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How to do Amazon UK ads
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C.L. wrote: "Hey guys!There's a secret way to do Amazon ads for other marketplaces. The best part is that because the advertising for places like UK are so new, they give you $100 of free ad spending money AN..."
Awesome stuff C.L. :D
I've been playing around with AMS a lot lately (highly recommend Brian Meek's book Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author's Guide) and I've found that KDP select plus careful AMS advertising is the best thing so far for my sales. It helps that my second book is quite long so I get a good KDP payout if people read through.
Wonderful! I was one of those who asked ages ago and was told no except if I opened an account. For some reason, not sure why now, I thought you had to pay £20 a month.Thank you so very, very much for sharing.
Me again.I'm not sure I understand how it works. It says:
"Advantage
Available Product Lines: Books, Music, DVD and Video
Discount Rates:
Books: 60% off List Price
Music: 30% off Dealer Price
DVD/Video: 35% off Dealer Price
Payment to Advantage Members:
Books: 40% of List Price
Music: 70% of Dealer Price
DVD/Video: 65% of Dealer Price "
What does this mean? Do we have to discount our books by 60% and then we receive 40% of the list price?
Perhaps they have changed from the £20 a month system to this.
Brilliant. Amazon is not user-friendly (in my opinion).
Thanks for sharing a trick to get through their
crazy maze.
Anna Faversham wrote: "Me again.I'm not sure I understand how it works. It says:
"Advantage
Available Product Lines: Books, Music, DVD and Video
Discount Rates:
Books: 60% off List Price
Music: 30% off Dealer Pri..."
That's because Advantage is usually used by people selling third party merchandise. Like, if you ran a used book store and wanted to market your ware a la Ebay, or if you owned a tee shirt store. But obviously you aren't going to use that side of Amazon. You'll just create the account so you can hack your way into AMS. So far they haven't asked me for any money and my books are selling at usual price.
Thank you C.L. Phew! I can go back and plough on. I'm always afraid I'll get into something I hadn't intended to and then can't get out of it.
Has anyone else negotiated to the end of this maze yet?I am now a 'company'.
C.L. - Am I doing something wrong. It seems that I have to ship books from my home address. Is that right?
I've been welcomed (and possibly billed) but as none of my books have ISBNs, I can't go any further.Thanks for letting me know, Alex. I'll certainly not be shipping paperbacks around the country. I suspect, and C.L. will know if I'm right, that things would carry on as normal but it's not the way it looks!
I'm just about to put my books into paperback but as I do all this stuff myself, it will be a while before I manage even the first book. I'm reading them all through again. Half way through the first book now and found - horror of horrors, a missing full stop! And sloppy descriptions waffling on. Sigh. So it's a good time to let my 'fresh eyes' give them all yet another going over.
I'll keep you posted. Currently I'm hoping C.L. will be able to soothe my nerves!
Guys I think you're not following my isntructions. Just create an Amazon advantage account. You don't have to do anything with it. Just create the log in. Then go to ams.amazon.co.uk. Sign in using your advantage log in. Voila. UK ads.If you're spending time messing around in Advantage you're doing it wrong.
Alex wrote: "Thanks, C.L. I now understand and have just gone there and set up an ad, feeling proud of myself, and grateful for you taking the time to explain.I've gone with £1 per day average, £0.25 max per ..."
No, do 0.10 per max click. Seriously you can get clicks on Amazon UK of 0.05 per click.
Once the campaign is approved you can edit your bids, but you should be making multiple ads anyway. Do a category interest ad, those do well, and a keyword ad at the very least.
Alex wrote: "C.L. wrote: "Once the campaign is approved you can edit your bids, but you should be making multiple ads anyway. Do a category interest ad, those do well, and a keyword ad at the very least."Than..."
No, don't advertise book 2. Always just advertise book 1 and hope for read-through. One ad is not going to tell you much of anything, since some ads never take off, and some types of ads work better than others.
Tips for amazon - do not trust their ACoS or reported sales. Their reporting sucks. Track the number of impressions and clicks you get each day and track your sales from KDP dashboard. You will need at least 1000 clicks to figure out how many clicks tend to lead to a sale or KDP download if you're in KDP. Once you've figured out that conversion ratio (like 22 clicks = a sale) then you can figure out your maximum bid to make a profit.
What did you guys do about the bit at the bottom of the page where you have to fill in name etc re VAT Registration?C.L. Thank you so very, very much.
Thanks Alex bu all those boxes are showing in red and they won't let me launch the campaign. I must have done something wrong as usual.
I think I filled in too much info yesterday and they think I am a company. Don't know how to get out of it now. Will contact a technical account manager, as it suggests!Thanks for your help. I'll stay in touch.
See - it's just like I said on message 12" I'm always afraid I'll get into something I hadn't intended to and then can't get out of it. "
And to think I'm about to put my books into print! What mess can I make there?
I think I just put my address in. I don't remember if I used my home address or the business address of my publishing arm. Alex, I'm curious - why not publish directly to Amazon via KDP? D2D is good for getting into Apple etc easily but why not go through Amazon directly?
Did you have to provide a bank account?
Anita wrote: "Did you have to provide a bank account?"No, I didn't fill in any banking info.
Oh C.L. I've obviously filled in far too much info.I had an email back from Amazon from someone, very polite, who could not write English very well and repeated back to me what I had written to them. I've sent another message.
Anna Faversham wrote: "Oh C.L. I've obviously filled in far too much info.I had an email back from Amazon from someone, very polite, who could not write English very well and repeated back to me what I had written to t..."
Even if they are going to bill you, hopefully you can make enough with ads to cover it. If you're in KDP especially, half your income will come from that. I've had very good return on UK ads, despite the fact that my book, being mixed-genre/subversion of genre, doesn't convert as well as a standard genre book would. You can get clicks at 0.05 each so even if it takes 50 clicks to make a sale, I can still make a profit if my book is priced at 3.99
Thanks C.L. I'm hoping for a positive reply that responds to my please cancel and let me start again.Did you sign the Terms of Service?
Alex, this is all so tricky, isn't it? I look forward to hearing that your BookBub submission is successful.
There was a form! I filled it in! Sigh. I should be more of a rebel. I still haven't heard back. Sigh (again).
C.L. wrote: "Alex wrote: "C.L. wrote: "Once the campaign is approved you can edit your bids, but you should be making multiple ads anyway. Do a category interest ad, those do well, and a keyword ad at the very ..."You sound very experienced, and accountant-like in figuring this all out. Thanks for sharing with the rest of us. It's a bit mind boggling to learn all these ropes. Appreciate your info. :)
Anna Faversham wrote: "I've been welcomed (and possibly billed) but as none of my books have ISBNs, I can't go any further.Thanks for letting me know, Alex. I'll certainly not be shipping paperbacks around the country...."
My son does all my technical work and even he was flummoxed when trying to put my ebooks on Amazon ads. He's an IT chappy, so if he can't work it out, then I have no chance. In the end we decided to give it up and try other, more simpler ads.
Alex wrote: "Hopefully it will all get sorted now that you've filled in the form."Oh no... the form I filled in so meticulously was my original attempt. I filled in where it said 'company', even though I'm not a company because there were no options, I read their Terms and Conditions and thought none of it applied to me, still I carried on and on and at the very last it would not let me continue until I gave it my VAT details - which, of course, I do not have.
So I contacted them. Polite response in broken English, but I didn't know how to send them the requested screen shot in that little box they offer you. That wouldn't work either.
So I've asked for more help... I now want to cancel the filling in of the form that I have done so far and start again.
No response.
Didn't I just know this was going to happen. What a mess.
The problem, as far as I can see, is that their form is not designed for anything but big companies. C.L. was so very smart in ignoring all the bumph.
Why aren't I smart? Grrr.......
Quetion for C.L. and Alex, please, did you sign the Amazon Marketing Services Agreement? I'm just trying to work out how far you got before you stopped filling stuff in!I've not received a response within the 24 hours they say, so I have written again and asked them to cancel it - so that I can start again. I've never had problems before with their responses.
I fear I may now miss out on being able to advertise.
Anna Faversham wrote: "Quetion for C.L. and Alex, please, did you sign the Amazon Marketing Services Agreement? I'm just trying to work out how far you got before you stopped filling stuff in!I've not received a respon..."
Sheesh, Anna....so sorry this has become a nightmare for you. I am learning from listening to your unfortunate troubles. Not sure I want to try this unless it gets sorted out. Sorry for all the frustration involved. I'm guessing you are having the same thoughts I would....it just shouldn't be this hard!
Thank you, Carmel. I really appreciate the support given in this thread/group. The Amazon Marketing Services Agreement looks terrifying and I am usually so very wary of signing anything I have not read at least 6 times and with which I agree. But this time? I just wanted to get to the end and it was becoming more and more inappropriate but I ploughed on - in order to be able to place cheap adverts! The US ads cost a fair bit and I really don't end up with money in my pocket, but I do fill up Amazon' and various other sites that charge a fortune to advertise my cheap books!
All this time-consuming stuff stops the creative side of writing. Sigh.
Thank you Alex and Carmel. I really do appreciate the support given in this group.What we need is someone who will take charge of marketing for us! Someone who loves this stuff (I usually enjoy it) and charges 10% but then we poor authors will never get any money at all!
Sigh.
If you want to know if you've done enough, just go to ams.amazon.co.uk and see if they let you make ads. The only point of the Advantage account is so you can log into AMS UK. Like, all I did was create the Advantage log in and then log in with it. I filled in the stuff that AMS asked me for and voila.Anna - if you aren't in KDP I highly recommend it. I tried wide for a while but honestly, you can double your income with KDP and higher prices - the higher your price, the more likely KU people will be to try it because they feel like they're getting a bargain, and every KU download counts as a sale for the Amazon algorithm.
C.L., yes, I've only ever been in KDP and my books bounce within the 500 to 600,000 range in the US. A little worse in the UK - and so I want to advertise there. I can't 'launch' the ad, the little button isn't interested until I fill in the VAT parts. I hope that someone in Amazon will fish me out of this murky pool.I do so wish I had stopped after creating the log in!
Ah well, it's probably just a matter of being patient. I hope.
I don't remember either. I just remember creating the log in, then going to AMS and doing whatever AMS asked me to do to get started. Everything was on the AMS side and not the Advantage side. So if there was an AMS agreement I must have agreed to it.
It wasn't a matter of being patient. I ended up having to ask them to cancel my application.I'll try again when I've recovered and try to remember to stay on the AMS side. I didn't notice that there was a choice.
Alex wrote: "It seems to be having a bit of an effect for me, though I am using it to promote a free book so that probably changes things,.."I find it takes a while for an ad to get running, too, so you might not see a spike right away. Then one day, boom! As you say, it'll take a while to see your money coming back because your income comes from read-through. In your experience what percentage of downloads of the free book equal a purchase of one or more of your other books?
Okay, that's not bad! So on the conservative side, you need like 15 downloads of book 1 to get a book 2 sale. So ideally you don't want to spend more than your royalty from book 2 to get 15 downloads of book 1. It takes about 1000 clicks or so to get a reliable average, so bid low, wait til you get 1000 clicks and do the math. If you're spending less or equal to your book 2 royalty to get 15 downloads of book 1, then you're golden because you'll also get book 3 profits.
Oh, and totally ignore their acos line in their reporting - Amazon sucks at attributing sales. Just go by your Draft2Digital reports to figure out downloads. Assume anything more than your previous average number of downloads per day is attributable to ads.
95 clicks for 15,000 impressions is quite good. It means you have good copy. I get a lot of clicks per impression too, usually one click per 200-400 impressions where most people get one per thousand. Where mine falls down is conversion - It takes me around 30 clicks to get a sale or KDP download, which is considered poor. I've tweaked my description a number of times butI think it just comes down to the fact that my book doesn't fall easily into an obvious category so people aren't sure if it's their cup of tea or not.
C.L. wrote: "95 clicks for 15,000 impressions is quite good. It means you have good copy. I get a lot of clicks per impression too, usually one click per 200-400 impressions where most people get one per thousa...""butI think it just comes down to the fact that my book doesn't fall easily into an obvious category so people aren't sure if it's their cup of tea or not."
I think that is my issue as well....not a "typical" kind of book or specific genre....seems to make people hesitant.
I need take time to get my head around this. At the moment it’s flying way above my head. I need to promote effectively in a long term kind of way!
Alex wrote: "I've heard, obviously this is anecdotal so take it with a pinch of salt, that books that don't fit neatly into a specific genre do better outside of Amazon. Personally I would have expected the opp..."I had heard that too but honestly I was getting zilch by being wide. Going back into KDP tripled my income so it works for me. I think people are more willing to take a chance on it if they can read it for free, and once they start it they are hooked and tend to binge read it in a day. And since my books are on the long side being paid by the page works well for me as a model.
D.J. wrote: "I need take time to get my head around this. At the moment it’s flying way above my head. I need to promote effectively in a long term kind of way!"Pick up Brian Meeks' Amazon Ads for Authors. It's readable, entertaining, useful, and comes with a link to a facebook group that is very helpufl.
C.L. wrote: "Alex wrote: "I've heard, obviously this is anecdotal so take it with a pinch of salt, that books that don't fit neatly into a specific genre do better outside of Amazon. Personally I would have exp..."That's interesting, Alex. I have also been reading that if you only have one book, it does better on Amazon, and going wide works better for those writing multiple books and series. That has been my biggest reluctance at this point, as it would be even more work to go that route. But, I appreciate all the discussions and thoughts, as I ponder what route to take with it all. :)
I'm in the middle of doing this now. I have two questions1. Did you fill in all the gumph on the Amazon Advantage Vendor setup process page that requires agreements, contacts, return addresses and bank information to be filled in.
2. On the AMS site did you pick Sponsored Product or a Product Display ad? (I'm put off by the middle one which requires 30-40 keywords!)
Cheers.
There's a secret way to do Amazon ads for other marketplaces. The best part is that because the advertising for places like UK are so new, they give you $100 of free ad spending money AND there is less competition so way better cost per click.
My UK ads are getting clicks at only GBP 0.04-0.06 and once I factor in KDP Select page reads those ads make like a 200% ROI.
So here's how to do it.
Go to http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/gp/vend...
Sign up for a UK Amazon Advantage account.
Then go to ams.amazon.co.uk and sign in using your Advantage log in.
Voila! UK advertising.
And yet if you call Amazon and ask how to do ads in the UK they'll tell you it can't be done.
But here we are.