# Amazon New Ad Button for Select



## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Howdy,

There is a new amazon ad button for KDP Select people. It is where the free promotion and kindle select countdown deal. Any idea the effects this will have on people who don't use it? Will you have to use ads to increase exposure? Will it kill most non-select authors who don't have major followings?

It is brand new so the cpc is five cents. You only pay when someone clicks on the ad and gets directed to your book. I am giving it a try. It is a one hundred dollar minimum for your campaign budget. I'll let you know how it goes!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I do not have this option on my last title that is in KDP Select. However, I know where the Amazon ad network lives if I wanted to go buy CPC ads for my book. My issue is why am I going to pay a company that already takes a 30% cut of my product's sale additional monies to advertise my book on their site? Something is fundamentally wrong with that system. I think I will stick with my plans of building my own following.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I do not have this option on my last title that is in KDP Select. However, I know where the Amazon ad network lives if I wanted to go buy CPC ads for my book. My issue is why am I going to pay a company that already takes a 30% cut of my product's sale additional monies to advertise my book on their site? Something is fundamentally wrong with that system. I think I will stick with my plans of building my own following.


Same here. I don't see the ad button on my Select titles, and I'm kind of glad.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

I believe they are split testing. The system has been around for six months or so.


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Mark Dawson said:


> I believe they are split testing. The system has been around for six months or so.


Interesting. I wonder how they selected the people to offer it to then. Maybe those who have most of their titles in Select and use the free promotions often? I wouldn't have known about it until I went to set a free promotion today.



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I do not have this option on my last title that is in KDP Select. However, I know where the Amazon ad network lives if I wanted to go buy CPC ads for my book. My issue is why am I going to pay a company that already takes a 30% cut of my product's sale additional monies to advertise my book on their site? Something is fundamentally wrong with that system. I think I will stick with my plans of building my own following.


I get that argument. My rationale is to test it out to see what it is like and I think it could be a boost for more exposure for my backlist. I also hope that it can have massive trickle down effect since it is part one of a serial that I'm using it on.

We shall see. I'll let you know how it goes.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

I see it now, but when I click on it, I get:

Oops! The page you requested is currently unavailable. 

LOL!


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Cherise Kelley said:


> I see it now, but when I click on it, I get:
> 
> Oops! The page you requested is currently unavailable.
> 
> LOL!


It let me set up two of them for a test run. I picked two different books, offered limited funds, and then picked two different options for who to target (for experimentation purposes). I figure it's worth a shot. They okayed my advertising options within about fifteen minutes each, and they start tomorrow, so I'm mildly curious. If it doesn't work, I'm only out a couple hundred bucks. If it does, it could be a really good thing. I'm just checking it out now. I have no idea of knowing if it will be good or bad at this point.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I finally see it, they changed my Manage Benefits to Promote and Advertise. I"m reading the terms now. It says Amazon Network Property. You all should know they just opened up CPM advertising to affiliates. I'm willing to bet these "ads" are not going to appear on Amazon.com proper, but on Affiliate sites. In fact, so far in the T&C of the CPC stuff offered to authors/publishers Amazon Network Property is defined as :

""Amazon Network Property" means (a) the Amazon Site; (b) any website or other online point of presence operated by Amazon or our Affiliates; and/or (c) any other website, device, service, application, feature or online point of presence through which the Amazon Site, any website of any of our Affiliates and/or products or services (including the Services) available thereon are syndicated, offered, merchandised, advertised or described."

Plus, there's also a provision that none of your materials will be aimed at people under 13. And no obscene material. Just make sure you all read the fine print.


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

More info here (link is on the Reports page):

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AVFOAV1KG90UW

"With advertising for KDP Select, you can use Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) to purchase advertising to promote your KDP-Select-enrolled books on Amazon.com."

I guess I'll never get to try it since my last title leaves Select tonight.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

I just booked it. 100 bucks, 15 cent CPC. For two products similar to my book. 

EDIT: Just booked a second one, this time for genre. See how things go.


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

A hundred bucks As the minimum? Uh, no thanks. Let's see, I get a dollar and some change for a book borrowed in Select. I'd have to have at least 80 borrows before I even get in the black. Sure, I might get some sales too, but I bet KU subscribers are targeted since the books are in Select.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2015)

This could be a game changer for the people who can master this.

But until someone figures out the parameters it seems a bit dangerous to experiment with blind.


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## Lionel&#039;s Mom (Aug 22, 2013)

I'd be interested to see what the ads look like and where they are, if anyone sees their ad and can link it, that would be much appreciated. 
I'm not in Select, nor would this entice me to go in, but if they wanted to take my money anyway, I'd probably give it a try.  

It will be interesting to see what the actual ad looks like, if it pushes for people to borrow or just tries to get them to click on your book. If it's all about "Read this book for free with KU membership" which already irks me because 9.99 a month isn't free! and also, you're really paying them to help advertise their program. 
But, only if that's what the ads look like. It could end up being really good, and like I said, I'd definitely try it if they wanted my non-select money, lol.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2015)

For instance, I'm looking at 'Target ad by product.' And then it lets me choose as many products as I like.

Doesn't seem right. It seems the more products I choose the more I'd be paying. But I can't find out where it says how any of that works.


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

ShaneJeffery said:


> For instance, I'm looking at 'Target ad by product.' And then it lets me choose as many products as I like.
> 
> Doesn't seem right. It seems the more products I choose the more I'd be paying. But I can't find out where it says how any of that works.


I think it will be highly useful for some genres It says the suggested cpc bid for romance books there for me is five cents. That can pay dividends for a series. If the ad helps your first book take off then your subsequent books will do well. It will also help non ad viewers find your book because your ranking will go up creating more exposure. The ad is essentially your book cover and its title, but it is targeted to people who like that type of genre and you only get paid if they click through to the book page.

You can also do an ad for target a similar product.



ShaneJeffery said:


> For instance, I'm looking at 'Target ad by product.' And then it lets me choose as many products as I like.
> 
> Doesn't seem right. It seems the more products I choose the more I'd be paying. But I can't find out where it says how any of that works.


I believe it is more because you are competing against more people for your ads to be shown. I use to do internet marketing and this was the case for other cpc sites like google adwords. The more people in the ad pool then the the higher you have to pay usually.


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## GP Hudson (Sep 16, 2013)

I don't see anything that says where on the page your ad will be displayed. Am I missing something? Does anybody else know where these ads will show up?


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

GP Hudson said:


> I don't see anything that says where on the page your ad will be displayed. Am I missing something? Does anybody else know where these ads will show up?


The ones I've seen have been fairly high up on the product page -- right around where the Kindle All-Star banners appear.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*************


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Ads booked by beta users have been showing up on *every* ebook product page for the last 6 months.
> 
> They appear on the amazon.com site just under the 'Send a Sample' box on the right side of the page.
> 
> ...


I think, like everything else, it's going to be a learning process. They might not work. I have no idea if they will. I'm willing to try. Why not? I'm just going to play around with them for a few weeks and see what happens.


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## jimkukral (Oct 31, 2011)

The way they're doing it doesn't make sense and is poorly implemented. a MUCH better way would have been to sell ads on the post order page, or thank you page. For example, if you bought a book on "bigfoot", then I could buy a spot on that thank you page as "Other books similar to this you might like". I'd gladly pay for that. But they are burying the ad the way they're doing it now and it won't be effective.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

*************


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

My advice is to stay clear of this. I was a tester. $600 and lots of clicks resulted in... drum roll please... $28


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## H.G. Suren (Jan 23, 2012)

This is like pushing away the authors with small budget, $100 is much I guess.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2015)

This: My issue is why am I going to pay a company that already takes a 30% cut of my product's sale additional monies to advertise my book on their site? Something is fundamentally wrong with that system.


First: I agree with you. This seems like double dipping. Shouldn't Amazon focus on DISCOVERABILITY i.e. good books get highlighted naturally.

Second: This is mirroring what Amazon does with Publishers and what bookstores do. You first give a share and then you give an additional share for 'placement'. Same in grocery stores.

Third: This will really squeeze authors, unless of course it's ineffective. If it takes off, then you have a bidding system, and any auction based system results in people gradually leaving all their profits at the table. Look at what happens with Google Adwords. The cost per click for searches like 'free romance books' and 'free kindle books' is $1 to $2. For some searches it's $4. For a single click. I'm not even sure how these people who pay $2 per click make back their money.

This is also how Facebook is growing its revenue in mobile - It's letting app developers pay crazy amounts for clicks on app install ads - hoping it leads to app installs.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> My advice is to stay clear of this. I was a tester. $600 and lots of clicks resulted in... drum roll please... $28


You did better than me. I got a fair number of clicks but no sales and I think it cost me $2 in the end.


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## Susanne O (Feb 8, 2010)

I was one of the beta testers on this. Close to 2000 clicks- 0 sales. 

Won't do that again.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Minimum $100 buy-in makes this pretty unfriendly for newbies even if you get past the galling fact that they're demanding exclusivity _for the right to pay them_

The system seems cribbed from Project Wonderful and as the news of some of the reasons for rejection start trickling in, it sounds like there's going to be a surprisingly small pool of people who are in both a position to use this and to benefit from it.

The buy-in still has me floored though. Why not just cause having an ad active result in a 60% royalty on purchases through the link instead of 70? Or take a flat fee. They're already bilking authors on 'delivery charges', so why not?


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Actually, I've just looked and I got 9,000 impressions, 4 (four) clicks and zero sales. I'd have done better wearing a sandwich board in the high street.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Lydniz said:


> Actually, I've just looked and I got 9,000 impressions, 4 (four) clicks and zero sales. I'd have done better wearing a sandwich board in the high street.


I'd pay money to see that! So yes, it would be better time/money spent


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I'd pay money to see that! So yes, it would be better time/money spent


I'll be standing outside Greggs at lunchtime.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Lydniz said:


> I'll be standing outside Greggs at lunchtime.


Cream scone for me please!


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Maybe I should start a marketing thread.


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

This likes it could be a complete game changer *for me*.

I can't see how it'll be useful for most people on kboard, though.

As a niche nonfiction writer the ability to target nonfiction to products just sounds so cool. My mind fills up with ideas (that are not even the kind of book I write) like advertising a book on how to solve teething problems linked to kids' toothpaste, or a book about how to use a specific brand of digital camera to someone who's bought that brand...

Useful for fiction writers? I somehow can't see it. Too small a margin, too hard to target the add at the specific market that will buy your book.

Useful for nonfiction writers? I can see people making careers out of it.


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## Kevin Chapman (Jul 5, 2014)

I'll hopefully have an interesting perspective to offer on this in a month or so. I have two 6 part serials that both been out for a little while, and neither of them are bothering the best seller lists. Until last week, they were both in KDP Select, and between the two of them I probably average no more 2-3 sales a day, and maybe another 2-3 KU borrows a day.

KDP Select expired on the first one last week, so I pulled episode one out and it's just gone perma-free. The other 5 books in that series are still in KU. The other series, I've just signed episode one up for a $0.05 CPC $100 campaign, and again the rest of the series remains in KU.

These two books perform pretty much identically at the moment, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some useful data about the benefits of AMS vs. perma-free.


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## kimberlyloth (May 15, 2014)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> My advice is to stay clear of this. I was a tester. $600 and lots of clicks resulted in... drum roll please... $28


Thanks for letting us know your results . I won't be trying that one.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

kimberlyloth said:


> Thanks for letting us know your results . I won't be trying that one.


YMMV... but I don't think so. If anyone has had a good experience, I would like to hear it. The only contacts I've had are with people who bombed the way I did.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

I've had a punt. It's exactly the sort of option I've been looking for recently. I've set up a $100 campaign for my Casanova translation, and targeted other books about Casanova and Venice. My expectations are low, but I've had reasonable results from the Goodreads self-serve system, and this is basically the same thing but all within the Zon eco-system.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

Given that I've sold exactly nothing so far this month, I thought I'd give it a punt (can't do much worse, right?)

"The product or service that you've clicked on is currently unavailable."

Ho hum!


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

If it works it's a big game changer. Fair or not (slippery slope) this is clever for Amazon (copying Google's AdSense).


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

As a reader I have NEVER clicked on an ad in Amazon.com. Also Boughts, Recommended for you, absolutely. Their ads? 100% ignored. If I wanted to advertise on Amazon, I would save up $10,000 (the lowest budget listed on the Amazon Marketing services page) And buy spots in the screensaver on devices. Those ads I do notice and I have clicked on.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Do you have to be in Select?

I see the option, but leave select on Monday.



Never mind. You do.

I'm going to play with my novella (which is staying in KDPS), and target the bestsellers in my sub genre.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> As a reader I have NEVER clicked on an ad in Amazon.com. Also Boughts, Recommended for you, absolutely. Their ads? 100% ignored. If I wanted to advertise on Amazon, I would save up $10,000 (the lowest budget listed on the Amazon Marketing services page) And buy spots in the screensaver on devices. Those ads I do notice and I have clicked on.


PPC ads used to be popular, about 7 years ago. When I worked for a property developer, we spent tens of thousands on Google PPC adverts, but over the years they became less and less effective. Buyers are wise to them now, and ignore them. I know I do.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

You can see samples of ads here: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A1C6UPR8MC1Q9D

Anyone else not seeing all their Select titles available for ads? When I get to "Select a Book to Advertise," I see a random selection of three books. I have six books in KDP. Two of the books shown aren't even in Select (and show as ineligible). The ones that I would want to advertise aren't there, even though they are in Select. So I'm left with only one random short story available for ads.

This wonkiness, the $100 minimum, and the philosophical objection to paying somebody to promote their own merchandise will keep me out of this for a while. Unless some of you braver folks make millions. Then I'm in.


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## crow.bar.beer (Oct 20, 2014)

It's remarkable how much time and resources they must've put into getting this operational, completely oblivious to how much weak sauce it really seems to be. I suppose they're more interested in fleecing the perpetual cycle of n00bs than actually offering effective solutions to professional authors.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

> Anyone else not seeing all their Select titles available for ads? When I get to "Select a Book to Advertise," I see a random selection of three books. I have six books in KDP. Two of the books shown aren't even in Select (and show as ineligible). The ones that I would want to advertise aren't there, even though they are in Select. So I'm left with only one random short story available for ads.


Update: the books showed up when I searched for them by title (not author). And only on my Mac, not my phone. (I'm just justifying complaining here before actually trying these things).


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Sweet Amber said:


> It's remarkable how much time and resources they must've put into getting this operational, completely oblivious to how much weak sauce it really seems to be. I suppose they're more interested in fleecing the perpetual cycle of n00bs than actually offering effective solutions to professional authors.


If you look at Amazon Marketing Services and Vendor Central, you can see there are analytics! Analytics!!!! Now, if Amazon would just let us author's have access to our product analytics, I think I'd cry with joy.


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## Will C. Brown (Sep 24, 2013)

shadowfox said:


> This likes it could be a complete game changer *for me*.
> 
> I can't see how it'll be useful for most people on kboard, though.
> 
> As a niche nonfiction writer the ability to target nonfiction to products just sounds so cool. My mind fills up with ideas (that are not even the kind of book I write) like advertising a book on how to solve teething problems linked to kids' toothpaste, or a book about how to use a specific brand of digital camera to someone who's bought that brand...


This!
I hadn't thought about it from this perspective. Let us know the results.


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## hs (Feb 15, 2011)

I saw a post on Self-Publishing Review about this today: http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2015/01/amazon-adds-advertising-for-kdp-select-authors/

However, given the experience of the beta testers so far, I'm afraid to try it until I hear of better results.


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## KaiW (Mar 11, 2014)

Susanne O'Leary said:


> I was one of the beta testers on this. Close to 2000 clicks- 0 sales.
> 
> Won't do that again.


Me too, and ditto. Useless


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## scottmarlowe (Apr 22, 2010)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Ads booked by beta users have been showing up on *every* ebook product page for the last 6 months.


I see them now, after I disabled my ad blocker. 

I never see the ads on Goodreads either for this very same reason.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2015)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> You have to commit $100, but if you don't get the clicks within the specified time, you don't have to pay - your credit card won't be charged. I didn't run any of the KDP Select ads, but I did run CPC ads with Amazon Marketing Services last spring. Out of my $100 budget that I really wanted to spend, I was only able to get like $10 worth of clicks. I was only charged the 10 bucks.


Thank you for the clarification, Phoenix. This is how I was reading it, too. But it is nice to get confirmation.

The way I read it, it isn't as if the $100 HAS to be spent. The ad doesn't keep running until the money runs out. The spend is just one of the parameters. If you set a CPC of .10 a click and set the campaign to only run for two weeks, if the campaign ends with only $20 worth of clicks you only pay $20. That seems sensible.

I would like to see more narrowly focused categories. Being able to drill down specifically to "women's fiction" would be much more useful than general "literature and fiction".


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## Z. Rider (Aug 15, 2014)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Being able to drill down specifically to "women's fiction" would be much more useful than general "literature and fiction".


Yikes. That's a pretty broad area.


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

You can pause or terminate a campaign before its completed. I think it may also be possible to throttle the spend to a number of dollars a day.

So the minimum spend is somewhat more flexible in practice.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

You can end the campaign when you like, plus you only pay according to success. Like I said, my campaign was so unsuccessful that it cost me about $2 over two weeks.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

I was a beta tester in July-August, then again in December, after they tweaked it.

Results:
Spent: $313.97
Impressions: 1,710,608
Clicks: 1,065
Sales: 13 ($24.15 per book)


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## mrforbes (Feb 16, 2013)

One of the biggest problems with the system, which I've pointed out to them a few times as part of my tenure as a beta-tester, is that they don't report KU borrows. Frankly, I'm amazed they went wide with this feature before they added that in, because its IMPOSSIBLE to calculate an accurate ROI with half the equation missing.


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## Scila (Apr 13, 2014)

I'm trying it out as well. I like monitoring results and having the data available, instead of just trying to guess if an $50 ad was successful or not. But, if it doesn't show any return (like Facebook), then I won't use it again.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

It's gone through this time - at least as far as "under review", so we shall see what we shall see.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I did the beta run over at Goodreads when Amazon took over. I didn't see any benefit. The minute I stopped, my dl's and sales went up and have been rising. I gave it a three month try.


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## CEMartin2 (May 26, 2012)

Okay, giving this a Benjamin try. Targeting other supernatural series. Shou,d be interesting to see if this works. If a series is similar to mine, but ending, maybe a reader is looking for something new to read.

I'll report back on if I was accepted, results, etc. Went with my book 10 which has a flaming roulette wheel on the cover, "A Lucky Day to Die"


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## Claire Frank (Jul 28, 2014)

Watching those who are testing this out with lots of interest. Keep us posted!


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## Mip7 (Mar 3, 2013)

Targeting toothpaste buyers with a Kindle book isn't going to work because too small of a % of those folks own Kindles, and enough of them will click the ad out of curiosity anyway to render the campaign unprofitable.

The only way this might be an effective tool, the way I see it, is targeting specific Kindle books you want to make the front row of also-boughts on, and only in certain niche subgenres where the readers are voracious for similar stories and the competition is light. For example, prepper survival fiction (oh, but no gun images allowed, and that's what those folks look for). Don't expect the campaign to be profitable in and of itself. Think of it as a marketing cost for getting your book placed where you want on those also-boughts.


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## Kevin Chapman (Jul 5, 2014)

Kevin Chapman said:


> I'll hopefully have an interesting perspective to offer on this in a month or so. I have two 6 part serials that both been out for a little while, and neither of them are bothering the best seller lists. Until last week, they were both in KDP Select, and between the two of them I probably average no more 2-3 sales a day, and maybe another 2-3 KU borrows a day.
> 
> KDP Select expired on the first one last week, so I pulled episode one out and it's just gone perma-free. The other 5 books in that series are still in KU. The other series, I've just signed episode one up for a $0.05 CPC $100 campaign, and again the rest of the series remains in KU.
> 
> These two books perform pretty much identically at the moment, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some useful data about the benefits of AMS vs. perma-free.


Or perhaps not, because I've just had a rejection email. Now to try and figure out why...


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## shadowfox (Jun 22, 2012)

Arkan9 said:


> Targeting toothpaste buyers with a Kindle book isn't going to work because too small of a % of those folks own Kindles, and enough of them will click the ad out of curiosity anyway to render the campaign unprofitable.


Just for clarification, all my books have both kindle and linked print editions (most are available on all platforms; I have one book that's in select. All the others are wide). I make over 60% of my income from my print editions. Quite happy if people choose to buy them instead of the ebook.


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## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

I notice that you can pause or terminate a campaign at any time. If it's not working for you, you can pull out without spending your minimum budget.


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## Mip7 (Mar 3, 2013)

> Quite happy if people choose to buy them instead of the ebook.


Would be an interesting experiment. I'm not optimistic, however, because the ad says "Now Available on Kindle."


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

What's the best option--targeted products or categories? I'd be promoting non-fiction / history / military. Also, what's a good amount per click? Thanks.


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## bobfrost (Sep 29, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> My advice is to stay clear of this. I was a tester. $600 and lots of clicks resulted in... drum roll please... $28


Just so I'm clear on this - you spent 600$ and made 28$ in total sales?

Or did you spend 600$ and -netted- 28$ (earned 628$)?


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## andrewwatts (Dec 28, 2014)

Is this the only way to target ads on amazon?  If so, I see that as highly valuable and a great benefit for KDP select.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Arkan9 said:


> Targeting toothpaste buyers with a Kindle book isn't going to work because too small of a % of those folks own Kindles, and enough of them will click the ad out of curiosity anyway to render the campaign unprofitable.
> 
> The only way this might be an effective tool, the way I see it, is targeting specific Kindle books you want to make the front row of also-boughts on, and only in certain niche subgenres where the readers are voracious for similar stories and the competition is light. For example, prepper survival fiction (oh, but no gun images allowed, and that's what those folks look for). Don't expect the campaign to be profitable in and of itself. Think of it as a marketing cost for getting your book placed where you want on those also-boughts.


You, Sir, are a genius.


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2015)

1) To be honest this seems like a kneejerk reaction from Amazon. Anywhere Amazon sees a profit stream it wants to release its own product.

2) This: If I wanted to advertise on Amazon, I would save up $10,000 (the lowest budget listed on the Amazon Marketing services page) And buy spots in the screensaver on devices. Those ads I do notice and I have clicked on.

$10,000. Crazy! Is it pay per click? Or pay per impression?

3) The BIG BIG BIG difference is that Amazon isn't cultivating a list of interested people and then promoting to them. It is just showing ads against books.


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

We shall see how it works. I am using it on a gay romance book. I targeted the books on the bestseller list of gay romance. We shall see if it any comes of it. If not then oh well.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Arkan9 said:


> ...no gun images allowed...


What makes you say that?


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Wired said:


> What makes you say that?


I am guessing because there are a lot of restrictions on what your cover can be. I had to change my cover on the book to get it accepted. It had a shirtless guy and they said it violated their guidelines. Lots of guidelines.


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

I thought I would experiment so I applied for an ad and was turned down.    They said my book cover violated their guidelines. Huh.  It's for the second in the series. I'm guessing it's the blood. How are they going to advertise for thrillers and such if they can't have blood or bullet holes or whatever on the cover?


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Well, I decided to try it out because every book is different and I wouldn't know it wouldn't work with my target audience until I tried it. I decided to limit it to just 38 books whose target audience overlap with mine (so I didn't do it by the very broad category targeting) and I unchecked the box that allowed Amazon to also show it on similar products, so it would just be those 38 books I'd be competing to appear on. I also had it over a 2 month period, and a slow burn, so that theoretically, if I didn't get a lot of clicks, I wouldn't be out much money. Anyway, thought it was worth experimenting. Well, I quickly got rejected because part of my hero's chest shows (I guess that was the reason). Despite the fact that any child can see a man's chest by going to the beach or walking around any neighborhood in the summer with guys jogging or mowing their lawn?? How is that prurient? It also doesn't seem to make sense, since Amazon approved it for sale in the general store, so my cover appears in Also Boughts, etc....


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Donna White Glaser said:


> I thought I would experiment so I applied for an ad and was turned down.  They said my book cover violated their guidelines. Huh. It's for the second in the series. I'm guessing it's the blood. How are they going to advertise for thrillers and such if they can't have blood or bullet holes or whatever on the cover?


You too? Weird. Doesn't make sense. See my post too...


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

I'm afraid to ask there rep why my cover was accepted for the general store and not an ad, in case they decide my book shouldn't be in the general store either? I feel like I'd be poking a big bear...


----------



## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

SmallTownGirl said:


> Lots of guidelines.


Are these guidelines posted anywhere?


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Wired said:


> Are these guidelines posted anywhere?


http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=3055298011


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

SmallTownGirl said:


> http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=3055298011


That is incredibly restrictive.


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## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

You can actually target specific books. That could be interesting.


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

S. Elliot Brandis said:


> You can actually target specific books. That could be interesting.


I thought it would be too, but apparently a little mipple is prurient in their eyes...


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Assuming this works at at least some conversion rate, this could have an impact on pricing...

For each $2.00 in clicks I make a sale.
This makes no sense for my book priced at $1.99, but if I raise the price to $3.99 this would be awesome.
At higher price point, for each $2.50 in cilcks I make a sale.
That's still profitable, so still a good idea.

In short, this will be a game of exploring conversions and bid price/delivery on clicks.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> My advice is to stay clear of this. I was a tester. $600 and lots of clicks resulted in... drum roll please... $28


My experience (spend and results) was very similar. And that was in first round beta when hardly any books were advertised. My feedback to KDP was: If I'd set fire to some $100 bills, at least I'd have ended up with a warm little glow.

CPC ads on cheap products are simply not effective. I should have known better.


----------



## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Mike McIntyre said:


> I was a beta tester in July-August, then again in December, after they tweaked it.
> 
> Results:
> Spent: $313.97
> ...


Ouch!!!


----------



## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

I signed up Stars and Other Monsters this morning, and already I've seen some strange results.

I picked a few books and other products (True Blood Blu Rays, for example) to target, and unchecked the box for similar products.

12 hours later, my book has jumped up in rank by almost 500,000 - it's now almost as high as when I did a 99 cent promotion with some paid ads. It's in the top 100 in its category.

Weird thing is: I see no sales in my dashboard. Even weirder thing is: I see _no clicks_ for the ads that I bought. Eight impressions, but no clicks, and obviously no sales.

Weird thing #3: I'm seeing some of the books I targeted in the ad campaign in my also-boughts.

#4: I got a whole bunch of impressions on my web site, all from one user (this last one is most likely to be coincidence, though an Amazon web robot thing is not out of the question).

Sooo I don't know if it's working or what. A few possible explanations: there was an influx of borrows, which affect rank but don't show up in my dashboard until the borrower reads 10%, _plus_ the Marketing Services stats take a while to update. Or both sites are taking a while to update. Or, for the conspiracy minded, merely enrolling in the ad program boosts ranks and buys your way into also-boughts without actually making any sales.

_Update: It does say that impression and click data can take 24 hours to appear on the Marketing Services site_


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Phronk said:


> I signed up Stars and Other Monsters this morning, and already I've seen some strange results.
> 
> I picked a few books and other products (True Blood Blu Rays, for example) to target, and unchecked the box for similar products.
> 
> ...


I don't think it is too weird. Your book is at a 169k ranking at the moment. You said that it jumped almost 500k. Two to three sales or borrows would cause that jump I believe. The sales and borrows probably just haven't shown up yet.


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Phronk said:


> I signed up Stars and Other Monsters this morning, and already I've seen some strange results.
> 
> I picked a few books and other products (True Blood Blu Rays, for example) to target, and unchecked the box for similar products.
> 
> ...


Interesting. Keep us posted! I'm just so aggravated I can't try it. I'm writing a blog post for tomorrow about it. If anyone else got their cover rejected, and have some points to make for my post, DM me....


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

SmallTownGirl said:


> I don't think it is too weird. Your book is at a 169k ranking at the moment. You said that it jumped almost 500k. Two to three sales or borrows would cause that jump I believe. The sales and borrows probably just haven't shown up yet.


Last time it was that high it took about 30 sales. But I know that ranking depends on more than just sales, so this is quite possible, and delayed reporting is the most likely explanation.



Angela Quarles said:


> Interesting. Keep us posted! I'm just so aggravated I can't try it. I'm writing a blog post for tomorrow about it. If anyone else got their cover rejected, and have some points to make for my post, DM me....


Will do! It's worth noting that my cover does have blood on it (just a little squirt), and was approved within an hour. It is aggravating that the rules are overly conservative and/or inconsistent.

At least it's not like Facebook, where the pictures with ads can barely have text, ruling out many book covers. Advertising is baffling.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Day 2 results:

AD 1 impressions: 446  clicks: 0

AD 2 impressions: 40    clicks: 0


And I still don't know which AD is which. Why could they not name them?


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Just wanted to pipe in that I was a beta tester for this, too, and my results were similar to others. 

$62 spent in a three month period
633,00+ impressions
396 clicks
Total sales = $10.89.


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## CEMartin2 (May 26, 2012)

Good to know beta results... i'll gamble $100 though, as i just dropped $77 at I love Vampire Novels.com and got zero sales.

Played with the ad control panel and learned two things...

1. You can advertise your book on pages for seasons of tv shows on Prime video.

2. Not only can you advertise on product pages for books, you can avertise on Author pages. Apparently any page with an ASIN can have an ad.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

I've just signed up for it. I can't really afford to lose $100 right now, so I'll keep an eye on it and cancel if it starts bleeding too much money. I'm hopeful, but not too optimistic.


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

KateDanley said:


> Just wanted to pipe in that I was a beta tester for this, too, and my results were similar to others.
> 
> $62 spent in a three month period
> 633,00+ impressions
> ...


Haven't read the entire thread, but the few results posted are similar to my last Goodreads campaign. 
I'm going to pass for now, wait it out to see if results improve.


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Brian Spangler said:


> Haven't read the entire thread, but the few results posted are similar to my last Goodreads campaign.
> I'm going to pass for now, wait it out to see if results improve.


See, I just look at GR campaigns as free impressions. I put up $10 and let it just keep showing with minimal clicks... lasts me for mooonths


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

KateDanley said:


> Just wanted to pipe in that I was a beta tester for this, too, and my results were similar to others.
> 
> $62 spent in a three month period
> 633,00+ impressions
> ...


You were ten times smarter than me, Kate! There's comfort for ya!
Millions of impressions--yay! Oh...hardly any sales...*slinks away*


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

As I have said on other threads, PPC advertising is NOT a wise buy. It is ineffectual, and only makes the business you pay advertising to money. I feel sorry for all the writers who have no experience with advertising thinking Amazon is offering them some great new tool. NO. It isn't. Except for Amazon.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

bobfrost said:


> Just so I'm clear on this - you spent 600$ and made 28$ in total sales?
> 
> Or did you spend 600$ and -netted- 28$ (earned 628$)?


No it netted a $572 LOSS


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Has _anyone_ got a positive tale to tell about this? I think mine seems to be the best result so far, in that I didn't make any sales, but at least it hardly cost me anything.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

I've laid down $100 and had 35 impressions and no clicks or sales yet.

It's a lot of fun playing with it though!


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## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

Mike McIntyre said:


> I was a beta tester in July-August, then again in December, after they tweaked it.
> 
> Results:
> Spent: $313.97
> ...


I have a couple of questions (and please don't take this the wrong way... I'm just interested).

You paid almost 30c a click, which is well above the price amazon recommends (0.05c). Why?

Your had one sale per 82 clicks. Do you think this is about what would happen in normal Amazon browsing? We don't really know how many people actually see our book pages per sale, so this could give us interesting data.

For you to break even, you'd have to pay 1.22c per click.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

S. Elliot Brandis said:


> I have a couple of questions (and please don't take this the wrong way... I'm just interested).
> 
> You paid almost 30c a click, which is well above the price amazon recommends (0.05c). Why?
> 
> ...


When I was testing, it worked like Facebook in that you set a bid price. So you could set 50 cents a click, but that would be your max. If the algos did their magic and you were the only one in the race for that page view, you might pay 5 cents, but if 1000s of authors are in the pot (as we know they will be) the price per click goes up until only 1 is left in the running. If everyone else dropped out at 25 cents, you would pay 26 cents.

That's how it used to work. I don't know if they tweaked it now though.


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## Guest (Jan 30, 2015)

I put through a submission about 5 minutes before everyone came into the thread and said it sucked the big one. Thank god I declined because there were man boobs on the cover. 

Seems like this whole thing doesn't work anyway, but even if it did, the only peeps who would benefit might just have plenty of male 'nudity' and guns. 

Very bizarre move to bring it out when every single beta tester is saying how terrible it is.


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## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> When I was testing, it worked like Facebook in that you set a bid price. So you could set 50 cents a click, but that would be your max. If the algos did their magic and you were the only one in the race for that page view, you might pay 5 cents, but if 1000s of authors are in the pot (as we know they will be) the price per click goes up until only 1 is left in the running. If everyone else dropped out at 25 cents, you would pay 26 cents.
> 
> That's how it used to work. I don't know if they tweaked it now though.


From what I understand, with Facebook you don't set a CPC -- it has an algorithm that works that out based on demand for your target group. You don't know your CPC until your ad is running. At least, this is my experience.

This Amazon system seems very similar, except you can set your maximum cost per click. e.g. I'm running a trial campaign set at 10c per click, and the average is 8c.

So the Amazon system seems slightly better (less surprise, because you have some control), but from what I've seen neither is that effective. Impressions per click is not important, but sales per click is. Neither systems seem that impressive.

In a perfect world the CPC would reach market equilibrium--a cost that matches the value--but that doesn't seem to be the case. Though Facebook is making a massive profit from advertising, so surely someone must be finding value in it.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Very bizarre move to bring it out when every single beta tester is saying how terrible it is.


Presumably they whacked it out anyway because there are plenty of fish in the sea other than us, who don't come to Kboards.


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## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

I want to reiterate that you can terminate a campaign at any time, regardless of the minimum budget. 

So anybody that is regretting spinning the wheel can pull out now.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

S. Elliot Brandis said:


> From what I understand, with Facebook you don't set a CPC -- it has an algorithm that works that out based on demand for your target group. You don't know your CPC until your ad is running. At least, this is my experience.
> 
> This Amazon system seems very similar, except you can set your maximum cost per click. e.g. I'm running a trial campaign set at 10c per click, and the average is 8c.
> 
> ...


I'm not talking boosted pages on Facebook, but the adverts. You set a max per click price as I said in the earlier post, and depending upon demand the value rises and falls under that max until an average is reached.

EDIT: I want to reiterate my first post. Save your pennies and buy a Bookbub or ENT instead.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

alawston said:


> I've laid down $100 and had 35 impressions and no clicks or sales yet.
> 
> It's a lot of fun playing with it though!


33 impressions so far. No clicks, no sales. I'm going to shut it down once it hits $50 spent (assuming it's unprofitable), since that's all I'm really willing to punt on another dead loss.


----------



## S. Elliot Brandis (Dec 9, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I'm not talking boosted pages on Facebook, but the adverts. You set a max per click price as I said in the earlier post, and depending upon demand the value rises and falls under that max until an average is reached.
> 
> EDIT: I want to reiterate my first post. Save your pennies and buy a Bookbub or ENT instead.


Just did a test on facebook -- and you can set your CPC price if you select 'Optimise for clicks' and then set your max price. It's not the default option, but if you know what you're doing you can get there.

And I totally agree with you -- I don't think either facebook or AMS are a good use of money.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

Tim_A said:


> 33 impressions so far. No clicks, no sales. I'm going to shut it down once it hits $50 spent (assuming it's unprofitable), since that's all I'm really willing to punt on another dead loss.


I'm up to 69 impressions, with no clicks or sales. Personally I think I'm happy to let this one run, and to keep tinkering to see how I can improve its effectiveness. I think the system has a lot of potential.

I realise there are a lot of voices against me on this one, but I've been working in ad sales for ten years and I know a little whereof I speak.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

S. Elliot Brandis said:


> Just did a test on facebook -- and you can set your CPC price if you select 'Optimise for clicks' and then set your max price. It's not the default option, but if you know what you're doing you can get there.


That's the one.

I've stopped using Facebook Adverts now. I think I overdid it and people got bored with seeing my covers everywhere they turned. I have been thinking I might try one more but straight to my email list in exchange for some free books. We'll see.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

alawston said:


> I'm up to 69 impressions, with no clicks or sales. Personally I think I'm happy to let this one run, and to keep tinkering to see how I can improve its effectiveness. I think the system has a lot of potential.
> 
> I realise there are a lot of voices against me on this one, but I've been working in ad sales for ten years and I know a little whereof I speak.


When it's not costing anything (or earning either) you might as well let it run. No harm. It's when it starts costing and there's no ROI that you have to pull the plug. Just be careful and keep an eye on it. Impressions are worthless on Amazon IMO. Imagine how many pages you browse on Amazon, each is an impression. Can you recall the ads your saw on those pages?


----------



## Guest (Jan 30, 2015)

Lydniz said:


> Presumably they whacked it out anyway because there are plenty of fish in the sea other than us, who don't come to Kboards.


I just find that strategy by them to be unprofessional and ugly.

Yes, the fish will buy into it because it 'looks' like it will work. But when you sell someone something that is broken, they're going to be angry.

Meanwhile you have all these informed professionals standing at the sidelines, looking at their distributor, shaking their heads.

Make a few dollars in the short run, and ruin reputation in the long.

Bad business decision.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

Phoenix Sullivan said:


> Ads booked by beta users have been showing up on *every* ebook product page for the last 6 months.
> 
> They appear on the amazon.com site just under the 'Send a Sample' box on the right side of the page.
> 
> That said, the beta runs I've been tracking for the past 6 months appear to be rather ineffectual. I didn't purchase any during the beta run and likely won't purchase unless they tweak them into something useful.


I know two people who were in the beta testing program for this and their experience echoes what Phoenix shared. They got virtually no sales bump from the ads.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

S. Elliot Brandis said:


> I have a couple of questions (and please don't take this the wrong way... I'm just interested).
> 
> You paid almost 30c a click, which is well above the price amazon recommends (0.05c). Why?
> 
> ...


As I recall, I started in July with a low bid, and when I didn't get any clicks, I bumped it up incrementally. I eventually got clicks, but few sales. It only took a couple weeks to chew up more than $300, and I suspended my campaign.

When Amazon came back at me with a revised program in December, I tried it again, but only bid $0.05 per click. It didn't cost me a penny because I didn't have any clicks.

I was initially excited to be part of the beta program because I figured Amazon + ads = $$$ (turns out I was right  ). But I was disappointed to see that the ads were like those Goodreads click ads, but much smaller. My entire title wasn't even displayed. The one advantage the Amazon ads have over the Goodreads ones is that Amazon shows you the exact number of sales resulting from clicks, whereas with Goodreads you never know.


----------



## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> When I was testing, it worked like Facebook in that you set a bid price. So you could set 50 cents a click, but that would be your max. If the algos did their magic and you were the only one in the race for that page view, you might pay 5 cents, but if 1000s of authors are in the pot (as we know they will be) the price per click goes up until only 1 is left in the running. If everyone else dropped out at 25 cents, you would pay 26 cents.
> 
> That's how it used to work. I don't know if they tweaked it now though.


Did you target categories or specific products? Just wondering if the latter might return a better ROI.


----------



## Guest (Jan 30, 2015)

There's always someone willing to pay for the feeling of 'I tried'.


This: In a perfect world the CPC would reach market equilibrium--a cost that matches the value--but that doesn't seem to be the case. Though Facebook is making a massive profit from advertising, so surely someone must be finding value in it.


Facebook is making profits because app develoipers and website owners will pay anyways. A lot of them feel - better to pay than to do nothing.

And think about it - First you pay to get Likes on your Page, then you pay to get your 'Fans' to see your boosted posts. Then you realize you've been tricked. So you pay to drive users straight to your website.

FB just made money 3 different times from the same advertiser.

If you look at their revenue growth it's already slowing down. And their non GAAP earnings seem really good but it excludes $900 million executive compensation. If you look at GAAP earnings they aren't growing much at all.

65% is mobile advertising. Wonder how much of that is

1) Desperate app developers paying for 'App install Ads'.

2) Accidental clicks by users on tiny mobile phone screens.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Angela Quarles said:


> Did you target categories or specific products? Just wondering if the latter might return a better ROI.


Categories back then.


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## AngelaQuarles (Jun 22, 2014)

Did anyone who Beta tested do the option of picking specific books or was it just categories during testing?

FWIW, I did a post on my blog. If your cover got rejected, feel free to post it in the comments: http://wp.me/p1SxbT-2bv


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

ShaneJeffery said:


> Very bizarre move to bring it out when every single beta tester is saying how terrible it is.


Maybe I'm assigning them greater intelligence than they deserve after that last year of actions, but:

- You have to be in Select to play with this.
- Being in Select auto-dumps you into KU.
- They just had that deal with the 'free' months of KU on every Kindle.


----------



## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

SmallTownGirl said:


> I am guessing because there are a lot of restrictions on what your cover can be. I had to change my cover on the book to get it accepted. It had a shirtless guy and they said it violated their guidelines. Lots of guidelines.





Wired said:


> What makes you say that?


That is correct. My ad was rejected for The Asset which has a gun on the cover. They don't allow guns to be displayed. I posted a thread about that here:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,207762.0.html


----------



## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Maybe I'm assigning them greater intelligence than they deserve after that last year of actions, but:
> 
> - You have to be in Select to play with this.
> - Being in Select auto-dumps you into KU.
> - They just had that deal with the 'free' months of KU on every Kindle.


This


----------



## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Mark E. Cooper said:
 

> No it netted a $572 LOSS


I had over 2 million impressions, even while picking out specific authors and books to be on the pages of. The amount of clicks did not match up with sales, or worse, I received less sales. I stopped the campaign shortly after Christmas and sales have steadily gone up. 
I looked at it as a complete money grab from authors. The only reason I tried it is: they're Amazon, and what if it did work? At least now I know. BTW, during the campaigns (I ran 13 of them on 7 books) I switched up key words, titles etc.

"On Sale" performed the worst. "FREE" did okay. Some titles related to my books did okay. I set my cpc at .o5 to 1.01, to see if that made any difference in conversion rates. It only mattered in how quickly I went through the funds set aside for this experiment. Conversion rates only climbed above .05%, twice.

ENT and Bookbub, FKBT, BKNights, and Genrepulse are the only sites that seem to make sense at this time.


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## CEMartin2 (May 26, 2012)

Mine's up and running. I started out at $.05 a click, and advertised across a range of books and authors and even a few supernatural shows on Prime video.

By last evening , I had 3 impressions, 0 clicks.
I upped it to $.06 a click.
This am, still just 3 & 0.
Upped it to $.07 a click.
Now, at lunch, I have 2 impressions...

Now, I know you can return a book, but how do you undo seeing an ad on a page? Very curious.


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## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Lisa Grace said:


> "FREE" did okay.


I was thinking of doing an ad for one of our permafrees, Lisa. When you say the freebie did okay, do you estimate that you recouped the ad spend on this campaign from subsequent buy-throughs?


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## dgrant (Feb 5, 2014)

When it comes to CPC advertising, "research" (ten minutes on a search engine) indicates that display ads (like what Amazon's doing) tend to have click-through rates around .05 percent. That is, 5 clicks per 10,000 impressions. 

The $100USD buy-in makes more sense, then; if we were buying $25 or $50 chunks, nobody'd see any return at the standard  industry rate. Here's hoping that they can target 20 times more effectively than the standard industry, to get that to 1% clickthrough... and still not expect it to be anywhere near as effective as direct mail advertising (bookbub, et al)


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

How does increasing the cost of each click matter? Does it 'buy' a better result?


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Wired said:


> How does increasing the cost of each click matter? Does it 'buy' a better result?


It's a bidding war. If everyone chose 0.05 then the algos would randomly choose an ad to show for each page it served. But if everyone else chooses 0.05 and you choose 0.06 your ad will get a greater chance of popping. That just means an impression. Then someone has to click. THEN someone has to like your cover, blurb, sample, and price, AND THEN they have to decide to buy and click the buy button.

Nothing to it


----------



## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Colin said:


> I was thinking of doing an ad for one of our permafrees, Lisa. When you say the freebie did okay, do you estimate that you recouped the ad spend on this campaign from subsequent buy-throughs?


Only books in Select can have ads through Amazon, so permafree books won't qualify.


----------



## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

I just terminated this ad:

spent…impressions…clicks
$5.23	6,320	10	

0 sales


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## Caddy (Sep 13, 2011)

alawston said:


> I'm up to 69 impressions, with no clicks or sales. Personally I think I'm happy to let this one run, and to keep tinkering to see how I can improve its effectiveness. I think the system has a lot of potential.
> 
> I realise there are a lot of voices against me on this one, but I've been working in ad sales for ten years and I know a little whereof I speak.


THen you should know this kind of advertising is one of the least effective forms for selling things out there. I, too, worked in advertising for 20 years. It was known industry wide as a way for the person selling the ads to make money, but not the one paying for the ads. It simply is not a good business decision.


----------



## Colin (Aug 6, 2011)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Only books in Select can have ads through Amazon, so permafree books won't qualify.


Good point!


----------



## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> spent...impressions...clicks
> $5.23 6,320 10


You folks aren't providing enough information. What was your targeting criteria? CTR and sell-through are directly related to the relevance of the ad to the person seeing it. Also, one of the things we need to assess is the sell-through-rate. 10 clicks and zero sales is bad at 52 CPC, but 11 clicks and 1 sale at a 0.15 CPC for a book at $3.99 is amazingly profitable.

Data. We need data.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

Phronk said:


> I signed up Stars and Other Monsters this morning, and already I've seen some strange results.
> 
> I picked a few books and other products (True Blood Blu Rays, for example) to target, and unchecked the box for similar products.
> 
> 12 hours later, my book has jumped up in rank by almost 500,000 - it's now almost as high as when I did a 99 cent promotion with some paid ads. It's in the top 100 in its category.


I just had to say your title "Give Me Back My God Damn Arm" had me laughing so hard I had to write in and say THANK YOU. Hilarious.

Signed up today - AFTER checking for, and not finding a thread on this. They may turn me down. Based on the beta-testers...hoping they do. But if they don't, I will report back and have my $100.00 serve the writers of Writer's Cafe. Cheers.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

CEMartin2 said:


> Good to know beta results... i'll gamble $100 though, as i just dropped $77 at I love Vampire Novels.com and got zero sales.


They got me bupkus (bupkis. buppcuss. take your spelling pick.) as well. Not a good sight to advertise on, I'm afraid. And I had a vampire novel. Umm...?


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

jakedfw said:


> You folks aren't providing enough information. What was your targeting criteria? CTR and sell-through are directly related to the relevance of the ad to the person seeing it. Also, one of the things we need to assess is the sell-through-rate. 10 clicks and zero sales is bad at 52 CPC, but 11 clicks and 1 sale at a 0.15 CPC for a book at $3.99 is amazingly profitable.
> 
> Data. We need data.


spent...impressions...clicks
$5.23 6,320 10 &#8230; and no extra sales

I targeted the five bestselling Kindle books in my sub sub genre.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

Can you change the targeting? It doesn't look like it, even though the campaign page claims you can change its keywords. Guess I'll just have to kill it and start again.

This morning it tells me I have 24 impressions, whereas yesterday I had 33. It's gone DOWN? ? ?


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

The story I used the ad on is nearing the four digit mark in ranking. It is the lowest it has ever been at. How much of that can be attributed to the ad or something else, I do not know. I'll keep you updated.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Tim_A said:


> Can you change the targeting?


That's my question. And can you change the keywords? Has anyone tried?


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## AA.A (Sep 6, 2012)

Wired said:


> That's my question. And can you change the keywords? Has anyone tried?


 keywords Yes. Targets No.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

CEMartin2 said:


> I advertised across a range of books...


How many books did you chose?


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

FMH said:


> I just had to say your title "Give Me Back My God Damn Arm" had me laughing so hard I had to write in and say THANK YOU. Hilarious.


Haha thank YOU! I really appreciate that. I thought I'd try a mildly provocative title; glad someone finds it amusing. 



> Signed up today - AFTER checking for, and not finding a thread on this. They may turn me down. Based on the beta-testers...hoping they do. But if they don't, I will report back and have my $100.00 serve the writers of Writer's Cafe. Cheers.


I've signed up too. It's worth a try. But here's what I don't understand about some of the responses from beta testers: you never have to actually spend $100. That's a maximum. You're paying by the click and can pause or terminate the campaign at any time.

It's pretty simple math (see this spreadsheet I just made): if each click, on average, leads to more money in sales than the cost per click price that you set, then you're making money. If you see that this isn't happening after spending a few cents, you can just stop, and you've only spent a few cents.

When it comes down to it, the main variable that matters is the percentage of clicks that lead to sales. If it's high (around 3% or higher at 5 cents per click), then you make money. If it's low (less than 3%), then you lose money.

If you're making money, you might as well keep it going. If you're losing money, you stop. It's easy to determine which situation you are in, so it's basically zero risk. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how anyone could lose hundreds of dollars, unless it was purely to experiment with stuff and learn despite leaking money the whole time.

There are a lot of other factors, but they mainly affect how _fast_ you make or lose money. What matters most is getting people who click to buy, which means doing the same things we've always been trying to do: create an awesome cover and an awesome blurb and an awesome preview so that people who were already interested enough to click the ad will click again to buy.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

What's an _impression_?


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

The beta test had different rules.


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## adanlerma (Jan 16, 2012)

Despite what seems like more cons than pros so far, am leaning toward trying this.

Was reluctant to commit the minimum amt required, still seems kinda high, but read this on the ad info page :

Paying for Ads
You pay only when customers click your ad. If they see it but don't click, you are not charged. You'll enter or select a major debit or credit card in your Amazon.com or Amazon Marketing Services account (not your KDP account), and you'll be charged periodically in small increments as your campaign goes on.

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=AVFOAV1KG90UW


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

Rosalind James said:


> The beta test had different rules.


Ahh okay, it seemed weird that the beta testers were having such a different experience than what's available now. That explains it. Thanks!


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Wired said:


> What's an _impression_?


An impression is when your advert appears for viewing on a page. Impression = a view. A click = someone clicking on your advert


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## adanlerma (Jan 16, 2012)

Have decided to give this a try, mainly because of the option below.

It was info via the small "i" that pops up an info box when I was setting up my ad.

**

Allow Amazon to spread out my campaign smoothly

This setting is useful when you want to ensure that your campaign continues to serve throughout your campaign dates. Smooth spread budgets are allocated a daily spend proportional to the remaining budget and the days remaining in the campaign. For a given day, any daily budget remaining will be distributed evenly across the remaining days in the campaign. For example, a campaign with a $100 budget running for 10 days will be given $10 to spend on the first day. If, at the end of the first day, only $9.10 out of the $10 was spent, the next day's budget will be $10.10. You will not be able to adjust this setting after creating the campaign.


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

dgrant said:


> When it comes to CPC advertising, "research" (ten minutes on a search engine) indicates that display ads (like what Amazon's doing) tend to have click-through rates around .05 percent. That is, 5 clicks per 10,000 impressions.


I put up my first Web site in 1994 and in those early years, click-through rates averaged 1-2%. As a lark, I once put up a black and white clip-art image, I think it was a close up of Alice from _Alice in Wonderland_, but just looked like the head of a little girl. It had a CTR of 1%.

What's really amazing is that there were companies selling banner ads at $50+CPM (not CPC) and still losing money! Google would make about $1Trillion a day at that rate... ;-)


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Phronk nailed it. All you need to know is the following:

What is my break even point? The royalty on the book I'm advertising
How much am I paying per click? CPC.
How many clicks convert to a sale? This is the ultimate data point you need.

From this you can easily calculate the effectiveness. Everything else is irrelevant. EVERYTHING. Disregard impressions. They don't matter. Disregard pacing. Just do as fast as possible. Doesn't matter. 

So... if you are paying 5 cents a click, and your royalty is $2.10, you don't lose money unless you get 42 clicks without a sale. Until you have enough data to clearly illustrate this, you don't have enough data to say, "This sucks." And by enough data I mean that clicks fluctuate over time, you probably need a few hundred clicks before you can get a ballpark figure on what your sell through rate is going to be. 

The only other variable is if you are actually getting any impressions at all. If the bids are higher than 5 cents and it means you're ad isn't showing at all (this is one of the things that impressions are good for... they show you how strong your bid is. Lots of impressions mean you don't have a lot of competition for your bid.)

So... always bid as low as you can. The only reason to bid higher is if your ad simply isn't showing up AND you can make money at a higher bid.

And, finally, pay extreme attention to your targeting. You want as close to a 100% match on your targeting between your book and where your ad shows. So...

Avoid the interest targeting UNLESS you can show that your ad has a profitable sell through at a wider target. There's nothing that will kill your efficiency more than targeting wide and having a lot of people click through out of curiosity and not true interest.

Spend a TON of time on picking your product targets. It is tempting to just pick the top ten in you niche category. But check how well they are selling. If the number one book in your niche category is ranked 200K in sales, it's not going to lift your book--it can't even lift itself! What you want to find are massive bestsellers that are really really close to your book. 

Another thing to do: Do you have a blurb from a best-selling author? Put a one line showcase with the person's name in bold at the top of your description and then target all your advertising to his or her product pages. "Hrm. I love Hugh Howey and am looking at reviews of his books. Oh, hey, this book also looks interesting. Click through. "My favorite book of the year. -- Hugh Howey" Boom. Your odds of a sale are that much higher.

CPC advertising is not a scam. Like so much on the Internet it is done poorly by a vast majority of the people out there and the few that get it right are the ones making bank.


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## adanlerma (Jan 16, 2012)

jakedfw said:


> pay extreme attention to your targeting


Agree, gonna focus on that


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Tim_A said:


> Can you change the targeting? It doesn't look like it, even though the campaign page claims you can change its keywords. Guess I'll just have to kill it and start again.
> 
> This morning it tells me I have 24 impressions, whereas yesterday I had 33. It's gone DOWN? ? ?


Yes, you can change the targeting. I've done it several times. 
Ad Campaigns
Campaign Name
Target Products Management Tab


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Lots of clicks but no sales tells me my cover is good but my blurb needs work.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Cherise Kelley said:


> Lots of clicks but no sales tells me my cover is good but my blurb needs work.


Not necessarily. I was in the first beta. At the time, I was selling nearly 1,000 books/day on Amazon. And I think I made about what Mark did. Maybe $50 or so on $600 worth of ads, and I had tons of clicks. (I have buried the details in my memory banks as they are too painful to recall.)

So--my cover and blurb were good enough to sell a boatload of books. But not to make a difference with the ads. So I think it's the ads.


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## Mip7 (Mar 3, 2013)

This system still has a lot of bugs.

I decided to have some fun and put my Bible apologetics book on Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion." To my surprise it was accepted. Maybe someone at Amazon has a sense of humor after all.

Their system "suggested" .05 per click. That didn't get any impressions. I keep bumping and bumping and bumping and am up to .20 per click and still not getting impressions.

What is showing on that book page is an ad for the sci-fi (fiction) book Forging Zero, obviously outbidding me but just as obviously doing a broad, non-targeted campaign in a mass market exposure effort. This is terribly inefficient, but if that's how it's going to be, fine. Just give us some idea of what the clicks will cost us if we actually want impressions when we set the campaign up, please.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> What is showing on that book page is an ad for the sci-fi (fiction) book Forging Zero, obviously outbidding me but just as obviously doing a broad, non-targeted campaign in a mass market exposure effort.


This is a good point. Nothing will destroy the efficiency of this like a bunch of uneducated advertisers flooding the system with "dumb money." At that point, you just fold your tent and wait for them to leave, assuming they ever do. It's possible that there are so many unsophisticated authors out there paying money for ads that this advertising will never be cost-effective.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

Looks like my guardian angels are watching out for me after all. As I stated in an earlier part of this thread, I submitted an ad after not finding THIS thread... and then I found it and heard how it was a waste of money. 

They rejected my ad!!!  Wooohooooo!!! $100 saved.   

Yes!!!! I'll put that toward a Freebooksy ad, because I know THEY work.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

How do I edit my keywords? I don't see any place to add or change keywords on my control panel.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Can I ask why people are targeting keywords? That sounds like a really bad way to target. Remember, this is targeting across the entire Amazon storefront. You may target keywords that you think are relevant and end up advertising under plush toys or costumes or similar. I  mean, I'm sure you can make it work if you plan it extremely carefully, but I'd be REALLY leery of doing it unless I had a very clear idea of what I was doing.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Day 4. 1500 impressions. Sales Clicks:










EDIT: For comparison sake, one of my top Google ADWords keywords generated me 48 clicks with 245 impressions in the last 7 days, yielding 19.6% CTR for $0.19 CPC

I put my FB campaign on pause as I want to get the CPC way down.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> Can I ask why people are targeting keywords? That sounds like a really bad way to target.


So if I've targeted books, I don't need to worry about keywords? Keywords are just a different form of targeting? Is that why I don't see any way to add or change keywords?


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Well, on the bright side, that is also how much you've spent. So no harm, no foul!


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Okay, I hadn't looked at keywords, so I was assuming they were the same as Google Keywords. They're not. They're just a way to search for products to target. So, in short: It's the same as product targeting. You just have to add the product you want to target underneath the keyword search you make.

To edit:

Click on the small pencil next to your campaign name on the Advertising Campaigns page.
Click on the Target Products Management tab.
Remove items by clicking on the garbage can.
Add them by clicking on "add target products."


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Thanks, Jake, that helped!


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Rosalind James said:


> Not necessarily. I was in the first beta. At the time, I was selling nearly 1,000 books/day on Amazon. And I think I made about what Mark did. Maybe $50 or so on $600 worth of ads, and I had tons of clicks. (I have buried the details in my memory banks as they are too painful to recall.)
> 
> So--my cover and blurb were good enough to sell a boatload of books. But not to make a difference with the ads. So I think it's the ads.


LOL! OK, go ahead, give me an excuse not to work on my blurb!


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## CEMartin2 (May 26, 2012)

I think a lot of folks are completely missing the boat on targeting. I've been looking at books I would like my ad to show on, action, paranormally thrillers. What I'm seeing are a ton of romance novels. Now while a lot of gals might like to read both thrillers and romances this is like advertising broccoli on a chocolate box. The idea with targeting isnt to show your book to anyone but someone who is more likely to buy it. Target similar books. A paranormal themed men's adventure is totally different from a paranormal romance with a shirtless guy who's pants are falling down.


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## adanlerma (Jan 16, 2012)

CEMartin2 said:


> I think a lot of folks are completely missing the boat on targeting. I've been looking at books I would like my ad to show on, action, paranormally thrillers. What I'm seeing are a ton of romance novels. Now while a lot of gals might like to read both thrillers and romances this is like advertising broccoli on a chocolate box. The idea with targeting isnt to show your book to anyone but someone who is more likely to buy it. Target similar books. A paranormal themed men's adventure is totally different from a paranormal romance with a shirtless guy who's pants are falling down.


Ditto. I'm targeting writers I read in the same genre of that particular book. Just got approved. Says it'll be a few days before I get first few stats. Wish me luck and all the best to everyone


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

jakedfw said:



> Can I ask why people are targeting keywords? That sounds like a really bad way to target. Remember, this is targeting across the entire Amazon storefront. You may target keywords that you think are relevant and end up advertising under plush toys or costumes or similar. I mean, I'm sure you can make it work if you plan it extremely carefully, but I'd be REALLY leery of doing it unless I had a very clear idea of what I was doing.


I'm targeting specific books, but the help says we can change keywords. There's just no place that I can see to do it.

(still no clicks, btw, but I'm slowly racking up impressions - at least impressions are cheap, but I had to up my bid to $0.20 to get any movement.)


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## Scila (Apr 13, 2014)

Okay... So far, I have 1310 impressions and 1 click, no sale data yet. Targeted the ad by related products (I picked a few zombie novels as well The Walking Dead comics). For comparison sake, I did a Facebook ad that in 3 weeks had 56.000 impressions and 200 clicks (Sadly, I have no way of knowing if these clicks turned into sales).


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Tim_A said:


> ...at least impressions are cheap...


Impressions are _free_, right? We only pay for clicks?


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Scila said:


> Targeted the ad by related products...


How many products did you choose?


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## Scila (Apr 13, 2014)

Impressions are free, yeah. You pay only when someone clicks the ad.

I picked 20 books/comics and even a few DVDs and video games.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> Okay... So far, I have 1310 impressions and 1 click, no sale data yet. Targeted the ad by related products (I picked a few zombie novels as well The Walking Dead comics). For comparison sake, I did a Facebook ad that in 3 weeks had 56.000 impressions and 200 clicks (Sadly, I have no way of knowing if these clicks turned into sales).


Facebook click-through-rate: .04%
Amazon click-through-rate: .08%

So your targeted campaign via Amazon is twice as efficient at converting clicks as Facebook. You hit the nail on the head, however: How many of those 200 clicks converted to sales versus how many Amazon clicks convert to sales?

One thing that people really need to understand: Do no worry about impressions. Try to get to where you get at least 1 click a day. If that takes 10,000 impressions or 100 impressions, it really doesn't matter (well, it matters strategically as it probably is indicative of your targeting, but ultimately it doesn't matter). Then start assessing how many of those clicks are converting to sales and how much it is costing you.

MILESTONE ONE:

Your expenditure passes your break even point for selling one book. For example, if you are paying 5 cents a click, and you get 7 clicks on a 99 cent book with no sales, you've just lost money. My recommendation here is to just keep going.

MILESTONE TWO:

Your ad converts to its first sale. This is where you can start doing some tweaking. How many clicks did it take to get to that sale? How much did you pay for those clicks? How much money did you lose? Is it worth continuing the test? Things you can do:

Lower your bid if you are losing money but it appears you can get to profitability by lowering the CPC.
Change your targeting. LOTS of impressions with low clicks can mean that you're getting browsers and not those with interest. Tweak your targeting so that you get fewer impressions but a similar click total (this is more art than science)
Keep going. 1 sale may not be a good enough of a data set. Keep going until a second sales and assess then.
Pull the plug. If you are massively underwater... where you spent $20 or $30 for a 30 cent sales commission, you can just pull the plug and rethink your strategy.

MILESTONE THREE

You sold your second book. This is where you can start to look at some significant trends by averaging cost and revenue across the two sales. This is basically a more accurate assessment of what you did for MILESTONE TWO.


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## Guest (Feb 2, 2015)

First:

This is SUPER TRUE. Great advice.

Phronk nailed it. All you need to know is the following:

What is my break even point? The royalty on the book I'm advertising
How much am I paying per click? CPC.
How many clicks convert to a sale? This is the ultimate data point you need.

From this you can easily calculate the effectiveness. Everything else is irrelevant. EVERYTHING. Disregard impressions. They don't matter. Disregard pacing. Just do as fast as possible. Doesn't matter.


*******

SECOND: I wonder how authors feel about ad space on their book's product page being sold.

If you're a popular author and you're spending, say, $200 a day sending readers to your product page. Isn't it strange that in addition to your book they see ads for other books.

And, if in future these ads become very good, then, in effect, the author would be losing some of the readers they would otherwise have gotten. No?


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

I started my campaign on 2/1 and have increased my bid incrementally from $0.05 to $0.50. I targeted the top 15 bestsellers in my non-fiction sub-genre, plus 15 related fiction bestsellers. As of today, impressions = 62 and clicks = 0. A troubling fact is that my sales and borrows have dried up since I started this campaign. It could be a coincidence, of course.


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Wired said:


> I started my campaign on 2/1 and have increased my bid incrementally from $0.05 to $0.50. As of today, impressions = 62 and clicks = 0. I targeted the top 15 bestsellers in my non-fiction sub-genre, plus 15 related fiction bestsellers. A troubling fact is that my sales and borrows have dried up _since I started this campaign_. It could be a coincidence, of course.


I had 5140 impressions on the first day and none since then.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

SmallTownGirl said:


> I had 5140 impressions on the first day and none since then.


How many books did you target?


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

Wired said:


> How many books did you target?


Eighty.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Everything I see indicates that the advertising is being flooded by high CPC poorly targeted campaigns, which push all the lower CPC tightly targeted campaigns down to minimal impressions.

This would indicate to me that this is a playground for unsophisticated buyers at the moment. Maybe the foolish money will get flushed out of the system at some point, but right now it's very difficult to get cost-effective impressions (which in turn makes it nearly impossible to assess sell through at scale).


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## SmallTownGirl (Jan 21, 2015)

jakedfw said:


> Everything I see indicates that the advertising is being flooded by high CPC poorly targeted campaigns, which push all the lower CPC tightly targeted campaigns down to minimal impressions.
> 
> This would indicate to me that this is a playground for unsophisticated buyers at the moment. Maybe the foolish money will get flushed out of the system at some point, but right now it's very difficult to get cost-effective impressions (which in turn makes it nearly impossible to assess sell through at scale).


That makes sense. People are probably going bananas over it. Hopefully they spend twenty dollars for every one sale : O. That way they will get flushed out like you said and the cpc will lower, or it won't.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2015)

I have a q - how will the stupid money know its stupid?

It's not as if they are coming to places like KBoards and realizing what effective ad rates are.


Also, what if it's just the algorithms trying to squeeze out money.


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

emilycantore said:


> I'm seeing dumb ads.
> 
> I just checked out Viola Rivard's Trust (Running With Alphas Book 1) - the ad goes here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GCS4AU0?me=A3T7DQBB0CKEM6
> 
> It's a diary of someone's life. Being advertised on a Alpha werewolf book.


I followed that link... I am truly speechless. That is all.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Lynn McNamee said:


> I read the sample, and I am stunned.
> 
> That book is priced at $9.99, and the ranking is 37,528.
> 
> How?


Borrows and/or AuthorHouse shenanigans.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Lady Vine said:


> I followed that link... I am truly speechless. That is all.


I followed that link and didn't see any ads at all.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

jakedfw said:


> Everything I see indicates that the advertising is being flooded by high CPC poorly targeted campaigns, which push all the lower CPC tightly targeted campaigns down to minimal impressions.
> 
> This would indicate to me that this is a playground for unsophisticated buyers at the moment. Maybe the foolish money will get flushed out of the system at some point, but right now it's very difficult to get cost-effective impressions (which in turn makes it nearly impossible to assess sell through at scale).


I get the exact same feeling. It's new, we have a lot of excited authors overbidding. Might take a year or more to stabilize. If the impressions slow to a trickle at a low CPC, I'll just not renew for a year or so. Besides, I've got enough on my plate with facebook and ADWords advertising--don't need to be a guinea pig for the 'Zon too =P


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

I'm just wondering how the bids are weighted when it comes to targeted items versus categories.

For instance:

Advertiser A has a max bid of $.10 on Romance
Advertiser B has a max bid of $.05 on all Danielle Steele books

Does this mean Advertiser B will never get any impressions if all Danielle Steele books are listed in Romance?

If Advertiser A raises the max bid to an outrageous one that outbids every other advertiser, will their book/item be the only one ever seen on every romance novel on Amazon?

*More Information:*

I started a campaign for one book. I targeted 31 books in the same genre. I left the bid at $.05.

I'm looking through the pages of the targeted books.

So far, I've seen ads from AT&T, HP, Olay, and Vanguard. All are big companies selling items that are higher priced than ebooks. I couldn't begin to compete with them on bidding for ad space.

Two of my targeted books aren't even displaying an ad. That makes no sense. Why not put my ad on there, since I bid on the spot?


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

I'm suspending this campaign after 10 days. Almost 8K impressions...yielding 20 clicks and 1 sale.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

I'm running a very tightly targeted campaign for my Casanova translation, at $0.05 CPC. I've still had no clicks, let alone sales, and we're around two weeks in now. But I have noticed in the last few days that my number of impressions is shooting up fairly rapidly (for a given value of "shooting up" but the first ten days or so yielded barely 200 impressions, whereas I've had another 250 in the last 48 hours alone).

My data set is too small to draw meaningful conclusions, but I'm starting to wonder whether quite a few high-CPC spenders have taken their toys home.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Wired said:


> I'm suspending this campaign after 10 days. Almost 8K impressions...yielding 20 clicks and 1 sale.


You don't pay for impressions, so the number of them is irrelevant.

If your bid was $.05, you paid $1 for the ad.

For that $1, you got one sale and 20 people visiting your book page. Some of those people could have put your book on their Wishlists. Some of them may buy your book the next time they see it.

I just don't see that as bad ROI on a dollar.


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## Scila (Apr 13, 2014)

Started a new campaign targeting categories instead of specific products (the other one ended at 5K impressions with 4 clicks). So far, 40 clicks and 1 sale at $0.25 (I raised the bid after the impressions stopped at 5k -- they shot up to 90k now). Doesn't seem to be worth it in the end. Maybe my product page isn't good enough? I don't know. I'll stick with other advertising options. I'm probably too dumb to use this tool effectively anyway.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Lynn McNamee said:


> If your bid was $.05, you paid $1 for the ad.


I paid way more than $0.05. My average CPC is $0.51, since I had to keep raising my bid to get a decent number of impressions. After 10 days I have whopping 21 clicks, resulting in (drum roll) 2 sales at $0.99 per sale. Meanwhile, the campaign has cost me $10.67. Not a great ROI, obviously.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

I'm starting to see confirmation in tho thread that people are overbidding because they are impatient for impressions. 

Looks like a 10% sell through rate so far (on an absurdly small sample). So the math is simple: Take your expected Profit on a sale and make sure your click bids are less than 10% of that.

So anyone bidding 50 cents, you better be making more than $5 on rack book sold.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

jakedfw said:


> I'm starting to see confirmation in tho thread that people are overbidding because they are impatient for impressions.
> 
> Looks like a 10% sell through rate so far (on an absurdly small sample). So the math is simple: Take your expected Profit on a sale and make sure your click bids are less than 10% of that.
> 
> So anyone bidding 50 cents, you better be making more than $5 on rack book sold.


And my last question still stands:

I'm just wondering how the bids are weighted when it comes to targeted items versus categories.

For instance:

Advertiser A has a max bid of $.10 on Romance
Advertiser B has a max bid of $.05 on all Danielle Steele books

Does this mean Advertiser B will never get any impressions if all Danielle Steele books are listed in Romance?

If Advertiser A raises the max bid to an outrageous one that outbids every other advertiser, will their book/item be the only one ever seen on every romance novel on Amazon?

This could make a huge difference on whether or not it's better to target categories or specific products.


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## Guest (Feb 10, 2015)

1) This: You don't pay for impressions, so the number of them is irrelevant.

Number of impressions is relevant in the larger context. Because the total number of impressions is limited to how many book pages are opened by readers.

So if the number of clicks is very low, then it means total number of clicks on any given date is rather limited.

2) This: Advertiser A has a max bid of $.10 on Romance
Advertiser B has a max bid of $.05 on all Danielle Steele books

Does this mean Advertiser B will never get any impressions if all Danielle Steele books are listed in Romance?

If Advertiser A raises the max bid to an outrageous one that outbids every other advertiser, will their book/item be the only one ever seen on every romance novel on Amazon?


How advertising platforms work (and Amazon will almost certainly choose this because they HATE dependency on one entity/author/provider) is

Give the higher bidder a higher percentage of impressions
Give the lower bidder a lower percentge of impressions

See what clicks are generated.
See what sales are generated.

Run their algorithms on how much they are making per click, per sale, etc. and then RANK the authors and every other authors.

Then share out the impressions to achieve two simultaneous targets

A) Maximize Earnings through BOTH book sales and click earnings.

B) Not become dependent on one author or one group of authors.

*******

In general, the narrower you get the better, provided it's narrower = relevant to your target audience.

The wide keywords are a bloodbath on most advertising networks.

For example:

Something like 'free books' will go for $1 to $5.

While

'good cheap science fiction books' will go for $0.10 to $0.40.

And the latter will convert much better.

The problem is that there is MUCH LESS of the latter + it's hard to find the latter.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Thanks for that response.  

I'm definitely going to try targeting specific products.

***

When I said impressions were irrelevant, I meant in that specific context of worrying about money spent.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Got my first click on a bid of 40 cents. It cost me 3 cents.

Weird.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

jakedfw said:


> Got my first click on a bid of 40 cents. It cost me 3 cents.
> 
> Weird.


I'm no expert, but this is how I understand it.

The CPC you enter is a maximum bid not an actual charge per click. The CPC you enter is a maximum bid not an actual charge per click.

If the highest bidder for that slot had a max bid of $.02 and your max bid is higher, then you would be charged $.03 for the clicks.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

I'm shocked at how low it is. With all the discussion of 50 cent clicks I was not at all expecting it to be that low.


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2015)

Yes, Lynn, this is right: When I said impressions were irrelevant, I meant in that specific context of worrying about money spent. 

*****

This is all very interesting. I would have loved to have the product pages to play with and work on cross-marketing & cross promotions. Amazon almost seems to be doing anti cross marketing.


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

ireaderreview said:


> Yes, Lynn, this is right: When I said impressions were irrelevant, I meant in that specific context of worrying about money spent.
> 
> *****
> 
> This is all very interesting. I would have loved to have the product pages to play with and work on cross-marketing & cross promotions. Amazon almost seems to be doing anti cross marketing.


I'm testing some various books and parameters.

If I learn anything new, I would be happy to contact you.

Also, I'm interested in your advertising services. Do you work with small publishers?


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

I now have had 7,003 impressions..5 clicks..8 page detail views..0 sales.

I'm curious as to why there are more page views than clicks. I can only think that those are from people who visited the page outside of seeing the ad. If this is the case, it could be a good way of monitoring the effectiveness of out book detail pages. I see many authors here have long wished that Amazon would provide us with the analytics to see how many people are visiting our books' detail pages.

For example, we could set our CPC at $0.02 with very limited targeting, thus pretty well ensuring that we'll never actually spend any money. We would then be able to see how many people are visiting our book detail pages organically.

Or am I reading this completely incorrectly?

Most likely.

Philip


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Philip Gibson said:


> I now have had 7,003 impressions..5 clicks..8 page detail views..0 sales.
> 
> I'm curious as to why there are more page views than clicks. I can only think that those are from people who visited the page outside of seeing the ad. If this is the case, it could be a good way of monitoring the effectiveness of out book detail pages. I see many authors here have long wished that Amazon would provide us with the analytics to see how many people are visiting our books' detail pages.
> 
> ...


From the Help page:

"... a sale is attributed when a shopper who clicks on the ad purchases a product from the brand within 14 days."

I'm guessing that maybe page views are counted the same way. That would account for page views being higher than clicks.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

I've yet to see any of these ads from authors on the Amazon site. And I've looked a lot. Maybe my computer blocks them automatically. When I did the CPC thing with Goodreads, I was very disappointed to see how my tiny ad was almost entirely non-visible on their pages, even though it counted as an 'impression'.

So I'm curious to see how these ads actually look on Amazon. If anyone here could take a screenshot of their ad (or any book ad) on Amazon and post it here, I would be most grateful.

Philip


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Philip Gibson said:


> I've yet to see any of these ads from authors on the Amazon site. And I've looked a lot. Maybe my computer blocks them automatically. When I did the CPC thing with Goodreads, I was very disappointed to see how my tiny ad was almost entirely non-visible on their pages, even though it counted as an 'impression'.
> 
> So I'm curious to see how these ads actually look on Amazon. If anyone here could take a screenshot of their ad (or any book ad) on Amazon and post it here, I would be most grateful.
> 
> Philip


Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Thought-I-Knew-You-ebook/dp/B009BBD08I/

On the right-hand said, just under all the Buy buttons and such, you should see an ad for a book.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Lynn McNamee said:


> Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Thought-I-Knew-You-ebook/dp/B009BBD08I/
> 
> On the right-hand said, just under all the Buy buttons and such, you should see an ad for a book.


The only ad I see there is this.










That's all I ever see - ads for Amazon products other than books.

Philip


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

That's odd.

This is what I see:



Do you own a Kindle or have you downloaded the Kindle App? If not, then maybe that's why you're not seeing Kindle book ads.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Thanks for that. That's quite a nice ad. and it's in a much more prominent position than the tiny Goodreads CPC ads are.

My ad. has apparently been shown over 9,000 times now so I'm somewhat hopeful. I have the Kindle app. for PC, so I'm thinking I'm not seeing the ads on Amazon pages either because I'm in Laos or my computer blocks them. Anyway good to know that they're quite nice and displayed prominently.

Philip


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## Lynn McNamee (Jan 8, 2009)

Please understand that I'm just making assumptions. That's our book page, but the ad is not mine. I'm only guessing it's an author who bought an ad.

I've been doing a lot of reading on this type of ad, so I now know just enough to be dangerous. 

The big thing is not to set your bid-per-click too high.

You'll only be able to figure out the best rate over time, but at first, be sure that it's not so high that you will be losing money even if every click resulted in a sale.

For instance, if you have a $.99 book, your profit on a sale would only be $.35 (if you're not in Select), so you would never want to bid higher than that amount. If your goal is to get exposure, you could bid close to that amount; if your goal is to make money off the ad itself, then you would need to bid significantly lower than that amount.

_(Note: This is just an example. You will need to do your own calculations for your own books, perhaps including Amazon's delivery fees.)_

Over time, you can figure out your average number of clicks per sale. For instance, if you get a sale for every 20 clicks, then the price of 20 clicks should be less than the amount you will make from that one sale.

As far as impressions, that will tell you if your book is getting seen and if it's getting seen by the right people. You can adjust your targeting strategy accordingly.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

ShaneJeffery said:


> For instance, I'm looking at 'Target ad by product.' And then it lets me choose as many products as I like.
> 
> Doesn't seem right. It seems the more products I choose the more I'd be paying. But I can't find out where it says how any of that works.


Focus targeting. You're going to pay per click. If you budget $100 at $.05 per click, you have 2000 opportunities for a reader to buy your book. Don't wast them. Why would anyone want their SF novel advertised to people browsing historical fiction? If they click it and hate it, the click just cost a nickle. Pick the single best fit of the options given. Your ratio of sales per click will be higher.

I just set applied for one with Fallen Out, it's been lagging the last few days.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Lynn McNamee said:


> Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Thought-I-Knew-You-ebook/dp/B009BBD08I/
> 
> On the right-hand said, just under all the Buy buttons and such, you should see an ad for a book.


I have a kindle and the account etc. I've never seen one of the adverts, but then maybe it's because I browse .com and .co.uk sometimes, but my account is a UK one.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

My book now has 16,771 impressions..14 clicks ..31 detail page views..0 sales.

Still trying to figure out the difference between clicks and detail page views. If they've clicked on the ad, then they've seen the detail page, haven't they?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Philip Gibson said:


> My book now has 16,771 impressions..14 clicks ..31 detail page views..0 sales.
> 
> Still trying to figure out the difference between clicks and detail page views. If they've clicked on the ad, then they've seen the detail page, haven't they?


Could be that those 14 went to the page more than once. A few questions:
How long after being notified that your ad was accepted did the campaign page update. I was just approved two hours ago?
What CPC rate did you put in? I bid $.10 per click.
What date range did you choose? I chose from today through 2/28.

It would be interesting to learn what CPC rate works the best and what date range gets the ad in front of more people, more often.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Could be that those 14 went to the page more than once. A few questions:
> How long after being notified that your ad was accepted did the campaign page update. I was just approved two hours ago?
> What CPC rate did you put in? I bid $.10 per click.
> What date range did you choose? I chose from today through 2/28.
> ...


I think it took 24 hours before I saw the first update. The book is about the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

My first campaign targeted 'Interests' (categories: History, Biographies, Non Fiction, Science). After 3 days at $0.05, I cancelled the campaign as it had only 9 impressions and 0 clicks.

I then set up a new campaign at $0.05 a click targeted at 'Products' (The #11-#20 and #51- #60 History best sellers) set to run until 16 March.

Results so far:

After day 1.. 9 impressions.. 0 clicks.. changed bid to $0.21.. 
After day 2.. 47 impressions.. 0 clicks..changed bid to $0.31..
After day 3.. 223 impressions.. 0 clicks.. changed bid to $0.76..
After day 4.. 7,003 impressions..5 clicks..8 page views..average $0.60 per click..0 sales recorded
After day 5.. 16,367..impressions..14 clicks..31 page views..average $0.56 per click..0 sales recorded


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> It would be interesting to learn what CPC rate works the best and what date range gets the ad in front of more people, more often.


I'd be very interested to see your results, Wayne. Knowing you, I'm sure you are keeping a record of them.


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

As many people here have pointed out, there's a lot of stupid money being thrown at the system right now.

Considering there are 700K+ ebooks in Select, and probably 200K+ authors, I predict it will be quite awhile before the stupid money is exhausted, at least a few months.

Seems like the tweaks that are available to get around the stupid money, is to find every single ebook target that fits your genre, that has a semi-decent rating. The more targets you can identify, the higher probability your low bid will win out. You might find a target no one else is competing on, and be able to squeeze a little something out of it.

I realize everyone says 'razor focus targeting', but, if everyone has a razor focus on the top 100 bestsellers in their genre, then you'd have to bid .75 to 1.00 and up to get a damn click on any of those books.

The smart money bidding low will have to focus outside of the top 100 in your subcategory to get any clicks at a decent price, or wait until the stupid money is bled out of the system.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

> Seems like the tweaks that are available to get around the stupid money, is to find every single ebook target that fits your genre, that has a semi-decent rating. The more targets you can identify, the higher probability your low bid will win out. You might find a target no one else is competing on, and be able to squeeze a little something out of it.
> 
> I realize everyone says 'razor focus targeting', but, if everyone has a razor focus on the top 100 bestsellers in their genre, then you'd have to bid .75 to 1.00 and up to get a damn click on any of those books.
> 
> The smart money bidding low will have to focus outside of the top 100 in your subcategory to get any clicks at a decent price, or wait until the stupid money is bled out of the system.


This is really smart.


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## MJWare (Jun 25, 2010)

Anyone else have their impressions count doing down? 

Yesterday one of my books was at 89, today it's 36. This has happened twice now, and it happens for each of my three campaigns.


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

MJWare said:


> Anyone else have their impressions count doing down?
> 
> Yesterday one of my books was at 89, today it's 36. This has happened twice now, and it happens for each of my three campaigns.


I think that what's happening is as Amazon bills out the clicks, little by little, the impression counter is reset.

That's my best guess.

I am getting several thousand impressions a day from each of my two attempts at this advertising experiment, and I've been billed twice (super low $$).

I think the slate is wiped clean every time Amazon bills out your ad account.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

Actually, going through this thread has made me want to try this out.  For some reason, I was under the impression that it was a flat $100, paid at the time you order the ad, and then... idk, it went to targeted emails or something.  Which actually wouldn't be so bad, if I had $100 to just shell out right now.

But this is just how Etsy does their promoted listings, which I've been using for years.  I bid $30 a month there, but rarely wind up paying more than $10, and it's all made back with the first sale.

It does seem like this would be something best left at a long-term run with a low bid.  Like some of the others are saying, impressions are largely irrelevant.  You can use them to fiddle with your targeting and try to dial it in, but unless you are some sort of god, your impressions are always going to be miles ahead of your clicks.  I do think, like others have said as well, that it seems most of the people using the system haven't really done much market research.  They don't know who to target their books to, because they haven't figured out who wants to read their books.  But I think I'm gonna fiddle with this and see what I can make of it.  I'll probably try to spread my $100 as far as they'll let me.


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## MJWare (Jun 25, 2010)

TWLuedke said:


> I think that what's happening is as Amazon bills out the clicks, little by little, the impression counter is reset.
> 
> That's my best guess.
> 
> ...


Weird, now my one click has disappeared, too. Maybe you are right about resetting the stats, but if so that will make it impossible to track our numbers.

I've been using Google Adwords for over 10 years and it's a completely different product--Amazon's system is so behind it's almost impossible to compare the two.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

My total number of clicks goes down or is reset every few days. I now have the first sale (at $4.99).  If I can believe the current stats, it took 34 clicks and has cost me $19.67.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

My sell through rate is currently 10%, but that's with only ten clicks. :/

That's not bad at all. The trouble is generating clicks at a reasonable cost takes FOREVER.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

There's a new announcement on top of my campaign page:



> Data Inaccurate
> Metrics data is currently reporting inaccurately. Data for your campaigns will be available in full when this issue is resolved.


I wonder if this has anything to do with the counts resetting at random, and if that's going to be fixed now.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Me too! Interesting development ...


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## MJWare (Jun 25, 2010)

I can't wait for a day or two when the get the stats figured out and we all find out we've spent $100 in the last three days!

*Update:* a minute after I wrote this my stats updated with about 3 times the impressions, but thankfully only 2 clicks. Still shows the, "Data Inaccurate" message so maybe they'll change more.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

The data inaccurate message is gone for me, but my impressions have also rocketed up.  No clicks yet, but maybe now if this is stalbilised, I can mess with my targeting some more and see if I can get a few.


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## TWLuedke (Nov 8, 2013)

I have paused my campaigns.

Amazon doesn't have their system setup for decent targeting, and their ad displays just aren't really enticing. Not getting anywhere near enough sales to justify the pricetag on the ads. Shittons of impressions! Yehaw! Who cares.

That's my conclusion.

I think you'd get alot more out of your time and money to design a squeeze page for a special offer, and put together a winning Facebook campaign on it, and just let it run, indefinitely, after you've tweaked and fine-tuned it as good as possible.

At least with Facebook and a squeeze page, you can customize every aspect of the ad and targeting, and get some real data to show how well its working. 

Amazon has a lot to learn about this advertising process before it will be worthwhile.

Of course, if you have some decent midlist sucess, and can afford to throw hundreds of dollars a month at Amazon ads for the extra exposure, and maybe to ingratiate yourself with an Amazon rep, then go for it. 

Me, I need to be much more effective with my money, because I'm just not making enough to justify poorly designed advertising campaigns.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

I'm not pausing or stopping my campaigns because the ROI is a net positive for me so far. (10% or so sell through rate for clicks). 

That said, getting a sale is so rare that it is cause for celebration. So as a way to push a sale or two without even thinking, it's good. But, yeah, it's pretty much set it, forget it, and then get a sale every few weeks.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Philip Gibson said:


> My total number of clicks goes down or is reset every few days. I now have the first sale (at $4.99). If I can believe the current stats, it took 34 clicks and has cost me $19.67.


Then you have to be paying around $0.57/click.

Which is too high, IMO. You're competing with the "stupid money" just to get impressions and clicks.

I think you'd be wise to lower your maximum, target more specifically, and be more patient on results.

But like everyone else, this is all new to me, too. What do I know?


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

I do have a question of my own:

How often does Amazon invoice your credit card? Every time they log a click? Once a week?


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

CraigInOregon said:


> Then you have to be paying around $0.57/click.
> 
> Which is too high, IMO. You're competing with the "stupid money" just to get impressions and clicks.
> 
> ...


I'm getting clicks as low as two cents, so you can definitely stick with Amazon's recommend five cent bid and make it work. I started one last month and one on the first of this month. Between the two, I've spent 19 cents, averaging three cents per click, and have one sale.

These people bidding way over the top are just going to lose money very fast. My initial thought was to bid low and treat it like a marathon, and early figures suggest it's likely to pay off.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Okay, I created an account for myself and found out the billing practices from that.

I would be billed at $1.00, at $5.00, and then at $10.00 intervals for the life of the campaign, if I wanted to set the campaign for a $100.00 total budget limit.

That answers that.

Here's my new question:

I've seen some people say, "I've suspended my campaign" for this reason or that reason.

So that leads me to ask: Does that mean that if you suspend a campaign, you're no longer obligated to spend out the rest of your campaign budget?

I mean, I realize if they generate only $10 in clicks for you in whatever you set as the time limit of your campaign, you won't be charged the extra $90, once the time runs out.

But what if you suspend a campaign because, say, your bank account is dry and you don't want that next $10 hitting you until you can replenish the account....

...or let's say you suspend the campaign because you think the results are cruddy and you just don't want to keep paying for something that's not working?

If *you* suspend the campaign until the end of the deadline for the length of the campaign, does that mean the balance remaining in the campaign budget goes away? Or will they say, "Hey, you agreed to spend $100 and you suspended after only $25. We'll now bill you for $75.00, thank you."

Is that possible? Or do they just say, "Thank you for your $25. We're sorry it didn't work better for you."

I guess what I'm getting at is, I can understand Amazon saying, "Hey, we only produced $25 worth of clicks for you in the time allotted, don't worry about the remaining $75."

What I'm less sure of is whether they'd be all forgiving like that if you suspend the campaign yourself.

Would a person be setting themselves up for a whopper of a "You owe us" bill? Or what?

Has anyone who's run a campaign and suspended it found out, yet?

I'd want to know this before I do anything. Just because I'm the careful type and it's not answered on the site right now.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

No worries, they only bill you for the clicks you get. If you suspend (and never re-start) your ad, you won't be billed any more than what you've already paid. =)


I started by targeting ~50 books in the same genre as mine. I set the bid at 7c, figuring it didn't matter if it took a while to build up clicks. But, a little over a month later, I'd only gained 147 views (zero clicks!).

So, tired of waiting, I put my bid price up to 22c. Three days later, and I've gained a whopping 20 extra views.    I probably need to target more books.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

My ad's finished now. I targeted about 30 books in the top 100 for my genre. I didn't see many impressions at all (maybe 20 a day) until I raised the bid price to $0.50. Then they started trickling in, but even so I was only seeing a few hundred impressions and no clicks. Towards the end they started pouring in, I guess as other advertisers started dropping out, so I lowered the bid.

Eventually I had a click, and another. Then a sale!

My final campaign results were: Impressions 5777, Clicks 3, Page Views 3, Spend $1.01, CPC $0.34, Sales $3.99

So assuming I made the regular $2.70 on that sale, That's a win! 

I've had a borrow in the ad timeframe too, but I don't know if it's related - the stats don't mention borrows.

Edit: That impressions number may be BS, because the tally reset itself several times, so I have no idea what the real total was.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Darcy and Tim,


Thanks for the insights and responses.


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## AA.A (Sep 6, 2012)

I selected 20 books from same Genre. I have changed the bid from 0.51-0.71 just for collecting data. These are the results from my four days experience. Currently bid 0.51. 

Cost $14.21	impressions (17,302) clicks(24)  CPC($0.59)	Sales($11.97)  from 3 sales
I have had several borrows, let us say one is from them. So totall  sales would be around $13.25.
I am currently in minus. By the end, the average of CPC will be 0.41-0.43.  On the long run i will make profit.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

Ahmad_Ardalan said:


> I selected 20 books from same Genre. I have changed the bid from 0.51-0.71 just for collecting data. These are the results from my four days experience. Currently bid 0.51.
> 
> Cost $14.21	impressions (17,302) clicks(24) CPC($0.59)	Sales($11.97) from 3 sales
> I have had several borrows, let us say one is from them. So totall sales would be around $13.25.
> I am currently in minus. By the end, the average of CPC will be 0.41-0.43. On the long run i will make profit.


You don't need a bid that high. Lower your bid and target more books. I'm targeting 100+, and averaging three cents peer click. I've paid 19 cents and have one $2.99 sale. This is on a campaign that's been running a little over a week.


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## Wired (Jan 10, 2014)

Hi all. Does anyone have any new data to add to this discussion?


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

18 clicks, 1 sale
CPC is 17 cents

Not too happy with the sell through rate, but the sample is very low. If I get 1 sale tomorrow from 1 click, then I'm very happy with the sell through rate. So, we are back to the main problem with this advertising: It's horribly inefficient.

Total impressions are around 15,000 but I don't really care at all about impressions.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

At least you have impressions. 

After several weeks, I have 185 impressions. No clicks. I terminated my campaign and started a new one with new, more specific targeting.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

Amazon KDP Marketing has added a new thing. You can add your own headline to your ads.



Since my last campaign didn't cost anything (because I got so few clicks), I'm trying again with a new headline. I'll report back if it makes any difference. Here's what the new ads look like with a headline.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

So some people are having a little success it seems  Wonder if Amazon will make this work or not.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

It strikes me that something like a boxed set for 6.99 or 7.99 might be the way to go here (or, I suppose, I more expensive book). You could target product pages for other boxed sets and you'd have more room to up your max price safely. If I had a boxed set, I'd try it!

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this  

Another thought - raise your book price to $7.99 for single novel and only target books very similar to yours which are selling for $6.99-$9.99. Slightly counterintuitive as far as raising price to get more conversions, but it allows you slightly better targeting (people looking at higher priced books) and more room to play with raising your allowable CPC.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

How do you target books by price?


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## Salvador Mercer (Jan 1, 2015)

Chiming in to give my 2 cents.

I've heard this $100 Amazon option doesn't help much.  On my own book page the ad is on the top (no scrolling necessary) but it's at the very bottom right and if I do scroll it is literally smaller than the also-boughts.  I really didn't realize that it was an ad till I just now looked.  I always thought it was some sort of recommendation engine from the Zon.

So until they make the ad bigger, I'm thinking most people aren't even seeing it or realizing it's there.

Again, just an opinion


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

I agree!  It's terrible in size and placement. I wish they had better targeting options as well


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Emily Wibberley said:


> How do you target books by price?


I haven't done any promos, but after reading through the whole thread it seems that you can select any specific books you want. So I could search for thrillers priced between $6.99 and $9.99, sort by sales rank or relevance, then jot down the ASINs of the ones I wanted to match. Then use that list when I go to set up my campaign and target specific books.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

Ah! And duh. Thanks.

I'm getting so few impressions on my Amazon ads - let alone clicks - so I'm doing something wrong. I'm going to try targeting similar books with higher prices now. I will let you know how it goes.


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## dragontucker (Jul 18, 2014)

Wouldn't it be best to use Amazon ads to build an email list? Get people to your permafree book that is leading to email sign ups for your series. Seems this would be a good approach.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

dragontucker said:


> Wouldn't it be best to use Amazon ads to build an email list? Get people to your permafree book that is leading to email sign ups for your series. Seems this would be a good approach.


If your cost per click is 30-50 cents, then that is likely a more expensive approach than other options. Even at 30 cents a click with a 50% conversion rate of clickers downloading your permafree (unlikely) and a 25% rate of downloaders signing up for your mailing list (even more unlikely), you'd be paying over $2 per subscriber. A number of folks are paying under 50 cents a subscriber on FB ads and getting decent open rates and low unsubscribe rates


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## ChristinaGarner (Aug 31, 2011)

I think I might start experimenting with this. I've got some disposable income (that term is so weird--who has ever wanted to dispose of it?!) right now and am going to go back to FB ads and give this a try to see which nets out better. I'll keep you posted on my results and would love to hear if anyone else has anything to add to this discussion.


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