Amazon Ads for Your Books as an Indie Author

by | Mar 20, 2022 | Author Life, Marketing | 0 comments

In this blog post you will find:

  • A mini review of Amazon Ads Unleashed by Robert J Ryan
  • My experience with the Kindlepreneur Amazon Ads course and Publisher Rocket
  • How to access Amazon’s free ad webinars and courses for authors

I have been around Amazon ads for a few years now. I have run my own ads and I have helped other authors launch campaigns. But believing yourself to be a master in advertising is akin to standing on a raft going downstream and believing that you are standing still.

The methods for advertising novels are constantly changing. What works will shift from year to year and even from month to month. Amazon is very good at making sure that no one “cheats” the system and their number one goal for their platform is to make readers happy. When you set out to create an Amazon ad for your novel, you should keep in mind that a happy reader will mean that your ads perform better.

Amazon ads are often confusing and overwhelming for authors. If you have zero background in marketing, it might seem impossible to run your own ads. Yet marketing companies can’t promise they will be able to return sales (even if they take a few thousand dollars out of your pockets.) This is really something that is worth learning on your own.

Start By Reading This Book on Amazon Ads

Amazon Ads Unleashed: Advanced Publishing and Marketing Strategies for Indie Authors by Robert J. Ryan

This book is one of those books with an obnoxiously long title that tends to get under my skin. When I first finished the book back in October of 2021, I felt like it wasn’t necessarily worth my time. There are a lot of videos and courses out there (for free, which I will talk about below) that are easier to follow than reading about how to analyze and process data in a book. I still don’t feel like this is the most *complete* guide for Amazon ads.

However, I re-read this book and some of the highlights that I marked recently and I do feel like there is a lot of valuable information in here. Yes, this book might seem repetitive if you have already completed a course on Amazon ads or you are familiar with the platform. But it is much easier to refer back to your highlights than it is to find which video you watched with information in it!

I did highlight a lot of content in this book. In fact, I highlighted 22 sections of text and I have referred back to them as I make changes to my own advertising campaigns. I don’t have a massive budget and I don’t spend much on advertising, so I really like to make sure I’m getting the most bang for my buck. This book has helped me, even though I don’t spend $100-1,000 a month on Amazon ads.

This book is a great place to start and a nice reference guide for those that hope to continue to learn and grow in their ability to create and run Amazon ads.

The Kindlepreneur Amazon Ads Course for Authors

This is not an ad for this course and I’m not affiliated with Kindlepreneur at all. But I do use Publisher Rocket and I enjoyed completing this course on Amazon Ads. It is free and informative and I watched this course and followed the step-by-step process when I created my first Amazon advertising campaign.

While the course is free, Publisher Rocket is not, so take with a grain of salt that the course does promote using this keyword finding tool. You don’t have use it and in the course, they teach you how to find keywords manually, if you would rather do that. So, I think it is a fairly balanced course.

Amazon Advertising Webinars

From your Amazon KDP Dashboard, you can click “Promote and Advertise” after publishing your book. It will then bring you to a page that has “Promote Your Book on Amazon” at the top of the page. Then you will see a little box that looks like this (highlight added by me):

When you click on either of these blue links, you will be able to access tons of free Amazon ads resources that Amazon put out there. I have joined in on a few free webinars, including one that Amazon designed specifically for authors trying to sell their books, and I have found them to be very helpful.

Don’t All These Products Cover the Same Information?

You might be wondering if it is necessary to read a book, take part in a course, and go through webinars just to get your Amazon ads off the ground. And for some people, this might be real overkill. If you feel like you have a great grasp on the concept after you take one course or read a book, then by all means, dive in!

Personally, I find it helpful to go through the information a few times so that I can retain it and I don’t sit down at my Amazon ads dashboard in a week or so and think “um… what am I supposed to do?”

That isn’t to say that all my free time is consumed with listening to podcasts and webinars on advertising. But every few months, I like to go over the information and see what has changed. I might refer back to old notes, study up with new videos, or explore the Amazon Ads training courses to see if I can learn anything new.

I hope that the above resources will help you to feel like you have a better understanding of the concepts around Amazon ads and feel more confident when you launch your own campaigns!

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