Excuse me, but key words are costing us money.

[Marti Talbott]

I have a historical romance that does pretty well, but lately, the sponsored books are all over the map - billionaire, horror, murder, contemporary, witches, and very few historical romances. That must be a major turn off for readers. Why would they keep looking?

Is it that people can list any and all key words in their ads? Doesn't Amazon have a way to keep that from happening?

[LilyBLily]

I think they can list anything they want and pay for the privilege. 

This has been happening for at least the last six months to a year. Every time I look at an Amazon page, I see totally inappropriate ads, often comingled with a bestselling author's large oeuvre even though I have specifically searched for that author. As an example, when searching incognito for Nora Roberts tonight--who surely sells more books at higher prices than any scammy scummy content mill ghostwritten retreads (have I insulted them enough?)--there is a banner ad at the top from an author basically saying she writes the same kinds of books as NR, priced cheaper, there are two KU sponsored ads next, and only then are there 8 NR novels before 2 MORE sponsored ads for KU books and then 8 more NR and 2 more sponsored ads. All of the KU books are pretty obviously not like NR's. Two ads are women's fiction by Inglath Cooper, who is a well-known author, one an ebook at $6.99--less than NR's prices--and one is a paperback at $15.29, just slightly more than any of the NR ebooks on that page. 

Seriously, what is Amazon thinking?

It may be that the cut Amazon gets off the sale of even a high-priced trad-pubbed book is small relative to the money that can be made soaking indies for ad keywords.

I opened a new incognito window and saw that if I searched my own author name, there were no sponsored ads. (I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that.) So, clearly, people are bidding--and bidding high--to be on NR's page. They must be bidding to be on your page, too, or deliberately using keywords for your subgenre. Or both.

 

[Marti Talbott]

I think they can list anything they want and pay for the privilege. 

This has been happening for at least the last six months to a year. Every time I look at an Amazon page, I see totally inappropriate ads, often comingled with a bestselling author's large oeuvre even though I have specifically searched for that author. As an example, when searching incognito for Nora Roberts tonight--who surely sells more books at higher prices than any scammy scummy content mill ghostwritten retreads (have I insulted them enough?)--there is a banner ad at the top from an author basically saying she writes the same kinds of books as NR, priced cheaper, there are two KU sponsored ads next, and only then are there 8 NR novels before 2 MORE sponsored ads for KU books and then 8 more NR and 2 more sponsored ads. All of the KU books are pretty obviously not like NR's. Two ads are women's fiction by Inglath Cooper, who is a well-known author, one an ebook at $6.99--less than NR's prices--and one is a paperback at $15.29, just slightly more than any of the NR ebooks on that page. 

Seriously, what is Amazon thinking?

It may be that the cut Amazon gets off the sale of even a high-priced trad-pubbed book is small relative to the money that can be made soaking indies for ad keywords.

I opened a new incognito window and saw that if I searched my own author name, there were no sponsored ads. (I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that.) So, clearly, people are bidding--and bidding high--to be on NR's page. They must be bidding to be on your page, too, or deliberately using keywords for your subgenre. Or both.

 

That's the problem, they can easily outspend me, so that my books are on page 125 and not 5. I figure that I should at least break even on my ads. Of course, AMS lists the sales price, not my cut of the sale, so I have to keep that in mind. I guess the solution is to put all my money behind an ad for just one book, and push it to the top. It might be worth a try. have you tried that?

Do you notice which days of the week are your higher sales days? I don't have a handle on that either. I don't seem to see a definite pattern.

[notthatamanda]

You can put your own name in as a keyword and see what they recommend people bid on you.  When I started AMS I was at 40 cents, last time I checked I was at "-".  To paraphrase Bob Seger, "I'm not even a number."  Yet the carousels are pretty filled up.  200 pages on my top moving permafree and 70 pages on one of my standalones, currently floating at around 1 million in rank.  I don't see how this is costing me money though.  No offense, I just don't get it.

I saw your latest reply Marti.  If you want the top page, you can use the new bid plus feature and authorize extra high bids if you get first page placement.

[Marti Talbott]

You can put your own name in as a keyword and see what they recommend people bid on you.  When I started AMS I was at 40 cents, last time I checked I was at "-".  To paraphrase Bob Seger, "I'm not even a number."  Yet the carousels are pretty filled up.  200 pages on my top moving permafree and 70 pages on one of my standalones, currently floating at around 1 million in rank.  I don't see how this is costing me money though.  No offense, I just don't get it.

I saw your latest reply Marti.  If you want the top page, you can use the new bid plus feature and authorize extra high bids if you get first page placement.

I'll try your suggestions and see if it helps. I do like the improvements they've made.
What I meant about it costing me money, is that readers who are looking for books in a certain genre, will see the unrelated books and possibly not keep turning the pages. That pushes my book way down and unlikely to be discovered - which means I'm throwing my money to the wind.

[LilyBLily]

You can put your own name in as a keyword and see what they recommend people bid on you.  When I started AMS I was at 40 cents, last time I checked I was at "-".  To paraphrase Bob Seger, "I'm not even a number."  Yet the carousels are pretty filled up.  200 pages on my top moving permafree and 70 pages on one of my standalones, currently floating at around 1 million in rank.  I don't see how this is costing me money though.  No offense, I just don't get it.

I saw your latest reply Marti.  If you want the top page, you can use the new bid plus feature and authorize extra high bids if you get first page placement.

I'll try your suggestions and see if it helps. I do like the improvements they've made.
What I meant about it costing me money, is that readers who are looking for books in a certain genre, will see the unrelated books and possibly not keep turning the pages. That pushes my book way down and unlikely to be discovered - which means I'm throwing my money to the wind.

You don't pay for ads if they don't click, though, so being on page 5 or page 125 of a carousel costs you nothing. It's just frustrating. What I was describing above was searching via an author name, and those pages don't have carousels, so calculating whether you could get on them or not is a little more complicated. Basically, if your book is selling, it'll show up right in the middle of some other author's page. I've seen mine do that and again I was using an incognito search so Amazon couldn't identify me and make it seem as if my books were plastered all over its site. Which they are not.

The category pages are trickier, but now we can see what readers are typing in and whether they click on our books. Do this by using the reports function and viewing the search term report. That's how I discovered that people interested in spanking were clicking on my western title. I made "spanking" a negative keyword for that ad, and now it's not showing up on the latest report.

I get most of my sales in the late afternoon and evening and on weekends. This tells me most of my readers either have jobs or children keeping them busy in the daytime. Unfortunately, because Amazon ads are so screwy, I can't schedule my ads to appear only during those times. One can schedule Facebook ads that way, so if you ever could track the timing, FB ads might be a better way to go, all things being equal--which they are not, since Amazon ads take much less effort. No visuals to create, and the customers are there on the Amazon site looking to buy. 
 

[Simon Haynes]

Just wanted to point out that some FB ads cannot be set to specific times. (All the CPC ones I run can't.)  I think it's to do with the type of bidding - e.g. lowest cost, etc.

[Marti Talbott]

You can put your own name in as a keyword and see what they recommend people bid on you.  When I started AMS I was at 40 cents, last time I checked I was at "-".  To paraphrase Bob Seger, "I'm not even a number."  Yet the carousels are pretty filled up.  200 pages on my top moving permafree and 70 pages on one of my standalones, currently floating at around 1 million in rank.  I don't see how this is costing me money though.  No offense, I just don't get it.

I saw your latest reply Marti.  If you want the top page, you can use the new bid plus feature and authorize extra high bids if you get first page placement.

I'll try your suggestions and see if it helps. I do like the improvements they've made.
What I meant about it costing me money, is that readers who are looking for books in a certain genre, will see the unrelated books and possibly not keep turning the pages. That pushes my book way down and unlikely to be discovered - which means I'm throwing my money to the wind.

You don't pay for ads if they don't click, though, so being on page 5 or page 125 of a carousel costs you nothing. It's just frustrating. What I was describing above was searching via an author name, and those pages don't have carousels, so calculating whether you could get on them or not is a little more complicated. Basically, if your book is selling, it'll show up right in the middle of some other author's page. I've seen mine do that and again I was using an incognito search so Amazon couldn't identify me and make it seem as if my books were plastered all over its site. Which they are not.

The category pages are trickier, but now we can see what readers are typing in and whether they click on our books. Do this by using the reports function and viewing the search term report. That's how I discovered that people interested in spanking were clicking on my western title. I made "spanking" a negative keyword for that ad, and now it's not showing up on the latest report.

I get most of my sales in the late afternoon and evening and on weekends. This tells me most of my readers either have jobs or children keeping them busy in the daytime. Unfortunately, because Amazon ads are so screwy, I can't schedule my ads to appear only during those times. One can schedule Facebook ads that way, so if you ever could track the timing, FB ads might be a better way to go, all things being equal--which they are not, since Amazon ads take much less effort. No visuals to create, and the customers are there on the Amazon site looking to buy.

You lost me on this one. Where is this exactly?

***The category pages are trickier, but now we can see what readers are typing in and whether they click on our books. Do this by using the reports function and viewing the search term report.  ***

I sometimes pause an ad in the morning and then turn it back on later in the day to catch the after-work people on the east coast. I'm not good at analysis, so I'm not sure that actually helps, but I don't run out of budget before the end of the buying day.

[notthatamanda]

Under the default bid box it says:

Adjust bid by placement (replaces bid +)

Click on that.

Edit:  Maybe that wasn't what you were asking, but I'll leave it just in case.

[Marti Talbott]

Under the default bid box it says:

Adjust bid by placement (replaces bid +)

Click on that.

Edit:  Maybe that wasn't what you were asking, but I'll leave it just in case.

I'm confused, which is normal for me. I'm not sure which report Lily is referring to and don't see a place to search in order to find out what terms people are searching for. I need a babysitter.

[notthatamanda]

Babysitters cost a fortune, so I'll try to help you out.    Top left of your AMS screen it says

Campaigns Drafts Advertising Reports

Click on Advertising Reports

Report type is search term.  I run this report every day for the day before so I change the title to "May 7 2019 Search term report"
it doesn't like commas in the title.

Then hit Create report on the left.    It will add it to the report summary table at the bottom, say generating and then change to download.  You can click download and open it, it is an excel file.  THAT shows you exactly what people type in when you get your clicks.  I haven't had anything weird show up like Lily's spanking problem, but it did point me in the direction of some other keywords I could try.

[Marti Talbott]

Very cool, thank you so much! I need to explore more.

[notthatamanda]

No problem, but I'm calling dibs on "Lily's Spanking Problem" as a title.

[LilyBLily]

You’re welcome to it.