Can we talk about ebook marketing

[Charnell]

I know the best marketing for ebooks is writing another ebook, but i already have over 40 unique titles and a few dozen spin-offs and bundles that produce a nice passive income every month. I'm still publishing, but want to increase my sales through advertising.

I was thinking of creating a few facebook ads as test runs. One set up to link to my author page(s), and another to link to my new semi successful series' first book, which has backmatter linking to the next book and so on. Anyone have any success with either? Advice on whether to skip on and go straight to the other.

I have been looking at odesk and people are hiring Virtual Assistants to basically go around to different websites and facebook groups advertising, trading reviews, basically pimping their books. That could be a consideration also, doing a test run for a month to see if the money put in is greater than the money received.

What has worked for you?

 

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[EricZ]

Google adsense,
but I haven't quite figured out the right combination of keywords.
But it does work - it get's people to your ad/website/ etc. at around 1 to 2 $ per CLICK!

My other favorite technique is called the "40 blogs and 40 nights", basically you write around 40 blogs about anything you like or don't like.
The one that gets the most hits (you will be surprised at what people like!!!) gets your affiliate link in prime real-estate i.e. top right corner of your blog.

This technique is AWESOME for people who want to stay anonymous.

You need a blog that gets around 200 views per day, this amounted to about 10% conversion on my ad.

I am going to do this for my next ebook and I will post the results.

The point is to blog like crazy - you are a writer right? -- and this helps the creative process while guaging what other people like.

It's the opposite of targeted marketing where you obviously target your audience, this is the "Spaghettie on the wall" technique - throw it up there and see what sticks!

 

[BrianPM]

^ Great idea on the 40 blogs

 

[Andy Black]

I haven't tried this, but what about:

What type of searches would indicate someone is looking for a book of a similar genre to yours?

Maybe "romance books", or "pride and prejudice", or "jane austen".

Do that search on Google or Bing. Are there ads showing?

Do the ads match the search you typed in? How appealing are they to the person who just performed that search?

Click the ads and check out the landing pages. Do they deliver on what the ad promised? Do they deliver what the searcher was looking for?

Can you do better?


Strategy 1 (go narrow):

Bid low, count impressions. Find out where the volume is. Then tighten up to a few search terms and try and get something profitable.


Strategy 2 (go wide):

Try using broad match and bidding very low.

Try Google Search Partners and the Google Display Network.

Let Google do it's job and try and find you clicks... dirt cheap.


For both strategies:

When someone clicks through to your site, drop a remarketing pixel on them, and follow them around the internet with your nice image ads.

Remember, it's not about CPCs, but about whether you can get your CPCs lower than your EPCs.



Dunno... might work.

 

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[peacemaker]

I'd recommend doing some guest posts.

Guest posts on popular blogs are a great way of building exposure and increasing your perceived expertise - both of which lead to more sales. One of the hardest parts of guest posting is finding suitable blogs to post on. You can search Google to find blogs that are related to your books using
commands like so:

inpostauthor:guest [your niche]
inurl:category/guest [your niche]

For example,if you have a book helps with SEO, you might search Google for "inpostauthor:guest SEO" which would return a list of blogs that accept guest posts for the topic of SEO.
Make sure your guest blog posts are relevant, well written and fit the blogs guidelines and you are more likely to be accepted. Also make sure you are on hand to answer any comments when the post is published.

 

[EricZ]

This guy sets his default bid to .35 $ , he's killing it!
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2011/11/02/the-truth-about-abs-mike-geary/

 

[Gymjunkie]

Is this for Fiction or Non-Fiction?

For Fiction best marketing is writing the next book and BookBub.com ad and cross promo from other authors.. but for Non-Fiction, best marketing is guestblogging, podcast interviews, answering questions on social media related to the topic and Joint Ventures, etc. Basically, same how you build a real business online. You are solving a problem so that makes marketing easier.

 

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[Silverhawk851]

If your running paid ads, just make sure you have a solid funnel, that'll make sure you can afford to have enough profit that you can run them.

Group reviews and all that is secondary, ideally you want paid traffic to convert well.
You'd have to niche down, and offer some sort of lead magnet up front, like couple chapters free or something.. get them hooked then sell the ebook.

For FB targetting, here is a good video you'll want to watch:

http://instant-replay.co/ai/

 

[Andy Black]

This guy sets his default bid to .35 $ , he's killing it!
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2011/11/02/the-truth-about-abs-mike-geary/

That's a great article. Thanks for the share.

The guy knows his media buying, and is happy to run breakeven or at a loss at the front-end, to build his list of customers because he knows what his average customer life-time-value is.


For me, my favourite line was:

"Sell the customers what they want, but give them what they NEED."

​

My key takeaway was that people can do some insane numbers with some very simple products - if they can help a lot of people.

 

[Andy Black]

Group reviews and all that is secondary, ideally you want paid traffic to convert well.

+1 on this.

 

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