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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Oct 20, 2018 20:52:24 GMT
advertising.amazon.com/products/sponsored-ads We don't have a thread for AMS yet, so here it is. If you have any experience with amazon's advertising service, please post here and let us know what you have learned and whether or not you recommend it. 
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Post by davidvandyke on Oct 24, 2018 16:57:03 GMT
AMS (now AA) is easier to use than FB, but harder to get a positive ROI in my experience. It's very easy to throw money away fast.
It appears to me that combining AMS with KU is a big advantage. The only arena I'm using AA is for my translated books which, unlike my English books, are in KU. I know with KU that if I achieve a positive ACoS (advertising cost of sale, i.e., how much do I spend to get a sale, the goal being to spend $1 and get at least $1.01 in earnings) I will actually be making a lot more, because KU borrows and reads go unrecorded and unreported in the AA system. In other words, if in retail terms I can get a positive ROI, I will be getting a "ghost" ROI on top of it from however many page reads I pick up because of the extra advertising.
It;'s important to try a lot of keywords and, once you have a track record to examine (it can take several days to get reported results, and it takes weeks to really see what's going on), you need to turn off the keywords that are losing money and try slowly increasing your bids on your best ones, to try to scale up. It;'s important to move slowly, though. Things don't always scale up, and again, you can end up pouring money down a hole to no gain.
I also believe that AA ads do cannibalize organic sales somewhat, and increasingly as you spend more and more. I see this empirically, and it also stands to reason. If you are getting a certain level of organic "free" sales from also-boughts, and you start running AA ads, some people who would have bought anyway via also-boughts will end up seeing ads and clicking and buying. I believe this happens more and more as you pay to have your ads seen more. So, IMO you have to expect better ROIs at low levels and worsening ROIs at higher levels. That's why it's critical to make your ads as efficient as possible, to squeeze every penny of ROI out of them.
If you're in AA, you can usually charge higher prices, too. This will ease the pressure on your ROI. Of course, you will have to experiment, but according to recent Smashwords data (not purely applicable to Amazon, but it probably correlates loosely) 4.99 is fast approaching 3.99 as an equal profit point. In other words, 3.99 and 4.99 are almost the same in terms of how much an author earns overall for that, organically. So, if you can "juice" your sales a little bit and you're paying for the ads anyway, why not sell at 4.99 instead of 3.99? IN the long run, this will also train your readers to accept higher prices for your work, assuming they are otherwise happy with it. Or, maybe you can charge 3.99 instead of 2.99 for your Book 1, or 2.99 instead of 99c. Same idea.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Oct 24, 2018 22:53:50 GMT
Thanks davidvandyke for your very helpful answers here and in the FB ads thread! That's interesting and encouraging to hear of price points rising. |
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Aug 25, 2020 2:41:40 GMT
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Post by gareththomasnz on Jul 25, 2022 4:55:50 GMT
I do nonfiction and find AMS (I still call it that) very easy to get positive ROI where as FB I struggle to break even
Here are my tips...
1. Have a series of books or several in a tight genre EG if you have a hunting book have a wilderness survival book etc
2. Use publisher rocket & kdspy and use 1000 keywords per ad initially
3. Make as many ads as you can all with different keywords
4. Dont bother with ad copy - have good covers & titles
5. Spend $1000 over a few weeks then switch off the keyword targets that dont work
6. I turn all of my ads off for a week or so every 4-5 weeks as they go stale - then after a few days I switch them on and they work again
OK there is a bit more to it but not much its easy. I always triple my money every month. Sometimes more.
Now some people swear black & blue the opposite, never turn ads off ever, test different ad copy etc. I have never had these other methods working.
AMS ads has limited scalability unlike FB
One other thing - the worst thing you can do for AMS ads is kindle select - instant ad sales death
... mmm and another thing - my books are not cheap 9.97 for kindle and $20 - $50 for print - this will have an impact on my ad results
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