Writerpedia discussion

Hello everyone,

So I decided to give google's advertising a shot and here are my results. I began the campaign on Jan 15th and let it run until Jan 22nd. I set the limit at a 10 dollar a day budget and put 50 dollars in my account. They charge a 5 dollar start up fee. Then I entered a bunch of key words. The most popular key word was Historical Fiction. I received most of my clicks from the keyword Barnes and Noble and most of my impressions from the keyword Amazon.

So this is how it looks on the high and low. On the 15 of Jan I received 17 clicks costing me 12 dollars. On the 19th I only received 2 clicks costing me.63 cents. By the time the campaign was over I received 83 clicks. I then owed google another $13.28 on top of my fifty.

Now the question is: How did this help me? Truthfully, I have no idea. While I could visually see my fan base increase when I did a Facebook Ad, with Google Ads, I have no idea if this Ad led to any sales, and I know it did not add any fans to my FB page.

Has anyone else tried Google Ads? What were your results? Do you believe it helped your sales?

Being I'm a small-timer, I generally have only one type of advertising running at any given time, so I can get a pretty good idea of what's working and what's not.

I've tried Google ads, Yahoo ads, and Bing ads, on and off over a period of two years. I got no significant sales from any of them. They did not generate enough sales to break even on the cost of the ad.

Frankly, I think Google et al ads are just not a practical advertising method for a book. The math just doesn't work.

Suppose you are a retailer with a web site selling, say, computers. You create a Google ad that costs you 50 cents per click. One sale could easily give you hundreds of dollars of gross profit. Suppose the average is just $100. Then at 50 cents per click, you need 1 out of every 200 people who click on the ad to buy something. Presumably people aren't going to click on your ad unless they want to buy a computer. As you have many many products, the chance that they will find something they like is pretty high. 1 out of 200 doesn't seem implausible.

Now consider a Google ad for a book. Your gross profit on a book is, what, maybe $5? At 50 cents per click, you need 1 out of every 10 people who click on the ad to buy the book. As it's just one book, they might well read whatever description you have of the book on your web site and decide they're not interested and look for something else. So you need a much higher "buy rate" to just break even on the ad, but in fact you'll probably have a much lower buy rate.

Maybe if you've written many books on a single subject and have Google ads for a web site that includes all of them, it could work out. Like if you've written 20 books on home repair, and advertise the site as a whole rather than individual titles. The math would still be strained but not as strained.

Hi Mark,

I agree the Google Ad seemed worthless, and likely did not lead to any sales. My Facebook Ad led to fans, but I'm unsure of sales. Now the giveaway contest I entered on Goodreads has had amazing results. I began the giveaway of A Necessary Heir on the Feb.5th and I'm running it until March 5th.

In the few days its been in the giveaway, 454 people have entered to win and 50 people added my book to their shelf to-be-read. I don't know if this will lead to sales, but I'm very impressed by the numbers and all it cost me was the price of my books and the cost of shipping to the winners. A great way to get your name out to readers in my opinion.

L.A. wrote: "Hi Mark,

I agree the Google Ad seemed worthless, and likely did not lead to any sales. My Facebook Ad led to fans, but I'm unsure of sales. Now the giveaway contest I entered on Goodreads has..."

How did you organise or enter the 'Giveaway' you mention? Was this something you set up for yourself on your author page or is it a promo Goodreads offer?
I am currently running a GR click per view ad. Its really weird because so far, no one, not one, person has clicked the add and yet the number of folk adding my book on their TBR list is going up. I ran a similar add on GR before and a similar thing happened - so it makes me think they liked the blurb and added the book but without clicking (?!) = great for my wallet!

Click the dropdown on "Explore". Select "Giveaways". In the upper right portion of the screen there's an option for "List a new giveaway" or something to that effect. Click this and you come to a form where you can create a giveaway.

Google Adsense is a horrible waste of money. Think about it - when was the last time you clicked on a link, clearly labelled an advertisement from Google? Personally? Never.

What a gouging price too, yeesh...

For authors, especially small time like myself, there are so many free services and social medias available to use - why pay? Hell, Ford, Budweiser, Tim Hortons and Royal Bank wouldn't be on Facebook and Twitter if it wasn't a smart thing to do.

I have actually found that I'll click on Google Adsense to get an idea of what books are new out there. However, I check them out from the library instead of buying them since I'm a grad student with a very tight budget. A library purchase is better than nothing, right?

I think if you want says from folks like me, you'd probably have to write a book they'd make me read for school. That is where all my money goes until I graduate.

So far, for me, the Goodreads giveaway had the best results for marketing and getting your name out there. Google and Facebook Ads were a bust for me, plus there's no way to track to see if the ads led to sales, even if my facebook page gained fans that still doesn't mean a sale. I spent about 50 dollars on each of those mareketing tools, but the Goodreads contest cost me the same with the cost of books and shipping. Now through the Goodreads contest 162 people added A Necessary Heir to their to-be-read shelf. To me that says alot. I did not gain 162 fans on my Facebook page, nor did I have 162 hits a on my Google ad. So yeah Goodreads! I love this site.

To be completely honest, even Goodreads is beginning to lack. It's got more authors than readers who actively participate. Still working, but I think it might begin to get impaired soon.

Here's to hoping it keeps useful!