Sometimes you have to experiment a little. So that’s what this is.
Earlier this month I launched Fantasy Treehouse Art & Architecture, which is an art book, a coloring book, a design idea book… and it’s got fairies. I had a lot of fun putting the project together, but ultimately? It’s a very niche book, and the sales reflect that. It’s fallen on it’s little nose and it’s not getting up again.
So! In the interests of gathering data, I’m also going to see what running an Amazon ad does for an obscure book in an extreme niche market. With about 12 hours of data collected, I’m looking at 146 impressions. Which is about 100 more pairs of eyeballs than this book had prior to the ad. I’ve spent a whopping $0.63 so far, hitting on the keywords ‘art architecture’ and it is set to auto-generate keywords. Since I have no idea how to keyword the book myself. I plan to learn from the auto-bots what hits and what doesn’t. Why so high a bid on the clicks? Because it’s an experiment. And because obviously this book is a hard sell to begin with.
Will I make a profit? I dunno. I can afford to run this for a couple of weeks and look at the data. My daughter and I did an ad for Pixie Noir starting back in July, and it was also auto-targeted and resulted in about 1200 impressions, and the equivalent of two read-throughs on KU. Not a success. I’m closing down that ad campaign and looking at it with a critical eye next month, when I have the time to generate keywords and see what happens.
In the meantime, I’m off on another adventure. I’ll share results as I get them.
Mad Genius Club 
My first try at Amazon ads (years ago) was a flop, but then I didn’t know what I was doing. I really ought to try again. Just tossing out business cards at FenCon, with a cover on the front and the URL for my Amazon page on the back resulted in a nice jump in both sales and page reads.
It’s almost like marketing can actually work . . . Now I just need to figure out how to do it on Amazon.
I’m trying different things. The ads are just another iteration of ‘we shall see’ in the long line of ideas.
You had me at color book. I popped over to Amazon and picked up few for xmas presents. I read you geniuses daily and want to keep y’all in beans and rice so consider it my (quite minimal) contribution to the cause.
Amazon book review to follow upon receipt of volumes.
Thank you! Much appreciated. They do make fun stocking stuffers 🙂
My Amazon ads never paid for themselves. YMMV
I’m collecting data and taking classes. We shall see.
Then there is the question of how much word of mouth spreads from this….
The post, or the ads?
Yes.
The cross-contamination is hard to sort out.
Have you done the Brian Cohen course on ads? If not, remind me to grab my notes and you and some time over coffee.
One of the really important takeaways, though, and with this book it’ll be something you can see: the Amazon ads dashboard does a really poor job of tracking sales through it. When I compared our baseline sales without ads to our baseline sales with ads, I know we’re getting a lot more sales than it shows.
Good to know! I’m in the current Bryan Cohen course but haven’t had the time to really work it.