As authors, we’re often balancing our creative principles with the need to embrace new technologies that might boost book sales. That’s why, after recently expressing his dislike of AI-generated art in book ads, Ginger decided to run a small experiment to see how effective these ads truly are.

By comparing ads using AI-generated artwork with a similar set featuring traditional art, he was able to draw some surprising conclusions. While this sample size is small and not meant to prove anything definitively, the results could be useful for any authors still debating whether to stick with traditional imagery or explore the AI route in their marketing efforts.

A couple of weeks ago, I published a rant about how much I loathed seeing ads for eBooks in my Facebook feed that used AI-generated artwork, and it seems from the responses that many of you agreed with me!

However, the debate raised one important question that I didn’t have the answer to: Whether or not the ads worked effectively.

Because at the end of the day, that’s a major consideration for authors – especially when we’re struggling to sell products that often only have a tiny profit margin. I recently increased the price of my books on Amazon, but previously I’d been retailing them at $3.99, which meant I only made $3 in royalties with each sale. My traffic ads would normally generate one sale for every 12 clicks, meaning I had to keep my Cost-Per-Click below $0.25 to make a profit.

Would AI-generated artwork produce cheaper, more effective ads?

In the interests of science, I decided to find out – and share all the results with you. That being said, I am still opposed to the idea of using AI-generated art in my ads – I just thought that it was worth finding out the answer for myself.

How do you create AI-generated art?

AI artwork is a massive thing right now, and there are all sorts of sites you can go to and type in prompts to generate AI art. Alternatively, the tech-savvy amongst us can download all the components to make our own AI-artwork system, which isn’t burdened by some of the restrictions that commercial providers impose.

I’m fairly technically savvy, but not on the same level as Craig, so I took the easy option. I have a monthly subscription to Adobe’s Stock Photography service and they now offer the ability to generate AI artwork within that service. I decided to start there.

(As a quick aside, I hate the way Adobe now has so many AI-generated photos and pictures in their Stock Photography catalog. I normally filter them out, because otherwise at least 50% of the pictures I search for end up being generated by AI.)

I write MC Romance books, so I asked Adobe to generate some muscular heroes for my ads, and the results were actually astonishingly good. I was genuinely surprised how realistic some of the images were and one in particular looked so much like a muscle-bound friend of mine that I even sent a copy to him!

I’d say the majority of the pictures that were generated didn’t pass muster. Some of them didn’t look like real human beings. Sometimes, they had incorrect details or backgrounds. By far the most common issue I ran into was generating pictures of people who didn’t look like the characters I was trying to make images of – I’d ask for a “muscular blond biker” and get a vividly realistic African-American biker with peroxide blond hair, for example (maybe he could be character inspiration for another day.)

Ultimately, though, I was able to generate enough pictures to make this experiment viable and go to work making some ads.

Creating Facebook Ads

When you run Facebook ads, you generally need three sizes to hit all the potential placements. A square image for the general Facebook and Instagram Feed, a portrait style one for Reels and Stories, and a landscape one for the Right Sidebar and News segments. 

I have a template I’ve used for ages which generally delivers good results. It features a mockup of an Amazon Kindle with my book cover on the display, and I add the stock photography as a backdrop. That’s exactly what I did here – creating four ads for four books, each in the three different sizes. 

This actually took some artistic skill, I’m not going to lie. I’m pretty handy with photoshop and not only did I create the three differently-sized ads, I also added some tattoos to my hunky heroes to keep them consistent with the covers and “brand” of my books. 

I believe AI can automatically add tattoos when it generates pictures, but they’re typically abstract types of letters and artwork and I wanted real-looking tattoos, so I used stock photography I’d used for previous designs using real, human models.

Perhaps this was cheating, since AI-generated tattoos would have definitely been a giveaway that this wasn’t a real human being in the ads – but I have some standards I don’t want to compromise on. That being said, I wasn’t trying to deliberately mislead anybody. I didn’t want to trick people into thinking these were real models in the photo – but the integrity of the experiment also required not making it too obvious.

Creating Video Ads

Once I’d created my ads, I took it a step further and created animated versions of them. This is something I do with all my regular ads, since video doesn’t tend to be very effective on Facebook. I used a program I paid for a number of years ago that adds pre-rendered overlays to my images to make it look like it’s pouring with rain, smoke is wafting across the screen, or sparks from a fire are billowing up in front of the images.

I made each video run for 12 seconds and made a version for each size across all the ads that I made – a Story version, a Square version, and a Landscape version.

I really liked the look of these ads! I still felt a little squeamish about using AI-generated art instead of real pictures of actual models – but at this stage of the process, I was becoming uncomfortable with just how good my ads looked. 

I hadn’t expected the whole process to come together so easily. From generating the models to animating them, making AI ads was actually easier than making regular ads since I didn’t need to do so much Photoshop. My AI-images were pre-rendered in the right proportions, with appropriate backgrounds, and I just needed to crop them and add small details like the tattoos. The whole process was much quicker than using regular stock photography.

(As I said before, I was getting really squeamish about it at this point.)

Running the Ads

After I’d finished rendering the video versions of my ads, I added them to a brand-new campaign and decided to face them off against a series of ads that I’d run previously with great success. My older ads were all generated with real, live humans as the models (and real life locations from stock photography.) I’d used the same methods to generate these ads in different sizes, and made video versions of all of them, so I thought this was a fair comparison to experiment with. 

I decided to run a Traffic Ad campaign rather than a Sales campaign, like the ones I normally use to direct potential customers to my direct sales funnel. Traffic ads give you the opportunity to reach a much broader audience much more cheaply, which was great since I was more focused on comparing the ads than making sales with this experiment. I set the ads to switch off after the same number of impressions, giving each of them the same opportunity to reach the same number of people.

Then, heart in my throat, I set them to run.

What were the results?

After a day of running the ads, I had enough information to compare the “real” artwork to the AI-generated art. The results surprised me.

I used the metric of Click-Thru-Rate to judge the effectiveness of each ad, since that compared the number of Impressions to the number of Clicks, effectively ranking just how engaging and click-worthy the ads were.

Six ads performed significantly better than the others – but surprisingly, three of them were AI-generated and three of them were made using regular stock photography, meaning there wasn’t a clear winner between AI-generated art and the regular kind. 

Five of them were video ads, however – and the rest of the video ads also performed better than the static image ads I’d created, regardless of whether or not the original artwork in them was generated by AI or not.

In fact that one rogue outlier, the static image ad that made it into the top six (it was #4, actually) was created using real-life stock photography, not AI-generated art, so it didn’t make the results between the two any clearer, either!

But what did seem clear was that video ads definitely seem to outperform regular static ads. They consistently seemed to get more impressions, a higher click-thru-rate, and result in a lower cost-per-click.

Conclusion

I was surprised, but also a little reassured by the fact that AI-generated art didn’t immediately and dramatically outperform the real-life images and stock photography I’d used in my ads. 

Perhaps I’d muddied the waters a bit by adding real tattoos to my handsome hunky heroes, or maybe the AI-generated artwork I’d chosen had just been too realistic – maybe people couldn’t tell the difference! In any event, it wasn’t the artwork that really made the difference – it was the animation.

Videos, it seems, really are the way to go when creating and running Facebook ads. The movement seems to make people more likely to stop mid-scroll, and that gives them enough time to read your copy and click on the “Learn More” button.

(The copy in both sets of ads was identical, by the way, to ensure a fair comparison.)

That’s why I’m definitely going to make sure I make video versions on all my ads moving forward. 

That being said, however, I’m not abandoning my static ads. Not only did at least one of them perform comparatively to the video ads, but none of them had performed badly by any stretch of the imagination. I think there are definitely going to be circumstances in which a static ad might be a better option (in the tiny landscape ads in the news feeds, for example) and in general it’s good practice to have more ads in your campaign rather than fewer.

And for the time being, at least (and ideally the foreseeable future) I’m going to continue trying to avoid running ads involving AI-generated art.

The quality of AI-artwork is continuing to improve at a ridiculous rate, and even the art I used for my ads was difficult to differentiate from real stock photography. However, I have too many friends who are models and photographers to be willing to abandon real stock photography anytime soon.

And the good news, in the short term at least, is that the metrics seem to indicate I won’t lose out by sticking to my principles in this regard. The real question, however, is how long that will last.

What did you make of this experiment? 

I was inspired to run this experiment after seeing so many comments (and emails) on my last article about AI-generated art in ads, and I’d love to learn what you thought about this one.

Were you surprised by the results? Relieved? Will you be experimenting with AI-generated art in your own ads, or sticking to your guns and only using “real” photography like I intend to?

We’re voyaging deeper and deeper into a brave new world for creative folks, and I’d love to learn where people stand on the issue. Please don’t be shy about putting your opinion into a comment down below.

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The post Analyzing the Ad Performance of AI-Generated Art appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

While newer social platforms like TikTok often steal the spotlight, Facebook remains the king of the hill when it comes to author engagement and audience connection. With its unique ability to foster deep, meaningful interactions and its unparalleled reach, Facebook is still a critical tool in an author’s marketing arsenal. But how can you make this platform work for you, especially when organic growth feels like an uphill battle?

In today’s blog, Ginger offers actionable strategies to transform your Facebook presence from a stagnant page into a thriving community of engaged readers. Plus, he shares a treasure trove of relevant hashtags to use in your posts, helping you draw in future fans, not just the ones who have already discovered you. So read on for a quick guide on how to use your Author Page to supercharge your social game.

Recently, I was asked why most of the articles I write about advertising focus on Facebook and the answer is simple: It’s the biggest game in town. Currently, no other platform offers quite the same sophistication as Facebook, or reaches a more appropriate audience.

But Facebook isn’t limited to just paid advertising. You can build quite a substantial presence there organically, especially if you’re willing to put in the work required. In fact, there are many authors who rely on Facebook as one of their primary platforms for engaging with fans – choosing it over Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok. 

This is because Facebook tends to be where your readers are, and when you encounter them on Facebook it’s a different experience to interactions on Instagram or Twitter. You can engage in longer conversations that are easier for other readers to discover and weigh-in on, and when your posts and engagements get shared, they tend to reach a new audience in a much more seamless and organic way than TikTok – almost as if you’re stumbling over a new friend’s profile in your feed.

But generating a following on Facebook isn’t as easy or intuitive as on TikTok or Twitter, and this is compounded by the fact that Meta actively limits your organic reach to just 15% of your total followers – making the task of gaining new fans much more difficult. 

But when you start building traction, it quickly snowballs – and if you’re already advertising on Facebook, having a robust calendar of content on your author page helps amplify the reach and impact of those ads. It’s really a no-brainer, and the biggest obstacle is normally just trying to learn what works on the platform, and what doesn’t.

That’s why I’ve decided to provide a quick guide to organically growing your author platform on Facebook – and it all starts with your Author Page.

Why You Need an Author Page, Not a Personal Profile

One of the biggest mistakes authors make on Facebook is trying to engage with fans and build a following using their personal Facebook account, or one they’ve specially created for their penname (which violates Facebook’s TOS, by the way, and can get your account banned from the platform.)

While it might be tempting to use your personal Facebook profile to promote your books, it’s highly recommended to create a separate Author Page instead. A Page on Facebook is a static landing page used by celebrities, businesses, and brands and it offers a lot more usability than a regular old Facebook account. Here’s why:

• Professionalism: An Author Page establishes a clear distinction between your personal life and your author brand. It gives your readers a dedicated space to engage with your work – and means you don’t need to worry about strangers seeing pictures of your kids or being privvy to other aspects of your personal life you only share with friends and family.
• Reach: Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes content from Pages over personal profiles, increasing the visibility of your posts. You’re also limited in the number of “friends” you can have on a personal Facebook account, but you can have as many fans and followers as you want on a Page.
• Analytics: Author Pages provide valuable insights into your audience, helping you tailor your content effectively and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
• Monetization: If you decide to explore advertising options in the future, you’ll need a Page to run ads. Since you have to have one, you might as well make proper use of it.

Growing Your Facebook Page Organically

Once you’ve created an Author Page, it’s time to start reaching out to people. Growing your Facebook page organically requires a strategic approach that focuses on creating valuable content, engaging with an appropriate audience, and finding ways to engage with them.

Here are two key strategies to always keep in mind:

Key #1 – Create High-Quality Content

• Know Your Audience: Understand their interests, preferences, and pain points. This part is generally easy, since as an author you’ll probably share many of these things with your readers!
• Diverse Content: Mix it up with text, images, videos, and live streams. Experiment and have fun with Facebook, trying out new types of posts and content. You’ll never know what will impact your audience, so experimentation is key when you’re just starting out.
• Visual Appeal: Use eye-catching visuals and engaging captions to attract new followers. Look at your post through their eyes. Would this make you stop scrolling if you saw it in your feed?   
• Value Proposition: Provide content that is informative, entertaining, or inspiring. This doesn’t mean all your posts have to be about your books – in fact, most of them shouldn’t be. Just create and share things that you find interesting and engaging, and you’ll find many of your future followers will appreciate them.

Key #2 – Engage with Your Audience

• Respond to Comments: Show you care by actively engaging in conversations. Even just tapping the Like button can reward somebody for leaving a comment. 
• Ask Questions: Encourage interaction and gather feedback in your posts – but just remember, if you invite opinions, you’re going to get them! 
• Join Groups: Participate in relevant Facebook groups to expand your reach. 
• Collaborate: Partner with other authors or influencers. Blog tours and Page takeovers are the bread-and-butter of many successful authors on Facebook, and many are eager for new authors to come and join them and help make an even bigger impact.
• User-Generated Content: Share posts from your followers! This rewards fans who take the time to engage with you, and helps provide social proof about you as an author.

How Can You Create Engaging Posts?

Once you’ve set up your Author Page, it’s time to start posting. Remember, the goal is to create content that people will want to share, like, and comment on. Here are some post ideas specific to authors – you’ve probably seen your favorite writers on Facebook create something similar:

• Behind-the-scenes glimpses: Offer exclusive looks into your writing process, such as sharing your favorite writing spots or discussing your research.
• Author Q&As: Interact with your audience by answering questions about your books, writing journey, or even personal interests.
• Book excerpts: Share tantalizing snippets from your latest or upcoming book to generate interest.
• Writing tips: Position yourself as an authority by sharing helpful advice for aspiring writers.
• Author challenges: Encourage interaction by creating fun challenges related to your book or genre.
• Share your passions: Demonstrate your personality by posting about your hobbies or interests outside of writing.

How Can You Reach More People?

Creating engaging content is invaluable – but there’s no point unless you’re going to be able to share it with new people. The best method for reaching a new audience organically on Facebook is to have fans of your Author Page share your post – letting your work be seen by all their friends.

However, you can also make it easier for readers to find your content on Facebook by using hashtags. These are something more familiar to Twitter or Instagram users, but hashtags on Facebook work in exactly the same way, and can help your content show up organically in searches for that tag.

Hashtags on Facebook are clickable links that categorize content. When you add a hashtag to your post (e.g., #bookworm, #amreading), it becomes a clickable link that leads to a feed of all other posts using that same hashtag.

Here’s a mix of general, genre-specific, and engagement-focused hashtags to get you started:

General Author Hashtags

• #author
• #bookworm
• #booklover
• #bookaddict
• #reader
• #bookstagram
• #bookish
• #amreading
• #currentlyreading
• #bookrecommendations
• #bookreview
• #writerslife
• #writingcommunity
• #indieauthor
• #selfpublished
• #supportindieauthor

Genre-Specific Hashtags

• Use specific hashtags related to your book’s genre, such as:
  • #romance
  • #fantasy
  • #mystery
  • #sciencefiction
  • #youngadult
  • #historicalfiction
  • #nonfiction
  • #memoir
  • #childrensbooks
  • #middlegrade

You can even make it more granular than that, by focusing on the tropes of your chosen genre, rather than the genre itself. For example, romance authors love using hashtags like these: 

General Romance Tropes

• #LoveStory
• #HappilyEverAfter
• #RomanceNovel
• #BookLover
• #BookWorm
• #ReadersOfInstagram
• #Bookstagram

Specific Romance Tropes

Enemies to Lovers

• #EnemiesToLovers
• #HateToRead
• #OppositesAttract
• #SlowBurnRomance
• #ForbiddenLove

Alpha Male/Strong Female

• #AlphaMale
• #StrongFemaleLead
• #BossyHero
• #IndependentHeroine
• #PowerCouple

Second Chance Romance

• #SecondChanceRomance
• #LostLove
• #RekindledLove
• #WeWereOnABreak

Small Town Romance

• #SmallTownRomance
• #CountryLove
• #HometownHeartthrob
• #CozyRomance

Historical Romance

• #HistoricalRomance
• #RegencyRomance
• #VictorianRomance
• #TimeTravelRomance

Fantasy Romance

• #FantasyRomance
• #ParanormalRomance
• #WerewolfRomance
• #VampireRomance
• #MagicAndLove

Contemporary Romance

• #ContemporaryRomance
• #OfficeRomance
• #BestFriendRomance
• #SingleMomRomance
• #MillionaireRomance

Finally, you can also engage with readers on Facebook another way – by going to the places where they’re talking about books. Try some of these hashtags:

• #bookclub
• #bookblogger
• #bookishlove
• #bookstagrammer
• #readersofinstagram
• #bookgiveaway
• #bookpromo
• #supportlocalauthors
• #readingchallenge
• #bookishlife

Remember:

• Relevance: Use hashtags that are relevant to your post’s topic.  
• Discoverability: Choose hashtags that are popular but not overly broad.
• Consistency: Use a mix of popular and niche hashtags. 
• Experimentation: Try different hashtags to see what works best for your audience.  
• Placement: You can use hashtags anywhere in your post, but many people prefer to place them at the end.

Benefits of Using Hashtags:

• Increased Visibility: Hashtags help your content reach a wider audience who are interested in the same topic. 
• Engagement: Hashtags can encourage interaction and participation in online conversations.
• Discoverability: People can find your content by searching for specific hashtags.

Now you’ve got #hashtags down, you’ll hopefully start to see more and more strangers find your posts – and remember what your grandmother said: A stranger is just a friend (or fan) you haven’t met yet.

Boosting Engagement

To maximize the impact of your posts, focus on building a community around your Author Page. Here are some ways to do that:.

• Respond to comments: Show your audience that you value their input by responding to every comment, no matter how small.
• Encourage sharing: Ask readers to share your posts with their friends if they enjoyed them.
• Invite fans to like your Page: When people interact with your content, invite them to like your Author Page for more updates.
• Use relevant hashtags: Help people discover your content by using popular and relevant hashtags.
• Post consistently: Regular posting keeps your Author Page active and fresh in people’s minds.
• Experiment with post formats: Mix up your content with images, videos, and text-based posts to see what resonates best with your audience.

Promoting Your Books

Now, all this advice is great, and will hopefully help boost your reach on Facebook – but as much as I recommended not making all your posts be about your books, you obviously want to make sure some of them are. After all, that’s why you’re doing this in the first place!

So, don’t be afraid to regularly insert some posts about your books – and here’s how to do it effectively:

• Direct links: When sharing book covers or excerpts, include a clear and clickable link to purchase the book. If you’re directing readers to Amazon, be sure to use an Attribution Tag to track their behavior once they get there.
• Create book-specific posts: Dedicated posts about your books can generate excitement and drive sales, and you should always ask people to share them.
• Offer exclusive content: Provide bonus content, such as short stories or character interviews, as incentives for purchasing your books or sharing your posts.
• Run contests and giveaways: Encourage engagement by offering free copies of your books or other prizes. I’d shy away from offering gift cards or any specific cash prizes, as Amazon can sometimes confuse these as “payment” for reviews (a major no-no.) However, prizes don’t only have to be books – and if they are, they don’t always have to be your books. 

Conclusion

Growing your author platform organically on Facebook takes time and effort, but the rewards can be substantial. By creating engaging content, building a community, and effectively promoting your books, you can significantly increase your reach and connect with readers on a deeper level – and on one of the best platforms for authors.

Just remember that hard work and consistency is key. Keep posting, keep interacting, and you’ll slowly watch your author platform flourish. With dedication and a strategic approach, you can harness the power of Facebook to build a thriving author career without breaking the bank on advertising – and when you do start advertising, it will make every dollar you spend work that much harder for you.

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The post Grow Your Author Platform Organically on Facebook in 2024 appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

Once in a while, a topic discussed on the blog generates more questions than usual and sharing the answers with the community would be more beneficial than simply replying directly to the author. Ginger’s recent Direct Sales series is one such example of this, where the interest in the topic has been high and some of the questions being asked are shared by many.  

Skipping the big online book retailers to sell directly to readers is a beefy topic, but one that is becoming more popular these days. Still, direct sales success is by no means a given, even if you can navigate your way through the complexity of the initial setup. There are other factors that go into whether it is right for you, and the questions Ginger is answering today reflect some of those concerns.

I recently completed a series of blog posts outlining my experiences with direct sales – bypassing Amazon entirely as a platform to sell my books and experimenting with hosting and selling them directly to readers instead.

The posts received a lot of interest! It seems like direct sales is potentially going to be one of the most important income streams for authors moving forward, as there are all sorts of challenges to being able to advertise your books profitably if you still sell them exclusively on Amazon.

Direct sales is a little bit more involved than going “wide for the win” but still follows the philosophy that perhaps authors shouldn’t put all their literary eggs in the same basket.

Following my blog series, I received a few questions from readers and thought it might be worth having a follow-up post to share my answers. If you have any questions of your own, don’t be shy about adding them in the comment section beneath this post. If we get some good ones, I might revisit this topic yet again in a future blog post.

Here are what people have been asking:

I’m interested in selling my books directly to readers. How easy is it to set up a direct sales funnel?

Great question! And the simple answer is: As easy as you want it to be!

A better question is: How easy is it to set up a direct sales funnel that works?

Because that’s the real question. When you first published your books on Amazon and started running Facebook ads pointing to your product page, you’d already created a funnel – it’s just a funnel that has proven more and more challenging to make a profit from.

Taking the plunge and creating your own direct sales funnel doesn’t necessarily mean it will be profitable either – it’s just that you have a lot more control about whether or not you can fix it. However, there are a lot of moving parts involved in making that happen, and choices you’ll have to make that determine whether it will be successful or not.

What you have to remember is that your direct sales funnel isn’t the Field of Dreams – “If you build it, they will come.” You’ve got to be sending your potential customers on a journey that makes them excited to eventually click the “buy now” button – and then you’ve got to make sure that journey continues with the safe delivery of your ebooks. It’s got to be a seamless route from first-click to final-purchase – at least as seamless as the experience of buying from Amazon directly, and ideally even more so.

And as anybody who’s ever been involved in eCommerce will tell you, that’s a lot more complicated than it might look. Remember that every click you receive on your ads is a real person – and people can be tricky. For example, did you know that a significant percentage of people who click on your ad will x-out of it if your website takes more than four seconds to load? That means decisions as fundamental as which website host you choose -such as CloudFlare, or GoDaddy, or BlueHost – could make a huge difference.

Likewise, how will your customers buy from you? The checkout experience is another crucial component. People trust Amazon, and that’s why they buy from it. If you’re trying to collect credit card details on a purchasing platform that customers aren’t familiar with, they might get nervous and cancel the whole transaction before it’s completed.

Each of these decisions makes a huge impact, and you can’t afford to just wing it. Cobbling together a sales funnel using your existing website and a PayPal link might technically function – but it probably isn’t going to work – at least not right away.

So, don’t embark on the direct sales journey unless you’re truly committed to it. There’s a reason most self-published authors stick to Amazon, and why there are dozens of authors still making a lot of money publishing and advertising there.

I want a direct sales funnel that works. What tools and services should I be using?

This isn’t just a great question – it’s THE question. After just explaining how crucial choosing the right website host and checkout system is, it’s only logical to ask for recommendations!

Well, unfortunately a weekly blog post doesn’t really provide what I’d need to outline an entire soup-to-nuts direct sales funnel using my preferred providers, and quite frankly I don’t think I’m qualified to do that anyway. After all, my blog series about direct sales was all about my experiences during my first month running my sales funnel! I’ve still got tons to learn myself.

All I can say is that you have a couple of options in terms of figuring out how best to build a direct sales funnel that works. You can do all the research and experimentation yourself, or you can learn from somebody who has trodden that path before. Recently, we had best-selling author Steve Pieper as a guest on the Fully Booked podcast to talk about exactly that, so that episode is a great place to start learning more.

In fact, I eventually paid for Steve’s course because of that podcast and learned how to build my sales funnel that way – and it worked out really well for me! About a year earlier, I’d tried to do it myself by reverse-engineering sales funnels used by authors who’d been selling books directly, but I couldn’t get that to work profitably. I used my own WordPress landing page and a PayHip checkout and – just like I’d warned about above – it functioned without working. I spent hundreds of dollars on Facebook ads, but only made a couple of sales of my books.

So, my advice is not to jump into this blindly. As self-published authors we always feel the urge to try and do everything ourselves, but that’s often a recipe for disaster. I’d start researching ecommerce, talking to friends or colleagues who sell products directly online, or checking out courses like the one Steve offers. You’ll find out everything you need to know, and you can tell whether or not you’re ready to create your own sales funnel based on how you feel about it.

If you’re eager and excited, you’re probably on the wrong end of the Dunning-Kruger curve. You should feel slightly daunted and intimidated by the challenge – that means you’re taking it seriously!

But that’s the reason authors who are successful with direct sales end up that way. It’s such an intimidating thing to jump into that only the truly inspired (or crazy) among us even try. You already know that taking bold action is the key to being a successful author. Now you have to find that boldness within yourself once again.

But for those authors it does work out for, it works out great! Direct sales provides you with a level of control over the publishing process that you never had before. It has the potential to change the trajectory of your writing career overnight.

How likely am I to be successful with direct sales to readers?

Another great question! (Which isn’t really surprising, since I got to pick the questions to answer!)

At the end of the day, this is the question that really matters to authors interested in direct sales to readers – whether or not they can make a profit from it. 

And I think there are some clear criteria here, so it’s worth taking stock of where you are in your self-publishing career before you proceed any further. For a lot of writers, direct sales isn’t right for you. For many others, it’s not right for you quite yet. You need to have a certain portfolio as an author before the reward outweighs the effort and expense.

In my case, I was able to start selling books profitably for a number of reasons. The first was that I wrote books that people wanted to buy. I’d already sold 70,000 copies of my books on Amazon, so I knew that if new customers got exposed to them, there was a good chance that a percentage of them would be interested to start reading.

This is the key to making direct sales – so if your books aren’t consistently selling on Amazon, it’s worth spending some time tweaking your covers, blurbs, and other details before trying to sell them anywhere else. You can use Amazon as a testing ground for changes you make, and only when you finally see them having an impact should you consider moving to direct sales.

But secondly – you also need to have enough books in your catalog to make direct sales work. One of the biggest challenges as an author is that we receive just a few dollars for every book we sell – and that’s true whether you’re selling them on Amazon, or directly from your own website. With such a tight profit margin, it’s practically impossible to advertise successfully if you’re only marketing one or two books. The magic happens when you have MANY books for your readers to click “buy now” on.

For example, if you’re just trying to sell one book on Amazon priced at $3.99, you’ll only receive $3 in royalties for each copy you sell. If your ads are running at $0.25 a click, that means you’ll have to sell one book for every 12 people who click on your ads to remain profitable. Given that the average conversion percentage for ecommerce ads is in the single-digit range, that’s a tall order! 

But I was selling 12 books in my series – so each new reader I nab could potentially be down for buying a dozen books in the future. That means I’ve got a maximum profit margin of $36 to work with, which means I only need to get one new customer for every 144 clicks. That’s much more realistic!

I mean, obviously that’s assuming each new reader will eventually buy all 12 of my books – and we know that isn’t going to happen every time! But it makes the mathematics of it all far easier to swallow. So just like you shouldn’t consider direct sales unless you know people are willing to buy your books, you shouldn’t try direct sales until you’ve got plenty of books for them to buy!

But that’s great news for successful authors with big catalogs – and a good target to aim for if you’re just starting out with your self-publishing career. The more you write and publish, the closer you get to being able to turn your hobby of writing into a full-time career. You might just have to wait a while.

Conclusion

Those are all the questions I have for this week, but if I receive others I’ll definitely consider a follow-up in the future. In any event, what’s really important remains the same whether you’re selling your books on Amazon, or directly to readers. You need to have great books, and plenty of them.

If you really want to be successful as a writer, those are the metrics you should be focusing on. Financial success comes as a result of learning the craft of writing and putting in the hard work. There’s no shortcut – and even if there was, direct sales wouldn’t be it!

But it is an exciting new opportunity for many self-published authors, and one I’ll keep you posted about as I continue down this path myself. Stay tuned!

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The post From the Mailbox: Direct Sales Success appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

This month we’ve been discussing the Direct Sales model of book selling, as many authors look at alternatives to the downsides that come with using the big online retailers. As we’ve mentioned, selling direct isn’t for everyone, but there is a lot of potential for those that can make it work and are willing to put in the effort at getting it all running.

Ginger has been our guide throughout this journey, and in today’s blog he is wrapping up this series by sharing and analyzing the results he’s seen after his first month of experimentation. Not only does he provide some raw numbers, but he also notes a surprising result and discusses whether or not he is going to continue forward with the Direct Sales model in the future.  

As this is the final installment of a four-part series, I would urge you to start at the beginning (if you haven’t already done so). Part One is where I discuss the Direct Sales model in general, Part Two gives you some of my personal reasons for wanting to give this a try along with some of my historical sales numbers for comparison, and then in Part Three I went over what it takes to put it all together.

Today, I’ll be going through the results, and how it all turned out.

It took me nearly a month to set up my direct sales “funnel.” It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my self-publishing career – calling more on the skills I’d learned working for New York advertising agencies than any I’d developed in my career as a writer. Eventually, though, I was in a position to switch it on and see if all the hard work paid off.

I set my initial budget at $50 a day, which is far more than most self-published authors would be comfortable spending on a brand new advertising campaign. However, I felt confident in doing this because I knew that if I made any sales, I’d be receiving the money within a few days, instead of having to wait for 60-days-after-months-end. I gave myself a buffer, keeping $350 in my account to cover a full week of advertising, and then started the most difficult part of this process.

Waiting.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long.

Direct Sales Results

The first day I started running my direct sales advertising, I got my first order. In fact, I got four orders that first day – more than enough to cover my advertising budget and bring in nearly double that amount in profit. Here’s what that looked like:

As you can imagine, I was beyond excited. After riding the emotional roller coaster of Amazon self-publishing for years, I finally thought I might be back in the saddle and ready to bring my writing career back to its former heights.

That was until the day after, of course – during which I kept checking my phone every few minutes, but didn’t see any new sales coming in. Eventually, I received a single order for a bundle of books – barely covering half my advertising budget for the day.

Elation turned to despondency. Despite the fact that I was overall still in the black, I began to despair – thinking that this whole project was a waste of time, and my plans to dominate self-publishing through direct sales were a fool’s errand.

But what is a fool other than somebody who perseveres in the face of adversity?

I’d given myself a week of advertising budget to burn through, so I decided to ride out the entire seven days and just see what happened. The next day, as if to torment me, I received two sales of book bundles that almost exactly covered the cost of my advertising for the day.

And that’s how things continued. Each day I’d wake up and listen for the app on my phone to make a little “cha-ching” noise to confirm that I’d just made a sale. It was so much more anxiety-inducing than selling my books on Amazon – but also pretty exciting. My kids noticed that my eyes would light up every time my phone went “cha-ching” and started celebrating every time I sold some books.

I mentioned above that the hardest part of the process was waiting, and that remained true. I’d set up my ads, my landing page, and my checkout – so all I could do was wait for Facebook to bring customers to me. Whether or not they decided to buy my books was the deciding factor.

On my best day, I received seven orders for book bundles – making nearly four times what I’d spent in advertising for the day. On my worst days, I got just a single order – barely covering half what I’d spent. However, there wasn’t a single day that didn’t see at least one sale come in, and over the course of the month a pattern clearly began to emerge.

I was breaking even.

Before my $350 buffer ran out, I received payment for the books I’d sold – and that allowed me to keep on advertising. The good days and the bad days balanced each other out, until I found myself making a slight profit over the course of each week. It was just enough profit to pay for my email services, website hosting, and all the other components of my direct sales funnel – plus a couple of six-packs of Stella Artois to bolster my courage to keep on going.

In speaking with other authors who’d turned to direct sales, I discovered that I was actually doing a lot better than most people. It’s practically unheard of to make a profit in your first month of advertising. Normally, you have to tweak different parts of your funnel to dial in the process – and if I ever wanted to make some real profit, that was definitely a project I was going to have to invest some time and effort into.

However, direct sales worked. In my first month of advertising, I spent $1,362.77 on Facebook advertising $352 on website hosting and other services – yet brought in a total of $1,922.46 in sales. That covered all my expenses and provided $207.69 in pure profit.

So, that’s not a lot. The lakeside cabin in upstate New York would have to wait for a while. However, it did show that the direct sales model had promise – and I had potential to improve my funnel and increase that profit margin.

This month, I’ve continued advertising. The only difference? My daily budget is now $100 instead of $50. Thanks to continued sales of my books, I’m currently able to sustain this level of advertising without having to reach into my own pockets – but I’m not going to lie. Things get pretty close to the wire depending on how good each day turns out.

Lessons I’ve Learned

Here are the biggest lessons I’ve learned from running direct sales for a month:

It’s not easy.

You’re going to have to build landing pages, configure delivery systems, plug in a checkout system, and automate email flows if you want your funnel to work correctly. This is beyond the comfort zone of many self-published authors, so be aware of that before you start. You can certainly hire experts to build this funnel for you, but that involves a lot of initial expense with no promise of an immediate return on that investment. You have been warned!

Your books have to be good – and you have to have a lot of them!

Back when I sold radio advertising, one customer warned me: “It doesn’t matter how much money you spend on advertising. If somebody doesn’t want to buy your product, they won’t.” That’s the same in self-publishing, whether you do it on Amazon, or sell directly to your readers. You have to have books with great covers, killer blurbs, and compelling stories to make this profitable – and the authors with bigger back-catalogs normally make a lot more money. I embarked on this adventure knowing that I was selling good books. I had 12 novels in my series, and I’d already sold 70,000 copies of them through Amazon, so I was pretty confident I could make direct sales profitable. However, if your books aren’t ready for prime-time, it doesn’t matter what sales system you use. You’re going to lose money. Only embark on direct sales when you know that you’re selling books people want to buy.

You’re probably going to lose money at first.

Many other authors have told me that my experience with direct sales is pretty exceptional. Most authors lose money when they start trying to sell their books directly, and don’t become profitable until they’ve tweaked their “sales funnel” a number of times.

But you’re not “losing” money. You’re spending it.

If your ads initially run in the red, however, don’t despair. Even money you “lose” gives you a return on investment, as long as your advertising is driving traffic to your landing pages. The advantage direct sales provides is real-time feedback on which part of the sales funnel trips potential customers up. Do they scroll down to your sales button? Do they check out your sample chapter? This information allows you to tweak your sales funnel and hopefully turn a loss into a sustainable profit. Selling books from Amazon doesn’t give you this level of information, even if you use attribution tags, so you’ll be able to reach profitability much faster selling directly.

More Results and Final Thoughts

Right now, I’m still excited about the potential of direct sales to readers. I’ve seen some initial success, and I intend to keep building on it. I think this is the right path back to consistently making $10,000+ a month in book sales, and I’m working hard to get there.

It wouldn’t have been possible if I’d stuck things out with Amazon. The lack of information I got from my advertising makes it a real struggle to know if I was making a profit or not, and having to wait 60 days for my royalties made the level of advertising I wanted to do financially unsustainable. 

But I felt horrible about that. One of my concerns about moving to direct sales was what effect it would have on my books on Amazon. After all, I’d removed them from Kindle Unlimited, and stopped all advertising that sent readers directly to my product pages. I thought my sales on Amazon would tank as a result, and initially that’s what seemed to happen.

The month prior to starting my ads, which I spent building my direct sales funnel, ended up being my worst month of the year in terms of book sales. This made sense, since all my books were out of KU by then, and I wasn’t doing any advertising at all.

However, something really surprising happened the month after: My sales on Amazon actually picked up!

Weirdly enough, after I started advertising my direct sales funnel, I started to sell more books on Amazon!

In fact, the month I spent doing direct sales has ended up being my best month in book sales on Amazon this year, even without my books being in Kindle Unlimited! More so than that – the trend seems to be continuing. Now I’m advertising at $100 a day, I’m seeing a massive increase in sales on Amazon as well.

That doesn’t make much sense to me, but I’m not complaining about it. In fact, it reassures me that advertising in general does work, even if you can’t track a direct link between where your ads show up, and who eventually buys your books. People are seeing my novels on Facebook, and then finding them on Amazon without me even having to provide them with a link.

That’s been my biggest surprise from experimenting with direct book sales – but I’m sure there will be many more along the way. I promise to check back in and let you know what they are as I continue this new chapter in my self-publishing story.

Have you experimented with direct sales to readers? What have your experiences been like? I’d love to hear your perspective. Don’t be shy about letting me know in the comment section below.

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The post Breaking Free: Why Direct Sales Might Be For You – Part Four appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

If there’s one thing that the big online eBook stores have going for them, is that they are relatively easy for authors to get started on. Entering product information is straightforward, and things like billing and content delivery are handled automatically. Yet, there are a host of downsides that make authors hungry for alternatives, which is why Ginger has put together this series on Direct Sales.

Today in part three, Ginger goes into detail about what exactly authors are giving up, and taking on, when making the decision to switch to the direct sales model – and it can be significant. Authors that want to follow this path must be prepared for a variety of technical tasks, added expenses, and a setup that can take weeks as opposed to the days or even hours that they’ve grown accustomed to. But for those that follow through, the reward at the end is far more control over their books, faster payouts, and a wealth of customer information that can be invaluable.

A couple of weeks ago, I began this series on Direct Sales, explaining what it is and why I ultimately decided to make the move. Today, I’m going through what it takes to make it all work – and let me tell you, it isn’t easy!

Setting Up Direct Sales

You may recall that in part 2, I mentioned how I’d first started to make the direct sales move back in January – which might lead you to wonder why I’d only just completed my first full month of advertising recently.

Well, that’s because there’s a lot of setup involved. A HUGE amount of setup. Enough setup, in fact, to easily dissuade the casual publisher from ever wanting to open up this can of worms. 

The wonderful thing about publishing on Amazon is that it all happens right there, in the KDP Dashboard. You can upload your books, design your product page, and reach a global audience with just a few clicks. It’s easy, convenient, and Amazon even deposits any royalties you earn straight into your bank account every month (minus their 30% cut, of course.)

And while Amazon might not do much to promote your book these days – thanks to how much advertising they’ve baked into the product pages – they still have a system in which reviews can be posted, sales can be ranked, and you can feel like your book is right there in the heart of a real (virtual) bookstore.

Direct sales is very different. Completely different.

Creating a Funnel

First off, you become less of a book publisher and more of a website developer when you switch to direct sales of your book. You have to create something called a “funnel.” This is a path by which people who click on your ads on Facebook are guided into a “funnel” that narrows their experience step-by-step until they finally find themselves ready to purchase your books. 

Then, you have to design an automated process by which people can pay you for your books, and a process for delivering the books to the reader in a way that makes them easy to read. Amazon normally takes care of all of this for you. When you venture into direct sales, you have to do it all yourself.

Now, there are a lot of tools that can help you with this. I’m not going to get tactical, since you have to research for yourself which services suit your plans better, but the “funnel” normally looks like this:

• Your ads – these are all done through Facebook, just like when you’re advertising books on Amazon. When people click on them, they get directed to…
• Your landing page – this is a website which provides information about one or all of your books. It could be as simple as a store page on Square or Shopify, with all your books listed, or a more sophisticated sales page built using a tool like WordPress. In any event, you’ll need to decide where you want to host your landing page, then design it yourself, and verify the domain with Facebook so that you can send potential customers there. 
• Your checkout – Assuming the people who clicked on your landing page want to buy one or more of your books, you need to provide them with a means to do so! There are a variety of checkout options you can use. Shopify has a robust and versatile version. PayHip is a site that offers transactions cheaply and easily, and Square is an option that many self-published authors love, especially since it also works well when they sell physical paperbacks at conventions or events.
• Delivery System – If you’re lucky enough to sell a book, how does it get to your customer? Book Funnel is probably the best-known book delivery system, and it can send eBooks directly to customers with just a few clicks. Some sales platforms connect automatically with Book Funnel to streamline the process. Other platforms require a third-party tool like Zapier to automate things. In any event, this is a vital part of the process – and it’s equally important that you don’t have to do anything manually. 
• Email Marketing – The final tool is one that will be familiar to most self-published authors who’ve started a subscriber list. Once people have purchased from you, you want them to do so again! So it’s important to use a service like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, or Klaviyo to track your customers and make it easy to nudge them when you have a new book available.

The challenge is: All of these components have to work in conjunction with each other, and that requires a reasonable amount of technical know-how. All of these services also tend to cost money, which is why it’s quite a leap to move to direct sales after Amazon has provided a lot of functionality to you for free in the past.

You’re not just building a business when you move to direct sales – you’re actually building a machine. It’s an automated process that leads customers to your eventual (ideal) destination – a book sale! The goal is to make a machine that enables you to sell books more efficiently than you can through Amazon.

Make Sure You’re Ready Before You Begin!

But before you can even start that, you have to set your house in order back on the world’s largest digital bookstore. For me, the reason I began this process in January but didn’t start making sales until May is that I had to take all my books out of Kindle Unlimited first.

Kindle Unlimited is really valuable if you’re trying to advertise books on Facebook, because Google and Apple have transpired to make it impossible to buy books directly from the Amazon app. I found I got 80% of my revenue from KENP page reads – but to be eligible for KU, there’s a price to be paid. Your book has to be exclusive to Amazon. 

Therefore, you can’t create a direct sales funnel if your books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. It violates Amazon’s terms of service and can get you kicked off the program if they find out you’re circumventing the rules. Given that your books will be for sale on a public website, it’s more than likely that Amazon WILL eventually discover you selling your books directly, so it’s not worth risking your account just to “double dip.” Before you begin direct sales, you have to unenroll your books and in my case, many of those enrollment periods weren’t over until the end of March or April. 

It was a MAJOR step outside my comfort zone to do this. Ever since I published my first best-seller in 2018, Kindle Unlimited has provided the bulk of my royalties. I realized I’d be taking a huge hit by doing this, and all on the promise of making more through direct sales than I would through KU. Nevertheless, risk is our business – so I bit the bullet and pulled my books.

The advantage, of course, is that I can finally go “wide for the win” on other platforms, including iBooks – but I didn’t have the bandwidth to even consider that when I first unchecked the renewal box. I think it’s a decision I can leverage in the future, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was my sales funnel.

And that brings me to the second reason this all took so long – I literally had to build EVERYTHING. I had to upload all my books to Book Funnel. I had to enter all my products into my shopping platform. I had to design a landing page, and customize my email lists, and basically go through the whole process of designing a website and marketing platform.

It took less than a month, but it’s still something I had to work on each and every day. I learned a huge amount – I’m practically a developer now! (Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) In any event, a lot of sleepless nights and busy days were spent designing my “funnel” before I could even think about switching it on.

Where the Magic Finally Happens

But once that happened, so did the magic. One massive advantage direct sales offers over sending people to your Amazon product page is that you can take advantage of a lot of ecommerce tools that Amazon doesn’t like. One of the most important is the Meta (Facebook) Pixel.

A Pixel is a special bit of code you can plug into your homepage and checkout page which tracks the behavior of the people who visit through your Facebook ads. This code can then report back to Facebook on each person’s behavior. If a customer buys a product, for example, Facebook recognizes that as a “conversion” and will try to send more similar customers to your store.

Previously, we’d been forced to rely on Traffic ads, which simply send a Facebook user to Amazon never to be seen again. Traffic ads are cheap (I was getting Cost-per-Click rates as low as $0.08 on some days) but you also get what you pay for. Using Conversion ads instead of Traffic ads delivers a much higher quality of customer, and while you pay more upfront for your ads (paying for conversions, rather than clicks) you’ll theoretically make that back by selling more products.

Likewise, selling through a third-party platform instead of Amazon allowed me to collect the email addresses of all new customers, and that was information I could use to generate a lookalike audience for my ads. 

As those of you who’ve advertised on Facebook will know, a good audience can make or break your campaign – and one of the challenges for self-published authors was the fact that the customer lists we often generated were from giving away free books. People who like free books rarely turn into customers, so it was always challenging to build a hard-hitting (and hard-buying) audience based on your subscribers.

By selling directly, you’re building a list of subscribers who ONLY purchase your books. This means lookalike audiences are FAR more likely to be filled with book-buyers, and that ultimately has a great impact on the cost and effectiveness of your ads.

But finally, and most importantly, using a different checkout system allows you to collect the money you make from selling books instantly, or within a few days. This can be the game changer, as far as I’m concerned.

If I sell a bundle of books using PayPal as a method-of-payment, I’ll get the money for that sale deposited instantly in my Paypal account, ready to be spent immediately. Through Shopify or Payhip it takes a few more days – but still two months or more quicker than getting paid through Amazon. 

This is what really made direct sales exciting for me. I’d previously struggled to scale up my advertising and now I didn’t have to. Advertising my books on Amazon at $30 a day required me to have $2,700 on hand to cover my advertising before Amazon finally paid me. With direct sales, I got that money in just a few days.

Therefore, as long as I was making a profit, I could sustain a much higher level of ad spend with a much smaller budget; and that’s where I started to realize that I could get my book sales back to what they once were without putting my family’s finances in jeopardy.

There are other advantages, too – like being able to track every click from every single potential customer. Even with Attribution Tags, you’re kind of in the dark when you send traffic to your product page on Amazon. With direct sales, I’m able to use tools to record each individual visit to my landing page – and figure out which sections might be putting potential customers off, so I can optimize them better.

This information makes it much quicker and easier to start running a profitable advertising campaign – and that’s exactly what happened to me. I’ve only been running direct sales for a month, but in that month I’ve already turned a profit.

I mean, okay – I’m not about to retire to the South of France on this profit. Not yet. However, I am motivated to keep on going in a way that I eventually wasn’t when advertising my books directly on Amazon. 

In Part Four, I’ll show you exactly what that profitable advertising looked like – and discuss whether or not I plan to continue selling my books directly to readers. Stay tuned!

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The post Breaking Free: Why Direct Sales Might Be For You – Part Three appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

Last week, Ginger began a series on direct sales – the idea of selling a book directly to readers from your own website, instead of through one of the traditional online retailers.

Today we continue this discussion with part two, where Ginger walks us through his personal reasons for wanting to give the direct sales route a try. Through disclosure of some of his actual historical sales numbers, he provides context that may help others decide if selling direct is right for them. These numbers will also be useful to compare against in the future, when he takes us through how well his direct sales experiment actually went. 

Last week, I started a series about how I’ve spent a month selling my books directly to readers on Facebook, rather than sending them to my product page on Amazon. The direct sales model isn’t for everyone though, so it will help to first give some context as to what led to my decision to finally give it a try. My journey may help you decide if selling direct is right for you, as well.

Why did I make the move?

I’ve been writing and publishing on Amazon since 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that I had my first best-seller. I went from making up to $50 a day from my books to suddenly making $500+ between royalties and Kindle Unlimited page reads. On my best day, I made $615 dollars.

This was a game-changer for me. I’d never realized it was possible to make this much money from writing before, and I definitely wanted more. I threw myself into writing and publishing following that initial success and was initially more than rewarded. I consistently made $10,000+ a month from my book sales on Amazon simply from publishing a new book every 60-90 days – with my best month exceeding $14,000 in royalties!

And the remarkable thing was all this was organic. Back in 2018, advertising on Amazon wasn’t an option, so all the recommendations and suggestions Amazon made were organic, based on the success of individual books. My books were successful, and therefore Amazon suggested them more often – meaning the better my books did, the better my other books did!

But in 2019 Amazon introduced advertising onto their platform. Now, instead of seeing purely organic suggestions from Amazon’s algorithm, customers would see paid-for ads sprinkled into their search results. As more and more of the real estate of each product page was allocated towards paid advertising, the impact of organic suggestions lessened. As a result, simply publishing new books every few months wasn’t enough to sustain an income that I could use to support my family.

And that’s been the struggle ever since. These days, the only way to make money through self-publishing is to market and advertise your books. However, as I explained last week, that isn’t always easy or sustainable. I was at an advantage because I’d worked in advertising for 20+ years, and I had a big series of romance books that people clearly wanted to read – but even then, it took a while to make any advertising profitable.

The biggest challenge was that Attribution Tags don’t necessarily track all of the sales or page reads that come from your advertising. One month when I was starting out, for example, my Attribution Tags tracked $252.82 in book royalties based on an advertising spend of $252.98. By that metric, I was a few cents short of breaking even.

However, I’d actually made $505.80 more in book sales and royalties than I had in the months that I hadn’t been advertising – and there had to be a correlation, since I’d never seen a random jump that high. So while the Attribution Tags told me I was making a loss, I was actually making nearly 100% profit on my advertising, according to the increase in actual sales. 

And that’s the dream, right? To invest $1 in advertising and get $2 back? Most advertisers would be thrilled to be doubling their money every month.

But the problem is, it’s not possible to sustain a family on $505.80 every month (at least where I live) – so I needed to spend more; and that’s exactly what I did. The following month I spent $937.01 on advertising and saw an increase in sales of $1,117.27. Great, right? 

Except that meant I’d only made $180.26 in profit that month – so instead of doubling my money, I’d just fallen short of a 20% profit. I mean, sure that was profit – but it’s frustrating to spend double the money and make half the return that you had the month before.

However, I continued to tweak and change things until the situation improved. Over the course of the next year, I spent $4,744.58 on advertising on Facebook. After paying that bill, I still earned an additional $4,868.25 in profit—money I wouldn’t have earned without any advertising. This meant that over the course of the year, my advertising efforts more than doubled my money. Great, right?

I mean, I certainly wasn’t complaining – but it was frustrating. The most frustrating part was the fact that Amazon didn’t pay me until 60 days after months end – so, for example, I didn’t get the money I’d spent in March back (plus my $180.26 profit) until the end of May. To keep my advertising going through that period, I had to lay down $2,700 in advertising costs right out of my own pocket, with the hope that I’d see all of it back again.

And that just wasn’t working for me.

The biggest problem was that I wasn’t in the financial situation to throw $2,700 around with casual indifference any longer – and when Amazon finally paid me, it only covered one of the months I’d been advertising. In my personal life, I needed to fix my car and pay for my son’s AP College Credit classes, so I ended up having to hustle like crazy to be able to pay my bills and keep advertising. 

And that also meant I didn’t have any hope of scaling up – and that’s really where you either make it or break it as an author. Realistically, I wanted to make a full-time income from writing again, which meant I needed at least ten times more profit every month than I’d been making. 

The challenge? I’d need ten times as much advertising money to make that happen. Stretching the budget to cover $2,700 was (barely) sustainable. Spending $27,000 over the next ninety days was a pipe-dream. 

Of course, I could have made it happen. I could have squirreled away my profits, and waited until I’d finally saved enough to scale things up. The problem was that there was no guarantee things would work out; and losing $27,000 on failed advertising would have probably resulted in losing my wife, as well (she’d be out the door within seconds!)

Now, I don’t necessarily think that would have happened – losing all of that spend with nothing to show for it. My books have always consistently sold well, and I know how to advertise effectively. You need only go to the Top 100 books for your genre on Amazon to see writers who are clearly spending hundreds of dollars (at least) to get their books ranked highly, and when you’ve got that kind of budget, each dollar stretches that much further. You can absolutely make a killing advertising on Amazon…

…but only if it doesn’t kill you first.

Which is why I decided to try Direct Sales instead.

I’d heard various people talking about it for the last year or so, including Steve Pieper and the highly-regarded Joanna Penn. I had many hesitations about it – not to mention a certain amount of fear – but I also couldn’t help but be fascinated at the potential advantages. Eventually, in January of this year, I decided to take the plunge; and it’s been a wild ride since then.

Let me be clear, though. Selling direct is NOT as easy as just putting your books up on Amazon or any of the other online stores. There is significant setup involved, which is what I’ll focus on next week, in part three.

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The post Breaking Free: Why Direct Sales Might Be For You – Part Two appeared first on HiddenGemsBooks.

Welcome to the first part of Ginger’s ongoing series about direct sales. In this series, he’ll explore why self-published authors should consider selling books directly to readers, rather than relying solely on traditional online book platforms.

As we’ve discussed before, authors face significant challenges in gaining visibility on sites dominated by advertising. Even when readers click on an ad, making an immediate purchase isn’t always straightforward, and the delay in receiving payment can be frustrating. Direct sales offer a way to bypass these obstacles, presenting an appealing alternative to traditional eBook stores. However, it’s not for everyone.

Over the next few weeks, Ginger will guide us through the benefits of the direct sales model, his personal reasons for choosing this path, the steps involved in setting it up, and the actual results he has seen since starting.

Back last year, Craig and I were excited to have Steve Pieper as a guest on our Fully Booked podcast, to discuss the potential of selling books directly to readers, rather than going through platforms like Amazon or iBooks.

The appeal is obvious. These days, Amazon has adopted such an advertising-heavy sales model that unless you’re spending money sending potential readers to your books, it’s very difficult to gain any organic visibility. 

However, advertising isn’t easy – especially not when you’re advertising products with a very small profit margin. That’s why a lot of self-published authors are too intimidated to get started, or lose a lot of money trying to figure things out for themselves, and then give up in frustration.

This is compounded by one of the most frustrating roadblocks authors have faced recently – the inability to buy eBooks through the Amazon app on either Google or Apple phones. This is because of an annoying dispute between the companies, with Google and Apple demanding a share of every transaction made on one of their phones. Amazon argues that the profit margin on ebooks is so narrow that it’s not profitable to sell them on their Amazon app if Apple and Google take such a big share; and so they’ve simply removed the buying option completely.

And given that 98.5% of all Facebook users access the platform through their phone, you can see the problem! Readers might be eager to click on your ads and even buy your book – but they’ll have to fire up their laptop computer to actually complete the purchase. Even the most enthusiastic customers might kid themselves that they’ll do so later, but they never actually go back to complete the purchase.

Now, that’s not to say that advertising your books on Facebook isn’t worthwhile. I managed to run profitable advertising for several months thanks to the fact that my books were enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Readers might not have been able to buy the books using the Amazon app, but they could download them and start reading them with Kindle Unlimited, and that’s where I saw 80% of my revenue come from during my time advertising on that platform.

Likewise, Amazon remembers when a user visits a book on the Amazon app, and will often display that book front-and-center when the same user logs in on their computer. For readers who’d promised themselves “I’ll buy this book later” the opportunity is now right in front of them. It’s just that there isn’t a direct route between ad-and-purchase. You’re paying to put your book into their sales algorithm with no guarantee that it will pop back in front of them when they’re in a book-buying mood.

Another traditional problem with advertising your books on Facebook was that there was no way to tell how many of the people who clicked on your ad eventually bought your book. The best you could do is send traffic to your product page and hope some of it resulted in book sales.

Amazon mitigated that recently with the development of Attribution Tags. These are uniquely generated URLS that you can use instead of a direct link to your book’s product page. They track whether or not a user clicked on Read More or Look Inside when they’re on your page, whether or not they bought your book, and how many pages they’d read through Kindle Unlimited.

It was something, at least – a way to gauge the success of an advertising campaign. However, the attribution system is far from perfect. It only tracks visits for 14 days, and only purchases made during that visit. It also doesn’t track purchases of that product made through a different sales route – for example, if somebody returns to Amazon and buys the book because of one of Amazon’s recommendation systems. 

The whole reason your book was even shown to them in the first place was because they visited it by clicking on one of your ads. However, the Attribution Tag won’t recognize that sale; so according to the figures, your advertising “failed” even though the sale would never have happened without it! 

I’ve seen this first hand. I struggled to break even according to the data about my Attribution Tags. However, every time I advertised, I also saw a massive spike in sales and page reads. I ended up calculating whether or not I was profitable based on the overall increase in sales, because I didn’t believe Attribution Tags were telling the whole story. Thanks to knowing what my “baseline” was without advertising, I think I did a pretty good job at figuring out my profit margin. However, part of the equation was definitely guesswork, and that’s a killer when it comes to ecommerce.

All I can tell you is that I did see an increase in sales when I was advertising on Facebook – enough to pay for my advertising and give me some profit. That might have been enough to keep me going, if it wasn’t for the final problem that advertising your books on Amazon presents you with: Actually getting paid.

Amazon pays its writers 60 days after the end of the month – so if you made $1,000 in book sales during January, that money wouldn’t actually land in your bank account until the end of March. This means that you need to have the money to sustain up to 90 days of advertising before Amazon actually gives you what you HOPE will be enough to cover your expenses.

So, if you’re spending $20 a day on advertising, you’d need access to $1,800 to be able to sustain your advertising long enough to get paid. That’s more money than a lot of writers easily have access to. Likewise, advertising isn’t easy. There’s no guarantee that you’ll make a profit – especially at first. This is an obstacle that many self-published authors find insurmountable. 

Advertising profitably is certainly possible. I’ve done it. It just requires a really great product, the ability to make decisions even without all the data you need, and 90 days of capital to burn through with no guarantee of getting any of it back. That is a HUGE barrier for entry for most self-published authors.

Which is where the appeal of direct sales comes in.

Imagine being able to send potential readers directly to a platform in which they could buy your books right on their phone? Imagine being able to get data from that sales channel that could help you build a better buying experience, or create a better audience to advertise to. And, finally, imagine getting paid instantly, or within days of making a sale, instead of having to wait for 60-days-after-the-end-of-the-month?

I finally took the plunge in May of this year, and now I’ve got enough data to share my experiences. In the next few blog posts, I’m going to cover what that looked like, share my results, explain how to set it all up, and give some insight into whether or not I plan to continue with direct sales. 

So, if you’re interested in whether or not direct sales are right for you, check out part 2!

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I’ve worked with Michelle quite a bit over the last few months, and have come to realize that she’s one of the most organized author’s I’ve ever met. She keeps stats and spreadsheets on all of the marketing and advertising she does, which gives her invaluable insight into what is working and what isn’t. I recently asked whether she’d be willing to share some of this knowledge with our community, and she graciously agreed. 

After years of using a variety of newsletter promotion sites to market her novels, Michelle has come up with a simple metric to assess their price-to-subscriber value. In today’s guest blog, Michelle explains this metric and uses it to rank the value of close to 20 different newsletter promotion sites. Even if the list below is missing some of the newsletter sites you use, you can easily use her metric to rank them yourself and determine whether they are a good place to spend your marketing dollars.

So, I hear you’d like to sell more copies of your book, while doing less work. Hey, guess what? ME TOO. If that’s what you’re interested in, newsletter promotion sites are a killer way to go.

I’ve got spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of data to prove that most marketing methods for self-published authors do sell more books…but not enough to pay for the cost of said marketing. Newsletter promotions are one of the only tools I’ve found that moves lots of copies and also usually pays for itself.

For those who are new to the terms, newsletter promotions are when you pay a business to promote your discounted book with an email to their list of readers. Newsletter stacks are what happen when you get clever and think, “Hey, I just sold a bunch more books with ONE of these sites, how high could I get my Amazon bestseller rank if I stacked up a bunch of these same sites in the same week?” Basically, you book multiple newsletter promotions over a limited period of time, in a strategic way.

BookBub is the largest and most famous of the newsletter promotion sites, but it’s also the most expensive. So when you’re googling your little author heart out, looking for others to stack up with your BookBub Featured Promotion, how do you find other newsletter promotion sites? How do you decide on the best newsletter promotion sites?

Well, dear author friend, you just read this blog, because I’ve done all the work for you.

This is a selection of most of the heavy-hitters in the newsletter promotion space. I then broke it down by a metric I invented called SUBSCRIBERS PER DOLLAR. It’s very simple math, where I divide the total number of subscribers by the total cost of the promotion.

What this means is, every newsletter has a different number of subscribers they show your book to. They also all price their services pretty differently, anywhere from $10 to $1000, and their prices aren’t directly linked with the size of their audience. Turns out that surprise! BookBub may still be the way to get your book in front of the biggest audience, but it’s not the best value per dollar spent.

TL;DR – the sites at the top of this list are the best value for your buck. Book those first.

Disclaimers: All these numbers are for the Contemporary Romance genre, for a book on .99c sale. So this blog is the most helpful for choosing the best newsletter promotion sites for romance. If you advertise in a different genre, the ratio of subscribers may be similar, but not identical. For advertising promotions on free books, the pricing is quite different than .99c sales. Some of these websites share the numbers openly, and some I had to email to ask. If I was not able to confirm newsletter size of audience, I did not include them on the list.

Newsletter Promotion Sites Ranked by Subscribers Per Dollar

* Not all websites divide subscribers by what genre of books they’d like to see. The ones that send to all genres at once will be a much less targeted audience for your promotion.

** Book Raid is a better deal than it looks, because you only pay $.20 per click, not a flat fee to advertise your book, so this could be way cheaper and scales by how successful you are. If every single one of their subscribers clicks on your book, you still only pay $60.

Pro Tips for Newsletter Stacks

This is provided as a bonus for any super dedicated readers who kept reading all the way to the bottom:

• You can put all your promotions on the same day to spike your Amazon rank the highest, or spread them out over multiple days, to try to keep your Amazon rank high for a few days in a row, and give people more time to discover it organically from the higher bestseller rank.
• Write several short pitches for your book before you go to book newsletter sites. Most sites require you to have a 350-400 character description and you don’t want to just patch it together on the fly, as you’re booking your newsletter spot.
• Write down your sales for each day of your newsletter promo, and see which sites produced the most sales. That way you know which ones to book next time!

Now go forth and sell lots of books, with very little effort!

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As the summer sun heats up, the temptation to take a break and relax becomes irresistible. But while it’s commonly believed that book sales tend to dip during these warmer months, there’s a golden opportunity hidden within this “summer slump”, especially for self-published authors. It’s possible to turn this seasonal slowdown to your advantage, ensuring your books become the go-to reads for vacationers everywhere.

From understanding the summer reading habits of your audience to crafting compelling marketing strategies that resonate with the season’s vibe, Ginger covers everything you need to know to boost your book sales during June, July, and August. So read on to discover new ways of making your book stand out in a less crowded market, and transform the next few months into a season of sales success!

I don’t know about you, but my ideal vacation is pretty simple. I want to sit outside by the water, sip on a frosty margarita, and lose myself in a paperback for hours at a time. I think summer reading is one of the best things about the season, and the wealth of TikToks, YouTube Videos, and Reels posted by readers sharing their “Summer Reading List” suggests I’m not alone in that thought!

This is something self-published authors should bear in mind. While surveys have generally pointed to a downtick in book sales during the summer months, those surveys also reiterate that people do still buy books during June, July, and August – just not as many of them.

So, as a writer, you should make every effort to make sure your books are among those copies that do get sold!

In that regard, being a self-published author might actually give you an advantage. Traditionally, the publishing industry has focused most of their fall releases and marketing to capitalize on back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. Therefore, summer offers a unique opportunity for self-published authors to get a lot more visibility for their books in a much less crowded marketplace – and that could potentially offer a real performance boost to any advertising or marketing you plan on doing.

Here’s why I think the lead-up to summer is the perfect time to advertise your book – and some thoughts on how to do it!

The Summer Slump Isn’t Just a Myth

In self-publishing forums, there’s a reference to something called the Summer Slump. This is when there’s a noticeable drop in book sales across the board for June, July, and August. Most people assume that this is because people are going on vacation, or they’re busy during the summer months with kids and other activities. The standard amount of time people are able to dedicate to reading during the winter often gets eaten up by new outside activities.

But while that’s true, it’s also worth observing how many readers actually crave the summer months. Those who do read love the idea of taking a book with them. It’s an escape during the wait at the airport. It’s the perfect way to spend an afternoon in the sun. For those with the desire to, summer is the perfect season to gain some extra reading time; and while the overall market might slump, these more dedicated readers could be the perfect audience to target with your advertising and marketing.

It’s also worth noting that the best time to advertise is often when there’s a downturn in sales – especially in the publishing industry. A lot of publishers and authors hold off on advertising during the summer, thinking that it’s pointless because of the “slump.”

However, readers still read – and if you take the opposite approach, and actually increase your advertising during the summer, you might find yourself reaching a larger percentage of those eager readers than you would have done during the seasons in which authors were advertising more.

Capitalize on the “Beach Read” Craving

As a self-published author, your catalog of books could be exactly what summer readers are looking for – and thanks to Amazon, they can go head-to-head with traditionally published books on the digital bookshelves.

You have an advantage in that competition is less fierce in the summer, so your advertising dollar might stretch a little further than it usually does.

It’s worth remembering, however, that summer is synonymous with relaxation and escape. Many readers specifically seek out “beach reads” – light, engaging stories that are perfect for unwinding on vacation or soaking up the sun. If your book fits this category, now is the ideal time to showcase it to potential readers.

That doesn’t mean more downbeat books don’t have their place on a summer reading list – but focusing your marketing on what the reader wants (rather than what you want to sell them) is a shortcut to making the most out of your marketing budget.

Highlight the Appeal of Physical Books

About 1 in 3 Americans read books on their iPad or Kindle.  In fact, eBooks make up 70% of book sales in some categories, like romance. However, while ebooks offer undeniable convenience, there’s a certain charm to holding a physical book in your hand – especially during the summertime. I know I still prefer reading a paperback by the poolside, rather than squinting at my phone or Kindle. You also don’t need to worry about recharging it, or dropping it into the water.

So, self-published authors should take note. If you haven’t already, consider creating a paperback version of your books. You can even plan advertising that links directly to the paperback version on Amazon, rather than the Kindle edition. 

If you need help, remember that Hidden Gems offers a cover design package and can help with the formatting and publishing of your paperback books. Reach out to us to guide you through the process.

It’s worth it, because paperbacks truly make your books feel “real.” Advertising paperback editions during the summer caters to a specific audience who might otherwise skip over your book if it’s only available in digital format.

Here are some additional tips to leverage the power of summer for your self-published book:

Craft a Summer-Themed Marketing Campaign

• Why don’t you consider running social media ads featuring beach visuals, refreshing drinks, or scenic landscapes? At Hidden Gems, we actually offer an Ad Design service that can produce ads for Instagram and Facebook that highlight your book against a lush, summer backdrop.
• Is your book set during the summer? Or in a warm climate? Lean into that! Post some summer-themed excerpts from your books to let readers know that they can bask in some sunshine even between the pages of your story.
• Here’s a great one for you. Think about sending your vacationing friends a paperback version of your book, with the promise that they’ll post about it on social media. Or even reach out to travel bloggers or book reviewers who “influence” a summer-loving audience. There’s nothing like seeing your own book on somebody else’s feed!

Run Targeted Online Promotions

• Book marketing best-practices can be even more effective during the summer. You should definitely consider maximizing these (and making your book stand out from the crowd) by offering discounts or bundles during the summer months.
• If you’re part of Amazon’s Kindle Select program, maximize those page-reads by using the Free Promotion Days or Countdown Deals that are exclusively available to books in Kindle Unlimited. You can use these once every 90-days, so you should already be planning out seasonal campaigns. Make sure you embrace the summer one!
• Consider “beach reads” and “summer reading” as potential keywords as you schedule your advertising. Running targeted advertising campaigns on social media platforms can be especially effective during the summer because people post a lot more selfies and videos during the summer months.

Engage with Booksellers and Local Communities

I’ve already mentioned paperbacks, but it’s worth repeating: They can offer a unique source of revenue for self-published authors during the summer months – especially if you put them in front of people eager for a new beach read. Whether you use a service like Ingram Sparks to produce paperbacks, or order Author Copies from Amazon directly, think about the following:

• Reaching out to independent bookstores in beach destinations or areas with high summer tourism. Ask if you can provide them with paperback copies to sell.
• Organize book signings or author talks at libraries or community centers during the summer months.
• Participate in local summer festivals or book fairs to connect with potential readers in person. Not only can you sell a surprising number of books at events like these, but they’re also a lot of fun to attend!

Embrace the Power of Reviews and Recommendations

As I mentioned above, the impact of book marketing best-practices can be amplified during the summer months because fewer authors are advertising. Here’s some stuff you should be doing already, which might deliver more bang for your buck because of the summer season.

• Make sure to encourage satisfied readers to sign up to your subscriber list, and leave positive reviews on retailer sites and online book communities.
• Offer free review copies to book bloggers or reviewers who specialize in your genre.
• Run contests or giveaways on social media platforms to generate excitement and word-of-mouth buzz.

Bonus Tip: Create a Compelling Summer Reading List of Your Own!

If you write in a specific genre, consider partnering with other self-published authors in your niche to curate a joint “Summer Reading List.” This collaborative effort can expose your book to a wider audience while providing readers with a diverse selection of summer reads.

I write MC Romance novels, for example – so I could team up with other motorcycle-club authors to create a list that showcases each of our books. Because our genre is so specific, readers are always eager to discover new authors who write books that hit their summer reading sweet-spot.

The Sun in Shining on Self-Published Authors

By implementing summer strategies like these, you could position your self-published books for even greater success this summer. 

Remember, the key lies in understanding what summer readers are looking for – escape, entertainment, and an engaging story to accompany them on their summer adventures. Make sure those are concepts forefront in your marketing.

Other than that – what are you waiting for? Get creative, embrace the warm weather spirit, and make an effort to send your self-published book sales soaring toward the summer sun!

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If you’ve ever wondered why some of your carefully crafted Facebook ads seem to rarely get shown, while others are capturing all the spotlight, you’re not alone. The ad giant’s algorithms are perplexing, and often leave authors both puzzled and frustrated as they struggle to promote their books. That’s why today, Ginger is diving into some of the reasons why not all of our ads are treated equally and what might be happening behind the scenes to cause this apparent imbalance.

Fortunately, he’s also giving us some ideas on how to level the playing field. One of the most powerful tools to make strategic adjustments to your ads is Facebook ad Rules, but very few authors are even aware that these Rules exist, much less what they’re used for. Yet by tweaking them, you can transform the way you manage your campaigns, giving you greater control over which ads are seen and more confidence that the best versions are being shown to your audience.

I regularly help self-published authors set up Facebook advertising campaigns for their books, and many of them share the same frustrations with the platform. One issue that keeps coming up is how Facebook’s algorithm won’t show all of an author’s ads equally.

You might have experienced this yourself. If you’ve ever run a Facebook campaign with multiple ads, you’ve probably observed that some of them will get more Impressions and Reach than others, even though they were all launched at the same time and share the same budget. This can be especially frustrating if the ads that aren’t getting all that attention are the ones with the lowest Cost-Per-Clicks.

So why does Facebook do this? And how can you ensure a fairer playing field for your book promotions?

Why Facebook Plays Favorites

In theory, Facebook’s ad delivery system is supposed to prioritize efficiency – showing the ads it predicts will perform best more frequently than the others. 

However, this can be frustrating if you’re running a campaign with multiple creative variations, because you want each ad to have a fair shot at reaching your target audience.

It doesn’t solve the problem, but it might at least help to understand the methodology behind why Facebook chooses some ads over others (even if you’re not quite convinced that this methodology really works.)

At the heart of all this is an auction system that Facebook uses to decide which ads to show in the limited ad space available. Every time a Facebook user scrolls through their feed, they’ll pass various “placements” that Facebook reserves for showing ads. To decide which one to show, an ad auction takes place. Advertisers compete for that space, with Facebook awarding it to the ad that offers the highest combination of two factors – Bid and Relevance.

Here’s a breakdown of the key factors:

• Your Bid: This is the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click. Most of us just set a daily limit and don’t worry about setting a maximum Bid, but the option exists if you want to take it.
• Estimated Action Rates: Facebook predicts the likelihood of users taking your desired action (clicking through to your Amazon book page, for example).
• Relevance Score: Facebook scores your ad based on how well it aligns with the target audience’s interests and past behaviors.

Imagine two of your ads in this auction. Ad A has a catchy image and compelling copy that Facebook users respond to, resulting in a higher Relevance score. Ad B, however, lacks that punch. Even if you set the same bid for both, Ad A will likely win the auction because of its higher Relevance. This explains why some ads receive more impressions, even though they share the same budget. These ads are simply seen as more likely to be successful by Facebook’s algorithm.

But can we trust Facebook’s algorithm?

Behind the scenes, Facebook has an incredible wealth of information and data to use when making decisions for its advertisers and users. They are able to know things about the people you’re advertising to that they might not even know themselves! 

So, in general, it’s fairly safe to trust Facebook’s decision about which ads to show more frequently. While it might be unsettling to see some of your ads get all the love, and others get completely ignored, this system should provide authors with the following:

• Priority Performance: Facebook prioritizes ads with a higher likelihood of driving clicks and conversions (sales). This means your most effective ads, or at least the ones that Facebook thinks will resonate best with your target audience, get the most exposure.
• Optimized Spend: In theory, the ads that Facebook shows most frequently should also perform the best, with lower Cost-Per-Clicks and Conversions (if you measure those.) By favoring higher-performing ads, Facebook helps you stretch your advertising budget further by not wasting money on ads that aren’t converting clicks into sales.

That’s the theory, anyway – but there’s a fine line between optimization and neglect. If one ad in your campaign completely dominates, the others might never get a chance to prove their worth. Facebook might tell you that the ads they show are more likely to be successful, but that’s difficult to prove unless all the ads get some visibility. 

You could just take Facebook’s word for it, or you could manually tweak the system to balance things out. This is where Facebook’s built-in tools come in handy.

How can you make sure all your ads get displayed equally?

Facebook Ads Manager offers a feature called “Rules” that empowers you to take control of how your ads are delivered. Here’s how to use it to ensure a fairer chance for all your ads:

• Setting Up Campaign Budget Optimization: When creating your ad campaign, choose “Campaign Budget Optimization” under the “Budget & Schedule” section. This tells Facebook to distribute your total budget across all your ad sets (groups of ads within the campaign) to maximize your overall objective (likely “Traffic” in this case).
• Utilizing the Power of Rules: Once your campaign is running, navigate to the “Rules” section within Ads Manager. Click “Create Rule” and choose “Delivery.”

Here’s where you set the parameters for fair delivery.

• Metric: Choose “Impressions.”
• Comparison: Select “Is Less Than”
• Value: Enter a percentage of the average impressions your ad set has received. For example, if your average is 1,000 impressions and you want all ads to get at least 70% of that, enter “700” as the value.

Taking Action:

• Action: Here, you tell Facebook what to do when an ad falls below the threshold. Choose “Adjust Budget” and then “Increase By”
• Increase By: Set a percentage by which you want Facebook to increase the budget for underperforming ads. Start with a conservative number like 5% and monitor the results.

Essentially, this rule tells Facebook to monitor the impression share of each ad within your campaign. If an ad falls below the set threshold, Facebook will automatically allocate a slightly higher budget to it, giving it a chance to compete for more impressions.

• WARNING! When you start trying to meddle with Facebook’s algorithm, sometimes it meddles back! If you experiment with Rules, it’s crucial to monitor your campaign closely because you don’t want to overspend or have Facebook endlessly increase budgets for ads that simply aren’t performing well. Regularly review the Rule and adjust the parameters as needed based on your campaign data. The goal should be optimizing, not overriding Facebook’s system.

While a bit of nudging through Facebook’s ad Rules can be beneficial, also remember that the core auction system has its advantages. The goal of settling Rules shouldn’t necessarily be to force equal impressions for all your ads. Instead, you just want to ensure every ad has a fair chance to compete based on its relevance.

But which ads have the most relevance?

One of the reasons many self-published authors find Facebook’s behavior frustrating is because the whole reason they want all their ads to get equal impressions is so that they can test how well they do against each other. 

It’s all very well for Facebook to prioritize one ad over the other, but if the neglected ad only has a handful of impressions, it doesn’t seem like Facebook even gave it a chance to succeed (or fail) and there’s no way to truly know how well Facebook users will respond to it. 

Well, just as you can use Facebook ad Rules to force all your ads to be displayed equally, you can also use Rules as a powerful tool to identify the creative that resonates most strongly with your target audience. 

A/B Testing with Facebook Ad Rules

Imagine having multiple ad variations, each featuring a different image or headline, all competing for the same audience. Facebook ad Rules allows you to set up a “fair fight” between these variations. Here’s how:

• Create Variations: Create a Traffic advertising campaign, and within it, design several ads with identical targeting but different creative elements. For example, you could have three ads with the same copy but different visuals. Just remember to only change one element at a time, otherwise it’s not really a fair test.
• Set Up the Rule: Here’s the magic. Within Facebook Ads Manager, create a Rule that automatically pauses any ad reaching 500 impressions. This ensures each variation receives a roughly equal number of views and then shuts off. This is also a great way to manage the amount of money you’ll spend on this experiment.
• Analyze and Optimize: Once the rule has paused all variations, analyze the results. Key metrics to consider include Click-Through Rate (CTR), Cost-Per-Click (CPC), and engagement (likes, comments, shares). The ad set with the highest CTR and lowest CPC indicates the most successful creative combination.
• Choose your ads: Although this method can determine a clear winner, it’s best to have a variety of ads in a campaign. I normally include any ad that has a CRT of 4% or more, and a CPC of $0.25 or less. I’ve worked out that these are the figures I need to hit in order to ensure that my advertising is profitable. 

With this short campaign, you’re essentially conducting an A/B test – a scientific way to determine which ads resonate best with your audience. This data-driven approach eliminates guesswork and prevents you from wasting money on ads that don’t perform.

Other Metrics to Consider

While CTR and CPC are crucial to deciding which ads to run, you might want to also consider reviewing the Relevance Score for each ad: This score indicates how well your ad aligns with your target audience’s interests. A high score signifies a well-targeted ad that’s likely to perform better.

Also look at Engagement – by which I mean Likes and Comments. An ad that generates Likes and Comments makes your Facebook page more visible, and demonstrates that your ads are actually being noticed by people. Engagement offers you a deeper understanding of your audience’s preferences so you can tailor your future ads for even greater impact.

Knowledge is Power in Facebook Ads

Facebook has invested billions into providing the best and most efficient advertising platform that they can, so there’s a lot to be said for just trusting their instincts when running advertising campaigns – even if they do inexplicable things like favor one ad other another.

But Facebook are also aware of the limitations of their algorithm, and that’s why tools like Rules exist – to give advertisers greater control of their campaigns.

So don’t sweat it too much if Facebook is showing favoritism towards one of your ads – but also don’t miss the opportunity to gain greater understanding of your audience by experimenting with Rules.

Testing and analyzing ad variations through Facebook Rules empower you to identify the creative elements that truly capture your audience’s attention. You’ll no longer be throwing money at untested ideas. Instead, you’ll be armed with data-driven insights to optimize your ad spend and ensure your book reaches the right readers. 

Remember, small changes can make a big difference. Using Rules to reduce your Cost-Per-Click from $0.40 to $0.20 might not seem like a big shift at first glance – but it’s basically doubling the effectiveness of your campaigns, and stretching your budget twice as far.

So, the next time you design a Facebook ad campaign, think about running some tests to dial in your creative. It can be one of the best ways to tighten your margins and make your advertising profitable.

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