This is the second installment of results from my advertising experiment. Today, I’ll discuss who I advertised with, both free ads and paid, and if I think they worked.

Again, I chose a book that for the first eight months after release performed well. However, after that great take-off, sales declined, so I thought it should be one I tested. That way, any bump in sales would definitely be the results of the Kindle Countdown Deal ads.

You can find plenty of sites to advertise your books for free and small amounts of $$. Just do a random search for book promo sites. Be sure and read each site’s rules for submission and if they are interested in only FREE books…some are. I spent several hours a day for three days getting my book submitted to all the sites.

Following is a list of where I submitted my ad and what I paid. Keep in mind, for every site you submit to, you must subscribe to their newsletter or you won’t be able to find out if they ran your ad or not. In many cases, you’ll never hear from them unless it’s a paid ad. Not all of the free sites ran my book. If I don’t list a price, that means it was a free submission.

Book Goodies**had to do an author interview and lengthy submission…took me over an hour! However, they did run my Kindle Deal.

Book Lovers Heaven $5**the cover didn’t show up on the ad

Books on the Knob**don’t think they ran an ad

Buck Books**no ad

Daily Free and Discounted Books**no ad

E Book Bargains UK $10**all romance books and a nice 2-D photo of mine.

Ebooks Habit**a free site. They listed the book at regular price, not @ .99cents. :+(

EBook Lister**ran the ad for three days. Nice coverage.

EBook of the Day**ran an ad

Fiverr/Book Tour Radio $10 They slammed Twitter and FB with ads for several days with lots of shares and retweets.

Great Books/Great Deals $5

Hotzippy Romance $15**I thought this site was complicated with lots of pages.

Indies Unlimited**great site for promotion site lists/didn’t run my ad

Korner Konnection***really nice look to this site, but don’t know if they ran my book or not

New Free Kindle Books**no ad

People Reads**no ad

Read Cheaply**Great looking site and free right now.

Read FREE.ly**my link didn’t work on this site

Reading Deals $10**nice site and simple submission form

StoryFinds $50**paid extra to target certain readers, don’t think it paid off.

Sweet Free Reads $5**mostly FB and Twitter. Really nice site.

The Midlist**no ad, but they did contact me saying they were full for that time period I requested.

World Literary Café and AMC $20**two different sites and it is the only ad that ran on Friday, May 22.

I also posted in several Facebook groups for indie authors. 99cent e-books, Bargain Ebook Hunters, Ebook Lovers, Indie Kindle, Amazon Kindle, and UK Kindle Book Lovers.

All of the sites I paid to advertise featured my book. Some of the free sites featured it as well. Most of the ads occurred on the first day of the deal, which was Monday, May, 18. I’d read that books sell best on Monday’s, so I kept that in mind when scheduling the price reduction.

The Facebook ads ran each day of the deal, with many reposting and tweeting.

RESULTS:

Monday, May 18—sold 49, loaned, 7

Tuesday, May 19—sold 33, loaned 9

Wednesday, May 20—sold 22, loaned 7

Thursday, May 21—sold 17, loaned 6

Friday, May 22—sold 18, loaned 7

Total= 139 sold, 36 loaned

Estimated income–97.30 +46.80=$144.10

As you can see, I covered my expense ($130) but certainly not the time I spent getting this deal setup. So my conclusion is…NO, it did not pay me to do all the random advertising.

Since I’m not interested in what ranking my book has during a sales blitz, I didn’t check the ranking any of the countdown deal days.

I have somewhat of a different take on promotion. I don’t think Facebook or Twitter is beneficial to me. Most authors will disagree, but I stand by my opinion. Maybe I don’t know how to use it, but in my experience, I’ve not seen results from social media. Most followers on Facebook are friends, and I do appreciate when they share my posts…that means a lot to me to have their support. I just don’t think Facebook posts results in many sales. As for Twitter, keep in mind every person on that site is selling something just like me.

Many authors put a lot of emphasis on rankings and do FREE promotions in order of becoming an Amazon Best Selling author. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. If I give away 70k books, 70k times 0, is still ZERO. So…not a best SELLING author…a best give-my-book-away-for-free author! Sorry, but reality sucks.

However, most times a free promotion will move the book up in rankings, but Amazon updates them every hour so a book could be in the top 100 at noon, and by 6 PM, in the thousands! My list according to importance goes like this…1. Sales 2. Reviews 3. Ranking.

One benefit of doing a sales promo is that if you write a series, it usually stimulates sales for the other books in the series. It also may result in more reviews for the book you featured. Which is a good thing. Even though my sales were not huge, I’ll wait and see if my reviews increase.

My next blog will concern a one day promo I did with one site known for having thousands of email subscribers. I’ll let you know how that came out! Stay tuned.