January 24, 2025 • 42 mins
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, chandler Bolt.
Here and joining me today isAlex Strathdee.
Alex is a bestselling authorturned digital marketing
strategist.
He's the founder ofAdvancedAmazonAdscom.
They've managed this.
Might even be an old stat over$4 million in ad spend for over
500 books.
He can be an old stat over $4million in ad spend for over 500
books.
He's a host of a popularpodcast.
(00:28):
Fun fact we'll ask about this.
At 21 years old, got 11colleges to distribute his books
to over 40,000 students acrossthe US.
So we're going to ask aboutthat and learn about that
Interesting guy.
We've got a lot to learn.
We'll talk about Amazon ads.
We'll talk about that strategy.
We'll probably talk about somebook funnel stuff.
A lot to cover, alex, what'shappening?
(00:49):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Chandler, it's a pleasure to be here.
I'm in your old town, san Diego, and it's really funny to be on
this podcast now because I liketo say I got my master's degree
in book marketing fromlistening to this show.
I mean, I was I kind of createdmy own commute, where I don't
know if you ever went to the UTCmall here in San Diego, but
there was a Capital One cafethat I would go work from and so
(01:12):
I would commute, you know, 30minutes there at 30 minutes back
, and it was always this podcastI was listening to and it's
what taught me, you know, a lotof what I now know.
So thank you, chandler.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, wow, that's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that, andI see the RIT book in the back
and the heroic shirt.
Brian, a good friend of mineand you know, has sent us a ton
of business as well.
We've helped a lot of people inhis community write and publish
books.
What's the connection?
Do you guys run ads for thatbook or what's the connection?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
there.
Yeah, brian's actually been aclient of ours now for over a
year, so he's one of our authors.
A lot of these people areauthors.
I got Michael Watkins of thefirst 90 days, ulrich of the
Price and Roadmap, but actually,if you notice, these are
actually old books that I havehelped me in my business and
you'll see published by a guynamed Chandler hey oh my gosh,
that's a blue version too.
Holy crap.
(02:03):
Yeah, this is an old version,look at that this is the old
school.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, it is.
I didn't even recognize that.
I'm like I was looking for mybook up there.
I didn't even see it.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, it's the old copy.
Nice, well, hey, how did you getinto book stuff, let's talk
that.
And then I want to this yeah,early on, uh, the university
strategy, super interesting,yeah, you got it.
So essentially was back at, youknow, as a college kid, always
entrepreneurial, wanted to dosomething, provide value some
(02:34):
way to some group of people,right.
So what did I know at that time?
I knew interviewing good friendof mine for, for you know, jobs
and stuff.
I had a good friend of mine,rashad canal, who I think's
connected through like a youknow jobs and stuff.
I had a good friend of mine,rishabh Kunal, who I think is
connected through, like you know, three degrees of connection
between us he is.
You know, we started thispodcast together called
Practically Passionate, and westarted to build up a little bit
of traction for that podcast.
(02:54):
And so we're like, okay, what'snext?
Obviously a book.
And so we paid someone to helpus put this book out to the
world and we launched it,expecting people to come running
, you know, as you know, youknow, time, time again, that's
every author.
You know a lot of them.
You put out a book and then youthink people are just going to
come buy your book and theydon't.
So I had to.
Then it became a veryinteresting question To me.
(03:17):
That has now become the companywhich is, you know, advanced
Amazon ads which, depending onwhen this episode comes out,
we're actually rebranding asShelf Life in the new year, so
you can find us at Get ShelfLife, but the book, you know.
We had to figure out how do wesell this thing, and so we you
know, college kids didn't have,you know, 10 bucks to basically
buy a glorified career guidewhen the university was giving
(03:38):
them, you know, something thatwasn't as great, but you know,
at least giving them something.
And so we had to ask ourselves,okay, how are we going to sell
this book?
And so we ran some Amazon adsand that got obviously some
traction.
And then we also did grassrootsmarketing.
So I remember sitting in coffeeshops weekend after weekend and
reached out to every universityacross the country, all of
their career service departments, saying, hey, we've got this,
(03:58):
we did the bestseller launch andall that, and so we could say
it was a bestseller.
And so then, you know, use thatin the emails to these
universities, and that got usabout 50 phone calls.
And out of those 50 phone calls, 11 universities actually said,
hey, yeah, let's, let's sendout this book to our to our
students, and so I man.
I love grassroots marketing andjust getting creative with it.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And so I may have missed this.
Did they buy the books fortheir?
Yeah, great Like, what did that?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
how did that work Great.
Next question so the 11universities that said they'd
gonna, they were gonna, send itout, we had one of them that
were willing to pay for it, sothat was Kansas State.
The College of Business atKansas State said, yeah, we'll
buy 500 copies of your book.
And everyone else said, yeah,you know, we'll distribute it if
you send it to us for free.
And so what we ended up doingis we sat there and we thought,
(04:47):
okay, well, we now have, youknow, a distribution of 40,000
students.
That's about what the 11universities added up to.
And so we thought, okay, how canwe, you know, turn this
audience into, you know, a wayto monetize the book or, at
least, you know, pay for thebook?
And so we turned around, in thesame way that we made a list
for all the college colleges, wemade a list for companies that
would want to get in front ofstudents, right?
(05:09):
So there's, you know, all thesecompanies that want to hire
those students.
And so we ended up turning thebook into a living thing.
You know where we actually soldfull page ads in the book for
$1,000 a piece, to companieslike Kohl's, belk, elephant
Insurance, all taking out $1,000pages in our book and that's
how we ended up being able tomake money off of it, and then
(05:29):
actually that's sort of the seedfunding for what this company
is now.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You're kidding.
So, just if I can repeat thisback because I want to make sure
I understand this.
So reach out to a bunch ofuniversities.
You got 11 to say yes.
10 of them said hey, we'll shipit to people if you give us
free books.
So kind of, uh, kick rocks,essentially, but but also like,
(05:53):
well, you know, we'll pass offfree books.
But then one kansas state said,hey, we're gonna, we're gonna
send out five, we'll buy andsend out 500.
And so so you said, hey, how dowe seed fund this distribution?
Well, okay, now we've got Xthousand college students.
So, hey, organizations want toget in front of these X thousand
(06:14):
college students.
So you said a thousand dollarsper page as kind of like an
advert for these big companies.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Is that kind of how it works Exactly.
And so Kansas state had thephysical books, all the rest
sent out, you know, via theircareer services site.
You know, sent it out a PDF ofthe book and in those PDFs I
mean, we were able to even tracklinks, you know to.
We were able to make it becauseit was digital.
We made it so that it took thestudents directly to
applications for internships andso we were able to then provide
(06:42):
those metrics back to companiesas well.
So we were able to then providethose metrics back to companies
as well, and so we were able tokind of the fact that it was
digital, we could kind of takeadvantage of that too.
But that was, that was my startinto the whole book book
marketing world.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That is cool.
What a fun story, and so thatmakes a lot more sense.
Now they're.
They have a page that is aboutan internship for their
organization.
Essentially.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Nice Exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Where did you learn all this?
The sales and marketing jobs?
That's a great question, Ithink.
Just getting creative.
You've got a problem to solve,so you gotta, you gotta get
creative about it.
I mean, I, I went to Pamplinbusiness school, virginia tech
go, hokies.
You know I love the way I lovethe work ethic of, uh, you know
they teach us at that school,but you know, I think, um, I was
, I was also.
I gotta say I was also.
I got to say I was in Delta,sigma, pi, which was a business
fraternity.
I know you were in.
I forget what the paintingyou're in.
(07:26):
Like a painting, yeah, thepainting, you know it's just
being surrounded by people youknow who are like-minded and you
know thinking in terms ofbusiness and creativity and
sales.
You know, that's, I think,where I got it from.
So shout out to DSP.
For any of those out there whoare fellow brothers, I'd say
Nice.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, I've met many people who were in that
fraternity.
They were all pretty sharp andhey, I'm going to say go Tigers.
You know we play you guysVirginia Tech every now and then
.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Doesn't go well for us.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Not these days.
It used to Name a ball.
So all right, you got this kindof successful swing doing your
own book, distributing throughuniversities.
At what point did you startgetting into Amazon ads?
And I guess that'll kind of bea segue to really nerd out on
Amazon ad stuff.
I'm sure we get a lot ofauthors who are listening to
this Thinking about Amazon ads,trying Amazon ads, maybe they
(08:25):
worked, maybe they didn't work,et cetera.
But how'd you?
What was the foray into Amazonads?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, excited to get uh, get into the nitty gritty,
uh of how to run Amazon adseffectively and who they're for.
But essentially when wepublished our own book, you know
, we worked with this sort ofindie publisher to help us get
that published, and so it wasworking with her.
I, I help us get that published, and so it was working with her
.
I built a little bit of arelationship with her and it
came to the point where I hadthe golden handcuffs.
I was making six figures firstjob out of school for a software
(08:57):
company as a sales engineer,and I hated it.
It would have been the rest ofmy life and sounded pretty awful
.
So I quit that and luckily had afamily member who had free.
She worked for AmericanAirlines and so I got free
flights around the world and Ithought I'm just going to go try
stuff while I travel the world.
And so then I ended up workingpart-time for this indie
publisher and learned kind ofthe business a little bit from
her.
And then I noticed that thepart that her clients seemed to
(09:20):
have the most trouble with wasbook marketing and specifically
running Amazon ads.
And so she would, you know, andthat was something she had me
just setting up Amazon ads forpeople, and so I'd set up some
Amazon ads and eventually, youknow, I realized I'm like you
know, you set them up, but yougot no one managing them.
You know, why don't you justsend them to me when you're done
and I'll start managing?
You know, their ads.
And it started off with justyou know four off, with just you
(09:48):
know, four or five authorspaying me 50 bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And you know, now we charge you know, a thousand
dollars a month and we work with, you know, some of the best
authors in the world, so it'sbeen quite the journey.
That's cool, and so let's gosh,there's a bunch of different
ways I could take this.
Who, I guess maybe we'll starthere who should run Amazon ads?
Who shouldn't?
So if I'm an author, if I'mthinking about it as a marketing
strategy, who does it makesense for?
(10:09):
Who does it not make sense for?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a great starting question.
So more and more I'm trying topush authors into this seeding
copies mindset Bill Gladstone,who's the literary agent to
people like Eckhart Tolle, jackCanfield, maria Kondo, and
essentially his whole thing, isin order to have a commercially
successful book, you need toseed 20,000 copies into the wild
, right?
It's the same with how Ilearned on your podcast,
(10:34):
actually, about who's it RobertKiyosaki.
He got his book in a car washand there was the founder of
Amway, walked in and ended upbuying a copy and then it became
their Bible.
Right, that's what I mean byseeding copies.
Right, he was seeding them in acar wash.
You know you need to find waysto seed copies, and the reason
why I bring that up first isbecause I want to first build a
framework that Amazon ads buildsinto right.
(10:55):
So when you seed your copies ofyour book, right and you know
people like Rob Fitzpatrick Ithink you might have interviewed
him on the show too.
He has a great book calledWrite Useful Books, you know he
talks about you only need toseed a thousand copies into a
micro community Right now.
I think that the truth is thenumber is somewhere between one
thousand and twenty thousand andyou know, if you're a really
serious author, you really wantthis book to do well, then you
(11:17):
should set your goal at.
You know twenty thousand and ifthis is just like kind of a
side project, you just want toget to the next thing.
You know, you can see, you knowa thousand copies and move on
Right.
And so when, once you have yournumber so I think that's where
most authors go wrong withmarketing is they don't have
their number to begin with ofokay, I'm going to commit to
moving this amount of copiesinto the wild, you know that's
kind of your your product test.
(11:38):
You're testing your product.
You're getting enough copiesinto the hands of people I
always say mom's, mom's purchasedoesn't help.
Right, like, these are people.
You need to get the book in thehands of people whose problem
you're actually solving for.
So then, once you have yournumber, then you need to break
down what are the tools at yourdisposal to move books right.
There's podcasting, there'sspeaking at events, there's
Amazon ads, there's all thesedifferent things are going to
(11:58):
take different levels of timeand money to market your book.
Amazon ads is one of the fewthings that will sell your book
while you're asleep, but itcosts money, right.
So let's talk aboutexpectations a little bit, and
then that will help us figureout who's right for Amazon ads
and who's not.
So you have a lot of people.
Let's talk about how Amazon adsgot to where they are today.
(12:19):
So a lot of people joined,started self-publishing back in
2010,.
People like Nir, you know,started self-publishing back in
2010.
People like Nir Eyal, you know,you have all these different
authors who self-published andhad great success.
Because Amazon was, there wasmuch more demand on the platform
than there was supply of books,and so Amazon ads was the same.
It was very easy for authors toget ads set up, and there's a
(12:41):
lot of people I won't name nameswho created Amazon ad courses
that worked for that environmentthat don't work today, and so
there's a lot of misconceptionsaround Amazon ads.
It's a very changed landscapethan how it was in 2015 or
whatever, have you, or even justfive years ago, when clicks
were a lot cheaper than theywere today.
You had the focus of also whatyou know.
(13:01):
Back then, you had just indieauthors who were just trying to
make money off their books.
Now you're competing againstpeople who are trying to use
their Amazon ads as a bookfunnel.
Those people are willing to paya much higher cost per click,
right?
So I'm not saying Amazon adsisn't for you.
I'm just saying don't thinkthat anyone who had success back
in 2015, it doesn't necessarilymean it's relevant to today,
right?
So pay attention to who you'refollowing with that, so the
(13:25):
authors that.
Well, again, that comes down toyour budget and how much.
If you have more money or youhave time, right?
If you have a huge budget andyou're a very, very busy
(13:45):
executive, or just you're a busychef or whatever it is, and you
have more money than time, thenAmazon ads can be one $3 to you
know, $20 to acquire a reader,as opposed to, you know, if you
are someone who has a smallbudget, you know, let's say, you
know you're, you know you'reputting your kids through
college and you know this iskind of just like a side project
you're working on.
You don't have much to fund it.
I would focus much more ondoing grassroots marketing,
(14:08):
right?
So, like we you know Chandlerand I talked about in the
beginning of this episode, about, you know, reaching out to
universities, right, that'sgoing to be much more effective
for you, you know, if you havemore time than money.
So, amazon ads don't expect.
First of all, amazon ads havechanged.
Don't expect them to be ascheap as they were.
That being said, there are afew books that Amazon, for
whatever reason, just loves andtakes off.
Now this is maybe one in athousand books.
(14:29):
So, like you know you, youcan't expect this.
I'm sure you've seen thisbefore too.
Like you know, I know you've,uh, you've had a Hayden Crabtree
of skip the flip.
Right, amazon ads just lovethat guy's book and it.
You know he's just donewonderful things with it because
of it.
And so you know and that's agreat episode, too, to listen to
uh, for those of you thatobviously right time, right
(14:50):
place, right book for Amazon.
There's certain things thatwe've started to notice that are
not Amazon, specific Amazon onthe platform, details about your
book on the platform thatimpact how well your book does
on Amazon.
So, like Joseph Noyan, let'stalk about an example that's
worked really really wellrecently, which is you might
have heard of the author JosephNoyan of Don't Believe
(15:10):
Everything you Think reallyreally well recently, which is
you might have heard of theauthor Joseph Noyan of Don't
Believe Everything.
You Think he actually justworked with a new publishing
company and was able to get theNew York Times hit the New York
Times list last week.
So like major, successful bookright now.
Right Now, joseph is aself-published author.
A year ago or whatever, sixmonths before he released that
book, he had Joseph had zerofollowing.
(15:31):
But what I think he did really,really well and we're starting
to test this a lot internallytoo is the more you send traffic
to Amazon, the more Amazon kindof scratches your back, uh,
back right, the more that theyare going to show your listing
organically.
So if you if you're it's almostlike you know if you are
sending traffic from off ofAmazon let's say you're running
Facebook ads, let's say you'redoing influencer campaigns to
(15:51):
Amazon and then you're runningAmazon ads, your listing is
going to do a whole lot betterbecause Amazon sees it, and not
even just from those conversions, but just due to the increased
clicks on your page and theincreased viewership on your
page.
It's a high, you know.
Think about a website.
It's a higher trafficked pageon Amazon.
Now Amazon's going to promoteit themselves, and so that's
where we were starting to reallytest this correlation between
(16:13):
the two, and so I think modernday.
You know and that's a littlebit of a tip for those if you
are starting to run Amazon ads,understand that Amazon ads will
never be the thing that thatseeds, you know, your 20,000
copies.
It is one tool in your toolbelt, and the more you have
these other pieces going, likeif you're running Facebook ads,
if you're running Facebook ads,if you're doing podcasts that
are converting and drivingtraffic to your listing but
that's the thing you don't evenhave to be selling books from
(16:34):
this additional traffic.
Just start by driving trafficto the Amazon platform and your
ads are going to work betterthan the person who has zero
traffic and that is trying torun Amazon ads for a somewhat
similar book.
So that's a little bit moreabout the nitty gritty.
But basically, who should run?
Answer the question fully.
Who should run?
Answer the question fully.
Who should run Amazon ads?
People who have a budget?
You know it's definitely not.
You know a game to be played bysomeone who's, you know,
(16:57):
scraping together pennies tomarket their book.
You need a budget, and then youknow, I think the other part of
it too is you need acomprehensive marketing strategy
as well, you know.
So those are the two mainthings that I think are
important for people if they'regoing to run Amazon ads that I
think are important for peopleif they're going to run Amazon
ads, make sure that you know youhave the budget and make sure
that you do have you know it aspart of a tool belt, not just
one tool, because otherwise it'slike trying to build a house
(17:18):
with just a hammer.
Right, you know you need thewrench.
You know you need thescrewdriver.
You need all the other toolstoo.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yep, love it.
That's great.
And you know I love this quotefrom Perry Marshall.
He talks about how well I guessI'll back up A lot of people.
I think the common misconceptionis hey, I'm just going to set
up some Amazon ads works greatfor other people and it's going
to be successful right out ofthe gate.
And Perry Marshall talks abouthow your first thousand dollars
(17:43):
on any ad platform is justpaying tuition to learn.
And a lot of ads and a lot ofmarketing in general is let me
try 10 things and hope thatthree of them work.
And then try 10 more and hopethat three of them work.
And you know you bat 300 and uhand baseball, you're in the
hall of fame, kind of verysimilar in marketing and but
(18:03):
you've got to try a lot beforeyou find something that's
successful, including a lot ofdifferent ad variations, copy,
et cetera, et cetera.
So first thousand bucks istuition to learn that platform
especially, or just learn moreabout ads.
I guess a two-part question Ahave you seen that to be true?
And then, how can peopleapproach spending their first
(18:33):
thousand dollars on ads in thesmartest way possible?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
setting up their first campaigns, kind of all
that stuff.
Yeah, I'll probably forget thesecond question by the time I'm
done answering the first, solet's start with the first
question.
So, first question being do youneed to spend $1,000, sort of
thinking of that as your tuition?
Well, that's why you listen toa podcast like this, that's why
(18:55):
you listen to Chandler is tosave yourself that tuition a
little bit, and I'll I'll togive you a little bit of of what
you would be spending on thattuition.
A couple of things to take noteof.
You know the.
It used to be a.
Uh, you know there there's alot of myths with Amazon ads.
You know then and realize thatthere's no gaming.
There's no any.
Anyone who's trying to give youa free lunch or teach you like a
hack method.
It's, it's not real.
And the second, amazon findsthat it's a hack method.
(19:20):
They'll probably do away withit.
Right, like there's manyauthors who found that little
hack that then you know, withinAmazon finds out about it in a
few months and then, you know,does away with it.
So like you really have to earnyour way and think about you
know practically and do this theright way.
So, like, what do I mean bythat?
Like you know, people say like,oh, if I set a campaign end
date, as, like you know, sooner,that means Amazon's going to
show like, no, none of thatstuff is like real, right, I
will say when it comes to blurbs.
(19:41):
So this is another thing thatAmazon, that there's a lot of
misconceptions about there, andI actually used to be in the
digital marketing.
Now I am lucky enough where Ihave some brilliant marketers.
We now have the former head ofOlive Paid Media for Blackstone
Publishing is now on our team.
The former VP over at Goodreadsis now on our team.
(20:03):
I'm fortunate now where I'velearned a lot just from having
experts on my team, and so youneed to be matching, thinking
about what are the differenttypes of people that you're
going after, the types ofaudiences and crafting messages
for those audiences.
So ad text does matter.
That's uh, that's one thingthat I'll mention.
Um, you know, don't run yourcampaigns without ad texts.
Second thing is auto campaigns.
(20:25):
So there's one of the reasonswhy authors, you know it can be
so hit or miss with autocampaigns.
Amazon is only going to.
Auto campaigns are taking thedata that Amazon has about your
book and making the mostinformed decisions based on that
data.
Right now, the data that Amazonhas when you've just put a book
up on Amazon is very limited.
It's very limited to your bookdescription, your book title,
(20:48):
you know any, your back endkeywords, right?
What's more important forAmazon is actually reader
profiles, and so in order tohave reader profiles, you need
people who have purchased yourbook, right?
So Amazon is looking at who haspurchased your book and then
building up a reader profilebased on that data that it has
about your ideal readers, andthen that's who it's running
(21:11):
those ads to, and so peoplespend so much time on the
metadata I wanted a lot of.
It is actually like who isbuying your book.
That's who Amazon's looking atwhen deciding on who to show
your book to, and a big part ofthat is reviews.
So you and I know I've heardyou talk about some other
platforms as well and Chandlerand when it comes to reviews, if
you have the wrong peoplereviewing your book like, let's
(21:32):
say, I'm, I have a business bookand I have a bunch of fiction
readers, you know buying andreviewing my book you are
telling Amazon that your book isfor fiction readers, and so you
know that's like.
You know I hate to say it, butlike platforms like pubby right,
like pubby, you know, if you'reespecially if you're a
nonfiction your book, you'regonna be telling Amazon the
wrong your book is for the wrongpeople.
So it's so important, when yourbook is early on in Amazon, to
(21:56):
make sure that you are drivingthe right people to your book.
It's the same, you know it goesback to my saying mom's purchase
doesn't help.
If your mom loves to readsteamy romance, you know, then,
like she is not gonna be theperson to buy your business book
.
You wanna business book.
You want to make sure you havethe right people buying your
book.
It's going to take you a lotfurther with your Amazon ads.
So that's two, two pieces oftuition that hopefully will
extend you.
There's, you know, definitelyhave ad texts.
(22:17):
Think about the people you'retargeting.
You know it's.
You're not.
Don't just launch a thousandcampaigns.
Uh.
And then the second thing is uh, you know, making sure you have
the right readers before youset up your ads.
You know I say, if you don'thave somewhere between 1,000, at
least 1,000 people who havepurchased your book, unless
you're in a really hot marketand don't get me wrong.
There are still markets onAmazon that have way more demand
(22:38):
than supply.
But unless you're in one ofthose markets, you need to be.
You need to realize that you'regoing to need to teach the
Amazon algorithms who your idealreaders are.
So I know I monologue a lot,chandler, so feel free to stop
me at any point.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
No, it's great.
It's great, it's a big takeaway.
Stay away from mom.
Steamy romance, I'm glad that'swhat stuck out to you.
No, I'm kidding.
Uh, so many great tips there,what?
So it feels like a little bitof a I would imagine, if I'm
listening to this right now, alittle bit of a catch-22.
It's okay, I need readers sothat Amazon knows who to target
(23:10):
right.
I need ads to get readers.
So what?
What would obviously, I meanyou can still spend money on ads
to your, I think, to your point.
They're just going to be lessefficient.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So is there any way?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
to maximize kind of your your bang for your buck
early on.
At times you know anything elsethat you think through.
I want to go like this is mylast question on beginner stuff.
Then I want to really talkadvanced, like how do we scale
all that stuff?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean this goes back to why
it's so important.
You know it is.
It's a catch 22, right, I mean.
I mean that's like one of thehardest things to learn as an
author is just that there's nosuch thing as a free lunch.
You know the lady who I paid tohelp us launch our book.
You know I paid to do a $4,000Amazon bestseller package, right
, and if you use that label inthe right way, like how I used
(23:59):
it to get in front of theseuniversities, then don't get me
wrong it can prove its value.
But a lot of people sign up forthose packages thinking that
their book, that means thatthey're going to have, you know,
thousands of adoring fans.
That's oftentimes not what itleads to, and so it's going back
and just realizing that, yeah,like you know, to become an
author and do something withyour book, it does take work,
and so you know it's where itcomes back to.
(24:20):
You know, having an email list,right, I mean, and I, you know I
love, like you know Tim Grawl's.
You know your first 1000 copies.
You know that's like if youwant to talk about getting your
first 1000 copies, you know, goand message your friends on
Facebook and LinkedInconnections and be like hey, I'm
writing about this topic, youknow, would you be interested?
You know, like an averageconversion rate on a webpage,
(24:41):
you know viewer to subscriber isgoing to be like what?
Like two, 3%, you'll you'llfind that you'll have like a 40
to 50%.
You know it's a conversion rateIf you're asking people one by
one and do that until you have alist of a hundred 200 people.
You know that's your startingplace as an author.
You know if you're releasing abook is start.
You know you have to have anemail list and I actually took
this from you that you know.
Again, you know we can go intoso many different rabbit holes
(25:03):
here.
I know you want to stay onAmazon ads, but you know, for
those authors who are like, okayit, you know you need to start
with like a mini audience andthen, you know, nurturing those
emails.
I actually stole this from yourinterview with James Clear
Chandler, where you know he hasthe three, two, one format,
which I think is like sobrilliant, not just because of
the fact that you know it's it'ssimple, easy to read, but also
you can batch produce that youdon't have to sit down and think
(25:25):
of oh, what am I going to writeto my followers today?
It's okay, what are three?
You know, like our three to oneis three book marketing secrets
, two links that are helpful forauthors and then one quote,
right, and so you know, thinkabout some structure, that's,
and we produce our a month fullof newsletters and, you know,
two hours a month.
So it doesn't have to be hard,just go back and listen to all
the episodes that Chandler's putout.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I appreciate that.
Yeah man, I love that.
Yeah man, I love that.
So, and you're right, I'mreally hammering you down on
Amazon ads.
I know you got way off on thatand I apologize.
We can go deeper, so maybe gointermediate, advanced funnels
and how they kind of cometogether and guys, obviously
Alex has got a book, check itout.
It's called Book Funnels andAmazon Ads, where he goes into a
(26:22):
lot of these frameworks.
Yeah, so all right, I've spentmy first thousand.
I'm maybe at a break even ormaybe slightly losing money,
maybe slightly making money.
What's the difference or what'sneeded to say, okay, I can now
scale this up to where I'mspending.
Let's call it a thousand bucksa month on ads at break even or
(26:43):
better, like what are the leversthat you see there to improve
ad performance?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
or better, like, what are the levers that you see
there to improve ad performance?
Yeah, so I would say one of themost important things getting
again intermediate is trackingyour data.
So, like the Amazon, the Amazonads dashboard is very
rudimentary.
It doesn't provide you with youknow what really.
You know a lot of the data.
That another.
You know more advancedplatforms, because, you can
remember, amazon ads is stillnew to the game compared to some
(27:08):
of these more legacy ads adplatforms.
And so, compiling your searchterm data I can't believe that
Amazon doesn't allow you to dothis.
Compiling your search term dataover a longer time horizon
right, so the longest, amazonhangs on to data for 65 days.
What I would recommend doing isand you know it depends how
(27:28):
good you are with Excel, butdownloading those search term
reports every 30 days and addingtogether the metrics, the
long-term metrics, and so thatis going to help you make much
more informed decisions and seeover the time what are my
highest converting targets, thatI can then build out further
campaigns on A couple morethings too.
(27:49):
So, yeah, utilize the searchterm reports a lot.
Again, compile that data every30 days and how advanced you
want to get with this is howmuch time you got here, chandler
.
But the second thing is there'sa lot of times that we'll see
that, for whatever reason, somebooks just won't start.
They just won't even showimpressions, and that's like a
(28:09):
why a lot of authors come to usis like, like I have budget, I
just can't even get Amazon tostart getting clicks or
impressions.
We actually reach out, uh, andyou know we're lucky where we
have back channels now with uh,where we've actually
unofficially become Amazon's uhchoice partner for nonfiction
books, where they actually sendus clients now, yeah, yeah, it's
(28:29):
cool.
They just sent us Dan Heath.
So like now we're working withDan Heath and that was Amazon
sent us that, which is prettycool, amazon.
So, yeah, amazon, oftentimesthere are actually a lot of
glitches on the backend.
So you know where your bookisn't showing.
We just and you know, maybeI'll get canceled for saying
this but we just bombard Amazonsupport and saying like, hey,
(28:50):
something's clearly wrong here.
We can't even get impressionsto show and it's like overnight
things will start to to.
We'll start to see clicks andimpressions come in.
So it's almost like they justare like okay, this person's
either annoying us or they seethat there is some glitch on the
backend and it turns on.
So reach out to Amazon supportin your ads dashboard if you're
seeing issues, so that'ssomething that fixes a lot of
(29:10):
issues.
Also, keep in mind that, ifyou're one of the key components
that I find Amazon, this isgoing back to, first of all,
what the issue is.
People will bid as much as like$10 on a bid and not get
clicked, and people are like Idon't understand, why is that?
I thought it's like asecond-tier auction system,
right, get clicked and peoplelike I don't understand, why is
that?
I thought it's like a secondtier auction system, right.
There's a lot more going intoAmazon's decision of when to
(29:31):
show an ad at a given time,which is, you know, like how
much Amazon actually thinks thatbook can convert.
And what's different is thatyou know where Facebook, which
you know you have you know it'smore about traffic.
Amazon is looking for booksales and Amazon actually makes
money when books sell, not justwhen people click on ads, right,
and so that's part of what'sgoing into that equation.
We found that even changingyour book pricing so that Amazon
(29:54):
can make more, so raising yourprices, can actually help your
book do better.
Again, these are all justleverage to pull.
I'm not saying one of these isgoing to be the given, you know
the thing, the golden nugget foryou.
I'm just saying you have tokeep.
(30:14):
You know, it's one big scienceexperiment, right?
So, like you know, with a bookat and we actually found there
was a something we ran with abook, one of our authors where,
you know, amazon will discountyour book for you.
You know, if Amazon gives you adiscount on your book, you know
that's like key, like pushreally hard on your book because
you're printing money right.
Like they will discount yourbook and still pay you based on
your royalty if you haven'tdiscounted the book anywhere
else.
And so we even tested this andI undid it very quickly because
(30:35):
you never want to bite the handthat feeds you.
But this lady's book wasselling at, you know, $19.99 and
it was discounted down to like$12.35.
And so we were like, okay, Iwonder what happens if we price
the book at, like you know, ahundred dollars?
And so we literally raised theprint book to a hundred dollars
just for, like a short-term test, and Amazon was paying more in
royalties than they were anyone.
(30:56):
You know, maybe I'll even getin trouble for saying this, but
you're like there.
A whole point of this is to saythat there are glitches on
Amazon and Amazon's ends right,and Amazon's end.
It's not a perfect platform,but you know, I do see that.
(31:19):
You know that's an extremeexample, but I do find that you
know, even if Amazon's notdiscounting, let's say you raise
your book to, you know, from$19.95 to like $24.95.
Your ads might show a littlemore because Amazon now has a
bigger you know bigger pie.
You know they get to make moneyoff of your book versus.
It depends on the competitorlandscape and what the people
bidding against you are, youknow is.
(31:39):
But you know, playing with yourpricing and raising your prices
can actually help your ads dobetter because Amazon, you know
again, has more to gain fromyour books.
So those are a couple of bighighlights that I'd say.
You know getting into more ofthe intermediate stuff, you know
again.
I think that you know goingback to the fundamental of just
what audiences are working foryou right now, and then you know
building out from there.
(32:00):
You know, in terms of metrics,I know some people will say like
a one in 30,.
You know, one click in or onepurchase in 30 clicks, or you
know one purchase in 50 clicks,the you know again.
You know, and those metrics atthe very beginning were a little
bit outdated we now managearound 10 million, or we have
managed around 10 million Amazonad spend and we currently have
around 5 million under undermanagement.
(32:21):
And so with the we usually findlike a one in 20 is about
average, so about one click orone order for every 20 clicks.
That's about an averageconversion rate, but some books
are they're at one in 30 andit's still healthy.
So hopefully those are somegood intermediate tips for you
and the listeners.
Chandler.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Cool, that's great, really good.
I just see some notes here.
I like that Gosh.
There's one follow up that Iwas going to ask on that.
It's escaping me right now.
But are you guys testing abunch of copy and that sort of
thing?
I mean, I guess you got yourlevers of your copy and your
(33:04):
targeting and then other stuff,stuff as well, but what are the
biggest levers that you'retesting that you see, make, make
the biggest difference andimprovements in and, uh, you
know, row, as to use a morecommon term.
I know obviously not the amazonspecific term, but like what do
you see there?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
yeah, you're off to a good start with the book
description.
Um, obviously, book descriptionis really important.
We found, uh, we tracked,tracked, and I say we.
You know, I got to give a shoutout to my team member, laura
Russell, who was our chiefmarketing scientist.
She looked and Atomic Habitschanged their book description
like eight times so far thisyear, if not more.
I could be even misquoting that.
So, yes, updated bookdescriptions.
(33:44):
Amazon just seems to likefreshness to your page, right,
so they like to see that there'sactivity on the page.
That it's.
You know you're changing things.
And then Amazon's constantlychanging things.
Because if everything stays thesame and your impressions have
gone down, you know that isAmazon saying, hey, we've tried
your book, it's not workingright, so you need to keep
things fresh.
You'd be trying other things.
Or else Amazon kind of justlike shadow, bans you because
(34:06):
they see like nothing'sconverting, right, so yes, keep
your book description updated.
And then other things I'd say Imean, yeah, you can't be tied to
your book cover.
You know, if you have a really,really low click-through rate,
then obviously and I say lowanything below like we have some
books that are as low as a 0.1.
And as long as their conversionrate's high, it's not a problem
.
So even if your click-throughrate is, uh is low, uh, you know
(34:29):
, like 0.1, you know that andyou're converting, it's not a
problem If it starts to getlower than that.
That's where and I start tolook at, like, how many reviews
do you have?
You know how many like, how'syour book uh cover?
And start to look at thingslike that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
But yeah, I mean like like eight, 10 times this past
year.
So definitely you want to keepthat fresh.
Nice, that's good, I like that.
I'll ask we're almost out oftime.
I'll say advanced, anythingabove.
Like okay, now we're spendingfive, 10 grand a month, or
actually, what's the most moneyyou're spending on a book?
You don't have to tell me thebook, but what you're spending
(35:10):
on a single book a month in ads,and is there anything you're
doing differently or have to dodifferently at scale, so you
don't just see huge erosions inin row S?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, so we've seen we actually have seen that this
is a we have the most spendingnonfiction book on all of Amazon
.
We've checked with Amazon andso it is.
I believe that we got up to thehighest month was like $45,000.
So this one author that we werespending for so $45,000 Amazon
ads spend one month and when youstart getting to that level,
(35:42):
you're starting to be morestrategic about trying to build
up your organic.
You're targeting, you're beingstrategic about building up
cross relevance with other books.
So again, going back to teachingthe Amazon algorithms who your
audience is.
If a thousand people who haveread, let's say, my book is
Money Book, rich Dad, poor Dad.
Or let's say my book is a MoneyBook and Rich Dad, poor Dad's a
(36:04):
book out there, I want as manyof his readers to have read my
book as possible.
So then you get more into howcan I get as many of his readers
to buy my books.
That Amazon then sees all thesebooks are related and then
shows them organically in placeslike frequently bought together
, right, which is, you know, oneof the few organic placements
that you get on Amazon, right?
And so then it's more soinfluencing the Amazon
(36:24):
algorithms at a larger scale andthat's where our team is now
testing.
You know, beyond just you knowwhat can we do outside of the
Amazon ads that influences theAmazon ads?
I'd say that's the advancedlevel is when you're starting to
weave your marketing activitiestogether so that you have a
comprehensive strategy that thatthen propels your Amazon ads.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Cool, I like that.
Yeah, speaking of outside ofAmazon, I hate to throw you kind
of a big hand grenade right atthe end, but let's talk like how
do book funnels play in withall this and how do you use that
in tandem with Amazon adsrunning to really juice returns
for authors that you're working?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
with.
Yeah, and this is where it's.
You know it's good to test yourcost per reader that you're
getting or cost per lead.
You know, because obviously,the difference between a book
funnel and Amazon versus onethat you're running, you know,
like on your on your website orFacebook or whatever is that you
don't get the data right whenyou're running.
You know Amazon doesn't want togive you who the reader is.
Uh, we find that the you knowthere's some, some of our
authors have as high as a 30%conversion rate.
(37:21):
Uh, we track data that comesjust specifically from
purchasers of the book on Amazonand you know we can see, okay,
10 people bought their book thismonth and three of them turned
into subscribers.
Really, we find that having apage in the very beginning of
the book, you know conversionpage and actually you know part
of this I even heard, you knowwith your help was audio book,
(37:42):
audio books and you know, free,yeah, audio books.
And what was the other one?
Oh, free, complimentary courses.
We find that the other thingthat really works quite well.
We have one of our authors, edRush.
He's the author of two books 21Day Miracle and God Talks.
His book converts about 20 or30 percent.
The 21 Day Miracle like really,really well.
And so you know, we have ourauthors honestly, when they come
(38:03):
to us and ask us, like how canI have a better conversion in
the book, that's kind of ourshining light.
We have them replicatesomething like that, which is
not too complicated, it's just,you know, a very.
We find that anything where theauthor is taking, giving a
reader like a little extra bitof time, is something you know
in the form of like a course,like walking them through the
book.
We find that to be really,really helpful.
And then specific, you knowreally thoughtful tools
(38:27):
throughout the book.
Right, if you're just sayinglike, come get my, you know PDF,
you know each chapter, like no,like, okay, you know.
For example, you know we haveour new book which is, if you've
heard, you know here, obviouslyI could go on for 10 hours
about all things book marketing,not just Amazon ads.
You know I have a new bookcoming out in the new year
before the bestseller same nameas our podcast, and in that book
(38:48):
you know it talks about, youknow there's different parts in
it where, like there there's a.
You know we have an influencertracker sheet right, a chapter
about, uh, how to do aninfluencer program.
So, okay, what is a somethingthat makes sense for that
chapter?
A tracker for influencers,right, Like you have to have.
You know, thoughtful things.
One of my favorite examplesalso is One Page Marketing Plan
(39:09):
by Alan Dibb.
The whole book is about the onepage marketing plan.
What do you think is the bestpossible lead gen thing that
people could go?
Reader magnet that people couldgo get from his website?
A one page marketing plantemplate.
right, like the whole.
You know the book is almostlike useless without it.
So you know, these are justsome things to think about.
(39:30):
I'm trying to talk fast here,so I apologize, you know, cause
I know we're coming to the endlanding the plane, as you like
to say.
So, uh, you know, hopefullythat's been helpful.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
That's good.
Wow, even using my catchphrasesagain, let's land the plane.
Uh, this is awesome, alex.
Where can people go to find outmore about you, your company
working with you guys?
Where you know the new book yougot coming up?
Whatever is the best place tosend people?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
absolutely assuming this podcast comes out early
February, then Get Shelf Life isthe best place to go to hear
more about us and then check outthe book which is before the
bestseller on Amazon all right,love it, alex, really really
helpful.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And check out the book which is before the
bestseller on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
All right, love it, alex.
Really, really helpful episode.
I appreciate you, dude.
It's so cool to be here.
Like I've learned, I'veliterally listened to your voice
for hundreds of hours, so it'scool to actually be having a
two-way conversation for once.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
It's so cool, it's so good.
I love it.
Hey, chandler Bolt.
Here and joining me today isAlex Strathdee.
Alex is a bestselling authorturned digital marketing
strategist.
He's the founder ofAdvancedAmazonAdscom.
They've managed this.
Might even be an old stat over$4 million in ad spend for over
500 books.
He can be an old stat over $4million in ad spend for over 500
books.
He's a host of a popularpodcast.
(00:28):
Fun fact we'll ask about this.
At 21 years old, got 11colleges to distribute his books
to over 40,000 students acrossthe US.
So we're going to ask aboutthat and learn about that
Interesting guy.
We've got a lot to learn.
We'll talk about Amazon ads.
We'll talk about that strategy.
We'll probably talk about somebook funnel stuff.
A lot to cover, alex, what'shappening?
(00:49):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Chandler, it's a pleasure to be here.
I'm in your old town, san Diego, and it's really funny to be on
this podcast now because I liketo say I got my master's degree
in book marketing fromlistening to this show.
I mean, I was I kind of createdmy own commute, where I don't
know if you ever went to the UTCmall here in San Diego, but
there was a Capital One cafethat I would go work from and so
(01:12):
I would commute, you know, 30minutes there at 30 minutes back
, and it was always this podcastI was listening to and it's
what taught me, you know, a lotof what I now know.
So thank you, chandler.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, wow, that's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that, andI see the RIT book in the back
and the heroic shirt.
Brian, a good friend of mineand you know, has sent us a ton
of business as well.
We've helped a lot of people inhis community write and publish
books.
What's the connection?
Do you guys run ads for thatbook or what's the connection?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
there.
Yeah, brian's actually been aclient of ours now for over a
year, so he's one of our authors.
A lot of these people areauthors.
I got Michael Watkins of thefirst 90 days, ulrich of the
Price and Roadmap, but actually,if you notice, these are
actually old books that I havehelped me in my business and
you'll see published by a guynamed Chandler hey oh my gosh,
that's a blue version too.
Holy crap.
(02:03):
Yeah, this is an old version,look at that this is the old
school.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, it is.
I didn't even recognize that.
I'm like I was looking for mybook up there.
I didn't even see it.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
That's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, it's the old copy.
Nice, well, hey, how did you getinto book stuff, let's talk
that.
And then I want to this yeah,early on, uh, the university
strategy, super interesting,yeah, you got it.
So essentially was back at, youknow, as a college kid, always
entrepreneurial, wanted to dosomething, provide value some
(02:34):
way to some group of people,right.
So what did I know at that time?
I knew interviewing good friendof mine for, for you know, jobs
and stuff.
I had a good friend of mine,rashad canal, who I think's
connected through like a youknow jobs and stuff.
I had a good friend of mine,rishabh Kunal, who I think is
connected through, like you know, three degrees of connection
between us he is.
You know, we started thispodcast together called
Practically Passionate, and westarted to build up a little bit
of traction for that podcast.
(02:54):
And so we're like, okay, what'snext?
Obviously a book.
And so we paid someone to helpus put this book out to the
world and we launched it,expecting people to come running
, you know, as you know, youknow, time, time again, that's
every author.
You know a lot of them.
You put out a book and then youthink people are just going to
come buy your book and theydon't.
So I had to.
Then it became a veryinteresting question To me.
(03:17):
That has now become the companywhich is, you know, advanced
Amazon ads which, depending onwhen this episode comes out,
we're actually rebranding asShelf Life in the new year, so
you can find us at Get ShelfLife, but the book, you know.
We had to figure out how do wesell this thing, and so we you
know, college kids didn't have,you know, 10 bucks to basically
buy a glorified career guidewhen the university was giving
(03:38):
them, you know, something thatwasn't as great, but you know,
at least giving them something.
And so we had to ask ourselves,okay, how are we going to sell
this book?
And so we ran some Amazon adsand that got obviously some
traction.
And then we also did grassrootsmarketing.
So I remember sitting in coffeeshops weekend after weekend and
reached out to every universityacross the country, all of
their career service departments, saying, hey, we've got this,
(03:58):
we did the bestseller launch andall that, and so we could say
it was a bestseller.
And so then, you know, use thatin the emails to these
universities, and that got usabout 50 phone calls.
And out of those 50 phone calls, 11 universities actually said,
hey, yeah, let's, let's sendout this book to our to our
students, and so I man.
I love grassroots marketing andjust getting creative with it.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
And so I may have missed this.
Did they buy the books fortheir?
Yeah, great Like, what did that?
Speaker 2 (04:25):
how did that work Great.
Next question so the 11universities that said they'd
gonna, they were gonna, send itout, we had one of them that
were willing to pay for it, sothat was Kansas State.
The College of Business atKansas State said, yeah, we'll
buy 500 copies of your book.
And everyone else said, yeah,you know, we'll distribute it if
you send it to us for free.
And so what we ended up doingis we sat there and we thought,
(04:47):
okay, well, we now have, youknow, a distribution of 40,000
students.
That's about what the 11universities added up to.
And so we thought, okay, how canwe, you know, turn this
audience into, you know, a wayto monetize the book or, at
least, you know, pay for thebook?
And so we turned around, in thesame way that we made a list
for all the college colleges, wemade a list for companies that
would want to get in front ofstudents, right?
(05:09):
So there's, you know, all thesecompanies that want to hire
those students.
And so we ended up turning thebook into a living thing.
You know where we actually soldfull page ads in the book for
$1,000 a piece, to companieslike Kohl's, belk, elephant
Insurance, all taking out $1,000pages in our book and that's
how we ended up being able tomake money off of it, and then
(05:29):
actually that's sort of the seedfunding for what this company
is now.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
You're kidding.
So, just if I can repeat thisback because I want to make sure
I understand this.
So reach out to a bunch ofuniversities.
You got 11 to say yes.
10 of them said hey, we'll shipit to people if you give us
free books.
So kind of, uh, kick rocks,essentially, but but also like,
(05:53):
well, you know, we'll pass offfree books.
But then one kansas state said,hey, we're gonna, we're gonna
send out five, we'll buy andsend out 500.
And so so you said, hey, how dowe seed fund this distribution?
Well, okay, now we've got Xthousand college students.
So, hey, organizations want toget in front of these X thousand
(06:14):
college students.
So you said a thousand dollarsper page as kind of like an
advert for these big companies.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Is that kind of how it works Exactly.
And so Kansas state had thephysical books, all the rest
sent out, you know, via theircareer services site.
You know, sent it out a PDF ofthe book and in those PDFs I
mean, we were able to even tracklinks, you know to.
We were able to make it becauseit was digital.
We made it so that it took thestudents directly to
applications for internships andso we were able to then provide
(06:42):
those metrics back to companiesas well.
So we were able to then providethose metrics back to companies
as well, and so we were able tokind of the fact that it was
digital, we could kind of takeadvantage of that too.
But that was, that was my startinto the whole book book
marketing world.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
That is cool.
What a fun story, and so thatmakes a lot more sense.
Now they're.
They have a page that is aboutan internship for their
organization.
Essentially.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Nice Exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Where did you learn all this?
The sales and marketing jobs?
That's a great question, Ithink.
Just getting creative.
You've got a problem to solve,so you gotta, you gotta get
creative about it.
I mean, I, I went to Pamplinbusiness school, virginia tech
go, hokies.
You know I love the way I lovethe work ethic of, uh, you know
they teach us at that school,but you know, I think, um, I was
, I was also.
I gotta say I was also.
I got to say I was in Delta,sigma, pi, which was a business
fraternity.
I know you were in.
I forget what the paintingyou're in.
(07:26):
Like a painting, yeah, thepainting, you know it's just
being surrounded by people youknow who are like-minded and you
know thinking in terms ofbusiness and creativity and
sales.
You know, that's, I think,where I got it from.
So shout out to DSP.
For any of those out there whoare fellow brothers, I'd say
Nice.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, I've met many people who were in that
fraternity.
They were all pretty sharp andhey, I'm going to say go Tigers.
You know we play you guysVirginia Tech every now and then
.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Doesn't go well for us.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Not these days.
It used to Name a ball.
So all right, you got this kindof successful swing doing your
own book, distributing throughuniversities.
At what point did you startgetting into Amazon ads?
And I guess that'll kind of bea segue to really nerd out on
Amazon ad stuff.
I'm sure we get a lot ofauthors who are listening to
this Thinking about Amazon ads,trying Amazon ads, maybe they
(08:25):
worked, maybe they didn't work,et cetera.
But how'd you?
What was the foray into Amazonads?
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, excited to get uh, get into the nitty gritty,
uh of how to run Amazon adseffectively and who they're for.
But essentially when wepublished our own book, you know
, we worked with this sort ofindie publisher to help us get
that published, and so it wasworking with her.
I, I help us get that published, and so it was working with her
.
I built a little bit of arelationship with her and it
came to the point where I hadthe golden handcuffs.
I was making six figures firstjob out of school for a software
(08:57):
company as a sales engineer,and I hated it.
It would have been the rest ofmy life and sounded pretty awful
.
So I quit that and luckily had afamily member who had free.
She worked for AmericanAirlines and so I got free
flights around the world and Ithought I'm just going to go try
stuff while I travel the world.
And so then I ended up workingpart-time for this indie
publisher and learned kind ofthe business a little bit from
her.
And then I noticed that thepart that her clients seemed to
(09:20):
have the most trouble with wasbook marketing and specifically
running Amazon ads.
And so she would, you know, andthat was something she had me
just setting up Amazon ads forpeople, and so I'd set up some
Amazon ads and eventually, youknow, I realized I'm like you
know, you set them up, but yougot no one managing them.
You know, why don't you justsend them to me when you're done
and I'll start managing?
You know, their ads.
And it started off with justyou know four off, with just you
(09:48):
know, four or five authorspaying me 50 bucks a month.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
And you know, now we charge you know, a thousand
dollars a month and we work with, you know, some of the best
authors in the world, so it'sbeen quite the journey.
That's cool, and so let's gosh,there's a bunch of different
ways I could take this.
Who, I guess maybe we'll starthere who should run Amazon ads?
Who shouldn't?
So if I'm an author, if I'mthinking about it as a marketing
strategy, who does it makesense for?
(10:09):
Who does it not make sense for?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a great starting question.
So more and more I'm trying topush authors into this seeding
copies mindset Bill Gladstone,who's the literary agent to
people like Eckhart Tolle, jackCanfield, maria Kondo, and
essentially his whole thing, isin order to have a commercially
successful book, you need toseed 20,000 copies into the wild
, right?
It's the same with how Ilearned on your podcast,
(10:34):
actually, about who's it RobertKiyosaki.
He got his book in a car washand there was the founder of
Amway, walked in and ended upbuying a copy and then it became
their Bible.
Right, that's what I mean byseeding copies.
Right, he was seeding them in acar wash.
You know you need to find waysto seed copies, and the reason
why I bring that up first isbecause I want to first build a
framework that Amazon ads buildsinto right.
(10:55):
So when you seed your copies ofyour book, right and you know
people like Rob Fitzpatrick Ithink you might have interviewed
him on the show too.
He has a great book calledWrite Useful Books, you know he
talks about you only need toseed a thousand copies into a
micro community Right now.
I think that the truth is thenumber is somewhere between one
thousand and twenty thousand andyou know, if you're a really
serious author, you really wantthis book to do well, then you
(11:17):
should set your goal at.
You know twenty thousand and ifthis is just like kind of a
side project, you just want toget to the next thing.
You know, you can see, you knowa thousand copies and move on
Right.
And so when, once you have yournumber so I think that's where
most authors go wrong withmarketing is they don't have
their number to begin with ofokay, I'm going to commit to
moving this amount of copiesinto the wild, you know that's
kind of your your product test.
(11:38):
You're testing your product.
You're getting enough copiesinto the hands of people I
always say mom's, mom's purchasedoesn't help.
Right, like, these are people.
You need to get the book in thehands of people whose problem
you're actually solving for.
So then, once you have yournumber, then you need to break
down what are the tools at yourdisposal to move books right.
There's podcasting, there'sspeaking at events, there's
Amazon ads, there's all thesedifferent things are going to
(11:58):
take different levels of timeand money to market your book.
Amazon ads is one of the fewthings that will sell your book
while you're asleep, but itcosts money, right.
So let's talk aboutexpectations a little bit, and
then that will help us figureout who's right for Amazon ads
and who's not.
So you have a lot of people.
Let's talk about how Amazon adsgot to where they are today.
(12:19):
So a lot of people joined,started self-publishing back in
2010,.
People like Nir, you know,started self-publishing back in
2010.
People like Nir Eyal, you know,you have all these different
authors who self-published andhad great success.
Because Amazon was, there wasmuch more demand on the platform
than there was supply of books,and so Amazon ads was the same.
It was very easy for authors toget ads set up, and there's a
(12:41):
lot of people I won't name nameswho created Amazon ad courses
that worked for that environmentthat don't work today, and so
there's a lot of misconceptionsaround Amazon ads.
It's a very changed landscapethan how it was in 2015 or
whatever, have you, or even justfive years ago, when clicks
were a lot cheaper than theywere today.
You had the focus of also whatyou know.
(13:01):
Back then, you had just indieauthors who were just trying to
make money off their books.
Now you're competing againstpeople who are trying to use
their Amazon ads as a bookfunnel.
Those people are willing to paya much higher cost per click,
right?
So I'm not saying Amazon adsisn't for you.
I'm just saying don't thinkthat anyone who had success back
in 2015, it doesn't necessarilymean it's relevant to today,
right?
So pay attention to who you'refollowing with that, so the
(13:25):
authors that.
Well, again, that comes down toyour budget and how much.
If you have more money or youhave time, right?
If you have a huge budget andyou're a very, very busy
(13:45):
executive, or just you're a busychef or whatever it is, and you
have more money than time, thenAmazon ads can be one $3 to you
know, $20 to acquire a reader,as opposed to, you know, if you
are someone who has a smallbudget, you know, let's say, you
know you're, you know you'reputting your kids through
college and you know this iskind of just like a side project
you're working on.
You don't have much to fund it.
I would focus much more ondoing grassroots marketing,
(14:08):
right?
So, like we you know Chandlerand I talked about in the
beginning of this episode, about, you know, reaching out to
universities, right, that'sgoing to be much more effective
for you, you know, if you havemore time than money.
So, amazon ads don't expect.
First of all, amazon ads havechanged.
Don't expect them to be ascheap as they were.
That being said, there are afew books that Amazon, for
whatever reason, just loves andtakes off.
Now this is maybe one in athousand books.
(14:29):
So, like you know you, youcan't expect this.
I'm sure you've seen thisbefore too.
Like you know, I know you've,uh, you've had a Hayden Crabtree
of skip the flip.
Right, amazon ads just lovethat guy's book and it.
You know he's just donewonderful things with it because
of it.
And so you know and that's agreat episode, too, to listen to
uh, for those of you thatobviously right time, right
(14:50):
place, right book for Amazon.
There's certain things thatwe've started to notice that are
not Amazon, specific Amazon onthe platform, details about your
book on the platform thatimpact how well your book does
on Amazon.
So, like Joseph Noyan, let'stalk about an example that's
worked really really wellrecently, which is you might
have heard of the author JosephNoyan of Don't Believe
(15:10):
Everything you Think reallyreally well recently, which is
you might have heard of theauthor Joseph Noyan of Don't
Believe Everything.
You Think he actually justworked with a new publishing
company and was able to get theNew York Times hit the New York
Times list last week.
So like major, successful bookright now.
Right Now, joseph is aself-published author.
A year ago or whatever, sixmonths before he released that
book, he had Joseph had zerofollowing.
(15:31):
But what I think he did really,really well and we're starting
to test this a lot internallytoo is the more you send traffic
to Amazon, the more Amazon kindof scratches your back, uh,
back right, the more that theyare going to show your listing
organically.
So if you if you're it's almostlike you know if you are
sending traffic from off ofAmazon let's say you're running
Facebook ads, let's say you'redoing influencer campaigns to
(15:51):
Amazon and then you're runningAmazon ads, your listing is
going to do a whole lot betterbecause Amazon sees it, and not
even just from those conversions, but just due to the increased
clicks on your page and theincreased viewership on your
page.
It's a high, you know.
Think about a website.
It's a higher trafficked pageon Amazon.
Now Amazon's going to promoteit themselves, and so that's
where we were starting to reallytest this correlation between
(16:13):
the two, and so I think modernday.
You know and that's a littlebit of a tip for those if you
are starting to run Amazon ads,understand that Amazon ads will
never be the thing that thatseeds, you know, your 20,000
copies.
It is one tool in your toolbelt, and the more you have
these other pieces going, likeif you're running Facebook ads,
if you're running Facebook ads,if you're doing podcasts that
are converting and drivingtraffic to your listing but
that's the thing you don't evenhave to be selling books from
(16:34):
this additional traffic.
Just start by driving trafficto the Amazon platform and your
ads are going to work betterthan the person who has zero
traffic and that is trying torun Amazon ads for a somewhat
similar book.
So that's a little bit moreabout the nitty gritty.
But basically, who should run?
Answer the question fully.
Who should run?
Answer the question fully.
Who should run Amazon ads?
People who have a budget?
You know it's definitely not.
You know a game to be played bysomeone who's, you know,
(16:57):
scraping together pennies tomarket their book.
You need a budget, and then youknow, I think the other part of
it too is you need acomprehensive marketing strategy
as well, you know.
So those are the two mainthings that I think are
important for people if they'regoing to run Amazon ads that I
think are important for peopleif they're going to run Amazon
ads, make sure that you know youhave the budget and make sure
that you do have you know it aspart of a tool belt, not just
one tool, because otherwise it'slike trying to build a house
(17:18):
with just a hammer.
Right, you know you need thewrench.
You know you need thescrewdriver.
You need all the other toolstoo.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yep, love it.
That's great.
And you know I love this quotefrom Perry Marshall.
He talks about how well I guessI'll back up A lot of people.
I think the common misconceptionis hey, I'm just going to set
up some Amazon ads works greatfor other people and it's going
to be successful right out ofthe gate.
And Perry Marshall talks abouthow your first thousand dollars
(17:43):
on any ad platform is justpaying tuition to learn.
And a lot of ads and a lot ofmarketing in general is let me
try 10 things and hope thatthree of them work.
And then try 10 more and hopethat three of them work.
And you know you bat 300 and uhand baseball, you're in the
hall of fame, kind of verysimilar in marketing and but
(18:03):
you've got to try a lot beforeyou find something that's
successful, including a lot ofdifferent ad variations, copy,
et cetera, et cetera.
So first thousand bucks istuition to learn that platform
especially, or just learn moreabout ads.
I guess a two-part question Ahave you seen that to be true?
And then, how can peopleapproach spending their first
(18:33):
thousand dollars on ads in thesmartest way possible?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
setting up their first campaigns, kind of all
that stuff.
Yeah, I'll probably forget thesecond question by the time I'm
done answering the first, solet's start with the first
question.
So, first question being do youneed to spend $1,000, sort of
thinking of that as your tuition?
Well, that's why you listen toa podcast like this, that's why
(18:55):
you listen to Chandler is tosave yourself that tuition a
little bit, and I'll I'll togive you a little bit of of what
you would be spending on thattuition.
A couple of things to take noteof.
You know the.
It used to be a.
Uh, you know there there's alot of myths with Amazon ads.
You know then and realize thatthere's no gaming.
There's no any.
Anyone who's trying to give youa free lunch or teach you like a
hack method.
It's, it's not real.
And the second, amazon findsthat it's a hack method.
(19:20):
They'll probably do away withit.
Right, like there's manyauthors who found that little
hack that then you know, withinAmazon finds out about it in a
few months and then, you know,does away with it.
So like you really have to earnyour way and think about you
know practically and do this theright way.
So, like, what do I mean bythat?
Like you know, people say like,oh, if I set a campaign end
date, as, like you know, sooner,that means Amazon's going to
show like, no, none of thatstuff is like real, right, I
will say when it comes to blurbs.
(19:41):
So this is another thing thatAmazon, that there's a lot of
misconceptions about there, andI actually used to be in the
digital marketing.
Now I am lucky enough where Ihave some brilliant marketers.
We now have the former head ofOlive Paid Media for Blackstone
Publishing is now on our team.
The former VP over at Goodreadsis now on our team.
(20:03):
I'm fortunate now where I'velearned a lot just from having
experts on my team, and so youneed to be matching, thinking
about what are the differenttypes of people that you're
going after, the types ofaudiences and crafting messages
for those audiences.
So ad text does matter.
That's uh, that's one thingthat I'll mention.
Um, you know, don't run yourcampaigns without ad texts.
Second thing is auto campaigns.
(20:25):
So there's one of the reasonswhy authors, you know it can be
so hit or miss with autocampaigns.
Amazon is only going to.
Auto campaigns are taking thedata that Amazon has about your
book and making the mostinformed decisions based on that
data.
Right now, the data that Amazonhas when you've just put a book
up on Amazon is very limited.
It's very limited to your bookdescription, your book title,
(20:48):
you know any, your back endkeywords, right?
What's more important forAmazon is actually reader
profiles, and so in order tohave reader profiles, you need
people who have purchased yourbook, right?
So Amazon is looking at who haspurchased your book and then
building up a reader profilebased on that data that it has
about your ideal readers, andthen that's who it's running
(21:11):
those ads to, and so peoplespend so much time on the
metadata I wanted a lot of.
It is actually like who isbuying your book.
That's who Amazon's looking atwhen deciding on who to show
your book to, and a big part ofthat is reviews.
So you and I know I've heardyou talk about some other
platforms as well and Chandlerand when it comes to reviews, if
you have the wrong peoplereviewing your book like, let's
(21:32):
say, I'm, I have a business bookand I have a bunch of fiction
readers, you know buying andreviewing my book you are
telling Amazon that your book isfor fiction readers, and so you
know that's like.
You know I hate to say it, butlike platforms like pubby right,
like pubby, you know, if you'reespecially if you're a
nonfiction your book, you'regonna be telling Amazon the
wrong your book is for the wrongpeople.
So it's so important, when yourbook is early on in Amazon, to
(21:56):
make sure that you are drivingthe right people to your book.
It's the same, you know it goesback to my saying mom's purchase
doesn't help.
If your mom loves to readsteamy romance, you know, then,
like she is not gonna be theperson to buy your business book
.
You wanna business book.
You want to make sure you havethe right people buying your
book.
It's going to take you a lotfurther with your Amazon ads.
So that's two, two pieces oftuition that hopefully will
extend you.
There's, you know, definitelyhave ad texts.
(22:17):
Think about the people you'retargeting.
You know it's.
You're not.
Don't just launch a thousandcampaigns.
Uh.
And then the second thing is uh, you know, making sure you have
the right readers before youset up your ads.
You know I say, if you don'thave somewhere between 1,000, at
least 1,000 people who havepurchased your book, unless
you're in a really hot marketand don't get me wrong.
There are still markets onAmazon that have way more demand
(22:38):
than supply.
But unless you're in one ofthose markets, you need to be.
You need to realize that you'regoing to need to teach the
Amazon algorithms who your idealreaders are.
So I know I monologue a lot,chandler, so feel free to stop
me at any point.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
No, it's great.
It's great, it's a big takeaway.
Stay away from mom.
Steamy romance, I'm glad that'swhat stuck out to you.
No, I'm kidding.
Uh, so many great tips there,what?
So it feels like a little bitof a I would imagine, if I'm
listening to this right now, alittle bit of a catch-22.
It's okay, I need readers sothat Amazon knows who to target
(23:10):
right.
I need ads to get readers.
So what?
What would obviously, I meanyou can still spend money on ads
to your, I think, to your point.
They're just going to be lessefficient.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
So is there any way?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
to maximize kind of your your bang for your buck
early on.
At times you know anything elsethat you think through.
I want to go like this is mylast question on beginner stuff.
Then I want to really talkadvanced, like how do we scale
all that stuff?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean this goes back to why
it's so important.
You know it is.
It's a catch 22, right, I mean.
I mean that's like one of thehardest things to learn as an
author is just that there's nosuch thing as a free lunch.
You know the lady who I paid tohelp us launch our book.
You know I paid to do a $4,000Amazon bestseller package, right
, and if you use that label inthe right way, like how I used
(23:59):
it to get in front of theseuniversities, then don't get me
wrong it can prove its value.
But a lot of people sign up forthose packages thinking that
their book, that means thatthey're going to have, you know,
thousands of adoring fans.
That's oftentimes not what itleads to, and so it's going back
and just realizing that, yeah,like you know, to become an
author and do something withyour book, it does take work,
and so you know it's where itcomes back to.
(24:20):
You know, having an email list,right, I mean, and I, you know I
love, like you know Tim Grawl's.
You know your first 1000 copies.
You know that's like if youwant to talk about getting your
first 1000 copies, you know, goand message your friends on
Facebook and LinkedInconnections and be like hey, I'm
writing about this topic, youknow, would you be interested?
You know, like an averageconversion rate on a webpage,
(24:41):
you know viewer to subscriber isgoing to be like what?
Like two, 3%, you'll you'llfind that you'll have like a 40
to 50%.
You know it's a conversion rateIf you're asking people one by
one and do that until you have alist of a hundred 200 people.
You know that's your startingplace as an author.
You know if you're releasing abook is start.
You know you have to have anemail list and I actually took
this from you that you know.
Again, you know we can go intoso many different rabbit holes
(25:03):
here.
I know you want to stay onAmazon ads, but you know, for
those authors who are like, okayit, you know you need to start
with like a mini audience andthen, you know, nurturing those
emails.
I actually stole this from yourinterview with James Clear
Chandler, where you know he hasthe three, two, one format,
which I think is like sobrilliant, not just because of
the fact that you know it's it'ssimple, easy to read, but also
you can batch produce that youdon't have to sit down and think
(25:25):
of oh, what am I going to writeto my followers today?
It's okay, what are three?
You know, like our three to oneis three book marketing secrets
, two links that are helpful forauthors and then one quote,
right, and so you know, thinkabout some structure, that's,
and we produce our a month fullof newsletters and, you know,
two hours a month.
So it doesn't have to be hard,just go back and listen to all
the episodes that Chandler's putout.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I appreciate that.
Yeah man, I love that.
Yeah man, I love that.
So, and you're right, I'mreally hammering you down on
Amazon ads.
I know you got way off on thatand I apologize.
We can go deeper, so maybe gointermediate, advanced funnels
and how they kind of cometogether and guys, obviously
Alex has got a book, check itout.
It's called Book Funnels andAmazon Ads, where he goes into a
(26:22):
lot of these frameworks.
Yeah, so all right, I've spentmy first thousand.
I'm maybe at a break even ormaybe slightly losing money,
maybe slightly making money.
What's the difference or what'sneeded to say, okay, I can now
scale this up to where I'mspending.
Let's call it a thousand bucksa month on ads at break even or
(26:43):
better, like what are the leversthat you see there to improve
ad performance?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
or better, like, what are the levers that you see
there to improve ad performance?
Yeah, so I would say one of themost important things getting
again intermediate is trackingyour data.
So, like the Amazon, the Amazonads dashboard is very
rudimentary.
It doesn't provide you with youknow what really.
You know a lot of the data.
That another.
You know more advancedplatforms, because, you can
remember, amazon ads is stillnew to the game compared to some
(27:08):
of these more legacy ads adplatforms.
And so, compiling your searchterm data I can't believe that
Amazon doesn't allow you to dothis.
Compiling your search term dataover a longer time horizon
right, so the longest, amazonhangs on to data for 65 days.
What I would recommend doing isand you know it depends how
(27:28):
good you are with Excel, butdownloading those search term
reports every 30 days and addingtogether the metrics, the
long-term metrics, and so thatis going to help you make much
more informed decisions and seeover the time what are my
highest converting targets, thatI can then build out further
campaigns on A couple morethings too.
(27:49):
So, yeah, utilize the searchterm reports a lot.
Again, compile that data every30 days and how advanced you
want to get with this is howmuch time you got here, chandler
.
But the second thing is there'sa lot of times that we'll see
that, for whatever reason, somebooks just won't start.
They just won't even showimpressions, and that's like a
(28:09):
why a lot of authors come to usis like, like I have budget, I
just can't even get Amazon tostart getting clicks or
impressions.
We actually reach out, uh, andyou know we're lucky where we
have back channels now with uh,where we've actually
unofficially become Amazon's uhchoice partner for nonfiction
books, where they actually sendus clients now, yeah, yeah, it's
(28:29):
cool.
They just sent us Dan Heath.
So like now we're working withDan Heath and that was Amazon
sent us that, which is prettycool, amazon.
So, yeah, amazon, oftentimesthere are actually a lot of
glitches on the backend.
So you know where your bookisn't showing.
We just and you know, maybeI'll get canceled for saying
this but we just bombard Amazonsupport and saying like, hey,
(28:50):
something's clearly wrong here.
We can't even get impressionsto show and it's like overnight
things will start to to.
We'll start to see clicks andimpressions come in.
So it's almost like they justare like okay, this person's
either annoying us or they seethat there is some glitch on the
backend and it turns on.
So reach out to Amazon supportin your ads dashboard if you're
seeing issues, so that'ssomething that fixes a lot of
(29:10):
issues.
Also, keep in mind that, ifyou're one of the key components
that I find Amazon, this isgoing back to, first of all,
what the issue is.
People will bid as much as like$10 on a bid and not get
clicked, and people are like Idon't understand, why is that?
I thought it's like asecond-tier auction system,
right, get clicked and peoplelike I don't understand, why is
that?
I thought it's like a secondtier auction system, right.
There's a lot more going intoAmazon's decision of when to
(29:31):
show an ad at a given time,which is, you know, like how
much Amazon actually thinks thatbook can convert.
And what's different is thatyou know where Facebook, which
you know you have you know it'smore about traffic.
Amazon is looking for booksales and Amazon actually makes
money when books sell, not justwhen people click on ads, right,
and so that's part of what'sgoing into that equation.
We found that even changingyour book pricing so that Amazon
(29:54):
can make more, so raising yourprices, can actually help your
book do better.
Again, these are all justleverage to pull.
I'm not saying one of these isgoing to be the given, you know
the thing, the golden nugget foryou.
I'm just saying you have tokeep.
(30:14):
You know, it's one big scienceexperiment, right?
So, like you know, with a bookat and we actually found there
was a something we ran with abook, one of our authors where,
you know, amazon will discountyour book for you.
You know, if Amazon gives you adiscount on your book, you know
that's like key, like pushreally hard on your book because
you're printing money right.
Like they will discount yourbook and still pay you based on
your royalty if you haven'tdiscounted the book anywhere
else.
And so we even tested this andI undid it very quickly because
(30:35):
you never want to bite the handthat feeds you.
But this lady's book wasselling at, you know, $19.99 and
it was discounted down to like$12.35.
And so we were like, okay, Iwonder what happens if we price
the book at, like you know, ahundred dollars?
And so we literally raised theprint book to a hundred dollars
just for, like a short-term test, and Amazon was paying more in
royalties than they were anyone.
(30:56):
You know, maybe I'll even getin trouble for saying this, but
you're like there.
A whole point of this is to saythat there are glitches on
Amazon and Amazon's ends right,and Amazon's end.
It's not a perfect platform,but you know, I do see that.
(31:19):
You know that's an extremeexample, but I do find that you
know, even if Amazon's notdiscounting, let's say you raise
your book to, you know, from$19.95 to like $24.95.
Your ads might show a littlemore because Amazon now has a
bigger you know bigger pie.
You know they get to make moneyoff of your book versus.
It depends on the competitorlandscape and what the people
bidding against you are, youknow is.
(31:39):
But you know, playing with yourpricing and raising your prices
can actually help your ads dobetter because Amazon, you know
again, has more to gain fromyour books.
So those are a couple of bighighlights that I'd say.
You know getting into more ofthe intermediate stuff, you know
again.
I think that you know goingback to the fundamental of just
what audiences are working foryou right now, and then you know
building out from there.
(32:00):
You know, in terms of metrics,I know some people will say like
a one in 30,.
You know, one click in or onepurchase in 30 clicks, or you
know one purchase in 50 clicks,the you know again.
You know, and those metrics atthe very beginning were a little
bit outdated we now managearound 10 million, or we have
managed around 10 million Amazonad spend and we currently have
around 5 million under undermanagement.
(32:21):
And so with the we usually findlike a one in 20 is about
average, so about one click orone order for every 20 clicks.
That's about an averageconversion rate, but some books
are they're at one in 30 andit's still healthy.
So hopefully those are somegood intermediate tips for you
and the listeners.
Chandler.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Cool, that's great, really good.
I just see some notes here.
I like that Gosh.
There's one follow up that Iwas going to ask on that.
It's escaping me right now.
But are you guys testing abunch of copy and that sort of
thing?
I mean, I guess you got yourlevers of your copy and your
(33:04):
targeting and then other stuff,stuff as well, but what are the
biggest levers that you'retesting that you see, make, make
the biggest difference andimprovements in and, uh, you
know, row, as to use a morecommon term.
I know obviously not the amazonspecific term, but like what do
you see there?
Speaker 2 (33:21):
yeah, you're off to a good start with the book
description.
Um, obviously, book descriptionis really important.
We found, uh, we tracked,tracked, and I say we.
You know, I got to give a shoutout to my team member, laura
Russell, who was our chiefmarketing scientist.
She looked and Atomic Habitschanged their book description
like eight times so far thisyear, if not more.
I could be even misquoting that.
So, yes, updated bookdescriptions.
(33:44):
Amazon just seems to likefreshness to your page, right,
so they like to see that there'sactivity on the page.
That it's.
You know you're changing things.
And then Amazon's constantlychanging things.
Because if everything stays thesame and your impressions have
gone down, you know that isAmazon saying, hey, we've tried
your book, it's not workingright, so you need to keep
things fresh.
You'd be trying other things.
Or else Amazon kind of justlike shadow, bans you because
(34:06):
they see like nothing'sconverting, right, so yes, keep
your book description updated.
And then other things I'd say Imean, yeah, you can't be tied to
your book cover.
You know, if you have a really,really low click-through rate,
then obviously and I say lowanything below like we have some
books that are as low as a 0.1.
And as long as their conversionrate's high, it's not a problem
.
So even if your click-throughrate is, uh is low, uh, you know
(34:29):
, like 0.1, you know that andyou're converting, it's not a
problem If it starts to getlower than that.
That's where and I start tolook at, like, how many reviews
do you have?
You know how many like, how'syour book uh cover?
And start to look at thingslike that.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
But yeah, I mean like like eight, 10 times this past
year.
So definitely you want to keepthat fresh.
Nice, that's good, I like that.
I'll ask we're almost out oftime.
I'll say advanced, anythingabove.
Like okay, now we're spendingfive, 10 grand a month, or
actually, what's the most moneyyou're spending on a book?
You don't have to tell me thebook, but what you're spending
(35:10):
on a single book a month in ads,and is there anything you're
doing differently or have to dodifferently at scale, so you
don't just see huge erosions inin row S?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, so we've seen we actually have seen that this
is a we have the most spendingnonfiction book on all of Amazon
.
We've checked with Amazon andso it is.
I believe that we got up to thehighest month was like $45,000.
So this one author that we werespending for so $45,000 Amazon
ads spend one month and when youstart getting to that level,
(35:42):
you're starting to be morestrategic about trying to build
up your organic.
You're targeting, you're beingstrategic about building up
cross relevance with other books.
So again, going back to teachingthe Amazon algorithms who your
audience is.
If a thousand people who haveread, let's say, my book is
Money Book, rich Dad, poor Dad.
Or let's say my book is a MoneyBook and Rich Dad, poor Dad's a
(36:04):
book out there, I want as manyof his readers to have read my
book as possible.
So then you get more into howcan I get as many of his readers
to buy my books.
That Amazon then sees all thesebooks are related and then
shows them organically in placeslike frequently bought together
, right, which is, you know, oneof the few organic placements
that you get on Amazon, right?
And so then it's more soinfluencing the Amazon
(36:24):
algorithms at a larger scale andthat's where our team is now
testing.
You know, beyond just you knowwhat can we do outside of the
Amazon ads that influences theAmazon ads?
I'd say that's the advancedlevel is when you're starting to
weave your marketing activitiestogether so that you have a
comprehensive strategy that thatthen propels your Amazon ads.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Cool, I like that.
Yeah, speaking of outside ofAmazon, I hate to throw you kind
of a big hand grenade right atthe end, but let's talk like how
do book funnels play in withall this and how do you use that
in tandem with Amazon adsrunning to really juice returns
for authors that you're working?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
with.
Yeah, and this is where it's.
You know it's good to test yourcost per reader that you're
getting or cost per lead.
You know, because obviously,the difference between a book
funnel and Amazon versus onethat you're running, you know,
like on your on your website orFacebook or whatever is that you
don't get the data right whenyou're running.
You know Amazon doesn't want togive you who the reader is.
Uh, we find that the you knowthere's some, some of our
authors have as high as a 30%conversion rate.
(37:21):
Uh, we track data that comesjust specifically from
purchasers of the book on Amazonand you know we can see, okay,
10 people bought their book thismonth and three of them turned
into subscribers.
Really, we find that having apage in the very beginning of
the book, you know conversionpage and actually you know part
of this I even heard, you knowwith your help was audio book,
(37:42):
audio books and you know, free,yeah, audio books.
And what was the other one?
Oh, free, complimentary courses.
We find that the other thingthat really works quite well.
We have one of our authors, edRush.
He's the author of two books 21Day Miracle and God Talks.
His book converts about 20 or30 percent.
The 21 Day Miracle like really,really well.
And so you know, we have ourauthors honestly, when they come
(38:03):
to us and ask us, like how canI have a better conversion in
the book, that's kind of ourshining light.
We have them replicatesomething like that, which is
not too complicated, it's just,you know, a very.
We find that anything where theauthor is taking, giving a
reader like a little extra bitof time, is something you know
in the form of like a course,like walking them through the
book.
We find that to be really,really helpful.
And then specific, you knowreally thoughtful tools
(38:27):
throughout the book.
Right, if you're just sayinglike, come get my, you know PDF,
you know each chapter, like no,like, okay, you know.
For example, you know we haveour new book which is, if you've
heard, you know here, obviouslyI could go on for 10 hours
about all things book marketing,not just Amazon ads.
You know I have a new bookcoming out in the new year
before the bestseller same nameas our podcast, and in that book
(38:48):
you know it talks about, youknow there's different parts in
it where, like there there's a.
You know we have an influencertracker sheet right, a chapter
about, uh, how to do aninfluencer program.
So, okay, what is a somethingthat makes sense for that
chapter?
A tracker for influencers,right, Like you have to have.
You know, thoughtful things.
One of my favorite examplesalso is One Page Marketing Plan
(39:09):
by Alan Dibb.
The whole book is about the onepage marketing plan.
What do you think is the bestpossible lead gen thing that
people could go?
Reader magnet that people couldgo get from his website?
A one page marketing plantemplate.
right, like the whole.
You know the book is almostlike useless without it.
So you know, these are justsome things to think about.
(39:30):
I'm trying to talk fast here,so I apologize, you know, cause
I know we're coming to the endlanding the plane, as you like
to say.
So, uh, you know, hopefullythat's been helpful.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
That's good.
Wow, even using my catchphrasesagain, let's land the plane.
Uh, this is awesome, alex.
Where can people go to find outmore about you, your company
working with you guys?
Where you know the new book yougot coming up?
Whatever is the best place tosend people?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
absolutely assuming this podcast comes out early
February, then Get Shelf Life isthe best place to go to hear
more about us and then check outthe book which is before the
bestseller on Amazon all right,love it, alex, really really
helpful.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
And check out the book which is before the
bestseller on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
All right, love it, alex.
Really, really helpful episode.
I appreciate you, dude.
It's so cool to be here.
Like I've learned, I'veliterally listened to your voice
for hundreds of hours, so it'scool to actually be having a
two-way conversation for once.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
It's so cool, it's so good.
I love it.
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