The 14-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge
Day #9: How to Figure Out Your Conversion Rate and What Makes a Good Number
Brought to you by Bryan Cohen’s Author Ad School
Here’s What You’ll Learn Today
- How to accurately calculate your book’s Conversion Rate number
- What makes a “good” Conversion Rate, and why it matters
Quick Tip: Reviewing Metadata
Tweaking and improving your categories, 7 KDP keywords, and the first line of your blurb can help your ads and books get more traction.
With your categories, you’ll want to select up to three that are the most relevant to your book (does your book fit on the shelf with the other books in the category?).
When it comes to your seven KDP keywords, you want to look at specific terms that have extremely relevant search results to your book on an Incognito browser.
Add those to a blurb with a strong hook that conveys genre and high stakes, and your book may start to convert better in the coming weeks and months ahead.
How Readers See Things
Now, these three key improvements to your book can have a significant impact on how your book and ads show up, but metadata isn’t everything. Improved categories, keywords, and hooks can get your book more traffic through ads, and the next step is making sure that readers who see your book actually buy it.
Readers make decisions based on your book’s cover, title, blurb, customer reviews, look inside, and a host of other factors. When one of those aspects of your page isn’t meeting that subgenre’s reader expectations, then there’s a chance they might be confused enough to avoid making the purchase.
If they don’t seem to be buying once we send that heightened amount of traffic, then we have to make sure we’re gathering enough information.
Profit and Conversion
We need to collect 100 clicks for each book you’re advertising (cumulatively over 10+ ads) because occasionally, your royalties can actually go from unprofitable to break even or profitable over that span of time (especially with the KU pages delay and Readthrough factored in).
If the book/series isn’t profitable during those weeks/months worth of data collection, then our next step is to figure out how many sales and/or borrows your book had out of those 100+ readers.
Many authors in the early stages of their careers only have books that fall into this category of unprofitable titles, but improving a book’s Conversion Rate can actually give that book a better chance of success. If you’ve been in the game a while, you may have a mix of books that are in profit and those that aren’t, and you have the opportunity to try to make all of your books profitable through sales page improvements.
Keep in mind that it’s almost always easier to make fixes on “your next book” rather than spending your time on your backlist.
What is Conversion Rate?
Conversion Rate is how many ad clicks it takes to make a sale (or a full read of a book in Kindle Unlimited).
For paperbacks or books that aren’t in KU, this is as easy as taking the clicks and dividing them by the # of sales (100 clicks / 10 sales = 10 clicks to get a sale.
For books in KU, you have to figure out how many sales as well as how many full KU reads your book has had (4,000 pages read / 400 pages in a book = 10 KU reads. 100 clicks / (10 sales + 10 KU reads) = 100 clicks / 20 = 5 clicks to get a sale/borrow). You can find out how many KU pages are in your book on your Bookshelf by going to “Promote and Advertise” for that book and scrolling to the bottom left.
We recommend gathering at least 100 clicks over 1-3 months where that book wasn’t in a promotion, discounted, or launched to get “cleaner” data.
How to Find Your Conversion
First, you’ll gather your # of clicks by looking at your Ad Dashboard for that book during a certain time period (you can add together all of your ads for that book to get the total clicks number).
Next, you’ll go to the KDP Reports dashboard and use the Orders tab to gather the total # of sales and the KENP tab to get the total # of KU pages for that book. If you’re in KU, you’ll add together the total # of sales and the total # of full KU reads (i.e. Total Pages / Pages in Your Book).
Lastly, you’ll divide your # of clicks by the # of sales/borrows to get your # of clicks to get a sale.
If your book is profitable and you’re happy with the profit, Conversion Rate is helpful info, but if your book is break-even or unprofitable, then knowing your book’s conversion can make a huge difference.
What Does Your Number Mean?
Let’s say your book isn’t profitable, and you’ve (eventually) logged 100 clicks and 8 sales. You’ve followed the steps to find that 100 clicks / 8 sales means that you get a sale essentially every 12.5 clicks. We are hoping to get a Conversion Rate closer to a sale for every 6 to 8 clicks, so you would then start thinking about what aspects of your sales page might be turning readers away.
If your number is much higher, like getting only 3 sales for every 100 clicks (a.k.a. around 33.3 clicks to make a sale), then you’ll really want to question your assumptions about what readers in your subgenre are looking for and assume that some more extensive work is needed.
Let’s keep in mind that this is a business, and if you have a number you’re unhappy with, it’s not a personal attack or any kind of expression of your worth as an author; it’s just data and it’s just business.
Some authors will find out their number, and they’ll avoid the fact that there are probably reasons that readers aren’t buying the book. Others will take the info to heart and find ways to start correcting their sales page issues (and we’ll dive into exactly what that looks like in tomorrow’s Challenge video!)
Want to See How I Calculate Conversion Rate?
Be sure to watch the screen share at 11:13 to follow along with the visual portion of this lesson!
There’s One Challenge Video Left
The Challenge expires soon with one video remaining and one webinar. At the conclusion of the 14 days, you’ll have to become a part of Author Ad School to continue your support.
If you would like support for three or more additional months, then you get access to 4+ weekly live sessions, 5+ additional modules, and daily writing rooms.
Even though our community and support on their own are worth the price of admission…
We love telling authors about the results our students have had!
“My writing has moved from being a hobby to being the career I never imagined it could be. I think it’s safe to say the results speak for themselves! But it’s not just the money. I’ve learned new ways of connecting with fans, and I have a whole network of people ready to support and encourage me, and it’s wonderful to be part of that community.” – Author Chez Churton
“Bryan’s course has really opened up possibilities for the future. When I started, I had a long way to go. In four months, I exceeded $300 in monthly royalties. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited or confident to move forward. If you want to sell books and master Amazon, which I think we are all going to have to do… If you want to play the game and be in this for the long-term… Then you need to sign up for Bryan’s course. You’re not going to be sorry.” – Author Beth Underwood
Here’s How You Get It
While some courses are based on fads, our course continues to deliver results to our 3,000+ students. You can get three months of access to Author Ad School Unlimited for one payment of $249 or three payments of $99.
You’ll also get an additional three-hour workshop with me and extra small group coaching when you join the program for 6 or 12 months.
Day #9 Homework
- How does the concept of Conversion Rate change your understanding of your current and future potential books?
- How do you suspect your future marketing efforts will boost your book sales if you focus on improving your Conversion Rate going forward?
- Why do you think we ask you to get 100 clicks before making any major decisions about your book’s sales page?
- You can answer these questions in a new post in the Facebook or Slack group with the hashtag #AdDay9 (and your own hashtag)
- Please remember to comment on another author’s post in the group to bring these good vibes on home!
On the Next Day of the Challenge
We’ll discuss the small and bigger changes you can make to improve your conversion rate.
We’ll also have a recap of the entire Ad Profit Challenge and what comes next!
Have a wonderful rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Sincerely,
Bryan & the Team