Advertising and Pinterest

#indieauthors #writerslife #amwritingromance #RomanceReaders #paranormalromance

On my author walk, I have learned that no matter how great the story is, two things are always working against an author. One is time, the other is distance. With the internet, I can shrink the distance that news of my story's existence must travel to reach the reader, but time is still a huge factor. In the last blog I tried to explain the 7/11 rule for desire and understanding. This is wrapped up in the whole time issue. It takes time for most readers to see my name, my story, and think about it. Books are rarely impulse buys. So that means that I have to become familiar. 

My book has to appear over and over again. The reader needs to see my name, the series name, and the book covers on repeat. That means promotion and marketing and likely advertising. This is why an author platform online is so important for an Indie Author. (It has taken me quite a while to learn all of this. If I had known this before I began publishing, my walk would have definitely followed a different path.) Needless to say, I will discuss more of what I do in free promotion in a later blog, but this one is focused on paid advertising with Pinterest.

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Pinterest ads are based on the promotion of a pin. Similar to the way Facebook promotes a post into other people's news feed, Pinterest promotes a pin onto other people's home page. I crafted a pin just to drive traffic back to my website for just $3 a day. While that ad ran, the traffic flowing to my website increased almost as much as it had when I tried the same thing with Facebook, only it costs less money to do that. Also, pins last longer (pins have a shelf life of a few weeks verses Facebook posts which have a shelf life of only a few hours. Thanks to NinaHarrington.com for that insight). People see them more often by way of organic traffic as well which means I am hitting my 7/11 rule even better. So Pinterest is definitely my favorite social media promotional tool. But like all social media, you must be active or it does not work. In other words you need to be pinning something regularly. Check out my boards, save a pin or two, follow me, I will follow you back. I have not yet spent $200 in Pinterest ads, but I do advertise the books.

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Am I losing money on advertising? Yes, absolutely! That is why I only advertise the first book in the series. I will lose money on it everytime. But hopefully, if someone reads the first one, they will want to read the rest. It takes time to build up readers. So I know I am going to lose money on advertising at the beginning. That is also why I keep my budget low at $3 a day. I don't want to go broke. As I begin earning money, I can scale the advertising up. At $3 a day I can experiment with different ads to see which ones work better as well. I am glad that I waited to do any of this until after I had published more than three books though. I need to have enough product available for readers to continue with before advertising makes sense. So head over to Amazon and check out all my books!

I hope that these past three blogs have answered the question of how much money it takes to start an Independent Author Walk. I have more writing I need to do. If you read, be kind and leave a review. 
Be Careful!
Happy reading,
Ophelia Kee