So there isn’t this huge long gap and anyone who has signed up to a newsletter doesn’t just think this guy doesn’t do anything, so I’m going unsubscribed from his list or I let it just drift and it sort of falls apart any some momentum that got going through that first book. So I do want to try in the next week or so to come up with a good idea and sort of push that back past the coaches and get ’em to look at my numbers. But yeah, it might be something mafiaa based or I might just do a more generic gangs or organized crime group and just consolidate all of them into one and see if that might work better rather than picking them off one by one as I did with the Irish thing. Ideally I’d like to start look at that, sort of build your team thing and looking at VAs and stuff like that, but I don’t want to run before I can walk and also got to be conscious of money that will take to pay people to do stuff while I’ve not got any kind of revenue coming in from the book. So yeah, the whole thing all start to snowball and look better if I can just get this one visible, start making some sales, get some money coming in, that’ll pay for the next one and all the rest of it. So that’s the one, just making sure this one starts to sell a little bit. It’s going to take a bit of a leap, try and get three or four more reviews in this week that people are promising. If I can get up to six, seven reviews, then I’ll run the ads from there and then, so yeah, two or three weeks time I should be catching up with Bruce and see how, so I work for G Ss k big pharma company in tech, so I manage a team that run messaging. So yeah, unfortunately that’s what I still do. Yeah, ultimately I’d like this to be a replacement for that. I dunno quite what my longevity is anymore in that role with locations and job shifting and stuff like that. So it’s kind of looking for a second income, sideline income, but also a potential replacement. So I’m enthusiastic about it.
I’ve enjoyed the process now and I want to sort ramp it up so that it gives me that sort of other option really. So if I do lose the job or it gives me an option to think I’ve had enough of doing this, it’s too stressful and there’s too much work involved in it, I’d rather do this something else for myself. So that’s the plan really. So yeah, that’s why I want to keep the momentum going now I can kind of see that the process can work, but it’s about volume and repetition and stuff like that. So I can’t have one book and think that’s going to solve all your financial problems. You’ve got to have 10 20, you’ve got to just keep the numbers coming through and that’s what I’m hoping to try and do now, as you said before, once you learn the process, then hopefully it just becomes a little bit more repetitive.
You can focus on what’s different each time and not, but the process is the same thing that you go through each time zone a little bit. Where I went into K P I did a lot of the early modules and raced through a lot of that training. Then I went into KX 10 and I sort of left K P I alone quite a lot. A lot of the material was different and you’re in your one-to-one groups and you small group coaching and had enough to do there. And now I’m sort of finding myself going back to through that K P I stuff because sort of forgotten a lot of that early stuff again. So I probably need to more reconnect again with the K P I program and jump back onto the calls with K P I as well, which they’re just not ideal times for the UK and my tired brain by about 10 30 at night, but it is what it is.
But there’s always catchups and stuff, so I probably need to just reconnect with the K P I program. It’s great just when I go back and look at those modules, which are only sort of 15, 20 minutes, some of them, they’re so good at just going, ah, that’s what you did there. Yeah, that’s why you went there and that’s why I did that. And I think that’ll help me while I’m in this kind of zone of trying to work out what to do next. Not really. I’ve been impressed with the program, the coaches, as you said, they’re really great and they do. I think what you have to do, and I think what people need to understand is you kind of do your weekly calls or your biweekly calls and you have to listen to them again about three times for it to sink in and you have to go back to them when you’re in that phase of the thing.
You might talk about, I dunno, book funnel or something, but you are only in your drafting of your manuscript stage. So you go, oh yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll create a newsletter. But you’re about three months away from needing to do that, so you need to go back over the program. I think that’s sort of my learning is just go and look at those things again, look at the materials again, and that’s what you have to do. The slide packs are good and I would say grab those when you can and read those. But absolutely just keep going over the materials multiple times if you’re new to this because there’s so much in there and you pick up different stuff each time and the penny only really drops when you’re trying to do it at that time, rather than it all being a bit theoretical when you’re just listening to CJ or the others, Lauren or whoever, go through that stage.
If you’re not doing it, it doesn’t, you think it is, but it doesn’t make sense until you’re doing it. So I think either try and run at the pace at which you’re running your workshops, but that’s quite difficult. Can’t really, I don’t think anyone can run at that speed with the book generation and their cover designs and everything. So yeah, just keep going back and accept. You’re going to have to go and listen to those repeat calls multiple times probably to pick up the little nuggets of information that you need. Yeah, there is. But yeah, other than that, I think, and maybe, and this is a difficult one and maybe slightly critical, but when I spoke to the guy who was kind of haray me multiple times to sign up for KX 10, there was an element of speed in implied, which I think is unrealistic, that he was sort of saying, oh, you sign up today in December, whenever it was, we were talking and you’ll have a book out by February and it’ll be making money by March and all this kind of stuff.
You go, yeah, okay, yeah, I can see make my money back probably by the end of the year and I’ll be into book two and three and four, and it escalates from there. I think that speed that he was selling is not quite realistic. I can understand why you have to do it because I must, I’d probably have thought, what I’m going to take six months, I’m going to sign up this amount of money, it’s going to take me six months to get a book out and then another six to 12 months to have any hope of making anything back on that book. And then that might be then when only book two’s out and you start to see anything like a return. I might not have signed up if I was working on those kind of calculations, if you see what I mean. So I just think there’s something in perhaps that early sales pitch about or the money you’re spending to sign up to the program to how quickly you’re going to see a return.
There was a little bit of an oversell on that I would say, but don’t question the value of the training and the mentoring and everything else that’s kind of worth it. But the return and the indication of when you might see a return was just slightly overstated. I would say. Knowing what I know now, just the explanation of the handholding, the level of mentorship, the skill and the been through it, done it, got the t-shirt of the mentors, I can see the value in that and that’s saving me time, saving me money on wasted effort and going down wrong paths and stuff like that. So I see the value in why you’re paying for the knowledge of those people and the fact that they invest time in all the calls and the materials and the one-to-ones and everything like that. People’s time costs money. I get that.
But that’s knowing what I know. Now. If I go back six months and think, yeah, you are telling me that CJ and I is a really good mentor and coach and she will help you, I’d gone, well, I don’t know her. I’ve never spoken to her, I’ve never read any of her books. You are telling me she’s great. I don’t know. She’s great. So I don’t think that would’ve been a deciding factor. And to be fair, the guy was telling me, you’ve got this team of mentors and they’d pick off different areas and they’ll lead you through the journey and et cetera, et cetera. And that was appealing. That was definitely something that already had me hooked into the idea. But yeah, what would’ve been the clincher?
That’s a tough one. I’m not sure I can really answer that. I think because it was about, as I say, I’ve been through the product stuff before and I’d been with mentors and I’d launched products and they’d made a bit of money for a bit, but I’d never really seen the full return on those things. And I just saw how difficult it was, and then covid and supply chains and everything went wrong. So I sort of looked, was looking for something different and less upfront investment in terms of the producing a product that you then sell with less risk. And I saw that. So I think, yeah, the risk element I think was perhaps a big sell that you think, well, as long as you follow the process and you’ve done your analysis and you do your creation bit following the guidance that you guys are going to give, there’s no reason why it should fail.
And that was the element that worked for me. It wasn’t like you’ve got shelves full of inventory and products that you couldn’t shift and you had to just scrap or do something with. Ultimately, if an ebook doesn’t work well, there’s nothing physical that exists. So you just go, well, I’ve learned from it and I won’t make that mistake in the next one, but so that risk element was the element, but also there was an element of the speed of return that was a deciding factor for me. So it is just being realistic, I think about that. Yeah, I think that might have been helpful actually, if you could see a bit of a timeline plotted out. And I know it’s difficult because a lot of this stuff happens via the phone, so you can’t share information and stuff. Some early material that just said, right, you’ll sign up here, your calls will be here, here and here.
Your likely releases around here. And yeah, you can be optimistic about that and say it’s three months, that doesn’t really matter. If I’d been spending my whole time doing this, I probably would’ve done it in three months, but I’ve got horrible day job that gets in the way and the family and stuff. But yeah, so I think that sort of better understanding of the steps you’re going to learn and also you would then get a better indication that there is, it’s not just about book generation, it is marketing and packaging and elements that go with it. That’s where the value comes. I think. Yeah, I’m just trying to be really honest about this one and stick to the program. And even if I feel massively uncomfortable with doing certain stuff or I don’t necessarily think, well, that’s not the way I do it, reminding myself, I’m not the expert here. This is the first time I’m doing stuff. So stick with the program, stick with the process and what these guys are telling you to do. And as I said before, then there is no reason why it shouldn’t work because these guys have been through it multiple times. That’s why they’re here doing what they’re doing. And then that’s why you can see it works. So I’m trying to just link myself. Right, just do as you’re told for once.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Next thing for me as say advertising and then trying to arrive at the topic for book two and get into it because yeah, enjoyed the process of book one. So I want to keep some momentum going then. And then that should be just continuous cycle.