Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Marketing Loft [Public] => Topic started by: idontknowyet on September 09, 2021, 08:09:13 AM
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I think i hit the :icon_think: :shocked: :n2Str17: :dizzy stage with amazon.
So i was setting up an ad and came across a recommended bid between $3.23-13.28
This is for books that sell between .99 and 7.99 how in the world are they making a profit? Even on 3 clicks per sale you have to sell multiple books to make a penny.
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Which "they" do you mean?
If they=Amazon then mucho moola
If they=Publishers willing to pay that much for a bid, then they'd better be best-selling household names
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Sorry i meant authors. How can any author afford to pay $13 a click?
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Sorry i meant authors. How can any author afford to pay $13 a click?
They exist, but on a different plane than you or I. The math is $90,000 in ad costs for $130,000 in revenues per month.
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1. Bid isn't necessarily what you pay.
2. Amazon recommendations are overpriced.
3. The high bidders aren't selling a single book--they're selling all the readthrough of an entire series.
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Many of the experts in the indie ad field say--and amazon has said--that the suggested bids were never meant for low-priced items such as ebooks. The system was designed for all the people selling electronics and other high priced items on Amazon.
So never pay attention to the suggested bids. Ever. They're useless/ inaccurate for authors.
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The recommended bid is meaningless. You should ignore it.
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The recommended bid is meaningless. You should ignore it.
How do you know what is a realistic bid then?
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The recommended bid is meaningless. You should ignore it.
How do you know what is a realistic bid then?
Experience.
How much a particular keyword costs is what establishes a realistic bid for that keyword.
Everything else is gamesmanship. You can up the bid in order to attain better ad placement, or you can up the budget to sustain a position, or you can fine tune the keyword bids themselves to be the best ever imagined. (Yeah. Dream on.)
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They usually suggest starting with $0.35 or lower for the US market and launch a new set of keywords (100-150) x 5 per week.
Then round up the better working ones and target phrase instead of broad with the same bid.
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Trial and error.
It's not as simple as "this bid is realistic for this keyword." It depends how relevant your book is, as well. If you have a higher CTR than a similar book with a higher bid, you can still "win" the placement.
Start your bid low. If it isn't spending, keep raising it, a few cents at a time. You'll find the sweet spot. It might not be where you want it, but it will be somewhere.
Some books are a good match with AMS and some aren't.
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An Amazon ad I created a week ago has had a decent number of impressions but almost no clicks. My starting bid was 53 cents although Amazon recommended 74 cents. I've just added a ton of author names into the targeting to see if that makes a difference. Otherwise, I suspect the bids have to go up, and that's a problem. At 6 clicks to get 1 sale--which would be a decent response although not spectacular--that would wipe out any profit on the sale. If it takes 10 clicks, instant loss of several dollars per sale.