Hey I have a Bookbub Ad that seems to be working

[JRTomlin]

I have followed all kinds of expert BB advice and out of more than a dozen ads I've run, in the past I've only had one BB ad (not promo) that worked for me. But I decided to give it one more try to extend the downloads from yesterday's promo and so far it is looking very good and even at a pretty reasonable price.

Frankly, the ad is ugly. But sometimes ugly works. I went with a yellow/gold background because the cover contrasts nicely but it also matches the flag.



So far it has 1600 impressions, 56 clicks and a CTR of 3.33% which is pretty healthy. The CPM is $5.96 which is reasonable as well. Interestingly enough the one place that is not getting as many clicks is Amazon.

[notthatamanda]

Good luck with it.

[JRTomlin]

Thanks. That is enough impressions and clicks to indicate that I will get my money's worth on it, something that I have not had much luck with. I do limit my spend on these though. I'm only throwing $75 at it. At that CTR it should pay for itself and help keep the novel up in the rankings.

[okey dokey]

Hope you do well with the ad.
And that's a good cover.

[JRTomlin]

Thanks

[Bill Hiatt]

Yes, the cover is very nice, and I wouldn't even call the ad ugly. However, Ram (from Ram's Promo Stacker) has designed a lot of BB ads for clients and told me once that sometimes ones he thinks are ugly do the best. Go figure!

[JRTomlin]

Sometimes ugly ones, or at least not really pretty ones, make the message obvious with nothing to distract. But believe me, ugly ones don't always work. I've tried ugly, I've tried pretty and getting anything to work has been ... I have no words for how difficult it's been in my subgenre.

[alhawke]

It certainly grabbed my attention. FREE. I like it.
I think the best ads are usually the simplest.
Best of luck with your BB run!!

[Simon Haynes]

Looks good to me, and those figures are great.

I saw you had a BB in the last couple of days - hope that went well for you.

[JRTomlin]

Thanks. I had the promo yesterday and it went well, not quite as well as I had hoped, but #10 in the Free store isn't too shabby. It made #1 in 4 or 5 subgenres. It is dropping pretty fast though which is the reason for running the ad, of course, hoping to slow the drop.

Before the end of the day, it reached 2,523 impressions and 87 clicks which is 3.45%. I have it spread over four days instead of fulfilled as quickly as possible. The next day it goes back to regular price. *crosses fingers*

[LilyBLily]

Good for you. You've almost convinced me to try a BB ad again, but I'm going to lie down until that idea floats away.

[JA Wallace]

I like the ad. It pops. I'm considering a BB ad, just haven't jumped in yet. Maybe I'll bite the bullet in January when I publish book #4 in my mystery series. Thanks for the info.

[JRTomlin]

The CTR has started dropping which I have found is quite typical on BB ads after a couple of days but it is still quite respectable.

To give you the updated details:

CPM $6.09    CPC$0.23   Total spend $60.01 Impressions 9,850   Clicks 262   CTR 2.66%

I believe that it has helped keep the novel in the Top 100 longer than it would have otherwise. It just dropped out this morning so that was four full days in it.

I *think* part of the trick with BB ads is having a list of really good comparable authors who have plenty of BB readers. This is difficult for me because there are few that have readers who write medieval fiction and HF readership tends to be very segmented. Few people who read WWII HF also read medieval, for example. So I blow through the possible readers rather quickly.

This will run for one more day and then I'll call it done. But it is by far the most successful BB ad I've had.

[Marti Talbott]

At least they stopped running those ads on page 2 where no one saw them. Makes me considering running one too.

I've been getting daily emails from BB for the last week and I'm amazed. Today, for example, only one book is free. The others are $1.99 - $2.99. Authors are actually paying BB those enormous prices? If they are, it could limit the number of books offered for free. That's not good. BB built its reputation on free books.

Wrong?

[JRTomlin]

A book doesn't have to be free to do well, just reduced. They may have turned down dozens (hundreds?) of novels because they thought those would do best. Yep, people pay those prices. (sometimes publishers of course)

BB built its reputation on offering reduced price books that their subscribers want. I've never been able to get a US 99 cent BB promo. I'd take on in a heartbeat.

[Marti Talbott]

A book doesn't have to be free to do well, just reduced.

But didn't they build their business initially on free books? Isn't that what readers sign up for?

[JRTomlin]

As far as I can remember, they have always accepted reduced price books as well as free ones. (Someone can correct me if my memory is wrong because that goes back a very long way)

I had to log out of my account to check but here is what they promise on their home page:

Discover books you'll love
Unbeatable ebook deals, handpicked recommendations, and updates from your favorite authors.

A big deal of what has given them success is that they at least to some degree vet the novels they promote and offer 'deals'. Nothing says the deals must be free. I would guess that with all the stats they have on clicks that they probably know what works.

[Simon Haynes]

I'm subscribed to three or four BB genres, and I reckon I see one freebie every 3-4 days now.  Certainly fewer than it used to be.

Most are 1.99, sometimes 2.99.  I know I paid 2.99 for a book I really wanted, and that's rare for me. (I'm drowning in TBR books. Why add more?)

[JRTomlin]

I can't keep myself in books. As soon as I buy a book, I read it, but at the moment I'm on a budget so I stop splurging.

[Marti Talbott]

BB must be making a ton of money, but I'm not hearing of great sales on the more expensive books, are you? Most are saying they're barely breaking even if that.

[JRTomlin]

I don't know anyone who has had one.

[Marti Talbott]

I tried a BB ad and now I remember why I didn't think it was fair. They charge per impression and not click. It's possible to spend buckets of cash and no see any returns. Not for me.

[notthatamanda]

I tried a BB ad and now I remember why I didn't think it was fair. They charge per impression and not click. It's possible to spend buckets of cash and no see any returns. Not for me.

You can do either.  Pay per 1000 impressions (I think, I don't do that one) or bid per click and only pay on clicks.  I am having some moderate success targeting B&N and specific authors. I do one author at a time and my total budget for the campaign is less than I would earn per book. Since these are full price books I put the price in my ad to discourage bargain only shoppers from clicking.

[Marti Talbott]

I tried a BB ad and now I remember why I didn't think it was fair. They charge per impression and not click. It's possible to spend buckets of cash and no see any returns. Not for me.

You can do either.  Pay per 1000 impressions (I think, I don't do that one) or bid per click and only pay on clicks.  I am having some moderate success targeting B&N and specific authors. I do one author at a time and my total budget for the campaign is less than I would earn per book. Since these are full price books I put the price in my ad to discourage bargain only shoppers from clicking.

I learn so much from you guys. I'll go see if I can fix that or start a new ad. Thanks.

[JRTomlin]

They allow massive changes in an ad without having to restart it which is one thing I like.

[alhawke]

They allow massive changes in an ad without having to restart it which is one thing I like.

I agree. And they're fun to create.

You can change a lot with BB ads. The one frustrating thing is you can't change the daily budget (you can increase it, though). The only way to lower the daily budget is copy and restart it, but I find copying and restarting an ad decreases its effectiveness.

What I've been playing around with is the maximum CPC bid.  If I bring the max cpc down on the same ad, I can cut down my daily expenses by having less clicks.

I've had success with BB, but I think it's only because I'm wide and have multiple distributors. I would think KDP Select may have less luck. It's true you can't see the sales like on AMS, but I can usually correspond a sale with a distributor (and AMS doesn't always give perfect trackable data either).

[Marti Talbott]

They allow massive changes in an ad without having to restart it which is one thing I like.

I couldn't figure out how to edit the old one, so I just made a new one. You're right, these could be a lot more fun than the confusing AMS ads. I already have 575 impressions and no spend on BB. No clicks either, but oh well. It's just the first day.
Thanks everyone!

[JRTomlin]

A lot of the trick with BB ads is targetting. You have to pick out authors who have plenty of BB followers and are very close to you in what they write. For me, that's not easy. The good thing is that you can limit your spend as you experiment to figure out what works. When I was fooling around with them a lot, I did a number of ads targetting one specific author each to see which ones worked for me. Most of them didn't. *sigh*

But it didn't cost much to find that out either.

ETA: David Gaughran has a pretty good book on BB ads that I recommend.

[Marti Talbott]

A lot of the trick with BB ads is targetting. You have to pick out authors who have plenty of BB followers and are very close to you in what they write. For me, that's not easy. The good thing is that you can limit your spend as you experiment to figure out what works. When I was fooling around with them a lot, I did a number of ads targetting one specific author each to see which ones worked for me. Most of them didn't. *sigh*

But it didn't cost much to find that out either.

ETA: David Gaughran has a pretty good book on BB ads that I recommend.

I didn't use authors, just categories * women's fiction, science fiction, thriller and one more I can't remember. My book is Seattle Quake 9.2. 1300 impressions so far, no clicks. I took someone's advice and posted the price so the clicks will actually lead to a sale. This book is in KU, too, so I guess the reader would have to remember the title to discover it's in KU,

[JRTomlin]

You will normally have better results by combining genre with specific authors who write novels that are at least somewhat similar to yours and have BB followers. Often looking at your also bought list will give you an idea of good authors to target. It would be particularly difficult to judge the results of an ad in KU. I don't know what to tell you on that.

[liveswithbirds]

So far it has 1600 impressions, 56 clicks and a CTR of 3.33% which is pretty healthy. The CPM is $5.96 which is reasonable as well. Interestingly enough the one place that is not getting as many clicks is Amazon.

Those are amazing results. At least, to me. On that many impressions, I could only hope to get 2 or 3 clicks.

The only luck I've ever had with BB ads is with a perma-free targeting non-Amazon readers, especially Kobo and Apple. But yeesh, even on a free book it's a struggle to get Amazon readers to click, and the CPC is like a dollar.

Maybe it depends on genre. I'm in romance/women's fic. And the authors I have success with targeting on BB are not always the same the work on AMS. Go figure.
 
The ads are fun to make, though, and the platform is easy to use.

Good for you. You've almost convinced me to try a BB ad again, but I'm going to lie down until that idea floats away.

Lily B, you're a hoot!

[JRTomlin]

I ended up with 332 clicks on that ad which is far better than I had ever done on any other ad including other free ones. It would be nice to duplicate that but I'm not holding my breath.

I was targeting my own readers and only one other author in the same genre. Historical Fiction is such a segmented market that it is not easy to target. But you're right about it being harder to get Amazon clicks. I got a higher percentage at all the other retailers than I did at Amazon US. I was only doing US, by the way. Google and Kobo had the highest percentage. Both were over 4% which is way, way over 'industry standard'. But both had fewer impressions so fewer total clicks in spite of the high percentage.

I am going to run a BB ad in a few weeks for a new novel, but it won't be free so I don't have any expectations for fantastic results. I'll post how it goes though.

[Marti Talbott]

I didn't think of using my own name in the author section. Good idea.

[notthatamanda]

You get to see how many followers you have on bookbub.  The followers that they list for the ad is not the same number as on your page.  The ones they send the ads to are anyone whoever looked at an author, or a book, once, not the ones that actually follow someone.

[JRTomlin]

When you list someone on your ad it shows how many 'readers' they have as opposed to 'followers' iirc. The two aren't the same as you say. I tend to judge whether to use someone by their followers which is a better metric in my experience of whether they will be worthwhile to target.

It took a while to figure out that it might be a good idea to target my own followers/readers. 

[notthatamanda]

You're right, they do call them readers now. Thanks.

[JRTomlin]

To illustrate, I have a bit under 6,000 followers and a bit over 36,000 readers, so it is a pretty substantial difference.

[notthatamanda]

6000 followers is pretty impressive.  I'm sitting at a solid 12 here. 

[JRTomlin]

I've been running promotions with them since they were little tykes in short pants. I suspect that explains that number.