Paid Advertising with Faith Blum

Hello! I have Faith Blum here today to talk about the tricky waters of Paid Advertising. It's something that I've not really done yet, outside of an ad that I ran on Goodreads, but it's incredibly helpful and wish that I had the money to do it.

Find Faith on the Interwebs:

Website~Blog~Amazon~Goodreads~Facebook~Twitter~Pinterest

Why in the world would you pay someone to advertise your book? How does that help you make money? 

I was skeptical, too. Until I tried it. And sold more books than I ever expected that not only paid for the advertising, but also gave me more income than I had made for a while. And great rankings on Amazon. So why pay, how do you do it, and what sites are the best? I'll answer each question in order.

How do you do it?

What I have found to be the best thing to do is to put one of your books on sale for free. Sound counterproductive? It did to me at first, too. Then I tried it. Did you know that if you make one book free, people often buy other books in the series? Me neither. Probably because I don't usually do anything like that.

Anyway, I can't say how other people do this, but the way I do it, is this way.

Step 1: Pick a Book

First things first, you need to decide which book of yours that you want to set free. If you have never done this before, I would suggest the first book in your series.

Step 2: Set a date (or not)

Depending on which sites you choose, you may want to not set a date. Especially for Bookbub and EreaderNewsToday (see below) since they are usually a little more open when you are flexible. Sometimes. However, if you have a date or dates you want, for instance, you have a new release coming out in the series, you can pick the date that works best for that.

Step 3: Set up the promos

This is one of the hardest things to coordinate sometimes. If you have a date picked for your freebie, make sure you give them the range of dates and a preferred date if that is an option. Then set up the promo on KDP. My recommendation would be at least a three day promotion.

Step 4: Day of

On the days of the promotion, you can post on Social Media, too. Include the links from promotion sites if you can. 

What sites are best?

 Here are my favorite promotion sites to advertise on:

BKnights (Schedule only 7-10 days ahead, $5)

EreaderNewsToday (Pricey, but good. Sometimes picky.)

Spirit-Filled Kindle (Schedule 7-14 days ahead,$20)

Christian Book Finds ($5-10, super sweet to work with)

eReader Obssession (Free)

Free Kindle Books and Tips ($25)

Robin Reads ($40, very few genre choices, slightly hard to get into)

Bookbub (Expensive, difficult to get into, but super productive)

For a list of other promotion sites, you can check here.