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Promo Sites Performance in July 2016
I promoted four different books on two different sites to see how each performed in terms of translating promotion into sales. PriceDroppedBooks (https://pricedroppedbooks.com/author-promotions/) has several genre-categories; the most expensive one is $22.00. This is all ONE-day only promo. There is a residual trickle of sales the day after running the promo but the effect plays out rather quickly.
https://pricedroppedbooks.com/author-promotions/ (ran three books (separately) on following dates, July 4, July 11 and July 14) The sales below are for all the books published independently that were sold in the time frame of the promo of 3 particular titles.
July 4th – 4 books
July 5th – 1 book
July 11th – 2 books
July 12th – 1 book
July 13th – 4 books
July 14th – 3 books
July 15th – 1 book
The sales realized in the above time-frame window did not cover the cost of even ONE-day promo. PriceDroppedBooks does share with the author, via bit-ly link, the book’s performance through clicks. While the book may earn hundreds of clicks, these do not translate into sales. The site claims to have 20,000 newsletter subscribers. This is not evident at this time. It could be that in summertime, book sales are very low since many readers are on vacation and don’t bother checking or reading their newsletter. Then again, I don’t know a reader (or author) who goes on vacation without his communication techno-tools.
I just don’t think the site can achieve a degree of success that would warrant them charging $22.00 per one day/per book for inclusion in a newsletter. Maybe $5.00, tops. Where should I have rather spent my $60+ US…? BookGorilla or StoryFinds or Choosybookworm or Dailybookworm. Much better promo results/corresponding sales.
As well, this promo did not have any appreciable impact on sales of my other titles, the so-called back-list.
Now and then I give ebookstage.com a chance (https://ebookstage.com/). They keep coming up short of my relatively modest expectations. I ran a 1-week promo, cost $10.00.They have an odd system of getting points or just paying via PayPal. If you can spare the $10 bucks, go for it. Otherwise save up for something with a solid performance.
https://www.ebookstage.com/home eBookstage promo (ran from July 6th to July 13th)
Jul 6th – 3 books
July 7th – 1book
July 8th – 1book
July 9th – 0 books
July 10th – 1 book
July 11th – 2 books
July 12th – 1 book
July 13th – 4 books
July 14th – 3 books
July 15th – 1 book
July 16th was the end of the promo effect. Once again, I keep giving this promo site a try and for $10 it’s a trickle, but I wouldn’t spend $50 on one of their packages. The sales would just not support it. Once again there is no appreciable effect of this promo on my back-listed titles.
September 22nd, 2016 at 12:58 pm · Link
I really wish there was a way to subscribe to your blog. Maybe a separate list like for your newsletter? 🙂 Anyway, I’ve shared it with my writing friends. See my Daily Journal at http://hestanbrough.com. Today’s will post around 6 p.m. Arizona time.