hey what's up guys we are back by
popular demand again for part three with
sam the kdp expert sam thanks for being
here again man now where is it so thanks
uh thanks again help me back
yeah so we were just talking uh in part
two
trying to give like a more in-depth
tutorial about the steps it takes to
publish not just any book but like books
that have a reasonable expectation to
make sales on amazon but we did also
mention the caveat that
in 2022 and beyond
if we're being realistic we're probably
gonna need to
uh let's say grease amazon's pockets aka
pay them for visibility by running some
ads
regardless of if it's kdp or selling
t-shirts or whatever the heck it is so
do you want to uh i kind of kind of take
it from here and give us a tutorial on
your process for running kdp ads
yeah i think uh the most important thing
to start off with is there's definitely
a right time to start ads i think i
mentioned in one of the previous videos
it's very easy to
start your kdp and then just jump
straight into ads because you see people
succeeding with it but from my
experience i think it's very important
to
to treat your ads as kind of a
nice to have on top of your kind of your
kdp foundations rather than
jumping straight away because if you're
i'm assuming your first few books on kdp
like mine were aren't going to be very
good
doesn't matter how much you put into ads
if your book's not very good it's not
going to sell so you don't want to be
wasting your time and your money on on
books that aren't very good so
definitely there's a time and a place
for jumping into ads i think once you've
once you've got a
couple of books that are consistently
selling well for you you know that
there's an organic demand there and you
can
if people are buying it organically
they're also going to buy it through
paid ads and it's at that point where
you actually just focus on those
specific books
and go for okay they're making say two
or three sales a day you can turn that
into
five six or seven with ads rather than
seeing a book as oh it's making no sales
i need to do ads on this
and then realizing it's not gonna do
anything if it's not selling organically
it's probably not gonna sell through ads
so
just focus your ads specifically on
um the right books that are actually
already selling that that's definitely a
first the first tip
dude i just want to say that i love that
tip because that's something that uh i
used to say
and i still say but um by the way sorry
if you can hear the dogs in the
background barking
can you hear them
i can i can quietly uh okay sorry about
that um but i always said that yes like
your time is money and you have to
decide if you're gonna make more money
run like setting up ads which takes time
or creating new books and uh it also
just reminded me of like one quick tip
that kind of piggybacks off of your
suggestion which is that you can go to
your
uh like author page or you know like if
you publish under the same pen name like
you can go to that page and sort by i
think
reviews
and if you do that that's also like a
nice way because like for me i have a
ton of books you know what i mean but if
i just need a quick way of finding like
what books maybe i should start with
like running ads to uh i can go do that
and then i've got a list basically in
order of all my books with reviews which
would be a great place to start with uh
running ads so i really like that tip
yeah so reviews is is an extra level on
top of sales if it's selling great if
it's got reviews on it as well even
better
yeah so when you start running ads uh
what type of ad unit do you start with
so again
the dogs are having a great time in the
background yeah i'm sorry man i can like
close the door why don't you just keep
talking i'll close the door
yeah so i think i think uh similarly to
what i said about uh just general kdp is
get to know the simple stuff first
before you d you delve deeper into the
more complicated and potentially
expensive stuff so
in terms of what that means with ads is
is you've got your three different types
of ads you've got your products your
product based ads where you compete you
advertise against other products you've
got your keyword stuff which is your
advertising against specific keywords
and then you've got your auto ads and
auto ads are kind of a merge of the two
amazon does a lot of the leg work for
you you don't really do a huge amount
but it's a good place to start and kind
of learn with ppc campaigns what
actually happens and there's a lot of
things and different metrics that
interact
with advertising on amazon so an auto
ads a great place where amazon do a lot
of the leg work for you and then you can
focus your time on understanding exactly
what's going on so i would definitely
say
start with an auto ad for your book
which for those who don't already know
basically means all you have to do is
put a default bid in on amazon and
amazon will
look at your book look at the specific
keywords in the title and the keywords
you put in your in your keyword boxes
and then kind of run ads against that so
as an example if i had a book that was
called i don't know um
look we touched on the previous episode
uh
drinking water habit tracker amazon will
look at that title and no it's a book
about habits and drinking water so you
might
see amazon
placing your ads against other habit
tracker related stuff anything to do
with water consumption so it's kind of
clever in the way it knows but that's
why it's really important
if you're running auto ads and i did a
thread on
twitter on this the other day because
it's difficult to remember everything in
one
it's good to kind of be able to follow
along but if you
are doing auto ads you need to make sure
that your keywords are right if you've
got a water habit tracker but you're
going for keywords like
football book or something general
your ad is going to put your
your habit your water habit tracker book
against football books or anything else
that your keywords are related for
and people who are searching for
football books aren't really gonna buy
your uh your water habit tracker so
yeah definitely make sure before you do
any sort of advertising your keywords in
your book all specific towards the kind
of book you're doing because that's what
amazon will use to put your book against
other products so that's a really really
important one
that's a great uh great call and then
also i wanted to ask like
would you
just do auto campaign right away or like
when you feel it's justified and then
wait before doing a manual campaign for
the auto campaign to generate some
keywords that are converting or
would you kind of like also then take
time to set up a manual campaign
so what i did i don't think there's any
hard and fast rule with it kind of do
whatever
works for you but for me i i started
with the auto ad uh set it with quite a
low bid so
in my eyes a low bid is anything around
kind of 25 25 p uh whatever that is in
in us dollars i think it's around 40
cents in us dollars start low that means
your ad won't spend loads it will only
start at relatively low bids you'll keep
it nice and condensed
and then you'll still be able to get
clicks and things like that
and also any sort of click is is going
to be quite cheap for you so
i'm going to assume we have a book that
you're selling for for six pound nine um
that you've got less than 100 pages so a
book that sells at six pound ninety nine
you'll get two pound forty nine royalty
for that so that's kind of the number
you wanna be
looking at for your auto ad so let's
just say uh let's just say it's two
pound fifty for simplicity
and you have a 25 p bid every time
someone clicks on your ad it's going to
cost you 25 p to do that
so with your auto ad you've essentially
got
10 different rolls of the dice or 10
different clicks that people can make
and if none of them make a purchase you
spent
2 pound 50 which is your 10 times 25 p
clicks and at that point that
key that ad is unprofitable because
you've spent 2.50
and a sale gets you 2 pound 49 back so
at that point you need to be aware that
it's unprofitable
in an ideal world you get a sale within
those first 10 clicks and therefore you
know that your ad is profitable then
generally my kind of rule i went with is
if you're spending
double what your royalty would be on a
book and not getting any ads then you
stop stop the ad it's not working it's
not profitable either your book isn't
isn't good enough the keywords aren't
specific enough but that kind of um
rule is is what i use so if it's a book
that i get 2.49 for for selling
if my ad spends five quid and i haven't
made any sales from it at that point i
would cut the ad up the the out off
yeah that's great that you have some
rules man and then i've also like i'm
at some point gonna be doing more
advertising talk on my channel about a
couple tools like two of them that i
know have been in like heavy development
in 2022 um that can like automate kind
of these these the execution of these
rules you're describing
all that yeah so yes that's always nice
when you're not having to be in there
like every single day you know across a
hundred books or thousands or whatever
it is i think on that without with auto
ads as well it's important to to
remember that the ad kind of gets
smarter the longer the longer it goes on
for it will learn what keywords are
converting which ones aren't so
the longer you have an auto ad running
which is why i always say give it two
times the potential royalty you might
get because if they spend 2 pound 15 it
has no sales it might just not be smart
enough yet or no had enough time to test
the words that work the ones that don't
so give it twice and then eventually you
add we'll get we'll get smarter and you
can
essentially you need to give it time to
give it time for it to learn so what i
would do is i'd set the auto ad and give
it at least 14 days i won't touch it and
i if you've got a low bid it's unlikely
you'll spend over the the money that you
that you set aside for it in 14 days but
at least in that 14 days you've given it
a chance to run
people can see it people can click it
your ad can learn what keywords are
working which ones aren't
and then from there you can
depending on what the ads doing either
stop it make changes to it i mean that's
that's a whole deeper conversation if it
needs to be
or potentially go from your auto ad what
keywords are working what products are
working and then from there use those
words that are working
into a manual adam that's how you really
scale up um
from there so kind of useful i kind of
use my auto ads as a
harvest harvest your keywords if i can
keep an auto out at break even or
slightly unprofitable that's not
necessarily a bad thing it all depends
on your your ad strategy but if you're
generating keywords that are profitable
for a manual campaign then you can
probably get away with having a slightly
unprofitable auto ad you just need to
work out what the role of the auto ad is
in your amazon campaign strategy
that's great advice man yeah and um
i did just want to touch on too like
what you're saying about the auto
campaign it takes time to learn and keep
in mind like uh to everybody watching
like amazon doesn't want to show
products that aren't relevant to
someone's search
to them you know what i mean so it's in
amazon's best interest as well to not be
showing your product on keywords that
aren't performing so they'll figure it
out as well but that doesn't also mean
that you should just like not check your
auto campaigns because you know they'll
find a way to spend your money too um i
just did a video yesterday i released it
today actually
the day of us recording this and was
talking about just the crazy numbers
amazon has done including amazon's
advertising growing year over year
through 2021 by um like 32 percent or
wait no was it 30 i think it was 32
percent it was something absurd or did
it triple
oh man it was too many it was like 15
things i'll send you the article after
this though
absolutely absurd man how much their
advertising had grown and it's like a 32
billion dollar a year thing yeah because
obviously they make money through
selling products but
us who are selling products on amazon
they're making money from us because
they take a margin and they're getting
all of our ad spend so i'd love to know
how much amazon actually making from ads
it must be but yeah look at this so 31
billion in 2021 man so absolutely absurd
and growth rate of 32 that's what it was
so they made 31 billion the growth rate
was 32
so it's just like that's crazy man crazy
i think that that kind of leads into a
good point is when you're looking at
your ads
it's very
important not to not to look at it as
raw money spent it's
if you spend a lot of money that's fine
if it's you should look at it more of a
return on your investment so it doesn't
matter if you spend ten pounds and
that's more than the five pounds you
want to spend ultimately if it's ten
pounds it's giving you an investment
then that's kind of what you have to
look at it for it does depend on how
much money you have to spend on your
budget but
don't take the raw numbers as a good
thing or a bad thing the main thing you
want to be looking for is a return on
your investment because that's
essentially what ads are you're
investing in the ads to potentially get
something back so
your a cost which is your your cost of
sales is the main metric to look for
there that will tell you how profitable
um
how profitable your ad is and that's the
one you want to keep keep your eyes on
you've got
it's got a
a really low a cost but it's spending
one pound a month like great it's a
profitable ad but it's not spending
anything it's not really doing anything
for you likewise you've got a lot of
spend on your on your ad but the a cost
is really high again you're spending a
lot of money but it's not that
profitable you want to find that fine
medium in between the two where you've
got
a relatively low cost that is still
spending so it's it's profitable but
it's actually still driving you sales
rather than just being profitable and
not doing a lot for you so that's where
the bids come in
basically yeah that's
that's great advice man and like um so i
know you have to go really soon but how
much did you say profit wise like let's
say we're selling a book at 6.99 how
much profit would you say we get like
250 about oh yeah two is 2.49 if you've
got it under 108 pages which is which is
what i do i think so let's do 2.49
divided by 6.99
so that means that if your a cost
is you know a call if you sell the book
at so sell
at
and this is in uh
right yeah yeah sell at 6.99 equals 2.49
profit
a cost
break even
is
35.6 so hopefully guys what we're saying
makes sense this is why you know say
follow sam on twitter by the way because
he's putting out like tons of amazing
free content follow me on youtube
hopefully you guys already are um and
you know we you know we'll probably each
be talking more in depth about these
things
yeah
so is that
a cos that's that for me that 36 is is
the golden number that's that's your
break-even margin and then if it's
higher it doesn't necessarily mean it's
too bad as long as it's within a
reasonable distance to it
but you do also with ads it's really
important to remember is you have to pay
i don't know what it is in the us it's
definitely in the uk we have to pay 20
v80 on top of the ad so actually the
break even a cost the actual breakeven
cost is actually lower than that so me
as a general rule i'll just do about 30
is my break even because
in theory it's 36 percent but we have to
pay v80 on top of that which amazon
sneakily don't really tell you in any of
the metrics but it's something you do
have to take into account but anything
around that break even sort of point is
where you want to be aiming for as long
as you're getting these keywords coming
through you can then put into a manga
lab that can be much more profitable
that's that's really important to
remember yeah so guys you're working
towards getting like really well
optimized manual ads is really the end
goal because that's you know
that's where you're like you have your
gold mine high value keywords
you find that sweet spot in your bids
like you can kind of adjust until you
find like where you're comfortable with
the spend and you're seeing good um
return
and uh that's that's the sweet spot
that's where you want to be
and
yeah i mean that's pretty much it like
you know this is what it's an evolving
process you always want to be in there
like monitoring because you don't want
to have your competition outbid you and
then all of a sudden start overtaking
your you know your organic rank because
keep in mind too when you're advertising
and you're converting people guys
whether it's manual or auto campaigns
this is also increasing organic rank
with each sale and those numbers that
you get from organic sales will not roll
up into your advertised sales so you
kind of just have to have faith that
it's working
um and that you're going to see like
long-term
reward for what you do i think just
jumping in i think if someone hasn't
done any sort of advertising on amazon
this might be quite daunting
one thing i would say is
don't worry about it focus on your auto
ads and you will naturally learn all the
metrics i had no idea i've never
advertised on anything before
once you just stick to your auto ads
just focus purely on that and naturally
you will understand when the right time
is to go into manual to learn how the
metrics interact what sort of numbers to
look for um literally don't worry about
having to know or you're not going to
know all at the start you'll just learn
as you go along stick with your simple
auto ads and then
everything else will come will come
naturally at the right time so yeah just
don't panic when you see all of that
loads of different numbers on the screen
there
stick to your auto ads and you'll be
fine yeah that's a great that's a great
uh place to start i mean at a minimum
too like it sucks with kdp you can't do
the like bulk auto campaign that you can
do with with everywhere else but maybe
one day we'll be able to do that but
definitely great advice and one thing we
didn't mention is how to actually get to
where you can run an ad in kdp so do you
just want to briefly say that and then
i'll let you go because i know you um
yeah yeah so there's two ways i think
just type in um
the web address is
advertising.amazon.com but if you just
type in google kdp advertising it will
be the top link there or if you go on
your actual kdp dashboard you've got
loads of different options with your
books you can just press promote book
and that will take you directly through
to the advertising thing but google
google's your best bet do it through
there and um you do have to create an
account from what i remember pretty
straightforward
yeah i think most people will probably
do the like go to the bookshelf and
click you just now order the dots and
click promote book the first time you
guys want to set up an ad and that's
that's going to be probably like where
you'll want to go
all right hey sam thank you so much for
being here man honestly um this format
works really well because you know what
you're talking about and i can just kind
of let you go and maybe like you know
show something on the screen share and
kind of elaborate after it's nice
yeah i really appreciate you being here
and um definitely i'm sure like guys let
us know what your thoughts and questions
in the comments below and if you want me
to have sam back in the future i'm sure
you have questions so maybe i'll just
keep a list and then you come back for
part four at some point answer the
questions i don't know yeah as i say if
we do if we do a part four it'll be good
to have specific questions people have
asked that we can actually tailor the
stuff to them so if they have any issues
we can go live dude i mean if you want
to i don't know i'm not putting you on
the spot or anything
either or we can do live or if they want
to put stuff in the comments we can at
least
touch on stuff that people are
specifically asking for so uh yeah
sounds good to me cool all right i
really appreciate it i'm gonna wrap this
up because i know you gotta go but
thanks again for being here yeah i know
where is it too again thanks uh thanks
for having me