Can I please have advice about my Amazon ads?

[allisonrhodesbooks]

Hello, all!

I've (somewhat) emerged from my depression over the events of the past few months, and I'm focusing on things I CAN control, not those things that I CAN'T control.

Amazon ads are things I can control, but I'm not good at it.  I've played with several campaigns, but haven't gotten any impressions.  (I didn't lowball auction bids, etc.)  At the moment, I'm advertising my most recent YA novel.  In this most recent campaign, I am doing manual keywords and keeping the median suggested bid.  For example, "Summer reading for boys."  That term is set at .64 with the range of .42-$1.13. 

In the past, I got one or two impressions, but this campaign with two manual search terms has gotten 43 impressions over a few days.  No clicks and no spend, it seems.

I'm just playing around, trying to put to use the stuff I've learned from podcasts and the other usual suspects.  I've set a $4 daily spend limit, but Amazon still hasn't taken any of my money. 

Should I load up on more search terms?  I wouldn't even mind paying the $4 for a couple days if it gave me some stats that I could work from. 

Thanks!

[TimothyEllis]

2 things come to mind.

You want 200 search terms, not 2. You can have up to 1000. And you need to focus them on other authors and their book titles, where you want your book to be displayed.

The other thing is the stats are crap. All I pay attention to is Book Report and if the ad actually boosts the average day above the no ad day.

[DmGuay]

I'm no expert by any means, but I can tell you what's working for me.

I took Bryan Cohen's free 7 day Amazon ad course and recommend that if you're new and trying to figure this all out.

Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. The AMS dashboard is terrible at tracking sales statistics. It was never designed for ebooks. Amazon admits this. The ONLY way to tell if your ads are working is to use book report or the Amazon enhanced dashboard to see if you are overall profitable, while you are running an ad/ ads.
2. Most ads will never pick up steam, so you have to keep creating more ads in hopes that some will serve.
3. Most ads will never spend your whole daily budget, so it's okay to test out a high daily total.

Here is how my ads are set up:

I have about 8 ads for my series running now. Maximum daily spend anywhere from $5 to $40 per ad. (Amazon NEVER ONCE has spent anywhere near $40/day, or any of my daily budget maximums, BTW.)

-Most of my ads have a maximum bid of 35 cents. Dynamic, down only. Advertising Book 1 in series.
-Two are automatic targeting, meaning I let Amazon choose where to show it. Those are doing very well. (Rumor is these do well IF the keywords in your book's KDP dashboard are optimized.)
-I have one auto target group ad for the series. It's new so I don't have enough data to judge merit.
-The rest of the ads are target keywords I entered myself. I don't do general categories. I only target authors and books SIMILAR to mine. Not exactly the same, but I did serious soul searching to the tune of: "Will people who like this book like my book?" This took many hours on Amazon poking around, but has been worth it.
-I do all three options (broad, phrase exact) for each of my keyword targets. And I end up with about 300 or more keywords per ad.


I'M NO EXPERT, but this is working for me. Over time, my ad spend has decreased while my monthly royalties have remained steady or grown. I feel AMS ads really work best if you are in KU.

[allisonrhodesbooks]

Thank you so much, Dm and Timothy.  I was clearly NOT packing in the (logical) keywords.  My thinking has been FAR too guarded and conservative.

I'm off to the ad portal to add keywords, but I would love to hear what other folks think. 

[LilyBLily]

The reason to use a couple hundred keywords is you don't know which ones will hit. It could be that an oddball one gets the most impressions and sales.

[allisonrhodesbooks]

Lily - Yes, now I am having fun brainstorming options that are a little unorthodox, but still logical.

And thank all of you!  I now have 250 impressions and I got my first click!  A 24-cent spend on the keyword "john green." 

[RPatton]

I'm no expert by any means, but I can tell you what's working for me.

I took Bryan Cohen's free 7 day Amazon ad course and recommend that if you're new and trying to figure this all out.

Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. The AMS dashboard is terrible at tracking sales statistics. It was never designed for ebooks. Amazon admits this. The ONLY way to tell if your ads are working is to use book report or the Amazon enhanced dashboard to see if you are overall profitable, while you are running an ad/ ads.
2. Most ads will never pick up steam, so you have to keep creating more ads in hopes that some will serve.
3. Most ads will never spend your whole daily budget, so it's okay to test out a high daily total.

Here is how my ads are set up:

I have about 8 ads for my series running now. Maximum daily spend anywhere from $5 to $40 per ad. (Amazon NEVER ONCE has spent anywhere near $40/day, or any of my daily budget maximums, BTW.)

-Most of my ads have a maximum bid of 35 cents. Dynamic, down only. Advertising Book 1 in series.
-Two are automatic targeting, meaning I let Amazon choose where to show it. Those are doing very well. (Rumor is these do well IF the keywords in your book's KDP dashboard are optimized.)
-I have one auto target group ad for the series. It's new so I don't have enough data to judge merit.
-The rest of the ads are target keywords I entered myself. I don't do general categories. I only target authors and books SIMILAR to mine. Not exactly the same, but I did serious soul searching to the tune of: "Will people who like this book like my book?" This took many hours on Amazon poking around, but has been worth it.
-I do all three options (broad, phrase exact) for each of my keyword targets. And I end up with about 300 or more keywords per ad.


I'M NO EXPERT, but this is working for me. Over time, my ad spend has decreased while my monthly royalties have remained steady or grown. I feel AMS ads really work best if you are in KU.

I did that challenge too and it's amazing. Can't wait for another challenge.

Question for you though. How do you decide which ads to phase out? I'm at the point where I know I am running too many (I have 19 now - basically, if they are getting impressions, I'm happy). With sales reporting being so bad, it's really hard to tell which ones are delivering and which are floundering. I sort of want to reorg my keywords: authors, titles, series, etc instead of sources (goodreads, ABs, and charts).

[DmGuay]

Well, that's the magic question. When to prune your ads. I haven't yet, but I'm working on it.

[allisonrhodesbooks]

I do feel silly for not figuring out sooner what I was doing wrong.  I am getting far more impressions now and clicks (from manual, not automatic keywords), and I think my big takeaway is that I need to stop being shy and just push out the keywords and ads.

I feel much better that I am actually getting some response of some kind from Amazon ads.  I've done well with a Kobo free ad, but was disappointed that I couldn't get even impressions from Amazon ads.

Thank you!

[LilyBLily]

It was a cheap thrill when I got my first impressions from my first AMS ads. Then I discovered the ads actually helped sell my books. Still do.

[JRTomlin]

For me, I generally prefer bidding somewhat high for most of my novels, although I never, ever bid over $1. (Not the few in KU though. Those I bid low.) It depends on the price of your novels and your sell-through. I find it worth paying a little more on novels with a higher price that are the first in a series with strong sell-through.

Let me mention that it is worth looking at the Placement tab. Although I agree that the AMD report is generally crap, that is really worth watching. Ads in 'top of search first page', tend to get by far the highest CTR and a high percentage of sales. (I have absolutely no clue why)

My problem with using Book Report is that not surprisingly when Amazon is slow reporting sales and/or income, so are they. And Amazon is sometimes several days behind. You can tell that when the Book Report dashboard says 10 sales of a novel that day and a $9.69 income and you bang your head on your desk.

I find that once I have an ad doing well I try not to tinker with it. It's only when one stops producing, as a couple of mine did recently, that I re-do them. Eventually, sometimes even a good ad will run its course.

ETA: In spite of the fact that even the reporting through BR is a long way from perfect, I can't see how you can make any judgments about your ads without it as has been mentioned. And I can't imagine how you can judge if you are running more than one sale for a novel. I suggest never doing that.

[MonkeyWithAPen]

In my experience you need to use lots of keywords and create lots of ads at a time to get one that starts to perform. You also have to tweak and revise and create more ads based on what worked every few days. I for one don't have the time or patience to bother. Usually what my ad person does is just create auto ads and leave it at that. They perform reasonably well for little effort.

[LilyBLily]

Usually my first ad for a new title tanks, probably because writing promo copy is not my forte. My second or third try might do better.

[JRTomlin]

One kindle book that I think has pretty good information that I would recommend is 'Amazon Ads for Authors' by DM Potter. It's not pricey and is even in KU. While I don't agree with 100% of her strategies, that is to be expected. She covers a lot of information that is not necessarily obvious to someone who is new to the ads or who just hasn't paid a lot of attention.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Ads-Authors-Strategies-Books-ebook/dp/B07TVXQBMY

ETA: By the way, that is an author that as far as I know, I've never even talked to online, just so you'll know.

[allisonrhodesbooks]

Thank you, JR (and everyone else)! 

I've successfully managed to get 6700 impressions and $10 worth of clicks.  No sales so far.  Interestingly, 100% of the impressions are from the manual keyword settings...0% from the automatic campaign.

[TimothyEllis]

I've successfully managed to get 6700 impressions and $10 worth of clicks.  No sales so far.  Interestingly, 100% of the impressions are from the manual keyword settings...0% from the automatic campaign.

What did that do to your daily income?

[allisonrhodesbooks]

Oh, I have no daily income.  I currently have the following books up:

A YA novel (eBook only).  That's been up for a couple years.  I have had it set to free since then and have gotten some reviews/ratings on Kobo, but only one on Kindle.  I've given away 800-ish copies.

A second YA novel (eBook and paperback).  That went up last year.  I've only sold a few copies, but haven't done any promo.  This is the one for which I've set all the ads.

A women's fiction novelette.  That's been up for a couple years and has been set to free.  I bought a $5 Kobo promo a year ago, and I get a download or two a day on that one.  I've given away more than a thousand of these.

Brand new Guy-Friendly Romance novelette for which I bought book promo for the 29th.

If you or anyone else is curious and wants to poke around, here's my Amazon Author page:

https://www.amazon.com/Allison-Rhodes/e/B07D8C4HP3

I just added this book, so it won't show up for a while.

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Before-Fletcher-High-Novel-ebook/dp/B07X7GVYYG/

I am definitely far behind most everyone, but I'm baby-stepping toward getting my act together.  I have several manuscripts that are edited and ready to go once I put in the work.

[TimothyEllis]

Oh, I have no daily income.

I had a quick look at your books.

Only one is doing ok, but it's free.

I suggest you choose one of them, and put it in the why isn't my book selling section, and get people to critique it for anything which might be stopping it selling.

If you are not making any income, the ads are not working. Unless you have some money to throw away trying things, it might be better to find out first why the books may not be selling.

All I did was look at the ranks, and I would not be spending money on those ranks, unless you want to spend money to give away the free book.

A good look at why they are not selling would be my first option.

[DmGuay]

Yes. The goal here is to make money.

I would suggest A. getting feedback from people in your genre. B. Putting the books in KU, so at least you can get borrows and page read $ from the ads. And C. Stop giving them away. D. Make sure you have your back/front matter in each book in top notch (as in, your links to your other books and your mailing list sign up.)

Giveaways only make sense if you're directing people into a long series that they will then borrow/pay for. There is no sense advertising a free book that doesn't lead into a series or to something that you can sell to people.

Stop your ads. Figure out your $$ strategy.

Maybe use one of the books you are currently offering for free as a reader magnet to build your newsletter. At least you'd get an email in exchange for your work, rather than nothing at all from a free download.  (You can still sell it on Amazon, but keep it out of KU so you can use it in swaps. Even put a notice in the look inside that says "get this book free if you join my list.")

You need a plan that can lead to profits before you throw ad money at your work.