Reader Reach ads are now available for Amazon

[alhawke]

Interesting ... Another big move by Written Word Media. It's been available for Facebook and I had some success with that in the past. I might try this in the future for Amazon. For anyone who does, please let us know your success and failures.

One thing I'd love is to gather their data after the promo for those keywords or authors that were found to work. Then you could continue to run the Zon ads on your own. Not sure if they'd allow that.

The other thing I'm wondering about is how they use your book to advertise ?? Not sure if you have to give access to your account.

[writeway]

I don't run AMS ads anymore but after what I've heard about their FB ad option, I am not so sure this would be a good idea either. Everyone who has had them do their FB ads has said it was a waste of time and money. You're probably the only one who I heard who said it worked for them. Apparently, the targeting is all over the place, etc. Now I love Written Word Media and Freebooksy and BargainBooksy but so far haven't heard any good news about their ad-running deal. Maybe the Amazon one will be better.

As for giving access to your account, I doubt they would need that. I hear they run FB ads through their own separate account and not the author's so I assume maybe they will do the same on Amazon. Remember, this is a company so they might have a special deal with Amazon where they can run ads for authors and might be paying Amazon a certain percentage to do so.

I am completely against giving ANYONE access to my account. I wouldn't suggest that for anyone.

[alhawke]

I am completely against giving ANYONE access to my account. I wouldn't suggest that for anyone.

I agree. I remember there was another service out there that did Amazon ads for you. That's how they did it. They accessed your account.

I'm not sure how Written Word Media works. I read through their description, but couldn't figure out how they access your book.

[idontknowyet]

I already lost money on one of Written Words new promos. I'm going to wait to hear if people have sucess with this new one.

[LilyBLily]

Thanks for this update. It's so tempting to throw money at people and hope they can do a better job than I can.

The only company that really does is BookBub, but as for their end-of-newsletter ads and other expensive offerings, I don't know. The jury is still out on those. Meanwhile, BB keeps sending cutesy self-publishing and advertising hints that are lengthy statements of the obvious or the irrelevant.

[Eric Thomson]

I figure I'd put it here instead of a new thread, but I tried Written Words Reader Reach ads for Facebook, because I've never advertised on Facebook for a variety of reasons. I went into this with the expectation that I would not recoup my investment on the book advertised, and I was right. However, my goal was getting my name into the Facebook ecosystem as a scifi author where it never had been beyond the readers who already follow me. It's been a month, and I can't see any increase in sales that might be attributable to the Reader Reach ads. Now, granted, this method is in its infancy so I won't be too harsh, and the cost is a business expense which my publishing company can afford. I'm tempted to try their Amazon Reader Reach ads simply as an experiment with no expectations just because. As for BookBub, I've received nothing but rejections for the last 27 months and over a 100 submissions, after a dozen successful campaigns over the space of three years, so I'm pretty much done with them.

[alhawke]

It's so tempting to throw money at people and hope they can do a better job than I can.

This is precisely why I was thinking of trying it out--sans the throwing money  . I stopped Amazon ads two years ago because I couldn't make any $ no matter how much time I spend playing around with them. If an "expert" can move some sales, I'd love to know what and how they did it. That's why an additional service with this new promotion that I'd love is feedback on what keywords were successful/authors--I'm not sure if they will offer this.

[LilyBLily]

I stopped all my Amazon ads--except for the one nonfiction title--a while back, too. The BookBub international ads I was lucky enough to get last year were profitable, but nothing like what I used to earn through simply doing Amazon ads.

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years. Amazon supports full-price advertising on its site. People don't shop Amazon only to buy 99-cent or free books.

[alhawke]

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years.

I suspect they're not confident they'll sell enough books with an ad blitz that lasts only five days. But I'd love that too.

It's surprising that there aren't more ad entrepreneurs working with advertising for authors. When you look at three to four hundred Amazon ads added on an AMS carousel for a new release, there are lots of hungry authors out there, aside from myself.

[Anarchist]

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years.

It's surprising that there aren't more ad entrepreneurs working with advertising for authors. When you look at three to four hundred Amazon ads added on an AMS carousel for a new release, there are lots of hungry authors out there, aside from myself.

It's not worthwhile to take on clients with a low monthly spend. The amount of work involved in building and scaling precludes it.

The service providers who take on clients and charge a small monthly fee (e.g. $150) are part-timers who'll never be able to scale. (Or they're fly-by-nighters.) Most agencies charge clients a percentage of their monthly spend. They don't want 500 clients, each with a $1K/mo spend. They want 20 clients, each with a minimum $25K/mo spend.

[LilyBLily]

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years.

It's surprising that there aren't more ad entrepreneurs working with advertising for authors. When you look at three to four hundred Amazon ads added on an AMS carousel for a new release, there are lots of hungry authors out there, aside from myself.

It's not worthwhile to take on clients with a low monthly spend. The amount of work involved in building and scaling precludes it.

The service providers who take on clients and charge a small monthly fee (e.g. $150) are part-timers who'll never be able to scale. (Or they're fly-by-nighters.) Most agencies charge clients a percentage of their monthly spend. They don't want 500 clients, each with a $1K/mo spend. They want 20 clients, each with a minimum $25K/mo spend.

Clearly, some of them think to "make it up in volume," as the job lot discounters claim.

[Anarchist]

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years.

It's surprising that there aren't more ad entrepreneurs working with advertising for authors. When you look at three to four hundred Amazon ads added on an AMS carousel for a new release, there are lots of hungry authors out there, aside from myself.

It's not worthwhile to take on clients with a low monthly spend. The amount of work involved in building and scaling precludes it.

The service providers who take on clients and charge a small monthly fee (e.g. $150) are part-timers who'll never be able to scale. (Or they're fly-by-nighters.) Most agencies charge clients a percentage of their monthly spend. They don't want 500 clients, each with a $1K/mo spend. They want 20 clients, each with a minimum $25K/mo spend.

Clearly, some of them think to "make it up in volume," as the job lot discounters claim.

Sure. If you're the service provider, you can do reasonably well catering to micro accounts. Fifty clients at $150/mo (plus a setup fee) equates to a full-time income in most places. But the value you provide each client won't be anywhere near the money they pay you for your service.

In that way, it's similar to offering services as a vanity publisher.

From the client's perspective, it's a waste of money even if they don't realize it. The provider will set up a few ads, spend several weeks gathering data, and then refine the ads to (hopefully) produce a good ACoS. Then, the client pays $150/mo mostly for maintenance. A couple new ads here and there so the provider can make it seem like they're "managing the account."

[idontknowyet]

how can those reader reach ads be profitable from written word?

The ads last only five days. It can take a week or more for ads to really get going on amazon even with large cost per click. they would have to be bidding like $2 or more per click to see any kind of significant spend in 5 days.  That doesnt seem profitable at all.  Possibly with long series you could see some returns. But at $2 per click you'd need to sell at ever third click. Then have some amazing read through on a 6 to 10 book series to be profitable.

[idontknowyet]

My major caveat about the Written Words ads is that I want to advertise full-price books, the way I did on Amazon for years.

It's surprising that there aren't more ad entrepreneurs working with advertising for authors. When you look at three to four hundred Amazon ads added on an AMS carousel for a new release, there are lots of hungry authors out there, aside from myself.

It's not worthwhile to take on clients with a low monthly spend. The amount of work involved in building and scaling precludes it.

The service providers who take on clients and charge a small monthly fee (e.g. $150) are part-timers who'll never be able to scale. (Or they're fly-by-nighters.) Most agencies charge clients a percentage of their monthly spend. They don't want 500 clients, each with a $1K/mo spend. They want 20 clients, each with a minimum $25K/mo spend.

Clearly, some of them think to "make it up in volume," as the job lot discounters claim.

Sure. If you're the service provider, you can do reasonably well catering to micro accounts. Fifty clients at $150/mo (plus a setup fee) equates to a full-time income in most places. But the value you provide each client won't be anywhere near the money they pay you for your service.

In that way, it's similar to offering services as a vanity publisher.

From the client's perspective, it's a waste of money even if they don't realize it. The provider will set up a few ads, spend several weeks gathering data, and then refine the ads to (hopefully) produce a good ACoS. Then, the client pays $150/mo mostly for maintenance. A couple new ads here and there so the provider can make it seem like they're "managing the account."

Once you find a profitable ad with a large audience do you really need to do much to it? Setting up/creating an effective ad to target the right audience can be challenging, but once set those can run for years in huge genres like romance or scifi. Seems profitable. Charge 1k to set up the ads and 150 a month to check on them once a week which takes what 15min max (you could probably set up a cheat sheet and do this in under 10min).  You make 150 an hour. Take 50 clients a month or even 40 clients leave yourself a few hours to on board new clients since there will always be some coming and some going.
Wow i need to get into ads. Seriously 10 hours a week for maint and 10-20 on new clients and youre making 6 figures. That's not too shabby at all.

[Post-Crisis D]

Once you find a profitable ad with a large audience do you really need to do much to it?

Um, yeah.  You'll be battling against other advertisers who may outbid you or create more effective ads or algorithms might lower your visibility or keywords might become more or less effective and so on.  It's a constant battle.

[Anarchist]

Once you find a profitable ad with a large audience do you really need to do much to it?

Um, yeah.  You'll be battling against other advertisers who may outbid you or create more effective ads or algorithms might lower your visibility or keywords might become more or less effective and so on.  It's a constant battle.

Complicating things, there are crafty ways to uncover targets that are converting for authors. The process requires tools, and it's neither easy nor simple (that's a good thing). But once you identify such targets, it cuts your research time and expense. It's like going after the older/weaker members of a herd: easier kills.

If you're my competitor, and I identify a target that's working for you (and given time, I will), I'm taking it from you. Then, if it works for me, I'm going to erect barriers to prevent you (and others) from retaking it.

This is one of the reasons sellers' campaigns that once received tons of impressions start to flounder and die.

This isn't 2016 anymore.