Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Adventures in Advertising

 Remember in my last post when I said I didn't have much of a marketing plan for my new book? That's still true, but I decided to join the 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge just to learn something about Amazon ads.

Mostly what I've learned is that I have no idea how anyone sells anything. I currently have eleven ad campaigns running. It took three days for Amazon to even show anything to anyone. (That's known as an "impression".) I don't have to pay anything until someone actually clicks on the ad.

It's been nearly a week and a half, and I have 418 impressions and 0 clicks. Most people see about 1000 impressions to get each click, so I may owe Amazon 30 whole cents sometime before the end of the year. On the plus side, this is a cheap gamble.

I did sell six books to other authors in the challenge, so I guess that's something.

Screenshot of campaign page showing 418 impressions and 0 clicks


Anyhow, I've learned a bunch, so it was worth the time. I'll probably stop obsessively refreshing the webpage someday soon. And maybe after I publish a few more books I'll have to start taking it seriously.

Two sleeping cats with a copy of Shift Happens on top of them.
Pimping out my cats to sell my book probably works better...