Hey everyone, Stefan here from Projectlifemastery.com. I have a very importantt
message today for all the Kindle publishers and anyone that's selling
anything on Amazon and that message is is do not get your Amazon account banned!
Do not get your KDP Kindle direct publishing account banned. Do not get
in trouble with Amazon, don't risk it and don't jeopardize your relationship with
Amazon in any way. It's not worth it guys. I've seen it time and time again,
Kindle publishers Amazon sellers, they're looking for loopholes, they're looking to
exploit the system, they're looking for a shortcut and sure enough they're
violating Amazon's terms of service, Amazon's guidelines, they end up getting
in trouble, they end up getting suspended, their whole account banned by Amazon, Amazon
withholding money that's owed to them. Potentially getting sued by someone else,
even getting sued by Amazon, getting a cease and desist from a lawyer.
That's not how you build a long term sustainable business guys. People are
after the short term profit, they're looking to exploit something and they're trying
to get rich quick and sure enough you might make some money in the short term
but it's not going to last because what you going to do when the loophole closes?
What are you going to do when Amazon bans your account and doesn't allow you to open
up another account? Your entire business is gone just like that. That's not how you
build a business. That's not what I teach, that's not what I'm about. I'm about building
long term sustainable strategies. Yes, it's more work, it's more time but it's
worth it. You want to build a business that has a foundation guys that
will stand the test of time,
years from now, 5, 10 years it will still be around because it's built on a solid
foundation that won't go away. Many of these people, they're violating these
different things on Amazon just to try to profit here and there and
they're risking things, they're jeopardizing things and even worse they end up trying
to teach other people to do this
and they end up getting in more trouble and it becomes a chain reaction and you're
putting other people at risk.
Don't do it guys. Be smart, do things the right way.
All right, so how do you prevent your Amazon account from being banned? How do
you avoid the mistakes that others have made that resulted in getting banned by
Amazon or getting in trouble or lawsuits or the whole ugly situation?
I think first and foremost you have to make sure that you read and understand
Amazon's terms of service and their guidelines, very important, it's right there
on the website and when you sign up for Amazon.com KDP you're agreeing to their terms
of service. You're agreeing to their guidelines, the terms of use of their
website, even if you use their website in any way or capacity you're signing
a contract, you're agreeing to their terms. You're at the mercy of Amazon. You have to
understand that Amazon is a privilege for us. As someone who wants to profit
from Amazon, have a business on Amazon, we're the lucky ones because
Amazon's provided this opportunity for us. They built, their business,
they built their reputation with customers, they're allowing us to take advantage of that
and to publish and sell on their website and get access to their millions of
customers. We're at the mercy of Amazon. When you sign up or use their
website in any way you have to make sure that you understand the terms of
them and you're not violating that in any way. If you do violate it it's going to
result in them banning you, suspending you, sending you a cease and desist,
potentially suing you, I've seen people get sued by Amazon, I've seen people get
sued by other people because they're violating a trademark, they're going against advice,
recommendations that I have and again, it's just not smart. Make sure you
just read the terms of service, you read the guidelines, I reference it all the time in
my Kindle course. I put links to it but sure enough again, people aren't willing to
do that so make sure you're smart if you want to avoid these things happening to
you,
Okay If you're unsure about anything in any way,
ask Amazon. You can contact them, there's a button on their website, you can send
them an email, you can even call them, ask them. You can submit to KDP, ask,
"Hey I'm thinking about this. Is this a good idea? Is this violating
anything in any way? I'm unclear about your guidelines here, can you maybe clarify this a
little bit." If you're ever uncertain just ask them, okay, because only they know. You
can ask me, you can ask other people out there but it's not my business, I can
only share based on my experience and what I've seen amongst other people but Amazon
is also always changing things, they're always updating their terms of service in some
way
so don't ask me, don't ask someone else, ask Amazon, only they can really tell
you and verify for you whether it is against their terms of service. If
you're still unsure and you kind of on the fence, I'm not sure if this is violating it or not then
just don't do it,
it's just not worth it, just don't do it at all, just play it safe.
That's always the smartest way of going about things, okay. Now, what do people do?
Number 1, I see people violate trademarks. They publish a book and they
violate someone else's trademark that's their intellectual property
that they own. Maybe they publish a book and they publish it under a
celebrity's name or they're trying to make money off another persons name
without their permission.
Never smart to do guys. How would you feel if you were someone that
had built your career, your business, you built your name, your reputation, you
worked your entire life to become something, to build something and then
someone comes along and they use your name or your business, your
trademark in some way that you've earned, they take that and they use that and they try to
profit from it? If that happened to me and it has happened to me man I'm
going to take action against that. I don't want this person, I don't know
this person using my name in some way to make money, to profit off of me without my
permission. I don't know what they're saying about me in any way. If
someone did that sure enough you'd probably report them to Amazon, you
might even call a lawyer, you might even take action from them if they're profiting
and making all this money off of you without your permission so don't do that
guys. If you're unsure you can do a US trademark search. Just do a
Google search for US trademark search. You can look up different trademarks to
see if it's against the terms of service but if it's someone
else's name just don't do it, it's just not worth it guys. Again, long term you might
make money in the short term but it's a matter of time before they catch you. I
see people violate trademarks or they say, "Well I see other people that are doing
it, they're getting away with it so I'm going to do it as well."
Well they're only getting away with it because they're not big enough for these
people to even care and take action against them. At the beginning
when you're a nobody, you're just doing this to make money off someone else's name, it's
not even worth their time to report you to Amazon
or even contact you in any way but once you start getting on their radar, once you start
making money off their name that's when they're going to go after you and at that
point you've already made all this money, they can go after all that money and all
the damages and take you to court.
It's just not worth it in the first place. I don't care if other people
are doing it, just don't do it guys, it's just not worth it.
Other things people do is they buy reviews. Don't buy reviews, don't
manipulate reviews in any way. Amazon has strict guidelines with that. Don't lie,
be dishonest or deceive people in any way, that's not how you build a long term
business with integrity. Don't buy reviews. There's a whole thing where
people got sued over fake reviews and buying reviews and things like that and
that's just not the right way to build a business. Getting reviews for
your business, your book takes time, you're promoting it, you're marketing
it, you base it on the principles of business and marketing you will have a successful
book if you do it that way. It might take a little more time like I said but
if you have the right mentality, the work ethic and the commitment you will be
successful. You should never have to worry about that, okay.
Focus long term and focus on sustainable marketing strategies that will grow your
books for a long period of time. One loophole that I've seen people violate, find out
find out and violate with Amazon KDP that's now causing a lot of problems, people getting
banned over Amazon, actually getting sued by Amazon from this is by exploiting the
whole Kindle Unlimited KNEP the books read, the whole system with
Amazon. Amazon has a Kindle Unlimited system where people sign up, they pay
every month, they get unlimited access to certain books that are exclusive to
Amazon. Amazon, the way they pay publishers for that is they pay based on how
many pages of a book that a customer reads. The more longer a book is
the more pages that the customer reads the more that the publisher is going to get
paid for that. What a lot of these Kindle publishers ended up doing is they found
a loophole where they made these really long books by just basically stuffing a
bunch of books into one, right. You can just put a whole document, they're putting like tons
of books, making their book really really long
and then they publish that. Sure enough their book might be a couple of hundred
pages, a couple of thousand pages in some cases. What they do is they put the
table of contents for the book at the very end of the book and KDP has something
called clickable table of contents so you can actually press a link at the
start of a book, when they press it, the customer presses the link it will take them
all the way to the end of the book. Kindle, KDP will register that as
hundreds or thousands pages read in which case Amazon will end up paying
that publisher for all those pages read but obviously the person isn't reading all
those pages they just have exploited a loophole where they press a button it's taken them to
the end of the book. This is something I do not recommend whatsoever.
People are getting suspended and banned by Amazon for this, they're even getting
potentially sued by Amazon because in some cases Amazon has paid out up to $100 for
a book and sure enough the customer didn't even read the book and Amazon has taken a
significant loss. Any time you try to scam Amazon you're going to lose.
It's just not smart to even take that risk in any way because if you're costing
Amazon that kind of money and hurting them they're going to go after you. They
have a lot more power and influence than you do so I don't know why, just don't
even risk that in any way guys. It gets even worse when people end up
trying to teach that and sharing that with other people and trying to profit off of
teaching this loophole that is causing more people to get their accounts and
their whole business in trouble as well. Again guys I just really
want to emphasize in this video there's other loopholes and all these
different things out there, I'm not going to go into them. I'm aware of them but I
consciously choose not to use them. I've seen time and time again over
the years different things that have occurred. I've seen people that have gotten
in trouble with Amazon and I've seen people that just worked hard and did the work
and built a long term sustainable business and the person that just
focuses on the long term, that's the guy that always ends up standing on top at the
end, always the one that's lasting a year, 2 years,
3 years, 4 or 5 years. I've seen publishers
that just did things the right way and just slowly worked away at their
business and built it up. That's really what I want to communicate in this message
guys. This theme can be applied for any business out there whether it's YouTube or Google.
I've seen people, trying to manipulate the search engines in Google and YouTube and
all this sort of stuff, just always be aware, always play by the rules guys.
You're given an opportunity from these other platforms and
and beyond that the mentality of short term thinking loopholes and
shortcuts is going to cost you in your life. People they look for a loophole now,
today, maybe it works, what's going to happen years down the road? Years down
the road in your marriage, in your family life, in your body, in your
business? There's no loophole that you can find or something you can exploit to get
yourself out of that mess. The shortcut is actually doing you a disservice. It's
preventing you from putting the work and really earning the success that you
really want and deserve. When you put in the work you actually earn something, you
did it by the book, you did it the right way, that's when you can be proud of that,
that's when you can have that pride and feel good about yourself because you
built a business that truly serves. It's something that will give you piece of
mind because you never have to worry about it. You don't want to always have to be worrying
about your business. I've seen people that built a business on Kindle and Amazon
exploiting loopholes and stuff like that. They're so dependent on Amazon, they're
making a couple of thousand a month, they're feeling good about themselves, they feel like an
expert, they think they're a guru now, they can start coaching and teaching other people
and sure enough, boom, their account gets shut down. They quit their job over this
and everything and now they're in trouble. What happens then? Again guys,
don't take that path. I've seen the loopholes, I'm
trying to help you guys avoid making those mistakes and trying to make sure that
you guys are compliant with Amazon.
Building a business again, long term, always focus on the long term. Look beyond
Kindle, look beyond Amazon, build something that's bigger than that. A lot
of people don't recognize that. Kindle is just a beginning, it's just the tip of the
iceberg guys. Kindle leads to paperback books. E-book to paperback to audio books to
affiliate marketing, building a brand, to building a Facebook, a YouTube, an Instagram,
a blog, an entire business that can lead to you doing products and just so much more.
Don't focus on the short term guys, focus on the long term. That's my message for
this video. Share this video, if any Kindle publisher or Amazon seller out
there you think can benefit from this, I really want to get this across and help
people avoid pain in their lives because I've seen people come to me when their
account gets in trouble and I end up, unfortunately have to say I told
you so because I typically advise against certain things but I don't want to see that
happen to many people and I just want to make sure you guys are educated right from the
start, right at the beginning of the business. I know a lot of you guys
that follow me are just starting out with Kindle and Amazon and sometimes you
listen to these other people out there, other people online or YouTube or
whatever and they're often times steering people in the wrong direction.
A lot of these people they started Kindle publishing a few months ago and they're already
some sort of expert because they exploited this loophole and they're making
some money in the short term and people buy into that, people trust some of these
people and invest their hard earned money and they end up getting scammed or ripped off or just
put down the wrong path.
I've been doing Kindle now for so many different years now, I've been at the
beginning stages and I've seen everything along the years of what to do and what not
to do. I've made mistakes myself. I'm not pointing the finger guys, I've made
mistakes too but I've learned from that. I've never gotten banned from Amazon. I've never gotten in
trouble with Amazon in any way,
thankfully because I still was intelligent about my process and
whatnot. Sometimes you violate and you're not even aware of it. I remember
one time for example I used the trademark for dummies in one of my
books and I didn't realize that at the time, I was kind of naive, I didn't know
that was a trademark and everything and sure enough I got contacted by the for
Dummies, whoever owned that trademark and I got that book taken down
and everything
and I rebranded the book and I made sure I didn't make that mistake again. I shared
that story and prevented other people from making that mistake also.
Be careful guys. Hopefully this video can potentially save some people's
businesses so I really hope that this can really resonate and help a lot of
people. Thank you guys for watching, I'll see you in the next video. Hey
this is Stefan and thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed
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I want to thank you again for watching this video, until the next one. I'll talk to you soon.