#015: This Is Why Authors Quit Advertising
Apr 15, 2023Read Time: 4 minutes
On the surface, with the reams of content around advertising books on Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, BookBub Ads, etc, success with advertising can seem so easy.
On top of this, with all the case studies and big numbers bouncing around, from the outside, these advertising platforms look like they could turn your books into an overnight success, from day 1.
This could not do more to set authors up for failure when they launch their first advertising campaigns on any of these platforms.
And when you don't get out of this world results within the first few days of launching your Ads, you may have one of 2 thought processes:
#1: You've been lied to by the people who are saying how great X advertising platform is.
#2: The advertising platform you've run your Ads on "doesn't work", is a waste of time and impossible to get good results from.
Neither of these are true.
There are many authors out there who have seen great success with the likes of Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads.
There are 2 extremes here:
Extreme #1: Advertising is so easy, even my cat, dog, or 2 year old toddler could do it.
Extreme #2: Advertising doesn't work, it's a waste of time and money and a big scam that everyone should avoid.
The truth lies somewhere in the middle of these 2 extremes.
Many authors, my wife included, have made their careers off the back of Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads with the visibility, sales, page reads, etc, these platforms have generated.
Advertising is a skill, just like writing. And it's going to take time to hone your skills in running Ads on these platforms.
If you want to get to grips with Facebook Ads or Amazon Ads, I have a couple of courses that can help: Facebook Ads Mastery For Authors and Amazon Ads Mastery For Authors.
You're in a competition
When advertising on Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, etc, you are competing against other advertisers to position your books in front of readers. And if you go into advertising with the mindset of I'm going to win, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.
Let's briefly take a concept outside of advertising to give this some context...
If you were a brand new cyclist, you wouldn't expect to go into a race with other cyclists who have been racing for years, have their technique perfected, a mindset of steel as well as a game plan for the race, and expect to win.
And yet, that can be the expectation of new advertisers.
They're competing against other advertisers who live and breath Ads every day of the week, have been doing so for years, and it has become an absolute passion of theirs.
The cost of advertising rises to the point where the best can succeed and the ones who aren't good at running Ads, well, don't succeed.
That's just the natural equilibrium.
And it's the same on any marketing or advertising platform.
There are always going to be people on these platforms who have been using them for years, made all the mistakes, and think about how they're going to get better results with them day in, day out.
As a newbie, you will be competing against these people. Guaranteed.
To succeed on any of these platforms, you have to become exceedingly good to stand a chance against the competition.
What's The Solution?
The question then becomes, how do you get good results from these advertising platforms without spending oodles of cash and years of your life becoming an "expert"? Here's how:
#1: Pick ONE Platform
The worst thing you can do, in my opinion, is trying to learn multiple advertising platforms at the same time.
For a start, you're going to burn yourself out and potentially confuse yourself with the ins and outs of each platform.
But perhaps most importantly, you're going to severely limit your progress and results because you're spreading your time, energy, and budget far too thin.
To counteract this, the solution is simple: Pick ONE platform and stick with it.
Learn how the platform operates, do your own testing, figure out what works and what doesn't work for your books, and understand the metrics and data of the platform.
Become a master at this platform, then layer on a second platform and go through the same process to become a master at it.
And to become a master at anything, you need one key ingredient... commitment, which leads us onto...
#2: Commit For 12 Months
You can't expect to have great results within a matter of a few days or weeks.
And even with a couple of months using an advertising platform, you're just not going to learn enough to become good at it for the long-term.
So, I highly recommend that you commit to the platform for at least 12 months.
You're going to outlast so much of your competition simply because you're going to keep doing it and they're not.
You're playing the long-game, whilst other advertisers are looking for a quick-win.
And a final point here... always be a student. Never close your mind off to learning new things.
This applies to all areas of life, but with advertising changing so rapidly, it's even more important here to never think "I know enough" because when you do, that's when you stop growing.
Wrapping Up
If you take just one thing away from today's blog, it would be this:
Don't do what many authors, unfortunately, find themselves doing, either consciously or subconsciously, which is moving from one shiny object to the next.
They'll start with Facebook Ads, stick at it for a couple of weeks and declare they don't work when they don't see good results within a matter of days.
Then they'll move on to Amazon Ads for a few weeks and experience the exact same cycle they did with Facebook Ads.
Next, they'll give BookBub Ads a whirl and a few weeks later declare they don't work either and are a complete waste of money.
And so the cycle continues, until they end up back on Facebook Ads again and repeat the entire process.
The bottom line here is that, yes, you're going to be competing against other advertisers, but when you grasp the idea that advertising is a skill that is learned over time, you can achieve great things.
You learned to walk as a baby. It took several weeks, or several months maybe, you wobbled, you fell over, but you got back up again.
Apply the same mentality to advertising and you'll see the results.
Thanks for reading. See you next Saturday.
To Your Success
– Matt
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