I have never advertised anything before. Other than a couple of paintings I placed on Ebay, I have never actually sold anything before. So, when I decided to self-publish my book (a decision based more on vanity combined with impatience than on anything else) I of course proved completely inept at getting it sold. Just having your book show up on search engines, or on Amazon does not get a sale. Nobody virtually "browses" the aisles of the Internet.
First thing I did was use my Facebook status to let everyone know I had a book. Generated 3 sales, all to one person. I guess my Facebook friends aren't in the children's book market demographic.
Then I tried taking out an ad on Facebook. Surprisingly easy to do. I went with a pay per click model just because it has no costs to entry, and because it is so cheap. I went for a really cheap budget just to see what happens. I posted several different ads to experiment with look, pricing model, etc. At first I just pointed to the storefront where the book is available for purchase. Then, on Thanksgiving, I pointed the ads to my website with a new page - better graphics, more explanatory text, sample chapter, etc. Then I tried posting ads on Google to same site.
A couple of observations:
1. your bid per click is a big deal - change the cost and exposure rapidly quadruples or more
2. the ratio of viewing to clicking seems to be about 3000/1 - although my ad with the weird "click the eyeball" theme generates more traffic than one with just a picture of the book
3. not one click has generated a sale - the new website has only been up one day (first day after Thanksgiving), so best to wait and see results
4. Google seems to achieve a higher click to view ratio than Facebook - although I have only run the ad one day
5. the value in advertising, if you have just one book to sell, seems pretty slim - the cost of the ads rapidly consumes all profit so long as nobody looking buys
I am going to let this particular ad campaign run through December and see what it yields. I have kept my budget pretty cheap, so no big loss if I get nothing of it. At the very least, I will have learned something.
Sophie took a walk
14 years ago
