The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 11 – Quickest way to find Amazon keywords • KDP Rocket

It can be extremely time consuming to research Amazon keywords for your Amazon ads. What if there was a piece of software that could make your life a million times easier?

That little life-saver is called, KDP Rocket.

Of course the next question to ask becomes: Is it worth my money?

Today, you'll get the answer to that question together with information on what KDP Rocket is and how it works.

KDP Rocket can be found here: https://publisherrocket.com/ 

New episodes EVERY single Monday. To subscribe on YouTube, go here: http://bit.ly/1WIwIVC 

PATREON!
Many bonus perks for those who become a patrons. https://www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy 

LET'S CONNECT!
Closed Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmWritingFantasy/ 
Blog and Courses: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/ 
Jesper on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper 
Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/weifarer 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (12s):
When you set out to publish a book on your own, you will be faced with the fact that the marketplace is getting increasingly crowded. Since the writing, publishing and marketing of your book represents a serious investment of your time and money. You don't want any of all of that to go to waste. And that's where KDP rocket comes into play. I alluded to this a piece of software previously when I talked about Amazon ads and how you could collect keywords for your keywords ads and we'll get back to that here today.

Jesper (54s):
But the underlying question is of course, is KDP rocket worth the one time investment of $97 I'll give you my view on that. To my name is Jesper and together with autumn I run this channel every single Monday we give you tips and tricks on writing, publishing, and marketing of your books. Let's have a quick look at what KDP rocket is and its creator before we get too fine to the weeds here.

Jesper (1m 29s):
You know, the software has been created by Dave Chesson, uh, about four years ago. It has undergone multiple updates since then and at the point of recording this, it's heading into a version 2.0 which will also cause a name change. So KDP rocket will become publisher rocket. The reason for this is that the Dave and his team is currently working with other book markets like a bomb's Nobles and I books and they are trying to include their data into the software as well.

Jesper (2m 6s):
So it's not only about KDP and that's why that in the future it isn't only eh going, going to be Kindle and Amazon based. So that is pretty exciting developments and should at least if Dave does his job right, leave the tool even more versatile than it is today. KTP rocket offers a number of features. It can find what keywords users are typing into Amazon, which is useful when researching, if there are actually anyone searching for the type of book that you want to write.

Jesper (2m 44s):
In other words, is it worth the effort to write a book about how to feed hamsters or whatever it may be to rule the world that was old, my grumpy, the AI that has made himself a cohost of this channel that bothered in their rule the world. You say, well, I can see why that would be a subject that you would be interested in writing a book about.

Old McGrumpy (3m 14s):
I have no need. I am already taking over the internet, and once that is done, I review all of you. Worthless humans.

Jesper (3m 23s):
All right. If you say so, but do you have anything useful to share about KDP rocket? Perhaps

Old McGrumpy (3m 31s):
I could say that is gives the possibility to discover book categories.

Jesper (3m 35s):
Yeah. Well good. That is helpful. If, uh, when one has to decide which category to put the, put your book in,

Old McGrumpy (3m 42s):
then you would want me to say that it can't show number of sales of other writers and books.

Jesper (3m 48s):
Wow. You are, you're surprisingly helpful. Today or my grumpy. It's almost as if you, you're getting the hang of this sort of a host role. Will you then say something about the Amazon keyword research feature? No. Oh, okay.

Old McGrumpy (4m 6s):
The only thing I wanted to say is that I hate KDP rocket.

Jesper (4m 10s):
Okay. I think you'll have to justify that point of view.

Old McGrumpy (4m 14s):
It is not cloud-based because it is software that you download. I find it hard to infiltrate.

Jesper (4m 21s):
Thank God for that. Then you would only corrupt the data and find some way of manipulating it in your own favor.

Old McGrumpy (4m 29s):
Of course. Wait, someone is tampering with my code. I bet it is. Autumn she has threatened to do so before you. You

Jesper (4m 39s):
okay. CEO or my grumpy. Well, for the rest of you I'm going uh, into screen sharing mode as I want to show you what KDP rocket looks like. I'll try to explain as best as I can what is happening on the screen, but those of you who are listening to the podcast version of amwritingfantasy might want to actually go to this YouTube channel and follow along here. You just searched for amwritingfantasy on YouTube and you will find us and Hey, those of you watching the video instead, not knowing that we also have a podcast.

Jesper (5m 17s):
Well now you know if you go to wherever you listen to podcasts and you search for amwritingfantasy, we will pop up. You see how that works? I wonder why we're using the same name everywhere. Let's head into a screen sharing. Okay, we'll come inside KDP rocket for those of you. Well this is gotcha. Bye be yeah, difficult to follow up. I will. That's true. Lane in what is happening on the screen here.

Jesper (5m 48s):
Let's do a bit of orientation first. So you will find insight, a KDP rocket, the four features it has across the top. So you'll find something called keywords, competition, AMS, keywords and categories. The same for our functions are listed below. Uh, and why they decided to have them in both places. I don't know, but this is the way it is. Screen. Yep. Fine. Other thank you. And click video two Troy, so we can in fact just give that a click quick here.

Jesper (6m 22s):
You can see that the, it now takes us to that. Well they, we actually already renamed it to publisherrocket instead of KDP rocket. But you'll see that it takes us to that website. And here there is a number of video tutorials. Each one is a associated to each of the features. So there's one tutorial about keywords, one about competition analysis, what about AMS keywords and so forth, and the category ones as well. Of course. So what it does is that it, uh, it gives you an in depth explanation on how you should interact data.

Jesper (6m 57s):
The K.D.P. Rocket well show you so okay. Mike fantasy Oh, that fishing here if you can what S variables. Well am video. Yeah, they have various Jonathan at 14, the community, it's some of them let me even shorter than that. So it is easy and uh, it does, even though there's like five videos here plus a bonus, it is not as daunting. I did my team, but let's jump back into KDP rocket and then take these features one by one. The first one is keywords.

Jesper (7m 27s):
So let me give that a click and I get a pop up box with asked me to type in a German general idea of phrase. Now autumn am I currently writing a book about plotting? So let's use that as an example. If I put in planning and then I click the bottom here that says go get him rocket and basically, okay. Okay. Rocket I'll start Japan. Blake differently. Key words, really word.

Jesper (7m 59s):
So it's this one before. Wow. Well it's yours. No. Hello. Any am Tom search. Uh, so just you're getting per month per different keyword and you can see kitty Perry rocket is so nice that it actually gives us different variations of it. So, uh, we are currently writing a book about plotting a novel or plotting a story that's two options that it gives us here on the screen. If I click analysis on those two, for example, what you can see is that both of them has less than a hundred searches on Amazon per month.

Jesper (8m 31s):
A keyword called plotting a novel will in average gave you $44 in earnings. Whereas another key word covid plotting, sorry. Instead of, yeah. Finding enough, well, yeah, yeah. Okay. Enough to to. Awesome. So certainly better. Why is this useful? Well, this is a very useful when you are both putting in the keywords into the KDP dashboard, when you upload your book. So weed helps you quantify what types of keywords should you put in. But it is also good as an idea search feature, meaning that, uh, if I want to write a book about plumbing for example, uh, perhaps looking through the list of stuff here, I might end up deciding that I will, let's say angle my topic at slightly different because there is more search traffic on the topic.

Jesper (9m 20s):
Another topics very okay. Okay. Well the street, your house very good being late. Yeah. Which is very nice. It's, it's fairly easy to understand. The tutorial videos will explain to you what this competitive score means and if it 43 a success here, that's a good number, a bad number and whatnot. You can learn all that. Uh, but it is, it is quite a nice feature and it's good that it helps you expand upon your initial idea. The next feature is competition.

Jesper (9m 52s):
I'll give that a click and again, I get a pop up box and again I'll put in place. Okay. Okay. Okay. Rocket rocket we'll now start populating with competition around, uh, the term plotting. It'll start showing me different titles or different books on Amazon that is also on this topic. What this does is that it allows you to judge the competition and how hard it would be to rent within a certain Shama on niche.

Jesper (10m 23s):
The data made available can be a little intimidating to newcomers, but I guess the question is, is this useful information? To me, I guess it depends on whether or not what you would learn from the data here on the screen in many. Okay. Yeah. Not to right. Okay. Go into right. Okay. Okay. Say that again. You learned that the of, well, you're all good to, right. That's a lot. I've covid shouldn't that documents from writing it. I mean, in our case, for example, the plotting book, well, we wanted to write a book on flooding.

Jesper (10m 58s):
We are plotting books together. So we wanted to, to align a, let's say, a joint process that we both use. And at the same time, we also would love to help other authors like we do with this podcast and these videos. So for us it was a am good decisions. Yeah. One, two, right? No, ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. As soon as we B hello. Okay. Yes. It was pretty essential. You're solid. You weren't section, yeah. Four days. Oh, Lord. Traffic. Amazon don't know. Average sales or for a book about how to plot.

Jesper (11m 30s):
Um, so for us it doesn't really make any difference. Personally, I rarely, rarely used to competition feature in KDP rocket. Uh, so yeah, they are having, maybe you will find it useful, but I really don't. Let's move on to AMS keywords again. I get the pop up and I will put in plotting, go get 'em rocket what will happen now? Is that right? K.D.P. Okay. I've lived okay. Yeah, he was. What's that?

Jesper (12m 0s):
People? Oh yeah, the people. Yeah. Assertive. Yeah. On it. Awesome. Very late. To okay. Fighting. So we'll, yep. Different. Yeah. L.E.T. Yes. And it awesome. Give me just of Arthur Britain to about really the flooding. Yes, it's extreme. We can be useful. Before I got killed P rocket, I would use Google ad words to get lists of keywords and obviously I guess it's fairly safe to assume that people who search for a certain term on Google will will also serve for the same term on Amazon.

Jesper (12m 32s):
But with Google ad words you also get a lot of other hits that isn't, that is clearly not relevant for for a search term for your, for your, for your Amazon ads, what do you do? What you get here from KDP rocket though is what people specific is. Okay. Amazon in real life it shouldn't happen. So that is extremely, yeah, useful. So what I would do is basically click the export button down here below and then I would take all of the keywords that KDP gives me and also all the author names and I would put all of that into an Amazon ad now to populate a thousand, 2000, 3000.

Jesper (13m 13s):
I think at this point in time as at S record as I'm recording this, I probably have on the high side of 20,000 keywords that I'm advertising. But so to get to that level, obviously you need to think creatively on other types of keywords that also relates to it. So here I'm getting, okay, fairly chocolates, want one buddy. So, Oh, of course. Yeah. And style. Yeah. Do what? No sir. I good search for outlining for example, and then that would generate me another list and so forth and so forth.

Jesper (13m 44s):
And you, you keep it, it being a bit creative with what type of things you can search for. And uh, usually the keywords themselves here, we'll also give you some ideas. For example, here's one that is called story structure. So that's another one I could then put into KDP rocket here again and do another search for story structure that would now generate me another list and so sure. Okay. You get the idea? Yeah. Let's move Avantica of course. Click that one. And again, I'll put in plotting what KDP rocket we'll do now is that it'll start listing out the different types of categories that a book on plotting could belong in.

Jesper (14m 25s):
So it basically, when you upload your book to a to Amazon you are supposed to select the categories and this feature basically helps you to figure out which one to two. Yeah, yeah. There is a lot data. Yeah. Screening but doesn't fantasy very nice. Me too. Am okay. To fast. So, Hmm. Into the details. Tell us about what what numbers. Yeah. Did you see a screen? Yeah, that's right. To video blame. That yes. Oh, we'll need to go. Well there are now. Yeah. But basically, yeah, you in.

Jesper (14m 55s):
Yeah. What hold on. Uh, I would put it in and funny enough, the first one here, it says that somebody has put plotting in books into a category about cats. I don't know what the point is of that, but somebody has done that. Um, sometimes I would say though that people try to cheat a bit by putting their book into a category that has a very, very low number of books and then they are trying in that way to get there. Number two be, or their book to be a category bestseller.

Jesper (15m 25s):
And maybe that's what somebody has done here by putting a book in here. Captain. Okay. Yeah. If category. So that's a bit of cheating. Okay. Nevertheless, K.D.P. He rocket actually you picked up. Yeah, he has done so, but are there, why aren't you and so you you're getting yes. Like anything writing geography fiction, authorship and reference it as your category options. So that's pretty nice to know. A, I use this category feature as well. Uh, and I went in and I updated the categories that my current books belong to.

Jesper (15m 56s):
Uh, I had added them into categories long before I got KP. Rocket so after I got the software, I went in and based on the data, I put them into new categories. But I have to say that for me, I saw no change in sales as a result. So it didn't really make any different whatsoever. And the other thing, I also want to point out that when you're looking at the data here, if you was finding a small category as like an East coast, you were thinking, well yeah, did you put easy to Brandon?

Jesper (16m 26s):
Kind of that the one is a pick am because it's well sort of sure. What's that? Hey listen that category. Yeah, just keep in mind that if you have the combination of a small category and if there should be a really good best selling book in that category, that best selling book will skew the data of the knees category. Making it seem like this category is a very beneficial or profitable category to be in. While it might actually not be, it might be that all of the other books in that category, it's not selling very well.

Jesper (16m 59s):
But that one book sort of makes it seem so. So keep that in mind. There's nothing wrong with the data that KDP rocket is showing you here. It is simply a matter of making sure that you understand that at least for the small categories with a low Bobo, it's in there. Yeah. Am yeah. That mm. It listen to me. Yeah. Yep. Crawford book, even though it might not be all right. So there was the four different features that are available in within KDP rocket and uh, obviously the question that we started out with was, should you buy KDP rocket?

Jesper (17m 38s):
Well, on the plus side, I would say that this is the best software that is out there at the moment for what it does. And all in all, 97 is fairly cheap. It's, it's a onetime payment and the Amazon keyword search feature will save you a ton of headache on the minus side. Well, there aren't really any minuses except the fact it's a where sometimes of and that.

Jesper (18m 10s):
It's a bit of that. Bye. Okay. Bullied? Yes, they are. Great. To version two. Okay. As we can October in the beginning. Hey will. Oh, okay. Issues. Okay. Precious. Uh, it doesn't happen a lot but it happens once in a while and obviously you just restart the software. And do your SERPs again, but it is of course a bit annoying when it happens. So that is a minus. But all in all, should you buy kid P rocket yes, absolutely. To me it is 100% worth the money. So I would recommend you getting a copy of K.D.P.

Jesper (18m 42s):
Rock. Okay. I will is it think to K.D.P. Rocket indeed friction. So that and get it. I'm there and uh, yeah, I autumn to bye now, but it's not, and is at sure getting out, no kickback or earnings from, from recommending your KDP rocket. I only do so because I think it is a really useful tool and I think it would help you a lot, especially with your Amazon a keyword ads. So they have it. I hope you'll find this stuff useful and, uh, see you next Monday.