Episode 232 - What Has Changed and Stayed the Same with Amazon Ads with Bryan Cohen
April 2, 2024
"What are you going to get more out of? Are you going to get more out of writing and researching a series starter, running ads to it, determining, eh, it's not, not where it needs to be, and then writing and researching a second series starter? And then maybe taking the lessons learned from that and writing a third series starter for a totally different series, maybe even a different subgenre? Or writing three books in one series and then running ads to it. Do you get more out of? I wonder if you get more out of option A." —Bryan Cohen
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Bryan Cohen discusses WHAT HAS CHANGED AND STAYED THE SAME WITH AMAZON ADS, including ads as a research tool; whether Amazon product pages are actually getting busier; the impact of A+ content; the advice to go deep rather than wide on ad platforms; how AI is (or might be) changing the ad game; budgeting for beginners; and whether one book is enough for an ad campaign.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
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Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He's helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full-time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. He lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat.
Links
Bryan's Links:
https://learn.bestpageforward.net
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_vHN_rKtRhtxs81s892vQ
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://learn.bestpageforward.net
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT_vHN_rKtRhtxs81s892vQ
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Bryan! What do you think about our discussion about advertising your first book?
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AI-generated Summary
This episode of The Indy Author Podcast features a conversation between the host, Matty Dalrymple, and guest Bryan Cohen, CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. They discuss various aspects of Amazon ads, providing insights and strategies for authors, particularly indie authors, in marketing their books.
Bryan Cohen has helped over 30,000 authors with advertising and emphasizes that Amazon ads can be an effective research tool to understand book positioning and market receptiveness. He notes that while the perception exists that Amazon ads have become more expensive, he's observed that costs can remain low, offering valuable data on how well a book is positioned in the market.
The conversation delves into the strategic use of Amazon ads, with Bryan pointing out that these ads can serve not only as a marketing tool but also as a means to gather insights on a book's reception and market fit. He suggests that even with just one book published, authors can benefit from Amazon ads to assess market response and refine their marketing and content strategies.
Bryan discusses the changes in Amazon ad placements, indicating an increase in ad spaces on product pages, which has made the pages busier. However, he advises that not all ad placements are equally effective and emphasizes the importance of strategic ad placement and understanding Amazon's advertising mechanisms.
A significant part of the discussion revolves around the use of A+ Content on Amazon and its impact on book sales. Bryan shares insights on how A+ Content can affect conversion rates and the importance of testing to see whether it enhances or detracts from sales performance.
The dialogue also touches on the broader marketing landscape for authors, comparing Amazon ads with other advertising platforms like Facebook and BookBub. Bryan suggests that while different platforms have their strengths, authors should focus on understanding and leveraging each platform's unique capabilities to maximize their advertising effectiveness.
Throughout the conversation, Bryan advocates for a balanced approach to marketing, where authors should not only focus on advertising but also on creating quality content and engaging with their audience. He emphasizes the importance of adapting strategies based on market feedback and continuously learning and refining advertising approaches.
In summary, the transcript covers a comprehensive discussion on the use of Amazon ads for indie authors, highlighting the importance of strategic advertising, market research, and the continual adaptation of marketing strategies to achieve success in book publishing. Bryan Cohen's insights provide valuable guidance for authors looking to navigate the complexities of online advertising and market positioning for their books.
Bryan Cohen has helped over 30,000 authors with advertising and emphasizes that Amazon ads can be an effective research tool to understand book positioning and market receptiveness. He notes that while the perception exists that Amazon ads have become more expensive, he's observed that costs can remain low, offering valuable data on how well a book is positioned in the market.
The conversation delves into the strategic use of Amazon ads, with Bryan pointing out that these ads can serve not only as a marketing tool but also as a means to gather insights on a book's reception and market fit. He suggests that even with just one book published, authors can benefit from Amazon ads to assess market response and refine their marketing and content strategies.
Bryan discusses the changes in Amazon ad placements, indicating an increase in ad spaces on product pages, which has made the pages busier. However, he advises that not all ad placements are equally effective and emphasizes the importance of strategic ad placement and understanding Amazon's advertising mechanisms.
A significant part of the discussion revolves around the use of A+ Content on Amazon and its impact on book sales. Bryan shares insights on how A+ Content can affect conversion rates and the importance of testing to see whether it enhances or detracts from sales performance.
The dialogue also touches on the broader marketing landscape for authors, comparing Amazon ads with other advertising platforms like Facebook and BookBub. Bryan suggests that while different platforms have their strengths, authors should focus on understanding and leveraging each platform's unique capabilities to maximize their advertising effectiveness.
Throughout the conversation, Bryan advocates for a balanced approach to marketing, where authors should not only focus on advertising but also on creating quality content and engaging with their audience. He emphasizes the importance of adapting strategies based on market feedback and continuously learning and refining advertising approaches.
In summary, the transcript covers a comprehensive discussion on the use of Amazon ads for indie authors, highlighting the importance of strategic advertising, market research, and the continual adaptation of marketing strategies to achieve success in book publishing. Bryan Cohen's insights provide valuable guidance for authors looking to navigate the complexities of online advertising and market positioning for their books.
Transcript
Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Bryan Cohen. Hey, Bryan, how are you doing?
Bryan: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here.
Meet Bryan Cohen
Matty: I am pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He has helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his five-day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. And he lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat. And I also wanted to send out a big congratulations to Bryan for passing 500 plus and 10 years of his great Sell More Books show podcast. So, Bryan, congratulations.
Bryan: Thank you, Matty. It's been a great, a great long time helping indie authors.
Matty: Yeah. Well, that is a very, very impressive track record. And the fact that you, you've done it so consistently and for such a long time and with such great information is, a great testament to you. So thank you for doing that.
Bryan: Of course. Of course.
Matty: So we are going to be talking today, not surprisingly, about Amazon ads, because obviously Bryan's the guy to go to for Amazon ads.
Strategic changes in Amazon ads
Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking What have you seen change, if anything, at a strategic level with Amazon ads? Like, if someone had asked, are Amazon ads, any good, is the answer you would give about why different now than it would have been a year ago, five years ago, however far back you want to go?
Bryan: Sure. Yeah, no, I do think it's a little different than it would have been a few years ago. not for the reasons people might think. People might think, oh, well, Bryan's going to say it's more expensive, which Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's not necessarily more expensive from what I've seen. I've seen authors get hundreds of clicks at very low costs here in 2024.
Ads as a research tool
Bryan: So I know it's not necessarily that it costs more. I have seen that it can be a really good research tool to know how well your book has been positioned. which I wasn't always aware of, even, that when ads, we've heard the refrain, Amazon won't take my money, you try to run ads and it doesn't work.
We have found that sometimes it's not about Bidding too low, or it's not about, oh, this market is too expensive. I can't get, sometimes it's about your book's seven KDP keyword phrases and your book's three categories and your book's title. Sometimes little things like that actually will let Amazon spend your money or not spend your money.
And so, I used to think, and this is something I even see people still talking about today, when Amazon, when you have a book out on Amazon, you're not ready, you should wait until you have three books. And I've changed my tune on that, because I think Amazon ads can be really helpful, even just with your first book out, helping you to figure out, okay, Is Amazon taking my money?
If there's not, if they're not taking it, it's probable that something in the information you gave Amazon when you publish, Amazon isn't receiving it in the way you thought they would. And so I find that Amazon ads can still be one of the lower cost marketing methods. But it can also be a really good tool when you're starting out or when you're trying out a new series to see, okay, is Amazon figuring out what I'm sending it?
Is it picking up what I'm putting down? Whatever metaphor you want to use, that is one of the reasons I still recommend Amazon ads.
Matty: And is Amazon better at identifying those things than let's say, I don't know, book club ads or Facebook ads or something like that because there's such a strong tie between the data you're giving KDP and then the performance of an Amazon ad?
Bryan: I do think that Amazon can be in line and more so in line than maybe a BookBub ad or a, a Facebook ad. I think it can be. The problem is a lot of authors do have misalignment issues somewhere in the midst of the keywords. Subtitle categories, all of that stuff. And so I think the public perception of Amazon ads is that they are not as strong at connecting readers, as the other platforms, but it is interesting that when we have seen, and this is especially the case with a lot of our agency clients, they are already selling well, cause they're already full-time authors. It's easier to get those ads to spend even as low as 27 cents a click. We're getting those ads to spend when a newer author comes to, through our challenge or through ad school, and they say, I can't even get one click.is the platform broken? And then we look at this other account and we see a thousand clicks in a day.
We say, no, platform isn't broken, but there might be a disconnect here. Yeah. Yeah.
The desire for immediate social feedback
Matty: it is. It's a very different mindset. I have, experience, I've had some experience across all three platforms, but more on Facebook and BookBub. Those are the three I think of, like, when I'm thinking about advertising for my own books. Those are the three I think about, and I think one of the things that appeals to me about Facebook ads is you get this very immediate and personal response.
Feedback on why people are liking or not liking your ad, in some cases. So the example I can think of is that a couple of years ago, I was testing out a new tagline for my, Lizzie Ballard thrillers, and I, the tagline I had come up with was, what happens when an extraordinary power transforms an ordinary life?
And so, I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I started writing ads against it, and then someone made a response to the post, that made it clear that they thought it was going to be like a religious book, like an extraordinary power. They thought that was not true. We're talking this through non religiously affiliated power, but it was going to be, really does it.
Oh, well, that's really good to know because, that's something I could easily pull back from, whereas it's harder. My experience is it's harder to get that kind of sense of why, like you could see that your ads aren't spending, but is it the keyword? Is it the quality of the cover? Is it the quality of the content? Can you glean that kind of stuff from the Amazon ad results?
Bryan: I think that's a really good point, a really good observation, because you do get that social feedback on Facebook. You do get that social feedback on some, on a platform like TikTok, and you wouldn't get that feedback from, from Amazon. And so my answer to a certain extent has always been, well, take our free challenge and send us the links.
Cause we do it. eight weeks a year that we're around there for free, send us the link. We'll go take a look. we'll look at your keywords, but yeah, I mean, I think that if you have some money to spend and you want that immediate result, absolutely makes sense for Facebook or TikTok to get some feedback, but I think it really depends.
And this goes back to Authors having individualized ways that they take care of things based on their personality, based on the way they like doing things. Fortunately, I think they're, if people like the hand holding, they come to us. If they want to get immediate results and don't want to have to talk to a person for real and make it more on social media, go to Facebook, go to TikTok.
Either way, I do think it still comes back around to when you have a book that is selling. And maybe you found success with it on Facebook. We have found that success can be doubled when they're also running the ads on Amazon and not just confining it to one platform. I think that Amazon ads can be a primary driver of traffic to a book.
But they're a really good secondary driver when something else is working.
Are Amazon product pages actually getting busier?
Matty: One of the things that I feel like has changed over time on Amazon, and I'll ask you to confirm or deny, is that the pages seem busier and busier. So, if I'm shopping on Amazon and I go to a book and I start, looking for, I realize I've clicked into book two of the series and I want to go look for book one.
It becomes harder and harder to find that information because there's just so much there. Is that actually changing? And if it is, is that something that has made you adjust your strategy about Amazon ads?
Bryan: I learned some interesting things this past year. late last year, as part of my agency, I reached out to Amazon and found out some things. And it turned out that, and my team was helpful with this. Amazon has their AMG ads is what they used to call them. They're called something different now and the name escapes me, but as it often does, but there is the AMG ads were always known as, okay, if you've got 10,000 to burn, you can go to Amazon and say, Hey, I've got 10,000.
And they say, great, that's our minimum. You spend 10,000 with us a month, we'll run some special ads for you. I said, okay, well, I don't have these 10,000 to burn for my books, but, is there a way to do this without 10,000? And they said, well, we subcontract through some agencies to let you run ads that are very similar, which Amazon refers to as DSP or platform ads.
And it turns out that we've Could, if we hit 10,000 across lots of authors, we could actually run some of these ads for authors. And these ads are what has made the system feel busier. It used to be there were a couple places you'd see ads. The carousels on the product pages that you'd see that kind of have replaced also boughts in a lot of places.
And the search results. That became a little busier with sponsored brand ads starting to show up at the top of the search results. But then how does it feel busier? You go to an Amazon page, you see at the very top of the browser, there's now an ad. Underneath the buy button, there's an ad, and often underneath the product description, there's an ad.
Now sometimes regular old sponsored product ads can show up in these places, but more often than not, these are DSP ads or Amazon's own AMG ads. Now, interesting data from running these for six months. Most of them don't convert. The top of the page ads. Terrible. The ones that are even near under the button. Terrible.
The only ones we found that have been able to convert for us, and mileage may vary, is right under the product description, which makes sense. In the web terms, these are above the fold, so you don't have to scroll to get to them. Now, all of that being said, to answer your question, yes, the pages are busier, they're busier because of these other ad placements that Amazon is now selling in other ways.
Us normal folks, we can't usually get access to these kind of ads. But the good news is, those ads, for the most part, in our experimentation, aren't really that valuable. And so, it's the kind of thing where, even though sponsor product ads a little bit cheaper, a little bit more affordable for the regular author. We still find that these ads that all authors have access to actually do better and have better tracking somehow than these fancy pantsy ads that we've been able to peek under the hood and see. And so, I think that despite it being busier, there are still lots of really good opportunities there.
The impact of A+ Content
Matty: One of the things that I realize makes some pages look busier is the A plus content, so I know that for my Ann Kinnear books, there's a huge part of the page now taken up with one of those, like, triptych, sort of, I made them in Book Brush, you load an ad and then it breaks it up for you so you have, like, three parts of one image, which looks super cool, but I'm like, I wonder how long Amazon's going to keep doing that, cause that's, A huge amount of screen real estate for basically just a giant picture that I uploaded that was associated with my story.
Have you seen any pro or con impacts of A plus content on the success of people who are running Amazon X?
Bryan: Well, you brought up that Amazon, are they going to keep doing this? Amazon loves A plus content. Not sure why. I wonder if there's a search engine optimization something. They get more search traffic by having more images. That I don't know. But they love pushing it. I've been fortunate enough, Amazon has had me come on and teach some classes.
And at the end, they have these, Q& A sessions that aren't really live. They're just answering some questions in an Amazonian kind of way. And Amazon loves making sure that A plus content is delivered. mention. Maybe it's because it was a very requested feature and they're hoping that it makes readers happy, or authors happy. But, for a long time when A plus content was first announced, we did experiments on it. We looked, hey, does this improve a chance of a book being profitable or does it reduce the chances of a book being profitable? And because of all that real estate taken up, we actually found that because, and we think it's because it took so long to actually get to the reviews.
That it did reduce conversion. It did make the royalties, and, the profitability worse for those books. It's gotten a little better over time. places like Book Brush having tools so that the images don't look bad because part of the reason I think conversion was worse is because the images looked bad, but it's still a bit of a problem that it takes up all that real estate.
And so I'm a big fan of testing. Get 100 clicks without the A plus content, get 100 clicks with the A plus content, compare group 1 to group 2, and see, did you profit better, did you convert better, when you had the A plus content in place, or did not?
Matty: If someone does not have A plus content yet, do you recommend that they provide some in order to run that test? Or is it the kind of thing that you say, if you don't have it now, don't bother, but if you do have it, maybe test it without to see if it improves?
Bryan: If you don't have it now, don't bother, is what I would recommend.
Matty: Okay, this example just popped into my head. I recently got a screenshot of a friend's Kindle. He had opened up his Kindle. He had, purchased other of my books before, and it had an ad on the lock screen for one of my books.
Unpaid lock screen ads
Bryan: Inexplicably, it had an ad for one of my short stories, which I thought was weird.
Matty: But that was with me not thinking. Not having paid anything, I wasn't running any Amazon ads, do you know how often Amazon just puts an ad up? Like, I've got to believe that for that person's Kindle lock screen, there was a whole queue of other books that were maybe paying to have that placement.
Do you have any insight into how, those lock screen placements, are assigned?
Bryan: So you're not the first person I've heard who's had a book that they weren't running any ads for just randomly show up. I do think sometimes this is a function of kind of a pseudo also bought or books that you might like kind of carousel loaded in for when there aren't enough lock screen ads to actually go around.
but it is pretty rare. I don't think that it's something we can count on with any, reliability. I don't have deep, deep insight, like, one of my contacts at Amazon has told me specifically. It will show up 1 percent of the time, so I don't have anything specific to that. But anecdotally, it can happen sometimes, but as many know, and many have probably come on this show to say, we're in a pay to play environment.
More often than not, you are going to have to pay to get placement. That being said, I would not pay for the lock screen ads. They tend to be, a little bit pricier, and often it prices out authors who are trying to get a lower cost click on their ads.
Follow one course until success
Matty: So you had mentioned earlier the idea of Amazon being sort of a primary driver of sales and perhaps being supported by other ad platforms. for someone who's relatively new to the advertising, the book advertising game, are there combinations that you recommend or combinations that you recommend people stay away from?
Bryan: That's a good question. I think if you're new, sticking with one is probably going to be better, better to go deeper on one than to necessarily broaden out and try to learn multiple things at once, because it is like a four year degree, any of these things that you are going to be going deeper on in order to truly go as deep as you need to go, you know.
Go deep rather than wide
Bryan: You need to focus. the old, acronym, I heard John Lee Dumas say it once. I don't know if it's his. Follow one course until success. It is helpful to focus on one. Let's say, though, that you have learned one of them. And, there are various combinations. Let's say you've learned Facebook ads first. Amazon ads are helpful to set up. in addition, it will look like they are not doing anything because if Facebook ads are already sending traffic to your books, you may assume just, this is our natural psychological assumption. The thing I was already doing is the thing that's working. The new thing probably isn't. That isn't always true in what we've found, but I will say that if you are running Facebook ads already and then you start Amazon ads, I would run the Amazon ads for at least three to six months. I would not make any quick assumptions on whether or not those are working. Let's say you've already run BookBub ads.
and you're trying to run Amazon ads. These can work really well together. BookBub ads spend a lot faster. And so, you are going to want to keep an eye on your budget. I don't necessarily have any huge concerns, oh, that I, that are different than the Facebook and Amazon combo. Similarly, give the ads three to six months.
If you've run Amazon ads, or you know Amazon ads, and then you're adding another one, I would probably add Facebook next, but take it slow. No need to add big budgets. There are some really good courses out there. I'm a big fan of, Matthew Holmes's, work on Facebook ads. He's got a great free book out there, that can help you start.
I've learned from other great people, like Mal Cooper, like James Blatch and company. Like, there, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But when there are different schools of thought on the same platform, sometimes it makes sense to take this idea, and this idea and combine them together, but a lot of the time it doesn't.
And so just be careful when you're saying, well, I tried to take Matt's idea. I tried to take James's idea and mash them together because it felt right to me. But feeling is not fact. You need to consider going deep on one of the methods. For that specific platform first, then you can consider adding some bells and whistles to it, but I would not, go to the buffet and add different parts, to, to one particular learning style because it is possible they will not go together well.
Relying on the algorithms
Matty: Well, the mention of, Matt Holmes is interesting. I'm going to glom together two questions here. So I took the Matt Holmes, course on untargeted Facebook ads, where you allow Facebook to determine, you don't provide these, this, people who like Stephen King are going to like this.
You let Facebook do that. And it totally made sense to me. And I tried that for a while. It wasn't really panning out for me. I'm not necessarily blaming the theory. It's there are a lot of moving parts. So. I know it's working well for some people, but one of the things that appeal to me about it is that it makes sense to me that if, if AI is writing novels, if AI can do the things that it can do, then Facebook algorithms as a form of AI, like I trust that they could be better at picking targets for me than I could be.
And that the platforms that rely on me doing research into my own books, like Better Understanding Comp Authors, I'm kind of looking forward to the day when I can press a button and, Chad GPT will say, as it does now, I'm not sure how accurate it is, but, oh, you know who good comp authors are for your books?
These. And I think Amazon is. is perfectly positioned to do this because they, like, they have the text of your book. I feel like it can't be that far away that they're going to be doing the equivalent of untargeted Facebook ads. That was a whole mess of stuff, but can you comment on, like, the pros and cons of you making the decisions about who will like your books versus a machine making decisions about who's going to like your books?
Bryan: Well, it's very interesting because, we have found that especially for some of our authors who are making over 6,000 a month, so they qualify, for our agency, they, they find that they're getting the most clicks on their auto ads, which is, Somewhat just generated by Amazon, based around your 7 KDP keyword phrases, based around your categories, based around previous maybe data that you have going to your book.
And so it is kind of similar in that way, nowhere near as detailed or sophisticated as Facebook's Advantage Plus, audiences, and I have heard of them working for some people, not working for others, but yet you got to try it because if it does work, there's your push button, there's your chat GPT, pick all the things that, if you can get it to work with less Input from you and less effort from you, and it works.
You got to do it because there is only so much time in the day, right? There's only so many hours. There's only so much energy. There's only so much passion that can go into a single day. And if we can figure out that, oh, this Facebook method saves time, saves energy, great. Amazon doesn't feel like it's quite there yet.
I would love for it to be there. I would love for it to be a little bit easier. I feel like, sometimes teaching Amazon ads, we're bending over backwards, trying to explain the little, quirks of the platform. It'd be nice if those quirks weren't there and it just kind of worked. but I do think in a few years, Matty, we will be in a position that it will be easier for everyone to be able to advertise, but that will mean some of the people that here in 2024 who currently have an advantage, over, over authors who maybe are struggling with those ads, that advantage may dissipate.
And, you know as well as I do, when, authors who are secure in their earnings start to see that gap, dissipating, they're going to be angry, and they're going to say, this is no good, and they're going to say mean things about that platform, or the machines, or how it works, and it's like, Well, this is why you build up an email list.
This is why you try to future proof your business. This is why you, you become anti fragile in whatever ways you can. This is why you connect deeper with your readers, while you have that advantage because these kinds of advantages could be temporary. And so it's good to build a stronger foundation for your business.
Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that the improvement of AI is not only going to be potentially a time saver for authors, but also remove, provides a more objective source. So for example, I could see someone writing a book and they say, this is definitely a police procedural. I'm going to, I'm going to put in a lot of police procedural related terms into my keywords.
And then, they put it up, it doesn't do anything, but behind the scenes, if you let a machine. Picket, they would say, oh, no, this is really more cozy. And they start showing it to cozy readers. And then suddenly the sales boom. And I just think that a lot of these is, ad approaches require the person who's probably the least good at objectively assessing the work to assign this stuff that is supposed to be objective, like keywords. It provides that third party perspective in a way that I think it can be very difficult for authors to bring to their own work.
Bryan: Yeah, you need, whether it is a person or a program, getting some neutral point of view on your books can make a huge difference. I absolutely agree.
Matty: Yeah, an experience I had was taking my, The description of one of my books and putting it into mid journey or something like that, and saying, give me a cover, not because I was planning on using the cover, but I was just curious, and it featured a secondary character much more prominently on the cover, and I thought, oh yeah, because you know what, that character's name shows up Before my protagonist's character in the description, maybe it would be a good idea if I didn't do that, actually put my protagonist's name first. So, those kinds of insights, I think it's useful to play around with this stuff, even if you don't end up using it in the real world, just to see. Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way before.
Bryan: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Good exercise that you did there for yourself.
Attributing performance results to advertising efforts
Matty: I think one of the challenges of using multiple platforms is this question of to where do you attribute the results? And so for a lot of my author career, I've only been doing one thing at a time. So if I get a big jump in sales, I'm like, okay, well, I was running Amazon ads. It's probably from Amazon ads.
Is there any, again, sort of strategic advice you can give when people are running ads on multiple platforms or making multiple promotional efforts, how they know where those came from?
Bryan: When you get really complicated when you're like some of the clients that we work with who are running Facebook ads, Amazon ads, they have a vibrant TikTok following. They're doing maybe TikTok shop or they're also doing Shopify, and some of the people who don't buy on Shopify will then go over to Amazon and buy This makes it.
Like, if you think back to high school calculus, this is a multi-variable equation. And so you want to look at potential cause and effect. Any assumptions you have to throw out the window, because if you see that, hey, I got more Facebook clicks this day, it must've been that. But then you dive deeper, and you see that, oh, well, there's a chance that Facebook, that Facebook traffic was actually going to a bad, irrelevant source that day.
And so you say, well, maybe it wasn't the Facebook. It is very, very difficult. And so, what you have to really look at You have to look at the data very objectively. You cannot go into it with a bunch of assumptions. I have had authors say, well, I know that these five sales didn't come from my ads because my uncle said he told his friends about it, and they must have bought it.
And it's like, well, you don't know anything when it comes to this because Amazon is not going to share that data with us. And so you really have to come at it very much from as much of a neutral perspective. We were just talking about a neutral perspective. As much as, as neutral as you possibly can be, because once you, when you throw in Amazon plus Facebook, okay, it gets a little more complicated.
If you have 3 or 4 promotional methods going at once, it is very difficult to tell where the sales actually came from. I would, for the most part, not recommend 3 to 4 promotional methods, unless you're already doing pretty well, because it, there comes a certain point in your career, and we've seen this with some of our agency clients, they’re making 20 grand on a bad month.
And so they know, well, if I spend five to 10 grand across these platforms and make 30 grand, it doesn't really matter where they came from to a certain extent. They're just happy that they threw money at ads and good things happen. They had a good profit margin and they're going to do it again. And there might come a time where they have to kind of reckon with that.
but in the short term, if they know I'll spend 10, I'll make 20 30 or 40, then they can go ahead and do that. But for folks who are starting out, you might want to keep things more simple.
Budgeting for ad beginners
Matty: I think that brings up another thing that I always like to encourage, people who are experts as you are to talk to is if someone is just starting out, I think we hear these, I spent 10,000 a month on Amazon ads and I earn, 10,000 times whatever. When people are just dipping their toe in the water.
What should they be budgeting, as a daily budget, as a weekly budget, however they, you would recommend they approach it, when they're just starting out.
Bryan: Yeah, absolutely. With Amazon ads, we usually put a 5 daily budget per ad. but then if you're worried that those ads are going to spend. All that money. If you have five ads, you have 10 ads, and you don't want to spend 25 to 50 a day, which they usually won't if you bid pretty low, around 34 to 39. But let's say you're nervous about it.
You can actually put all those ads into an ad folder that's called a portfolio, and you can set a portfolio budget cap and say, Actually, I don't want this to spend more than 40 for the month. And you say on a recurring basis, each month I want to spend 40 or less. I would say that. When you're first starting out, you could set those portfolio budgets, 40 to 50 in a month.
when you're just starting out, when you just have one book, it's not even likely to spend all that. but it's nice to know that budget is in place. I think a lot of authors, when they come into this, they say, well, I've got 400 earmarked. I'm going to spend this on ads. Then you go to Amazon, and it spends 4.
And you're like, but I budgeted 400. Why didn't it spend it? I'm going to raise my bid, which is not what we would recommend. And so you might want to budget for a certain amount, but you just got to keep in mind with a platform like Amazon, it might not actually go and spend that money, but, it’s good to know those numbers so that you could put them in as a portfolio budget cap.
Is one book enough for an ad campaign?
Matty: So I wanted to ask a time investment question. you would mention before about, we all have lives, and so how much time do we invest in this kind of thing? So I think that a piece of common author advice is, if you're wondering what to do with your time, you never go wrong using it to work on your next book.
And I think that's generally true, although I'm kind of hearing a shift, because I think if I had heard you speak as I have years ago, then the message would have been, if you only have one book, maybe wait until you have another book. Now I think I'm hearing more of a shift to, there's no harm in running ads against an early book, because it can advise, it can give you that market research insight.
That suggest, maybe this is really cozy and not a police procedural, or maybe people aren't sympathizing with your character, whatever that might be. But, I think there's also a point where you've got a bunch of books, like, I have, I currently have, 10 novels by the end of this year, I should have 11 or 12, and I almost feel like, maybe it's better, like, maybe I should make 2025 my promotional year, not stop writing altogether, because I think there are dangers there, but do you ever think that there's a time when you would advise an author to say, now it's time to shift your, Let's shift your focus a little bit.
Let's have a concerted chunk of time that is strictly going to be focused on learning and optimizing and using promotional tools like Amazon ads.
Bryan: I think folks do this naturally. I think that people do kind of go into promotional mode, especially if they buy a course or they are trying out a new method. I think there can be benefits of it, but right now, and I got a little bit in trouble for this, this was exciting. So I was talking about on some more book show that this exact question, if you have, one book out, or how many books would you wait until you run ads?
And I say one, because if you are planning to write a ten book series, and first book has no chance of selling once you've run the ads, and you realize, like, maybe you didn't quite get the genre right, maybe you didn't get the tropes right, then, hey, the ads have actually pointed you in the direction of, well, maybe you could write something a little bit different and see how that goes.
I got in trouble for it a little bit, because someone listened to that post, or listened to that, episode, and said, Bryan is telling me that I should cancel my series if it didn't sell well on ads. And then that was posted in a public group, the writing gals, and a lot of people were like, That's terrible advice!
And it's not exactly what I was saying, but it's not exactly the opposite of what I was saying either, because What are you going to get more out of? Are you going to get more out of writing and researching a series starter, running ads to it, determining, eh, it's not where it needs to be, and then writing and researching a second series starter.
And then maybe taking the lessons learned from that and writing a third series starter for a totally different series, maybe even a different subgenre. Or writing three books in one series and then running ads to it. do you get more out of? I wonder if you get more out of option A, because that writing and research process that usually we don't do until we've finished a series, put it on the shelf, moved on to another series, is where the growth can happen to a certain extent.
I remember I was writing a series, and I was writing book 5, and I was like, this is the best book I've ever written, and no one's ever going to find it. Because it's deep in a series that the book one isn't so good. And so to go back to the question of, is there a time where you focus on promotional methods or you, or do you always just keep the writing going? a big fan right now of you focus some time on the writing and research and. You can focus some time on promotion, but I think the big growths, the Richter scale, 10x growths, those happen jumping from a series to a different series to a different series. Now, I did message the person and all these comments come in and I said, you don't have to quit a series.
You don't have to give up a series. But there is nothing wrong with saying, I'm going to write another book one and I'll come back to book two of this later. You never have to kill a series, but I am very big right now, Matty, on can I save an author two to three years of their lives? And this is kind of the theory I'm going on of, especially based on lots of authors I've seen who've had success.
This might be the thing to concentrate on. And you might want to wait until you have the big hit where one of those series starters does seem to take off on its own. maybe you go into promotion mode, not necessarily when, you're in a position where you'd need to double your sales to be happy. To me, that feels like, well, ads are going to bump what you have up 20 to 30 percent at most. If. If you're not happy with what 20 30 percent more would bring, then I wonder if you focus on that next series starter and go deeper into that writing to market genre research and then save the promotional time for later.
Theoretical? I'll put that, forward, philosophical maybe, but I'm always trying to think of how can authors kind of level up, and this feels to me like maybe the direction they need to go in.
Matty: Well, I like that idea that you're not suggesting people trash their starter if it's not doing well on the ads, but that by the time you've tested your third starter, and this is the one that catches on, then it's easier to step back and say, oh, you know what I did differently?
I spent more time developing the character, and you know what I could do? I could go back into series one, and I could write that second book, except this time, guess what? more character development, or an interesting backstory, or whatever that might be. And so, the learnings that you can gain from what it was about that one that finally hit could be profitably applied to the earlier ones.
Bryan: right. that's, like I said, the theory, but I've seen too many authors. All of those have success with their 3rd series or their 4th series or their 5th series. And I wonder, well, what if that didn't happen in year 6 of their career? What if it happened in year 2? And it just makes me wonder.
Matty: So, Bryan, I appreciate you being willing to delve into all these sort of philosophical and theoretical questions about, Amazon ads, and I know you have lots of resources for the more tactical side of Amazon ads as well, so, please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about those resources and everything you do online,
Bryan: Absolutely. And thank you, Matty. It's been a lot of fun talking with you today. So, the 5 Day Author Ad Profit Challenge is a free event that we do quarterly. The next one's coming up April 17th, 2024. We'll have more in the future each quarter. this is a free course, free support, free Q&As. Often copied and duplicated. People try to do these kinds of challenges, but, I feel like we've really gotten a good handle on our process here, and that's why this one coming up is the 19th challenge we've done, and usually several thousand people are taking it at once, we love putting this on, it's a good way to learn the basics, it's a good way to.
Matty: Get your hands dirty and actually make a few ads, but do, to do it in a safe environment where you have a lot of support, where you're not doing it all on your own. That is at AuthorsAdvertise.com. That's AuthorsAdvertise.com and you can register for the challenge. as I have done myself.
Bryan: As you have done yourself,
Matty: That's right.
Bryan: I'm so excited that you'll be there.
and then I have a podcast too, the Sell More Book Show podcast, sellmorebookshow.com or anywhere you listen to podcasts. as Matty mentioned, we just hit 10 years, hoping to do as many more as we can.
Matty: Great. It was lovely talking to you, Bryan. Thanks so much.
Bryan: Hey Matty, I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here.
Meet Bryan Cohen
Matty: I am pleased to have you here. And just to give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Bryan Cohen is the CEO of Best Page Forward and Author Ad School. He has helped over 30,000 authors learn ads through his five-day Author Ad Profit Challenge. He also runs the Author Ad Agency, which helps full time authors to scale up their self-publishing earnings. And he lives in North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and cat. And I also wanted to send out a big congratulations to Bryan for passing 500 plus and 10 years of his great Sell More Books show podcast. So, Bryan, congratulations.
Bryan: Thank you, Matty. It's been a great, a great long time helping indie authors.
Matty: Yeah. Well, that is a very, very impressive track record. And the fact that you, you've done it so consistently and for such a long time and with such great information is, a great testament to you. So thank you for doing that.
Bryan: Of course. Of course.
Matty: So we are going to be talking today, not surprisingly, about Amazon ads, because obviously Bryan's the guy to go to for Amazon ads.
Strategic changes in Amazon ads
Matty: And so I wanted to start out by asking What have you seen change, if anything, at a strategic level with Amazon ads? Like, if someone had asked, are Amazon ads, any good, is the answer you would give about why different now than it would have been a year ago, five years ago, however far back you want to go?
Bryan: Sure. Yeah, no, I do think it's a little different than it would have been a few years ago. not for the reasons people might think. People might think, oh, well, Bryan's going to say it's more expensive, which Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's not necessarily more expensive from what I've seen. I've seen authors get hundreds of clicks at very low costs here in 2024.
Ads as a research tool
Bryan: So I know it's not necessarily that it costs more. I have seen that it can be a really good research tool to know how well your book has been positioned. which I wasn't always aware of, even, that when ads, we've heard the refrain, Amazon won't take my money, you try to run ads and it doesn't work.
We have found that sometimes it's not about Bidding too low, or it's not about, oh, this market is too expensive. I can't get, sometimes it's about your book's seven KDP keyword phrases and your book's three categories and your book's title. Sometimes little things like that actually will let Amazon spend your money or not spend your money.
And so, I used to think, and this is something I even see people still talking about today, when Amazon, when you have a book out on Amazon, you're not ready, you should wait until you have three books. And I've changed my tune on that, because I think Amazon ads can be really helpful, even just with your first book out, helping you to figure out, okay, Is Amazon taking my money?
If there's not, if they're not taking it, it's probable that something in the information you gave Amazon when you publish, Amazon isn't receiving it in the way you thought they would. And so I find that Amazon ads can still be one of the lower cost marketing methods. But it can also be a really good tool when you're starting out or when you're trying out a new series to see, okay, is Amazon figuring out what I'm sending it?
Is it picking up what I'm putting down? Whatever metaphor you want to use, that is one of the reasons I still recommend Amazon ads.
Matty: And is Amazon better at identifying those things than let's say, I don't know, book club ads or Facebook ads or something like that because there's such a strong tie between the data you're giving KDP and then the performance of an Amazon ad?
Bryan: I do think that Amazon can be in line and more so in line than maybe a BookBub ad or a, a Facebook ad. I think it can be. The problem is a lot of authors do have misalignment issues somewhere in the midst of the keywords. Subtitle categories, all of that stuff. And so I think the public perception of Amazon ads is that they are not as strong at connecting readers, as the other platforms, but it is interesting that when we have seen, and this is especially the case with a lot of our agency clients, they are already selling well, cause they're already full-time authors. It's easier to get those ads to spend even as low as 27 cents a click. We're getting those ads to spend when a newer author comes to, through our challenge or through ad school, and they say, I can't even get one click.is the platform broken? And then we look at this other account and we see a thousand clicks in a day.
We say, no, platform isn't broken, but there might be a disconnect here. Yeah. Yeah.
The desire for immediate social feedback
Matty: it is. It's a very different mindset. I have, experience, I've had some experience across all three platforms, but more on Facebook and BookBub. Those are the three I think of, like, when I'm thinking about advertising for my own books. Those are the three I think about, and I think one of the things that appeals to me about Facebook ads is you get this very immediate and personal response.
Feedback on why people are liking or not liking your ad, in some cases. So the example I can think of is that a couple of years ago, I was testing out a new tagline for my, Lizzie Ballard thrillers, and I, the tagline I had come up with was, what happens when an extraordinary power transforms an ordinary life?
And so, I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I started writing ads against it, and then someone made a response to the post, that made it clear that they thought it was going to be like a religious book, like an extraordinary power. They thought that was not true. We're talking this through non religiously affiliated power, but it was going to be, really does it.
Oh, well, that's really good to know because, that's something I could easily pull back from, whereas it's harder. My experience is it's harder to get that kind of sense of why, like you could see that your ads aren't spending, but is it the keyword? Is it the quality of the cover? Is it the quality of the content? Can you glean that kind of stuff from the Amazon ad results?
Bryan: I think that's a really good point, a really good observation, because you do get that social feedback on Facebook. You do get that social feedback on some, on a platform like TikTok, and you wouldn't get that feedback from, from Amazon. And so my answer to a certain extent has always been, well, take our free challenge and send us the links.
Cause we do it. eight weeks a year that we're around there for free, send us the link. We'll go take a look. we'll look at your keywords, but yeah, I mean, I think that if you have some money to spend and you want that immediate result, absolutely makes sense for Facebook or TikTok to get some feedback, but I think it really depends.
And this goes back to Authors having individualized ways that they take care of things based on their personality, based on the way they like doing things. Fortunately, I think they're, if people like the hand holding, they come to us. If they want to get immediate results and don't want to have to talk to a person for real and make it more on social media, go to Facebook, go to TikTok.
Either way, I do think it still comes back around to when you have a book that is selling. And maybe you found success with it on Facebook. We have found that success can be doubled when they're also running the ads on Amazon and not just confining it to one platform. I think that Amazon ads can be a primary driver of traffic to a book.
But they're a really good secondary driver when something else is working.
Are Amazon product pages actually getting busier?
Matty: One of the things that I feel like has changed over time on Amazon, and I'll ask you to confirm or deny, is that the pages seem busier and busier. So, if I'm shopping on Amazon and I go to a book and I start, looking for, I realize I've clicked into book two of the series and I want to go look for book one.
It becomes harder and harder to find that information because there's just so much there. Is that actually changing? And if it is, is that something that has made you adjust your strategy about Amazon ads?
Bryan: I learned some interesting things this past year. late last year, as part of my agency, I reached out to Amazon and found out some things. And it turned out that, and my team was helpful with this. Amazon has their AMG ads is what they used to call them. They're called something different now and the name escapes me, but as it often does, but there is the AMG ads were always known as, okay, if you've got 10,000 to burn, you can go to Amazon and say, Hey, I've got 10,000.
And they say, great, that's our minimum. You spend 10,000 with us a month, we'll run some special ads for you. I said, okay, well, I don't have these 10,000 to burn for my books, but, is there a way to do this without 10,000? And they said, well, we subcontract through some agencies to let you run ads that are very similar, which Amazon refers to as DSP or platform ads.
And it turns out that we've Could, if we hit 10,000 across lots of authors, we could actually run some of these ads for authors. And these ads are what has made the system feel busier. It used to be there were a couple places you'd see ads. The carousels on the product pages that you'd see that kind of have replaced also boughts in a lot of places.
And the search results. That became a little busier with sponsored brand ads starting to show up at the top of the search results. But then how does it feel busier? You go to an Amazon page, you see at the very top of the browser, there's now an ad. Underneath the buy button, there's an ad, and often underneath the product description, there's an ad.
Now sometimes regular old sponsored product ads can show up in these places, but more often than not, these are DSP ads or Amazon's own AMG ads. Now, interesting data from running these for six months. Most of them don't convert. The top of the page ads. Terrible. The ones that are even near under the button. Terrible.
The only ones we found that have been able to convert for us, and mileage may vary, is right under the product description, which makes sense. In the web terms, these are above the fold, so you don't have to scroll to get to them. Now, all of that being said, to answer your question, yes, the pages are busier, they're busier because of these other ad placements that Amazon is now selling in other ways.
Us normal folks, we can't usually get access to these kind of ads. But the good news is, those ads, for the most part, in our experimentation, aren't really that valuable. And so, it's the kind of thing where, even though sponsor product ads a little bit cheaper, a little bit more affordable for the regular author. We still find that these ads that all authors have access to actually do better and have better tracking somehow than these fancy pantsy ads that we've been able to peek under the hood and see. And so, I think that despite it being busier, there are still lots of really good opportunities there.
The impact of A+ Content
Matty: One of the things that I realize makes some pages look busier is the A plus content, so I know that for my Ann Kinnear books, there's a huge part of the page now taken up with one of those, like, triptych, sort of, I made them in Book Brush, you load an ad and then it breaks it up for you so you have, like, three parts of one image, which looks super cool, but I'm like, I wonder how long Amazon's going to keep doing that, cause that's, A huge amount of screen real estate for basically just a giant picture that I uploaded that was associated with my story.
Have you seen any pro or con impacts of A plus content on the success of people who are running Amazon X?
Bryan: Well, you brought up that Amazon, are they going to keep doing this? Amazon loves A plus content. Not sure why. I wonder if there's a search engine optimization something. They get more search traffic by having more images. That I don't know. But they love pushing it. I've been fortunate enough, Amazon has had me come on and teach some classes.
And at the end, they have these, Q& A sessions that aren't really live. They're just answering some questions in an Amazonian kind of way. And Amazon loves making sure that A plus content is delivered. mention. Maybe it's because it was a very requested feature and they're hoping that it makes readers happy, or authors happy. But, for a long time when A plus content was first announced, we did experiments on it. We looked, hey, does this improve a chance of a book being profitable or does it reduce the chances of a book being profitable? And because of all that real estate taken up, we actually found that because, and we think it's because it took so long to actually get to the reviews.
That it did reduce conversion. It did make the royalties, and, the profitability worse for those books. It's gotten a little better over time. places like Book Brush having tools so that the images don't look bad because part of the reason I think conversion was worse is because the images looked bad, but it's still a bit of a problem that it takes up all that real estate.
And so I'm a big fan of testing. Get 100 clicks without the A plus content, get 100 clicks with the A plus content, compare group 1 to group 2, and see, did you profit better, did you convert better, when you had the A plus content in place, or did not?
Matty: If someone does not have A plus content yet, do you recommend that they provide some in order to run that test? Or is it the kind of thing that you say, if you don't have it now, don't bother, but if you do have it, maybe test it without to see if it improves?
Bryan: If you don't have it now, don't bother, is what I would recommend.
Matty: Okay, this example just popped into my head. I recently got a screenshot of a friend's Kindle. He had opened up his Kindle. He had, purchased other of my books before, and it had an ad on the lock screen for one of my books.
Unpaid lock screen ads
Bryan: Inexplicably, it had an ad for one of my short stories, which I thought was weird.
Matty: But that was with me not thinking. Not having paid anything, I wasn't running any Amazon ads, do you know how often Amazon just puts an ad up? Like, I've got to believe that for that person's Kindle lock screen, there was a whole queue of other books that were maybe paying to have that placement.
Do you have any insight into how, those lock screen placements, are assigned?
Bryan: So you're not the first person I've heard who's had a book that they weren't running any ads for just randomly show up. I do think sometimes this is a function of kind of a pseudo also bought or books that you might like kind of carousel loaded in for when there aren't enough lock screen ads to actually go around.
but it is pretty rare. I don't think that it's something we can count on with any, reliability. I don't have deep, deep insight, like, one of my contacts at Amazon has told me specifically. It will show up 1 percent of the time, so I don't have anything specific to that. But anecdotally, it can happen sometimes, but as many know, and many have probably come on this show to say, we're in a pay to play environment.
More often than not, you are going to have to pay to get placement. That being said, I would not pay for the lock screen ads. They tend to be, a little bit pricier, and often it prices out authors who are trying to get a lower cost click on their ads.
Follow one course until success
Matty: So you had mentioned earlier the idea of Amazon being sort of a primary driver of sales and perhaps being supported by other ad platforms. for someone who's relatively new to the advertising, the book advertising game, are there combinations that you recommend or combinations that you recommend people stay away from?
Bryan: That's a good question. I think if you're new, sticking with one is probably going to be better, better to go deeper on one than to necessarily broaden out and try to learn multiple things at once, because it is like a four year degree, any of these things that you are going to be going deeper on in order to truly go as deep as you need to go, you know.
Go deep rather than wide
Bryan: You need to focus. the old, acronym, I heard John Lee Dumas say it once. I don't know if it's his. Follow one course until success. It is helpful to focus on one. Let's say, though, that you have learned one of them. And, there are various combinations. Let's say you've learned Facebook ads first. Amazon ads are helpful to set up. in addition, it will look like they are not doing anything because if Facebook ads are already sending traffic to your books, you may assume just, this is our natural psychological assumption. The thing I was already doing is the thing that's working. The new thing probably isn't. That isn't always true in what we've found, but I will say that if you are running Facebook ads already and then you start Amazon ads, I would run the Amazon ads for at least three to six months. I would not make any quick assumptions on whether or not those are working. Let's say you've already run BookBub ads.
and you're trying to run Amazon ads. These can work really well together. BookBub ads spend a lot faster. And so, you are going to want to keep an eye on your budget. I don't necessarily have any huge concerns, oh, that I, that are different than the Facebook and Amazon combo. Similarly, give the ads three to six months.
If you've run Amazon ads, or you know Amazon ads, and then you're adding another one, I would probably add Facebook next, but take it slow. No need to add big budgets. There are some really good courses out there. I'm a big fan of, Matthew Holmes's, work on Facebook ads. He's got a great free book out there, that can help you start.
I've learned from other great people, like Mal Cooper, like James Blatch and company. Like, there, there's a lot of good stuff out there. But when there are different schools of thought on the same platform, sometimes it makes sense to take this idea, and this idea and combine them together, but a lot of the time it doesn't.
And so just be careful when you're saying, well, I tried to take Matt's idea. I tried to take James's idea and mash them together because it felt right to me. But feeling is not fact. You need to consider going deep on one of the methods. For that specific platform first, then you can consider adding some bells and whistles to it, but I would not, go to the buffet and add different parts, to, to one particular learning style because it is possible they will not go together well.
Relying on the algorithms
Matty: Well, the mention of, Matt Holmes is interesting. I'm going to glom together two questions here. So I took the Matt Holmes, course on untargeted Facebook ads, where you allow Facebook to determine, you don't provide these, this, people who like Stephen King are going to like this.
You let Facebook do that. And it totally made sense to me. And I tried that for a while. It wasn't really panning out for me. I'm not necessarily blaming the theory. It's there are a lot of moving parts. So. I know it's working well for some people, but one of the things that appeal to me about it is that it makes sense to me that if, if AI is writing novels, if AI can do the things that it can do, then Facebook algorithms as a form of AI, like I trust that they could be better at picking targets for me than I could be.
And that the platforms that rely on me doing research into my own books, like Better Understanding Comp Authors, I'm kind of looking forward to the day when I can press a button and, Chad GPT will say, as it does now, I'm not sure how accurate it is, but, oh, you know who good comp authors are for your books?
These. And I think Amazon is. is perfectly positioned to do this because they, like, they have the text of your book. I feel like it can't be that far away that they're going to be doing the equivalent of untargeted Facebook ads. That was a whole mess of stuff, but can you comment on, like, the pros and cons of you making the decisions about who will like your books versus a machine making decisions about who's going to like your books?
Bryan: Well, it's very interesting because, we have found that especially for some of our authors who are making over 6,000 a month, so they qualify, for our agency, they, they find that they're getting the most clicks on their auto ads, which is, Somewhat just generated by Amazon, based around your 7 KDP keyword phrases, based around your categories, based around previous maybe data that you have going to your book.
And so it is kind of similar in that way, nowhere near as detailed or sophisticated as Facebook's Advantage Plus, audiences, and I have heard of them working for some people, not working for others, but yet you got to try it because if it does work, there's your push button, there's your chat GPT, pick all the things that, if you can get it to work with less Input from you and less effort from you, and it works.
You got to do it because there is only so much time in the day, right? There's only so many hours. There's only so much energy. There's only so much passion that can go into a single day. And if we can figure out that, oh, this Facebook method saves time, saves energy, great. Amazon doesn't feel like it's quite there yet.
I would love for it to be there. I would love for it to be a little bit easier. I feel like, sometimes teaching Amazon ads, we're bending over backwards, trying to explain the little, quirks of the platform. It'd be nice if those quirks weren't there and it just kind of worked. but I do think in a few years, Matty, we will be in a position that it will be easier for everyone to be able to advertise, but that will mean some of the people that here in 2024 who currently have an advantage, over, over authors who maybe are struggling with those ads, that advantage may dissipate.
And, you know as well as I do, when, authors who are secure in their earnings start to see that gap, dissipating, they're going to be angry, and they're going to say, this is no good, and they're going to say mean things about that platform, or the machines, or how it works, and it's like, Well, this is why you build up an email list.
This is why you try to future proof your business. This is why you, you become anti fragile in whatever ways you can. This is why you connect deeper with your readers, while you have that advantage because these kinds of advantages could be temporary. And so it's good to build a stronger foundation for your business.
Matty: Yeah, I can imagine that the improvement of AI is not only going to be potentially a time saver for authors, but also remove, provides a more objective source. So for example, I could see someone writing a book and they say, this is definitely a police procedural. I'm going to, I'm going to put in a lot of police procedural related terms into my keywords.
And then, they put it up, it doesn't do anything, but behind the scenes, if you let a machine. Picket, they would say, oh, no, this is really more cozy. And they start showing it to cozy readers. And then suddenly the sales boom. And I just think that a lot of these is, ad approaches require the person who's probably the least good at objectively assessing the work to assign this stuff that is supposed to be objective, like keywords. It provides that third party perspective in a way that I think it can be very difficult for authors to bring to their own work.
Bryan: Yeah, you need, whether it is a person or a program, getting some neutral point of view on your books can make a huge difference. I absolutely agree.
Matty: Yeah, an experience I had was taking my, The description of one of my books and putting it into mid journey or something like that, and saying, give me a cover, not because I was planning on using the cover, but I was just curious, and it featured a secondary character much more prominently on the cover, and I thought, oh yeah, because you know what, that character's name shows up Before my protagonist's character in the description, maybe it would be a good idea if I didn't do that, actually put my protagonist's name first. So, those kinds of insights, I think it's useful to play around with this stuff, even if you don't end up using it in the real world, just to see. Oh yeah, I never thought of it that way before.
Bryan: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Good exercise that you did there for yourself.
Attributing performance results to advertising efforts
Matty: I think one of the challenges of using multiple platforms is this question of to where do you attribute the results? And so for a lot of my author career, I've only been doing one thing at a time. So if I get a big jump in sales, I'm like, okay, well, I was running Amazon ads. It's probably from Amazon ads.
Is there any, again, sort of strategic advice you can give when people are running ads on multiple platforms or making multiple promotional efforts, how they know where those came from?
Bryan: When you get really complicated when you're like some of the clients that we work with who are running Facebook ads, Amazon ads, they have a vibrant TikTok following. They're doing maybe TikTok shop or they're also doing Shopify, and some of the people who don't buy on Shopify will then go over to Amazon and buy This makes it.
Like, if you think back to high school calculus, this is a multi-variable equation. And so you want to look at potential cause and effect. Any assumptions you have to throw out the window, because if you see that, hey, I got more Facebook clicks this day, it must've been that. But then you dive deeper, and you see that, oh, well, there's a chance that Facebook, that Facebook traffic was actually going to a bad, irrelevant source that day.
And so you say, well, maybe it wasn't the Facebook. It is very, very difficult. And so, what you have to really look at You have to look at the data very objectively. You cannot go into it with a bunch of assumptions. I have had authors say, well, I know that these five sales didn't come from my ads because my uncle said he told his friends about it, and they must have bought it.
And it's like, well, you don't know anything when it comes to this because Amazon is not going to share that data with us. And so you really have to come at it very much from as much of a neutral perspective. We were just talking about a neutral perspective. As much as, as neutral as you possibly can be, because once you, when you throw in Amazon plus Facebook, okay, it gets a little more complicated.
If you have 3 or 4 promotional methods going at once, it is very difficult to tell where the sales actually came from. I would, for the most part, not recommend 3 to 4 promotional methods, unless you're already doing pretty well, because it, there comes a certain point in your career, and we've seen this with some of our agency clients, they’re making 20 grand on a bad month.
And so they know, well, if I spend five to 10 grand across these platforms and make 30 grand, it doesn't really matter where they came from to a certain extent. They're just happy that they threw money at ads and good things happen. They had a good profit margin and they're going to do it again. And there might come a time where they have to kind of reckon with that.
but in the short term, if they know I'll spend 10, I'll make 20 30 or 40, then they can go ahead and do that. But for folks who are starting out, you might want to keep things more simple.
Budgeting for ad beginners
Matty: I think that brings up another thing that I always like to encourage, people who are experts as you are to talk to is if someone is just starting out, I think we hear these, I spent 10,000 a month on Amazon ads and I earn, 10,000 times whatever. When people are just dipping their toe in the water.
What should they be budgeting, as a daily budget, as a weekly budget, however they, you would recommend they approach it, when they're just starting out.
Bryan: Yeah, absolutely. With Amazon ads, we usually put a 5 daily budget per ad. but then if you're worried that those ads are going to spend. All that money. If you have five ads, you have 10 ads, and you don't want to spend 25 to 50 a day, which they usually won't if you bid pretty low, around 34 to 39. But let's say you're nervous about it.
You can actually put all those ads into an ad folder that's called a portfolio, and you can set a portfolio budget cap and say, Actually, I don't want this to spend more than 40 for the month. And you say on a recurring basis, each month I want to spend 40 or less. I would say that. When you're first starting out, you could set those portfolio budgets, 40 to 50 in a month.
when you're just starting out, when you just have one book, it's not even likely to spend all that. but it's nice to know that budget is in place. I think a lot of authors, when they come into this, they say, well, I've got 400 earmarked. I'm going to spend this on ads. Then you go to Amazon, and it spends 4.
And you're like, but I budgeted 400. Why didn't it spend it? I'm going to raise my bid, which is not what we would recommend. And so you might want to budget for a certain amount, but you just got to keep in mind with a platform like Amazon, it might not actually go and spend that money, but, it’s good to know those numbers so that you could put them in as a portfolio budget cap.
Is one book enough for an ad campaign?
Matty: So I wanted to ask a time investment question. you would mention before about, we all have lives, and so how much time do we invest in this kind of thing? So I think that a piece of common author advice is, if you're wondering what to do with your time, you never go wrong using it to work on your next book.
And I think that's generally true, although I'm kind of hearing a shift, because I think if I had heard you speak as I have years ago, then the message would have been, if you only have one book, maybe wait until you have another book. Now I think I'm hearing more of a shift to, there's no harm in running ads against an early book, because it can advise, it can give you that market research insight.
That suggest, maybe this is really cozy and not a police procedural, or maybe people aren't sympathizing with your character, whatever that might be. But, I think there's also a point where you've got a bunch of books, like, I have, I currently have, 10 novels by the end of this year, I should have 11 or 12, and I almost feel like, maybe it's better, like, maybe I should make 2025 my promotional year, not stop writing altogether, because I think there are dangers there, but do you ever think that there's a time when you would advise an author to say, now it's time to shift your, Let's shift your focus a little bit.
Let's have a concerted chunk of time that is strictly going to be focused on learning and optimizing and using promotional tools like Amazon ads.
Bryan: I think folks do this naturally. I think that people do kind of go into promotional mode, especially if they buy a course or they are trying out a new method. I think there can be benefits of it, but right now, and I got a little bit in trouble for this, this was exciting. So I was talking about on some more book show that this exact question, if you have, one book out, or how many books would you wait until you run ads?
And I say one, because if you are planning to write a ten book series, and first book has no chance of selling once you've run the ads, and you realize, like, maybe you didn't quite get the genre right, maybe you didn't get the tropes right, then, hey, the ads have actually pointed you in the direction of, well, maybe you could write something a little bit different and see how that goes.
I got in trouble for it a little bit, because someone listened to that post, or listened to that, episode, and said, Bryan is telling me that I should cancel my series if it didn't sell well on ads. And then that was posted in a public group, the writing gals, and a lot of people were like, That's terrible advice!
And it's not exactly what I was saying, but it's not exactly the opposite of what I was saying either, because What are you going to get more out of? Are you going to get more out of writing and researching a series starter, running ads to it, determining, eh, it's not where it needs to be, and then writing and researching a second series starter.
And then maybe taking the lessons learned from that and writing a third series starter for a totally different series, maybe even a different subgenre. Or writing three books in one series and then running ads to it. do you get more out of? I wonder if you get more out of option A, because that writing and research process that usually we don't do until we've finished a series, put it on the shelf, moved on to another series, is where the growth can happen to a certain extent.
I remember I was writing a series, and I was writing book 5, and I was like, this is the best book I've ever written, and no one's ever going to find it. Because it's deep in a series that the book one isn't so good. And so to go back to the question of, is there a time where you focus on promotional methods or you, or do you always just keep the writing going? a big fan right now of you focus some time on the writing and research and. You can focus some time on promotion, but I think the big growths, the Richter scale, 10x growths, those happen jumping from a series to a different series to a different series. Now, I did message the person and all these comments come in and I said, you don't have to quit a series.
You don't have to give up a series. But there is nothing wrong with saying, I'm going to write another book one and I'll come back to book two of this later. You never have to kill a series, but I am very big right now, Matty, on can I save an author two to three years of their lives? And this is kind of the theory I'm going on of, especially based on lots of authors I've seen who've had success.
This might be the thing to concentrate on. And you might want to wait until you have the big hit where one of those series starters does seem to take off on its own. maybe you go into promotion mode, not necessarily when, you're in a position where you'd need to double your sales to be happy. To me, that feels like, well, ads are going to bump what you have up 20 to 30 percent at most. If. If you're not happy with what 20 30 percent more would bring, then I wonder if you focus on that next series starter and go deeper into that writing to market genre research and then save the promotional time for later.
Theoretical? I'll put that, forward, philosophical maybe, but I'm always trying to think of how can authors kind of level up, and this feels to me like maybe the direction they need to go in.
Matty: Well, I like that idea that you're not suggesting people trash their starter if it's not doing well on the ads, but that by the time you've tested your third starter, and this is the one that catches on, then it's easier to step back and say, oh, you know what I did differently?
I spent more time developing the character, and you know what I could do? I could go back into series one, and I could write that second book, except this time, guess what? more character development, or an interesting backstory, or whatever that might be. And so, the learnings that you can gain from what it was about that one that finally hit could be profitably applied to the earlier ones.
Bryan: right. that's, like I said, the theory, but I've seen too many authors. All of those have success with their 3rd series or their 4th series or their 5th series. And I wonder, well, what if that didn't happen in year 6 of their career? What if it happened in year 2? And it just makes me wonder.
Matty: So, Bryan, I appreciate you being willing to delve into all these sort of philosophical and theoretical questions about, Amazon ads, and I know you have lots of resources for the more tactical side of Amazon ads as well, so, please let the listeners know where they can go to find out more about those resources and everything you do online,
Bryan: Absolutely. And thank you, Matty. It's been a lot of fun talking with you today. So, the 5 Day Author Ad Profit Challenge is a free event that we do quarterly. The next one's coming up April 17th, 2024. We'll have more in the future each quarter. this is a free course, free support, free Q&As. Often copied and duplicated. People try to do these kinds of challenges, but, I feel like we've really gotten a good handle on our process here, and that's why this one coming up is the 19th challenge we've done, and usually several thousand people are taking it at once, we love putting this on, it's a good way to learn the basics, it's a good way to.
Matty: Get your hands dirty and actually make a few ads, but do, to do it in a safe environment where you have a lot of support, where you're not doing it all on your own. That is at AuthorsAdvertise.com. That's AuthorsAdvertise.com and you can register for the challenge. as I have done myself.
Bryan: As you have done yourself,
Matty: That's right.
Bryan: I'm so excited that you'll be there.
and then I have a podcast too, the Sell More Book Show podcast, sellmorebookshow.com or anywhere you listen to podcasts. as Matty mentioned, we just hit 10 years, hoping to do as many more as we can.
Matty: Great. It was lovely talking to you, Bryan. Thanks so much.
