S01E45: When We Get Results

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda drop back into a discussion about ads as they review their latest attempts, the results, and future actions.

Next week, Sam and Matilda will be trusting themselves... to make all the right decisions and finally set up a plan for future ads. 

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/3QHym3m

Most recent book: Heart of the Wolf (Moons & Magic Book 2) https://amzn.eu/d/4HecH3a

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Mal and Jill Cooper: https://www.amazon.com/Help-Facebook-Ads-Suck-Marketing-ebook/dp/B0C5RWPTL4/

Bookbub Ads Expert by David Gaughran: https://www.amazon.com/BookBub-Ads-Expert-Marketing-Publishing-ebook/dp/B07P57V38D/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Samantha Cummings here with my co-host, Matilda Swift, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our mastery through Miss Steps Journey.

Each week we cover a topic to help along the way and this week's topic is reading results.

Before that though, what are your wins and winches of the week?

Okay, I feel like I'm all wins, but not, you know, I've previously had some big headline wins and this just feels like a general winning week.

It's interesting.

I feel like recently I've been really up and down and feeling like, oh, it's going really great.

And then the next day I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing and this feels terrible.

And I think that is a symptomatic of like where I'm at in a good way that I just feel like I am growing and changing and I'm trying to change a lot of things at once.

So my wins, they're not stellar, but they feel really good and they feel like they're on a journey to success.

So my first win is just we had our mastermind meeting today and I haven't said this for a while as a win, but it was absolute win today.

We were talking kind of immediate changes, but also long-term things and it really feels like I can look long-term and not in a way of like I'm planning out every single book for the next few years, but in that I know where I'm going next year in a publishing and professional sense.

So phenomenal.

And then I have another win.

Oh, my blurb.

I was working on my blurb for a new series.

And I had a blurb a while ago.

Because this new series has been in the works for, you know, this year, I guess actually most this year.

I'd got a blurb and I was able to leave it and let it rest and then come back to it over this weekend and send it to various people.

I just got some really concrete solid advice.

And I worked on it a bit with Gemini, which is my preferred AI platform.

And just give it sentences and ask for alternates for those and really just like polish it into a sparklet.

And I feel phenomenal about it.

And that just makes me feel like everything is very promising.

So all wins and I'm excited.

How about you?

I also just have wins that I'm going to say this week because I don't want to say any whinges.

So my win obviously was Master My Meeting.

It was very fun.

We are both so tired.

It was just so much mental work.

A lot of mental work.

But it was, yeah, I've come away from it feeling so enthused for the next, even like the next few years, like you say, I don't have solid plans, but I feel like we know where we're going.

And it doesn't feel as scary to think about the future anymore.

So yeah, I feel that was a great win today.

I also have been writing this week, so I had the week off work.

I always take the first week of November off because, well, I mean, I don't like it when it starts to get darker, so I just want to stay at home.

But I always take it off to start Na Na Raimo.

And I did, and it's kind of been a little bit hit and miss just in terms of getting the words down.

But I still have started a new story, so it's a huge win.

I'm very excited about writing this book.

And also, my sister is home from Australia.

She lives there with her husband and her baby.

And they have come home for a quick visit before Christmas.

And yeah, it's just been really nice seeing her.

I've not seen her for two years since her wedding.

So it's been very nice just to play catch up and to try and win the affections of my young nephew and be his favorite aunt.

Everything's a competition.

I've got to be the best.

Yeah, no, and no one just apart from just the fireworks constantly going off.

It is.

Yeah, being the favorite aunt is the best position that you could be in.

Yeah, I am a big fan of being a cool aunt.

It's like my best part of best aspect of being my family.

So, good that we're on a winter's week, but I feel like it's a bit of a tricky topic.

So we're talking about reading the results.

Just first of all, what results do we mean?

Quite a vague title.

Yes.

Thanks.

Thanks for passing that over to me.

So this topic is all about reading your ad results.

And we have both been running ads.

My ad is actually still running.

I thought it was, it was not.

I thought it ended, but it has not ended yet.

So, yeah, this is all about looking at the results you get from Facebook or Amazon, and making informed decisions on where to go next.

Because usually what we both are very guilty of doing is running an ad and then dusting our hands and saying, well, I guess that happened, and then doing nothing with the results.

So, yeah, it's just all about...

I'm not a millionaire straight away.

Never mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that didn't catch on.

Yeah, trying to not just run an ad and then leave a human-shaped hole in the wall as you just quickly exit the scene.

All about trying to get game momentum from what you're doing and always leaving with an action, like a point of action.

That's kind of how I'm looking at it.

If that sounds like what you were thinking as well.

So we have our Mastermind meeting today and in that we quite often talk about this topic at the top of the podcast during the day.

We did talk about today's topic.

I'm going to give my explicit content slash extended metaphor warning here.

Because I think our metaphor that we came up with for this topic today is really helpful.

So when we've previously done ads and we've tried them, we've done our due diligence, right?

We've followed a process, we've picked a guru and done what they said and done all the steps and made the image and found the best text and done the combinations and looked at the audience and all the things you can do.

And then we've set it going and then it hasn't worked.

And then you just think, well, if my best possible effort doesn't work, like I should just quit here.

That's definitely how I felt.

And I was trying to think about comparable things where I feel that same way, and maybe how I've got past that.

And one issue I have with that is it just feels that there's so many aspects to it, and I don't know which one is going wrong.

And my comparison when we started talking about this was driving.

I really hate driving.

And everyone always says like, oh, just keep driving and get used to it.

And that's not true because I have a friend who also hates driving and just kept driving and she still hates driving.

She just has to do it for work.

So it sucks to be her.

And I made the right decision by saying it's not for me.

And the thing I hate about driving is I am manually processing every single input, like the navigation, the road conditions, the pedestrians around, the other cars on the road.

I have seen too many if you grew up in the UK, the government put in these very horrible arts way, you were haunted by the ghost of the child that you accidentally killed by not paying attention for five seconds while you're driving.

I was like, I don't want that.

I don't want a ghost child under my desk.

It seems traumatic.

So we're talking about that and I was like, yeah, just kind of feel to me like something like that where there's just too many facets.

And then like what would persuade me to drive?

Nothing.

I just don't drive.

And I feel good about that.

So that was not a good comparison.

And then we're trying to think about other things that we could maybe make the comparison to.

And the other thing that we came up with was Rubik's Cubes.

Because a Rubik's Cube, if you'd never come across one before, like imagine, you know, we're both kids of the 80s, you come across it for the first time, it is the hot new thing, no one else knows how to complete them.

It might have been just confronted with Rubik's Cube, and you've got all these squares, and you start turning it, and I am someone who I'll start turning it and play around with it.

And then I was like, well, I don't know what's happening.

Nothing seems to be improving here.

I can get a few colors together.

And then I turn them and it goes wrong.

So this just seems like not fun.

Pointless, I'll put it down, I'll never come back to it again.

I've never in my life saw a Rubik's Cube.

And I could now, in contemporary times, look up a YouTube video and learn how to solve it.

But what's the point of that?

Like, I don't need to solve a Rubik's Cube.

And so the idea of the Rubik's Cube felt a bit like ads in that like there's just so many parts to it.

And if you're in a situation where Rubik's Cubes have just been invented and you're trying to figure out how to solve it, really, the better option is to just put it down.

It's horrible.

Like, I'm trying to think like, what would make me want to solve Rubik's Cube?

And the only thing would be is if you sold it, there's something amazing inside, right?

And I was like, okay, if I was in that situation where there's something amazing inside the Rubik's Cube, where if I get all the sides lined up, magical all the colors, I've got through that annoying stage where you've got one side complete and you have to break it all up again to complete the whole cube.

And it burst open and something magical popped out.

I would absolutely persist with it.

And what I would do is I would write things down.

I would write down all the steps that I need to go through to solve it.

And I would think, okay, here's everything I know about the cube.

Here's the colors.

Here's my theories of how they might work.

And I would test those theories.

And I would succeed.

I would persistently succeed because there's something magical inside.

And I need to treat ads the same way and not think I've got one great strategy.

I'm going to test that.

And if it doesn't work, I'm putting the cube away forever.

Never mind cube, never mind ads.

And I need to really, really strategize on this.

So that is the extended metaphor that we kind of come up with today.

And hopefully, if you're listening, that might, you know, ring true perhaps with like the way you've thought about ads before.

I'm sure you've come up with your own tortured metaphor about how this works.

But it was really helpful to try and compare it to something and think what would, what stops me and what process would I go through if I were more incentivized to complete it.

So that was hopefully helpful.

And then we talked about different ads platforms that we were looking at different ads we were working on.

So I'll take a break from talking now.

And Sam, if you can tell us a bit about what ads you've run recently and what results you got out of that and how you feel that you're going to maybe change things going forward?

Yeah.

So it's funny because the Rubik's Cube and the driving thing, we're both having the same results, but we both have different opinions.

So I don't mind driving and I don't mind Rubik's Cubes.

For the reasons why you hate them is like, driving for me is like, I'm very good at autopilot and I'm very good at taking in a lot of information and then letting my body do what needs to be done.

And I'm fine with that.

And I'm a good driver and I just go up and down the same road over and over again.

It's great.

Rubik's Cubes, equally, I'm happy completing one side and not doing the rest.

To me, that's a win.

But I do understand the frustration of not completing the whole thing.

So I'll put the Rubik's Cube back on the shelf with just the side that I've solved showing.

And I do feel like that still works as a metaphor because I have run or I'm running a Facebook ad right now.

And by all accounts, it looks like it's doing a good job.

It's serving, it's getting a good amount of clicks.

The click through rate's good, the cost per click is good, but I have absolutely no ROI.

I'm not getting any sales from it.

So that's, and I will be honest, I'm not gonna lie and say, oh, it's fine, it's all working out.

I've done a great job.

Like I have done a great job, but not a good enough job.

And that's kind of where I'm at right now.

And like I say, like the ad is still running.

So I have still got about a week or so left of it.

It's still like learning and doing all the things that Facebook likes to take its time doing.

And right, so right now, what I'm trying to think of before it finishes is what am I gonna take away from this, other than the fact that it's not, it sent people to Amazon and they have not clicked to buy.

And that is obviously like one hurdle that I don't know how to get over that hurdle.

I don't know, like, do I need to change my blurbs again?

I don't know.

But that's fine.

What I'm kind of also thinking is, well, what can I do to make sure Facebook is showing it to people who do buy from Amazon?

Because that's obviously, that's, in my opinion, the next step back is obviously not showing it to the right people.

It's showing it to people who click things, no problem, that's great.

But it's not showing it to people who click things and buy things.

So that is where I'm looking to kind of start my next set of ads is retargeting.

So I let Facebook do its own audience and stuff for this ad.

And like we're talking about and talk about this today about setting up a bunch of different scenarios that you want to test out, because ads is testing things.

I'm going to come up with a list of ten things to change from this ad and just go through that list as an experiment.

I like a can I kind of maybe change another side of this Rubik's Cube by tweaking this?

And I am quite excited to start doing that.

And I feel like I have gained something from this ad, even though it's not sales.

I feel like I have a piece of a puzzle.

But we'll see.

But it has like, it has spurred me on to try and figure out what the next, rather than just like leaving it and saying, well, that ad didn't work.

What's the next step?

What's the next thing I can change?

I did a bog standard.

I can't remember the word.

I keep forgetting this word that we talked about.

When you set the tone, what am I thinking of?

What is this word that I keep forgetting?

Like the first thing in a test.

When you set-

For a baseline.

When you set a baseline.

I was gonna say, when you set a baseline, I can never remember that word.

So I've done a baseline test.

This is the start of-

For a benchmark, yeah.

This is now the start of a whole thing that I'm gonna do.

And I don't think I would have thought about that had we not picked this as our episode.

I think I wouldn't have, I would have just tossed this one away like I have done the previous ads that I've done.

But now that we're getting towards the end of the year and I really have big ambitions for next year, I'm just not gonna wait to start doing tests.

I'm just gonna, this is it.

I'm just gonna kick off doing tests now.

Don't wait for January, don't wait for New Year's resolutions, just get into it.

So I'm kind of excited about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's really tricky with Facebook, right?

Because you're doing traffic ads and Facebook doesn't know who buys from that.

They have no way to know.

And then also you don't know if it's that Facebook's picking the wrong people or it's that there's a disconnect from like what the ad builds, the rotation and then what they get the other end.

And also the fact that like I personally, if I'm advertised a book, will download a sample.

I don't, I very, very rarely will buy straight away.

And then I might buy a month when I'm looking to my samples from another book to read.

So it's really hard.

And if you had maybe some sales, but not as many as you might expect, then you might think, oh, maybe some people are sampling and we'll buy later.

And there's no way to do that.

But I think if you've got no results, then you can say like, either the disconnect or Facebook's not picking the right people.

Or it's the wind is blowing the wrong way today.

Tricky.

So, but I think the benefit of Facebook is there are more things to change.

Like I have previously done Facebook ads and tried doing the changes.

And what I found really difficult, and like honestly, I would say like disheartening, I find it really...

I like, this sounds, this isn't something I would want to say about myself.

Like I find it really emotionally difficult to do Facebook ads, because I like to learn things, and then apply the knowledge I've learned.

And Facebook will work one way one day, and then it will not do the same thing the next day.

Like, I thought I had learned that, and now I don't know what I've learned.

And I find that really unpleasant.

So, it is unpleasant, but also the positive thing on Facebook is there are many things to change.

So I have been currently doing a Facebook ad and an Amazon ad.

I wanted to get a sense of what is worth kind of throwing my time behind.

And I felt really confident about doing an Amazon ad, and I don't know why.

Absolute delusion, because I ran an Amazon ad every summer and got no results.

I was like, I tell you what, let me just try that again.

No reason.

And I think it's because the series is relatively old and it's had low sales for a while.

So Amazon isn't pushing it enough in the right way.

So I need to give it some better data from Facebook.

And it's interesting and hopefully positive in the long term in that Amazon has actually got lots of impressions.

It's given plenty of impressions.

I've had clicks, I'm not getting sales from those clicks.

And I think part of that is that I, because I wanted to get some good data, I've put in a high bid and it's given me clicks from incredibly generic words like mystery books.

And it's like, you can be looking for anything if you're looking for a mystery book.

Like mine might look interesting, but maybe you're not a cozy reader or it's not quite what we're looking for right then.

Like it's too broad a term.

It was an auto ad.

And I think for me, I think auto ads are too general and like you can't change a thing.

It's definitely, it has been useful that like I have been spurred on to have a look at my blurbs.

I have tweaked all my keywords.

I have used my Provisional Rockets that I have and do very little with to sort out my keywords.

That's been positive.

But I think if I were going to do more work on Amazon ads, it would be to run a proper ad, not an auto ad and spend time on keywords.

And that's kind of all you can do.

So then if that wasn't working, then what else am I trying?

So I think that doesn't feel great for me.

I want to have process that I can tweak different things and try and read the results and make changes.

So I think I am going to stick the Facebook ads.

Interestingly, I felt really negatively about my Facebook ad campaign recently.

So I've been running one low budget just to try and see some things.

It has definitely moved my rank.

I would say I've had just like a handful of sales, not enough sales to be worth the price.

But, and like, so that made me feel like, oh gosh, what a waste of money.

But actually like, I have found a way to make some sales from absolute strangers who've got no interaction with my work before, presumably, because I didn't build as a lookalike audience.

Those people have then gone to buy the book.

So I'm doing some things right.

I need to do some things better.

But I think I'm always looking for a quick fix.

And it's interesting, right?

I don't know why that's true.

I'm always looking for like, because it seems so simplistic, right?

It seems so like show an ad to a person and they buy a book.

And it does not feel logical that like, if you just maybe change the wording or like the length of the information or a slight placement on a picture, if you change those things, people will spend money in a different way.

That does not seem logical.

And I'm aware, as I say this, there's like a multi-billion dollar industry built around this.

But I'm not in that industry and I don't, I don't enjoy that kind of like thinking, that way of thinking about things.

But yeah, but I can do it.

So I'm just gonna pull my socks up and make a list of things.

Like I would do in my Rubik's Cube, make a list of things to test, and just go through the phrase of testing things and tick things off.

Say, if I change my, if I change the image, can I find out of 10 images that I test, what's the best one?

Okay, that one's going forwards, or four images and iterate based on that.

And then the same with the text and the same with the audience.

Like all I can do is just keep changing those things bit by bit, and allocate some budget to just the testing phase and expect to make no money in this testing period, where all I'm doing is trying to improve my own personal skills with Facebook ads.

Yes.

Yeah, that's exactly how I see it.

It's like I already was putting this money for ads into a spending account.

Not spending it is not getting me anywhere, so I might as well spend it and at least learn and get the experience and start trying to move the needle a little bit.

And and I do think that it'll happen.

And I think if we continuously are doing these ads and looking at the results and making informed decisions like, oh, that didn't quite hit the right audience that I was looking for.

Like there's way too many.

Like for me, like even though I tried to stop it from showing it to people in a really older demographic, a lot of the people that were clicking through on mine were like in their 50s and 60s for a couple of weeks.

And I was like, why is it showing it to these people when I didn't I didn't say that.

And I had to go in and like readjust the audience.

Just things like that.

It's just like learning to look and see and learning what you can tweak whilst an ad's running and learning what you shouldn't tweak whilst an ad's running and you should wait till it's finished to start something new.

It is just all a learning experience.

And yeah, if we've got the money for it, then we should be spending it.

That's how I have to come to look at it.

Yeah, and you know, the worst case scenario, all it's encouraging to do is like really polish up your Ubook product page.

It's like I have had another crack at my blurb.

I've looked through things.

I want to update my A plus content, which is like a relatively minor thing.

But you know, I just threw up when I first went for A plus content first started.

I was like, I wanted to try this and see what happens.

I think I could have much better A plus content now.

Now I've got Canva Pro very excitingly.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah, that sounds like a deal on that.

And it's not like to make a big difference.

But it's forcing like it's...

I think that's the thing about ads, right?

It's like nothing makes a big difference.

That is what I find frustrating about it.

Nothing is like, aha, I have clicked and found it.

Everything makes a small difference.

Which is, you know, much like the Rubik's Cube.

It's very frustrating.

You're doing like one square at a time.

I don't enjoy that, but I will do it.

I like it because I do like the challenge.

I do like, and even though I don't believe that I will ever solve a Rubik's Cube without cheating, I really don't think I'll do it without looking at it.

I still, we have a Rubik's Cube in the living room, and I still almost every day will pick it up and be like, today's the day, and I'll twist it a few times.

No, today's not the day.

He's not magically able to do Rubik's Cubes.

I've probably asked before, they were just like, do I magically know how to do that today?

No.

But a Rubik's Cube, the thing about it is, I was saying I would not, I don't care about solving it unless there's something magical going to come out of the inside of it.

If you knew inside the Rubik's Cube, there was a key to a pot of gold, would you spend the time to properly fit it, like sit down and solve it?

I would never put the Rubik's Cube down.

But I do like the satisfaction.

I can't wait to solve one and be able to tell people that I did it.

Yeah, I'm so gloaty and...

You're not trying to solve it, you're just twiddling it.

No, but I know that I'm not going to solve the Rubik's Cube.

I know it.

But the reason I keep picking it up is because I know that if I did solve it, it would be great.

But I'm not going to do it by the way I was doing it.

You're taking the like monkeys and typewriters approach, which I think is also my approach to like ads.

It's just like, if I just if I just keep putting ads and then putting an image and maybe some text, somehow I'll write Shakespeare.

That's not so vaguely true.

And I think I just have taken that approach.

And I'm not that's exaggerating, right?

I've never decided, I'm like, let me just put some images up and some text.

Like I have, I have read Mal Cooper's book.

I have looked at the Matt Holmes course.

I you know, I've done all the things I think I've even done from like, the whatever the SPS one was, I just I've done a lot of different ads things.

And and I just like, I'll try a bit of that.

So I'm like a slightly smart monkey who like maybe knows the alphabet.

And it's just like, I know I'm pressing, I'm hitting letters.

But I do not know how to like write an iambic pentameter.

Like that's not I think I can do.

And I would have to sit down and really consciously learn it.

I'd maybe have to at least read a few books, you know, of other Shakespeare works before I tried to actually write Hamlet.

So yeah, and I, I don't really know what's stopped me.

In the past, but I think part of it is that I haven't felt incentivized enough, right?

It hasn't, I, I haven't necessarily believed in my bones, that like if I worked hard on ads, I would sell my book.

That is like a true and difficult to confront like thing to think about my, my previous efforts.

It's, it's that I haven't felt like there is, there is a thing inside the Rubik's Cube.

I have felt like I'm being forced to try and do a Rubik's Cube, and I can't do Rubik's Cubes, because some mean teacher is like looking over my shoulder, saying, everyone has to do a Rubik's Cube.

And that's not the attitude to take.

And I just, I definitely feel better.

I know last week, I felt really down about like the, the prospects in my book.

And that's part of like feeling up and down.

And I, I think on this podcast, what I really tried to do is like, honestly capture my emotional state.

Not because it's necessarily just helpful to me, though I think it is always helpful to articulate where you're at, because you can't really, like you can't manage what you measure.

And I think lying to myself about like, I'm loving this journey, all parts of it are great.

I think part of it is like, it does help me, but part of it is also, I think there's so much of a, like sometimes toxic positivity in self-publishing, about like, if you just keep trying, you will definitely make it.

And it's like, that's not true, right?

There is, that's not, it's not a lie, but it's an oversimplified way of looking at things that fundamentally isn't true.

It's so simplified, it becomes untrue.

And I think it is important to say, last week, I felt really disheartened and I found it hard emotionally to like have enough faith in my books to want to work on the things I need to work on.

This week, I feel much better and nothing has particularly changed between these two weeks.

That is just like, some weeks feel great, some weeks feel not so great.

And I would say this, this like meeting with you every week forces me to push through those negative times and keep trying, rather than like let that sink and sink and sink, as I think I've done in the past.

And then just stop looking at things and definitely adds, I feel like I need more positivity than I necessarily have in isolation.

And it really helps to be able to to bounce it off you and kind of get some positivity back and have you also ask realistic questions like like a couple weeks ago, you're asking like, are your books, like objectively worse than other cozies?

It's like, no, I just feel bad about them right now.

Yeah, I know they're not, but at the same time, yes, they're worse.

No, it's a struggle because in order to do ads, you have to really build up a resilience.

But like you do with everything in the publishing industry, it's all about resilience.

It's like when you get knocked down because your ad hasn't delivered and you've not made any sales, like how long are you going to let that hold you down before you get up and you go, well, I'll try it again.

Not everybody is predisposition-y, predisposed, yeah, that's the word, to get back up.

When something doesn't go their way, and I know you've said this, if you're not good at something, you don't think you should bother trying to do it.

I think that that's why we work so well together, is that you go at things with such intent, that you put so much thought behind stuff, and you do all the research, and that's great, and that gets you so far.

And then when it doesn't work, you feel bummed out.

And I go at things like a Tasmanian devil, and it's not so well thought out, but I get back up a little bit quicker, and that's where we balance each other out.

Yeah, I think I really have to believe something is possible for it to put effort into it.

And then when I do, I'm like a dog with a bone.

I'm like, if I, if I can do it, I will do it.

Like one day I will be flying again, we've talked about it before, one day I will fly.

Yeah, I believe I can do it.

So I will just do that.

Whereas I, it's a lot of things that come together with with like ads is like, it's not just about the ad itself.

And like, it's hard to make ads work.

It's also in the like the self-belief, which I've been working on a lot this year.

Like you have to believe that it's worth spending money on your books.

Because people will want to read them.

And when you have like two difficult things going together, like having to believe in your books and believe in your ability to do ads.

Both those things are hard to believe.

So any one time, at least one of them you feel rubbish about.

And then you're like, well...

And it feels emotionally hard to push against both those things.

Even one is hard enough.

And then it's just so easy to be like, I'll just do ads later.

When I am powerful in some way that I have not.

Yes, like when I've already made money from not advertising, but just like just organic sales.

And then when I've done all my organic sales, I'll switch on ads and I'll get even richer.

That sounds so rudimentary for that.

I wonder how I feel.

Yeah, I know.

I think that's like the line that we all tell ourselves is like, I'm going to make it without having to spend any money.

I'm going to be able to make it without having to resort to turning into a salesperson.

And like, that's obviously the dream.

Like, you don't want to be the salesperson.

You just want somebody or a few people to stumble upon your book, and then it to catch like wildfire and just go the best thing that could ever happen.

But that we know that that's not true.

But yeah, we still tell ourselves that lie.

And it's really hard though.

It's like it's baked into all the advertising kind of gurus' conversations, because like the first step of everything is like, calculate your sell-through rate.

And it's like, my sell-through rate is so polluted by like, you know, the most recent release.

It has got, if you're looking at like a certain period, you're looking at the last three months, like the most recent release is read much more than the other books, because it's just released.

Or I run a promo on book four in the series, so that's massively higher than the others.

And, and like, if they're like, oh, maybe it's better to look at your lifetime styles.

And it's like, but what if you just don't have big lifetimes?

There's been times earlier when I've been starting ads, when I was early in my genital publishing was like, I don't have a strong enough sense of what my self-period is.

So then what, where do I start?

And there's just there's so many points at which you're knockback, or which I have been knocked back, right?

And I think I'm very, like overly easily discouraged from things I don't find easy straight away.

Like we talked about this.

And so it's just easy to start and advertise and wait for this.

Yeah, the magical organic sales that will then give me the data to then do the ads.

Now I know who my target audience is.

Now I know what my reader way is.

It's like, what's, I don't know, just start, just do things.

Yeah.

Do you have anything else you want to say on reading results at this point?

Like, do you know what you're taking away from your ads?

Like, what's your next step?

We may have already covered this, but I figure might as well just like try and put it in a simple way as possible.

Yeah, I think it's good to just make a commitment to something.

So I have done recently Bookbub, Amazon and Facebook ads.

The Bookbub ads I just wanted to do to get a benchmark or baseline of, can I find some authors who could come to me and figure out what is the impact of Bookbub ads, how can I use them, and when might want to use them.

I feel a bit loathe to leave using until you need an ad, right?

Because I've got a new series coming up and I feel very tempted to wait and advertise that series because I feel like it's way more to market, but then it's too late to learn how to use these things.

So I did some Bookbub ads, I've got good baselines, I'm doing nothing more with that.

It was interesting, I would actually say it's worth doing Bookbub ads to understand do you know who your comps are really?

Because I got very different click-through rates than I expected on identical ads, just a different reader, just a different author targeted ads with very low spends.

And I followed, it's David Gogran's book I think about Bookbub ads.

And just followed that to the letter, got the results, useful to have that information for later.

So I read it, I feel confident I hire the results work.

I think I would do some ads when I've got a new release, but very minimal and just with the objective of like targeting my comps to help my auto boards.

My Amazon ad, I don't have any sense of how I can improve that, really without giving Amazon more data.

So that's useful to see.

I'm just turning it off.

I think it's about to expire anyway, but I wanted to leave it to run until we talked.

But I don't feel like there's any benefit to that.

And I have heard from many, many people, Amazon ads are really, really hard.

And it's like, yeah, they do seem to be.

And I don't think it is worth me putting the effort in without building up else in other ways.

So I'm going to drop that.

And I'm going to focus on Facebook.

And on my first step is I'm going to reread Mal Cooper's book, help my Facebook ad suck or whatever it's called.

I'll put it in the show notes.

I think I've read it twice, maybe three times already.

But I do think there's like learning something, try like reading something, trying it really again with fresh eyes, reading it and they'll be like, Oh, now I know what this is about.

I'm hoping that this is the now I know it's about time.

So I'm going to reread it, make some notes, go through and implement it.

And I think just it's just about trying like iterating more.

I have looked at all my comps and I have read the books, I have tried the things, I'm just not persisting enough because I believe I need to be good at something straight away or I should quit it.

That's not true and I'm going to set aside that mindset and go in more deliberately.

And so I'm going to make myself a list of tests and a budget and just follow through that plan.

Sort of and to an extent, but not entirely regardless of the results.

Like I'm not saying I'm looking for like, I'm not expecting more magic ad.

I'm going to test things.

What I want is data.

That is what I'm going to buy from Mark Zuckerberg.

Yes, that's, yes, that is a fantastic way to look at it is your, I know I don't want to give Mark Zuckerberg any money, but yes, getting data is, I mean, data is like internet gold.

Like that's what every big company wants is everyone's data.

So we can't ignore that, that the data is important and same with me, like I'm just looking to try and really figure out who my actual audience is on my Facebook ads.

Because you're right, I don't, I think copy and images, like I know that people are clicking on stuff.

I like the idea of tweaking copy and images just for myself, but I don't think, I don't think that like a slightly different copy is going to work.

It's going to like be the thing that like makes it make or makes or breaks an ad.

I don't think like a slightly tweaked copy or slightly tweaked image.

I think we're looking for a slightly better click-through rate, a slightly better conversion rate.

I think I haven't really been looking for like make or break.

Like finally I found the ad.

No, I think I'm just looking for an ad that I think should work, make it slightly better, make it slightly better.

And that's what I need to do.

Yeah, so that's how I'm approaching it now.

And I'm going to thank you.

I'm going to make a list of different things that I want to change from the ads that I've got running at the moment.

And just play around with that and have fun trying to.

I mean, at the moment, I've only got two books of a series out.

So I'm kind of what I feel like is I'm in a dead zone because everyone wants to wait till a full series is out usually.

So this is the most playful zone that I could be in for ads because I'm just like in a nice...

I'm going to say it's a nice limbo because I've got two books out already in this series.

So like I've got the start.

Is it a three book series?

It's a three book series.

So like this is a good time to play around because then when the whole...

Can the third book go on pre-order?

It is going to be on pre-order soon.

Yeah, I just need to like set the dates.

But I feel like I'm in a good space to have this play around so that when I get to the third book release and stuff, I've got the data that I need to maybe not win, but just do a better job.

This all sounds very positive.

I know.

I hope I remain this positive and that I do not come back in a week and be like, I've tried so many things and nothing's working and I hate this.

It can't be that I'm the only person who cannot make Facebook ads work.

I'm not uniquely stupid in this area, so I will make it work.

Yeah.

There's only up.

We can only go up.

Right.

So for next week's topic, we are finishing off this series that we've called Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.

And the next episode is about trusting your own decisions.

Do you have any thoughts on this right now?

Yes.

In the notes that I have on this from when we discussed originally, it says in brackets, Facebook ads.

So I think we put this as a next episode in order to not come back next week and say, you know what, I tried and I hate it, never mind.

I think by next week, I want to have a full list of my tests that I want to run and have set up some tests and started running and got results because...

And I think I also want to decide how much money specifically to put into this.

Like I don't know why I never...

This is, you know, as I've said before, like I'm always trying to be like, I'll just spend the amount of money that I don't notice myself losing.

Therefore, it's like free money.

And so I spend like a small amount every day on Facebook, but it's miniscule.

But why?

Why?

Because I think my books aren't worth more, which is pointless.

So I'm going to set myself a budget, a testing budget, I'm going to set myself an overall budget and divide it into days.

And I want to have that done by next week and commit to that in order to then just make sure I'm going to see it through.

So that I think will not feel comfortable or easy, but I am going to do that.

How about you?

Yeah.

Well, I have a budget for my ads.

And it's not a huge budget, but it's the only kind of amount that I can comfortably spend on it right now, because I'm just doing a terrible job with money right now.

Fun.

But I, yeah, at the same time, next week, I want to have...

You just don't say about like your money.

I know it's not really true.

Yeah.

I'm just, yeah, I'm doing a good job of, I'm finally doing a good job of being an adult.

Like I go through phases and I've just gone through a really good phase of like raining in loads of stuff.

So I am by next week, definitely going to have a list of at least five next steps for my ads.

And I'm going to set dates that I'm going to do them, and I'm going to put them in my planner.

Rather than like writing my planner, like start a Facebook ad, I'm going to actually have in my planner, start Facebook ad for, and then have like a campaign, a campaign name and a very clear, a very clear task that I want to achieve.

So yeah, by next week, I'm going to do that and then feel, I will feel confident in that I have kind of set myself up for some sort of success.

For loads of success.

I'm feeling confident.

Loads of, loads of success.

Okay, yes.

And when we will trust every decision we make and everything will turn out okay.

Fantastically.

Well, I think that brings us to the end of this episode.

Thank you to everybody who's tuned in.

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