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PAID PROMO – Beware -Try it Once – GoTo – Bingo
http://awesomegang.com/advertising-on-awesomegang/
otherwise known as your book gets put to sleep (lost) on their site
It’s cheap vague-promo, $10 US to list your book on their site and send it out via their newsletter that claims 7,000 subscribers. No way to confirm that but if your downloads (sales) are any indication few if any of those subscribers are more than just an email. The owners are nice, approachable though there’s not much to ‘approach’ for. Your promo runs for 2 days. Your book is listed on their site but even then, height of your promo, it’s hard to find. I don’t know a reader who will continue scrolling through dozens and dozens of books and suddenly comes upon yours with that ‘aha’ moment. When you enter your author name into search, you WILL find all your books promoted with them, and the dates when these were promoted. That part is solid. Whether anything results from promoting here is…nebulous at best.
TRY IT ONCE but be realistic of what you can get out of it. If it makes you feel good to go to the site, search your author name and see that your book is listed (and lost among many, many others) then by all means, spend the $10 bucks.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of the promo (February/Monday&Tuesday) there was 1 download (paid) of the promoted novel in two days and 43 downloads of my ‘free’ book.
**NOTE This may be an indicator that those site-searchers who do visit the site and then click on your book are only searching for freebies. We’ll discuss the pros and cons (mostly cons) of offering your book for free in another post.
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http://kindlebookpromos.luckycinda.com/
otherwise known as no staff or money spent on upkeep of the site
They have several promotional options, ranging in price from $5.00 to $50.00 and if you scroll through their Advertising Options tab http://kindlebookpromos.luckycinda.com/?page_id=10719 you will see they don’t bother updating their site. That alone should raise a flag. After all, advertising promotional deals that end February 1st or having special “Christmas Giveaway” considering it’s March or featuring “2105 Book Marketing”…peruse this site with a raised brow. They will send you PayPal invoice minutes after you book your promote.
BEWARE They will get back to you but frankly they are more interested in billing you through PayPal and collecting money than using any of that revenue to update their website so it at least doesn’t read so…ridiculously out of date. And if the site’s material is out of whack, what else is out of date…newsletter, lists, readers…not sure where your book will land or whether it’ll make any impact.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of the promo (February/Wednesday) there was 1 paid download of the promoted book, and 18 downloads of my free book.
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http://bookpreviewclub.com/authorsignup/ Book Preview Club
otherwise known as they deliver and your book stays there on their site
Book Preview Club has only three promo spots, Free, Featured Listing and Premium Feature. Featured Listing is $10 and Premium is $20. They will list your book on their site and it appears to be in good company. The display is a bit cluttered but you can readily pick out your title. The Premium Feature ($20) will keep your title on their site permanently and it really stays there.
GO-TO but don’t expect great results, just appreciable results that will make you feel better. Then again, you’re only spending $10-20 so it’s nothing to feel stressed about. This is the kind of promo that you keep on the back burner, and use its link to promote on twitter or facebook when you have time to promote. Your book is on their site, it’s nicely visible, doesn’t take much to find it so it’s easy to promote when you want to stay something about it.
PERSONAL RESULTS: on the day of promo (February/Thursday) there were 8 paid downloads of the promoted book, and 15 downloads of my free book. If your book is in the category that is narrowly focused in its genre, 8 downloads per single day can well raise it to the top 100 paid-Kindle category for that day or two. Something to consider.
SUMMARY & OBSERVATION
Thursday seems to be the strongest day for paid promotion. Look through the promo sites where you are thinking of advertising. If you see pages and pages of books listed and have to scroll for fifteen minutes to go through ‘current’ promotion, skip that site. They will deliver on their pitch of listing your book but no one will be able to find it, much less buy it. Zero sales are a reality for sites like that. There is also no possibility of ‘cascade sales’ into following days from that promotion. You’ll do better if you just spend those fifteen minutes pitching your novel on facebook.
Next blog, three more paid promo sites coming up for review.
