#073: Kindle Countdown Deal [Case Study]

We used to run promotions for my wife Lori's books every 90 days, using Kindle Countdown Deals as the main scarcity factor.

Due to one thing and another though, we haven't run a Kindle Countdown Deal for almost 12 months.

We thought it was time to change all that.

Last week, we ran our first Kindle Countdown Deal in almost a year, and today, I'm going to share the results with you; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Book promotions are one of the most effective ways to bring a LOT of new readers into your world in a short period of time.

And if your books are in Kindle Unlimited, you benefit from being able to run Kindle Countdown Deals.

These are limited-time deals (Upto 5 days for free books and upto 7 days for paid books), with:

- A countdown timer on your book product page

- 70% earnings on every sale (even at $0.99)

- Additional promotion from Amazon

From September 12th - 18th, we ran a Kindle Countdown Deal on Books 1-4 of Lori's series.

Let's take a look at what worked, what didn't work and the numbers...

The Details

- USA Only

- Books 1 -4 priced at $0.99

- Traffic from Promo Sites going to Book 1

- Traffic from Facebook Ads going to Amazon Series Page

- Traffic from Amazon Ads going to Book 1

The Numbers (USA Only)

- Facebook Ads Spend: $1,255

- Amazon Ads Spend: $336

- Promo Sites Spend: $1,071

- Books Sold: 1,338

- Page Reads: 159,241

- Royalties: $1,765

As you can see, this wasn't a profitable promotion. Our first unprofitable promotion since we started.

Why?

Honestly, I don't know for sure, but my theories are:

- Facebook Ads have less relevant traffic (more reports of bots over the past 12 months)

- Promo Sites are less effective than they once were

- Time of year and upcoming US election

- Too few $0.99 books to make profitable (4 in total)

- I simply spent too much on Ads and promo sites

All that said, despite the lack of profit, we did:

- Bring a bunch of new readers into Lori's books

- Increased the number of her Amazon followers

- Grew Lori's email list and audience size

- Make a good profit the day after the promo when the books went back to full price

Let's now take a look at what happened with the Ads I was running...

Amazon Ads

Not much changed here, to be honest.

A few days before the promo started, I increased the bids and budgets on top-performing Campaigns.

Job done.

The Amazon Ads didn't sell a huge quantity of books, but they rarely will unless you ramp up the bids to $0.90+, and even then, things won't always go to plan.

I find Facebook Ads a more effective platform for scaling spend rapidly, so let's look at how things went over there.

Facebook Ads

These drove most of the sales for us (as they always do).

But 1 Ad outperformed all others by a country mile.

If you'd like to see my Facebook Ads strategy for this promo, check out my previous newsletter here that I wrote a few weeks ago.

Before we get into the stats of the Facebook Ads, here's the winning ad image:

Running Facebook Ads for a limited-time promotion such as a Kindle Countdown Deal is a challenge because you simply don't have the time to test lots of different Ads.

Even Dynamic Creative Ads (what I use for evergreen Facebook Ads) aren't a good candidate for promotions because they can take 5-7+ days to really find their groove.

So, I tested 5 individual Ads, turned one off after 2 days, another off after 4 days and then let the best three Ads run for the final 3 days.

Each Ad was in its own Ad Set with a budget of £25 ($33) per Ad Set. I let them run untouched for Days 1 and 2, then increased the budget of the top-performing Ads from day 3 onwards by around 20%.

Here's what the performance looked like for each of these top-performing Ads (using Amazon Attribution to collect the conversion data):

Ad1 (Top Performer):

- Conversion Rate: 20%

- Cost-Per-Sale: $1.16

- Units Sold: 249

Ad1 (2nd Top Performer):

- Conversion Rate: 21%

- Cost-Per-Sale: $1.65

- Units Sold: 172

Ad1 (3rd Top Performer):

- Conversion Rate: 11%

- Cost-Per-Sale: $2.43

- Units Sold: 114

A note on Page Reads from the Facebook Ads... they were very low (about 4,500 for the full 7 days from all Ads). This makes sense as readers were picking up the $0.99 books rather than borrowing them as part of their Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Promo Sites

We booked 20 promo sites for this promo and our strategy for these hasn't changed for years.

Start small with 1-3 promo sites per day and scale up to 4-5+ promo sites on the final 2 days.

The idea with the increasing number of promo sites (and the increasing Facebook Ads spend) is to send as much traffic as possible to the book(s) on the final 1-2 days of the promo giving them one final push.

We want to end the promo with the book(s) at the highest possible Amazon Bestseller Rank. This way, when the book(s) return to full price, they'll have maximum visibility and pick up plenty of full price sales as their Amazon Bestseller Rank stabilizes.

Wrapping Up...

The whole purpose of this promo was to get my teeth back into running them, learn what is working (and isn't working) in 2024 and build Lori's audience and readership in preparation for her next book launch later this year.

Profit, though it would have been the cherry on top, wasn't the goal.

And as I mentioned above, the day after the promo, profit went shooting back up when the books returned to full price.

So, all in all, it was money well spent, we learnt a lot and built Lori's audience.

Hope you've found this a useful insight into how we run promos, but this isn't the only way, by any means.

Your next promo may have a similar goal to ours, or maybe it needs to be profitable. Either way, you can design your promo as you see fit.

Whether you have $100 to spend or $10,000 to spend, you can design your promo around your budget and your goals.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend.

See you next Saturday.

To Your Success

- Matt