Taking the Plunge

Tackling Amazon ads has been on my to-do list for a while, but I haven't had the mental bandwidth to give it a go. With real life and the day job constantly vying for my attention, not to mention projects around the house, it's been tough to stick to my writing regimen, let alone learn a new skill. Excuses, excuses. The timing for things is seldom perfect. Sometimes all you can do is say enough with the procrastinating. So that's what I did. And then I put on my student hat.

My first step was to take the free Kindlepreneur course. Venturing into advertising blind, I figured it couldn't hurt to get some sage advice. The online course was helpful and explained everything in a way that made sense. What more could you want? It's definitely an advertisement in itself for Publisher Rocket, a book marketing software program that has some very cool features. But instead of shelling out $200 for that, I used Gemini (the Google A.I.) to come up with 50 keywords related to Murders at the Manor, one of my better-selling titles. Then I plugged each of those keywords into the Amazon search bar, one at a time, to see how many were used by shoppers. That narrowed the list down to about twenty-five, which I deployed in my first ad.

Following the Kindlepreneur directions step by step, I ran a sponsored product ad with manual targeting, a daily budget of $10, and set my bids at $0.65. (Anytime a shopper clicked on my ad, I would be charged 65 cents.) These amounts were based on best practices; however, Amazon made it clear that I would do better if my budget were $25 each day and my bids were well over a buck per click. But I held my ground. Because going broke is no fun. At the end of my three-week experiment, I had 166,000 impressions (that's how many shoppers saw my ad), 228 clicks, and 8 orders. Overall, I spent $160 and earned $16. But if I factor in sequel sales and Kindle Unlimited reads occurring at the same time, I earned $88 in total. Better, but not great. Not by a long shot. 

I've decided to put the ad on pause while I recoup my losses. Once I break even, I'll try it again with automatic keyword targeting, or I might go with a book in a smaller category. (Something like space opera sword & sorcery, perchance?) This was a good learning experience, and I no longer feel clueless about advertising on Amazon. Some authors have lost thousands of dollars on their ads, and I understand how easily that can happen. But if you set your budget, stick to that budget, and pause things before they get out of hand, you can learn a lot from the data you've collected. Then regroup, course-correct, and give it another shot. 

To be continued...