CNCKing.com Volume 4: Rise of the CNC #36 on Amazon in Toymaking!

I’m slowly going up in the Amazon rankings

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,178 in Books
#36 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Crafts & Hobbies > Toys & Models > Toymaking
#88 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Crafts & Hobbies > Toys & Models

What I find interesting is that my book is 2-3x more expensive than any other book that precedes mine. Some other books are pretty beefy on that list though but I believe my book is also the largest and the one with the most pages.

Gaming Amazon Ranking

It is common knowledge among authors that gaming Amazon is a great way to generate lots of sales… when ever you see “#1 in Amazon” on a book – they most likely gamed it and only appeared #1 for a few hours at most. Why? Many consumers look at the rankings to make a purchase, so if a book is #1 it must be good right? Not!

I read-up a lot about how to game Amazon’s ranking system and it’s pretty easy, sell a book on Amazon at cost (meaning it’s as cheap as Amazon allows) so that people don’t have sticker shock and jump into Google Adsense, FaceBook etc… and just go on a huge marketing blitz to generate some buzz for your book while planting lots of reviews via friends and family. All of this must be done within a few hours for it to work. Generally, you only need to sell a few hundred books in one or two hours to rank as #1 but this isn’t sustainable and you eventually wind-up back to where you should be, in back of the line.

Building a sustainable business

I didn’t do the above, it doesn’t me build a sustainable business – I don’t care if I’m number one on Amazon or one million – Amazon isn’t a real indicator of a books popularity as sales happening OUTSIDE of Amazon aren’t counted… which is where I sell the vast majority of my books.

I fully realize that my new book isn’t “cheap” by Amazon standards but it also contains 5 years of knowledge, trial and error and information that will save you YEARS off your life going through what I did… in that sense, it’s a steal! If a book like this existed five years ago, I would have paid a few hundred without a blink of the eye for it.

Most importantly though, I need margins for this book (and anything else I sell) because I want to improve the machinery I have, produce higher quality models and all this takes more and more time. Shooting at Amazon.com #1, spending a tens of thousands of dollars in the process really doesn’t help my business or my future – it hinders it. It’s incredibly easy to drop 100K on CNC machines overnight and if I had an extra 10K laying around – I’d prefer to spend it on getting a plasma cutter or saving-up a bit more for a ShopBot Standard rather than giving it to Google and have only “#1” as my claim to fame as it will generate more money, better projects and push my passions further.

Let’s see how much “higher” in the rankings my book goes or drops… it’s just a fun number to watch but at the end of the day, of no consequence to me as long as people are learning and enjoying its contents. Do what you love and money will follow is a motto I really believe in and has proven itself valid since I started in business.

Update: October 5th, 2013

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,274 in Books
#22 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Crafts & Hobbies > Toys & Models > Toymaking
#47 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Crafts & Hobbies > Toys & Models