What is Reddit's opinion of Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author's Guide?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Amazon (AMS) ads are a great place to start. If you haven't already, check out Brian Meeks book on AMS ads (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072SNXYMY)

Start with a small daily budget, monitor your ads daily and see how they convert. Ignore the current suggested bids as they can really be out to lunch.

The problem may not be your ads at all, they could be with your blurb, your cover, your price or your look inside.

Use AMS ads to set a baseline, then if they aren't converting as well as you would like (1 in 10) then consider tweaking each of the above, one at a time, leaving enough time between changes to monitor the impacts. That way you can see if the changes are having a positive impact. It takes a while, but it is worth it to have measurable results.

Great, I'm glad it's useful; although the erotica market is different in some ways to other genre fiction markets (discussed here frequently), many core principles are the same. Some responses:

• The 10:1 clicks-to-sales ratio refers to AMS ads, suggesting that if you get one sale for every 10 clicks (as shown in your AMS dashboard), that's a sign of a good blurb. This is a figure asserted in the Amazon Ads book I reference (this one). It's an older book now and some of what's in it may no longer be relevant, but for my own work I've found that to be still a good benchmark. I stress that it will vary a lot between genres, and others may be able to chime in with their experiences here too.
  
• I'm glad the further reading suggestions are useful, and when money permits I'd definitely recommend buying a couple of the books I mention. They aren't expensive, and I don't recommend things unless they're something I refer to. Additional recommendation for erotica (and all) book formatting: A Filthy Book in A Fancy Dress. Written by our noble mod (who wrote the cover design series), it's worth the money.
  
• Only showing the Top 100 was an inexplicable boob on my part: try it now and it should show you all 400, and match with the downloadable Excel spreadsheet (which it wasn't before)
• The question of whether and how much KU readers also buy is a thorny one and you'll get a lot of different opinions here. As usual, only Amazon knows for sure. I don't have enough data to form an opinion, and I don't like saying more than I can back up with data. I will say, though, that KU and wide are different markets in most genres: if you look at books with the same tags between the two (therefore ostensibly covering the same content), you'll see what I mean. My colleagues who have gone wide from KU have needed to get new covers and rewrite blurbs to make their work fit wide readers' expectations. I wouldn't recommend tackling wide storefronts until you're familiar with other aspects of self-publishing, though.

Hi dan

Facebook ads have only kept getting more expensive since I've made that post, and I hardly ever use them anymore.

I get my best results from amazon ads and ad stacking with book promotion websites now.

This book is one of the best resources for amazon ads.

This article is a great resource for book promotions. Also if you sign up to his email list you'll get another file with the top ROI websites.

The basic idea is to stack as many ads on consecutive days as you can during a launch or kindle countdown deal for a ranking spike, then using optimized keywords and product page to continue selling organically.

I also run a facebook group with about 200 horror/supernatural authors trying to help each other improve and market their work. Publishers are always popular, and it's a great place to swap ideas and promotions.

Cheers,