Help Center
We have many questions in the group about ads. People wanting to know more about them, to getting very little clicks or sales, auto ads or manual ads, etc.
Hopefully you have read the advertising article in the blog section (click Blog link from the main Book Bolt webpage or click Learning from the studio and pick Book Bolt Blog), or click here How to Run Amazon Ads for KDP if you have not read it, please do this before reading this. This article is a great thing for a learning tool as well as to get sales quickly and gives you all the information you need to understand advertising on Amazon.
This article is about suggesting things you can try, that I have found work for me on advertising and possibly spend less money on them. No, you probably will not get the same sales as you would by following the article How to Run Amazon Ads for KDP. In a lot of cases, you are hoping to break even and may lose money initially when starting ads, and in time that turns into profit. It could save you money though, you may be on a budget or not have a lot to spend, and it still could bring in sales or increase your sales for less money.
Neil has mentioned numerous times about adjusting your ads and it was one of the first things I tried when first doing ads. He brough this up in one of the first live calls I ever watched. Then I heard it 2 or 3 times in the next couple of months. It concerns adjusting your ads (up or down) in 5 to 10% increments and letting them run for 3 or 4 days, just so you can see the changes, if any, and worth continuing doing. So, moving on…
Once you are making sales and doing well with the ads, let’s say for a month or maybe 2, like mentioned above, you could break even or even lose money. However, as each week goes on and your BSR improves, you should be getting more and more organic sales. I like to track my Organic Sales numbers vs. Ad Sales numbers. At the start my organic sales were 0%, that is why I am doing ads. I place an ad, and maybe get 9 sales from the ads, and 1 from organic sales, that means 10% were organic. The 2nd week I had 20 sales, and 5 were organic, I am up to 20% of my sales are organic, this is because my BSR is getting better, and I want to keep it getting better.
If you are not getting the results with ads, you will possibly need to increase the bids. If you are doing well with the ads, you possibly can reduce the per click amount and save some money on ads.
First, we will go over increasing the per click amount on ads, if yours are not doing as well as you would like.
If you are not happy with the number of impressions or the sales, you can raise your bid. Do this in small increments like mentioned above, 5 to 10% of current bid. But I would say if you were bidding 60 cents on an auto ad, go to 63, maybe 64 cents. Let it run for 3, 4 or 5 full days, even a week, not a day or 2. I make sure to make a note of a few things from my initial ad and usually use a spreadsheet to do so. I record the time-period, my per click rate I set the ad at, impressions, clicks, CTR, Top of search %, spend, CPC, orders, sales, ACOS and I make a formula in the spreadsheet to figure out my percentage of orders to clicks. So, 3 orders on 10 clicks, getting orders on 30% of the clicks. I also record organic sales. Then a formula to see organic sales number vs. ad sales.
I then make the adjustment of say 3 or 4 cents. But like I said I want to leave this amount for 3, 4, or 5 days to get some numbers and I don’t count the day I changed it. Once 4 or 5 days have gone by, I click the date range and pick the first full day and the current day (if late in the day), if not, then the previous day. I record the numbers in my spreadsheet under the previous one. I then compare, are the numbers better? The same or worse. I have rarely ever done this and been worse. Your top of search % should have improved a bit, this is a good thing, means more of your ads are getting placed on the first page and higher up. Hopefully your CTR is better and maybe as well your orders to click %. So, you can continue doing this, at some point though you won’t see very much of a difference, because you could be at the very top of the page. Another thing I do now and then as well, is I use search terms I know that will bring up my book or get them from search results on the ad, using incognito mode and I look through some pages, say top 5 pages and look for where my ad is. I tend to record this info as well. So, after I am done with each increase, I search the same term and see where the ad placed. I will search with the drop down on “All” which most people use, but I also change it to books and search that way as well. Ideally you want to be in the top half of the first page in the ads. Probably one more increase gets you close to the top if not the top ad.
The above could be costly, and yes it will get you sales, but realize you need to be able to do this for 2, 3, 4 or 6 months. As time goes by, your organic sales should be increasing, your ad spend will come down. Another reason to do searches using search terms and keywords, is if your book is towards top of page and ad is right there as well. Then you will need to adjust downwards. Why have an ad right next to your book listing? So, you follow the same steps and go down in increments. Find that happy medium. Hopefully at some point organic sales are 75 or 80% of your sales and 20% are from ads. The sales from ads make a bit of money or at worst break even and the organic sales are all profit. You can stop the ad, but remember, even a couple, 3, 4 or 5 sales and breaking even is okay, because in the end it will help your BSR.
Now if you can’t afford losing money almost from the start, another thing you can do is applying the above method, which I was focusing on raising the bid in small increments, to get more sales faster, you can also start at the suggested and let it run for a week or two, then slowly go down, in hopes that 1, 2 or 3 or more drops of 5 to 10% still result in the same sales or drop off slightly, but a month down the road your ads may cost less, like 25%, 30% or more. This may save you a bit of money and maybe closer to breaking even or even better make a little money after a month.
Onto what is more like what I like to call budgetting ads, when you maybe cannot afford a lot at once and or for the long term.
So, what I do a lot of times, instead of the above, which is mentioned in Neil’s article even is I start low on the per click amount and always pick down only. Say Amazon Ads are suggesting 75 cents and a low to high range of 52 cents and 97 cents. I would start it at say 25 cents. If it said a suggestion of 50 cents and a range of 28 cents to 79 cents, I would probably start at 18 cents. But let’s stick to the first amount of 75 cents and 52 to 97 cents. I don’t really say a percentage lower of the low side or anything, just a random number I will pick.
Since I have done this for a while, I generally use this way from the start knowing full well I will be adjusting my initial bid amount. Keep in mind as I said above, I may not get the sales I could get by following Neil’s article, I am trying to budget to not spend as much initially, as well as do better than break even with any luck in the first month. If you want to make a lot of sales almost from the start and can afford to spend money, then you should follow Neil’s ad article 100% on using suggested bid amount or a little higher! In some cases, I am impatient and others I am not. This I have patience for, and I guess part of the game is trying to beat the system lol.
I follow the same steps as above, wait 4 or 5 full days, record the results, then increase it 5 to 10% of the bid amount, but I usually always do a minimum of 2 or 3 cents. I will raise it from 25 cents to 28 cents. Again wait 4 or 5 days, change date range to the 4 or 5 full days and record the numbers in my spreadsheet. I usually always see a difference the first change. May not have sales yet, or if so 1 or 2 sales. I then repeat the steps again. Sometimes I end up at the suggested or a little higher. But sometimes not. I feel that by going slowly up and hopefully getting random sales that are moving my BSR higher, I get organic sales as well eventually. In the end if on a budget and not a lot to spend this may be a better way to go. Also, I usually set the daily budget to about $2 a day initially. When I start getting sales or at least more clicks I will go to $3 a day.
I hope this helps somewhat with using Amazon Advertising. You need to spend time on this, it is not just do and forget, login every day, look at the numbers, look at search terms, I still login every day first thing, change date range to yesterday and look at the numbers. I look at search terms, I add some to the negative targeting. So spend the time learning to make yourself better at it.
Some other helpful links:
Pricing of Books When Books are Newer
What Do I Do Now That I Have Published My Book(s) / Why Don't I Have Any Sales?
We have over 15 articles covering many topics to do with marketing. Book Bolt Marketing
Amazon has great information on ads as well: