[alawston]

How is Bknights doing for people these days? I used them three times last year, and had nothing but good experiences. I made my money back on two paid promotions, and got a couple of hundred downloads on my contender for "most obscure book ever written" with a free promotion.

Yesterday, I got 2 sales on a $0.99 book. Admittedly they'd promoted Something Nice once before, but given it was 10 months ago, I don't think that should have been much of a factor.

I don't tend to gripe much about advertising results and ROI and things - I stuck $100 on the KDP Advertising thing happily and with no expectations - but given that Bknights has worked so well for me in the past, I'm a bit nonplussed as to what's happened here.

Is there likely to be a bit of a tail, at least? Really not my experience in the past, but I'm looking for sweet consolation here

 

[Kirkee]

Hi, Alawston.

Hard to believe. I just ran an ad for my Fifty Shades of Tinsel, Vol. #1/Heartthrob & picked up over 500 hits.
Could be because mine is free. Dunno. At .99, your book should have done better.
Keep in mind, it does take a day for results to trickle in.

 

[Paul K]

My results with them have varied wildly. When I did a free promo it got about a thousand from them. With 0.99 sales its been as low as two or as high as mid 20's. Not massive numbers, but for me, anything is good

I'm doing a week of promo next week (first time in more than 6 months), and they are included so we shall see what comes of it.

 

[Guest]

I have run two fiverr ads with them, but they have responded with returning my money because the results were negligible.

I still think they are good, possibly even excellent, but they can't make sales appear when there aren't any to be had. In both cases I had a smattering of sales and I put it down to the fact my books had already sold to the audience they attract.

 

[alawston]

Kirkee, yes I saw yours on yesterday's post, and thought it would do well. Congratulations! Free stuff always seems to tickle their audience more than paid, but I guess that's the way of the world.

Paul, I sense we're in a similar place regarding sales expectations For past ads I've tended to have around 10 sales, and a buy-through on a more expensive title to take me into (marginal) profit on the deal. And I've been very happy with that, don't get me wrong. The only reason I'm able to track these campaigns so precisely is that most days I don't sell anything

Tobias, I have heard they refund money for unsuccessful campaigns. I'm not sure whether I'd qualify, I have after all had a couple of sales at least (and who knows, maybe a borrow or two will show up later when the people in question get over 10%). If they're still hitting the numbers for others, I'll take it on the chin and it won't stop me promoting with them again.

 

[Marilyn Peake]

I've had varying sales results with BKnights, although they're fantastic to work with. Book sales seem to be tougher to get now than in the past. BKnights decided to refund my money a few times because they felt I hadn't sold enough books to make the ad worthwhile, which was a fantastic surprise. Recently, my BKnights ad for my Kindle Worlds book was effective in improving the Amazon book sales rank.

 

[ufwriter]

My recent promotion with them only got me 5 sales for a 99 cent title. That said, my entire promo week had low numbers, so I'm not sure it had anything to do with them.

 

[alawston]

I go in with pretty low expectations, short story collections just don't do the numbers that a novel will. I'll wait and see what happens. If one of the 2 sales turns into a review, then that's me pretty happy really.

 

[D-C]

I don't use them for paid (because results have been poor), but they're awesome for freebies.

 

[Tim_A]

I found them very disappointing on a 99c promo last year - only sold 4 copies and lost money. Sure it's not "big bucks", but even Amazon Ads made me $3  on a $1 spend!

 

[alawston]

I don't often do free promos, but I'll be trying a few later this year and bknights will be my first port of call...

 

[Censored]

@alawston: I sing BKnights' praises a lot, but I have to admit my experience has varied wildly with them as well. I've gotten as many as 30 sales for a $.99 promo and as few as 2 sales for another $.99 promo. I will say that the two separate times when I only sold 2 books, the most recent one being last week, BKnights refunded my money in full (even though I didn't ask or expect them to). So at the very least, I think you can expect this to not cost you.

That's saying a lot more than Kindle Nation Daily, which took my $100 and returned 2 sales (yep), and never looked back. 

Thus why I will continue to sing BKnights' praises.

P.S. And yeah, BKnights seems more consistent for free deals. I've always gotten a few hundred downloads, between 200-500 usually.

 

[alawston]

It's definitely not about the money, so if they do offer a refund, I'll plough it straight back into a promotion on the new book (I'm already doing EBooksoda next week so that will tie in well if I can get on the schedule). It looks as though I just got unlucky. Ah well.

 

[Tim_A]

They didn't offer me a refund, but then I didn't ask for one either.

 

[alawston]

I won't ask for one either, to be honest. I'm still hoping a few borrows might show up and bring the whole thing close to the break even point.

 

[dmburnett]

I'm glad I stopped in to read some posts with my coffee this morning! I was planning on researching promos for my upcoming release and this just answered the question about BKnights....Maybe I better save them for my permafree.

 

[PearlEarringLady]

To put the other side of the coin, I've used them twice for 99c promos, and they brought in 22 and 26 sales, running with no other ads on that day. So they can be effective even for discounted books. They also did well for me on two free promos. They're the only site I use on every campaign. They just seem to work well for me.

But every book is different, and they do seem to be spottier with 99c books (that's true of a number of sites, actually).

 

[Howietzer]

$0.99 promo last year = practically nothing
Free promo this year = 450 downloads

They were really good to us by returning our money ($10) from the first promo. We ended up just reinvesting it into the second promo, lol.

 

[alawston]

Guys, looking at a couple of the comments up the thread, I must stress that I really don't want to dissuade anyone from using Bknights for any kind of promo. As I said in my original post, I've used them several times for both free and paid promotions, and up to yesterday they always delivered great results for me. It seems that on balance they're still doing so for a lot of customers.

True, I've not seen the sales from this ad, but it seems clear from everyone else's experiences that I just had an unlucky day. Bknights have done everything they've said they'd do, putting my ad out on their site in front of their audience. There are no guarantees with any kind of advertising, and anyone who claims otherwise is out to scam you. Bknights gets great results for just $5 - and I'm happy to take a $5 punt any day.

 

[VEwoodlake]

I just did a $5 promotion on a free title. They managed to push me onto the first page of free erotica titles, so I was delighted. I have no readers, so the 350+ downloads helped.