Author Topic: AMS advice for the comically inept (Read 42917 times)

notthatamanda · « **Reply #300 on:** December 16, 2020, 07:17:40 AM »

Mine are all still delivering and I've had no emails about moderation. That's weird.

R. C. · « **Reply #301 on:** December 16, 2020, 07:27:17 AM »

Quote from: Hopscotch on December 16, 2020, 06:20:13 AM

Why is AMS re-moderating all my Bryan ads moderated and approved a month ago? (So far, no changes in approvals.) Anyone else w/same experience?

Yes, I received "moderated" emails out of the blue. I chock it up to their BOTs are not tuned correctly.

Cheers,
R.C.

Anarchist · « **Reply #302 on:** December 16, 2020, 10:53:34 AM »

AMS has been more aggressive this year in moderating ads. I suspect they started with the big spenders like myself where Amazon's exposure is greatest. AMS has suspended several hundreds of my ads in the last few month. (All of them are back up and running after my having made the requested changes.)

I have thousands of ads running that are guilty of the same violations as the ones that were suspended. I'm expecting a lot of future suspensions that I'll need to devote time to.

Not a pleasant thought, but adapt or die. lol

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #303 on:** December 16, 2020, 11:11:15 AM »

Did you add any promoted books? I added a few extra titles to existing ads and they went through the approval again.

Recently I also noticed two of my ebooks were denied/blocked from being advertised in several ads (Butt of Heads was deemed offensive - same on Facebook. It's not that kind of butt, people...) and another has a girl with a space gun which is vaguely aimed at the ground. (Covers with guns pointing at the readers can't be advertised... even though that's sometimes the only way to get a sale.)

But then, without me doing anything, the ads went through another review process and those books were allowed again.

Anarchist · « **Reply #304 on:** December 16, 2020, 05:09:24 PM »

Quote from: Simon Haynes on December 16, 2020, 11:11:15 AM

Did you add any promoted books?

No, this is for the traditional sponsored ads in the U.S.

My ads violated the updated content guidelines. The new guidelines prohibit something that was fine under the old guidelines. Fortunately, I've done enough testing of my ad copy to know what converts. My "corrected" ads are converting even better than my suspended ones.

So, it was inconvenient but ultimately a big win.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #305 on:** December 16, 2020, 10:53:39 PM »

Jeez, it would save them a lot of time if they would just tell us the new guidelines. Do they publish those anywhere?

Anarchist · « **Reply #306 on:** December 16, 2020, 11:51:36 PM »

Quote from: notthatamanda on December 16, 2020, 10:53:39 PM

Jeez, it would save them a lot of time if they would just tell us the new guidelines. Do they publish those anywhere?

https://advertising.amazon.com/resources/ad-policy/sponsored-ads-policies

The difficult part was that my violation is not mentioned anywhere in the guidelines. It's not spelled out. My trespass was an extrapolation of one of the bullet points. The problem wasn't intuitive (to me, at least).

For example, take the following bullet (found at the above link):

"Exploitation of sensitive events such as natural disasters, human-caused disasters, incidents of mass drama, or the death of public figures."

Sounds reasonable, right? But let's say you've written a post-apoc thriller, and your ad includes the copy "A massive EMP has caused severe food shortages."

You receive an email from AMS saying, "We have suspended your ad because it is non-compliant with our content guidelines. Please make the necessary changes."

So you visit the link and comb through the bullets. The only item you see that MIGHT explain the problem is the above bullet. But you're left wondering whether mention of the EMP is considered a "human-caused disaster" or whether mention of severe food shortages is considered an "incident of mass drama."

No way to know for sure because your violation hasn't been explicitly explained.

Needless to say, there was a lot of trial and error on my part before they finally approved my corrective actions.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #307 on:** December 17, 2020, 12:44:21 AM »

Thanks. It's nice to have this reference. I've only ever been denied for spelling violations. One of which made it though numerous times before they flagged it. Bad writer.

Jeff Tanyard · « **Reply #308 on:** December 17, 2020, 04:57:23 AM »

That "incidents of mass drama" phrase is so vague and wide that it could apply to almost any fiction book ever written.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #309 on:** December 17, 2020, 05:05:37 AM »

Especially young adult.

LilyBLily · « **Reply #310 on:** December 17, 2020, 01:20:47 PM »

That made for interesting reading.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #311 on:** December 19, 2020, 09:05:28 AM »

My ads are all expiring soon and I'm pretty tempted to just let them. Sales keep getting slower and slower as the month drags on, eating into the profitability I had.

LilyBLily · « **Reply #312 on:** December 19, 2020, 11:15:50 AM »

I just re-upped some Amazon ads, some category and some keyword, the ones with the most views or good sales percentages.

Sales are slow. Either people are fixated on news re the virus and the vaccines or they're all busy buying presents and trimming trees and such.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #313 on:** December 19, 2020, 01:19:40 PM »

I agree, but I don't see the point in spending more money on ads right now. I don't have any home runs that are consistently bringing in sales or I would keep those.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #314 on:** December 19, 2020, 02:11:03 PM »

Yep, my ad spend has dwindled a lot since I reined in the expensive bids. I guess a lot of people are competing for the same eyeballs.

Hopscotch · « **Reply #315 on:** December 29, 2020, 05:21:52 AM »

Does AMS autotarget shift targets w/ea ad impression event or are targets constant throughout ad run? Scouring all my Bryan ads today to prepare for a refreshed run at AMS Jan 1 and don't see autotarget has been much help so far.

LilyBLily · « **Reply #316 on:** December 29, 2020, 05:46:29 AM »

I just threw a little money at newsletter ads to see what would happen. Immediate net loss, of course, but the increased page reads might lead to more for the whole series. One can hope so, anyway. I've scheduled a few more newsletter ads for January just to pretend I am doing something useful.

Meanwhile, despite upped budgets, Amazon is not showing my ads. In ten days it spent four dollars. That's sad.

My next move, a more expensive one, is to change the cover of my western series starter. Newer covers come across as much crisper, so it needs an update. Then I'll see if my old ad will show my new cover and start moving again, or if I need more drastic action. I'm leaning toward creating new Facebook ads.

A BookBub cpc ad has cost $10 so far and earned $4. Could be worse. I didn't discount the book.

My Amazon UK ad for my one nonfiction title continues to earn steady money at 10 cents a click. This is the book I published as a family obligation that I never expected would even sell a hundred copies. It has far, far outstripped that number.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #317 on:** December 29, 2020, 07:33:24 AM »

Quote from: Hopscotch on December 29, 2020, 05:21:52 AM

Does AMS autotarget shift targets w/ea ad impression event or are targets constant throughout ad run? Scouring all my Bryan ads today to prepare for a refreshed run at AMS Jan 1 and don't see autotarget has been much help so far.

Do you run the search term report to see what books are getting sales and clicks from your auto target ads? That's the biggest use of the auto target ads, for me anyway. There was a popular book that the auto ad really liked, I got a lot of clicks, but not a huge amount of sales. I would have targeted that author but it was her first book.

All my ads shut off on the 20th and I'm still getting free downloads and a handful of sales. Really don't see a huge difference between that and when the ads were running. I was thinking of firing up some ads for Jan 1st, but now I'm not sure. I may hold off until my WIP progress is finished, then started running ads on book 1 of that series.

Hopscotch · « **Reply #318 on:** December 30, 2020, 03:07:28 PM »

Yep, did that to help put together ads running for month of Jan - tho' surprised how little useful data autotarget ads provided, at least at my subterranean level. Bryan helped me move up to a consistent daily level of sales/reads and I'm pleased. But that level is far from my goal. So I consider myself still struggling on Bryan's first level of effort, and disappointed I haven't done better. Espec as everything I write is a work of unparalled genius.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #319 on:** December 30, 2020, 10:52:49 PM »

Yeah, I didn't get any miracles aka find any unicorn ads. Did you not get a lot of clicks or sales on the auto ads? I usually found they were useful for finding relevant keywords.

Keeping track of everything on a spreadsheet will be useful for me when I jump back into it.

DmGuay · « **Reply #320 on:** December 31, 2020, 08:34:22 AM »

Now that I have a full year of AMS data and can see some patterns, here is a tip:

If you're experimenting with AMS ads and are a newbie DON'T start in November or December.

Amazon burns through your ad dollars at 2-4 x the normal monthly rate in Nov.-Dec. in the lead up to Christmas, as more people are on their site shopping and "browsing". Those browsers really do run up your click bill!!

So, if you're new and experimenting, these are not the months for you. The data will not reflect your ad's performance during the rest of the year.

For me personally, my sales stayed about the same in November and December, but my AMS ad spend tripled. These are the months of the looky-loos!

notthatamanda · « **Reply #321 on:** December 31, 2020, 11:12:54 AM »

Thanks. Maybe I will fire up some ads in January. Which is like two days away. Mid January.

LilyBLily · « **Reply #322 on:** December 31, 2020, 03:05:51 PM »

I've got a couple of January countdowns and newsletter ads scheduled. It's hardly worth the effort to pause my Amazon ads, since they aren't even spending a dollar a day right now. Nevertheless, in 2020 I managed to drop a couple thousand dollars on ads, mostly on Amazon, making a slim profit. Not a great year for selling my books, but I was happy enough to have written and published them. Still am.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #323 on:** December 31, 2020, 10:56:37 PM »

That was the conundrum I was in. The spending was really small per day, but I hadn't had a sale attributed to ads in a while. I don't do KU and wasn't seeing sales in books 2 and 3 of my trilogies. So it was just eating away at my profitability click by click.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #324 on:** January 06, 2021, 05:02:57 PM »

Most of my stuff is wide now. Ebook sales are up, and page reads are still maintaining their average.

Re the AMS ads, I've left everything as-is, although I've taken to lowering the highest bids each day, bringing down anything which has a CPC above my wince range.

Over the past couple of days I've actually seen better profitability, probably because people are buying the ebook edition instead of (maybe) adding my books to their library. Almost all my books are 4.99, with maybe 400-500 KENPC, so I earn twice as much from a sale than a readthrough. (Royalty of approx 3.70 vs readthrough of $1.60-$2 if I'm lucky. The latter is even worse outside the US.)

Starting to see a few sales on Apple and Google and Kobo, but I've not announced that I'm wide yet, nor promoted in any way.

I've completely redone my spacejock.com.au website since Christmas - all 400 pages - and included random banner and sidebar ads for my own books. As a follow-up I did the 500+ pages as spacejock.com as well.

Next I'm going to update the hundreds and hundreds of links for my ebooks over at Bookbub, bringing those up to date.

Eventually I plan to run AMS ads plus some new Bookbub ads with links to all retailers, perhaps even avoiding Amazon so I'm not competing for clicks against KU bidders. For example, a Bookbub ad targeting Kobo in Canada.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #325 on:** January 06, 2021, 10:42:25 PM »

Bookbub ad for Kobo in Canada sounds interesting. Good luck wide (welcome back).

Edit - I went and created one ad with no ad copy. I didn't get any really well performing hooks with my experimentation with ads Oct-Dec. I did figure out that the algos decided they hated the hook that did really well for me in 2019, they wouldn't show it at all. I think doing no hook ads won't suck up too much time or money, so maybe I'll stick with that for a while. Going to create another one for my WWII book now.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #326 on:** January 07, 2021, 10:18:13 PM »

Off the bat things didn't quite go to plan. Book 1 in my main series was delisted by Google due to a conflict with someone else's published version of the same book. (My original trade publisher has the paperback novel listed on Google books, but not as an ebook.)

Sorted that out, then they locked my account for a review.

On the Kobo side, I decided to apply for a freebie promo for that same book, and they immediately reduced the price to zero. Amazon price matched it within about 0.03 of a second, and it's still free (there) a day later, but nowhere else. I'm not too fussed as this book was perma-free for the best part of a decade, so a few more downloads won't hurt. It certainly increased the clicks (and outlay) on my suite of ads for that ebook though...

Smashwords all went okay, so the Apple and B&N listings are up. Last night I spent about 3 hours updating/adding bookbub store links for all my ebooks. I didn't bother with the short stories.

Tomorrow another 4 of my books drop out of KU, and I've also cancelled the renewal on everything else. (March for one series, April for the other)

notthatamanda · « **Reply #327 on:** January 08, 2021, 12:22:52 AM »

Quote from: Simon Haynes on January 07, 2021, 10:18:13 PM

Off the bat things didn't quite go to plan. Book 1 in my main series was delisted by Google due to a conflict with someone else's published version of the same book. (My original trade publisher has the paperback novel listed on Google books, but not as an ebook.)

Sorted that out, then they locked my account for a review.

On the Kobo side, I decided to apply for a freebie promo for that same book, and they immediately reduced the price to zero. Amazon price matched it within about 0.03 of a second, and it's still free (there) a day later, but nowhere else. I'm not too fussed as this book was perma-free for the best part of a decade, so a few more downloads won't hurt. It certainly increased the clicks (and outlay) on my suite of ads for that ebook though...

Smashwords all went okay, so the Apple and B&N listings are up. Last night I spent about 3 hours updating/adding bookbub store links for all my ebooks. I didn't bother with the short stories.

Tomorrow another 4 of my books drop out of KU, and I've also cancelled the renewal on everything else. (March for one series, April for the other)

Um, that's weird.

AMS - No hook ads - My WWII book has one impression since yesterday. The psych thriller almost 2500 with one click for 6 cents.

Hopscotch · « **Reply #328 on:** January 08, 2021, 03:31:04 AM »

Quote from: notthatamanda on January 08, 2021, 12:22:52 AM

AMS - No hook ads - My WWII book has one impression since yesterday. The psych thriller almost 2500 with one click for 6 cents.

Curious to hear how those w/more AMS success interpret notthatamanda's result (and ideas for a fix). As my own effort to move up to Bryan's second level of ads has resulted in a similar collapse of my daily sales/reads.

(Or is the news from Washington DC more entertaining than any book?)

DmGuay · « **Reply #329 on:** January 08, 2021, 03:43:24 AM »

May I ask how often you're checking your ad stats? It can take weeks for the data to populate. The stats in KDP and AMS don't populate in anything close to real time.

I only check my ads once every two weeks or so, and that gives me a good enough idea of ad spend vs royalties.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #330 on:** January 08, 2021, 03:52:44 AM »

My psych thriller has 40+ reviews with a 4 star average. My WW2 has one 3 star rating. Also the psych thriller market is bigger, so less opportunities for WW2 to be placed period. Also my psych thriller has a much longer and better sales history. So I think those might affect the algos decisions to place it.

I'm not trying to fix it so much, I'm just going to add an ad or two every day and try to get some more visibility cheap.

I think I could entice more people to click on it with decent ad copy, I'm just lazy about doing it right now.

Not sure it any of this is helpful.

I think people are quite preoccupied right now.

My plan is to try for a big push on the WW2 book when I get ready to release the sequel.

Hopscotch · « **Reply #331 on:** January 08, 2021, 04:06:40 AM »

Quote from: DmGuay on January 08, 2021, 03:43:24 AM

May I ask how often you're checking your ad stats?...I only check my ads once every two weeks or so, and that gives me a good enough idea of ad spend vs royalties.

I check ads weekly, which means I'm gun-jumping. I check sales/reads daily. Thanks

for the advice - I'll make the intervals longer.

DmGuay · « **Reply #332 on:** January 08, 2021, 04:09:46 AM »

Weekly might be all right. But I do think it takes two weeks to get a more accurate reading.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #333 on:** January 08, 2021, 04:17:09 AM »

In 2019 my total daily budget was easily over $500 a day. I checked it daily just to make sure I hadn't made any mistakes and nothing weird was happening. I agree you have to give it time to see results, but be sure you can live with the consequences if your ads start spending higher all of a sudden. I've seen it happen. I monitor daily and try to be patient for results. I'm not very good at the second part.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #334 on:** January 08, 2021, 02:09:01 PM »

Yep, I've done Kobo promos in the past and I thought the prompt to set the price was meant to be 'this is the price it will be if we accept the deal'.

The only other possibility is that the price was already set to zero, dating from before my foray into KU. I thought I checked everything, but activating and checking 20+ titles across three or four retailers whilst uploading covers and content ... let's just say it would be easy to miss one. (On smashwords, all my books were at the 2.99 price until I realised it.)

notthatamanda · « **Reply #335 on:** January 08, 2021, 09:51:42 PM »

Since part of my point in being wide is keeping the permafrees at zero I've never been in the position to have that happen.

Side note - I just got turned down for the first in series free again. They find me about as attractive as bookbub does.

Edit - I took my ad that has 4000 impressions since Wednesday and used those keywords to make another ad with my best hook from my Q4 experimentation. I did sell two paperbacks of that book this week, but I can't be sure if they are Amazon or not cause ranks never update (hyperbole cause the delays are annoying).

notthatamanda · « **Reply #336 on:** January 12, 2021, 12:43:35 PM »

Not a single impression today after racking up 2500 in two days on one ad alone. Anyone else seeing impressions or is the whole thing stuck?

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #337 on:** January 12, 2021, 02:11:08 PM »

11k impressions on the US ads store here.

They just accepted my inadvertant permafree for a promo. It's in the SF category, so perhaps there's less competition? After all, so much SF is in KU these days ...

Anarchist · « **Reply #338 on:** January 12, 2021, 05:08:02 PM »

Quote from: notthatamanda on January 12, 2021, 12:43:35 PM

Not a single impression today after racking up 2500 in two days on one ad alone. Anyone else seeing impressions or is the whole thing stuck?

Not stuck for me. U.S. impressions are on track (7 figures).

notthatamanda · « **Reply #339 on:** January 12, 2021, 09:51:59 PM »

I had to log out and get back in. Thanks guys.

I need to work on my hook. I have a hook that the algos like but the readers are definitely not impressed.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #340 on:** January 13, 2021, 03:58:45 PM »

Now that the rest of my longest-running series is wide, I just created a Bookbub ad for my permafree prequel novel/novella.

I'm only targeting Australia and Canada at this stage, with a $50 budget (each country) for 5-7 days. (I like to split my BB ads up per country, because otherwise the US swallows the entire budget and costs more per click.)

I'm not targeting any authors for these ads, just the Scifi genre. Reason being, CA and AU are already small markets.

By the way, last time I ran wide ads on BB I ended up switching off the Amazon link for each country because it was twice the price per click than the others. I think AMS is the better option for reaching Amazon readers.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #341 on:** January 13, 2021, 09:46:16 PM »

So you're targeting Kobo, Google, Apple, B&N? Just curious.

In the inept category, yesterday I came up with a new hook that I liked and I thought would appeal to readers and the algos. And I spelled one of the words wrong. AMS still granted me 75 impressions. Fixing now.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #342 on:** January 13, 2021, 11:11:23 PM »

I didn't target B&N - I wasn't sure whether they were US only.

I did target Amazon and also added a manual link for Smashwords.

I remember reading somewhere, long ago, that Kobo is supposed to be the #1 store for Canadian ebook buyers, more popular even than Amazon.

In Australia I think it's Apple and Google - maybe because ebook buyers here couldn't get hold of a Kindle initially, and probably still can't buy a Nook, and went straight to reading on phones. Perhaps.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #343 on:** January 13, 2021, 11:21:09 PM »

Yep, just looking at the figures for my Australian wide ad, and the google link has around 4x the views of the other stores.

Unfortunately the google reports/analytics tend to lag 2-3 days, so I won't know whether it's leading to any downloads of the freebie there.

I've had one click on the Kobo link and that immediately showed up as a download on the Kobo dashboard, source country Australia.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #344 on:** January 14, 2021, 12:17:52 AM »

You just doing the bookbub ad for the freebie? I've actually had moderate success with book bub for my full price ww2 book on B&N. Haven't tried other retailers. I should add the preview to book 2 to the D2D version and maybe try again. And try categories instead of individual authors, thanks for the idea.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #345 on:** January 14, 2021, 02:27:01 AM »

For the moment, just the freebie. I'm just waiting for Google to stop suspending/checking/approving my account (second time in 2 weeks right now), and then I'm going to apply for a 99c bookbub on one of my newly-wide series.

Right now the ads are just a token effort. My strategy is promo stacking and Bookbubs, which is why I decided to leave KU.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #346 on:** January 14, 2021, 02:57:29 AM »

The algos seem to like my latest hook for my first book (Hook 9). 500+ impressions since I started ads new to me keywords, versus 200 impressions on my previous best hook (hook 3). Still waiting to see if the readers like it. The no hook at with those keywords is only at 49 impressions.

Edit - my new hook got me 3000 impressions in 24 hours and no clicks.

Edit again - started a UK ad which doesn't allow hooks

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #347 on:** January 16, 2021, 04:57:00 AM »

Some results (at last) for my Bookbub ad. This campaign is for a permafree prequel novella, and I'm just experimenting by advertising wide to Canada and Australia. (Apple, Kobo, Amazon, Google).

The Canadian ad didn't fire up much. In fact, BB sent me an email saying so, and that I was welcome to leave it running but it wasn't high priority for them to show it at my current bids. Never had one of those emails before, so it might be something new. Since they sent the email I have actually had 2 clicks, but they suggested copying it and raising the bid.

For the Aussie ad, I got 6 clicks on Apple (5 converted), 8 clicks on Kobo (6 converted), 4 clicks on Amazon (all 4 converted), and 74 clicks on Google(!) of which at least 52 have converted. It's hard to tell because the Google figures are always 24-48 hours behind. That lot cost me almost $50, which was the amount I decided to put into the experiment.

Over the next few days I'll see whether that particular series attracts any sales on those stores. I mean, if Google shows no sales at all from Australia for a month, then I won't advertise a freebie there again - which was one of the things I wanted to find out.

Simon Haynes · « **Reply #348 on:** January 16, 2021, 02:14:28 PM »

My advice if you get one of those bookbub 'your ad isn't performing' emails?

Ignore it.

Today, barely 24 hours later, the ad has gone nuts, spending most of the budget overnight. e.g. 66 clicks on Kobo CA. My guess is that someone else's campaign has been paused (or ended) for the weekend.

notthatamanda · « **Reply #349 on:** January 16, 2021, 10:29:42 PM »

Or their ad ran out of money. Bookbub ads are good at that. They could spend 20 bucks while I took a shower.

I'm frustrated with AMS. My new hook has 6000 impressions in 3 days. No clicks. No sales. I know how it goes; if you don't get clicks the cover is bad, if you don't get sales fix the blurb, but I sold thousands of this book in 2019 with the same cover and blurb. I guess I'll do some more ads because they aren't costing me anything (closing in on spending a solid dollar for the ytd) so what the hey I can pretend I am working.

I got my first follower on my blog yesterday, though I'm not sure what to make of it, their site looks kind of scammy.

News:

Author Topic: AMS advice for the comically inept (Read 42917 times)