Trialling Amazon ads – Week One

Trialling Amazon ads – Week One

1st August – 7th August

*I’m using the UK ads site for now, but I have a US ad planned for next week*

My initial plan was to spend £1 a day on an ad for all of August. However, I’ve since tweaked that to see if changing the daily spend has an impact. I’ve always been terrified of how much Amazon ads would cost, but as time’s gone on I’ve become more confident. I’ve toggled dynamic bids down so I won’t go over my budget and I’m also noticing days when I’m spending nothing. Just because you’ve got a daily budget of £2, doesn’t mean you’ll spend that every day.

Because of this, I opted to trial a few different ads and compile the data.

 

Before we get into my journey of trialling Amazon ads, let me tell you a little about me. 

I’ve been a self-published UK author since 2020 with a zero to tiny budget. It’s been a huge learning curve in every aspect, but I can proudly say I have 8 published books (5 of them are my focused genre – escapism romance). Before writing books, I blogged and spent a lot of time teaching myself keywords and SEO (my knowledge is still basic but it’s a building block).

Let me be brutally honest with you about two things…

1. If you haven’t researched keywords, Amazon ads aren’t for you. Even if you opt for an automatic ad, the data is picked up from your book’s information and if your keyword research is unsuccessful, your ads will be too (you’ll see during my experience I’ve realised my book’s metadata must be wrong).
2. Everyone’s audience looks different. Success differs for every author and genre is a big part of that. Niche books will have a smaller audience and therefore fewer sales. It’s not always helpful to directly compare your sales with someone else’s.

Now, onto my first week of using Amazon ads…

Sponsored product automatic targeting

This is where Amazon picks up your book’s metadata to advertise it.

My experience with auto-targeting was rubbish, so on the 4th of August, I tweaked the budget and the date. I changed the budget from £1 a day to £3 and opted to end it on 6th August.

Book: A Spring Fling at Hotel Mayfair (ebook)

Price: £2.99

Dates: 1st August – 6th August

Budget: £1-£3 daily

Total impressions for 1st August – 7th August: 498

Total clicks for 1st August – 7th August: 0

Total Sales: £0

Total Spent: £0

Total earned: £0

The auto ad did not go at all how I was expecting! I’m going to have to look at my book’s metadata as something is obviously not right with it!

Sponsored product manual targeting

This is where you enter your own keywords to select the audience your book is marketed to.

Book: The Cornish Vintage Dress Shop (ebook)

Price: £2.99

Dates: 1st – 31st August (this post is focusing on 1st – 7th August)

Budget: Started at £1 a day but I upped it to £2 (on 2nd August) and saw an improvement.

Total impressions for 1st August – 7th August: 2,260

Total clicks for 1st August – 7th August: 12

Total Sales: 1 and 32 pages read

Total Spent: £4.19

Total earned: £2.10 (approx)

Amazon Ads Dashboard Vs KDP Dashboard:

On the KDP dashboard, my royalties for this book are £4.79. I’m inclined to think this total is from ads, as I haven’t been marketing this book on social media very much.

Sponsored Category Products Manual Targeting

This is where you choose similar category products to market your book.

Books:

A Merry Christmas at the Castle (ebook)

A Spring Fling at Hotel Mayfair (ebook)

Price: Both are priced at £2.99

Dates: 5th – 6th August

Budget: £3 daily

Total impressions for 1st August – 7th August: 6,847

Total clicks for 1st August – 7th August: 7

Total Sales: 271 pages read split over two books (approximately £0.70) – Possibly more page reads to come as the full books haven’t been read.

Total Spent: £1.47

Profit? Loss.

I think there’s potential with this category ad, but I haven’t let it run for long enough.

I may revisit it in a couple of weeks.

 

 

Overall thoughts…

I’ve spent £5.66 and if I compare my ads dashboard and KDP dashboard, I think I’ve made £5.49 through ads. I have also had page reads on other books that could be read through. If I include them, then I’m in profit.

An overall loss of 17p seems okay since I’m still trying to get my head around it all!

I’ve had a total of 19 clicks and if I compare my ads and KDP dashboard, I believe I’ve sold two books and had an approximate total of 303 pages read.

 

Next week I plan to keep my UK manual-targeted ad running for The Cornish Vintage Dress Shop and I’m starting a US manual-targeted ad for A Spring Fling at Hotel Mayfair. I’ll let you know how it goes!

 

Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions or let me know any data you’d like to be included in the next post. I’d also love to hear about your own experiences with Amazon ads.

Week Two’s update can be found here