[......~......]

Thanks. I am talking about the "Sponsored Products" ad. So, I can target authors and books with the keywords? I should just type in a book name if I wanted my ad listed on that book's page? I already submitted my ad, but I will for sure target certain books if this is the case. Is it pretty accurate if so? Thanks

Yeah, you can target specific authors/titles. You can just add them to your current ad.

 

[dragontucker]

Yeah, you can target specific authors/titles. You can just add them to your current ad.

so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know

 

[......~......]

so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know

Yeah just the title usually works. You can have up to a thousand keywords per ad.

 

[m.a. petterson]

so basically, I just type in the exact book name I want to target as a keyword? That will work? Is there a limit? That's so great to know

With my nonfic book Zon limited me to somewhere around 750 titles.

After typing in a title another window opens with a list of similar genre-specific books I can add.

I had no luck with my fiction which is why I'm going wide in a few days.

 

[dragontucker]

Thanks guys. My ad is pending approval right now. After it gets approved, I am going to target a lot of books like mine

 

[locker17]

I guess I'm going to put my next book(s) into select. I'm tempted to yank the one book I have out and try with it but it was a pain to get it on smashwords and deal with the meatgrinder thing. Plus I like having it at BN.com. I still go into Barnes and Noble a lot and I like that in theory all the mobs of people clamoring for my book can easily order from there. The only thing that is disappointing is that the mobs of people are not yet aware they should be clamoring. That's where I was hoping the ads would help...

Sigh

 

[amdonehere]

Ok I don't know if this is a good or annoying thing. Book 1 of my series now appears as a Sponsored Product of my Book 3.

This is so funny. On the one hand, I guess that keeps my book's page "mine". But OTOH, Why am I running a campaign to show my book on my own series' page? Assuming if people on on my 3rd book, they won't need to be told to buy my Book 1.

 

[JalexM]

Posted this in wrong thread, so i'll post here.
So I decided to give this a try, I have a daily limit of 5$, so far I have 2 sales from a total of 4 clicks at a cost of 1.18(Which would have been 50 cents less if I understood that urban fiction isn't anywhere close to urban fantasy...)
I have the price at 3.99. So far, that's amazing ROI.
I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
It seems like people who click on these ads are more likely to buy your book because when their searching, you're in their results and they are searching to buy. So a good cover and blurb would do wonders.
This is only the weekend though, so I wonder if I'll do as well on the weekdays.

 

[dragontucker]

One thing I don't understand. If you target a book title, does amazon only track the actual keyword a user types in to find the book? So if I find a book called "The Dragon's Flame and Sword" and use that exact same keyword, how does it work? Does amazon actually track clicks from the book page, or just the keyword the user searched for?

If someone comes to that book from an "also bought" on another page and doesn't find it with the keyword, is amazon still reporting that to me? Or is it just only when a user actually types in that keyword to find the book with my ad on it? Hope this question makes sense lol. I was just curious about this since we are using keywords to target our ads. Do users actually have to enter those keywords to find the book our ad is listed on?

 

[amdonehere]

Posted this in wrong thread, so i'll post here.
So I decided to give this a try, I have a daily limit of 5$, so far I have 2 sales from a total of 4 clicks at a cost of 1.18(Which would have been 50 cents less if I understood that urban fiction isn't anywhere close to urban fantasy...)
I have the price at 3.99. So far, that's amazing ROI.

Are the reported sales from your AMS or your Dashboard sales report? Check the Dashboard. I'm finding higher sales and increase in KU reads, but some of that are sell-throughs. You'll have to check the KDP report on units sold to know for sure how many sales you made. So far, my KDP reports exceed the AMS report. SO yes, the ROI is insane!

[q]I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
It seems like people who click on these ads are more likely to buy your book because when their searching, you're in their results and they are searching to buy. So a good cover and blurb would do wonders.
This is only the weekend though, so I wonder if I'll do as well on the weekdays.
[/quote]

I set my daily limit at $1 and I don't hit it each day. I can't tell right now if I set it higher would help put the books in more places. I figured I don't need to since I don't even hit the limit yet.

 

[amdonehere]

One thing I don't understand. If you target a book title, does amazon only track the actual keyword a user types in to find the book? So if I find a book called "The Dragon's Flame and Sword" and use that exact same keyword, how does it work? Does amazon actually track clicks from the book page, or just the keyword the user searched for?

If you sign up, you can a very detailed report for each keyword as to the number of impressions, number of clicks, amount you paid for the click (based on the bid compared to other bids), total spent on clicks, and total sales. The report for the total sales has been under dispute. There's another thread right now saying Amazon is not being truthful. My own experience in the mean time is, the falsity errs in under-reporting. But all are annecdotal so take it whichever way you want.

So yes. If Dragon Flame and Sword is your keyword, you'll know if clicks came from that.

If someone comes to that book from an "also bought" on another page and doesn't find it with the keyword, is amazon still reporting that to me? Or is it just only when a user actually types in that keyword to find the book with my ad on it? Hope this question makes sense lol. I was just curious about this since we are using keywords to target our ads. Do users actually have to enter those keywords to find the book our ad is listed on? [quote[

Also-boughts are not ads. You won't get reports on also boughts.

You keyword helps to land you on other books' pages. When a reader click on your book under Sponsored Products, that's when you get reported info. User dones not have to enter keywords.

If you are the reader, and you go visit the page for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. While there, you look at other recommended books on the page, whether it's Also-Boughts or the SPonsored Products underneath and browse. If you then click on a book titled "Dragon Flame and Sword" in the Sponsored Products, the author of "Dragon Flame and SWord" will have to pay for your click, and get a report. If you then buy "Dragon Flame and Sword", it'll be a sale.

 

[Graham C.]

Giving this sponsored ad a go as well. I had a heck of a time saving the draft, as I kept getting "your session has timed out" messages and then losing all my keywords. Finally got the keywords and ad submitted. Now I'm wondering, how long does it take before the ads start appearing?  Does Amazon email you first, like when you submit your book, or do they just start the campaign when they've signed off on it? 

 

[JalexM]

Are the reported sales from your AMS or your Dashboard sales report? Check the Dashboard. I'm finding higher sales and increase in KU reads, but some of that are sell-throughs. You'll have to check the KDP report on units sold to know for sure how many sales you made. So far, my KDP reports exceed the AMS report. SO yes, the ROI is insane!

[q]I haven't hit my 5 dollar limit yet, will I get more impressions if I increase the ad spend?
I have around 20 keywords when I started and stopped 3 of them because they weren't getting impressions.
It seems like people who click on these ads are more likely to buy your book because when their searching, you're in their results and they are searching to buy. So a good cover and blurb would do wonders.
This is only the weekend though, so I wonder if I'll do as well on the weekdays.

I set my daily limit at $1 and I don't hit it each day. I can't tell right now if I set it higher would help put the books in more places. I figured I don't need to since I don't even hit the limit yet.

It showed on the dashboard, but it took a day or two for the AMS board updated to show the sales.

 

[amdonehere]

FWIW it's been a week since I started advertising and for four days I put a 5 dollars limit which has been reached each day. A lot of impressions, at least I think, I don't know what number we should expect, very few clicks, and no sales. I changed to 2 dollars for the last three days, the number of impressions has been very low, and the clicks almost non existent, as for the limit this time isn't reached.
So my experience is that with the 5 dollars limit I reached it every time, but not with the 2. Which means, if I understand the system correctly, that I'm not comptettive enough so they can show my ad, or am I mistaken?

We can't really help since we don't know your book. Generally, You blurbs and your cover still count. It helps to have a great cover (obvious). The blurb is even more important since you only have 30 words (or was it 30 characters) to get someone to click on your book. IF you want us to help see if the blurb is good, you can post it and we can give you some feedback. I think it's important to get straight to the point why people should buy it.

Also, try new and different keyword. I'm not discovering that this is a long game. To keep up the sales, you got to keep adding keywords and steer your book to where new audience might discover it. That means getting your book on the page of books that sell. HNR of your genre is good. TOp 20 in your genre is good. Top 20 free in your genre is good. Get your book on those pages.

I haven't set my daily limit beyond $1 or $2 and it's been going ok. I don't reach my daily limit at all.

 

[amdonehere]

How's everyone doing on this so far? Any news to share or updates?

 

[TheLemontree]

I posted this on the other "sponsored products" thread, but I think it belongs here instead.

This is where I'm at at the moment. The advantage of being so very prawny is that it's easy to see a minor increase in sales

Hi all,
I've been running these ads for a couple of months now, so I have some data

I set my limit to $1 per day.
For Book1 I've spent $23.22 since June 20th. Results below. These are ebook sales only, graph is from BookReport and shows income from both books, once Book2 is released. I have also made paperback sales from the ads, but only about 3 or 4 I believe.

I've also started the ads for Book2, but only a few days ago so too soon to see impact on sales. This was a good time to take the screenshot before the launch of Book2 began to confound the results



So, I'm clearly not playing with the big boys, in terms of income or expenditure, but it shows a nice, measurable increase in sales for my book, saving it from utter obscurity.

 

[Linn]

2. The blurbs -- We're only allowed 30 characters right? Or was it 30 words? Either way, you got to get the message across and invoke readers emotions with one single sentence. I've tested 2 versions. The first one tells readers immediately what the book is about. The second one, I thought it might draw readers in by identifying the MCs and their travails. I thought the second one would improve since so many other Sponsored Products blurbs were doing it. Wrong! The first one got much better mileage.

Does anyone know if Amazon will allow us to run more than one campaign on the same book simultaneously? I just pulled the plug on my first attempt at this so I can try out a different sales pitch, and I'm thinking it might be helpful if I can tailor different blurbs to different keywords, and have them both running at the same time.

(eg. You write regency romance, you try to get on a page of another similar book, but you're competing with a sci-fi space opera, and God only knows why the author of the sci-fi space opera wanted to get on this page.)

Lol, I'm trying to sell my space opera to readers looking for Little Women. So far the attempt has proven futile. I might try running a separate campaign for this keyword, and start the blurb out with "Little Women in space."

 

[SomeoneElse]

Does anyone know if Amazon will allow us to run more than one campaign on the same book simultaneously? I just pulled the plug on my first attempt at this so I can try out a different sales pitch, and I'm thinking it might be helpful if I can tailor different blurbs to different keywords, and have them both running at the same time.

Lol, I'm trying to sell my space opera to readers looking for Little Women. So far the attempt has proven futile. I might try running a separate campaign for this keyword, and start the blurb out with "Little Women in space."

I have found that the keywords that perform the best are the ones where you've mentioned the connection in the ad text (or it's clear from the cover.) For example, one of my books has a nice sisterly relationship, and I get a lot of impressions on the sisters keyword, but no clicks because there's no mention of that in the text or indication on the cover. I get a lot of clicks on the 'magic' keyword, because that's exactly what my cover and ad text communicate.

 

[JalexM]

How's everyone doing on this so far? Any news to share or updates?

Averaging like .75 sales a day, still in the positive. Want to sell more though with the ads. Here's my ad copy

 

[Ros_Jackson]

I've just started a campaign, but I'm finding it hard to get impressions. Basically I had 60 similar books targeted and a bid of .10, with 81 impressions over three days. I'll try adding a few more target books and increasing the bid to see what happens. Am I bidding too low for a popular genre like epic fantasy?