THE 5-DAY AUTHOR AD PROFIT CHALLENGE

WITH BRYAN COHEN. I MET THE CHALLENGE!

The 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge was a free class on running Amazon ads that I heard about. I first learned about Bryan Cohen when Amazon invited him to give a presentation on selling books during Prime Day Sales a few months ago that I signed up for.

Bryan Cohen provides a 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge several times a year, hoping authors will sign up for his Author Ad School after they take the challenge. This class costs anywhere from $379.00- $479.00 for the basic course with access for life. Since the challenge class is free, and I feared selling on Amazon, I pushed myself and took the class. I got much more than I anticipated and learned more than how to run ads on Amazon; I also learned how to improve my metadata.

Metadata is the data that Amazon uses for your book, the three categories, your seven keywords, and your book description.

Hundreds of people were in the class, but don't let that scare you away from taking the free course. It was one of the best online classes I've ever taken.

The class was extremely well organized and was better than ninety-nine percent of the ones I'd paid for.

Bryan Cohen as an instructor, is likable and honest. He comes down to your level wherever you're at. If you aren't even selling a hundred dollars a month or never sold a single book, he can help you. If you're selling thousands of dollars of books a month, he can help you too. He explains that progress will be slow and doesn't promise overnight improvements. He also explains that sales will improve with changes in your meta data and improvements to your books. No surprise there, but not something most authors want to hear. I appreciate he's willing to tell authors the truth. Deep down, I know my books need to improve. I’ve only written a few. I’m not Virginia Woolf, and I’m still figuring out who Kay Freeman is.

I found Facebook as the interface for posting assignments a bit crazy sometimes, with so many people posting. When posting your assignments, it was near impossible to go back and locate your post unless someone posted a comment, and even then… However, I'm not a Facebook lover, and I admit I don't hang out on there unless I absolutely have to. Yes, I know about searching for your group activity. Still, besides that one complaint, the lessons were thorough, and thankfully, the class did not use the platform to present materials.

I had no problem following Cohen's instructions and running my ads. He not only explains everything slowly but also demonstrates it again from the Amazon ad page. The videos are pre-recorded so you can watch them over and over. He does a live session at two o'clock where you can ask questions for an hour. These sessions were recorded and put up on Facebook if you missed them or wanted to watch them again.

I had over 500 impressions, sold two books by the fifth day, and only spent thirty-five cents. I sold two additional books, but the other two could have come from a Facebook ad that got turned on too early.

How did I only spend .34 cents, if I sold two books? I only got one click. Cohen explained that people sometimes see the ads but don't click on them. They sometimes come back later and purchase.

I learned Cohen's technique of running many different kinds of ads, keeping low $5.00 budgets and bidding low at .34 cents. These are all things I would not have known to do alone. I also learned to push myself to go beyond settling for twenty-five keywords.

Bryan Cohen encouraged us to research 100-150 keywords when creating keyword ads. He had us running multiple keyword ads and also using similar authors to our books and their book titles as keywords (do this on your keyword ads only, do not use them on your keyword categories. It's a no-no.) This is where PublisherRocket, which Ellen Y. Mueller wrote about, really came in handy. I used it extensively throughout the 5-Day Author AD Profit Challenge Course for various assignments, saving me much time.

If you are totally intimidated by the prospect of running Amazon ads, like I was, then this is the class for you. With budgets of $5.00 a day for each ad, I never used up any of my ad budgets; in fact, I only spent .34 the entire time. Rest assured, you can afford to take this class, learn how to run various Amazon ads, not spend a bunch of money and improve the metadata on your book simultaneously.

Bryan Cohen encourages you to wait until you gather a hundred clicks before making significant decisions about your book and major decisions about changing covers, book descriptions, etc. At this rate, it could take me a few months to gather the hundred clicks he wants me to gather before considering changing covers, descriptions, etc. The mascot of the company is the Lemur and Bryan preaches patience about writing and advertising.

If you want to advertise your books, I strongly suggest you take the class the next time it runs, even if you have a book you've previously tried to sell. There were several people in the class that did well with older books, others that had ones that were free, and others with books they were launching. I remind you, I get nothing from anyone for suggesting the class, and the five-day class is free unless you believe it's worth signing up for the paid course, which is entirely up to you. Wherever you are in your writing journey, you will get something out of this free course.

I learned a lot about advertising on Amazon and my own book and what I need to work on to make the next one in the series more successful.

Next week I'll write about keywords, what they are, why we need good ones, and where you can find more of them, regardless of whether you choose to pursue paid advertising. I'll show you another way to find keywords without having a copy of Publisher Rocket.

Since I wrote about direct selling last week, I got an email from Nick Stephenson about NRDLY. These are template author websites that you complete yourself. No web manager is required. They've been around for a while, but he's just released new ones that support selling direct from your website. These new sites are impressive because they are affordable right out of the box and support selling directly from your website or a storefront like Gumroad. I don't know anything else about it, but I thought I'd include the link. Right now there is a waiting list for the sites. I advise you to do your own research if you are interested.

Have a great week!