Is anyone else reluctant to spend on advertising?

[notthatamanda]

Do you think it makes a difference? Ad copy or no ad copy that is. I will admit when I found out that you couldn't do ad copy in the UK or Germany it was a hmmm moment for me. But I still haven't gotten into the UK AMS.

Side note - I saw what probably was one of those multi book ads last night, on a thriller page.
Page 3 - 2 books
Page 4 - 5 books
Page 5 - 3 books

It certainly got my attention. I think it could be a really good thing to add to a launch, if it is the next in a series, or in the same genre. Neither of which apply to me.

[Simon Haynes]

If the cover matches the genre you're targeting, I don't think it matters.

I'll try duplicating my ad with no blurb and multiple covers, making it book one with a blurb. Then I'll run it with the same settings and see how it converts.

[Lynn]

If the cover matches the genre you're targeting, I don't think it matters.

I'll try duplicating my ad with no blurb and multiple covers, making it book one with a blurb. Then I'll run it with the same settings and see how it converts.

As someone who doesn't do ads, but who sees them, I haven't noticed the text ever tempting me. It's always the cover, author, etc. Most of the time, the text just turns me away. Not many people can do tempting ad text. Probably cuts down on clicks though, if that's what a person wants (and sometimes it is, I'm sure!). :D

Good luck with this experiment. I'll be watching for your results!

[Rick Partlow]

I stopped a few months ago.  I made a very slim profit from the ads I was running until the cost per click went up and my ads stopped spending.  I upped my bids and a slim profit went to a slim loss and I stopped running ads and started looking for alternatives.

[TimothyEllis]

I'm doing a test at the moment, with 21 books on the ad, using auto targeting, and a $20 spend, with a 75c bid, and the down option on.

In over a day of being live, they've spent $1.80. And it's had a tad over 2,000 impressions, with zero other stats.

Looks like a total waste of time to me.

[notthatamanda]

I would guess showing five books on one page of the sponsored ad carousel will drive the impressions up pretty quick.

I wonder what readers will think of it over time.  It's not offering them a lot of different (to them) options. Will they tune it out eventually?

[Simon Haynes]

I'm doing a test at the moment, with 21 books on the ad, using auto targeting, and a $20 spend, with a 75c bid, and the down option on.

In over a day of being live, they've spent $1.80. And it's had a tad over 2,000 impressions, with zero other stats.

Looks like a total waste of time to me.

You have to activate the hidden columns. (e.g. Clicks, CTR, CPC)

Click the Columns V  button to the left of the date selector, then choose Customise Columns, and add those three at the very least. Next, I suggest removing portfolio, start date, strategy.

[TimothyEllis]

What a stupidly designed page. 

So getting some info, but all it does is highlight even more the lack of successful bids.

75c is as high as I will go these days. Above that is just ridiculous.

[Simon Haynes]

It's only a bid, not the actual price paid (usually).  I'm bidding 75c on a different category but the average of my 11 clicks is only 50c.

Have you calculated your sell-through percentage and the amount you earn each time someone buys book 1 in any one of your series?

For example, I know that every time someone buys Peace Force, on average I will earn $9.80 profit. (Based on the average readthrough from one book to the next, and the royalty on the three books in the series.)  For page reads on the same series, it's $6.30, but that data is very new and subject to change.

So, I can afford to spend almost $10 to get one sale of Peace Force, and I'll still break even. Not going to do that, obviously, but even if I spend $2 for 3 clicks leading to one sale I'm almost $8 ahead.

[TimothyEllis]

What a total waste of time.

Almost no impressions overnight, didn't even spend a $1, and both sales and reads totally tanked. No idea if there is any causality, but its a serious sign that AMS is a total broken joke.

 

[Simon Haynes]

If you're prepared to throw $20 at it, why not try a bid of 95c and see what happens for 24 hours?

Also, are you using manual targeting or auto?  If manual, how many keywords?

[TimothyEllis]

If you're prepared to throw $20 at it, why not try a bid of 95c and see what happens for 24 hours?

Also, are you using manual targeting or auto?  If manual, how many keywords?

Auto. I'd never tried that before.

All the bids which got a click were less than 75c. Going up to 95c, wouldn't appear to change it. My gut tells me all you get for less than $2 bids, is the dregs end of KU books, or ranks below 500k.

I used to use manual with 950-1000 keywords. But my list is way out of date. Might be worth a try though, since anything current is going to be commanding $2+.

[JRTomlin]

I figured I would be called paranoid if I told this story but I was getting very good placement on the overall number one book a month or so ago.  I had almost 100 clicks with no sales.  This is on an ad/book that I'm doing exceptionally well with (conahura, knock wood).  I killed the ad and a similar thing happened with a very popular book in the genre, older book, but very high placed.  I killed that ad as well.  It really just didn't feel right given what I am seeing with my other ads (I run a lot very small ads, I find it easier to keep tabs on that way.) I thought of competition clicking.  I'm keeping a closer watch on things now.

I can't see Amazon giving us back money spent for customer just browsing and not buying, but I'm all for it if they are listening.  Fabulous idea!

I had this happen recently as well on two different ads. It was very strange. On one of them about half the clicks have since disappeared but that was still a lot of clicks with no sales.

Fortunately I keep a pretty close eye on my ads which I can do because I don't run many. For a long time I only ran one. Now I am running two.

[Simon Haynes]

If you're prepared to throw $20 at it, why not try a bid of 95c and see what happens for 24 hours?

Also, are you using manual targeting or auto?  If manual, how many keywords?

Auto. I'd never tried that before.

All the bids which got a click were less than 75c. Going up to 95c, wouldn't appear to change it. My gut tells me all you get for less than $2 bids, is the dregs end of KU books, or ranks below 500k.

I used to use manual with 950-1000 keywords. But my list is way out of date. Might be worth a try though, since anything current is going to be commanding $2+.

I don't believe that's how the bidding works.  You have to bid higher than those above you in the carousel, but the actual cost of the click is usually lower than the bid.

So, if 99% of people are bidding 75c, because it's a nice round number, you can bid 76c and get ahead of them.



In my experience, Auto ads can take a day or three to fire up. It's like Amazon is deciding where to show them

I've had an auto ad hit the spend limit three days running, and yesterday it wouldn't even start showing ads.

[TimothyEllis]

Submitted a new add.

99c bid. $25 day.

996 keywords, but not containing anything new.

18 books, being my best covers only.

Sponsored, down only.

Give it a few days and see what happens.

Each time I do this, it gives me a totally different average. Damned tab crashed twice trying to paste in 1000 keywords, and each time I got a different bid suggestion. I don't think Amazon has a clue what to recommend. They just pluck a number out of a bot's arse.

[JRTomlin]

I don't use down bidding because in my experience, and this may or may not apply to other genres, Amazon hasn't a clue about what people are likely to buy.

[fleurina]

I don't know whether it's just me and my frugal ways, but I can't seem to get over the fear of wasting money on ads.

Me too -- I'm the Scrooge McDuck of the book advertising world.

Also, keyword analysis confuses and frustrates me.  Heck, my books don't even fit neatly into categories, I'm not sure my covers are genre-appropriate -- add all that into the mix, and it's hard to decide and spend on keywords.

Most of the above points are why 'wide' suits me best, and this will likely be my last 90-day stint in Select.

My most successful ad was for my Zap Anxiety book -- but only at first -- I set it to auto with ridiculously low bids, and it sold well for the first week (of ads) then fizzled out.   

I've got a few ads starting today for the UK market -- first in each series and set to auto. I'll try some manual targeting too -- based on authors and book titles -- probably.

[notthatamanda]

I figured I would be called paranoid if I told this story but I was getting very good placement on the overall number one book a month or so ago.  I had almost 100 clicks with no sales.  This is on an ad/book that I'm doing exceptionally well with (conahura, knock wood).  I killed the ad and a similar thing happened with a very popular book in the genre, older book, but very high placed.  I killed that ad as well.  It really just didn't feel right given what I am seeing with my other ads (I run a lot very small ads, I find it easier to keep tabs on that way.) I thought of competition clicking.  I'm keeping a closer watch on things now.

I can't see Amazon giving us back money spent for customer just browsing and not buying, but I'm all for it if they are listening.  Fabulous idea!

I had this happen recently as well on two different ads. It was very strange. On one of them about half the clicks have since disappeared but that was still a lot of clicks with no sales.

Fortunately I keep a pretty close eye on my ads which I can do because I don't run many. For a long time I only ran one. Now I am running two.

I went back and checked the ad I archived and it still has the 90 clicks showing on it.  So maybe they were real clicks, maybe the bots were fooled, or maybe they didn't check it.

[notthatamanda]

I don't use down bidding because in my experience, and this may or may not apply to other genres, Amazon hasn't a clue about what people are likely to buy.

Do you use fixed bids?

[notthatamanda]

I don't believe that's how the bidding works.  You have to bid higher than those above you in the carousel, but the actual cost of the click is usually lower than the bid.

So, if 99% of people are bidding 75c, because it's a nice round number, you can bid 76c and get ahead of them.

I always bid round numbers, ending in 5 or 0. Thanks for the tip Simon. Note to self - duh.

[dgcasey]

Damned tab crashed twice trying to paste in 1000 keywords, and each time I got a different bid suggestion.

Yeah, I had that happen, too. You have to split your keyword lists into two or more lists. I just started a set of ads with 1206 keywords, so I broke that down into two ads with 603 keywords each and it worked fine. This keyword list was based off the YASIV website and twelve authors. That leaves me plenty of room to go back and add another author if I like and their YASIV findings without having to start any new campaigns.

[LilyBLily]

This is making my head hurt. I've just launched one ad with auto targeting covering five books. Low daily budget $6 and low bid $0.31 cents. I always bid on the number at least one up from a round number. People don't like a number like 26 but I've used it successfully in the past. I'll report back.

[Maggie Ann]

Damned tab crashed twice trying to paste in 1000 keywords, and each time I got a different bid suggestion.

Yeah, I had that happen, too. You have to split your keyword lists into two or more lists. I just started a set of ads with 1206 keywords, so I broke that down into two ads with 603 keywords each and it worked fine. This keyword list was based off the YASIV website and twelve authors. That leaves me plenty of room to go back and add another author if I like and their YASIV findings without having to start any new campaigns.

Thanks, Glenn. I was trying to remember YASIV.

[notthatamanda]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

[Simon Haynes]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

I take nearby titles and enter them into KDP Rocket (okay, Publisher Rocket)

[Maggie Ann]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

There's a list on the right side. It does include book covers, but also has the titles and subtitles. Unfortunately, the list doesn't include author's names. I haven't figured out how to export it. I just copy and paste it into a Word doc and spend time deleting the images.

[Simon Haynes]

It also shows all the categories a given book is in, which is incredibly useful.

[Maggie Ann]

It also shows all the categories a given book is in, which is incredibly useful.

You can also sort the book list by rank.

[dgcasey]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

You don't see a page that looks like this? If not, there is probably a setting somewhere that isn't turned on the way it should be.

[dgcasey]

There's a list on the right side. It does include book covers, but also has the titles and subtitles. Unfortunately, the list doesn't include author's names. I haven't figured out how to export it. I just copy and paste it into a Word doc and spend time deleting the images.

Cut and paste them into a spreadsheet, using the Paste Special - Unformatted Text (LibreOffice).  If you're using Excel it's Paste Special - Text. Viola! No pictures. It also makes it easy to resort and get rid of the 24 products point here part of the line.

[Maggie Ann]

There's a list on the right side. It does include book covers, but also has the titles and subtitles. Unfortunately, the list doesn't include author's names. I haven't figured out how to export it. I just copy and paste it into a Word doc and spend time deleting the images.

Cut and paste them into a spreadsheet, using the Paste Special - Unformatted Text (LibreOffice).  If you're using Excel it's Paste Special - Text. Viola! No pictures. It also makes it easy to resort and get rid of the 24 products point here part of the line.

Oh, thanks so much for that. Saves a lot of work. Off to try it.

[notthatamanda]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

You don't see a page that looks like this? If not, there is probably a setting somewhere that isn't turned on the way it should be.

That's what I get. Thanks for the tip on excel.

[Maggie Ann]

All I get on Yasiv is the pics of the books linked by all the lines. Is there someway to download a list from there?

You don't see a page that looks like this? If not, there is probably a setting somewhere that isn't turned on the way it should be.

That's what I get. Thanks for the tip on excel.

Just tried Glenn's tip and it works great. Now I'm culling same series from the list.

[TimothyEllis]

So I just cancelled the latest ad. It spent the day cap, plus a bit, and the day's money is well DOWN.

The whole system just feels like a scam to me.

[Maggie Ann]

I started my ad on Oct 3 and with page reads and a couple of sales, I've actually made $2.02. Now that could translate into Starbucks money, except since I added some keywords a week ago, I haven't had a single click. I had 12 clicks for about 1100 impressions, and now nothing. Totally flat line.

Not worried. I was going to start another ad anyway. At least I'm not losing money and I still have my $2.02. No enough for Starbucks, but I can get two cups of McD's coffee with my senior discount. 

[LilyBLily]

My brand new ad shows 0 results of any kind so far.

[Simon Haynes]

So I just cancelled the latest ad. It spent the day cap, plus a bit, and the day's money is well DOWN.

The whole system just feels like a scam to me.

Sorry it didn't work for you.  Can you check the rank for that book to see if there are any new borrows?

[TimothyEllis]

Sorry it didn't work for you.  Can you check the rank for that book to see if there are any new borrows?

None. If anything, the rank slipped back in spite of 11 clicks.

[dgcasey]

I just watched yesterday's Self Publishing Show on Youtube and they interviewed Amanda Lee. She was talking about her advertising and she is pretty much, exclusively AMS. What I found interesting is that she said she starts a campaign and then just lets it go. She doesn't play with it, she doesn't adjust it or anything like that. She just sets it and forgets it.

She said she doesn't do much of anything with Bookbub or Facebook ads. Her main advertising avenue is New Releases and at the rate she releases books, I can see why it works for her. She also said she spends about $5000 a month on advertising, which I would assume is mostly AMS.

She also said her daily routine is a table at Starbucks for about three hours. That's about how long it take for her to get 9000 words done. She is my new hero. Sorry Stephen. 

If you didn't see the show, here it is. Now, I'm off to Starbucks.  (Next week is Jeff Wheeler)

[TimothyEllis]

I'm doing one last trial, totally differently. Just curious as to what will happen, although probably nothing will.

[Simon Haynes]

Am I spending too much for the results I'm getting? Yes, almost certainly. Do I believe writing more novels pays off better than ads in the long run? Yep.

But I can work on ads when I'm not able to write for one reason or another, and it's a productive use of my time.

[Hopscotch]

I just watched yesterday's Self Publishing Show on Youtube and they interviewed Amanda Lee...her daily routine is a table at Starbucks for about three hours. That's about how long it take for her to get 9000 words done. She is my new hero.

Ah, so Starbucks is the key!  That explains my paltry success - I'm allergic to coffee.  But now I can shake off my writing blues, give three cheers for Amanda and get back to .

[dgcasey]

Ah, so Starbucks is the key!  That explains my paltry success - I'm allergic to coffee.  But now I can shake off my writing blues, give three cheers for Amanda and get back to .

I don't drink coffee either, but they do have other drinks, such as hot chocolate. I just got back and three hours and one hot chocolate later, I'm 3000+ words further along in my WIP. 

[Maggie Ann]

Ah, so Starbucks is the key!  That explains my paltry success - I'm allergic to coffee.  But now I can shake off my writing blues, give three cheers for Amanda and get back to .

I don't drink coffee either, but they do have other drinks, such as hot chocolate. I just got back and three hours and one hot chocolate later, I'm 3000+ words further along in my WIP. 

My inspiration was Panera. Spinach/Artichoke souffle, hot tea with lemon and two hours of writing. Don't think I'll ever reach 2K/hour, but I can do about 1200/hr.

[Simon Haynes]

I'm trying something new, which is to add all my humorous novels to the best-performing ad, and then pausing the other ads for those particular novels.

So, three series in one ad, instead of one good ad for one series and two meh ads for the other two.

[LilyBLily]

So far, my new ad has had 30 views. That's pathetic. OTOH, it hasn't cost me a dime, since with a paltry number of views there haven't been any clicks, either.

I can't work at cafes. The chairs are too hard, and the long drive to get to one isn't worth it. Just like swimming for exercise for half an hour but having to drive an hour for the experience, the cafe thing doesn't compute for me.

[TimothyEllis]

So far, my new ad has had 30 views.

My current test still isn't a day old yet, but has had 1800 views, and 4 clicks, costing me 90c. 12 books, dynamic, $20 a day, but only 20c bid.

I'm going to leave it going for a few days and see if it goes anywhere.

[alhawke]

I'm very frustrated with AMS and feel like it's a bit of a money pit. There was a recent article by Written Word Media claiming authors thought AMS was more effective than BookBub ads. For one reason or another, I really like BookBub better. I like creating ads and I like their wide reach.

I sold about 17 books through AMS during a major promo, but the minute I charged as much of a latte for my new book, I heard the sound of silence. It's the silence that made me give up on AMS last time.

The problem I have with ads is that the moment you get a sale, you jump up and down and figure "oh, it's working" . So then you keep going with it. And then you lose more. It's a bit like gambling for me. Well, the gambling's gonna stop. For now anyway.

(Incidentally, I'm a total newbie here on writersanctum and this is my first post so please forgive any problems with my signature (just put it up today!).)

[dgcasey]

Following Simon's lead, I created an ad that encompassed three novels (Chronicles of Wyndweir) that I started 48 hours ago. I paused The Tales of Garlan, which is the prequel to the Chronicles. I paused it with 27K impressions and 11 clicks and $2.81 in spend and no sales, but a couple of borrows. Definitely not something to get all excited about.

The new ad, after 48 hours, has 7500 impressions, 8 clicks, about three or four borrows, but no sales yet. Spend is a $1.94 on that ad. This tells me I should hit 100K impressions in a month, 120+ clicks and spend about $30. So, in terms of impressions, clicks, CTR and CPC I'd say I'm happy with the new ad. I'm thinking in the next day or so I'll do the same thing with my Cold Shivers Nightmare ads and see how those work.

Understand that my budget is only $2 per day per campaign. The Chronicles portfolio has four ads in it, so that is a budget of $8 per day between them. I think I really need to fine-tune my blurbs. That is one thing that concerns me about this method of advertising. The potential buyer has only your cover thumbnail and title to go on when they see the ad. If they get to the book's page and the blurb doesn't grab them, they will click away and it will be a wasted click paid for.

Now, as Chris Fox would say, I need to get back to the writing.   

[Simon Haynes]

I spent the whole day tweaking the title font on ten novels and three omnibus editions. Still fine tuning and perfecting, as always...

I'm also expanding my bookbub cpc ads, because I managed to get one creative to convert better than most I've tried in the past.

And yes, the blurbs on the product page are key. I'll buy an interesting-sounding book with an average cover, but I won't buy a beautiful cover with a dull blurb. (Leaving aside the writing in the first chapter, which is a whole different matter.)