Paid Advertising

There are almost an infinite number of options in the area of paid advertising to choose from.  The key to advertising is to know your audience.  If you have a book on Bible prophecy, a site about Bible prophecy would probably be a good place to advertise.  There a numerous high volume Christian sites that you can advertise on starting at different price ranges.  For information about advertising on our site, see paid features.

Impressions vs. clicks

A very important thing to understand when advertising is the difference between impressions and clicks.  Impressions are how many times your ad will be displayed.  This is usually counted in groups of one thousand.

Clicks on the other hand are the actual number of people who click on your ad and will see your webpage.  You must determine which is a better investment for your money.  If one dollar will get you either 1000 impressions or will pay for five clicks at 20 cents each, you must determine if the 1000 ad impressions is likely to get you more than 5 clicks or a click through percent of 0.5%.

From personal experience, impressions, particularly banner impressions, do not have a high click through rate and do not guarantee clicks.  Paying for clicks at least guarantees that an interested person will visit your page.

Considering the cost

It is a simple bit of math but if you make $3 off of every book you sell, you make a profit if you spend less than $3 to make that sale.  Using the above example, if you pay 20 cents per click, one out of every fifteen people who clicks on your ad needs to buy your book for you to break even.  If you pay five or ten cents a click, your odds of turning a profit are much higher because only one in thirty or sixty will need to buy your book to break even.

Of course, it is always possible that you are more interested in gaining exposure for your book and sharing your work with others.  Such a thing cannot be factored into the sale of a book and you may be willing to take a loss on advertising for your book to begin with until word of mouth spreads and the buying ratio increases.  You need to determine where the proper balance is.

Keyword advertising

There are several search engines that will let you sponsor certain keywords.  Whenever a certainly keyword is searched your ad will be displayed.  This is a quick way to get attention and make it on the first page of a search engine where people are most likely to click.  The three biggest names in this area are Yahoo, Overture, and Google.  (Yahoo and Overture and now partnered, so there are really only two companies I recommend.)  I personally would not deal with anyone other than these three as they are reputable sites.  I have had a very bad experience with a site called brainfox, so if you go with a cheaper site, pay very close attention to the details of the agreement.

Personally, I swear by Google.  I believe that they have a very solid program that is very adaptable to anyone's needs.  They do not require any money up front aside from a $5 setup fee.  After that, you will pay once a month for clicks that have already been delivered.  Google also lets you set a maximum amount per day so that you won't blow through your entire advertising budget in a day.  (Done that and then some on brainfox!)  You also get to choose how much you are willing to pay per click.  Until recently there was a minimum of five cents per click, now that rate is variable.  If you want to advertise on a high volume work such as "book" the minimum may be higher than five cents.  But on the other side, you can pick up lower volume words or phrases such as "Old Testament typology" for only a penny in some cases.

To find out more about Google AdWords and/or to set up an account, click here.

The final word on keyword advertising

It is worth your time looking into advertising a certain sites if you have a limited audience and you know where to find them.  Personally, for my money, I go with Google because they have well targeted ads and most sites can't beat five cents a click.  For a $1 a day I can drive in 600 visitors a month.  At $3 a book I only need to sell ten a month to break even and anything above that is profit.

Domain names

For a small initial investment you can buy your own domain name and forward it directly to your book.  When you post links it doesn't matter how long the name is, the link goes where you want it to - but if you tell someone your page address it might be hard to remember.  Instead of an address like www.glorifiedpublishers.com/books/fiction/mybook.html you can tell someone to just go to www.mybook.com and this will take them directly to your page.  This is especially nice if you talk to a lot of people about your book in person or if you wish to put something on your business card.

A lot of places charge $35 a year for domain names.  I recommend using godaddy for domain names.  They charge only $8.95 a year for domains and are a very large a reputable company.

If you don't feel comfortable setting up your domain name or just don't want to be bothered with it, we can set you up under our account for $15 for the first year and $10 each additional year.  Domain names can also be purchased as part of an advertising package if you decide to let us do the advertising for you.

Purchase a domain name through us