by Ben Zackheim | Feb 11, 2013 | Book Promotion, Writing |
Does advertising on Goodreads work? My first step into their self-serve ad system shows promise. I know there’s interest in the writing community about advertising on Goodreads, so I thought I’d share the results of my first (ten bucks!) campaign.
I advertised two middle grade books in my Shirley Link series. The campaign started 12-6-2012.
While I’m somewhat pleased with the overall views, I can’t measure the actual sales since Amazon and BN.com are black boxes. I plan on making my own landing page for sales so I can measure conversion next time! Sigh. I knew that, but I didn’t account for it. No soup for me!
I targeted one ad using genres and authors as filters. I used no targeting for the other ad. The ctr was higher for the targeted ad (.01 vs. .02).
daily cap $2.00
total credit purchased $10.00 transactions
total views 116,129
total clicks 20
ctr for all time 0.02%
cpc for all time $0.50
The ten bucks started to go quickly, but after a couple of days it dropped to a trickle. I probably wouldn’t have spent the whole ten bucks if I hadn’t redone the creative on one book, including copy. I also adjusted the link for the ad and made it point to my Goodreads page, and not to my books’ Amazon pages. That simple move seems to have pushed it over the top and my ten bucks quickly got spent. Another benefit of linking to Goodreads page is that I saw a spike in my books being added to Goodreads shelves. It implies that the Goodreads community likes to stay on the site. It also implies (though I have no proof) that Goodreads gives preferential treatment to ads that link to their book pages, and not someone else’s.
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[blockquote author_name=”” width=”50%” float=”left”]My goals for next campaign:
Get a full half percent ctr (you read that right! .5, not .05!)
Track my custom sales page![/blockquote]
[blockquote author_name=”” width=”50%” float=”left”]Lessons learned:
Make a product/landing page that you can track!
Target the ad, but not too strictly. Limiting it to a few genres and several authors is a good place to start.
Adjust the ad when the views drop. Change the copy and graphic, if possible.
For first-timers/dabblers advertising on Goodreads: If you don’t have a landing page of your own where you can sell the book directly, then point the ad to your Goodreads page, NOT an online retailer. Since it’s probably really attractive to link to the online retailers (just to see what happens) I’d wait to do it on your second campaign. That way you can spot your own ad’s performance and adjust around the most important part…the conversion![/blockquote]
by Ben Zackheim | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Promotion, Writing |
This is Part One of an ongoing series that will look into WordPress tools that do specific things we fiction writers must do.
With as little effort as possible, of course. We have writing to do!
One of the toughest, and most satisfying, tasks that I’ve had to tackle as a writer of fiction is my website. When I decided to follow my dream of yarning-it-up for a living, I knew that a site would be one of those dreaded (scary cello music) THINGS YOU MUST DO!
After all, how can anyone get by without their digital stamp on our collective Web brain? Sure, it’s possible, even likely, that no one will show up, but, hey, what if they do?
I was slow to get mine up and running. Writing, after all, is my focus. Who has time to go beyond securing the domain before the other guy with your name snags it?
With my background in corporate America, I tried very hard to make my site’s creation as difficult as possible. Surely there was no such thing as a one-size-fits-all platform for me to leverage. Surely, it would be tougher than simply finding one web service. Nonono, I’d have to find one service to enable sharing, another service to pretty the site up, another to build the foundation, another to place ads, blahblahblah.
Oh, and I’d have to pay for all of it. One way or another.
Then I followed the advice of a friend, and tried WordPress.
1. WordPress is mind-blowingly stupendous for writers.
(yes, i’m a fan)
For newbies out there, WordPress lets you create a site that can do absolutely anything. Blog thoughts, sell books, run ads, launch contests, evaluate traffic, quantify your hard work against a million criteria.
In a word, WordPress is the single best web product and service ever built. Yes, that’s hard to quantify, but damned if I’m even going to try. WordPress speaks for itself.
It is the one-stop shop I never thought could be built. It has everything I need. Awesome designs (called themes), social network sharing tools, SEO plug-ins, ad widgets, html boxes, A/B testing, cheap gasoline. All drag-and-drop-easy. And most are as free as air currently is.
2. WordPress is gut-wrenchingly distracting to writers.
My favorite built-in feature is the theme switching. I can download a new theme, preview it, and even push it into the world without losing any aspect of the hard work I’ve done on my real site. In all, I’ve only switched designs permanently once (it took about 15 minutes to make it work like I wanted). But I’ve tested a couple of hundred themes, which is great fun.
And a huge distraction.
With all of the themes available, I found it tough to settle on one for a couple of reasons:
- There were too many options.
- My needs are, shall we say, “fluid”.
Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. I’ve spoken to dozens of writers who tell me they suffered through their own lack of focus when building their corner of the WWW. Some got caught up in the cool plug-ins. Some were wandering the massive catacombs of drag-n-drop widgets. Most were in my boat, ogling themes until the morning coffee brewed.
After months of grappling with the immense toolset like a supervillain with all the power in the world, I realized something that I hope will save you tons of time, and free you up to write a novel that sells better than mine.
What is that thing?
Focus.
In the next post, I’ll give my opinion of what makes a good WordPress writer site. It starts with a focused author, who doesn’t mind getting into the weeds just a little. Read part two now.
by Ben Zackheim
by Ben Zackheim | Nov 21, 2012 | Book Promotion, Writing |
How many moments do we miss? A joke told by a buddy with slashing panache that leaves you breathless. A month later you can’t even remember the setup, much less the punch line. Or the moment your six year old son uses the word “coincidentally” in a sentence and then looks up with the same eyes he had when he was a baby. Then later in the year you try to recall that word he spoke. And nothing. Nope. Lost to time, to the priorities that aren’t really important.
So at the moment, as I enjoy watching Shirley Link books climb the ebook charts (in the free category) I need to document it somewhere. Because next week I won’t recall this feeling of accomplishment, if I even recall it at all. Next week I’ll be back in the weeds.
But, for now, I have the #4 and #10 spots in Teen ebooks. #1 and 2 in Teen Mysteries.
by Ben Zackheim | Sep 20, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Promote wisely (i.e. without Facebook Chat)
There are a lot of ways to use Facebook to promote yourself. Set up a product page for your book, run some polls, post some cool photos, arrange an event, interact with your fans. But Facebook Chat is an awful way to reach out. First of all, it’s unreliable. Secondly, few people use it on their computer to chat in real-time (though mobile is picking up speed). Most people (who know better) set themselves to invisible which means all chats are sent to the Message box. That may be fine for a quick ping. But if you catch someone online and try to chat up your new book with them they probably won’t appreciate it. The ambiance of Facebook is still one of arms-length. Even if you spend a lot of time on it, and feel fulfilled by it, most people use it to interact, but with some distance. Chat is too immediate for Facebook. I expect it will become even less prominent on their website as time goes on.
by Ben Zackheim | Sep 12, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Google Ads are awesome. They genuinely generate traffic, which is what we all want, right? But beware! Google likes to send out free ad credits to new sites. You must enter your cc information when you sign up. It’s easy to turn on a few campaigns with those credits and then forget that you will be charged for everything over and beyond the freebie. So put it in your calendar. Pause your ad campaign!
by Ben Zackheim | Sep 5, 2012 | Book Promotion, Viral Juice |
Years ago I did a comic strip titled The Block. It was a wonderful part of my creative life and I realize I miss it. I’ll be posting this new strip, Viral Juice, as often as possible. What’s “Viral Juice” mean? Well, I can tell you that it will lambaste our obsession with using social media for self promotion. For more than that simple summary, tune in next week to find out!
