How effective is your advertising?

Evening gang,

In my case the answer to this question is "not very". But I'm still learning.

Regular readers will know that last week I bought some pay per click advertising on Goodreads. Since the 21st June the ads have been viewed 13,000 times. That's right, 13,000! Easy maths tells us that's about 1300 views each and every day on average. Now imagine if just 1% of those views turned into sales. That would be 130 copies of the Jazz cafe sold in just 10 days.

Doesn't sound hard does it. Except so far the views are not translating into sales. This, it seems, is the trick. So I've just tweaked the advert and will leave it until the weekend to see if anything changes. As it's pay per click it's costing me nothing to have it sat there being seen and I can edit it as much as I like, when I like. Probability suggests that if I stick at it I'll stumble across the magic formula eventually and the sales will come. Once that happens I'll buy adverts for my other books too.

As I've mentioned to friends recently and to my long suffering wife, it's time to make a change. I'm becoming one of those people who simply complains about his lot in life. God knows my lot is much better than most. I've got a very cushy job at the moment, we have plenty of money, big house, ace puppy called Ralph, it's all good. Except I want to do something else. So I'm finally doing something about it.

Buying the ads is the first small step to push the book sales. The new book will be ready soon and I am considering paying for a launch campaign to kick start it. In other news I also viewed a property last week to buy as an investment. If that works out, I might buy another.

The end goal? Regular readers know the answer. Less time at work. More time writing. It's all about making enough to pay the bills.

Anyway, I've got editing to do, quick half hour and then an episode of Breaking Bad before bed.

Carry on.