"By The Seat of My Pants" Promo

645 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by AshMP, Jan 12, 2013

AshMP

Discussion Starter · Jan 11, 2013

My first term of Select ends on the 16th ... and thus far I have only used one promo of three days. My numbers started to backslide on Wednesday and I figured why not just use those two free days up rather then forfeit them? A last ditch effort? I'd say so. I signed up for what I call a "seat of my pants promo" and I hope it was a good idea -- my numbers, yesterday, continued to climb back up going from around 16k to 40k to 60k ending at 89k.

So, interestingly enough, we've been talking about the slow death of Select and some have wondered if it's the program OR all the promotion we do of the program that moves our books.

Well, for me, we shall see.

I have done ABSOLUTELY no promotion of this giveaway. None, nada, zilch. I'm only mentioning it here because I'm going to post my numbers and ranking. It's a little experiment to see if a book with next to no visibility can move copies at all just leaning on Amazon.

Here is where it begins --

January 1- January 10 :
SOLD - 25
BORROWED - 29
RETURNED - 0
PROMO - 0

Rating - 4.5 stars
Reviews - 10

Ranking - Around 89k

January 11:

PROMO - 22 @ 6:55a
Ranking - None

PROMO - 106 @ 12:08
Ranking -#2,845 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#41 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction
#54 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction

PROMO - 952 @ 7:13p
Ranking - #1,401 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#28 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction
#36 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction

PROMO - 979 @ 7:27p (only updating because I saw a large jump in over-all ranking)
Ranking - #708 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#23 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction
#24 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction

PROMO - 1204 @ 10:10p
Ranking - #260 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction
Interestingly, my ranking for Lit fell off, but it was still hanging out at #23 when I checked and my other category, Contemporary, had me at #41

January 12

PROMO - 1374 @ 7:27a
Ranking - #211 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#9 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction
#10 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction
In Contemporary, it's #19

PROMO - 1595 @ 6:25p
Ranking -#273 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#11 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction
#16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction
Interesting backslide beginning

PROMO - 1722 @ 11:59p
Ranking -#380 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#14 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Women's Fiction
#20 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Literary Fiction

Perhaps the biggest surprise was my ability to giveaway books in the UK. Never before I have had such numbers or ranked that high ...
#43 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#3 in Kindle Store > Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction

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1 - 10 of 10 Posts

L.M. Gautreaux

· #2 · Jan 11, 2013

Hope it goes well, Ashley. I already bought your first book, months ago.

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Jessica R

· #3 · Jan 11, 2013

I just did one of those too. Just put it up yesterday to see what would happen. I probably gave away as much in that day as in two days of my last promo, which I did more prep work for, maybe more. Weird, but I did have some good reviews up this time. I think that made the difference, and maybe it was better not to do it on the weekend. I did a little searching on that. I didn't give away anywhere near as many as you either time, though. And I'm not really getting any sales from it so far.

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T.K.

· #4 · Jan 11, 2013

Hi Ashley, just wanted you to know that I featured your book on Compass eBook's blog and FB page on Jan 7th. We have a very small FB following but a lot of blog traffic. It may not have helped with any sales but just wanted you to know.

Good luck with the promo!

http://compassebooks.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-milestone-tapes.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Compass-eBooks/294233217265745?sk=wall

TK

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AshMP

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jan 11, 2013

T.K. Richardson said:
Hi Ashley, just wanted you to know that I featured your book on Compass eBook's blog and FB page on Jan 7th. We have a very small FB following but a lot of blog traffic. It may not have helped with any sales but just wanted you to know.

Good luck with the promo!

http://compassebooks.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-milestone-tapes.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Compass-eBooks/294233217265745?sk=wall

TK

Oh my goodness, thank you! That was very sweet of you!

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Linda Acaster

· #6 · Jan 12, 2013

Well, I'd be interested Italiahaircolor to see how your numbers shift, freebies and solds, so do keep them coming for us, eh

Regards - Linda

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jvin248

· #7 · Jan 12, 2013

Italiahaircolor said:
...
January 11:
PROMO - 22 @ 6:55a
PROMO - 106 @ 12:08
...

.
My fancy predictor spreadsheet says from these two data points you will likely end up 3:00am EST somewhere close to 345 units, if running for day two it might see around 732 total units (which is 386 additional units). That's without doing something like getting favorable placement on an announcement site.
.
I can usually predict how my free days will go with two or three data points in the wee early hours of the day - helpful if I am considering canceling or adding another day. So this will be a good experiment.
.
Try to report the day after your last free day where the rank goes "7am it's now 750,123" then it should come up with additional real sales probably back to the 80k or hopefully better.
.

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AshMP

Discussion Starter · #8 · Jan 12, 2013

jvin248 said:
.
My fancy predictor spreadsheet says from these two data points you will likely end up 3:00am EST somewhere close to 345 units, if running for day two it might see around 732 total units (which is 386 additional units). That's without doing something like getting favorable placement on an announcement site.
.
I can usually predict how my free days will go with two or three data points in the wee early hours of the day - helpful if I am considering canceling or adding another day. So this will be a good experiment.
.
Try to report the day after your last free day where the rank goes "7am it's now 750,123" then it should come up with additional real sales probably back to the 80k or hopefully better.
.

I will continue to update post-sale as well. It's very interesting to see how doing "no work" to promote is translating. It's a much slower climb then in the past (save for my Christmas giveaway which was sooooo slow).