From 0 to 1000+ in less than 5 days

It’s been an exciting week! My first four stories launched on Amazon, and I began an extensive marketing campaign. It all started with a contest for a Kindle Paperwhite, which began before launching the books on Amazon.

The goal was simple – collect email addresses, lots of them.

Of course, there is a bit more to it. I wanted to collect reader email addresses, so I offered a Kindle Paperwhite. In order to filter out the contestants, I also offered a free download of Greed : An Urban Fantasy Heist.

I’m about the numbers, so I built out a spreadsheet to track my progress and automate averages, totals, etc. by only filling in a few fields a day. The sheet included:

– How many downloads were recorded each day
– How many emails I collected
– How much my ad spend was
– What marketing was activated that day
– How many leads the ads were generating

…among a huge number of other statistics.

I’ve been a successful freelance web developer and internet marketer for ten years. If there is one thing you need to know when selling a product or service, it’s your numbers. If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, the sharks will repeat this over and over again.

As an author, your writing is your business. You need to track your numbers, spending, and how much it costs to generate a single lead. Not only a single lead, you should know your cost per download.

Why?

So you know if your marketing is working. And, although I have seen very little sales yet, I believe I am doing exceptionally well for a newbie author.

For the first five days of the campaign, I went from zero in every category to:

•  1000+ email addresses collected, averaging over 200+ per day
  • As of writing this, I’m almost at 400 emails today, which is almost double the average for the first 5 days this week.
• 100+ downloads of my free story, Greed : An Urban Fantasy Heist
• 10+ downloads of my main book, Fury : The Fae Awakening Book One
• 1 sale of Fury in the first hour of it being released

Funny isn’t it? 1000 -> 100 -> 10 -> 1. I like numbers and think that’s the universe’s way of giving me a pat on the back. : )

With my books releasing only two days ago, and no marketing push towards the sales… yet. I would call that a success.

So far, the goal is to turn those Greed downloads into reviews of Greed… and then into sales of Fury. I have the emails in place and they start to go out today as readers hit the timing delays on those emails.

The hope is that I start to see reviews hitting Amazon on Monday, leading to sales. If I was already a published author with a full launch team, I would have planned this a little differently, pushing for reviews the day of launch. But, I started with 0 leads and a very small launch team, with only a couple finishing the stories so far.

I have to give a shout out to Nick Stephenson and his Your First 10K Readers course.

I have years of marketing experience, especially internet marketing. Using Nick’s course, I blended the successful tactics of current authors with my own strategy.

With the promos I have lined up starting Monday, I think the marketing blend will be a huge success.

Now, I just have to wait for the reviews to start rolling in… with the sales coming later.

If you’re interested in Fury or Greed, feel free to check them out using the links below.

Greed : An Urban Fantasy Heist

Fury : The Fae Awakening Book One

If you’re an author, make sure you check out Nick’s course. My initial plan is for two months. At this rate, there’s a good chance I’ll hit 10k emails in those two months. That may not translate to 10k readers, as I’m only at about a 12% reader conversion, but that should all change with the promos starting throughout this month.

I’ll keep you posted.

Happy reading! 🙂

– Will