I thought I'd start this thread for those of us using this for advertising. This is the "Sponsored Products" below the "Customers Also Bought", NOT the bigger Amazon Ad on the right side of the book's page. I'm distinguishing these two because Amazon's requirements and probably therefore results are different for the 2 types of ads, and it's often confusing which one people are talking about.
So I tried out my first one a few weeks ago. I set the daily budget at $1 and ran it for 6 days for the 1st book in my series. I feel like it was a really good investment. I spent less than 30 cents and sold a few books, and got thousands of impressions. I don't know if it's a fluke though. I ran a second campaign with my 2nd in the series (yes I know, I know, you're not supposed to promote the later books in your series, but this is not like other promos, but more like Also-boughts, and I wanted to test the reactions to another book cover). That one yielded no sales, but the click costs was so low, it was still worth the impressions I thought. I'm running another 6 days on the 1st in my series again, adding more keywords, to see what happens. The ad campaign started yesterday.
What I like about these are:
1. They are very easy to set up, and given that I'm very busy right now, it's a quick way to do a promo.
2. The ad runs through many days, so even though you don't get a 1 day spike with tail, it keeps your book out there. I know of so few ways to do that besides FB, but FB can easily run your wallet to the ground. This one costs very little so far.
3. It's cheap. If you even sell one book, your ROI comes back like a hundred fold.
4. The minimum $1 per day limit. It helps you not to spend more than you can afford. And anyway, I'm pretty happy with the actual cost per click they charged. We're talking about a few cents, like 3 cents per click.
What I am confused about -- I don't understand how the CPC works. Amazon recommends 50cents. I set it to 10 cents - 30cents depending on whether I want to bid for a particular keyword. But does anyone know how they ultimately decide to charge per click? The cost of the clicks I have to pay came nowhere near my chosen bid (a good thing, but I would like to know how it all works.)
Anyway, i've been wanting to do these ads for a long time and I wasn't offered this choice by Amazon 2 months ago. I'm very glad they let me do this now. i don't want to do the other ad (the one on the right side of a book's page) for a number of reasons.
If anyone else is playing ball, share your thoughts, info, or whatever here.
ETA: Just so we are not confused what ads we are discussing here, I'm adding this screenshot of the current #1 best seller in the Kindle store. The row of books called "Sponsored Products" under the Also-Boughts. Those are what we're talking about. All advise and info here will not help you with and will not be relevant to whatever other Amazon ads you're running.
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So I tried out my first one a few weeks ago. I set the daily budget at $1 and ran it for 6 days for the 1st book in my series. I feel like it was a really good investment. I spent less than 30 cents and sold a few books, and got thousands of impressions. I don't know if it's a fluke though. I ran a second campaign with my 2nd in the series (yes I know, I know, you're not supposed to promote the later books in your series, but this is not like other promos, but more like Also-boughts, and I wanted to test the reactions to another book cover). That one yielded no sales, but the click costs was so low, it was still worth the impressions I thought. I'm running another 6 days on the 1st in my series again, adding more keywords, to see what happens. The ad campaign started yesterday.
What I like about these are:
1. They are very easy to set up, and given that I'm very busy right now, it's a quick way to do a promo.
2. The ad runs through many days, so even though you don't get a 1 day spike with tail, it keeps your book out there. I know of so few ways to do that besides FB, but FB can easily run your wallet to the ground. This one costs very little so far.
3. It's cheap. If you even sell one book, your ROI comes back like a hundred fold.
4. The minimum $1 per day limit. It helps you not to spend more than you can afford. And anyway, I'm pretty happy with the actual cost per click they charged. We're talking about a few cents, like 3 cents per click.
What I am confused about -- I don't understand how the CPC works. Amazon recommends 50cents. I set it to 10 cents - 30cents depending on whether I want to bid for a particular keyword. But does anyone know how they ultimately decide to charge per click? The cost of the clicks I have to pay came nowhere near my chosen bid (a good thing, but I would like to know how it all works.)
Anyway, i've been wanting to do these ads for a long time and I wasn't offered this choice by Amazon 2 months ago. I'm very glad they let me do this now. i don't want to do the other ad (the one on the right side of a book's page) for a number of reasons.
If anyone else is playing ball, share your thoughts, info, or whatever here.
ETA: Just so we are not confused what ads we are discussing here, I'm adding this screenshot of the current #1 best seller in the Kindle store. The row of books called "Sponsored Products" under the Also-Boughts. Those are what we're talking about. All advise and info here will not help you with and will not be relevant to whatever other Amazon ads you're running.
) Cool. Now I need to add this to my To-Do list. 
