Trouble in Bejako land:
My Amazon ad campaigns, which have been buoying up sales of my new 10 Commandments book, have cratered.
The background:
Since publishing my new 10 Commandments book back in May, I have reliably been selling 15-20 copies of the book per day.
A part of how I have been doing this is by running several Amazon ad campaigns in the background.
These campaigns have been working consistently for me. Until, of course, last week, when something shifted.
My campaign ad spend was no longer being spent, or even close to it. Ad cost per sale went way up. Most importantly, fewer books started being sold, just 5-10 per day, both via ads and organically.
I asked the universe why it’s doing this to me, and the universe came back with an answer.
“Amazon has changed its ad algorithm,” the universe told me.
It seems Amazon is now favoring “auto” ad campaigns (which I only had a small discovery budget for) and punishing “exact” campaigns (which was the bulk of my ad spend, because it got better results for cheaper).
I’m not sure what my point is, except maybe the old advice from sports marketer Jon Spoelstra:
“In almost any industry, the best role model is the high tech business. They can’t sit back and stop innovating. If they did, in three to six months they would be woefully behind.”
Amazon is innovating, and I fortunately am forced to innovate alongside them.
The fact is, email lists as a marketing tool provide a certain moat.
An email list is a free way to regularly communicate with dedicated, trusting readers and past customers, many of whom are ready and even eager to buy from you rather than others.
But an email list is only so much of a moat, and lulling yourself (like I often do) into thinking that an email list is a forever source of income, while sitting back and not innovating, will lead to woe.
In any case, I am adapting my Amazon ads strategy, and maybe I will get my book sales back up.
But also I want to get back to more active promotion of my new 10 Commandments book.
My initial idea for promoting this sucker was to get on podcasts. I put that on hold because 1) Amazon ads were working reliably until now and 2) finding podcasts to guest on is a pain.
But now it’s time to innovate. So can you do me a favor?
Do you listen to a podcast — about con men, or pickup, or magic, or sales, or hypnosis, or copywriting, or negotiation, or political propaganda, or comedy, or screenwriting — that you enjoy, and you think might enjoy having me as a guest to talk about the ideas inside my new 10 Commandments book?
If you do, hit reply and let me know. You’ll be doing me a favor.
And if you haven’t yet read my new 10 Commandments book, it deals with all those fields in a coherent and even interesting way. A few headlines from Amazon reviews:
#1. “This is going into my yearly reads collection”
#2. “A new favorite”
#3. “Sophisticated strategies behind the playful tone”
#4. “Instant Classic That’s Highly Entertaining”
#5. “This One’s Staying on My Desk!
#6. “More compelling than Cialdini with sprinkles of Houdini”
#7. “Superb lessons to be aware of”
Your own copy of my new 10 Commandment book is waiting patiently for you right now. If you’d like to claim it: