watchingthedaisies

Book Bub – The Results of My First Test Ads

Inspirational

I procrastinated at length, over running my first BookBub ad campaign, largely due to my fear of both technology and change. However, I am glad I put my fears aside, as I have been pleasantly surprised by the results .

Getting Started

BookBub offer a number of helpful posts to get you started. Check out the following page:

https://insights.bookbub.com/category/bookbub-ads/

They also offer assistance if you are having difficulties.

I asked, and they helped.

Test Ads

They suggest running test ads and:

  • Running your test ads without any other book promotions during a set period of time,
  • Starting with a low budget of perhaps $10 to $20

I followed their advice.

Audience Targeting

The great bonus with BookBub ads is that you can focus your ads by:

  • Refining your audience by focusing on readers of similar authors,
  • Refining your audience by book category.

I set my target audience as readers of Louise Hay, Sonia Choquette, Julia Cameron and Elizabeth Gilbert in my first test ad, plus book categories – General Non Fiction, Biographies and Memoirs and Advice and How To.

The ad was featured on 28 October for 24 hours with a budget of $20.

Results

I had 3256 impressions for my $20, which equates to a cost of $6.14 per thousand.

The click through rate of 1.14% or 37 clicks led to a good percentage of those clicks converting to sales of both E-book and print copies.

Although I did not make a profit on that first ad, I have continued to test further ads over a longer period, and the results look promising.

Two Simultaneous Ads to Test Wording

I tested two ads simultaneously, to check the best wording:

In the test ads above, I chose:

  • A different target audience of authors who have written books relating to fibromyalgia,
  • A budget of $10 for each ad,
  • A two week promotion period.

Results

As expected, the “$0.99 button” invited more clicks, with a click through rate of 0.94%. The “buy now” button had a CTR of 0.80%.

However, these test ads produced a better rate of sales per click, compared to the first ad with a wider audience.

I shall continue to experiment with BookBub ads over the coming months.

Feedback

Have you used BookBub to promote your book(s)?

Have you any insights or tips to share?

Brigid P. Gallagher is a retired natural medicines therapist, passionate organic gardener and author of “Watching the Daisies- Life lessons on the Importance of Slow,” a holistic memoir dedicated to the art of mindfulness and healing from debilitating illness.

 

 

 

 

51 comments

  3. I often see ads on Facebook to sign up for Book Bub, as a consumer, of course – I don’t have any books to promote nor, in my wildest dreams, am I ever likely to! Maybe I’ll follow up on the next one, as this sounds interesting. I hope it continues to work well for you after showing that early promise 😊

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  10. Congratulations Brigid. It looks like you got good results without having to spend a fortune. I find lots of new authors to read through Book Bub, and I would imagine lots of other people do too. Thanks for sharing your journey – this is really helpful for anyone who might be writing a book!

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  14. Interesting facts Brigid. I can’t get Bookbub to work for me. I opened a page there and my books or reviews won’t show. I emailed them, and got some nonsense response like: It’s because I’m Canadian. They suggested I log in as American. Big help. Not! I haven’t even been back there to my lone page. You aren’t American either, so I’m surprised at your success. I guess Bookbub and Amazon both treat Canadians like 3rd class citizens.

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  16. Brigid, thank you so much for your fascinating insight into BookBub and the various ad campaigns and the results of these. I did look at using this website a while ago but I think you need at least 50 Amazon reviews before they will consider you? If this has changed I would definitely be keen to use them – especially since reading your post here.

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  17. Thank you Brigid for sharing.You are so helpful to others xoxo I have started experimenting as well and I must say have got a better response than I have ever had from both Amazon or Facebook ads. It’s only one day but seems promising. I never considered using them mainly due to the high cost of featured deals but with the ads the huge audience they have are more available.

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    • I am so glad you found it helpful Julie. I noticed you on their New Releases. Did you find that produced good results? I am going forward writing another book and wondered if it helped. I am using BookBub on a month long ad at the moment and I will probably continue. x

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      • Hi Brigid,
        The first ad I ran for two days. I got over 4000 impressions, 24 clicks and 8 books sold. I am now running another ad for $10 and have changed the text a bit and added more authors. I have been bidding for Clicks rather than impressions as I want results rather than an ad served to people that may not be interested. I have tried F/B and Amazon ads but I feel this is the best initial response so will keep trying. It seems harder to get sales now than it was 3 years ago I have found so am experimenting with what works and what doesn’t. You have a very good blog and you seem to do an awful lot of work. All the best with writing you next book xx

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      • That is terrific Julie. I am glad it is going well for you too. I have been doing CPC on this longer ad. Initially, it was slow so I paused it, and tweaked the wording to get better results. I have not tried Facebook or Amazon yet. xx

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