Keyword Research for Selling Low Content Books and Journals on Amazon

Keyword research is the absolute most crucial step to getting it right the first time around in the LCB biz by creating a low-content book that people are actually looking for. You don’t want to spend a bunch of time and effort on making your journal, notebook, or activity book only to find out…… nobody is picking up what you’re putting down.

I made this mistake a few times as I journeyed through the learning curve of KDP. I’ll fill you in on just one of my failures along the way. I had the bright idea that if I could just uncover some hidden niche that no one else has touched thus far, I could place myself in a position to dominate a whole new, yet in-demand, market, and I could explode my LCB business quickly. In theory, that is a GREAT and very clever way to instantly catapult yourself into a place of insta-success on KDP. However… chances are, if you go to Amazon, and there are no other books being made in your chosen niche, it juuuuussssttt might be due to lack of demand.

Yes, you want to get into a niche that is low-supply, but in order for it to be successful, the niche has to be in high-demand. Just one without the other will set you up for failure. So, in case you missed it, here is that last statement in bullet points for you. In order for a niche to be successful, you will need both of the following to occur simultaneously:

• Low Supply
• High Demand

That’s the winning formula! Finding a niche that meets both criteria is the challenge. It’s not impossible, but it’s challenging.

Back to my failure story……..the weird, crazy, underground niche I chose was……drumroll please…….(hold on to your hats, because yes, this is really a thing)…….coffee enemas.

I’ll give you a minute…….

Yes, there are people, and since I have discovered this niche, I looked into it, and it even seems legit, that do coffee enemas to detox their liver. In fact, on Facebook, I was able to find a very sizable group dedicated to just that. There are also books and lots of articles on google that come up when you type it in.

When you search “coffee enema” on Amazon, there are like 2 pages of results in the “books” department with books people have written about this topic. And when you type the phrase into the “All” department, pages of coffee enema supplies come up.

However, I did not see any journals or logbooks on the topic. To me, it appeared to be a possible untapped goldmine of a niche!

So I decided to jump in with both feet and venture down the road to creating my very first custom interior for a logbook for people to track the progress of their health while doing these coffee enemas. I created these cute little covers (that now kind of remind me more of greeting cards than book covers) and spent like a month creating the interior to these logbooks.

I thought they were the bomb. HOWEVER, no one else did, because I think I may have sold ONE since January of 2020. Sigh…..

Ya live and ya learn I guess.

The problem is, no one is actually looking for something like that. Yes, it might be a good idea, and maybe even one of these days in the future, if coffee enemas get more popular (strange idea, but we are living in strange times) they might surprise me and start selling, but as of now, they are literally dead in the water.

Which brings me back to what I said a few lines up……..you need BOTH low-supply AND high-demand to be true in order to have a winning formula for niche success.

Ok, back to the reason you came to this post to begin with…….to learn how to do research on Amazon that WILL yield good results.

I am still learning, and because things change so often over there at Amazon, I will probably always be “learning”. However, one thing is certain, Amazon is literally a big search engine, with its own algorithm, and although we can’t ever know exactly how it works in its entirety, we can use what we do know to help us determine whether or not a low content book idea is worthy of our time and effort.

The most important part of anything when you are dealing with an algorithm, especially a “buying” algorigthm, is understanding how people look for things. What kind of keywords do they use when they are searching for those things? And how does Amazon kick those results back to the buyer? Answering these questions will help you build a better, more successful LCB business right out of the gates.

When I first started in LCB, I was lucky to have found this course that taught me alot about the basics, like how the Amazon Algorithm works, how to do the required research to determine whether or not a niche was successful, and how to get my books in front of the buyers that actually wanted them. I didn’t have a lot of expertise at the time, but I was able to pick it up fairly quickly using the tools and strategies I learned.

One valuable lesson I learned from the beginning is if I treat this as a real, legit business, I can justify the time I spend on both the research part and the book creation part. I won’t lie, it is time consuming, but the more you create, the faster you become. And the more you create, the less likely you will make mistakes in niche judgement like I did back at the beginning of 2020.

So, Exactly What Do You Need To Do Proper Keyword Research on Amazon?

There are some free Chrome browser extensions I use to help with this process, and I will just briefly mention them here first before we get into the meat and potatoes:

• Keywords Everywhere – Keywords Everywhere is a huge time saver. Normally, when doing keyword research, you would spend a ton of time on copying data from one website while finding search volume from another. Keywords Everywhere lets you find long-tail phrases with their accurate search volume, CPC and competition data. (there is a free version and a paid version, but the paid is really cheap. You get 100,000 keywords for $10) Totally worth it free or paid!
• AMZ Suggestion Expander – This is a Chrome extension for Amazon sellers to expand the number of search suggestions that are shown in the Amazon search bar. (see video below for a short demo) There is a paid version that let’s you download keywords and phrases into an excel spreadsheet, however, I have never used it before, the free version has always been sufficient for me. This is a must have if you are going to be selling books (or anything) on Amazon.
• DS Amazon Quickview – Allows you to have a quick glance of important Amazon product information, such as product ASIN, sales ranking, customer rating and more direct info on the Amazon index pages. (So you don’t actually have to click on the listing to view this info, it just pops up on your screen when you hover over the product.) Major time saver!

There are also a couple paid tools I like, and I’ll just briefly mention them here below in case you are looking for one-stop shops to make life easier while performing your Amazon keyword research and interior/cover creation:

• Bookbolt – If you can afford $10 a month, Bookbolt is INVALUABLE. It’s one of the most popular tools in the LCB community. Visit any of the many groups on Facebook dedicated to low content creation, and you will see Bookbolt mentioned often. They have a blog (check out the primary top menu bar) with informative how-to’s and insider industry info to help teach you along the way, and their software is powerful in helping you see real time Amazon search volume so you can get your book in front of the right audience and beat out your competition. They offer a product database and trend hunter to help you find emerging niches and hidden niches, (I should have probably used this before I dove into the coffee enema niche :-)) and they have a listing optimization tool to help you pick the right categories and back end keywords. There’s also a drag and drop cover creator and interior designer with lots of different free fonts and royalty free images to choose from, and you can even create activity books with their puzzle maker. And lots more. It’s awesome, check it out!

• Publisher Rocket – I just recently got Publisher Rocket, and I’m kind of addicted now. I had always heard people talk about it in the LCB communities on Facebook, but I’m such a do-it-yourselfer (is that a word? It is now.) I’ve kind of steered clear of paid tools. Until recently. Life has gotten exponentially more busy, as I work part time and homeschool, I just don’t have the time to spend hours and hours on finding profitable keywords. Coming up with that initial list of keywords, figuring out how many people are actually searching for those keywords, figuring out from that number how many people searching for those keywords actually go on to buy something, and understanding how much money books ranking for that keyword are making……… takes sooooo much time. That’s why I really love Publisher Rocket. It does all that and more in like under a second. Aaaaand, everything is color coded so you can kind of turn your brain down and look at it in a more black and white way. Is this a good niche that will bring me return on my time or is this just going to be a big waste of time and effort? Publisher Rocket, where have you been all my life?

Anyway, you can do all that for free, and I’m going to show you how! But if you are looking to save some serious time on the research process, check Publisher Rocket out!

You certainly don’t need to spend any money to get started in LCB, so for this post, I am going to show you how to use some of these free tools.

The Play By Play For Performing Killer Keyword Research On Amazon Using Some Pretty Awesome Free Tools

That was a mouthful!

Download Your Free Chrome Extensions

After you have a good idea in mind for a low content book (see this post to learn how to use Pinterest to find hot niche ideas, head on over to Amazon and type in your idea.

Install the AMZ Suggestion Expander Chrome Extension in your Chrome Browser. Here’s a quick demo on how it works:

So aside from saying ‘um” about a dozen times and forgetting the actual name of AMZ Suggestion Expander at the end (I attribute this to working on wayyy too many projects at once), you can see that this tool can be absolutely invaluable in your quest to find niche specific keywords that your brain most likely wouldn’t come up with on its own.

Next, install DS Amazon Quick View. This extension will show you important information you need to determine if a keyword is profitable right on the Amazon search results page. It eliminates the need to have to click through on each individual listing to see this information. Here’s another quick demo to show you a broad overview of what this extension does:

Are you feeling the potential having both of these installed on your Chrome browser can yield? These two extensions are going to be your best friends when you are doing keyword research.

One other free tool I like to use to get new niche ideas is Keywords Everywhere. This is also a Chrome extension, and it gives you more keyword suggestions based on your search. This extension shows you keywords based on what people type into Google, but it is also a great indicator of if the population at large is actually searching using that keyword or keyword phrase.

Here is a quick demo of how Keywords Everywhere works:

Let’s dive in….

To find a good niche and generate a list of potential keywords, open up your Chrome Browser in Incognito Mode. If you have never used Incognito Mode before, this might sound a little like an undercover spy term, however, it’s just the name of a browser session you can open that won’t show you results based on any previous search or sales history. That’s what we want! Raw data.

We don’t want our research to be skewed by our past browsing and purchasing history. Amazon showing us personalized results when we are shopping for something is good. But Amazon showing us personalized results when we are trying to figure out what everyone else is doing is bad.

So go ahead and find the 3 little dots at the top right of your Chrome Browser, click on them and choose “New Incognito Window”, and a dark tab will pop up. You can now browse through Amazon (or anywhere on the web) privately, and Chrome won’t save your browsing history or use Cookies or remember any of your past Amazon searches or purchases. Amazon won’t know anything about you. You are like a spy!

Your chrome extensions will still work in Incognito Mode, if you don’t see them, head back over to your normal Chrome browser and go into your extension settings, and for most extensions there is an option to toggle “allow in Incognito Mode” on and off. Make sure that’s turned on.

Generate a List of Keywords

There are lots of ways to actually find a good niche and its keywords, but this is what I did before I started using Bookbolt and Publisher Rocket .

• Choose a broad niche. Usually one word, like “teacher” or “realtor”. You can’t go wrong starting off with a profession as your broad niche. At this stage of the game, you want to be as open minded as possible, and let your mind run wild with possibilities. Literally, any anything could be a niche of some sort. (Mountains, waterfalls, unicorns, clocks, sports, gardening, ice hockey, teaching……….you get the point.) But for this example, we are going to go with a profession…….realtor.
• Type this word into Amazon, and see what AMZ Suggestion Expander suggests. After I did this, I got some relevant suggestions like this: (when you are dealing with a professional niche that describes job roles, many people are buying gifts for their co-workers of that profession, or a family member who is that profession. Adding the word “gift” after your keyword will help those gifters find your low content book.
  • realtor gifts
  • realtor gifts for women
  • Christmas gift for realtor
  • funny realtor
  • realtor planner
  • thank you gift realtor
  • realtor notebook
  • realtor and dog mom
• Then I take each of those relevant keywords, and type them each individually into the Amazon search bar. (I say ‘relevant’ because not all the suggestions will be relevant to making a low content book when you are just typing in one word search words) When I type in “realtor planner”, some sub niches that pop up in the suggestion expander are:
  • realtor planner 2022
  • realtor planner and organizer
  • realtor planner for women
• If I punch in “realtor notebook”, I get:
  • realtor notebook for clients

• Now, head over to Google and type in those sub-niches you found. If you have the Keywords Everywhere Chrome Extension installed, on the right hand of your search results page, you will see a list of keyword suggestions. When typing in “realtor planner’, some sub niche keywords I get are:
  • realtor and financial planner
  • realtor daily planner
  • realtor social media planner
  • realtor yearly planner
  • real estate agent daily planner

As you can see, you can generate an endless list of new ideas each time you insert a new variation of your broad keyword into Amazon and Google.

So, that’s how you generate your keyword list. The next step is to take those keywords and validate them, or determine which ones will be profitable for you to spend your time making a low content book around.

Validate Your Keywords

Remember the winning formula above. Low supply + high demand = cha-ching. If you can master that formula, your books will have a great start right out of the gates.

BSR – Best Seller Rank = Demand

When figuring out if a keyword is lucrative and if there is high demand, the key is to look at the BSR, or the Best Seller Rank, of the books on the search results page. You can view a book’s BSR either on its listing page or if you have the DS Amazon Chrome plug in installed, it will pop up for you on the search results page.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like on the actual listing page:

The BSR of this book is 5,542 in the books category as a whole. It is 253 in the sub category ‘Notebooks and Writing Pads’. This book is doing VERY well. According to this Book Sales Calculator, this book is making 40 sales per day. That’s pretty darn good!

The lower the BSR number, the better. To give you a better idea, here is an approximate breakdown of sales per BSR #:

• BSR# 1000 = 147 Sales/day
• BSR# 5000 = 44 Sales/Day
• BSR# 10,000 = 25 Sales/Day
• BSR# 100,000 = 3 Sales/Day

As you can see, the lower the BSR, the more sales you make. The lower the BSR, the more demand there is for that niche. You’ll want to take the average of the first 5-10 or so (non-paid) results of a given keyword to help determine if the niche/keyword is selling and worth your time. Don’t take the sponsored ads into account when you are averaging the BSR, start with the first result after the last paid ad on the page.

While there is no hard rule on what makes a good BSR average, I consider anything under 400,000 a possible good niche, and a greenlight to do some further research. BSR numbers change daily, but they are a good indicator if a book is selling or not, and many times they can tell you if a book is selling well or not.

There are some other factors to consider in also to verify demand, like the popularity of the authors on the first page, the probability that people who type in your keyword are actually looking to buy something, etc., and sometimes it’s hard to gauge, but when you first start out and are doing all this manually, you can usually get a pretty good general idea and feel for these things by just taking the average of the first page BSRs. Otherwise, if you want to really hone in on your research and be more confident in your assessment of demand and competition, a tool like Publisher Rocket can help you do just that.

Number of Search Results = Supply

The second part of the success formula is supply. More specifically, low supply. You don’t want to create a book in a niche that has thousands of other books just like it. It’s hard to be the new guy on the block when there is lots of competition. Breaking into an already saturated niche probably isn’t your best bet when you are first starting out, and have yet to make a name for yourself.

The goal is to enter a niche that people are looking for, but there is a gap in the supply. This is the perfect opportunity for you to step in and fill that gap!

Looking at the number of results on the search page of Amazon will give you a good idea if there is a need for books like yours. The lower the number, the less competition. For example, below is a screenshot of the number of search results that came up when I typed in “Mindfulness Journal” into the “books” category of Amazon.

60,000 results. That’s a lot of competition. Probably not a great keyword to focus on. But does that mean I can’t pursue the Mindfulness Journal niche? No. Look at what happens when I niche down and type in “Mindfulness Journal for Parents”.

Only 4000! That’s a significantly less amount of books to compete with than 60,000 in the first example!

The moral of those examples are….don’t get discouraged when you search up your original idea and a sea of results come up. Just find ways to niche down.

Though 4000 is a better number than 60,000, an even lower number would be better. I always get kind of excited when anything under 1000 pops up. Or even better, a few hundred!

So in a nutshell, that is how you go about generating ideas and keywords, and then validating those keywords to see if they meet the success formula of low supply and high demand.

If you’d like to learn more about researching low content book ideas as well as how to create your books (interiors and covers), check out this course that I used when I first jumped into LCB publishing.