I haven’t been publishing long so I certainly am no expert in the field but one thing I am really good at is research. And that requires extreme testing.

Testing…a word that tastes good rolling over the tongue but doesn’t feel good going down the esophagus. It’s not beyond the norm to bang your head against a wall while testing a system, hoping to knock yourself unconscious before you come to your senses that this really hurts.

I’ve done that before, by the way. Not a very pleasant feeling.

Now I Step Away From The Tangent.

I have a few fictional novels on Amazon’s website and, just like most of you, I didn’t have a clue how to market my books to my targeted niche…and this coming from a 7 year online marketing veteran who does this full time.

Moving right along.

Even if I knew how to market my books to my niche, I still operated on a very abbreviated budget. You know how it is…you have $100 bucks to build a million dollar empire.

Oh…and you had to build it in 13 days because you had a bill due on day 14 that was either life or death or a combo pack. So…I unplugged from the Matrix. That’s right, I located Trinity and took the red pill because I wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole went and…

Thank God For Morpheus. He Taught Me A Lot!

Amazon was the rabbit hole; traditional marketing was the Matrix that I needed to get unplugged from. No more book reviews, pitching literary agents, submitting press releases and then waiting for rejections.

Nope.

Instead of relying on traditional marketing…the Matrix…I started researching how Amazon works. I knew that if I were to get ahead of the game, I needed to know how the Amazon ranking system operated.

Now, I want to say this. I know for a fact that I can’t one-hundred percent prove my theories…but I also know you can’t one-hundred percent disprove my theories either. I also know that here is no official documentation by Amazon that you can read that will tell you what I’ve discovered.

If there was, if Amazon told you exactly how their algorithms worked, it would be the collapse of the system. In addition, as soon as too many people figure it out, like Google, Amazon will change the algorithm pattern to keep relevant content ahead of the curve at all times.

So, the hunt I went on was more important than the books I actually wrote. I went on it…

And That’s When I Learned How Deep The Rabbit Hole Went.

Disclaimer alert! I am in no way saying this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and Amazon Saints. This is just what I’ve found. If you have an issue, hey, I don’t have any tissues…but I’m sure Amazon does if that’s what you want.

So, what makes Amazon’s algorithm work?

Well there are 5 key points you need to be aware of:

Amazon cares about how many paid downloads you have in a day.
Amazon cares about the price of your book.
Amazon cares about the 4 and 5 star rating reviews.
Amazon cares about how many comments Amazon users find helpful.
Amazon cares about how many paid downloads you have over a weekly period.

Simple enough?

So Let’s Jump Down Another Rabbit Hole Right Quick!

Amazon Cares 1: Paid daily downloads.

This should be straightforward but, in case it’s not, Amazon loves good books because good books make them money. Period. You want to hit the best sellers list for your niche or sub niche, sell more books than the others in your category on any given day. Instant bestseller status!

Amazon Cares 2: Price of your book.

Not that it’s obvious, because it’s not, but your book price matters. Again, the more money you make Amazon, the more valuable you are to them. I’ve noticed that Amazon ranks my higher priced books faster than my lower priced books.

I’ve had my $.99 cent books sell more units than my $2.99 priced books, in the same sub niche, but my $2.99 books ranked much higher.

My guess? At $.99 cents and 35% royalty that you earn, you make Amazon $.65 cents per book while your $2.99 book at 70% royalty makes them about $1.10…almost double. Now, we can debate selling more units at $.65 cent per unit earnings versus selling less units at $1.10 per unit earnings all day.

But, at the end of the day, we still don’t know how much it cost Amazon to deliver each download from their cloud servers.

In edition, I personally believe that Amazon wants to encourage you to sell your book higher and at the same volume as your lower priced books. Why? Because it makes them more money.

Simple business sense. So, this is just my theory, but I think higher priced books are ranking higher than lower priced books on Amazon these days. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Shoot me.

Amazon Cares 3: Review star rating.

Ok, obvious? You need good reviews. End of story. Dare I say go the John Locke route and buy a bunch of favorable reviews?

Only if you’re dishonest and only care about short term goals. If your work sucks and you buy a bunch of good reviews, eventually the real ones will come in and tank your book so get real ones and just write well.

The important issue here is value. Amazon sees you with a lot of good 4 and 5 star reviews, they see that it’s valuable on their website, it triggers the algorithms and you rank up. Simple.

Amazon Cares 4: How many comments are deemed helpful.

While it is impossible to determine how many comments need to be found by passerby’s as helpful to trigger the algorithms, just know that they are necessary for ranking up. It goes back to writing well and everything else takes care of itself.

Since we’re pushing that Amazon value button, the books with more positive comments found by users to be helpful tend to rank up faster in the search results. Amazon sees the growing value among its peers and wants to help more people find your book.

Amazon Cares 5: Paid downloads over a weekly period.

Now here is the most important part, so please pay attention!

So, you’ve sold a lot of daily books, right? It pushed up to the top 100 bestsellers for your niche. Awesome! But…that’s just one day. Anyone can be a one hit wonder by telling all of their friends and family to buy it on one day.

However, the successful authors can sell “top 100 in your niche” volume on a consistent basis. If you want to trigger the Amazon algorithms to get you ranked higher, to get more visibility and to get more sales, you have to keep selling day after day.

If you can keep up similar volume for at least a week…or if you hit #1 in your niche…Amazon will put you on the list of bestsellers for the month and do email list blasts promoting your books to the millions of subscribers on their mailing list.

And, you know what this means…money!

The point of all this is, if your marketing budget is non-existent (like mine is most of the time) then you have to milk the Amazon system for all it’s worth. Once the algorithms pick up the variables of your book stats, the rest will take care of itself.