If you use Bookfunnel - help me out

[RiverRun]

One of my goals for 2023 is to set up a proper email newletter. I tried this once before but no one signed up. And as I was paying $70 a year for a personal domain email, I ditched it after a year. (My current website is a free wordpress blog with my own domain name. $16 a year. I will probably need to switch again to a paid email or pay for a proper website. Not sure which yet, but that's another question.)

This time I have a stand alone short story in a related genre to offer as an incentive. But how to distribute it?  I was thinking about signing up for Bookfunnel's new author plan for $20. But I'm a tiny bit confused about what I actually get for this. Will I be able to set up a landing page offering a free story on the $20 plan? Or do I need to get the $100 a year plan to be able to that? This is the website I'm looking at. https://bookfunnel.com/pricing/ Seems Like I ought to be able to answer this myself, but it isn't clear to me what I'm actually paying for.     

If anyone wants to share what services you use to deliver your email newsletter/reader magnet, I'd love to hear what you do!

[LilyBLily]

You can set up a landing page and deliver the free story, but it doesn't look as if the $20 plan collects email addresses. Which leaves me baffled, because then what would be the point? Did you read all their FAQ?

One thought is that you might want to sign up for the next plan up on a monthly basis, planning to do it for only two months. Or even one month. There's your same $20, but you get the addresses. This would require planning ahead to ensure that your story is ready to go when you sign up, so you can maximize the value of the short-term plan.

Signing up for the $100-a-year plan on the yearly basis is cost efficient only if you're going to dig in and use the service constantly. If you sign up for a lot of services billed by the year, you'll have basic carrying costs for your self-publishing venture that could be more than your sales justify.
 

[RiverRun]

I did read the FAQ which helped, but not with the questions above. I just re-read it and you're right, the $20 plan does not collect email addresses. But I think I could collect email addresses using a Mailerlite sign up box and then send a link to download my story in the first email. I think? I just wouldn't get the pretty one-step sign up/get free book landing page.  (I think.)

My goal was to have a kind of 'set it and forget it' thing allowing me to slowly accumulate a list of newsletter sign ups year after year. But I hoped to do this without paying $200 a year. It may be that this is impossible. 

[Bill Hiatt]

It's true you can save money by paying for just two months on the monthly payment option, but realistically, two months isn't like to do that much for you. Using reader magnets for signups works, but you'll likely only get a few each month, at least in the beginning.

Is your email list going to be worth spending $100 per year on? Maybe not at first. Results differ a lot. But it is definitely constraining not to have one.

Keep in mind that you get more than newsletter signup promos. You also get sales promos (which usually work best for discounted products). When I do one of those, I find the conversion rates from clicks to buys are normally pretty high--anything from 15% to over 50% (based on taking the difference from the previous month's sales over sales during the promo). (I wish I could get that kind of conversion on Amazon ads!) Of course, that does depend on how appealing the book(s) you are promoting is (are) and whether or not it's a good fit for the particular promo. Good covers and descriptions are essential (as they pretty much always are). Undiscounted books will still sell, but then the conversion is more like 3-5%.

It's easier to get a positive ROI from Bookfunnel if you use it for sales as well as signups. For the fee, you can participate in as many of those as you want (though realistically, you probably shouldn't do more than one or two a month to avoid exhausting your new mailing list subscribers and social media fans. Promotion sponsors will be understanding if new authors with no mailing list don't send many clicks to the promo, but you need to be able to generate some as time goes on, and bombing fans with too many promos at a time reduces the response rate considerably.

Another thing to consider is that Bookfunnel has good tech support for people who download your freebies, for example, helping if they have a problem loading them on their devices. This becomes more helpful if you decide to use BF to deliver ARCs or if you want to use ebooks as giveaway prizes.

As I think about it, maybe your best play is to sign up monthly for a couple of months and see how it goes. If it produces good results, you can think about a longer commitment. 

[alhawke]

Well the lower tier doesn't allow book giving. I use this all the time for ARCs review books. It doesn't allow watermarks. There's "magic" with watermarking cause you gotta wonder if it really matters. But, it's a nice addition to have with your downloads. As far as email collection, it appears like the lower tier would not allow you to build your list. Cause you can't collect email addresses. But you could run book sales promos though through Bookfunnel (which I do mostly too). For me, the lowest tier isn't worth it. You need those extra perks.

Bookfunnel $100 tier is worth it if you send a newsletter bi-monthly and release 3-4 books per year like me. If you're looking at advertising one book and rarely emailing, then I'm not so sure.

Overall, I love Bookfunnel and use it all the time.
(as an aside, I'm dabbling with StoryOrigin this month. I threw it in to see if my readers like their promos cause it's something different. But StoryOrigin is pricey too (used to be free)).

[Post-Crisis D]

When I was using Bookfunnel, I used it basically as a download service so they could handle any technical issues people had with downloading and getting the book on their device.  I used the $20 level for that.

I have my list separate with Aweber.  A free alternative is self-hosted phpList but you need a website to install it on.

[littleauthor]

I opted for the $20/yr tier for the first year I was building my email list to see how it worked and if I liked it. I drove traffic to my Mailchimp landing page which then carried the subscriber to Bookfunnel for the download. I got 60 subscribers this way. I participated in a newsletter building promo and had over 500 downloads of my short story BUT those emails were not collected. I had a link at the back to subscribe if they liked my work. I have no idea how many took me up on that. The list I have is organic and my open rates are excellent.

I'm launching another pen this year so with another newsletter and reader magnet, I opted for the Midlist Author tier with email integration for $150 usd. It's a seamless process now for the reader to click, enter their email, get their book and I get the address in Mailerlite and Mailchimp. But it took me a year to figure out where I was going with my series and if there was value in Bookfunnel.

[RiverRun]

I opted for the $20/yr tier for the first year I was building my email list to see how it worked and if I liked it. I drove traffic to my Mailchimp landing page which then carried the subscriber to Bookfunnel for the download. I got 60 subscribers this way. I participated in a newsletter building promo and had over 500 downloads of my short story BUT those emails were not collected. I had a link at the back to subscribe if they liked my work. I have no idea how many took me up on that. The list I have is organic and my open rates are excellent.

I'm launching another pen this year so with another newsletter and reader magnet, I opted for the Midlist Author tier with email integration for $150 usd. It's a seamless process now for the reader to click, enter their email, get their book and I get the address in Mailerlite and Mailchimp. But it took me a year to figure out where I was going with my series and if there was value in Bookfunnel.

I just found a page on Bookfunnel's website that explained I could in fact do this very thing. But I'm glad to have it confirmed! https://authors.bookfunnel.com/help/how-to-use-bookfunnel-with-any-mailing-list-provider/

What you describe is probably the direction I am going in. I have always liked the tag line on your posts by the way. Always makes me laugh.

[RiverRun]

Well the lower tier doesn't allow book giving. I use this all the time for ARCs review books. It doesn't allow watermarks. There's "magic" with watermarking cause you gotta wonder if it really matters. But, it's a nice addition to have with your downloads. As far as email collection, it appears like the lower tier would not allow you to build your list. Cause you can't collect email addresses. But you could run book sales promos though through Bookfunnel (which I do mostly too). For me, the lowest tier isn't worth it. You need those extra perks.

Bookfunnel $100 tier is worth it if you send a newsletter bi-monthly and release 3-4 books per year like me. If you're looking at advertising one book and rarely emailing, then I'm not so sure.

Overall, I love Bookfunnel and use it all the time.
(as an aside, I'm dabbling with StoryOrigin this month. I threw it in to see if my readers like their promos cause it's something different. But StoryOrigin is pricey too (used to be free)).

You and Bill both mention sales promos. What is this exactly? I knew Bookfunnel offered newsletter swaps, but this sounds like something different?

[RiverRun]

When I was using Bookfunnel, I used it basically as a download service so they could handle any technical issues people had with downloading and getting the book on their device.  I used the $20 level for that.

I have my list separate with Aweber.  A free alternative is self-hosted phpList but you need a website to install it on.

Its nice to know that there is a free option. I doubt I'm tech savvy enough to use it even if I get a website. Thank you though.

[alhawke]

You and Bill both mention sales promos. What is this exactly? I knew Bookfunnel offered newsletter swaps, but this sounds like something different?

Sales promos are simply book fairs where you advertise your book with other similar author books. They don't have to be discounted, but they often are. During Halloween, I ran a successful version of this showcasing only halloween titles. But most, including mine, were not on sale. I still sold books. I also am running a new release promo this month. I probably run sales promos more often than promos to grow my list (but often I run one of each during the month). StoryOrigin has one final different type of promotion - review promotions. I'm trying that this month offering a book for reviews with other authors.

Regarding integrations, I find adding integration unnecessary. I don't pay the extra $50. I just manually migrate the list.

[Bill Hiatt]

I also tried Story Origin, but what I found at the time was that there were fewer promos, and the sale promos I tried didn't sell any books for me--literally.

But that was some time ago. Perhaps it's improved and is now a more viable platform for that.