We have gone into much detail in other articles in this series about the benefits of low-to-no content publications. Along with journals, diaries, and calendars, some of the hottest things you can produce and sell on your Amazon store page are planners. Planners are for everyone, to organize everything in their lives. This item will always sell, but you will have a lot of competition in this as well. So you need to make yourself stand out, create new and exciting unique designs to have everyone bring in their new years with style.
You have complete control, just as with any self-published, print-on-demand product. You design your planner pages to precisely fit the needs of your customer base. Even if you are only selling your own books through KDP, adding items like this can only help your overall monetization. For example, if you’re in between book releases or won’t have a book ready to release for a few months, you may design your own planner or notepad. The cover can even incorporate a representation of your most popular character from previous novels (a wonderful form of cross-marketing), and each page could include references to previous stories.
Just like that, you’ve added another way to earn money, market to your audience, and keep your readers happy! These kinds of goods are extremely popular and they provide simple strategies to supplement your earnings from book sales. But of course, this works just as well if all you sell is low-to-no content products. You just have to come up with your own designs and themes and that could be literally anything that’s popular today.
But really, who doesn’t want to own something like this? Everyone can benefit from having one of these handy; they tend to make events and appointments more “real” in a sense as opposed to an entry on a computer or in your phone’s calendar. Our brains tend to see such things as more tangible, the very act of writing seems to be directly connected to remembering and memorizing. It’s small wonder why so many of us still gravitate to pen and paper when we can. Be the person who sells them. And here are some examples of existing products for you to ponder over and learn for when you make your own.
The Basics: Ruled Monthly Planner
The standard ruled planner, the favorite of many due to its clean lines and intuitive layout. You cannot go wrong with producing something of this type. Each month (December of the previous year through January of the year following the intended one) is printed on a two-page spread with note space for appointments, project due dates, birthdays, and much more. Each left-hand page includes eight at-a-glance calendars for quick reference. Personal information, future planning for the following year, key phone numbers, three-year reference calendars, and a time zone/area code map are all provided on separate pages. Protective vinyl covers are offered in a wide range of authoritative business colors. The dimensions for this particular example are 11-7/8″ x 8-1/16″ x 1/8”, a great size for such an item and one you might want to learn from.
Clever Fox Daily Meal Planner
What better way to try to stick to your dietary New Year’s resolutions than with something like this to help guide you and keep track of everything you are eating? Your customers can plan meals months in advance, taking into consideration special events, vacations, cruises (where eating patterns will VERY much change), anything to do with their food habits. An item like this also includes an area for grocery lists, showing a direct correlation between what is purchased at the store and what actually winds up on the table. They can track trends (both good and bad) and look for patterns to improve upon.
This meal planner can assist people in setting diet goals, creating meal plans, and forgetting the stress of finding healthy supper solutions at the last minute. A lot can be accomplished in a year, so no one should delay in organizing their eating habits and taking a huge step toward wellness! Nutrition experts created this particular meal planner which includes everything needed for successful planning: a starting point page, suggested exercise plans, monthly calendar and progress sections, 52 weekly spreads for daily meal planning, a measurements tracker spread, a year-end review section, space for tracking the nutrition of their favorite foods, and dot-grid space at the back.
There are templates for such things on BookBolt and other POD design sites. Do some research, see what’s out there, and then decide if you want to go with a template or create your own version purely from scratch before you upload to KDP.
Curriculum & Classwork Planner
Most of us need to get better organized and students are hardly an exception. Considering what so many young people have been through in terms of classes during the pandemic, trying to move back into the swing of “regular” classes has never been more difficult. The potential for facilitating learning with a personalized planner is enormous. Each student could have a planner with class plans and homework already written down in spaces dedicated for each. Having a clear vision of the semester and the tasks is especially important as digital and distant learning become more popular. And, because print-on-demand makes it simple to review and update, once the curriculum planner is in place, the majority of the work is done! The design can be changed and improved each semester.
Daily Exercise Planner
Working hand-in-hand with the meal planners, keeping track of what we are actually doing in terms of regular exercise is essential. Very few people are getting anywhere near as much exercise as they think they are, and with the planet opening up again the poor habits we might have learned over the last two years need to be looked at closely. No one can remember it all, so something like this can really be a huge help (and a huge item in terms of sales). You can construct a journal with workouts built in, which is one of the most typical styles. If you’re a fitness instructor or simply interested in physical health, an exercise planner could be a great way to share your routine!