[botolo]

I used to run successful FB ads on my wife's book. I was targeting specific authors PLUS "Amazon Kindle" interest and directing users to the Amazon sales page. I was not making tons of profit (mostly because we only have two books for sale at this point), but I was not losing money and I was able to scale and sell a good amount of copies every month.

Then I stopped, mostly because I had to wait for royalties to come in to cover the ads expenses.

I recently restarted but the FB ads performance is very poor. Tons of clicks, but very few sales. Audiences are the same, ads creativity is different but it seems to work in term of clicks. I am trying to figure out what's going on. The only difference is that we are now in KU.

Trying to go through the steps that a user would do when clicking on an ad, I noticed that the Amazon sales page now features very predominantly a "Read for free" button that sends users to a Kindle Unlimited landing page. I wonder whether this is killing the ads performance. Users might come to the Amazon sales page with the intent to buy a copy, they see "read for free" and click it, they then see a page that invites them to signup for a services, and they just close the page.

What do you think?

 

[kwest]

What's the difference with the ad creative? As that could actually be relevant.

I know from experience that the "Read for Free" thing can be confusing for some readers. Basically Amazon is willing to lose a few conversions that way if it means they get more KU sign-ups. Hurts you, but it doesn't really matter to them.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Presumably, that read for free was there before with the first ad, no? Unless you recently added it to KU.

 

[botolo]

What's the difference with the ad creative? As that could actually be relevant.

I know from experience that the "Read for Free" thing can be confusing for some readers. Basically Amazon is willing to lose a few conversions that way if it means they get more KU sign-ups. Hurts you, but it doesn't really matter to them.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Presumably, that read for free was there before with the first ad, no? Unless you recently added it to KU.

The book was added in KU only a few days before the new ads started and it was not in KU when the previous ads run.
The ads creative is minor: the image has always featured the book cover, now it's with a green background and before it was with a yellow background; the text of the ad is different, before it was tailored to the audience ("If you like author X, then you'll love this book, etc.") now it's more about the book ("If you like deep characters, then you'll love this book, etc.")

Anything is possible, but the biggest change is the book being in KU now and, therefore, the different format of the Amazon sales page.

If there was a way to target on FB Kindle Unlimited users...

 

[kwest]

The book was added in KU only a few days before the new ads started and it was not in KU when the previous ads run.
The ads creative is minor: the image has always featured the book cover, now it's with a green background and before it was with a yellow background; the text of the ad is different, before it was tailored to the audience ("If you like author X, then you'll love this book, etc.") now it's more about the book ("If you like deep characters, then you'll love this book, etc.")

Anything is possible, but the biggest change is the book being in KU now and, therefore, the different format of the Amazon sales page.

If there was a way to target on FB Kindle Unlimited users...

I'm not sure about the green/yellow thing. That difference probably is minor. But the first ad copy is actually far better than the second, in my opinion, due to the fact that it's specific. Even more so if you are targeting readers of Author X. The second is more generic. I don't think the Read for Free thing is nearly a big an issue as you think it is.

As far as specifically targeting KU readers, you just kind of have to hope to grab them with your targeting. There will be KU readers on FB. AMS is probably a better way to target KU specifically because you can use it in your key words, or you can isolate the key words that produce a lot of pages.

 

[CassieL]

But the OP said they're getting clicks on the ad, so ad creative seems to be working to draw readers in.

OP, one thing you can do is put Now in Kindle Unlimited or Free in Kindle Unlimited somewhere in the ad to let readers know it's in KU. Also, because you're targeting Amazon Kindle you may be getting more borrows than sales and then not getting the page reads. Are you factoring in page reads on the book for ad performance? Have you tracked your book ranks to see if borrows are happening?

 

[botolo]

But the OP said they're getting clicks on the ad, so ad creative seems to be working to draw readers in.

OP, one thing you can do is put Now in Kindle Unlimited or Free in Kindle Unlimited somewhere in the ad to let readers know it's in KU. Also, because you're targeting Amazon Kindle you may be getting more borrows than sales and then not getting the page reads. Are you factoring in page reads on the book for ad performance? Have you tracked your book ranks to see if borrows are happening?

Hi Cassie, I think you are correct on ads creative...I am getting a lot of clicks. I am not getting a lot of KENP reads...roughly 600/day. Just to give you some more data, a couple of days ago I got 156 clicks and 2 sales :-( And again, the ad photo is the book cover, the ad text recalls the book's blurb, both the cover and blurb have been created by professional designers and copywriters and worked very well in the past.

I have to say the difference in the "buy" button position between a book in KU and a book not in KU is big, when you think that FB users are impulse buyers. Take a look at my wife's book (in KU) and another book not in KU.

 

[kwest]

I think we understand what you're getting it...it's just other KU authors deal with the same thing and still gets the conversions. The problem can lie with a number of things, but the two usual contenders are the ad image or the audience.

Usually, high clicks but few conversions is indicative of something wrong with the sales page itself. Which is hard to diagnose from us watching from afar, but it could be the blurb, look inside, certain reviews, or perhaps the page count looking too low or a combination thereof. Price is also a huge influence on conversion.

And sometimes, for reasons unknown, ads on FB just don't take off even given the same parameters. I chalk it up to slight differences the algo makes in the beginning which can send impressions in different directions.

Usually by the time you get 50 or clicks, you can tell if an ad will be successful or not. The key is to stamp it out, and then experiment with new audiences or tweaking the ad image.

 

[markpauloleksiw]

Since I started Facebook ads I am getting more page reads and more sales especially when targeting the UK.

Interesting though is my book rankings have become dramatically more volatile. For example, will close at 65,000 and by next morning be in the 300,000. This volatily never occured before and my sales are not great but very consistent.

There was a "theory" that the Amazon bots don't like facebook ads when you move away from AMS ads...and coincidentally this volatility started when I shifted my spending EVENTHOUGH I am selling more.

Mark