Why Is Advertising Valuable For Authors?
Organic social media posts are the primary marketing channel, sometimes the only marketing channel, for most authors. But there are inherent problems with it that dramatically affect authors.
The biggest issue is that you have no control over who sees your content. Yes, your followers will see your content more often than non-followers most of the time. But social media sites have been moving away from filling your feed with only content from people you follow for a long time.
In fact, these days a growing share of the content that people see is not from people they follow.
Because of this, the actual impact on sales and page reads that organic content can have is declining all the time.
This is where advertising can shine since Meta gives you much more explicit control over who sees an ad than they do over who sees your social posts.
This allows authors to reach the audiences they want to reach and more easily track the effect that promotion is having on sales and revenue.
The Budget Question
There are two things that hold most authors back from trying ads for themselves. The first of those is a lack of experience or knowledge about how ad platforms work and where to get started. That's a problem I'm looking to solve with free resources, which this newsletter always gets first, and courses like the one mentioned at the bottom of this newsletter.
But for the majority of authors, the biggest thing holding them back is the amount of money required to run ads successfully.
I've said previously in my Ads for Authors series that authors shouldn't run ads unless they have $300-$500/month to spend. I want to explain the reasoning for that more explicitly. Buckle up, because there's some math incoming.
First, it's important to understand that ad platforms primarily function on a daily budget. This means that $300/month in a 30-day month roughly translates to $10/day. You can already see how that monthly number is getting minimized when viewed this way.
The way that users are charged for ads differs depending on the kinds of ads they run, but there are two main ways: Per Click (CPC) or Per 1,000 Views (CPM), views are often called "Impressions" on most ad platforms.
Meta, that is Instagram and Facebook, almost exclusively charges on a CPM model, and authors can expect to pay anywhere between $7-$10 per 1,000 impressions. This means if your budget is $10/day you're generating around 1,000 impressions and 20 clicks on average.
The percentage of people who actually do what you want when they click on your ad varies, but a good rule of thumb is 5%.
This means that on average, if your budget is $10/day, or $300/month, you're generating around 1 new reader per day.
To me, this is the minimum, because anything less than this is likely not going to get any results, which means that you are advertising with no return on that money that you've spent. Below $10/day the platform isn't going to get enough data to even start figuring out who your readers are.
The Importance of a Backlog
After reading that your first conclusion might be that ads aren't for you, because they lose money. Most authors don't make $10 on a book sale, or a full KU read. But whether you make money on this depends on a couple of factors, mostly the size of your backlog and if you are building for the future or looking for an immediate return.
If you are a Kindle Unlimited(KU) author especially, and you have 5-10 books, you have a much better case for advertising. If someone binges all of your books, or say a whole series, you could make much more than $10 off that single reader.
It's generally true for authors that the size of your backlog is one of the biggest indicators of revenue because of this fact.
Most paid promotion is not profitable in the short term for an author with 1-3 books, but if you have 5-10 it's much more likely to be profitable quickly, since you're creating a reader who is more likely to read or buy multiple books.
There is also an argument for doing this as a newer author who falls into the 1-3 book range.
Right now you are early in your author journey, and reaching new readers now could create potential fans of your work who are more likely to buy your future books.
This is much more long term, and harder to prove, but it is a viable strategy that has worked for authors I've worked with.
Who Am I To Talk About This?
For those of you who don't know, my background is in marketing, specifically digital ad management. I own an agency and have managed millions of dollars in ad spend across different advertising platforms over the course of my career.
Advertising is a complex thing in the best of times, and I want to bring some of that knowledge to the general author public in as affordable a way as I can.
If you know other authors who might be interested in learning more about advertising, I would really appreciate it if you forwarded them this newsletter, as it will be a recurring topic here because of my own experience with it.
You can also expect more free resources around advertising for authors to come through this newsletter, and this is always the first group that will see them.
I'm also gauging interest for a potential first cohort for a 4-week ads management program. It would be in the cost range of $100-$150.
This is still a ways out, so if you would be interested, reply and let me know!
If you've received this email it means that you're entered for a chance to win a free strategy call as well!
November's winner is Elmina, author of Betrayal at the Peak!
Thanks and happy writing!
Seth
