Is anyone else reluctant to spend on advertising?

[Simon Haynes]

Heh. If anyone's keen to leave the little league of AMS and step into the pirahna pool that is BB CPC ads... here's my experience.


I've been running a campaign with a 75c CPC rate across four countries (UK/US/CA/AU).  I set a $40 budget and told them to spend it over a week.

Well, the clickthrough was pretty good so I cloned the ad, changed the bid to a higher amount, and told them to spend $50 as quickly as possible.

I think it took 4 minutes.

90% of the clicks were UK readers.  I scored 7 sales at $3.99 each, and no idea on borrows.

However, each of those $3.99 sales is worth $16.27 in average readthrough royalties on this particular series, so by all accounts I'm $114 up, minus the $50 spend.


(Just kidding about AMS being little league, but wow, can it take a while to spend the budget there.)



ETA: the stats were lagging and they just added a huge number of impressions and clicks.

[alhawke]

Heh. If anyone's keen to leave the little league of AMS and step into the pirahna pool that is BB CPC ads... here's my experience.


I've been running a campaign with a 75c CPC rate across four countries (UK/US/CA/AU).  I set a $40 budget and told them to spend it over a week.

Well, the clickthrough was pretty good so I cloned the ad, changed the bid to a higher amount, and told them to spend $50 as quickly as possible.

I think it took 4 minutes.

90% of the clicks were UK readers.  I scored 7 sales at $3.99 each, and no idea on borrows.

However, each of those $3.99 sales is worth $16.27 in average readthrough royalties on this particular series, so by all accounts I'm $114 up, minus the $50 spend.


(Just kidding about AMS being little league, but wow, can it take a while to spend the budget there.)



ETA: the stats were lagging and they just added a huge number of impressions and clicks.

Bookbub does really good for international sales. I had a recent run of $25 profit in Australia for one of my titles. As you know, you can't track whether the sale was from Bookbub or elswhere, but where else could it be from Australia? That being said, that ad ran me $100. So that's 25% profit. Measly, and fits the title of your post. It's also interesting to note that the minute an ad gains traction in one country or another, it seems to build on itself. Is it from people telling others 'bout it? Or is the bots sending it the same direction? Don't know.

[Tom Wood]

...

I've been running a campaign with a 75c CPC rate across four countries (UK/US/CA/AU).  I set a $40 budget and told them to spend it over a week.

Well, the clickthrough was pretty good so I cloned the ad, changed the bid to a higher amount, and told them to spend $50 as quickly as possible.

I think it took 4 minutes.
...

ETA: the stats were lagging and they just added a huge number of impressions and clicks.

Since you are getting such a good reaction, would that be an indication that a CPM campaign at a low bid (say $7/1000) would be more profitable?

[notthatamanda]

I just watched yesterday's Self Publishing Show on Youtube and they interviewed Amanda Lee (notthatamanda  ). 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. 

I'm not Amanda Lee.  I'd appreciate it if you edit your post to clarify that. Also, for the record, I prefer Dunkins.

[idontknowyet]

Cruller Donuts!!!!! Now you made me hungry!

[dgcasey]

I'm not Amanda Lee.  I'd appreciate it if you edit your post to clarify that. Also, for the record, I prefer Dunkins.

Actually, that's why I included NOTthatamanda in parenthesis.

[notthatamanda]

Okay, I misunderstood.  Thanks.

[Jeff Tanyard]

(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!).)

Welcome to the site.   

[alhawke]

(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!).)

Welcome to the site.   

Thanks! Happy to be here.
Had some trouble with my signature this morning and Timothy Ellis promptly fixed it. 
I am TOTALLY into your guys' emojis, by the way   

[Post-Doctorate D]

For whatever it's worth, which isn't much but that's never stopped me before, I started two ads last week a couple days after publishing my latest book.  Also, for whatever it's worth, when I published my latest, I went ahead and put it in Select as well as all of my other books.  They've all been out of Select since around January, so I figured it's only 90 days and I can see if my previous books get any benefit from the new release.  The new book is priced at $4.99 which, given its length (250k words), I figured that was a reasonable price.

Anyway, both ads are for the same new release.  One is with Amazon's auto targeting and the other uses keywords I picked.  So far, I don't think there are any impressions on the auto ad.  Mine has around 90 but no clicks.  So, kind of a bust either way.  I wish I was better at picking keywords.  I used my knowledge from past PPC ads as well as information I read in the thread but clearly I've lost whatever magic touch I thought I used to have.

I have a low budget, under $6/day, and I don't have high bids either.  Been burnt on high bids before, so I'd rather bid low and let my ads display on page five or wherever.  Maybe that's a bad strategy but the opposite hasn't worked so I figured I'd give it a go.

I'll let the ads run a few more days to give them a chance but I'm not optimistic so far, which is a bit disappointing as I figured this book might do better than previous ones so I wanted to do ads to give it a fair shot.

[Maggie Ann]

How do I change the status of an ad to archive? And if I do that, will it still show on the list or will it drop to the bottom?

I tried following Amazon's instructions but they lead nowhere.

[notthatamanda]

You go to the campaign, go to campaign settings on the left. Under the active/pause button there is an archive campaign in blue. Click that, it will ask you to confirm.
Seeing archive campaigns in your dash is dependent on how you are filtering them for active status.
You can filter all but archived, enabled, several options, just save the one you pick or it won't take it.  You can always look through archived campaigns again, I think you just can do anything with them, I haven't tried, but that was my impression.

[Maggie Ann]

You go to the campaign, go to campaign settings on the left. Under the active/pause button there is an archive campaign in blue. Click that, it will ask you to confirm.
Seeing archive campaigns in your dash is dependent on how you are filtering them for active status.
You can filter all but archived, enabled, several options, just save the one you pick or it won't take it.  You can always look through archived campaigns again, I think you just can do anything with them, I haven't tried, but that was my impression.

Perfect. Thank you.

[VanessaC]

Inspired by this thread, I've just started my first series AMS ads - I suck at advertising, and find it difficult to get AMS to spend my money, although I do think the very limited effort I've put in so far has been helpful in keeping my books from sinking into telephone number rankings.

Will be interested to see how this goes.

[notthatamanda]

Good luck.

[LilyBLily]

After four days, my first multi-title Amazon ad with automatic targeting has produced 56 impressions and nothing else. I'm not going to pause it just yet, but I have started a new multi-title ad with all the same parameters: 5 titles in the series, $6 a day budget, 0.31 keyword bids (broad), and a couple hundred keywords plus 45 negative keywords to keep the people wanting "Christian" and "free" books from seeing the ad. No blurb copy. I have a separate ad for the first book (now called the prequel) in the series; these two ads are for the others and they include two pre-order titles.

 

[LilyBLily]

I've just paused the auto-targeting multi-book ad test. In one week it only received 166 impressions.

By contrast, the new version with manual targeting and about 275 keywords has nearly 25k impressions already after four days and is credited (by the super slow Amazon ads dashboard) with one sale.

[Simon Haynes]

It's funny, because I had an auto-targeted ad that went wild each day, spending my budget and more, while the manual targeted ad did next to nothing.

Right now I'm running a whole mix of different ads.

When I was a kid I used to play darts, and sometimes AMS feels just the same only now I have a blindfold on.

[Maggie Ann]

I've just paused the auto-targeting multi-book ad test. In one week it only received 166 impressions.

By contrast, the new version with manual targeting and about 275 keywords has nearly 25k impressions already after four days and is credited (by the super slow Amazon ads dashboard) with one sale.

Was the new version also a multi-book ad?

[LilyBLily]

I've just paused the auto-targeting multi-book ad test. In one week it only received 166 impressions.

By contrast, the new version with manual targeting and about 275 keywords has nearly 25k impressions already after four days and is credited (by the super slow Amazon ads dashboard) with one sale.

Was the new version also a multi-book ad?

Yes, it's the same ad, and I didn't write any ad copy for it, so it's really a true test of the auto targeting versus my own choice of keywords. Targeting for western romance ought to be relatively straightforward, too, so no idea why Amazon basically didn't run the first version.

It took 20 clicks to get that 1 sale with the second version and that's worse than I ever get with my other ads. The ones that work, that is. As Simon says, it's a dartboard.

[Post-Doctorate D]

My ads end tonight.  As of right now, my auto-targeted ad had 2 impressions and nothing else.  My manual targeted ad had 361 impressions, 1 click and no sales.  The book has had one sale so far and that was due to the mailing I sent out to my list this morning.

[LilyBLily]

My ads end tonight.  As of right now, my auto-targeted ad had 2 impressions and nothing else.  My manual targeted ad had 361 impressions, 1 click and no sales.  The book has had one sale so far and that was due to the mailing I sent out to my list this morning.

Oh, bummer. You're so funny, too. There's got to be an audience for your books. Maybe you should hand sell!

[dgcasey]

The only auto targeted ads I've ever had that got any amount of impressions was my category ads. Looking at a multi-book ad I started a week ago, it has just over 31K impressions, 30 clicks and no listed sales, but a few borrows that I would attribute to it.

Looking at the guts of that ad, the Auto Category campaign has well over 15K impressions and 10 impressions. The other three campaigns in that portfolio split the remainder of the impressions and clicks and they are all manual, keywords and authors.

[Post-Doctorate D]

The campaign ended with 394 impressions, 1 click and no sales.

Still only the one sale so far but, on the plus side, that means that 6% of the people on my list that (reportedly) opened the message bought it.

My ads end tonight.  As of right now, my auto-targeted ad had 2 impressions and nothing else.  My manual targeted ad had 361 impressions, 1 click and no sales.  The book has had one sale so far and that was due to the mailing I sent out to my list this morning.

Oh, bummer. You're so funny, too. There's got to be an audience for your books. Maybe you should hand sell!

Thanks.

I really thought this one would sell too, especially around Halloween time since it involves wizards, vampires and aliens.

[Simon Haynes]

I've decided to run a few tests on ad effectiveness. Instead of running simultaneous ads on all my series starters, I'm going to cycle between them over several days. If the ads are working, then the book currently being targeted should get the most borrows and sales, right? And if the others begin to flag over the days they're not being advertised, on 'their' ad day they ought to get a jump.

(Yesterday I fired up an ad on a series starter which I'd neglected for a week. Overnight it became my most-read title, and I can't believe that's all due to the blurb I updated yesterday.)

[LilyBLily]

I killed my second multi-book test. It got 36k impressions but only one sale and ACOS was 262%. Ouch. I might revive it when both my newest books release, strictly for visibility instead of sales. Viewed in that light, it is a cheap ad venue. Otherwise, meh.

I suppose I should have waited until the weekend--prime buying time--was over, but some days it just seems as if Amazon is picking my pocket. Emotional decisions are as valid as any others.

[Hopscotch]

Thank you all for the chance to see what you've tried with AMS but nothing seems to work for me, and certainly not to the (well, modest) scale I'd hoped.  So I'm bailing on AMS after much effort, money and frustration to focus on re-upgrading my keywords.  If that helps boost sales, may take another crack at AMS.

[notthatamanda]

I've decided to run a few tests on ad effectiveness. Instead of running simultaneous ads on all my series starters, I'm going to cycle between them over several days. If the ads are working, then the book currently being targeted should get the most borrows and sales, right? And if the others begin to flag over the days they're not being advertised, on 'their' ad day they ought to get a jump.

(Yesterday I fired up an ad on a series starter which I'd neglected for a week. Overnight it became my most-read title, and I can't believe that's all due to the blurb I updated yesterday.)

Can I ask what you mean by fired up?  Was it paused, did you add keywords, did you increase bids?  I ask because if I pause and restart an ad, or start a new one, it does not take off overnight.  Takes a couple of days to even start getting some traction.  Also if anyone knows where you can buy some patience, send me a link. 

[Simon Haynes]

Sorry, I meant launched.

I do tend to start ads with higher bids than I'd like to, and then I wind them back as they start to spend all my money.

[notthatamanda]

Well that is still useful.  I'll be starting a bunch of ads tonight so I will deliberate the "higher than I like" option.  Do you find the actual cost per click lower than your bids or is it all over the place depending on everything else?

[Simon Haynes]

Usually it's lower, yes.  Maybe try one of those ads with the higher than usual option, but be prepared to rein it in (or set a low budget).  I've noticed stats can take hours to update, too.

[notthatamanda]

That's a good idea.  I usually set my budget high, but if I do high bids and set a lower budget, it will alert me.  Thanks.

[alhawke]

Do you guys fluctuate the bid for only a few hours? In other words, try a large bid of $50 for 1-2 hrs, then bring it back to $5? Anybody see a benefit of this, or is Amazon already on top of this with their algorithms?

I tried it a few times without much luck during peak hrs, but I did notice a slight increase in clicks (no sales).

[Simon Haynes]

I tend to go in at the upper end of the suggested range and dial it back to the midpoint (or lower) once the impressions are ticking over.

But I'm getting lots of clicks and no sales on my middle-grade series, so maybe I'm not the best to ask!

[Bill Hiatt]

At the risk of sounding completely out of touch (which I probably am), how does one set up a multi-book ad? I've longed to be able to do something like that for years, and when I saw references to them here, I thought, "Wow, I missed that memo." I then went to my AMS account and tried to set up a multi-book ad, but I see no references to such a thing, and as soon as I add one book to a new campaign, I get, "You have added the maximum number of products."

Clearly, I'm missing something.

[TimothyEllis]

You have to select the option without ad copy.

[Bill Hiatt]

Thanks! I'll have to try that.

[notthatamanda]

Do you guys fluctuate the bid for only a few hours? In other words, try a large bid of $50 for 1-2 hrs, then bring it back to $5? Anybody see a benefit of this, or is Amazon already on top of this with their algorithms?

I tried it a few times without much luck during peak hrs, but I did notice a slight increase in clicks (no sales).

You mean budget right, not bid?  No I haven't but I have heard that I higher budget makes the algos think you are more serious about it.  I kind of believe that is true, but I think there are other criteria that are more important.  Just my prawny opinion.

[notthatamanda]

I tend to go in at the upper end of the suggested range and dial it back to the midpoint (or lower) once the impressions are ticking over.

But I'm getting lots of clicks and no sales on my middle-grade series, so maybe I'm not the best to ask!

Ii though middle grade was completely impenetrable thanks to something taxpayer something Scholastic.  So don't feel too bad.  ;)

[dgcasey]

I tend to go in at the upper end of the suggested range and dial it back to the midpoint (or lower) once the impressions are ticking over.

But I'm getting lots of clicks and no sales on my middle-grade series, so maybe I'm not the best to ask!

I started an experiment on the 1st, where I dropped all of my campaigns from .30 cents to .20 cents across the board. My impressions have dropped, but only by about 10%. I fully expect impressions to get back to where they were before the drop once the ads have been running for a few days and start getting some traction.

I misspoke. I dropped all the campaigns, EXCEPT for the author ads. Those I left at .30 cents. If I get 30 impressions in a day on the author campaigns I feel like they've had a good day. But, the category and keyword ads have all been dropped.

One thing I have noticed since going to the lower bids near the end of September is, I seem to be selling quite a few more paperbacks. Not sure what that's all about. And the paperbacks have the worst looking blurbs of the two types.

Is anyone else having a problem getting their paperback blurbs to show with the formatting you put in? I use the Author Central dashboard to do my blurbs and the ebook blurbs look fine, but the paperback blurbs lose all their formatting and get jammed into one long paragraph.

Curiouser and curiouser.

[Simon Haynes]

Yeah, middle grade is a wash, but I loved writing the books and I am very, very stubborn.

Also, my then-publisher didn't want the series because they said the first was aimed too much at boys instead of both genders, which they believed cut the potential market in half. (The first book features two boys saving a space station together, with the help of a female technician. Book two has a boy and a girl saving the space station together. Book three has two boys going camping alone together, AND they don't even have to save a space station. With book four I managed to get a whole bunch of kids together to... save the space station.)

[Simon Haynes]

I tend to go in at the upper end of the suggested range and dial it back to the midpoint (or lower) once the impressions are ticking over.

But I'm getting lots of clicks and no sales on my middle-grade series, so maybe I'm not the best to ask!

I started an experiment on the 1st, where I dropped all of my campaigns from .30 cents to .20 cents across the board. My impressions have dropped, but only by about 10%. I fully expect impressions to get back to where they were before the drop once the ads have been running for a few days and start getting some traction.

I misspoke. I dropped all the campaigns, EXCEPT for the author ads. Those I left at .30 cents. If I get 30 impressions in a day on the author campaigns I feel like they've had a good day. But, the category and keyword ads have all been dropped.

One thing I have noticed since going to the lower bids near the end of September is, I seem to be selling quite a few more paperbacks. Not sure what that's all about. And the paperbacks have the worst looking blurbs of the two types.

Is anyone else having a problem getting their paperback blurbs to show with the formatting you put in? I use the Author Central dashboard to do my blurbs and the ebook blurbs look fine, but the paperback blurbs lose all their formatting and get jammed into one long paragraph.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I found that targeting categories only shows book (ie paperback) categories, not kindle ones. So, if you advertise against categories, you're targeting paperback buyers.

I have an email in to KDP support about this, because on the UK site you can target kindle AND book categories.

[notthatamanda]

One thing I noticed in categories is that if I set a price minimum, it would totally disregard the kindle price limit I set if the paper format or audio was higher than the limit, it would display it there.  But maybe I am missing something because I wasn't able to target by format.  I'll have to check tonight if they changed something.  I tried product ads, eg, focusing on a specific hardcover book, but those almost never get impressions. 

DG - does Amazon make more $ off your paperbacks than the ebooks?  That's one of my theories, that the algos like ads for products they'll make more on.

[LilyBLily]

One thing I noticed in categories is that if I set a price minimum, it would totally disregard the kindle price limit I set if the paper format or audio was higher than the limit, it would display it there.  But maybe I am missing something because I wasn't able to target by format.  I'll have to check tonight if they changed something.  I tried product ads, eg, focusing on a specific hardcover book, but those almost never get impressions. 

DG - does Amazon make more $ off your paperbacks than the ebooks?  That's one of my theories, that the algos like ads for products they'll make more on.

It isn't likely that a print book would make Amazon more than an ebook does, since with print KDP must deliver a physical manufactured book and an ebook is just an upload. Amazon has lots of servers and probably the Kindle division "pays" an insider rate for server use.

[Simon Haynes]

It's not so much the algos, as the fact I can't even find the kindle categories to begin with. Even browsing the tree view (before entering a search term) won't show kindle books.

I ended up selecting a few bestselling kindle books as targets, but I had to use their ASIN because searching for kindle editions in targeting doesn't show anything either.

I wondered whether it's because my kindle editions all have paperbacks associated with them. Maybe I should create a test ad for one of my shorts, which doesn't.

And, as mentioned, it works fine on the UK site and DE sites, where ebook and kindle categories can be searched for and specified. Therefore I'm pretty sure it's not user error.

Will wait to see what the KDP people say.

[VanessaC]

Love the dartboard analogy - I don't play darts, so if I could even hit the board, I think I'd be doing well ...

I'm really not doing much advertising, but just had a weird thing today on the UK store - just set up a series ad for my first (complete) series and apparently have sold 8 books in that series today - all later books in the series. Based on the rankings, looks like they're all from the UK store. This is more sales than I've had for a while!

The UK ads dashboard isn't showing a huge number of impressions, so this could be other weirdness happening, but could also be the ad. Who knows?!

Happy with the sales, either way. 

[dgcasey]

DG - does Amazon make more $ off your paperbacks than the ebooks?  That's one of my theories, that the algos like ads for products they'll make more on.

I don't know. On one of my books, for example, the ebook price is $3.99 (AMZ royalty would $1.20) and the paperback price is $12.99 (AMZ royalty would be $5.20). But, it's always been this way, ever since Amazon folded CreateSpace into their little fiefdom. The paperbacks have only recently, as in the past couple of months, started selling. I'm running no Bookbub ads or Facebook ads right now, so everything is AMS.

I'm thinking Simon might be on to something, but there is a problem with his suggestion. My category ads, such as with Cold Shivers Nightmare, have eight categories targeted. Some categories are ebook only and some are paperback only. Such as:

Occult Fiction = ebook only
Occult & Paranormal = paperback only
Paranormal & Urban Fantasy = both

Of course, I don't think it really makes a difference. Most of the paperbacks I've sold over the past couple of months, that get attributed to an AMS category campaign have been through an ebook category. I don't think readers care much about what category the books are listed in as long as they can find either an ebook or a paperback, depending on their tastes.

[Tom Wood]

I know we're overrun with advice books these days, but I think Robert Ryan has a fresh take that is guided by his experience in PPC.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZXV4MVZ/

His advice is to target only ASINs of ebooks if you want to sell ebooks because the regular keyword targeting puts your ebook ads in front of print buyers. They don't click, and if they do they don't buy. Amazon notices this and interprets it as low relevancy.

Edit: Changed ISBNs to ASINs

[notthatamanda]

It's not so much the algos, as the fact I can't even find the kindle categories to begin with. Even browsing the tree view (before entering a search term) won't show kindle books.

I ended up selecting a few bestselling kindle books as targets, but I had to use their ASIN because searching for kindle editions in targeting doesn't show anything either.

I wondered whether it's because my kindle editions all have paperbacks associated with them. Maybe I should create a test ad for one of my shorts, which doesn't.

And, as mentioned, it works fine on the UK site and DE sites, where ebook and kindle categories can be searched for and specified. Therefore I'm pretty sure it's not user error.

Will wait to see what the KDP people say.

I had to have a look, I'm able to search categories, eg, put in Young Adult fiction and got a list to pick from.
A search on Historical Fiction gave me audible choices and book choices but no ebooks.
Under products, I put in the Hunger Games and got some suggestions that didn't say the format at all (weird) and some that said paperback.
I searched The Storyteller and the kindle editions came up.
Well I'm interested in what they say, though I'm pretty soured on product and category ads for the most part.

[notthatamanda]

I know we're overrun with advice books these days, but I think Robert Ryan has a fresh take that is guided by his experience in PPC.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZXV4MVZ/

His advice is to target only ISBNs of ebooks if you want to sell ebooks because the regular keyword targeting puts your ebook ads in front of print buyers. They don't click, and if they do they don't buy. Amazon notices this and interprets it as low relevancy.

I gave up on product ads, using specific ebooks because I got next to no impressions on those, despite bidding high.  I let them sit there for months and only killed them when I was shutting down ads for those books for other reasons.

That's not to say that RR's theory is incorrect, I don't know, I'd be interested to hear if anybody has made product ads work, cause I certainly didn't break that code.

Right now I'm just running product ads on my large print edition, still getting almost no impressions, but it's not costing me anything.