Are You Ready?

Hey,

On the surface, Amazon Ads can appear to be a magic bullet, a shiny object to turn your books from unheard of into overnight bestsellers.

In realty, to get the most out of Amazon Ads, you need a good book with a solid sales history (selling 1-2 copies per day for 1-3 months), strong reviews/ratings and a product page that converts browsers into readers.

The elements of your book product page that help conversions are:

- Book Description
- Reviews/Ratings
- Book Cover
- Price
- Title and Subtitle

Amazon recommends you have at least 15 reviews/ratings on your book before you start to advertise it with Amazon Ads. Personally, I find that 100 or more reviews performs better as it's just additional social proof that will help with the conversion of your Ads.

Amazon Ads also rely heavily on sales history when deciding if they should show your Ads in the first place and where to show them (i.e. how much exposure they're willing to give you), but also, how much you'll be paying for every click on your Ads.

The better your Ads convert, the more exposure Amazon will give you and the more favorable the CPC (Cost-Per-Click) Amazon will charge you.

If your book is ranked at over 100,000 in the Kindle Store, I recommend you get some initial traction with sales by using other RELEVANT marketing or advertising channels (aside from Amazon Ads) such as Facebook Ads, Newsletter Swaps, Promo Sites, etc, as these sources don't look at Sales History; they just send bucketloads of traffic to your books!

As I mentioned in a recent email, Amazon want to make money (they're a business after all) and they are going to be much more inclined to show a RELEVANT Ad if it has a proven history of converting into a sale compared to a book that has little to no sales history.

So, once you've built up a good sales history, you've got at least 15+ reviews/ratings, a solid book description, your price and book cover are on-point for your genre, then you're ready to start Amazon Ads.

At the end of the day, as I talk about frequently, your book sells your book.

Amazon Ads are just there to drive RELEVANT traffic, but it's your book that has got to sell itself once potential readers land on your product page.

Having said all of this, Amazon Ads can be used for launching a new book or books with no or low reviews/ratings and no or little sales history - just be prepared to be aggressive with your Ads, potentially "lose money" and go into this with an expectation of your Amazon Ads not being profitable immediately.

See this as an investment in data collection rather than a profit making exercise. As your Ads start to collect data, you can then begin to fine them and move closer towards profitability or break-even.

To Your Success
- Matt