PAID PROMO – Beware -Try it Once – GoTo – Bingo

Bargain Ebook Hunter otherwise known as tiny-tea-cup and mostly empty http://bargainebookhunter.com/feature-your-book/

When you arrive at the above site it re-directs you to HotZippy which is now its parent-site. There you have 4 choices: BargaineBookHunter, PixelScroll, Romance Ebook Deals & 13 Horror Street.

http://support.hotzippy.net/?page_id=581

At Bargain Ebook Hunter you have a choice of number of books to promote and number of days.

To promote 5 books for ONE single day can set you back $75 (US)

To promote 1 book for 1-day is $15 (US).

An extra day of promo costs $7.50 (US).

I ran this promo for 2 days—total cost $22.50 (US). For those of us around the globe, that’s 20.15Ɛuro, 15.92BritishPound, 29.99CAN$ and 29.97AUST$. Naturally, I get paid in Canadian Dollars so paid promo is very pricey for me. Promo ran Thursday and Friday in at the beginning of March.

PERSONAL RESULTS: Thursday sales: 2 paid downloads, 3 free-book downloads

Friday sales: 1 paid download, 4 free-book downloads

Try it Once after all you may get entirely different results. This is an expensive promo that yields slim results (at least for me). I ran it last year for my other novels and it performs just about the same. They deliver as per their advertisement but the mere fact they put in an ‘invitation’ (Newbie writers welcome) does not inspire much trust in their audience-reach. They are after your paid promo dollars and if my results are any indication, they don’t have a ‘reading’ audience for their emails or newsletter.

*******

BookGoodies otherwise known as a long confusing list of promo features http://bookgoodies.com/authors-start-here/

BookGoodies is a network. It’s a confusing site. You can spend as little as $7.50 and all the way up to $200 or more, depending on what you choose. It’s worth to go to the site just to read about all the plethora of offered advertisement.

Two weeks on BookGoodies Bargain Book category page $37.50 USD. I ran it for two middle weeks in March because they had a 50% discount. I ended up paying $18.75 for two weeks of listing on the site in the above given category. The book was priced at 0.99.

PERSONAL RESULTS: On the first 3 days of this promo results were: Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday sales: 1+0+1 paid downloads & 1+6+2 free-book downloads.

Try it Once just to learn about their promo features. It’ll give you an overview of what is available and if you have the money in the budget to try it. If you get on their newsletter distribution list, they’ll send you a notice when they have discounts on their promo. That’s about the only time I would choose to promote through this site. You can get their link to your book on their site when it’s running as a bargain and then promote that on your social media.

*******

FreeKindleBooks and Tips otherwise known as pricey promo that will deliver a morale-crushing trickle http://fkbt.com/for-authors/

New releases can be booked only Saturday or Sunday—and as we know by now those are the worst possible days to do paid promo so the price tag is: 0.99 cents books – $25 (US)  $1.00 to 2.99 – $50 (US) and no books over $2.99 accepted.

 Regular Book Posting: 0.99 – $30 (US)  $1.00 and up $60 (US)

 Featured Book Posting: Free book – $100 (US) 0.99 and up – $125 (US)

They claim: 600,000+ people accessing the blog via the free reader app or the Collections app for their Kindle Fire.

150,000+ people via an e-Ink Kindle subscription, email or social media subscription, or directly on the blog’s website, or via an RSS reader.

However, if my downloads are any indication, then the above number of readers do NOT access anything on Saturday or Sunday. The owner of this promo site has to ‘approve’ your submission and does not require the book to have any requisite number of reviews. Having read the site several times, I believe this is his justification for charging those hefty premiums.

Try it Once but only if you can afford it and if, after having read all the claims and ‘warning advice’ on the site, you still want to give it a try. The site has a ‘search’ feature that lets you see your book ‘archives’ on the site. You can promote that link to your social media in which case it’s ever harder to tell whether those 6 paid downloads came from the paid promo site effort—or yours.

My book was a new release so I had to run it on a weekend—Sunday.

PERSONAL RESULTS: 6 paid downloads, 2 free-book downloads

BEWARE – Lesson learned

I’ve learned that any paid promo site that boasts 30,000 newsletter subscribers or 500,000 distribution reach is pretty much composed of ghosts behind the emails—or at the very least presence that does not read and that directs any communication from these promoters to go into the Spam Folder.

A site that claims to have nearly a million subscribers may well have them but any further claim of reaching 100,000 readers should be taken with a grain of salt. For one thing, none of these sites can possibly have the kind of expensive tech built in that collects information on its subscribers that would tell them whether they’re readers, or even whether there is real-live substance behind the email. What I mean is that I can subscribe to their newsletter with my work email and it’s a solidly legitimate email, no questions there. However, unless I go to my preferences on my work computer, and adjust the company-set spam criteria, that email will not reach my work-desk. That’s what I mean about claims of hundreds and thousands of subscribers. And let’s not even get started about how many legitimate email accounts I can have with my ISP provider on my technology-for-small-business plan. So spend your promo money carefully.

REFLECTION Almost ALL promo sites that I’ve used in the past 18 months have been ‘full’ booked, often for weeks in advance. On average, book your promo ONE month ahead. That’s what many of these promo sites are booking at. This means there are not only many, many indie writers out there promoting, but they have the budget to do so. Perhaps the old definition of ‘indie writer’ no longer applies. Those who are promoting have big budgets to do it. To me, this means that those writers who had to settle for one of the myriad e-publishers that have sprung out there in the past few years, are really, really suffering because their publishers certainly don’t promote anything…except their own work. Something to think about.