Amazon Advertising for Authors— Does it Work?
If you sell books on Amazon, you might want to read this!
If you’re an author selling through Kindle Direct Publishing, or even if you’re selling ‘wide’ across different platforms, you may be interested in Amazon Advertising, and whether it’s a cost-effective way of selling books.
Before I started advertising on Amazon, I’d heard lots of horror stories about people losing large sums of money on Amazon advertising, only selling a few books, or campaigns that had been running for years, but delivered no sales.
I decided to launch my own Amazon advertising campaign in March, and soon, writer friends on social media were asking, “Does it deliver? Does Amazon Advertising sell books? Do you make more than you spend?”
Initially, the answer was ‘no’, but then I got 281 Kindle Unlimited reads and a sale — both due to the adverts — and suddenly, I found myself in profit!
The campaign has now been running for a few months, on and off, and it is delivering a very small profit, but it’d be very easy to run at a loss if I put my bids up, so it’s important to bid low.
Tips for new advertisers
I found it useful to attend Bryan Cohen’s ‘5 Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge’. This online course provides a few basics about how Amazon advertising works. Amazon run their own online workshops, which can be useful too.
Bryan Cohen recommends:
- Bid low — this will reduce your risk of losing money;
- Put an end date on your campaign — this will increase impressions. Two weeks should be sufficient to make Amazon prioritise your ad, because the algorithm thinks the campaign is scheduled to end soon.
- Run an automatic campaign because it’s the easiest way to get started.
- Also run a manual campaign, using lots of relevant keywords. Over time, modify the manual campaign to optimise the results. The more keywords you add, the greater visibility your book gets. The keywords need to be relevant, or you’ll be wasting your money. You can set a maximum bid for each keyword.
In my experience, manual campaigns deliver more sales. My manual campaign was responsible for all the sales and for all the Kindle Unlimited reads, so I cancelled the automatic campaign after a few months.
Other people’s experiences
Other people’s experiences of Amazon advertising have been mixed. I’ve heard from a lot of people who broke even, and some who lost money. It seems to be quite hard to earn much from it.
People on Twitter reported their results:
- Gabrielle Olexa reported, ‘Over 3500 impressions for me. No clicks. No KU reads. No buys. This happens to me every time’.
- Danielle Larson said, ‘I kept getting impressions and a few clicks, but ZERO sales after running the ad for a few months. I eventually just cancelled it. It wasn’t worth the money as I wasn’t getting anything in return’.
- Chris Barrie said, ‘Overall I spent £30 and got £50 or so in sales so it paid off but I haven’t spent that much since on Amazon’.
- William Disdale said, ‘I am running an amazon ad and have about 2000 impressions, 11 clicks, one sale. Set daily limit to £5 and spent 1.96 in total.’
So it seems there’s a skill, as well as a degree of trial and error, to making a profit from Amazon Advertising. I do plan to continue advertising for the time being — as long as I’m making a profit, not a loss, it makes sense. I’m bidding low, so impressions are low, but I’m optimistic that with some tweaks and adjustments, I can improve my good fortune, and improve my book sales.