I posted recently about how my author website has suddenly started attracting attracting Google traffic. Posting every day for over a year suddenly seems to be paying off. I started my Kindle Direct Publishing experience with Amazon Adverting Campaigns. I tried both sponsored products and sponsored brands. You can set a daily budget, and it basically works along an “if you like that you might like this” basis. You choose the books or authors that you think attract readers who would like your books too. I ran campaigns in both the UK and USA. The tools are pretty good at helping you to identify which other books or authors are generating the most sales for you. I kept whittling it down to be as efficient as possible. But the advertising expense always remained much greater than the sales revenue generated.
I ditched the sponsored brand and focused on sponsored product. Then I ditched USA and focused on UK. The advertising cost remained around five times greater than the revenue generated. I hoped for a snowball effect, but Christmas didn’t come. I have now turned off Amazon Advertising altogether. For two days I didn’t sell a single book and there were no pages read on KENP. Had I done the right thing? Should I turn it on again? Then I sold a book, then another. I started to see KENP pages being read again. I’m not selling as many books, but I am selling some. I’m saving about £260 a month on Amazon Advertising. My author website costs me £22 a month, and the current sales that I can see will more than pay for that.
When I set up my author website I decided to include links to Project Sponsorship and Something Hidden too. Project Sponsorship is a technical book that I wrote, published by Taylor Francis. Something Hidden is an anthology of short stories, including my There Must be More, published by Bridge House Publishing. I see more clicks on my website going to Something Hidden and Project Sponsorship than to the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures. I won’t know if those convert to sales until the royalty payments arrive.