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6:04pm on Sunday, 10th July, 2011:

The Power of Advertising

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I mentioned on Thursday that I was going to use a free £30 advertising code Facebook had sent to MUSE Ltd (hey, waste not, want not) to see if I could sell any more copies of my young adult novel for the Kindle. I wasn't kidding, I actually did do it. I set up a month-long campaign targeted at UK girls aged 13-14 at secondary school (the latter being unnecessary in the light of the former, but because it was more specific I figured it would be less often bought and therefore the price would be lower). Here's what the ad looks like:



I was unsure about the "for kids" but went with it anyway, on the grounds that I get charged per click on the ad so I really want to make sure that the people who click on it aren't just doing it because they can't see what the writing on the book says...

The result, after 5 days, is that the ad has been seen by 11,973 people, an average of 4.7 times each. It has been clicked on precisely 12 times. I thought these would be entirely by accident, but no: remarkably, those 12 clicks have led to 2 sales of the book.

However, to get those 12 clicks, it cost £2.93 in advertising. If I didn't have £30 of free advertising, I'd basically be paying £1.50 to see each copy of the book. This is just over twice the price of the book itself, and five times as much as I get in royalties from it. It's not, therefore, economical.

Mind you, if I were to raise the price of the book six-fold and the purchasers are price-insensitive, that would work.

Referenced by A New Campaign.


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Copyright © 2011 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).