Adventures in KU – Month Two

Happy Friday! And welcome back to my adventures in KU. Last month we kicked off with a little backstory detailing my start and my general stance on the kindle unlimited program. No need to rehash, you can check out that post HERE. So, how did month two in this experiment go? Let’s find out.

This month I attempted to tackle the great and mysterious AMS ads. Now if you’re around the “water-cooler” at all, you know there are varying opinions on these ads, mostly surrounding their ease of use. Or lack thereof. Because I’m experimenting I didn’t want to sink in a bunch of money. Did that hurt or help? The world my never know. What is known is my utter failure at AMS ads! UTTER. FAILURE.

Here’s the breakdown. My overall budget was $40 and I set them to run for a week. This was my first attempt at them, and I had the wonderful Coralie Moss holding my hand trying to help me with the process. It’s all trial and error.

Why do I call it a failure? Well, see for yourself.

That’s right folks, of the $40 I set aside to spend, only $5 of it was used and I made ZERO sales. Not a single one. That’s rather dismal. I was told a few things though.

1) I needed to let them run longer. Apparently it can take some time for the ads to “kick in” so to speak.

2) I need a bigger budget. Eh, I mean I kind of figured, but I’m cautious with my limited marketing dollars.

The third piece of information I was told was that if I didn’t have a series I was basically wasting my money on advertising. That last one is too much to unpack right now. Maybe for one of my IWSG posts.

Moving on. Other than the ads, and some bare minimum teaser type social media posts I didn’t advertise much. I did play around with the keywords to see if that would help. So far, not so much. I also temporarily changed up the cover for The Lists.

I love the cover Avery Kingston (the jar one) made for me. She gave me exactly what I asked for. The issue however, is it doesn’t fit the genre. I knew this when I picked the design. I wanted a reflection of the story, not so much a “sex sells” approach.

If my sales ranking is any indication, the cover change hasn’t had any more impact than the keyword adjustments. I will leave this cover up for the remaining time in KU and reassess once my time is up.

Lastly, the cold, hard facts.

Sales. They went up from last month (9) so yay on that. Fiendish was still my top seller with 7 total for this round, one even being paperback! And somehow I managed to sale two copies of The Lists. Not ready for a fancy dinner at Ruth Chris, but it’s an improvement so I’ll take it.

Page reads. Those went the other direction from last month (2,672). I didn’t participate in any takeover events like I had last month. Not sure if that had any impact on the page reads or not. I’m not planning any for next month.

Okay that’s it for this update. My plan for next month is to attempt the last promotional option which is the Kindle Countdown option. After that I’ll decide on the fate of my books in KU.

Have you experimented with kindle unlimited? How’s it working for you?

Until next time
~Meka