A/B Testing Ebook Marketing Methods

[EricZ]

As mentioned in a previous post, I finally started the test!

Initially I wanted to start both methods at the same exact time, but -well- that didn’t pan out because I would have to have 4 books ready at the same time. So I am starting with method A as I finish the other 2 books for method B.

A quick reminder:

Test A is Nick Stephenson’s “Reader Magnets” method where you make 1 book permanently free, and the 2nd book free for subscribers to your list/website. This method is all about growing your Email list. Also called the Lead Magnet, Funnel Marketing, or Perma-Free technique.

Test B is my own favorite method where you use traffic to your blog to sell a book, targeted specifically for readers of that blog. The ballpark figure should be a blog with at least 200 unique hits per day. This method does not build your Email list at all, because you want to remain anonymous, or maybe your readers want to remain anonymous and are not the type who would subscribe, maybe due to the nature of the product or blog topic.

I know this is an apples vs oranges thing, because in the 1st method it’s all about Email sign-ups, and the second method is about selling straight away, but here it goes:

TEST A1

I’m using this book .
Results after 1 week:
37 downloads at Smashwords.
1(!?) subscriber grand total at MailCheat(Chimp).

TEST A2

I’m using this book.
Results after 2 weeks:
70 downloads at Smashwords.
14 subscribers grand total at MailCheat(Chimp).

Lessons Learned:
Smashwords is a cool platform, but ridiculously ANAL about the description of the book, “no upselling language allowed”. When I look in Kobo and iTunes they actually transferred the “upselling” description, but kept my revised description for their website only! Plus they want you to upload a WORD.DOC instead of .docx , WTF???! Stoneage mentality or Tech. reasons? The problem with this word.doc requirement is that the .mobi that they generate from the .doc is DEFECTIVE. Check out the screenshots (from my kindle keyboard) of the table of contents and some pics that have transparency (.png) and how they rendered in the smashwords generated .mobi:

The ToC!

A .png image — wtf?!

Now you may say it is a technical problem on my side, BUT the Auto-vetter results from smashwords said “Congratulations! No defects in your word document!”

To solve the problem, I opted to upload an Epub, instead of a word.doc, and -yes- , it passed easily and is now available in all the platforms that Smashwords works with, iTunes, Kobo etc. BUT, I must disable the .mobi on the site because I don’t want to risk someone downloading that defective garbage and giving me a bad review.

So Smashwords is really cool, and once you figure out their quirks and criteria you can upload and be live in FIVE different platforms simultaneously really QUICK, but you really gotta massage your descriptions and word.doc’s before you can get there. I recommend just going with the Epub to stay on the safe side.

Another VERY cool advantage to Smashwords, your book stays on the first page of the results if you choose your keywords wisely, here’s the Navy Seals book and my Ebook Formatting guide on the first page (top 10!) still after 1 week:

Not really stellar results; I’m kind of disappointed in 1 subscriber and 14 subscribers, but do I really think I’m going to get 10,000 in the first week?

OK, that was Smashwords, what about Amazon?

AMAZON SUCKS!

The idiots blocked my Navy SEALs book. They said “too many open domain pics”. WTF!? In their rejection letter they specifically state that public domain pics are allowed, then they go on to say that Wikipedia pics are not allowed... do they know what the hell “public domain” is!?

“...We don't accept books which include content that is freely available on the web unless you have sole publishing rights or they’re part of the public domain. For example, content from Wikipedia and content with private label rights are not allowed...”
​

For my Air Force book I have F-15 pilots on my contributor team, I have a lot of the pics from the Air Force directly, however ANY and EVERY pic taken by a US Airman is by law open domain! So what if some of them are in Wikipedia too!? It’s inevitable! Do they really think I’m going to rent an F-15, F-16, F-22 and an F-35 so I can get my own copyrighted pics?! Same thing for my Navy Seals book.

So this really underlines the fact that we should be growing our Email lists, this makes us platform independent, the EXACT reason for this method. And remember in MFL — the law of CONTROL, well this is a friggin darned good example of WHY we need to stay in control.

Another problem with Amazon, in Nick’s Reader Magnets, you put your funnel book for free on Smashwords and then get Amazon to price match it, well, that can take a very long time. So it lumbers around Amazon for weeks at .99cents while it is already free on Smashwords, iTunes etc. So the other book, A2 , the Ebook Formatting Guide did get accepted by “Ama-dumb”, but it’s still not free, after 2 weeks and me and my friends telling them to price match multiple times.

OK my friends, that’s enough for now, I’ll be updating regularly, I’ll show you a quick screenshot of my 200 hits per day blog below while I try to finish the 2 books for Test B, asap!

 

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[EricZ]

TEST B
I finally got test B going!
Here are the first reults after a "clean" 24hr. period.
The book is in the blog now in prime real-estate.
The Blog gets 200+ uniques per day.
I'm using KDP select to offer the book for FREE for 5 days, yesterday was day 1.

Day 1

• 20 Free units "sold"/downloaded
• 200 uniques/20 = 10% conversion - is that safe to say? (don't know, exactly how is conversion calculated for free books?)
• I'm very interested to see what happens when the 5 day sale is over, I think I will put it up to 2.99 and then do a 99cent sale afterwards.
• Well that's the strategy anyways...

LESSONS LEARNED:

A vs B
Comparing method A to method B, in method A you make 1 book permanently free and gather subscribers, in method B you write a blog and push your book in your blog, going for sales only because you want to remain anonymous etc.
A:
After 3 weeks
100+ downloads of book 1 = 17 subscribers
100+ downloads of book 2 = 2 subscribers (!)
No new subscribers for over 1 week

Sounds dismal doesn't it?
Well regardless, I have learned we MUST have CONTROL (remember?) and after 3 weeks Amazon has blocked one book (not in the test now , but the reason I had to delay the test) , and GOOGLE has announced once again that they will be BLOCKING ADULT CONTENT BLOGS!!!!

All of these "jerk-moves" by the various platforms don't bother you in the least bit if you have your own subscriber list!
Your 1000 true fans are YOURS, to take to whatever platform you please, but only if you have an email list.
This is GOLD and my biggest takeaway already.

B:
After 1 day = 20 free downloads of book 1. (Book 2 is in the making)
My FUNNEL blog for test B is now in danger of going down because of Big Brother Goog changing their policy (N-E-C-S-T), it will be interesting to see what happens.
I will post everything here, right now I'm going run it to the hilt, March 23rd is D-Day.
In four days the book will be 2.99$, we shall see what happens to the graph after that:

Bonus:
You see that little red "paid units" on the left?
That's a book I added over a year ago, no keywords, no categories, just forget about entirely...
It's starting to sell!
Dontcha just love passive income? Ok it's not a lot, but that's telling me something isn't it?
GET ON IT!

 

[Mattie]

Interesting your using blogger. lol Blogger suspended me for writing a paragraph about my books and putting an image twice. They consider it spamming.

 

[EricZ]

There's a HUGE reason I use blogger - you can edit the html and inject script into the homepage template of blogger, you cannot do that with the FREE wordpress.com blogs! That means you cannot install a pop-up or appsumo for example on the free wordpress blogs - sucks!
Another platform that allows you to inject code and alter the template is tumblr.

But yes, there are minuses to blogger, I will be posting that soon!

 

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[EricZ]

UPDATE:

TEST A
This is the book(A2) that readers get for free if they subscribe throught the link in my first book(A1).
I published it in Amazon a week ago and told my friends (about 15) and 2 contributors, then I enrolled it in KDP SELECT and did a 5 day free giveaway.
We are on day 4 right now and this is what it looks like:



TEST B
This book is in my 200+ unique blog, NO fanfare or emails to friends and contributors, just a link at the top of the blog to the amazon page and a bit of copy text. Additionally I enrolled it in KDP Select and did a 5 day free giveaway which is now over:


Results:
The book (A2) without a blog got more downloads-30-, than the book with a blog -20-!
So it seems FREE works, regardless of the 200+ unique blog.
However, there are some sales for book B and none for book A...hmmm...

Here is a book that I made almost two years ago and totally forgot about, it too is anonymous and at the top of a blog of mine:

OK so it's not a lot, one PAID unit every two weeks on average, but not bad for a forgotten book! I love making money in my sleep!

The sale for book A is still on, it is going to be interesting to see how these 2 books pan out.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. FREE works!
2. Blogs as FUNNELS work too!
3. You gotta ACE the cover and Title
   • I think the only reason my old "forgotten" book is selling now is because of the title "You Can...", and the cover, which is a really sharp eye-catching graphic.
4. PRICING
   • Damn! I should have mentioned this from the beginning:
   • The "B" books, are 2.99
     • There is only one review of the B1 book, a 1 star negative review. This is an English book, it was bought in the GERMAN Amazon.de and he gave it a bad review in German! wtf!? It is also clear that if he would have read the description of the book, that it was a book made from my blog posts and that I am not a doctor or scientist.
     • Does this mean people (Germans!) are blindly buying books based on the cover art and not even reading the description?
     • Or did I just "ace" the title and cover and targeting for a super specific niche?
   • The "A" book is 4.99
     • No sales yet - I will update in the next posts....
5. I love "divorcing" my time from money/hourly wages, I am going to concentrate now on high quality evergreen content that I can scale/amplify to make me money forever in my sleep! (does that make sense?)

 

[Mattie]

Hmm...it sure is an experiment! Just mix a little of this with a little of that, and some point in time we might figure out the right solution. I just read yesterday, that sometimes really ugly covers get people's attention. I didn't try it, but hey someone did. I don't believe everyone reads the description. I'm one of those people. I go for keywords, and I'm a learning junky, and know from being at auctions, flea markets, thrift shops, and antique stores, you dig deep enough you find awesome stuff.

I'm weird like that. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H3LVFSA/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20
I think it was this one I found some interesting things. I read on unlimited Kindle though, so I don't pay for most of the digging!

 

[EricZ]

Thanks! Have you gotten any results with the tips in that book?

 

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[Mattie]

Just read it yesterday, so haven't really tried yet.

 

[EricZ]

Time for an update!

The free sales are all over, there have been around 5 days of no free deals for all books, here is what it looks like:
Overall:

Book A2 - the target of a the funnel book (A1)

Book B1 - the book at the top of a blog that gets 200+ uniques per day and is a very narrow Niche:


And the forgotten book which is actually #2 among its competitors- and that's gonna be another blog post at www.zbooks.co !

And here is the perma-free Funnel for a website (looking for leads + traffic not sales).


Lessons learned:
1. Again - FREE WORKS
2. The book with the 200 unique blog isn't doin that great, seems like 200 uniques per day and a super narrow niche aren't enough.
- Or I gotta change up my offer.
3. The forgotten book is still selling, somewhat slow, but steadily, I think mostly because I aced the cover and title on that one + niche.

Note, these are only Kindle sales reports.

 

[Grinning-Jack]

Sounds like I'll get a problem with my 1st eBook at amazon. I used some pics from https://www.graphicstock.com/, but I redesigned them.

 

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[Mattie]

I really think it depends on the subject to tell you the truth. Whether a lot of people are after the same thing.

 

[EricZ]

Another thing I have learned is NICHE - NICHE - NICHE...if you can nail a niche, you don't even need reviews.
That "forgotten" book has a better title and better cover than the others in the same category WITH reviews and it's doing BETTER!
So yeah, a lot to learn there.

But about your first book, I think everyone should be prepared for that 1st day spike - from being shortly on the first page - and then the trail off into oblivion.
UNLESS you are of course Tim Ferris who attacks it and dominates the marketing from the beginning. I like his style, he says "I'm gonna write a bestseller" -- then he goes out and does it!

With the 4 books above I had variing amounts of mediocre average effort when it came to marketing.
Books A were funnels and target books,
Books B were my lazy blogging technique where more effort goes into the blog and book and almost Zero effort in marketing,
well -- you can now see exactly the results you get with Zero marketing.

It remains to be seen if in the long term I can dig out some more profits and pivot with these books.
You can supposedly make the lion share when you have a fat product palette and the people start digging around in your other books.

So this is a start and I'm glad to have shared it with everyone.
It's a perfect example of what you get with little to mediocre effort.
This is really encouraging for me actually, because now I know the way, and with concentrated effort I can kill it!

That too my friends is going to be a big fat post in my website.

I will post here to let you see the results. If you want more info on what methods I am following you can see the post about A/B marketing in my website and look up these guys - they are really all you need when it comes to Ebooks and marketing:
Nick Stephenson - Reader Magnets
Noah Kagan - holy shit - this guy gives you so much for FREE!
John Locke - Ebook Marketing Master
And Tim Ferriss - look up his posts too, about "how to really make million with ebooks"

 

[Grinning-Jack]

EricZ, please I have the question to you and everyone who sells ebooks.
My 1st ebook was declined with Amazon - the reason was like you had said about 1 of your book.
What's another good market place to sell ebooks?
How about ebay? I ment ebay because I sell different collectibles at ebay, however, my ebook isn't on collectibles.
Thanks for your time.

 

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[EricZ]

@Grinning-Jack can you be more specific? If Amazon rejected it just because of the cover, then try another cover.
If not there are plenty of other places and YES - Ebay is a great place to try.
I suggest:
Gumroad
Smashwords
Nook
Google Play
Kobo

Of all of the above Smashwords is the most ANAL(!), they judge the inside content of your book too, so the easiest to platform to get your book on is Google Play Books, and Gumroad.

After that Nook and Kobo.

Or you can set up your own landing page for your book, of course I made a tutorial about that too:
http://goo.gl/p5SDHs

Achtung:
With Gumroad and your own landing page you will have to drive traffic to them - you could explore Clickbank for that.

p.s.
Sign up at my site www.zbooks.co
I'd love to help you make your first book!

 

[Grinning-Jack]

@Grinning-Jack can you be more specific? If Amazon rejected it just because of the cover, then try another cover.
If not there are plenty of other places and YES - Ebay is a great place to try.
I suggest:
Gumroad
Smashwords
Nook
Google Play
Kobo

Of all of the above Smashwords is the most ANAL(!), they judge the inside content of your book too, so the easiest to platform to get your book on is Google Play Books, and Gumroad.

After that Nook and Kobo.

Or you can set up your own landing page for your book, of course I made a tutorial about that too:
http://goo.gl/p5SDHs

Achtung:
With Gumroad and your own landing page you will have to drive traffic to them - you could explore Clickbank for that.

p.s.
Sign up at my site www.zbooks.co
I'd love to help you make your first book!

Thank you for the reply EricZ.

No. it’s all ok with the cover. The problem is with pics inside the ebook. I used free copyright pics from the Internet. Their verdict – the book isn’t unique. Sorry, I don’t here want to post the cover or say the ebook is about.

You meant all these market places. Is it possible to list the ebook at each the same time?

Thanks. I’ll sign up at your site.

 

[EricZ]

Yes you can publish your book to all of those sites at the same time - go for it! See what works best.

As for your book being rejected. Yup that is a BIG pain in the you know what.

Strange, they accepted my US Air Force book without any objections and it has just as many -if not more- open domain pics than the first one!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U1DAHMM/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20
Use the preview function in amazon - you will see the copyright page.

However I sent them a huge complaint/hate mail and explained the situation.
For example ANY picture taken by a member of the armed forces is automatically in the public domain, can you help it if some jerk then put it in wikipedia?
I also told them and sent mails from the Air Force pilots that helped me on the book.
Also very IMPORTANT:
Make sure you do not ever use the word "WIKI---" i.e. wikipedia or wikimedia in your book! I think amazon's automatic checker catches that and automatically rejects it.
Always use the "CC-BY-2.0" or "CC-BY-3.0" copyright tags underneath the open domain pics instead.

They never have changed their mind about the first book, but, like said they let the next book through which had just as many "violations".
I am going to try again with a new cover and clean the manuscript of "wiki--" for the Navy SEALs book.
We shall see...

For yours: try Google Play Books first - they're not such buttheads.

Here is an example of my landing page for Navy Seals, as you can see, plenty of options besides Ama-dumb:
http://goo.gl/pHP5Kc

 

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[EricZ]

Time for an update:
First off THANKS to @Charnell for the awesome book report tool (see his post here https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...ard-tool-breaks-down-sales.59658/#post-456071)

I started publishing my books this year, with one exception -- the "sleeper".
I make my books 100% , no subcontracting -- this way I have no costs to recover, that EBIT is all mine!
That does not mean I work in a vaccuum, I validated the books before beginning, indeed, Validation is an art in itself and that's another reason for this post:

February Earnings:
4.11$ wow! (hahaha- ok this, was the very beginning)

March earnings:
42.93$ ok, getting better...

Month to date:
23.06$ hmmmm....

These are all Amazon, I must also mention amazon AUTOMATICALLY took taxes out of the March payment, so I only received 31.50 instead of 42.93!

Again I want to re-iterate that I am the laziest person I know, this is all with the minimum marketing, e.g. blogging, but nothing more, I think it's also a good example of what happens when we begin, get rid of those "get rich quick" balogney-dreams! Making money is hard work.
At the same time I want to add that 3/4 of the books are completely anonymous, so I don't want to tweet and facebook the cräp out of them. There is only one now that is not anonymous - the Air Force Book, all the others you see are FREE cheatsheets, so don't really count.

COSMIC UNIVERSAL LAW #1:
Your ROI will be directly proportional to your marketing​

Let's compare:

This is book B1 at $2.99, the one with a 200+ unique blog, the one where I thought I had "ACE'd" it from the beginning:

I am still stumped at the gap there in the last 3 weeks, no idea whatsoever...

Lesson:
After 2 months, it looks like a 200+ unique blog doesn't mean much (remember this book is anonymous - NO tweeting or FB),
because look at the sleeper, which has a blog with about 20(!) visits per day:

The sleeper at $2.99:

This too is a completely anonymous book, no tweeting etc. just a blog and a book in amazon, it has less than half the sales of book B1, so the blog does make a difference?

Book A2, the target of my A1-Navy SEALs book above, the funnel technique or Reader Magnets by Nick Stephenson:


Is now my best money maker! It sells less, but it is priced more at 4.99$
It is not anonymous. I have tweeted the crap out of it and Facebooked it, and still FB'ng it.
I went to the Air Force Recruiter and gave him a physical copy. Next day 2 sales in amazon and 1 week later a Physical sale in Lulu - my first physical book sale - YEAH!
Also don't forget, the Navy SEALS book-A1 is still out there as the FREE lead magnet pointing directly at this book A2, and it is doing it's job great!
See here Google Play - GOOGLE PLAY ROCKS! If you have Kids Books go there FIRST!:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=xC2TBgAAQBAJ
See all of those reviews? They are ORGANIC - didn't even try, no bugging people or review trading , the kids dig it!

Also:
As usual the permanently FREE book as a funnel really works well. There's nothing like a BEACON of yours out there, right "deep" in the pool of fish you want to catch, just sitting there and attracting the customers. This techniques is becoming my favorite rather quickly...


Lessons Learned:

1. FREE works - DO IT!
2. Want to reach the kids? Go to Google Play FIRST.
3. Want to publish books anonymously? Better get TRAFFIC, 200+ uniques per day means NOTHING: with a good book and good cover and good niche will net you about 10$ per month ....wow :-(
4. Your marketing starts before you write one word, and it NEVER ends.

Next actions:

1. Bundle the B books above, got 3 now and bundles are supposed to be a great hack.
2. Change up the keywords of ALL books. See Nick Stephenson's videos. Supposedly you should do this EVERY 3 months and gradually work your way up from the small ponds to the big ponds. KindleSpy plugin for Chrome is a great tip here. Gonna buy that soon.
3. Make slideshares for ALL books - put links to the landing pages in them - free advertising!
4. Make youtube vids from the slideshares - super easy function in YT! Now there are "cards" in YT so you can add a CTA really easy - we shall see - can't beat free advertising.
5. Set price to 3.99 for ALL books. 3.99 is the new 2.99! Look at the awesome smashwords slideshare by Mark Coker. Very good insights there.

Future actions:

1. Explore clickbank and affiliate programs to drive buyers to a landing page.
2. Sell directly to customer - NO amazon, only my platform, combined with clickbank above.
3. Try selling the books as .pdf in Gumroad
4. Try Kickstarter and Validate and go for a bigger launch in the beginning like @DennisDuty did with his book.

If anyone has some ideas - LET ME KNOW! That's why we're here right?

Thanks for reading this - hope it adds value,
E.

 

[Grinning-Jack]

Most of those sites didn't allow me to post my ebook just because I'm from Ukraine. My ebook is in English.

Probably, I should write a book about Ukrainian fastlaners but it'll sound like a cop's report.

 

[EricZ]

Wtf? I've never heard of your situation! Let's carry that over to a PM/email.
Brgs E.

 

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