Trialling Amazon ads – Month overview

Trialling Amazon ads – Month overview

I started this month thinking I would run an ad for a £1 daily limit to see what success I had. It was only a day or two into this that I realised my £1 limit was achieving nothing, so I upped it to £2. This small change made a big difference.

Over the month I trialled many different types of ads, you can read about them here…

Week One

Week Two 

Week Three

As time went on I became more confident, I saw what I was spending was returning in royalties so I doubled my budget for the month (from £30 to £60). I settled on two separate ads, both Manual Sponsored Category Ads. One ad was for The Cornish Vintage Dress Shop. The other ad covered two of my books A Merry Christmas at the Castle and A Spring Fling at Hotel Mayfair. These ads were having the most success so I’ve stuck with them.

Was it successful?

Here’s my overall stats on my KDP Dashboard. I know all of these sales and page reads weren’t from the ads, but I’m concentrating on whether my royalties can pay for my ads. Including the added tax, I spent £60.94 on ads for August (It was £50.54 prior to tax). I’m happy that the royalties have paid for the ads and have given me a profit. I do need to look at my ads because my click rate to sales ratio isn’t amazing (basically, I’m paying a lot in ads for each sale).

My book sales are something that I’m particularly pleased with as prior months have seen lots of page reads but few sales. I hit 10,000 pages read on Kindle Unlimited. It’s a fantastic milestone that I’ve only ever hit once before. However, I did see a lot of clicks ended in KU reads, which while great to see someone reading my book, it’s not as profitable.

(If I’m spending £4 a day on ads I need to sell two books to cover that, but I’d need 4 full book reads to cover that on Kindle Unlimited).

Here’s a look at the spend vs. clicks vs. income (the sale amount is the price my book is on Amazon so it’s not my profit). I would estimate that £41.86 to be closer to £28. This would mean my ads have made a total of £42.01, putting me at a loss. However, the ads dashboard is unreliable and can often miss sales or page reads, so I’m sticking with comparing my spending with my overall royalties.

My ads made 101,441 impressions and received 211 clicks in August. It’s possible that some of the people may have jotted down the names of my books, and added them to their lists to purchase later. Some may have downloaded on KU in preparation to read at a later date. I will never truly know how many people bought my books from ads.

However, I’m thrilled to be reaching new audiences with very little effort on my part! For now, I’m happy with the success ads have given me, but I will next be looking at how I can step them up.

Overall thoughts…

Do I think the same level of success is achievable without ads? Yes.

I’ve had similar stats in other months. However, I’ve had to put a lot of work into my social media marketing and it hasn’t rolled into the next month. I’ll be keeping the ads going in September and am interested in whether the success of August continues. Overall, I have LOVED ads. I’m seeing great results without having to put so much work in. It’s leaving me with more energy to pour into my writing which feels like a big win. Financially, I’m not sure how sustainable it is. I think I’ll look into trends in the month and might only run ads for half the month.

I think keyword ads would probably be the most successful as you can really target your readers. However, this month has taught me that I have a lot to learn about keywords.

My advice would be… don’t be scared to trial ads. Set aside some money and see what happens (but remember to add tax and set your bids to down only). If you’re really confused about where to start then I think Bryan Cohen’s free ad course is a great place to begin. I’ve signed up for his October course to see if I can learn anything more. Sign up here.

I’m happy to answer any questions. You can either drop them in a comment or email me at ehollandauthor@gmail.com