The raw deal

Okay, for all my new followers, here’s the raw deal of what I’ve done in the way of promotions in the last four months and what the results are. First were the fiver ads on fiver.com. For five bucks people put your books and links on their blogs and websites. I did about fifteen different blogs with little result. My advice; don’t waste that hard earned five bucks. Then I did the article service where an article is ghost-written for you and then sent to thousands of journal sites and logs. It is supposed to drive interest and traffic to your book. The result; a complete waste of fifty bucks. Next, I ran an ad on Kindle Nation Daily for a whopping one hundred and fifty bucks. The result; some sales but not enough to justify the cost. Then I did a bunch of interviews on blogs and websites. The results; sales did increase on those days as well as followers to my blog increased. My advice; do as many interviews as you can. All while I’ve been doing this extra marketing, I’ve also been active on all the writers sites I mentioned a few posts back. The results; sales of my books are increasing every week and I’m getting lots of exposure. My latest sponsorship: http://thefrugalereader.com/2012/03/20/the-frugal-find-of-the-day-silent-invasion-neil-ostroff-1-99-or-borrow-free-with-prime/ has yielded some extra sales, but again, not enough to warrant the fifty dollar price tag. I still have nine more sponsorships this year on Kindle Nation Daily, Kindle Boards, and Kindle Fire Department. As I mentioned before, I’m focusing my ebook efforts on selling through Kindle. All in all, I think the best results have been through free promotions on KDP Select and posting and keeping active on the writer’s sites aforementioned. If my sales keep increasing at the same ratio month after month, I calculate that my books should be able to support me and my wife within five years. Pretty cool, eh?