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What It's About
Twin brothers oversee an Amazon self-publishing factory.
Business Model
Affiliate
Skills Required
Publishing Knowledge & Communication
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
When finding book ideas, the Mikkelsen twins rely on one thing: market research. As they put it, numbers don't lie—you need to look for book topics that have high demand and low competition (not enough books on the subject).
To look at demand, they simply go to Amazon and look at the average BSRs (best seller rates) of the books in a particular niche. Then they compare that to how many authors/publishers are selling books on this topic by looking at search results on Amazon and Audible.
Fun Fact
Did you know that eBook sales have more than doubled in 2018? Well, that's according to some estimates. While exact data is unknown, many experts believe that sales of eBooks in the United States alone have eclipsed 200 million per year.
Notes from Chris
Episode 942
In 2016, the Mikkelsen brothers, Rasmus and Christian, were working their way through college. In addition to being identical twins, they also had identical 4.0 GPAs. To pay the bills while studying, they each worked part-time jobs—Rasmus as a Chinese food delivery driver, and Christian as a receptionist. The jobs weren’t high-paying but gave them the money they needed to live. If they continued down their current path, they’d graduate with honors and go on to lucrative careers in a few short years. But these two had other plans… They already knew that the typical path of college to an office job wasn’t for them. They wanted something different, and they hoped to escape the rat race before they even started running. So, they began to explore different online business models in hopes of making some extra money. Since it was their first foray into making money online, they didn’t quite know where to start. So, they spent a couple of days scouring Google researching as many methods as they could; dropshipping, affiliate marketing, app building, Amazon FBA … and the list goes on. After that, they decided on a divide and conquer approach. They each chose a business model and would dedicate a few months to trying to make it work. For Rasmus, it was dropshipping; Christian would try his hand at self-publishing ebooks. Within six months, a clear winner emerged! While Rasmus’s dropshipping experiment yielded some success, it was Christian’s self-publishing that really excited them. Here’s what happened... On July 2016, Christian published his first ebook. He wrote about something he knew and titled it “How to Be a 4.0 GPA Student in College, Like Me.” It was a 5,000-word guide that included study tips, hacks, and techniques he used to maintain top grades. It wasn’t exactly a magnum opus, but a useful handbook nonetheless. He published the book on Amazon and made $6.46 that first month. The next month, they quit school and retired to live a life of leisure … oh wait, not quite. Still, even earning $6 felt validating. After all, you have to start somewhere! Through a lot of trial and error, by the end of that year, they were making over five thousand dollars per month through their self-publishing business. It was easily enough to live on, perhaps not for two people in the USA, but definitely in Thailand. So, they embraced the expat lifestyle and moved overseas to lower their expenses, all while continuing to work on the business. Over the next year, they traveled to over a dozen countries while growing revenue to more than $8,000 per month. And that success led them to something new—to teach what they know. They’ve started a YouTube channel and are working on a self-publishing course. The story of the Mikkelsen twins is only half complete … but this time, instead of outsourcing, they’re writing it themselves!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- YouTube | Mikkelsen Twins: To learn more about Rasmus, Christian, and their self-publishing hustle, head on over to their YouTube channel!
- Australian Designer Starts Publishing Company, Hires Herself: A freelance designer creates a publishing company to produce and collaborate on books for female creatives
- Canadian Colleagues Publish Children’s Books About Real Life: Two Canadian mothers shake up the children’s book narrative by publishing stories that tell the truth about hard things in life
- Finance Employee Sells 200,000 Self-Published Romance Novels: When she can’t find anything good to read, a finance employee starts writing romance novels of her own. The books go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies and pull her family out of debt
Quote of the Day
"The amazing and completely unfair advantage of having a twin is that we can split business models. So, to begin with, we started two separate businesses, and whoever would have more success, the other one would just jump over and do that business model too. It's a foolproof strategy!"
—Rasmus & Christian Mikkelsen #SideHustleSchool
