The 14-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge
Day #7: How to Research Even More Ad Targets and Create New Ads Each Week
Brought to you by Bryan Cohen’s Author Ad School
Here’s What You’ll Learn Today
- What tools you can use to find more keywords in the form of book titles and author names
- Why and how you should create 5-10 new Keyword Ads each week
How to Find More Keywords
There are multiple free tools that can help you find keywords to use, including the free Google Chrome plugins Instant Data Scraper and the Kindletrends Also Boughts Downloader.
For the Kindletrends plugin, you’ll want to visit the link shared above or simply search the plugin on Google and download the plugin to Chrome. You’ll then want to go into “Settings,” click on the “Extensions” button (which looks like a puzzle piece), and enable the plugin to work in an Incognito browser.
The plugin will now display a little download button above all lists of books that appear on a book’s sales page, though some lists tend to be more relevant than others.
Our best bet is the “Customers Also Bought” list, but “Customers Also Viewed” is another good option that more often shows up on Amazon when you use an Incognito browser (other options are looking in international Amazon stores or looking at the bottom of series pages for relevant books).
More Ads for More Traffic
Rather than running multiple ads to the same sets of targets, it’s a better idea to broaden your scope by creating more ads, with most of them taking the form of Sponsored Product Keyword Ads.
Now that we have the tools to create each of these three ad types, we’ll put the pedal to the metal by finding enough targets to create up to 5 Category Ads (in total) and as many as 5-10 Keyword Ads per week. Since we recommend only one target per Category Ad and a max of five campaigns, most of the work will be in finding 100-150 keyword phrases to put into our Keyword Ads.
Today, with the help of a free program or two, you can research keywords more quickly and set up the ads you need to bring in cumulatively more impressions and eventually clicks and sales (Are you fired up? I am. Let’s do it!).
Researching Keywords
To find the right keywords that fit with your book, use an Incognito browser to click on the sales page of one of the bestselling books in your subgenre that would fit on the same shelf as yours.
Scroll all the way down until you find “Also Bought” or “Also Viewed,” click the download button above the list of books, and wait 30-60 seconds for the plugin to work. Save both of the files that the downloader has created and then open a spreadsheet program like Excel or go to the free Google Sheets to import the TXT file the plugin generated.
Open the TXT file with Excel or import it with Sheets, select Next, Next, and then Finish, and you’ll see the book titles and author names separated out into columns.
Since the list of keywords created can be a little clunky, here’s a link to an optional keyword cleaner you can use to strip out unwanted special characters that Amazon won’t accept, such as colons and commas, before using them as targets in your Sponsored Product Keyword Ads.
Edit Your Keyword List
Some of the book titles and author names you gather will be a perfectly relevant fit for your book, but others won’t fit quite as well. This is why before you copy and paste your cleaned-up list of keywords, you’ll want to look through and make sure some weird ones haven’t snuck in.
It’s hard to know all the titles in your genre, but you don’t need to research all the books in your list of keywords. It’s a smart idea to remove any that are obvious poor fits, such as popular books that are miscategorized or books you know personally that aren’t relevant to your own.
I recommend having one session per week where you download the various also boughts/viewed lists and another session where you clean them up (which is sort of like the first draft writing and editing modes you need for your writing time). From there, you can take your edited lists of keywords and add 100-150 of them into a new Keyword Ad.
Next Steps: 5-10 Ads Per Week
Let’s say you’ve run the numbers (we’ll do this together in tomorrow’s lesson!), and you can see clear as day that you’re either very profitable, a little profitable, break even, or unprofitable: what do you do next?
Since it’s early in the process, the next step for all authors, no matter their profit level, is to keep creating more relevant ads each week. We even suggest this for authors who are break-even or unprofitable because we want to get at least 100 clicks worth of ad data (if all your ads for one book add up to 100 clicks, then you’re set) to help us have the best data possible.
At 39 cents a click maximum, it will cost you $39 to gather those 100 clicks, but knowing this information could be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars and years of your creative time, so it’s very worth the money.
If you have gotten a little profit or significant profit, there are definitely ways to capitalize on it.
Regular Ad Creation Rocks
The idea of creating 5 -10 Keyword Ads per week may seem daunting now, but once you get the hang of the free plugins we mentioned, the process becomes a whole lot simpler. Creating more ads on a regular basis (until you get to about 100 campaigns for a particular book) can help stimulate the Amazon algorithm to send more readers to your books.
Making sure those campaigns feature relevant targets and that your book has the most relevant metadata possible can get you more impressions and clicks for a lower cost, giving your book a better chance of profitability. The best part about making ads and getting more traffic is that you have a lot more control over the process as you can ensure that readers make it to your book’s sales page every single day.
We’ve overseen thousands of authors creating dozens of ads each, and it’s a sight to behold seeing the progress that many of them (and you) have made as you try to make your author career a reality.
Want to Hunt Down Some Keywords With Me?
Be sure to watch the screen share at 10:33 to follow along with the visual portion of this lesson!
We’ve Hit the Halfway Point
You’re doing the right work you need to do to become profitable.
We’ve still got three more videos and a webinar to show you before the Challenge ends. After that, the support and videos will be moving to our premium Author Ad School program, which features year-round support and our daily Page Pals writing sessions.
Author Ad School also includes ongoing access to this Challenge material so you can continue it at your own pace.
“When I started the Challenge, I never dreamed that I would learn so much or that I could do so well with what I had learned. Ad School helped take me from $500 a month to $15,000 a month in less than a year. Ad School has taught me so much that I continue to use on a daily basis.” – Author Nichole Rose
Here’s How You Get Ad School
While some courses get out of date fast, we have regular, new, updated content.
You can get three months of the best walkthroughs in self-publishing with Author Ad School Unlimited for as little as one payment of $249 or 3 easy payments of $99.
You’ll also get additional workshops with me and extra bonuses when you join our premium program for 6 or 12 months.
Click here to join 3,000+ students in Author Ad School
Day #7 Homework
• Using today’s process, seek out some keywords using the Kindletrends Alsoboughts Downloader in an Incognito browser
• Import those lists into a spreadsheet in Excel or Sheets and clean them up using the free keyword cleaner
• Create one or more Keyword Ads using 100-150 keywords in each with your choice of whether you’d like to use Custom or Standard (copy or no copy)
• Post a picture of your newly created ads in a post in the Facebook or Slack group with #AdDay7
•Comment on two other author’s posts to keep the good vibes going!
On the Next Day of the Challenge
We’ll learn how to find out whether or not your book (or series) is in profit.
We’ll also talk about why embracing the slow-and-steady approach can lead to sustainable growth.
It’s now your wonderful opportunity to go off and do that homework.
You’re doing an awesome job! Thank you for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video!
Sincerely,
Bryan & the Team