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Marketing budget and sales ranking

1K views 19 replies 18 participants last post by  Crystal_ 
#1 ·
any data or author experiences on how much daily marketing spend needs to be (FB/AMS/BB) to maintain a ranking of 10-20k?
 
#2 ·
It really depends on what you're writing. I know of authors who've hit ranks better than that with almost no advertising budget because what they were writing was in demand with readers and so readers went looking for it. I have books in my list that will never hit that rank no matter how much I spend on advertising because there isn't enough demand for them.
 
#3 ·
LilyBLily said:
I think people have occasionally commented on what they spent, but it's completely dependent on 1) where you buy your ads, and 2) the subgenre your book is in. In some, selling 5 copies a day will do it easily. In others, 10 copies a day won't even touch 20k ranking.

Assume $10-30 per day in ad costs and you won't be far off. That's $300-900 a month. Make sure your cover price can sustain the costs.
This is about right in my experience for a stand alone book with a price high enough to support the ad spend. Ranking at 20k with a book in KU takes about $15 to $20 per day. That means 2 or 3 sales a day then another 3 or 4 KU downloads. As Lily said though, you need to price high to make the ads worth it. To rank at 10k is much tougher. It takes between $30 and $40 per day to bounce around in the 10k to 12k range.

The important thing to remember is that your own situation will affect your ranking success. For example, your ad dollars will go a lot further on a 99 cent book if rank is what you're looking to achieve. But, it may not give you the best return on investment.
 
#8 ·
A.G.B said:
I'm astonished at the numbers being bandied around here! :eek:
Same here. To put it into perspective, I budget for $15 month total (though get charged a third of that) for my memoirs. My rank for both of them varies wildly. It is about 1 million at low points, and around 200k with two sales over two days. One sale will take the book to 400k.
My author rank is much steadier. In the lifetime its never been below 450k and usually maxes out at 100k.
 
#10 ·
that sounds a very low daily spend for me. i was thinking a higher daily spend would be needed to maintain a book between 10-20k in the Zon ranking...but i have no data to support my belief.

cadle-sparks said:
This varies widely. I spent no money and had books in the top 1000 and was ranked in the top 1000 authors at Zon for a while. Other people spend 25 hours a week and $1000 a week to maintain a 10K ranking.
 
#11 ·
I agree that it’s going to be completely dependent on factors like sub genre, pricing and just the book itself. Some books just respond better to advertising than others, and sometimes not even the author knows why.

As for $1k a week, I agree that it doesn’t sound like breaking the bank to me, at least not under the right circumstances - such as if the book in question is the start of a long series with high prices and good read through, for example. It just goes to show the one thing that is always true in publishing: YMMV.
 
#12 ·
This thread is a good example of your mileage may vary, and that there are a lot of factors to consider. Factors include: genre, appeal of your book to the audiences you are targeting, experience and skill with the ad platforms you are using, whether exclusive or not (borrows have a big impact on rank, but not necessarily on profit, which is one reason chasing rank isn't as effective as one would think, but you asked about rank), other stuff.

I juggle three series and a box set. I don't spend enough on the BS to get in the 10-20k range. Daily spend for it is less than $5 a day, but it's profitable (on just the set).

Series one has about a $20 a day ad spend and hangs out in the top 10k (7-9k depending on day).

Series two has about a $15 a day ad spend (or less) and sticks between 10-12k.

Series three had a $5 a day ad spend and settled around 20k rank. It wasn't as profitable as the other two series, so I stopped running ads on it, and it sunk fast. Still getting page reads, so it's still bringing in a few dollars a day, though.

All books either break even or have a small profit, so the rest of the books in the series are just profit. I could spend more a day (and have) but I'm working with a very specific budget.
 
#13 ·
I wouldn't recommend anyone go out and spend a grand a week on advertising right off the bat. Build up slowly, but I guess that goes without saying.

My plan is to place a few ads, testing different options, and only increasing the spend if I see the advertising reflected in overall sales.

I'm in a slightly different situation to most, I guess, because I published a lot of backlist a few years back, then went off and abandoned them all, letting everything slide. Now I'm trying to work my way back up from a very low base, with two new releases and the ads I mentioned.

I just checked, and I've spent an amount roughly equal to my royalties/page reads on advertising so far this month, but about a third of that spend is for ads which haven't gone out yet - e.g. a 99c promo with ENT due next week. I'm keeping a spreadsheet with bookings, dates, results and so on, and next month I'll repeat without the duds.

I'm also determined to get into bookbub's featured deal if at all possible. They've passed on three titles so far, but I've noted the dates I can resubmit. I'm now working flat out writing 3 novels at once .. burnout, what's that? ;-)

 
#14 ·
Like others are saying, it really depends on a lot of other factors as well. I'm currently only spending about $15 a day advertising Dragon's Guard, for example, and it's been hovering in the mid to high 2000s for the most part. But it's in a popular niche genre, and I also have a new book selling well that points to DG in the back matter.
 
#15 ·
I think it's important to calculate your ROI and also to be aware of the affect of your ranking on AMS ads.

I calculate my ROI on a daily basis to ensure what i'm spending on ads is actually making money and not throwing it away.
I'm in KU and most of my money comes from page reads. In that sense the feedback from the AMS table is pretty useless so doing it by hand to know the ad is working is essential. I'm at $15 a day now, but have been as high as $30 or $50 when the ROI was high. (like above 400%) Now its closer to 100%~200% a day.

From my observation ranking also has an effect on your ad placement. So when you are just releasing and your ranking is low, your ads will show up closer to the front of the line, even with low bids. When your ranking is higher, you need to bid higher to achieve that.

Keep in mind that the best advertising is free and that comes from the Amazon algorithms pumping your stuff for you. This is why ad spend from book to book can vary so much. Due to the product, packaging and market size, an author can be spending very little or even nothing to rank really low, because amazon is advertising the book for free.

So the main thing is to work out your ROI and adjust accordingly. No sense spending $15 a day to hit 10k rank if your ROI is negative. 
 
#17 ·
Usedtoposthere said:
I do not think there is any right answer. You can maintain that rank or much higher with no spend, or spend a lot and get nothing, or spend a little and get a lot. Depends on the book, the ad, and the mysteries of AMS. I guess you have to experiment.
I agree, if there was a clean line to draw between X in advertising always yielding Y in rank, we would have figured it out by now.
 
#20 ·
LilyBLily said:
They can be scary numbers, and some of us can't front the money for the 60 days until Amazon pays us. Remember, a lot of people here don't have the budget to spend $100 on a cover, let alone drop a grand on ads. Indie publishing is typically undercapitalized.
Why? No one is saying "you need to spend X" or "you need to spend, period." Lots of people spend nothing on ads and do well. Lots of people spend enormous amounts of money on ads and do well. There isn't one right or wrong way, but it sounds like OP is considering spending more on ads, so we should respond with numbers that answer his question.

I spend a ton on ads now, but I started out spending a handful of dollars a day and built from there. I did initially invest a few thousand dollars into my books, but after that initial spend, all the money I've put into it has come from profits.
 
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