SPS 293: Amazon Ads Masterclass: How To Start & Scale Your Ads with Alex Strathdee

. He's the founder of AdvancedAmazonAdscom . 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 $4 million in ad spend for over 500 books . He's a host of a popular podcast . Fun fact we'll ask about this .

At 21 years old , got 11 colleges to distribute his books to over 40,000 students across the US . So we're going to ask about that 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 some book funnel stuff . A lot to cover , alex , what's happening ? Welcome .

I mean , I was I kind of created my own commute , where I don't know if you ever went to the UTC mall here in San Diego , but there was a Capital One cafe that I would go work from and so I would commute , you know , 30 minutes there at 30 minutes back , and it was always this podcast I was listening to and it's what taught me , you know , a lot of

what I now know . So thank you , chandler .

I got Michael Watkins of the first 90 days , ulrich of the Price and Roadmap , but actually , if you notice , these are actually old books that I have helped me in my business and you'll see published by a guy named Chandler hey oh my gosh , that's a blue version too . Holy crap . Yeah , this is an old version , look at that this is the old school .

So essentially was back at , you know , as a college kid , always entrepreneurial , wanted to do something , provide value some way to some group of people , right . So what did I know at that time ? I knew interviewing good friend of 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 you know 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 this podcast together called Practically Passionate , and we started to build up a little bit of traction for that podcast . And so we're like , okay , what's next ? Obviously a book .

And so we paid someone to help us put this book out to the world and we launched it , expecting people to come running , you know , as you know , you know , time , time again , that's every author . You know a lot of them . You put out a book and then you think people are just going to come buy your book and they don't . So I had to .

Then it became a very interesting question To me . That has now become the company which is , you know , advanced Amazon ads which , depending on when this episode comes out , we're actually rebranding as Shelf Life in the new year , so you can find us at Get Shelf Life , but the book , you know .

We had to figure out how do we sell this thing , and so we you know , college kids didn't have , you know , 10 bucks to basically buy a glorified career guide when the university was giving them , you know , something that wasn'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 ads and that got obviously some traction . And then we also did grassroots marketing .

So I remember sitting in coffee shops weekend after weekend and reached out to every university across the country , all of their career service departments , saying , hey , we've got this , we did the bestseller launch and all that , and so we could say it was a bestseller .

And so then , you know , use that in the emails to these universities , and that got us about 50 phone calls . And out of those 50 phone calls , 11 universities actually said , hey , yeah , let's , let's send out this book to our to our students , and so I man . I love grassroots marketing and just getting creative with it .

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 doing is we sat there and we thought , okay , well , we now have , you know , a distribution of 40,000 students . That's about what the 11 universities added up to .

And so we thought , okay , how can we , you know , turn this audience into , you know , a way to monetize the book or , at least , you know , pay for the book ? And so we turned around , in the same way that we made a list for all the college colleges , we made a list for companies that would want to get in front of students , right ?

So there's , you know , all these companies that want to hire those students . And so we ended up turning the book into a living thing .

You know where we actually sold full page ads in the book for $1,000 a piece , to companies like Kohl's , belk , elephant Insurance , all taking out $1,000 pages in our book and that's how we ended up being able to make money off of it , and then actually that's sort of the seed funding for what this company is now .

But then one kansas state said , hey , we're gonna , we're gonna send out five , we'll buy and send out 500 . And so so you said , hey , how do we seed fund this distribution ? Well , okay , now we've got X thousand college students . So , hey , organizations want to get in front of these X thousand college students .

So you said a thousand dollars per page as kind of like an advert for these big companies .

We made it so that it took the students directly to applications for internships and so we were able to then provide those metrics back to companies as well . So we were able to then provide those metrics back to companies as well , and so we were able to kind of the fact that it was digital , we could kind of take advantage of that too .

But that was , that was my start into the whole book book marketing world .

You know I love the way I love the 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 painting you're in .

Like a painting , yeah , the painting , you know it's just being surrounded by people you know who are like-minded and you know thinking in terms of business 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 who are fellow brothers , I'd say Nice .

ads ? And I guess that'll kind of be a segue to really nerd out on Amazon ad stuff . I'm sure we get a lot of authors who are listening to this Thinking about Amazon ads , trying Amazon ads , maybe they worked , maybe they didn't work , et cetera . But how'd you ? What was the foray into Amazon ads ?

I built a little bit of a relationship with her and it came to the point where I had the golden handcuffs . I was making six figures first job out of school for a software company as a sales engineer , and I hated it . It would have been the rest of my life and sounded pretty awful . So I quit that and luckily had a family member who had free .

She worked for American Airlines and so I got free flights around the world and I thought I'm just going to go try stuff while I travel the world . And so then I ended up working part-time for this indie publisher and learned kind of the business a little bit from her .

And then I noticed that the part that her clients seemed to have the most trouble with was book marketing and specifically running Amazon ads .

And so she would , you know , and that was something she had me just setting up Amazon ads for people , and so I'd set up some Amazon ads and eventually , you know , I realized I'm like you know , you set them up , but you got no one managing them . You know , why don't you just send them to me when you're done and I'll start managing ?

You know , their ads . And it started off with just you know four off , with just you know , four or five authors paying me 50 bucks a month .

So if I'm an author , if I'm thinking about it as a marketing strategy , who does it make sense for ? Who does it not make sense for ?

It's the same with how I learned on your podcast , actually , about who's it Robert Kiyosaki . He got his book in a car wash and there was the founder of Amway , walked in and ended up buying a copy and then it became their Bible . Right , that's what I mean by seeding copies . Right , he was seeding them in a car wash .

You know you need to find ways to seed copies , and the reason why I bring that up first is because I want to first build a framework that Amazon ads builds into right . So when you seed your copies of your book , right and you know people like Rob Fitzpatrick I think you might have interviewed him on the show too .

He has a great book called Write Useful Books , you know he talks about you only need to seed a thousand copies into a micro community Right now . I think that the truth is the number is somewhere between one thousand and twenty thousand and you know , if you're a really serious author , you really want this book to do well , then you should set your goal at .

You know twenty thousand and if this is just like kind of a side project , you just want to get to the next thing . You know , you can see , you know a thousand copies and move on Right .

And so when , once you have your number so I think that's where most authors go wrong with marketing is they don't have their number to begin with of okay , I'm going to commit to moving this amount of copies into the wild , you know that's kind of your your product test . You're testing your product .

You're getting enough copies into the hands of people I always say mom's , mom's purchase doesn't help . Right , like , these are people . You need to get the book in the hands of people whose problem you're actually solving for . So then , once you have your number , then you need to break down what are the tools at your disposal to move books right .

There's podcasting , there's speaking at events , there's Amazon ads , there's

all these different things are going to take different levels of time and money to market your book . Amazon ads is one of the few things that will sell your book while you're asleep , but it costs money , right . So let's talk about expectations a little bit , and then that will help us figure out who's right for Amazon ads and who's not .

So you have a lot of people . Let's talk about how Amazon ads got to where they are today . 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 and had great success .

Because Amazon was , there was much more demand on the platform than there was supply of books , and so Amazon ads was the same .

It was very easy for authors to get ads set up , and there's a lot of people I won't name names who created Amazon ad courses that worked for that environment that don't work today , and so there's a lot of misconceptions around Amazon ads .

It's a very changed landscape than how it was in 2015 or whatever , have you , or even just five years ago , when clicks were a lot cheaper than they were today . You had the focus of also what you know . Back then , you had just indie authors who were just trying to make money off their books .

Now you're competing against people who are trying to use their Amazon ads as a book funnel . Those people are willing to pay a much higher cost per click , right ? So I'm not saying Amazon ads isn't for you . I'm just saying don't think that anyone who had success back in 2015 , it doesn't necessarily mean it's relevant to today , right ?

So pay attention to who you're following with that , so the authors that . Well , again , that comes down to your budget and how much . If you have more money or you have time , right ?

If you have a huge budget and you're a very , very busy executive , or just you're a busy chef or whatever it is , and you have more money than time , then Amazon 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 small budget , you know , let's say , you know you're , you know you're putting

your kids through college and you know this is kind of just like a side project you're working on . You don't have much to fund it . I would focus much more on doing grassroots marketing , right ?

So , like we you know Chandler and I talked about in the beginning of this episode , about , you know , reaching out to universities , right , that's going to be much more effective for you , you know , if you have more time than money . So , amazon ads don't expect . First of all , amazon ads have changed . Don't expect them to be as cheap as they were .

That being said , there are a few books that Amazon , for whatever reason , just loves and takes off . Now this is maybe one in a thousand books . So , like you know you , you can't expect this . I'm sure you've seen this before too . Like you know , I know you've , uh , you've had a Hayden Crabtree of skip the flip .

Right , amazon ads just love that guy's book and it . You know he's just done wonderful things with it because of it . And so you know and that's a great episode , too , to listen to uh , for those of you that obviously right time , right place , right book for Amazon .

There's certain things that we've started to notice that are not Amazon , specific Amazon on the platform , details about your book on the platform that impact how well your book does on Amazon .

So , like Joseph Noyan , let's talk about an example that's worked really really well recently , which is you might have heard of the author Joseph Noyan of Don't Believe Everything you Think really really well recently , which is you might have heard of the author Joseph Noyan of Don't Believe Everything .

You Think he actually just worked with a new publishing company and was able to get the New York Times hit the New York Times list last week . So like major , successful book right now . Right Now , joseph is a self-published author . A year ago or whatever , six months before he released that book , he had Joseph had zero following .

But what I think he did really , really well and we're starting to test this a lot internally too is the more you send traffic to Amazon , the more Amazon kind of scratches your back , uh , back right , the more that they are going to show your listing organically .

So if you if you're it's almost like you know if you are sending traffic from off of Amazon let's say you're running Facebook ads , let's say you're doing influencer campaigns to Amazon and then you're running Amazon ads , your listing is going to do a whole lot better because Amazon sees it , and not even just from those conversions , but just due to the increased

clicks on your page and the increased viewership on your page . It's a high , you know . Think about a website . It's a higher trafficked page on Amazon . Now Amazon's going to promote it themselves , and so that's where we were starting to really test this correlation between the two , and so I think modern day .

You know and that's a little bit of a tip for those if you are starting to run Amazon ads , understand that Amazon ads will never be the thing that that seeds , you know , your 20,000 copies .

It is one tool in your tool belt , and the more you have these other pieces going , like if you're running Facebook ads , if you're running Facebook ads , if you're doing podcasts that are converting and driving traffic to your listing but that's the thing you don't even have to be selling books from this additional traffic .

Just start by driving traffic to the Amazon platform and your ads are going to work better than the person who has zero traffic and that is trying to run Amazon ads for a somewhat similar book . So that's a little bit more about 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 by someone who's , you know , scraping together pennies to market their book . You need a budget , and then you know , I think the other part of it too is you need a comprehensive marketing strategy as well , you know .

So those are the two main things that I think are important for people if they're going to run Amazon ads that I think are important for people if they're going to run Amazon ads , make sure that you know you have the budget and make sure that you do have you know it as part of a tool belt , not just one tool , because otherwise it's like trying to build a

house with just a hammer . Right , you know you need the wrench . You know you need the screwdriver . You need all the other tools too .

And Perry Marshall talks about how your first thousand dollars on any ad platform is just paying tuition to learn . And a lot of ads and a lot of marketing in general is let me try 10 things and hope that three of them work . And then try 10 more and hope that three of them work .

And you know you bat 300 and uh and baseball , you're in the hall of fame , kind of very similar in marketing and but you've got to try a lot before you find something that's successful , including a lot of different ad variations , copy , et cetera , et cetera . So first thousand bucks is tuition to learn that platform especially , or just learn more about ads .

I guess a two-part question A have you seen that to be true ? And then , how can people approach spending their first thousand dollars on ads in the smartest way possible ?

Well , that's why you listen to a podcast like this , that's why you listen to Chandler is to save yourself that tuition a little bit , and I'll I'll to give you a little bit of of what you would be spending on that tuition . A couple of things to take note of . You know the . It used to be a .

Uh , you know there there's a lot of myths with Amazon ads . You know then and realize that there's no gaming . There's no any . Anyone who's trying to give you a free lunch or teach you like a hack method . It's , it's not real . And the second , amazon finds that it's a hack method . They'll probably do away with it .

Right , like there's many authors who found that little hack that then you know , within Amazon finds out about it in a few months and then , you know , does away with it . So like you really have to earn your way and think about you know practically and do this the right way . So , like , what do I mean by that ?

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 that stuff is like real , right , I will say when it comes to blurbs .

So this is another thing that Amazon , that there's a lot of misconceptions about there , and I actually used to be in the digital marketing . Now I am lucky enough where I have some brilliant marketers . We now have the former head of Olive Paid Media for Blackstone Publishing is now on our team . The former VP over at Goodreads is now on our team .

I'm fortunate now where I've learned a lot just from having experts on my team , and so you need to be matching , thinking about what are the different types of people that you're going after , the types of audiences and crafting messages for those audiences . So ad text does matter . That's uh , that's one thing that I'll mention .

Um , you know , don't run your campaigns without ad texts . Second thing is auto campaigns . So there's one of the reasons why authors , you know it can be so hit or miss with auto campaigns . Amazon is only going to . Auto campaigns are taking the data that Amazon has about your book and making the most informed decisions based on that data .

Right now , the data that Amazon has when you've just put a book up on Amazon is very limited . It's very limited to your book description , your book title , you know any , your back end keywords , right ? What's more important for Amazon is actually reader profiles , and so in order to have reader profiles , you need people who have purchased your book , right ?

So Amazon is looking at who has purchased your book and then building up a reader profile based on that data that it has about your ideal readers , and then that's who it's running those ads to , and so people spend so much time on the metadata I wanted a lot of . It is actually like who is buying your book .

That's who Amazon's looking at when deciding on who to show your book to , and a big part of that is reviews .

So you and I know I've heard you talk about some other platforms as well and Chandler and when it comes to reviews , if you have the wrong people reviewing your book like , let's say , I'm , I have a business book and I have a bunch of fiction readers , you know buying and reviewing my book you are telling Amazon that your book is for fiction readers , and so

you know that's like . You know I hate to say it , but like platforms like pubby right , like pubby , you know , if you're especially if you're a nonfiction your book , you're gonna be telling Amazon the wrong your book is for the wrong people .

So it's so important , when your book is early on in Amazon , to make sure that you are driving the right people to your book . It's the same , you know it goes back to my saying mom's purchase doesn't help . If your mom loves to read steamy romance , you know , then , like she is not gonna be the person to buy your business book . You wanna business book .

You want to make sure you have the right people buying your book . It's going to take you a lot further with your Amazon ads . So that's two , two pieces of tuition that hopefully will extend you . There's , you know , definitely have ad texts . Think about the people you're targeting . You know it's . You're not . Don't just launch a thousand campaigns . Uh .

And then the second thing is uh , you know , making sure you have the right readers before you set up your ads . You know I say , if you don't have somewhere between 1,000 , at least 1,000 people who have purchased your book , unless you're in a really hot market and don't get me wrong . There are still markets on Amazon that have way more demand than supply .

But unless you're in one of those markets , you need to be . You need to realize that you're going to need to teach the Amazon algorithms who your ideal readers are . So I know I monologue a lot , chandler , so feel free to stop me at any point .

It's okay , I need readers so that Amazon knows who to target right . I need ads to get readers . So what ? What would obviously , I mean you can still spend money on ads to your , I think , to your point . They're just going to be less efficient .

You know I paid to do a $4,000 Amazon bestseller package , right , and if you use that label in the

right way , like how I used it to get in front of these universities , then don't get me wrong it can prove its value . But a lot of people sign up for those packages thinking that their book , that means that they're going to have , you know , thousands of adoring fans .

That's oftentimes not what it leads to , and so it's going back and just realizing that , yeah , like you know , to become an author and do something with your book , it does take work , and so you know it's where it comes back to . 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 you want to talk about getting your first 1000 copies , you know , go and message your friends on Facebook and LinkedIn connections and be like hey , I'm writing about this topic , you know , would you be interested ?

You know , like an average conversion rate on a webpage , you know viewer to subscriber is going to be like what ? Like two , 3% , you'll you'll find that you'll have like a 40 to 50% . You know it's a conversion rate If you're asking people one by one and do that until you have a list of a hundred 200 people .

You know that's your starting place as an author . You know if you're releasing a book is start . You know you have to have an email list and I actually took this from you that you know . Again , you know we can go into so many different rabbit holes here .

I know you want to stay on Amazon ads , but you know , for those authors who are like , okay it , you know you need to start with like a mini audience and then , you know , nurturing those emails .

I actually stole this from your interview with James Clear Chandler , where you know he has the three , two , one format , which I think is like so brilliant , not just because of the fact that you know it's it's simple , easy to read , but also you can batch produce that you don't have to sit down and think of oh , what am I going to write to my followers

today ? It's okay , what are three ? You know , like our three to one is three book marketing secrets , two links that are helpful for authors and then one quote , right , and so you know , think about some structure , that's , and we produce our a month full of 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 put out .

It's called Book Funnels and Amazon Ads , where he goes into a lot of these frameworks . Yeah , so all right , I've spent my first thousand . I'm maybe at a break even or maybe slightly losing money , maybe slightly making money . What's the difference or what's needed to say , okay , I can now scale this up to where I'm spending .

Let's call it a thousand bucks a month on ads at break even or better , like what are the levers that you see there to improve ad performance ?

You know more advanced platforms , because , you can remember , amazon ads is still new to the game compared to some of these more legacy ads ad platforms . And so , compiling your search term data I can't believe that Amazon doesn't allow you to do this .

Compiling your search term data over a longer time horizon right , so the longest , amazon hangs on to data for 65 days .

What I would recommend doing is and you know it depends how good you are with Excel , but downloading those search term reports every 30 days and adding together the metrics , the long-term metrics , and so that is going to help you make much more informed decisions and see over the time what are my highest converting targets , that I can then build out further

campaigns on A couple more things too . So , yeah , utilize the search term reports a lot . Again , compile that data every 30 days and how advanced you want to get with this is how much time you got here , chandler . But the second thing is there's a lot of times that we'll see that , for whatever reason , some books just won't start .

They just won't even show impressions , and that's like a why a lot of authors come to us is like , like I have budget , I just can't even get Amazon to start getting clicks or impressions .

We actually reach out , uh , and you know we're lucky where we have back channels now with uh , where we've actually unofficially become Amazon's uh choice partner for nonfiction books , where they actually send us clients now , yeah , yeah , it's cool . They just sent us Dan Heath .

So like now we're working with Dan Heath and that was Amazon sent us that , which is pretty cool , amazon . So , yeah , amazon , oftentimes there are actually a lot of glitches on the backend . So you know where your book isn't showing .

We just and you know , maybe I'll get canceled for saying this but we just bombard Amazon support and saying like , hey , something's clearly wrong here . We can't even get impressions to show and it's like overnight things will start to to . We'll start to see clicks and impressions come in .

So it's almost like they just are like okay , this person's either annoying us or they see that there is some glitch on the backend and it turns on . So reach out to Amazon support in your ads dashboard if you're seeing issues , so that's something that fixes a lot of issues .

Also , keep in mind that , if you're one of the key components that I find Amazon , this is going 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 I don't understand , why is that ?

I thought it's like a second-tier auction system , right , get clicked and people like I don't understand , why is that ? I thought it's like a second tier auction system , right . There's a lot more going into Amazon's decision of when to show an ad at a given time , which is , you know , like how much Amazon actually thinks that book can convert .

And what's different is that you know where Facebook , which you know you have you know it's more about traffic . Amazon is looking for book sales and Amazon actually makes money when books sell , not just when people click on ads , right , and so that's part of what's going into that equation .

We found that even changing your book pricing so that Amazon can make more , so raising your prices , can actually help your book do better . Again , these are all just leverage to pull . I'm not saying one of these is going to be the given , you know the thing , the golden nugget for you . I'm just saying you have to keep .

You know , it's one big science experiment , right ? So , like you know , with a book at and we actually found there was a something we ran with a book , one of our authors where , you know , amazon will discount your book for you .

You know , if Amazon gives you a discount on your book , you know that's like key , like push really hard on your book because you're printing money right . Like they will discount your book and still pay you based on your royalty if you haven't discounted the book anywhere else .

And so we even tested this and I undid it very quickly because you never want to bite the hand that feeds you . But this lady's book was selling at , you know , $19.99 and it was discounted down to like $12.35 . And so we were like , okay , I wonder what happens if we price the book at , like you know , a hundred dollars ?

And so we literally raised the print book to a hundred dollars just for , like a short-term test , and Amazon was paying more in royalties than they were anyone . You know , maybe I'll even get in trouble for saying this , but you're like there . A whole point of this is to say that 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 . You know that's an extreme example , but I do find that you know , even if Amazon's not discounting , let's say you raise your book to , you know , from $19.95 to like $24.95 . Your ads might show a little more because Amazon now has a bigger you know bigger pie .

You know they get to make money off of your book versus . It depends on the competitor landscape and what the people bidding against you are , you know is . But you know , playing with your pricing and raising your prices can actually help your ads do better because Amazon , you know again , has more to gain from your books .

So those are a couple of big highlights that I'd say . You know getting into more of the intermediate stuff , you know again . I think that you know going back to the fundamental of just what audiences are working for you right now , and then you know building out from there . You know , in terms of metrics , I know some people will say like a one in 30, .

You know , one click in or one purchase in 30 clicks , or you know one purchase in 50 clicks , the you know again . You know , and those metrics at the very beginning were a little bit outdated we now manage around 10 million , or we have managed around 10 million Amazon ad spend and we currently have around 5 million under under management . And so with

the we usually find like a one in 20 is about average , so about one click or one order for every 20 clicks . That's about an average conversion rate , but some books are they're at one in 30 and it's still healthy . So hopefully those are some good intermediate tips for you and the listeners . Chandler .

I mean , I guess you got your levers of your copy and your targeting and then other stuff , stuff as well , but what are the biggest levers that you're testing that you see , make , make the biggest difference and improvements in and , uh , you know , row , as to use a more common term .

I know obviously not the amazon specific term , but like what do you see there ?

She looked and Atomic Habits changed their book description like eight times so far this year , if not more . I could be even misquoting that . So , yes , updated book descriptions . Amazon just seems to like freshness to your page , right , so they like to see that there's activity on the page . That it's . You know you're changing things .

And then Amazon's constantly changing things . Because if everything stays the same and your impressions have gone down , you know that is Amazon saying , hey , we've tried your book , it's not working right , so you need to keep things fresh . You'd be trying other things .

Or else Amazon kind of just like shadow , bans you because they see like nothing's converting , right , so yes , keep your book description updated . And then other things I'd say I mean , 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 low anything below like we have some books that are as low as a 0.1 . And as long as their conversion rate's high , it's not a problem .

So even if your click-through rate is , uh is low , uh , you know , like 0.1 , you know that and you're converting , it's not a problem If it starts to get lower than that . That's where and I start to look at , like , how many reviews do you have ? You know how many like , how's your book uh cover ? And start to look at things like that .

You don't have to tell me the book , but what you're spending on a single book a month in ads , and is there anything you're doing differently or have to do differently at scale , so you don't just see huge erosions in in row S ?

So this one author that we were spending for so $45,000 Amazon ads spend one month and when you start getting to that level , you're starting to be more strategic about trying to build up your organic . You're targeting , you're being strategic about building up cross relevance with other books .

So again , going back to teaching the Amazon algorithms who your audience is . If a thousand people who have read , let's say , my book is Money Book , rich Dad , poor Dad . Or let's say my book is a Money Book and Rich Dad , poor Dad's a book out there , I want as many of his readers to have read my book as possible .

So then you get more into how can I get as many of his readers to buy my books . That Amazon then sees all these books are related and then shows them organically in places like frequently bought together , right , which is , you know , one of the few organic placements that you get on Amazon , right ?

And so then it's more so influencing the Amazon algorithms at a larger scale and that's where our team is now testing . You know , beyond just you know what can we do outside of the Amazon ads that influences the Amazon ads ?

I'd say that's the advanced level is when you're starting to weave your marketing activities together so that you have a comprehensive strategy that that then propels your Amazon ads .

You know Amazon doesn't want to give you who the reader is . Uh , we find that the you know there's some , some of our authors have as high as a 30% conversion rate .

Uh , we track data that comes just specifically from purchasers of the book on Amazon and you know we can see , okay , 10 people bought their book this month and three of them turned into subscribers .

Really , we find that having a page in the very beginning of the book , you know conversion page and actually you know part of this I even heard , you know with your help was audio book , audio books and you know , free , yeah , audio books . And what was the other one ? Oh , free , complimentary courses .

We find that the other thing that really works quite well . We have one of our authors , ed Rush . He's the author of two books 21 Day Miracle and God Talks . His book converts about 20 or 30 percent . The 21 Day Miracle like really , really well .

And so you know , we have our authors honestly , when they come to us and ask us , like how can I have a better conversion in the book , that's kind of our shining light . We have them replicate something like that , which is not too complicated , it's just , you know , a very .

We find that anything where the author is taking , giving a reader like a little extra bit of 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 know really thoughtful tools throughout the book .

Right , if you're just saying like , come get my , you know PDF , you know each chapter , like no , like , okay , you know . For example , you know we have our new book which is , if you've heard , you know here , obviously I could go on for 10 hours about all things book marketing , not just Amazon ads .

You know I have a new book coming out in the new year before the bestseller same name as our podcast , and in that book you know it talks about , you know there's different parts in it where , like there there's a . You know we have an influencer tracker sheet right , a chapter about , uh , how to do an influencer program .

So , okay , what is a something that makes sense for that chapter ? A tracker for influencers , right , Like you have to have . You know , thoughtful things . One of my favorite examples also

is One Page Marketing Plan by Alan Dibb . The whole book is about the one page marketing plan . What do you think is the best possible lead gen thing that people could go ? Reader magnet that people could go get from his website ? A one page marketing plan template . right , like the whole . You know the book is almost like useless without it .

So you know , these are just some things to think about . I'm trying to talk fast here , so I apologize , you know , cause I know we're coming to the end landing the plane , as you like to say . So , uh , you know , hopefully that's been helpful .