Saturday, March 16, 2024

Week in Review (March 16, 2024)

I have always hoped that the reason why my books haven't sold as well as some others was marketing. I'm sure this is not entirely the case. :-)

After over $100 in marketing (really hardly anything), I had only two sales through Facebook last weekend. That's an $80 loss on the ad itself. I was hoping it was because it wasn't a payday, but thus far this weekend, the ad hasn't garnered any more sales even among the 50 or so people who signed up for my email list.

Yesterday I started running another ad with another bundle. This is 5 e-books for $9.99. The books are:

Same setup as the other. Free ebook to introduce you to the series which then leads you to the offer of four more ebooks for only $9.99. Five books in all for only $10. Pretty good deal! 
I didn't have the time to work too extensively on this ad sequence. The ad gets a good reaction (although at way too high a cost per click), and the conversion rate for getting people on my email list is very good. But once on the list, they don't seem to download the free ebook or purchase the bundle. I don't know if a larger ad spend would make any difference.

I'll confess that I find it very discouraging. I know people who've written pretty trivial stuff who are selling 1000s on their personality. I mean books that have almost nothing in them. They sell because people like the author as far as I can tell. It's their magnetism. I mean, I have some charisma, but I don't have THAT x factor.

2. A good work week. I did have an encounter that had me chuckling a little. Someone seemed to take umbrage at our sales pitch. They let us know in no uncertain terms that their online courses were excellent, their faculty excellent, and that we could learn some things from the way they did online. Maybe so. I don't know. It felt a little out of nowhere to me.

Academics are funny people. Sometimes you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

5 comments:

James F. McGrath said...

Hi Ken. I don't know how much sheer charisma or advertising is the key. If you want social media posts to lead people to buy books then I'd recommend blogging and posting more about the exciting things you're coming up with, offering teasers, and sharing general interest things like memes and posts about other topics so that people have a chance to get to know you as author and find out what to expect.

We should meet and chat about this sometime soon!

Ken Schenck said...

Always enjoy our conversations. You have a knack for connecting with an audience for sure. I connect well for free. :-)

Anonymous said...

Tony Maddalena - Looking Forward to more Ruth Hebrew Videos …

Ken Schenck said...

Every Wednesday!

Anonymous said...

Tony Maddalena - WayCool … … …