I feel like I'm not getting it...

[WasAnn]

First off, my career as a navy officer and scientist in physics for the navy means that I really don't have that salesman gene...like...at all. So, I'm coming into the world of pay per click ads with a significant disadvantage.

I've been playing with Bub ads and AMS ads, but I don't seem to be getting it to click in my head. I've not had a runaway good ad yet. I've had a couple of AMS ads over the years that had amazing ACOS (like 26% over an entire year), but that's rare. Mostly, books in KU are a shot in the dark, though when I stop them, I do seem to decrease reads.

I've no patience for long classes, and I'm not one of those people who wants to take months of writing time to study advertising maths in detail, which might mean I'll never be good at it. What I'd like to know is how you learned to crack this, or is this still a crap shoot with you? Is there daily fiddling with things to try to make it work (which is what I'm doing now), or when you look at your numbers, does it make a specific sort of sense that allows you to make confident changes?

[Simon Haynes]

My approach on AMS is limited to 'Whoa that's a lot of money for zero sales', at which point I lower the bid on that keyword, or pause the entire ad if the spend is not generating any sales.

So I basically tinker with bids, add new keywords when I spot a book which sounds like mine, and pause keywords that are wasting money.

[Maggie Ann]

My approach on AMS is limited to 'Whoa that's a lot of money for zero sales', at which point I lower the bid on that keyword, or pause the entire ad if the spend is not generating any sales.

So I basically tinker with bids, add new keywords when I spot a book which sounds like mine, and pause keywords that are wasting money.

My "whoa" moment is $2 on a keyword, $20 without a sale. Just paused an ad that brought in two full reads but no sales with a decent amount of clicks.

I have a Reading Stacks ad on this book coming up Thursday and I don't want anything else running at the same time. That will give me time to fiddle with keywords and bids on the AMS. I haven't done one in a long time and it's a whole new ballgame.

[Simon Haynes]

I've never bid more than 95c on a keyword - not intentionally at least. Let me tell you about the time I forgot the decimal point in a 25c bid...

It might be the genre I'm in, because the range is often 45 to 85c.

[dgcasey]

I'm doing the 5-Day Ad Challenge right now and the instructor told us to to create ads with a $5 budget. Mine are all $2, thank you very much.

[MCMLXXV]

I'm definitely going to have to take a course before I start advertising, because it looks completely intimidating from the outside looking in. I haven't spent a dime on it yet, and it's not something I'm looking forward to, and yet I know it must be done.

[Paul Gr]

Same here. I've learned what 'going wide' means, though, and plan to go wide with a couple of my books next month.
I'm concerned that the time I spend figuring out advertising will cut into my writing time.
But as you say, it's got to be done.
Maybe it becomes a kind of reflex action after a while, you can write and simutaneously get involved with advertising.

[Paul Gr]

Can't believe you have to take a course in advertising.
Did you have to take a course in writing before you wrote your first book?
Read a few posts by newbie promoters like us, I'm pretty sure you'll pick it up, that's my master plan anyway. 

[dgcasey]

Can't believe you have to take a course in advertising.
Did you have to take a course in writing before you wrote your first book?
Read a few posts by newbie promoters like us, I'm pretty sure you'll pick it up, that's my master plan anyway.

That actually sounds pretty arrogant. Learning to read and write are skills taught in pretty much every school. Learning to advertise your books is a totally different animal and NOT something taught in very many schools at all. To look down your nose at us peasants is not the greatest way I can see to become endeared to the community.

And the course I'm involved with right now, The 5-Day Ad Challenge, is free. Yes, it is a feeder class into a paid course, but if it returns enough money to pay for the paid course, then I'll be happy to fork it over. Because "reading a few posts" about advertising is a sure-fire way of getting a hundred different advertising plans of which most aren't worth the electrons they're printed with on your screen, while a couple of others will be gold. But, us "newbie" authors might not be able to discern which are which.

[Cobbah]

Marketing and advertising for those who haven't been trained in a retail-based office environment that depends largely on a sales force to survive is pretty much an enigma. To those of us who know its intricacies its a simple matter of understanding the product, the market and the customer. Then it's only necessary to target things in the right way and you have a success on a plate, or more likely a failure.

I've seen more marketing executives jump under a bus, figuratively speaking, than I've seen succeed in achieving their aims. Instead of a hit & miss affair it's more of a 'miss, miss, miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, miss, miss' one. There are few (very few) advertising companies out there who boast of multiple successes with their clients. What they don''t tell you is how many advertising gurus the system ate, chewed and spat out to get them there.

Writers are writers, they're not marketing or advertising gurus, they write, fullstop! The only trouble for everyone is there is no guaranteed marketing plan that will work for more than one person at a time. They have to be individually tailored and tested, tested, tested and if word gets out that something works, then it's everyone pile onto the bandwagon until it caves in under the strain. Those who have a working strategy aren't going to tell you and me about it. My point to all this is, there is no easy or reliable strategy to get your book sold. You have to find your own way and whilst all those courses will teach you to do A, B, C if everyone does it the same way, you will all arrive at the point of failure together. Learn how others do it, but not with the intention of copying them. Learn the methods, techniques and strategies and then design your own and test it to breaking point until you get it working for you.

THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, DON'T TELL ANYONE WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT.

[Simon Haynes]

I'm lucky, because I spent my working life in small business. One of my many jobs was designing ads, and that meant for the company's weekly newspaper spend as well as the annual yellow pages efforts. (Small business is very DIY. If someone has a skill you use it, even if hiring out might have been better.)

It's a handy background, even if it doesn't translate that well to AMS/FB/Bookbub.

[LilyBLily]

<snip>

THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, DON'T TELL ANYONE WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT.

If Jackie Weger hadn't told people, including me, about AMS ads three years ago, I might have given up by now because the trend of my sales was downward to nothing. So I am grateful to people who share. Advertising indie books is a complex endeavor that can take up enormous amounts of time. Information from people like Nick Erik, cutting through the chatter and freely posting lots of data because they did spend the time, is very welcome. 

However, my experience has been that no amount of clever advertising will turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. I have a series that is poison. Nothing sells it, and nothing is going to sell it because of prejudices about its content. Romance readers think it is too culturally elitist, and the culturally elite look down on it as romance. I've used various patented methods that may work for other kinds of books, but they do not work for mine. At bottom, I'm sometimes writing the wrong kinds of books, and I know it. I write the books I feel compelled to write--but that's a different thread.

Advertising can be beneficial to gaining visibility, but then what the books are is what counts. Most of the ad courses you can pay serious money for are keyed to writers who write the same kind of story in the same subgenre consistently. If you do that, then maybe take one of these courses. If, like me, you dabble in multiple subgenres, ads will only sell individual books or at best one series, so spending hundreds of dollars on an ad course would not be profitable.

The only exponential sales I've gotten through advertising were when I went from selling zero copies a month to more than zero. Otherwise, my ad results have been incremental in AMS and abysmal everywhere else.

 

[missingalaska]

My experience is the same as the OP's.  I've had some successful ads; however, by and large, I've never been able to scale up. At best, I've broken even or eked out a few dollars profit in a month. Because my bottom line was about the same with or without ads (little profit), I simply stopped advertising, saving myself the hassle. Of course, I saw the corresponding decrease in sales and page reads on Amazon. I went wide with a first in series and my sales are recovering on other outlets (but not Amazon). I now believe that AMS ads are best used strategically and not as a general sales tool. If bids drop, I might reconsider routine use of AMS -- but I don't see that happening. Instead, I'll reserve those large bids for book launches or as part of a larger marketing strategy (e.g. a Bookbub, etc) -- if I advertise at all (unlikely).

IMHO, the Amazon algorithms are too tightly bound by other factors for ads (and the resultant sales) to make enough of a difference in a book's trajectory to be worthwhile.  I believe (without a shred of proof, mind you, this is only speculation) that your long-term sales history (to include author-rank) is a huge part of the recommendation algorithm.  If you score low, Amazon will not show or recommend you to buyers (in emails, page views, or ads).  As a result, if your book tanked in the beginning due to a bad cover or poor release, ads might never rescue it from the unrelenting calculus of their algorithm.  In other words, if your early books were poor or launched poorly, the algorithms remember that and hold it against you.

[Cobbah]

"If Jackie Weger hadn't told people, including me, about AMS ads three years ago, I might have given up by now because the trend of my sales was downward to nothing."

He wouldn't have told you a bean if his lifeblood depended on it. People are magnanimous after the event and no longer depend on it. You can afford to be generous with all your knowledge, experience and techniques when you've already established yourself in a field. I'm talking about you going out and finding out what works for you (using everyone else's teachings, but mostly your own intuition) and then keeping quite about it because you are not in Jack Weger's position and you cannot afford to share something until you no longer need it. Be a shrewd investor in your own time and effort and use your knowledge wisely.

[Cobbah]

I now believe that AMS ads are best used strategically and not as a general sales tool.

For the small author the AMS ads are best not used at all. They will suck your budget dry and spit you out. There's only so much money you can throw at it and seeing as the concept of advertising bidding is designed around a 'brand awareness' unless you have one you will just feed the profit margins of Amazon or Facebook for little return.

It's a mugs game at our level.

[123mlh]

AMS is what moved me from being a small author to being a mid-level author. It was the best option for me because I didn't have enough books out to effectively use free first in series or run 99 cent promos all the time.

But I also had to get to the point where I had books worth advertising. As LilyBLily said, some books just don't sell well no matter what you throw at them. And some don't scale. I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

[Cobbah]

I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

I'd be interested in knowing what the cost of getting that $100k was

[123mlh]

I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

I'd be interested in knowing what the cost of getting that $100k was

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Of course the AMS sales numbers are list price so there's that. Then again the sales number doesn't include sellthrough, sales through added visibility, or KU revenue. So really those numbers don't tell you much. But there you have it.

[Cobbah]

I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

I'd be interested in knowing what the cost of getting that $100k was

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Of course the AMS sales numbers are list price so there's that. Then again the sales number doesn't include sellthrough, sales through added visibility, or KU revenue. So really those numbers don't tell you much. But there you have it.

So, You're spending $47K to make $44k and $18K to make $22k and Amazon is making the AMS fee plus the commission on the royalty payment. I'd say that Amazon has a great business going there. Yes, I understand the desirability of this sort of advertising - for Amazon.

[OfficialEthanJ]

So, You're spending $47K to make $44k and $18K to make $22k and Amazon is making the AMS fee plus the commission on the royalty payment. I'd say that Amazon has a great business going there. Yes, I understand the desirability of this sort of advertising - for Amazon.

Emphasis added.

[Shoe]

So, You're spending $47K to make $44k

There's no exact formula. This year I'll spend about $12k to clear $$42k. The $12k spent (on AMS) could probably have been $6k if I knew what I was doing.

[Cobbah]

So, You're spending $47K to make $44k

There's no exact formula. This year I'll spend about $12k to clear $$42k. The $12k spent (on AMS) could probably have been $6k if I knew what I was doing.

How much of that would you have made without AMS spend?  We're looking for the difference between organic sales and AMS generated sales. Let's be conservative and say if your books are worth $100k with AMS, they would be worth $20k without it - fair?
So your real gain is $24k for a cost of $47k your gains won't look quite so good on that basis. I'm not saying you're not onto a good thing, but I think it could turn bad PDQ and that gain could turn into a loss quite quickly. Just my viewpoint. Ignore it if you wish.

[Shoe]

How much of that would you have made without AMS spend?

I paused AMS for two months and my net actually went up. My AMS campaign had been rather less than intelligent (throw a lot of money at it, see what happens).

I can only guess on earnings without AMS. I suspect my net would drop to $30k without it. That's on ten-plus books, several of which are really novellas. Organically, my books rank between 30k-200k. AMS puts them between 10k-120k, with occasional dips to 7k and slips to 300k.

So your real gain is $24k for a cost of $47k your gains won't look quite so good on that basis. I'm not saying you're not onto a good thing, but I think it could turn bad PDQ and that gain could turn into a loss quite quickly. Just my viewpoint. Ignore it if you wish.

Lost me there.

[notthatamanda]

Personally I'd be thrilled if I could spend 50% of my gross on AMS ads and ramp that up to the numbers 123mlh is talking and beyond.  Covers and editing is pocket change when you are talking that kind of gross.  Even if my profit was 40% of my gross that would still be killing it in a lot of business sectors.   1 million gross, 500K to Amazon for ads, 100K for other stuff, 400K in my pocket.  Yes please.

[Cobbah]

Personally I'd be thrilled if I could spend 50% of my gross on AMS ads and ramp that up to the numbers 123mlh is talking and beyond.  Covers and editing is pocket change when you are talking that kind of gross.  Even if my profit was 40% of my gross that would still be killing it in a lot of business sectors.   1 million gross, 500K to Amazon for ads, 100K for other stuff, 400K in my pocket.  Yes please.

Given those kind of numbers who wouldn't - Hell yeah! I'd have some. Trouble is for most people those numbers don't exist. When you add up the ancillary costs in terms of time, effort, designwork for ads, the stress of it all. Then you do a net accounting of everything. You could possibly have done better just writing a few more books and made that much money anyway (another $24k not the $100k)

I have to be clear that I'm against AMS entirely because I think it is a gamble. It's a gamble that you can outbid other authors and the only winner (By a vast amount of money) is Amazon. I'm reluctant to give them a single cent more than I have to. My prejudice of them rules my view on AMS. So please excuse me if my position seems irrational. It's not, but then again it probably is. 

[notthatamanda]

Oh, I understand your point of view much better now, thanks.
I like writing ad copy, and most of my AMS work is done at night or first thing in the morning when I'm useless for other things anyway.

[Cobbah]

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

[Post-Doctorate D]

You could possibly have done better just writing a few more books and made that much money anyway (another $24k not the $100k)

Once you understand how it works and if you can make it work for you, it is largely a matter of spending money and not a heavy time investment, which means you can increase the sales of existing books without taking too much time at all away from writing more.  Win-win.

I have to be clear that I'm against AMS entirely because I think it is a gamble. It's a gamble that you can outbid other authors and the only winner (By a vast amount of money) is Amazon. I'm reluctant to give them a single cent more than I have to. My prejudice of them rules my view on AMS. So please excuse me if my position seems irrational. It's not, but then again it probably is. 

When I ran Google ads way back when, there was a formula I had learned/been given from somewhere that helped to reduce your chances of losing money.  There's never a guarantee that you won't lose money but you can do what you can to minimize the risk.  I used to advertise physical goods with Google ads.  These were goods that you would most likely buy once and probably never again.  They would last for years and, unless you managed to break it, you wouldn't be likely to buy another.  Probably only 10% of buyers would become repeat customers.  I stopped advertising those products with Google ads when the cost for a click was equal to the profit on the item.  If 100% of the people that clicked on the ad made a purchase and 10% of them made a repeat purchase, sure, then you would make money.  But 100% of people that click are not going to buy, so I was pretty much guaranteed to lose money.  If your entire profit margin is eaten by the cost of a click, what's the point?  It might make sense if I was selling an item they would buy every month, because then you're only losing one month's profits in the hopes of retaining a customer for many more months.  But for a one-off purchase?  Nope.

I get not wanting to give Amazon a penny more than you have to, but they're the largest market and often the first place people think of to buy books or eBooks.  Other companies have/had a chance, but they seem to keep dropping the ball.  B&N maybe had the best chance and they occasionally try to kick the ball around but it seems like they inexplicably deflate the ball first and then scratch their heads wondering why the ball doesn't bounce very far.

[Cobbah]

Once you understand how it works and if you can make it work for you, it is largely a matter of spending money and not a heavy time investment, which means you can increase the sales of existing books without taking too much time at all away from writing more.  Win-win.

I understand how it works. That's why I hate it so much because it's pitting author against author while Amazon sits back and wins 100% of the time.

I get not wanting to give Amazon a penny more than you have to, but they're the largest market and often the first place people think of to buy books or eBooks.  Other companies have/had a chance, but they seem to keep dropping the ball.  B&N maybe had the best chance and they occasionally try to kick the ball around but it seems like they inexplicably deflate the ball first and then scratch their heads wondering why the ball doesn't bounce very far.

I'm not in KU and my books sell wide better than they do on Amazon. So, I wouldn't be able to leverage it enough to make it worthwhile anyway.

[notthatamanda]

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

Given that I'm a SAHM and we've been on one income for 15 years anything I make is a bonus.  $120K-$77K = 43K and I don't have to commute, or put up with corporate BS, make my own hours, work as much as I want.  Again, yes please.  Everyone's situation is different, but I have personally would have no problem with this.  It's just the cost of doing business.  I doubt I could make $43K without ads, not that I'm close to that but this is my best year so far.

Just in the interest of transparency, I took this year to learn ads and am putting every cent I make back into the business now.  Happy to break even until I can break out.  I mean breaking even on the cost of everything, not just AMS.

[Post-Doctorate D]

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

You would spend $77,000.

Then you would see a check or deposit in the amount of $120,000 in your account.

Of that, $43,000 is profit and all yours.  (Well, until the tax-man taketh away . . .)


What if it wasn't Amazon?  What if, today, you sent me* $77,000 and in sixty days I send you $120,000?


Or, to look at it another way, suppose you looked at your bank account today and you had $78,000 in it.  You transfer $77,000 away (to Amazon, me, whoever) and don't look at your account balance for the next sixty days.  Then you look and instead of $78,000, you have $121,000.

And what if you transferred away $120,000 of that money and checked your bank account sixty days later and found $188,000 in there?

Would it bother you that Amazon made $197,000 and the result is that you have $110,000 more in your account than you did four months earlier?

If you hadn't spent that money, Amazon would have earned nothing and you would have $78,000 in your bank account instead of $188,000.





*This is an example.  Don't send me money.  You would not be getting $120,000 back in sixty, or even six hundred, days.  I mean, feel free to send me money, sure.  Just don't expect anything back, ever.

[notthatamanda]

Once you understand how it works and if you can make it work for you, it is largely a matter of spending money and not a heavy time investment, which means you can increase the sales of existing books without taking too much time at all away from writing more.  Win-win.

I understand how it works. That's why I hate it so much because it's pitting author against author while Amazon sits back and wins 100% of the time.

I get not wanting to give Amazon a penny more than you have to, but they're the largest market and often the first place people think of to buy books or eBooks.  Other companies have/had a chance, but they seem to keep dropping the ball.  B&N maybe had the best chance and they occasionally try to kick the ball around but it seems like they inexplicably deflate the ball first and then scratch their heads wondering why the ball doesn't bounce very far.

I'm not in KU and my books sell wide better than they do on Amazon. So, I wouldn't be able to leverage it enough to make it worthwhile anyway.

How is this different from giving the money to Bookbub or Freebooksy?  Doesn't that pit author against author?  I think we have a better chance at competing at AMS than at Bookbub.  AMS will run your ad if you want to bid high enough, and even if you bid really low you may get some impressions, clicks and sales. 

ETA - I'm not trying to convince you to do AMS.  Just waiting for dinner to cook and I'm finding the conversation interesting.

[Post-Doctorate D]

Does it help that some of the "authors" you're competing against are really just Internet marketers that'll be gone the minute they spot easy money to be found elsewhere?

[notthatamanda]

I just want to add, it's the long game.  AMS is just a buy in.  Just like a bookbub or a freebooksy, the promotion is getting you up in the ranks, which means more exposure and more sales.  If you are in a smaller category it's easier.  Romance is pretty brutal.

[Cobbah]

I think it's a lot about me and my scruples. I spent a lifetime in advertising and marketing so I know the score. Amazon is feeding off authors and I think its immoral. Yes, there are countless other instances in the world where the feeding frenzy begins the moment a chance comes along for a quick buck. However, Amazon is my pet hate so I pick them out every time.

I hate Facebook equally, Mark Zuckerberg is a cretin.  So, I'm a bit like if I don't like you I won't give you money. I don't like the government or the tax man so I don't give them money either (unless I'm forced to). The same goes for charities I've done extensive research into them over the years and they don't get my money either. Don't get me wrong, if you're needy I'll slip you cash (don't ask) and I make my own donations, but generally speaking I won't support these people if I have a problem with them.

Advertising is an addiction, because it gives you a temporary high, but to keep the high you have to maintain the pressure. I cite the age-old story of Walkers and Smiths crisps as an excellent example. Smith's was number one and decided they were safe enough to stop their advertising spend. In just one year they were overtaken by Walkers who have been number one ever since despite Smiths spending more every year to try and regain their spot.

I would rather write another couple of books, publish and get the $24k that way, and then get it for doing no further work for the next ten years. I'm a writer now, not a businessman. I'm happier in that role.

[Shoe]

I think it's a lot about me and my scruples. I spent a lifetime in advertising and marketing so I know the score. Amazon is feeding off authors and I think its immoral.

Do you have books on Amazon? Take them down. Problem settled.

[missingalaska]

I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

I'd be interested in knowing what the cost of getting that $100k was

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Of course the AMS sales numbers are list price so there's that. Then again the sales number doesn't include sellthrough, sales through added visibility, or KU revenue. So really those numbers don't tell you much. But there you have it.

So, back to the original question. Did you start big or did you scale up?

[Rosie Scott]

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Of course the AMS sales numbers are list price so there's that. Then again the sales number doesn't include sellthrough, sales through added visibility, or KU revenue. So really those numbers don't tell you much. But there you have it.

This mirrors my experience as well (save for exact numbers). I started out using AMS in late-2017. I made less than $100/month by releasing alone. The month I started using AMS I made four figures and it built from there. My ad spend on AMS seems crazy, but my income is three to four times that. My ACoS has never been below 100%, but I know for a fact AMS has led to better visibility, tons of KU borrows, and sellthrough because if I stop the ads everything drops off a cliff.

There were two things I did recently that boosted sales and decreased my ACoS. One: I increased the daily budgets of my best-selling books by a zero each (going from $200 spend per day to $2000, for one example). AMS never spends my budget, but it certainly tries, leading to more sales and exposure. Two, I spent a few hours one night studying the "Sponsored Products Search term report" and refining/tweaking all my campaigns with new keywords, negative keywords, etc. Not saying these will work for everyone, but they've helped me.

To summarize, WasAnn, I'm not the best at AMS ads (I'd venture to say that title belongs to Anarchist), but I'm learning as I go. Like Cobbah mentioned, it's "miss, miss, hit, miss, miss, hit" but I've learned from misses and hits and stick with what works to refine it so it's closer to "hit, miss, hit, hit, miss, hit". It helps that I have a background in advertising real estate. The two fields are vastly different, of course, but the concepts of learning your market, changing how/what you market to coincide with demand fluctuations, and continuously learning new tips and tricks are relevant to both. I pinpoint what works and then strive continuously to make it work better. I've only used AMS since 2017, but "what works" seems to change on a continual basis.

[Maggie Ann]

What are negative keywords? I've seen them mentioned before.

[dgcasey]

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

So, you're one of those that thinks Amazon is supposed to be a charity, giving their goods and services away for free. Sorry, but I don't think the world works that way.

[dgcasey]

What are negative keywords? I've seen them mentioned before.

If you look at your ads dashboard, at the keywords report and see a keyword that pops up a lot, that doesn't seem to be relevant to your books and is getting a lot of clicks, but no sales, you put that keyword into your negative targeting list and it will stop serving.

[Maggie Ann]

What are negative keywords? I've seen them mentioned before.

If you look at your ads dashboard, at the keywords report and see a keyword that pops up a lot, that doesn't seem to be relevant to your books and is getting a lot of clicks, but no sales, you put that keyword into your negative targeting list and it will stop serving.

Thanks. I think I have a lot of those. 

[LilyBLily]

An interesting discussion. If I got off the Amazon ads treadmill, I'd have to do a lot more work of the sort that does not appeal to me. I'd have to create ads for Facebook and BookBub, something at which I have already failed. I'd have to repeatedly and selectively discount my books for BookBub, which is tedious and annoying at best and which at worst will get me into battles with Amazon when it matches my sale prices. I have done Kobo promotions without much success. A handful of sales. Most of the time, Kobo declines me.

I have just finished an experiment of not advertising one of my women's fiction titles on Amazon. It sold almost no copies during that period. Now that I am advertising it on Amazon again, it is selling again. The ad makes me a profit. Historically, book publishing has been a 6% profit business. Grocery stores are a 1% or 2% profit business. Volume makes a huge difference. Next year, I'll have more money to play with and maybe I'll throw around a bigger daily budget and see what happens. But many people have found that a bigger budget does not guarantee that Amazon will show their ads to more people. In fact, often Amazon does not spend all our budgets. Meanwhile, FB and BB ads eat them up and I personally have never made a profit on them.

I know some people hate Amazon, and I understand. Amazon is not a good company. Almost no company is, though.

[123mlh]

I'll hit $100K in gross sales on my AMS dashboard this year. More than a third of that will be for one title.

I'd be interested in knowing what the cost of getting that $100k was

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Of course the AMS sales numbers are list price so there's that. Then again the sales number doesn't include sellthrough, sales through added visibility, or KU revenue. So really those numbers don't tell you much. But there you have it.

So, back to the original question. Did you start big or did you scale up?

I scaled up over time. I spend more in one month now than I did in my first year or more of running the ads.

First step for me was trial and error between Sponsored Product and Product Display ads. Once I zeroed in on Sponsored Product ads then it was a matter of figuring out what budgets/bids/keywords worked for each book and also applying those lessons more generally across all of my ads. I've never done a lot of ad copy testing. My focus is more on how to target the ads and adjusting to the competition. I find something that works, push it as far as it will go, and then try to keep it going for as long as I can. I also tend to shut down low-performing ads or keywords fast.

[notthatamanda]

There were two things I did recently that boosted sales and decreased my ACoS. One: I increased the daily budgets of my best-selling books by a zero each (going from $200 spend per day to $2000, for one example). AMS never spends my budget, but it certainly tries, leading to more sales and exposure. Two, I spent a few hours one night studying the "Sponsored Products Search term report" and refining/tweaking all my campaigns with new keywords, negative keywords, etc. Not saying these will work for everyone, but they've helped me

So Rosie, were you spending close to the $200 a day before you raised it?  I don't know how to phrase this.  I run a lot of smaller campaigns, and I generally do $10 each.  If I raise them to $100 are the algos looking at me going, damn, this girl is serious, let's place her ads more?  If I am budgeting $10 a day, it might only spend $2-5, but if I budget $50 a day it will find a way to spend $20?

[TimothyEllis]

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Back in 2018, I had 3 books where I spent 3 figures to make 5 figures, on each book. But how much was this AMS, and how much the books simply hit the spot and hit it out of the ball park on their own? The stats are very inconclusive.

First book in 2019, I spent 4 figures to make 4 figures. Second book I spent nothing to make the same 4 figures. Third book I spend the same nothing to make the same 4 figures.

AMS worked better in 2018. All the changes this year imo, broke AMS. But from my stats, AMS probably never worked at all. I just deluded myself into thinking it did.

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

Me too.

But that is why I gave up on AMS. I'm a writer, not a speculator.

[123mlh]

Right now I'm at $91K in Sales on the dashboard with a Spend of $47K. YTD is $40K with a spend of $18K.

Back in 2018, I had 3 books where I spent 3 figures to make 5 figures, on each book. But how much was this AMS, and how much the books simply hit the spot and hit it out of the ball park on their own? The stats are very inconclusive.

First book in 2019, I spent 4 figures to make 4 figures. Second book I spent nothing to make the same 4 figures. Third book I spend the same nothing to make the same 4 figures.

AMS worked better in 2018. All the changes this year imo, broke AMS. But from my stats, AMS probably never worked at all. I just deluded myself into thinking it did.

It makes me sick in my head to think that I'd have to give Amazon roughly $77,000 to earn $120,000. I feel quite ill even imagining it.

Me too.

But that is why I gave up on AMS. I'm a writer, not a speculator.

I know that personally for my books they don't sell without ads. Everyone's experience is different.

[JRTomlin]

I only advertise one book. It is the one that has the biggest sales over a number of years and is a good entry to what I write and my style. I have not only a very good sell-through but believe that people who buy it often buy my other series. It is worth what I spend. I must admit I have tried advertising some of my other novels and for whatever reason (damned if I know) my AMS ads for the others have been fail fail fail fail fail, so I stick with the one that works. I wish there were something on the other retailers that worked as well.

[dgcasey]

I know some people hate Amazon, and I understand. Amazon is not a good company. Almost no company is, though.

I know some people say that and maybe, in some instances it might seem true. But, what would your life as a writer look like right now, IF Amazon didn't come along and create the Kindle and open up a huge portion of their book business to ebooks AND open up a huge portion of their ebook business to independent authors?

What I mean is, any author that thinks Amazon is the devil is quite welcome to leave Amazon, get themselves a traditional deal and go at it that way. I just hope those authors make sure to tell their publishers they don't want to be sold through Amazon for any reason.

[Lynn]

I hate Amazon too these days. However, anyone who thinks I'm going to cut my nose off to spite my face is an idiot just out to make a point that's not really a point but an argument for argument's sake.

I mean, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I can hate something and what it does to (or how it treats) (some) (group of) people and still find value in it.

(Quite like the bible, to be honest.)

I figure it's safe to bring that up, simply because we've already reached the "if you hate Amazon, don't ever sell anything on Amazon ever" part of the discussion.

As if...