Jeremy Weisz 3:12
Yeah, I’d love to hear any others. And we could talk about some of the books you’ve helped one of my favorites. people and companies actually is Sweet Process. You mentioned system. So sweet process. For anyone out there, I did an interview with Owen McGab. And they are a software to help you use it to create processes for your business. So check that episode out, because we geek out on all things, systems and processes. And he’s been, you know, doing this for many, many companies with their software.
Alex Strathdee 3:43
Yeah, that’s, and I wonder if David maybe mentions their software? I know he has a list on his website, I should go check it out. Maybe they know each other?
Jeremy Weisz 3:51
Well, if not, we’ll have to introduce him. So any other favorite books for you?
Alex Strathdee 3:57
For me, the love of nonfiction started when I no longer was forced to read books. I think all of us, you know, go through high school and we’re all like told to read these books and I’m about you, but I was the kid who was always spark knowing them and never actually, you know, just it was almost like a game. How much can I be us? You know, this assignment? Let’s do that. I have to read, you know, Tale of Two Cities are and I’m sure they’re wonderful books. I should have read
Jeremy Weisz 4:17
my matrix biochemistry, Alec, so I was not an English person. So
Alex Strathdee 4:23
for sure. Yeah. And then you know, at some point, you start opening up some nonfiction books and you’re like, wow, that’s really useful. And for me, I think, you know, for a lot of people it shows I think it’s like constantly the top 20 books selling on Amazon, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I would lifeguard in the summers back in high school and you know, that book just opened up my mind to you know, the world of business and really self help and progressing yourself. So that was the my introduction to self help nonfiction and it’s been an obsession ever since as you can see about this wall behind me.
Jeremy Weisz 4:53
Let’s talk about Ed Rush for a second. If you want to like show the book you’re watching the video. Pull up the book for a second, then let’s talk about what you did with that.
Alex Strathdee 5:03
Sure, yeah. So add, we’ve been working together now for about a year. And he is a former fighter pilot, and he has a multitude of businesses. But really, he helps he, he’s a wonderful business coach for many people out there. And many people have seen huge increases in their business by working with him. And I feel very lucky, because, you know, you know, we were still very young kind of learning that toddler learning how to walk, you know, he kind of took me under his wing, and he’s really taught me a lot along the way. And in exchange, we’ve also been able to work on his book, which has been absolutely fantastic. And his book is basically the introduction to his entire world. So he does events, he has consulting, he has courses that people take, he has a an event coming up in Bend, Oregon and late August, you know, he’s he’s got all these things going on, where he makes the value of a reader coming through his book is so much more than someone who’s just reading a book, right? I think there’s a marketing thing out there, that’s like, you know, you have to spend seven hours with someone before you’re ready to buy from them. Now, you can accomplish more than half of that just by opening, but just like giving someone your book, right. And he a lot of people at his events asking Wait, like, you know, you don’t know me, but like, I love you. And like, you know, this is, you know, like, You’ve helped me so much. And it’s like, almost embarrassed because like, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know these people, but they’ve been touched so much by his books. And so with the 21 day miracle, specifically, we’ve just helped him get more exposure on Amazon, he threw the book out there, it’s sold 1000s and 1000s of copies very quickly, he had someone set up his ads wrong, where they basically killed the relevance for his book. And so Amazon stopped organically showing that book. And so what we’ve been doing, and you can go type in the 21 day miracle right now and look at its rankings, you know, he’s back to selling, you know, 2030 copies a day, just from his Amazon ads, when you know, it was pretty much stagnant like zero to one copy, you know, per day on. So now he has more people coming into his back end, and I work very closely with his business lead to track, you know, people who are how that translates into subscribers over time, we can talk about, you know, it’s basically the essence of a book funnel. But on Amazon, we can talk about that looks like but that’s really the work we’ve done with.
Jeremy Weisz 7:07
Yeah, walk me through that for a second. And because I can imagine, the companies you work with, if they have these pieces in place, it makes it a lot easier, right? Because you could drive as much traffic or leads, and maybe they buy the book, but maybe they don’t. But if only a small number, if they have a service or an offering, you know, get the net go to the next level. It’s huge, right? So what does that funnel look like? You know, like, obviously, people can set it up wrong, and they could do it wrong. What’s it that ideal pathway look like?
Alex Strathdee 7:40
Yeah, that’s a really good question, because there are some really key parts to it. And so initially, it’s writing a good book, I would recommend, there’s a book by Rob Fitzpatrick called write useful books came out relatively recently. But it’s all about running a book that’s recommendable, and he talks about the whole goal of book marketing is to not have to market it anymore. And that’s where you have, you know, like the Body Keeps the Score released in 2016. This past year sold more copies than ever. The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks sells more. He just had his biggest royalty check ever, and does no marketing for that book, like next to no marketing for that book. And so you have all these books that are just exploding over time. And you wonder, Well, why is that? And it’s because there are recommendable books. And there’s a very specific blueprint on how to do that. And so one number one is to write a good book. Now, I know it’s easier said than done. But there are, you know, people don’t realize it is more calculated than you think it is. Number two, is because that’s, that’s what just makes everything else worth so much more. Number two is to have your Amazon listing page done well. So a lot of people will just copy and paste the back of their book, into the description page of their book on Amazon, it’s the worst thing you can do that is not a place for a description, that is actually sales copy, you are trying to get your page to convert. And then with the Amazon ads, what you’re, you know, essentially you’re trying to one get someone to view your ad, and extra trying to get someone to click on your ad. Now you’re trying to now they’re viewing your product page. This is why that you know, the copy there is so important. Now you’re trying to convert them into a reader. And then they have the book, right? Where do they go from there? So that first part is really where we the sweet spot. We work with authors who are, you know, at that point, and then on the back end, you know, we do consult with authors where, you know, Ed’s if we for those of you that are watching at home here, the first page in Ed’s book, this free bonus page converts at about 30% Meaning every 10 readers that buy Ed’s book, three of them end up becoming a subscriber they end up going into the back end buying other products services. And so that is where having a reader magnet in your book is very key. And a quick little tip there is always put it the first thing in your book don’t make the dedication the first page make the first page of your book your free giveaway.
Jeremy Weisz 9:52
Just put it on the cover. Now. Jeremy, do you know why that is? Because people only read the first five pages of Most people don’t
Alex Strathdee 10:01
actually read the books. So that is why, you know, if you aren’t making it the first thing like hey, you know, come get my soul amazing thing You won’t believe it’s free, whatever, you know, the front of the book, and then your conversion rates are gonna be much, much higher and also be willing to play around with it. We work with another author, Mike cousy, he wrote the 100 page book, he recently switched out his reader magnet and is convinced the great thing about KDP publishing, if you’re self publishing, you can just switch out switch it out really easy. And he’s put in a new reader magnet in front of his book and his subscribers has like text. And so that is definitely an important that the next part is getting someone to convert and your back end. And a lot of people will make the mistake like I was on it. Let
Jeremy Weisz 10:40
me one second. Let me just stop there for a second break that down because someone’s thinking, shoot, Alex, I should have contacted you before I wrote my book, or while I was writing my book, right? I don’t have this reader magnet. So you have one solution, which is you can go and you can update the Kindle version, right, which is electronic. But you’re like, listen, I get a lot of people buying the physical version. Do you suggest that they just go update it? It depends on how they’re doing it right? If it’s I don’t know if it’s even Createspace anymore what what it is, but what do you recommend for someone who’s listening and like, I have a book and if you don’t, maybe you should contact Alex before because there’s key elements you should include, if you haven’t already, so
Alex Strathdee 11:21
his his podcast is like one of my favorites is Chandler bolt. Yeah, of course, self publishing school podcast. You know whether or not you buy anything from Chandler, his podcast, like I learned about book marketing from Chandler’s podcast. It is that simple. It is everything in there about funnel and to actually answer your question for the paperback hardcover, it’s not too late for you. If you’re self published, you can actually update those as well. On the KDP side, it’s not a not a problem. If you’re a traditionally published, you’re probably just need to get your submit your edit, edit in with the next print run or something. Right.
Jeremy Weisz 11:53
Search or something. Yeah, so we’re gonna insert in there, that’s neon yellow, so they don’t pass it off. And that’s your freebie. But yeah, check out the episode with Chandler bolt, we, you know, we break talked about his book, which actually is very detailed, people should check it out. And he kind of broke down some of those elements in there, and probably on the podcast, too. So So you write a good book, and you want to make sure you have the elements of of like not just writing a book, but having the marketing elements or anything else in the structure of the book, like you mentioned, the reader magnet, are there any anything else, you want to make sure that people if they are writing a book, now they should make sure to include?
Alex Strathdee 12:30
Another key part to that is going to be the social proof. Right? And so this is what helps the book sell well over time. And author who just did that really, really well is Alex from Mozi, with $100 million offers also a fantastic book, it’s helped me a lot in our business. It has that book was released less than a year ago, it was released in July of last year already has close to if not over 5000 reviews. And you ask how does it look at that many reviews, that fast? Key has a three page you know, a lot of authors won’t even ask for review. And when you don’t ask for review, no one’s gonna leave your review on Amazon. Right. So next step is you need to ask for a review. And they’re selfless ways to do that. If you found this helpful, you can help other people find this information as well by leaving a review. That’s like a one line sentence that’s very common. And just having that sentence will you know 10x Your reviews compared to not having that sentence right. Next up is going to be this which I had never seen done before and why it blew my mind. And for those of you that actually want to see the three page chapter, I send it out in my newsletter a lot. For those of you that want to get on our we have a three to one book marketing newsletter you can get just by going to our website and sign up for our free course for Amazon ads, you’ll get added to our subscriber list. But this three page chapter is essentially just breaks down. What is goodwill? Why is it so important for entrepreneurs and then says, want to get a leg up on getting that goodwill? Go leave a review right now it’s going to help like he essentially just breaks down so elegantly these, you know, the reason why reviews are so helpful for other people and how, you know, he says like, if you’re someone who’s reading this book, you’re someone who really cares about people, you’re someone who really, really wants to see other people succeed. And so prove to me that you are that person go leave a review because you never know you know that next mom entrepreneur that’s going to become successful because you left a review and they found the book, and like what a like what a sell, right? Like it was just the best sell I’ve ever seen a book and so the social proof is so important. And that’s also gonna help you get booked, right like if some CEO or you know some of that book or whatever sees your book, they see all those reviews, your speaker fee is going to be a lot higher if you have that social proof. So the other you know, that’s the third component social proof, but when it comes to the actual, you know, funnel of someone you know, entering in going through, you know, make sure that front part is taken care of make sure you have your cover of your book, The subtitle and title both need to be big enough so that they can be viewed in a thumbnail, right? When people see books on Amazon, they’re seeing I forgot the exact pixel sizes, but I’ve seen a very small mall, so you need to make sure you are subtitles readable? Or else you know, you’re shooting yourself in the leg? And so having the product good on Amazon is one important part. And next part is actually making sure your book is gonna drive people into the backends. Those are really the two main components then layered on top of that, is that social proof we just talked about? Got it?
Jeremy Weisz 15:14
Yeah. So you could those are the components of the book, not just writing good, but but also having those elements that go to the next step. And then making sure you have the, you know, the the Amazon listing page, really good copywriting and compelling copy. They’re talking about the benefits. And then the next is the conversion, the ad piece, right, so now you’re putting fuel on it? How does that piece work?
Alex Strathdee 15:39
Yeah, so Amazon ads are simpler, yet far more complex. They are, essentially, you don’t have the copy and the images, you know, the rich stuff that comes along with Facebook ads, there’s none of that. It’s simply with Amazon. It’s all about algorithms. And so what you’re really trying to do is get your book, it’s a very simple ad, all you can do is customize it with 150 characters of text, some authors don’t even use that 150 characters of text. And we can talk about why. All it is is your reviews, number of reviews, your title and the cover of your book. That’s all that gets shown in the Amazon ad. For most of the ads, and for what most people have access to, there is some other stuff going on. But for the majority of listeners, I’m sure this will be more applicable to them. So this is all that is actually being seen with Amazon ad. And what it really comes down to is you’re trying to target search terms that people are typing into Amazon, right. So if you have an entrepreneurship book, and someone types entrepreneurship into Amazon, you want your book to show up, right? That’s simple enough. The second thing you’re actually trying to do is to get Amazon to recommend your book themselves. And the way you do that is by because it’s you know, it’s different from Facebook, right? People are on Amazon with their wallets out there to buy something. And so Amazon is able to make suggestions, as opposed to a Facebook ad, which makes us you know, you’re on there to look at photos of your grandkids. And it makes a suggestion to buy a, I don’t know, like a new lawnmower. Like that’s interruption marketing, right? Like, that doesn’t make sense. But Amazon actually gets to be your friend when you’re on there looking around when you’re actually buying things. And so they recommend other books, oftentimes, we click on those books, we end up buying those books. And so you’re actually the other thing you’re doing Amazon, as besides targeting searches, is actually targeting specific products on Amazon, that you want Amazon to see, hey, readers of the E Myth, also read system ology. And then if you build up enough cross readership, let’s say you end up with 1000 people who buy both of those books, Amazon will actually start to push your book, because they’re trying to get sales to right Amazon, you know, as a marketplace, they’re trying to, you know, sell books. And so they’ll start to organically without you paying for it, push your book to other books, where they see there’s cross readership. And that’s the holy grail of Amazon ads. And that’s what you’re really trying to do is just tap into the recommendation engine, which, which Amazon is.
Jeremy Weisz 17:51
Okay, so we’re talking about native advertising on Amazon, not okay, I’m gonna, you know, build up a Facebook campaign and push it to Amazon. It’s all relative within Amazon, because I always picture what I love about what you’re doing is it’s very niche, like you hear about a lot of people doing, you know, they do Amazon ads for products like e-commerce products, but they’re not specializing in books specifically. So there’s a whole different methodology I imagine from is there is it the same platform where, okay, you want to advertise for your spatula versus
Alex Strathdee 18:29
a book, there’s a lot of commonalities, but it’s the same platform that you’re running them in. But at the end of the day, products just work differently than books. There’s men, the way people shop for books, the way people purchase books, the way people consume the product is very, very different than the way that people buy and interact with products on Amazon. For those of you that remember, Amazon started as a book company, right? They were book distribution, right? book sales. And so although they’re, you know, they’re related cousins, and the great use, I mean, I actually love to steal my entire team actually came from the product world. And then I just teach them the twist with that come with marketing a book. There is, you know, similar and we speak the same language, but it’s like being able to code but then the difference between Java and Python, right, they’re different languages at the end of the day. So same platform, which is great for those that you know, have products, you’ll you’ll have an easier time understanding how to do books, but different at the end of the day.
Jeremy Weisz 19:24
So you could talk about you can maybe target different keywords and things in a book that’s popular. That’s related, that we’ll see you can get on that recommended area. I’m curious if does it apply to products as well? Does it cross sell the books like if you have a book on parenting or an infant, if there’s someone’s going to buy a baby bottle? Well, the bookshop or is that it doesn’t really work like that. Yeah. And I was just talking
Alex Strathdee 19:55
with another author cam Knight, he wrote speed reading and he has a couple of axes. some really fantastic books and a lot of them over 1000 reviews. So he’s a very, very successful author. And we were talking about it, he’s actually been targeting, you know, in one of his books, he talks a lot about whiteboarding. Right. And it’s like, you know, whiteboard your ideas or whatever. And what is it that white borders use? They use Expo markers. And so he’s been targeting Expo markers, and it’s sold a ton of copies for him. So yeah, there is so
Jeremy Weisz 20:25
someone will go to buy like a whiteboard or Expo markers, and then you’re still able to possibly get on what you know, a recommended product page.
Alex Strathdee 20:35
Now, the you know, Amazon, the back end, you have to be somewhat relevant. Amazon has to see some relevance there. And so you can’t just like he the way he found this out. Was he targeted? Like one of the companies that makes x Expo markers, probably Expo, I don’t know if that’s the case. Is that the company that I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s like a Kleenex tissue thing anyway. So essentially, Amazon sold the relevance. And so they show the book, it is it can be very difficult to sharpen products, because Amazon oftentimes sees books and products very differently. But it is possible if Amazon sees that there is enough relevance between the two items.
Jeremy Weisz 21:10
Got it? So okay, now you set these ads in place, you have the right structure, which your team works on the key words, and what should people is there a progression of budget that people start off with of spending?
Alex Strathdee 21:25
Yeah, there is a, there’s different approaches you can take before the authors that we bring on, they are serious about marketing their book, right, their goal isn’t to sell a few copies here or there, their goal is to really push copies. And the only way to do that is to see Amazon ads as a significant investment. And so we recommend a starting budget of around $1,500, just to you know, just to start testing, and then we scale from there. So we have some authors who, you know, do over $20,000 a month in ad spend, but they’re selling a truckload of books, right, they’re selling, you know, a whole lot of books. And, you know, the sales, you know, equals a spender or whatever their goals are, right. So usually we start off with the low budget, and then based on their goals, and based on how the ads are performing, we scale from there. So it can be anywhere, starting 1500. Now, if you’re someone sitting at home, and you know, maybe you don’t have that kind of budget, you just want to, you know, get your feet wet, see what’s going on, then by all means, you know, with $500 a month, you can start to test some stuff yourself. But for those that are really serious about it, you do need to see it as an investment. And capping yourself anything less than that is going to hinder your one timeliness in getting to success. And then to even just your level of success that you’ll see over time.
Jeremy Weisz 22:39
So with the Amazon ads, now someone buys, right. Next, is there steps for obviously, you get it and you’ve put these things in place that there’s some call to action and what they should do next? What are some of the things that you look at? Like you said, with some of these books? After the fact I don’t know, maybe we can we can talk about Mike Cohen? Or what you do with them?
Alex Strathdee 23:07
Sorry, what is your question? Specifically?
Jeremy Weisz 23:09
I’m talking about Mike Cohen for a second because I want to hear about not just that process, but But after they buy, because you’re you’re looking at it, you know, you don’t have control over all those elements afterwards. But that’s, that’s what they’re judging it. So you’re consulting with these companies say, Hey, here’s how you help with the conversion afterwards so that we make the, you know, the most out of this campaign.
Alex Strathdee 23:34
Yeah, exactly. So it’s gonna depend on how the shop is set up what they’re selling, you know, all that stuff for Edie, we work with his business manager who keeps track of what is the platform they use? Anyway, they use something similar Click Funnels, but it’s not click funnels, basically, you know, tracking their conversion, right. And so they have, you know, we’re able to see, you know, how many subscribers did he get this month versus last month so we work with, you know, whoever it is, sometimes we’ll just get access to those platforms and then track it for the author for some smaller shops, they don’t you know, have the bandwidth to have someone who’s hired to do those things for other authors. So like, you know, you asked to talk about neurofeedback went along this guy right here. So this book, had basically no other marketing, besides Amazon ads released early 2020. And he’s closing in on 10,000 copies sold. Now, Jeremy, I don’t know if he knew this, but 90% of books don’t sell more than what is it like 200 copies, right? I would guess like 50 But yeah, exactly. And so 10,000 copies is a lot of copies, especially for a no name author. This is his first book he’s ever written. And he has a clinic down in Jupiter, Florida, where he helps people overcome things like ADHD past traumas using a technique called neurofeedback. It’s mentioned actually in a lot of people have heard the Body Keeps the Score. It’s actually, you know, an offshoot of it’s one of the paths towards recovery that Bessel actually recommends, and so he’ll let people know Look into his practice in Florida who have driven to three hours to get to him because they said, Oh, I read your book. And so I mean, you talk about, you know, he’s this is a medical practice, right? Like they, you know, their prices aren’t necessarily cheap. And so you talk about, you know, people driving hours just to go see, you know, someone who’s really good at this thing. It’s worked really well for him. Right? So there, it’s a little bit more anecdotal. Because it you know, he doesn’t have a funnel, right? He’s not, you know, he doesn’t come from marketing comes to one
Jeremy Weisz 25:26
piece of it. I mean, they a lot of times people need like, like you said, seven to nine different touch points. So maybe they check out the website, maybe they get the book, then they, you know, they call they do some research, but it’s one piece that lends itself to authority and credibility as well.
Alex Strathdee 25:42
Exactly. Yeah. I couldn’t have said it better myself, Alan Dib. Allen did, yeah. So results are still pending, we actually just got to start with his book. But the reason I wanted to bring it up is because it’s, it represents and I’ve got a book right here, also a fantastic book, I actually found one page marketing plan, one page marketing plan, I read the book, it completely simplified how we do marketing. And then I was like, Wait a second, I would love to work with this author, and I saw he was running out, it’s, and I see this a lot. You know, I’ll see authors who have set up their ads a while ago, or they had their friends set up their ads for them, and then don’t touch them. And what happens is the first few months, Amazon wants you to do well, they give you kind of this great grace period, right. And so your campaigns will look good, if you set up some auto campaigns, and then over time those become money sucks, Amazon will start to show you for everything you’ll start to your ROI will go way down. And you’ll just spend a fortune that over time, your sales will actually start to decrease. And while your spend continues to increase, and a lot of authors don’t realize this, they just set their campaigns, they’re like, Oh, this is as good as it’s going to be. That’s just not the case. You need to be mining those auto campaigns separating things out that are working in thrown campaigns, you need to be negatively targeting to make sure you’re not targeting, you know, things that Amazon thinks are relevant for, but aren’t actually really that relevant for. And so what we’re doing with this author, you know, who, you know, last time he even went into, really his ads console was two years ago, you know, he handed us his ads, consultants, like, here’s my ads, we took a look at it. And you know, they’re there, he’s not targeting any of the, you know, the latest books that have come out in marketing, right, immediately. That’s, you know, something you can do, he hasn’t been trimming any of his auto campaigns, he hasn’t been removing targets that are just spending money. And so we get into a book like that. And you know, it’s just a matter of cleaning up because the book, if you look it up, it’s top 5000, all of Amazon, which, you know, Jeremy, you and I know that’s significant, right? Anything that’s selling under 100,000 copies is selling a few copies a day, you know, at least and so he’s 10,000, you can only imagine, you know how many copies he’s selling, and these paperbacks, actually down to 5000. So that’s kind of the work we’re doing with a one page marketing plan. Alan did, basically for any of you that are listening out there, and you’re like, Well, I set up some auto campaigns, please look at them. Because I’m afraid for all of you out there who are spending a fortune on your ads because you think it’s just a set it and forget it. It’s definitely not.
Jeremy Weisz 27:54
Alex, what I’m gonna do is and we didn’t plan this ahead of time, I’m gonna share my screen and we’ll look at Amazon and maybe do a breakdown of some stuff, some books or what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing. I don’t know what’s going to show for my Amazon account. So we’ll see. This keg top is not for beer, but it’s actually for sparkling water that I make. So the Where should we go? Let’s take a look at the business books section. Where should we go to take a look at some of what people are doing? Well, what they’re maybe not doing well.
Alex Strathdee 28:28
Yeah, and my apologies the we happen a little bit here in San Diego and there’s a lot of military presence in San Diego so if you hear helicopters flying over there’s no one going over right now. So my apologies in advance. But yeah, let’s just go ahead and let’s do what most of us type in let’s type in business books into the books section there
alright, so you might not know this but the entire everything you’re viewing right now is actually an ad. The way that you can tell this is that little sponsor tag right there that is anytime an ad is being placed you’ll see that little sponsored tag so like sales secrets, talent and nuclear fact along with Ray Dalio spends a fortune on his old he’s a billionaire I’m sure you can afford to I’d love to if anyone knows Ray Dalio there’s so many things I want to tell him that will save him a lot of money with his ads because he seems to just throw things out there but continue well
Jeremy Weisz 29:18
so if anyone knows any of these people, you can connect them with Alex So Ray Dalio boom just will shout that out.
Alex Strathdee 29:25
Yes, keep on skipping a scroll there. You know, okay, so here’s some organic posting right like these
Jeremy Weisz 29:31
versus organic these, these top three here. Sales secrets, talent in the nuclear factor, these all sponsored,
Alex Strathdee 29:38
those are all paid and even that Israel place so even the very, very top and right here Ray Dalio has books, those are called Brand brand placement. And so those actually have the there it’s more of a long term. If you are really trying to meet reach the masses, which Ray Dalio is, then it can make sense for you. But at the end of the day, those are going to be some of your lowest converting places. And you can also only utilize that space, if you have three books, this ad will probably end up getting shut down the one that you’re seeing at the top, because it’s only got two titles, and Amazon Well, unless he’s probably just spending such a fortune that Amazon’s like, well let him do whatever he wants. But that’s actually, you’re not even allowed to use one of those spots with just two books, what we’re seeing right there, scrolling down here into the top three, you know, the top three, you know, paid placements at the top. Remember what I said, you know, all you’re seeing there is the title, the reviews, the author’s name, and, you know, the the copy edits, right. And these are ads, there’s no these people aren’t even, you know, don’t even have text on their, you know, in their ads. And so these, this is going to be the, you know, these people are probably paying to show up for business books, probably paying in the realm of two to $3 per click, just to show up there, all of these books, definitely the backend, none of these books are trying to make money on the book themselves, because there’s no way someone can be at the top of business business books, and you won’t be able to sustain that. And don’t be surprised if you go and type in business books on Amazon right now. And you get three different books. It is a real time auction that Amazon runs anytime someone performs a search on anything. And so essentially, anyone who’s eligible to be displayed for a certain thing will be thrown out, you know, their hat, their name will be thrown in the hat. And then based on your relevance to the search, so Amazon is looking at Jeremy’s you know, his reading data, you know, his his back end, you know, what books, you know, you’ve probably bought some business books in the past. And they’re deciding, okay, based on what Jeremy’s typing in, and the books that he’s bought in the back, these are the people
Jeremy Weisz 31:30
who were they know everything about me. Yeah,
Alex Strathdee 31:33
they know everything about all of us. And we keep I think I saw like Amazon just came out with like, Echo Dot, and it was like, add it to your like bed nightstand. And I was like, what’s like, in here, you’re talking the bedroom to like, they literally just hear everything. Say, yeah, so these are just to give you some background, you know, this is why these ads are being displayed. Also, you know, cost per click, if you aren’t as relevant to the consumer, you’re gonna pay more, if you are more relevant to the consumer, you’ll pay less. It’s that simple. So if we keep scrolling down here, is there
Jeremy Weisz 31:59
a strategy here? So you could see rom sron? Here, it says, Only one left in stock? The other ones have a free shipping to it. Is there anything with that? Or is that just they’re using a different fulfillment?
Alex Strathdee 32:11
Different fulfillment? Yeah. So they’re fulfilled by you know, an Ingram sparks, or they’re, you know, fulfilled by someone other than Amazon, which, you know, at the same time, you know, it’s like, it can work Korea light scarcity is, you know, as a currency. And so, you know, it’s great to see, okay, only one left in stock, but at the same time, if you’re out of stock, you’re missing out on sales. So, yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 32:32
I’m curious what you would advise there, like this person is your client. Because, you know, you want to eliminate friction, and there’s also a shipping costs, right, so people are used to not paying for shipping on Amazon. So I don’t know,
Alex Strathdee 32:44
this is this goes back to the whole question. And we could do a whole episode about this and traditional versus self published, right? Because, you know, there are pros and cons to each I’ve talked with many authors about why they do certain things. There’s a lot of authors who still go traditionally published, but increasingly, you have the, you know, like Ed P want to change something in his book tomorrow, he could have it done in literally minutes. Right. So it just depends on you know, where you are, there’s also people who go self published to get a publishing deal. You know, your your, you know, advance, you know, if you have a self published book that sells well could be the difference between a $20,000 advance and $100,000 advance. But, you know, that’s a whole different topic for a whole nother day, I would say.
Jeremy Weisz 33:22
So what about these ones? Maybe? I don’t know, if you want to open up a few take a look at their copy, or just yeah,
Alex Strathdee 33:28
let’s go ahead and click on your next five moves right there. And again, you know, you can see the difference, like, What’s that book on the left 4000 reviews versus Brendan Byrne Branson, you know, 806 reviews, right? Like, which business book looks better to, you know, the one with 4000. So that’s why reviews are so crucial. So taking a look at the product page here, we can scroll down. Keep scrolling, keep scrolling. All right. So here’s right there frequently bought together. That is the recommendation I was telling you about. And there’s actually the book that I recommend at the beginning how to win friends and influence people, enough people have bought the next five moves, where Amazon dot have also bought How to Win Friends and Influence People that Amazon is actually recommending this book, no one’s paying for that placement, right? Like, that is incredible, right? Like Amazon is recommending this person’s book and they aren’t paying for it. This is what you’re trying to do with your Amazon, you are trying to associate your book with other books. That’s how you really, really move copies on Amazon.
Jeremy Weisz 34:28
So if Patrick bet David comes to you, Alex, he’s like, Alex, I want to turn on the heat. Would you recommend because he’s already organically ranking? I don’t know. Is there a way to tell if he is running ads through this or not? Amazon ads, but if he’s not, would you recommend looking at these two and really targeting those keywords, so it drives up even more?
Alex Strathdee 34:51
Yeah, and I would also look at leveling up. So one of the strategies we’ll use well without authors is you know, we’ll take someone who, like you’re not going to rank if you launch a book too. Laurel, you’re not going to rank on Rich Dad Poor Dad anytime soon, right? Because that book is been out for so long. It has so many so much cross readership with other books that like, if you try, you know, maybe 100 People who have bought Rich Dad, Poor Dad buy your book. That’s great, but you’re competing against other books that have crossed readership of hundreds of 1000s. Right. And so what your goal is to level up now, right? So, okay, you start off with what is what is the low hanging fruit? Let me find a couple of books that are ranked around 100,000 Let me get on those product pages. And then once you start organically getting traffic from those product pages, then you’re like, Okay, I’ve got copies moving. Let me now target some higher, you know, some some books that are a little bit more competitive. And so rank up, right, so start off, you know, if you’re just launching your book, you don’t have an author name, start off with, you know, books that are 100,000 and then go up from there. And that can help you you know, rank even higher, right, so now maybe he’d look at, you know, ranking for other business books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, although I’m pretty sure how to win friends and influence actually, no Rich Dad, Poor Dad is ranked higher. So I bet if we went to Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I bet we’d actually see your next five moves on the recommendation engine. But if we continue to scroll down here, these are all ads. So products related to this item. There’s a carousel page, you know, one to 498 these are all people placing ads, you can actually see some of them have the 150 characters of text, right. So like Brendan burnaston, you know, he’s got his 150 characters of text there. You know, that’s so these are ads that people are actually running page one is going to be a whole lot more expensive than page 263. Right. So that’s something to keep in mind. And then also how relevant you are also determines, you know, how much you rank at the beginning as well. If you continue scrolling down here, alright. Yeah, I wish I knew rich, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it’s like everywhere on Amazon, you can’t escape it. Thanks for 1000 Wow, yeah, explore similar books. This is where again, organic, so it switches back and forth is like, you know, kind of similar placement one, you have to pay for one, you know, right, the whole goal is to get to a point where you don’t have to pay for your book marketing anymore. Because your organic really, I mean, you should always still pay for, you know, certain placements. But you know, these, these page one to five here, all these books are being recommended organically, they’re not paying for any of these placements. And then keep scrolling down. Keep scrolling, there is like more, there’s so many carousels all over the place, and keep scrolling. And also for those of you that have heard me talk about rank, if we stopped right there, we can see the best sellers rank for this book is 1800. That is what I’m talking about anything that is under 100,000 is selling a few copies a day. That’s how you can figure out the rank of a book. And then if we keep scrolling here, let me know if I’m getting too much into
Jeremy Weisz 37:36
the weeds. This is great. Keep we keep going.
Alex Strathdee 37:39
Keep scrolling down, keep scrolling. Alright, so here we go more Oh,
Jeremy Weisz 37:42
my God, Amazon will maximize everything. It’s crazy.
Alex Strathdee 37:45
They really do. It’s absolute incredible. As you can see, I mean, we could go on for you know, but essentially, when you are you target two things, we’re going to
Jeremy Weisz 37:52
hit the bottom of the page, I don’t care you to skip your next meeting. No, just
Alex Strathdee 37:56
keep going, there’s going to be like two or three more. These are also paid placements. These are paid placements as well. Lower basically the front and further to the left you are or the more to the top and left to the page you are the more you’re gonna pay for that placement. Right. So So these
Jeremy Weisz 38:12
people right here are these people, potential clients for you them. Like we have Gino Wickman. I’ve had Gina Wickman on the podcast before, get a grip. So they are doing some kind of form of paid marketing for their books
Alex Strathdee 38:28
here. Yeah, I love it. Because we are so niche and don’t tell anyone else about this. We really the first ones to figure out Amazon ads for nonfiction authors. And so you know, there’s a lot of people who come approach it from the product side. And some of them do see success, but they’re not focused on books, they don’t understand the value of the books, they don’t understand the metrics that an author actually cares about. That’s the biggest differentiator is actually you know, there, obviously, there’s a lot of difference in the style of campaigns that you run, but also just understanding the value to the author. Like what is it the author is actually trying to accomplish with this, I would meant I would probably say that every single one these books we’re seeing right here have a back end or some other way. And so you can actually sell yourself short if you’re working with someone who doesn’t understand what you’re actually trying to accomplish with your book. And so it’s a great I love living in this space because I you know, one I love books. But two I also just understand you know what it means to be an author, I actually if you scroll up to the very top here and go type in you know, book funnels and Amazon ads. You know, I always like to say Never trust someone who doesn’t walk with a limp. I’m actually I know this stuff because I do it myself. subscribers, which leads to my subscriber lists, which we get clients from. So if you scroll down here, we’re on Yeah, there we go. We’re the first organic ranking for that. And then, you know, we’ve we’re up to 111 reviews and we even there’s many different strategies you can use. We actually use a free so we have the book listed as free. And that’s just because it maximizes the amount of copies and that actually maximizes the amount of subscribers coming in now, depending on what you’re selling, like, if you’re selling $1,000 Consulting programs, I think it’s better to have some skin in the game, you know, I think someone paying 99 cents for your book or $1.99 is important. So it’s also just a matter of planning around testing different things. So
Jeremy Weisz 40:16
totally. So wow, this is wild. Yeah, I mean, so we have this. And it looks like Brandon has two books here that he’s advertising. He’s got sales secrets, and a seven figure social selling. So he’s really kind of taking up some real estate and looks like
Alex Strathdee 40:36
he understands the value of these ads, that’s for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 40:39
Um, and then so now we just kind of get into the review section. But you
Alex Strathdee 40:44
if you go to the bottom, you’ll get more. I guarantee there’ll be more carousels down at the bottom that Amazon that every every area customers, if you decide, and this is this is, this is again, this is organic, and then scroll down again, I bet there’ll be some more paid. So then I’ll show you some products. So these are some more so you can just see how much organic you know, if you start okay, I guess there’s no more paid for this one. But every time you search, and every time you look at different books, you’ll see different you know, you’ll you’ll see different types of carousels and Amazon tries to throw at you. Amazing. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 41:15
um, so let’s, what about the copy on here? How is how is he doing with that you mentioned, you know, you don’t just want to paste the back of the book onto the page. How’s Patrick but David doing with that?
Alex Strathdee 41:29
Yeah, so click read more on the same one, you know, like, he’s taking an approach of validation first. If you look at the sales copy for like, click back to my book, or their book funnels and Amazon ads, you’ll see the sales copy, the goal of it is actually to attract from the first second, right, so if you click on that book page, over there that’s loaded. You’ll see here your book was meant to help build your brand. Why can’t you find the readers right immediately addresses the pain point mentions a few things. I gotta give all the credit here to Brian Meeks. He is like he’s one of those people that doesn’t do any marketing himself. He’s just so good at what he does, that people can’t help but hear about him. He has a Facebook group. It’s actually for Amazon ads. It’s over 10,000 people he does, you know, he has multiple books about book descriptions. He’s like, he’s an indie. He’s one of the people who just got in early with indie publishing. And I’ve seen like when I first wrote my book description and converted, and when I say converted, I mean, the amount of people who clicked the people who purchased it took me 20 clicks to get someone to buy. Now it takes me six clicks to get someone to buy. So I can spend or, you know, say one to five on one and five, just for the math sake. Now I can spend four times more my advertising, you know, and get better placements instead of the one in 20. That’s why book description converting is so so important. Now, there’s other factors that go into it. But just for brevity sake, we’ll leave it at that. But so this is a good example is you want to hook Okay, here’s exactly what this book is about. You go back to the next five moves. It just says like, here’s why we’re so great. It doesn’t say immediately, here’s what we’re solving. Here’s the problem that we’re solving.
Jeremy Weisz 43:09
It’s a lot of social proof, the number one YouTube channel most of you know, Ray Dalio he has a quote for him.
Alex Strathdee 43:15
But like what problem is the solving. And so like, initially, when you know you had to click the Read More to even get down to figure out what the book was about. That’s not really that great this both I could probably improve their stuff a whole lot more just by addressing the problem first. So that’s my two cents. But I refer back to Brian Meeks, who’s taught me about copywriting. I can’t I just can’t recommend it enough. I don’t even think he has like a website because he’s just so lucky. I would find him on Facebook, but he’s one of the best copywriters I’ve ever I’ve ever met.
Jeremy Weisz 43:44
What about, um, I don’t know if there’s a strategy to this or not, but I noticed you have co authors.
Alex Strathdee 43:51
Yeah, that’s just to give my team some cred. You know, these are pretty much like we succeed and fail as a team. And so it’s a matter of them being able to, you know, if they ever, you know, move on to other organizations last year, Gabby’s already moved on. She’s not working for Microsoft, but she’s now able to put on her resume, you know, best selling author, and they’ve helped us develop our strategy and Amazon. So I’m very much you know, we win together, we fail together kind of guy. And so that’s why they’re my co authors. How
Jeremy Weisz 44:17
should someone approach the forward? Right, it looks like you have carry over runner here. Why carry and, you know, what should people think about the forward
Alex Strathdee 44:28
you’re the master of partnerships and relationships, you get someone to write your Ford, they’re gonna, you know, obviously, you know, want to promote the book, share the book, social proof, you know, Kerry is one of the, you know, best names in self publishing. He won’t he runs Ignite, igniting self publishing. He’s also just amazing human. So a lot of it was just because I like I’ve known Kerry for a long time. We worked with a lot of his clients, but at the same time, you know, his name carries a lot of weight. So that’s why you know, it’s afford, but you know, don’t, you know, like, I have a genuine relationship with Terry it wasn’t just like, Oh, I’m gonna use Kerry to like work for like, I’ve been working with Kerry. for close to two years now, so I just did just want to mention that a little bit. Of course,
Jeremy Weisz 45:04
I mean, it goes without saying you want someone who’s going to help the book, but also that you really believe in as a human being and a business person or whatever genre that person’s in.
Alex Strathdee 45:16
Exactly. Yeah. Cuz I mean, yeah, you’re associating your brand with theirs. Right. So,
Jeremy Weisz 45:21
Alex, first of all, thank you, I want to point people towards your website, they can check out more, learn more advanced, Amazon ads.com. And like we mentioned, a perfect fit for you is someone who is a nonfiction writer, but has like an actual back end to it. Because hopefully, by this point, you realize you’re not gonna get rich off a book, especially if you’re making like, $3 what he keeps the score, right? I mean, there’s it’s very, very rare, right? I mean, there’s people that do make a living off selling books, but for the rest of us normal human beings, that’s, that’s less likely. So having a back end service product, core, something that actually will lead to a larger lifetime value of a client. Also, I’m curious why you even go fiction, right? Like you say, fiction, three, three or more books. So those people must have approached you as well.
Alex Strathdee 46:13
Very, very small. In fact, I went as soon as you mentioned that beginning, I was like, Oh, we don’t actually really work with fiction anymore. Because that in itself has its own type of targeting. Like, there’s so many sub genres within sub genres. And if you don’t understand those very minut sub genres, it’s like do what you know, right? Like I read, you know, business book a week, I understand business books through and through, I know that different types of business books, I don’t read fiction, so and my team doesn’t read fiction. And so are we the best to do fiction books. Not we’re not as good as someone who actually understands your specific like, lit RPG genre, I have no idea what that is. And there’s a lot of authors who fall under that category. Like you need to understand the books in your category and go from there. So the reason why three books are more is because the only way fiction authors actually make money and this is just for any of you who might be listening and fall into that category is by your read through rate. So you know, you want you want make money on Book One, two, or three, but you’ll make money on book four through 10. That’s how you make money as a fiction fiction author. But that’s, you know, another topic for another day. So primarily just nonfiction, we do still have like, I have some books behind me do work with fiction authors, just because it’s worked so well for you know, they’ve been with us for a long time. And it’s worked well it continues to work well, but we actually aren’t taking I have other people I refer out to for perfection.
Jeremy Weisz 47:27
So what I mean also children books, too, I find like there’s a lot there’s a growing number of business people that like if there’s children book me Mike Michalowicz, for instance. And I mean, so there’s people that crossover that maybe are entrepreneurs, business owners, who wrote a fiction or a children’s book, that those people also may qualify for their services, while it’s maybe less common than they imagined. And with my
Alex Strathdee 47:49
dad, and specifically microfleece, my bunny, my money bunnies. And the reason why we took that project on is because we understand the reader. We’re not targeting kids, kids aren’t buying books on Amazon, we’re targeting parents who are fiscally responsible, who want to teach their kids about money. We target that audience all day long with nonfiction books. So it really wasn’t that much of a leap for us to to be able to advertise that.
Jeremy Weisz 48:10
That also leads to his other books that also leads to other services he has, I mean, one that um, that’s popping in my mind is Ben settle, people follow copywriting. He’s, you know, talks a lot about email copywriting he is he has a bunch of fiction books, but I think some of his fans who kind of cross over to his business copywriting email newsletter, also follow him and find him through his fiction books. So there is some crossover, it’s probably not as common. Yeah,
Alex Strathdee 48:40
it’s just every use case is individual. And so you know, our acceptance rate is only about 10 20% of the people who we bring on, just because a lot of people, you know, we’re very focused on who we can serve and who we can’t serve. And there is for the people who can’t necessarily serve, or I want to see like, Hey, can you just run some campaigns yourself? Come back to me see, you know, show me your results, show me what your numbers are. And then we can talk, I actually have a free course, which will walk you through pretty much 99% of what our process actually is. I don’t charge for it. I used to have a paid course I know that making a free course made it even better than the paid course. And so you can go get that just by visiting www.advancedamazonads.com. So if you’re, you know, if you’re not ready to make that leap, or you just want to test some ads out yourself, you know, that course is a wonderful place. I would pay attention more to people who teach Amazon ads about products than people who teach Amazon ads about books. Because I’ll tell you why. Jeremy, it’s because people in the book space a lot of the people who made early money with Amazon ads, or it was just a matter of they threw the books up there and there was more demand and supply. We are no longer in that phase. There is now just as much supply about as much supply as there is demand. And so those people will run Amazon ads, they were highly successful. They’re like, Wow, I’m so good at this. I should create a course. They don’t actually know a single thing about Amazon ads. They were just early to the game. The people who are on the product side of things. They’ve been investing millions as they understand this through and through, there’s a lot more money that’s going into the educational materials for products than there are books. There’s still a lot of nuance, which is the sweet spot we sit in. But yeah, so just a word to the wise there about, you know, pick your guru wisely.
Jeremy Weisz 50:13
Everyone check out advancedAmazonads.com Learn more. And Alex, thanks so much.
Alex Strathdee 50:18
Jeremy is such a pleasure being on here. I really appreciate it and you’ve had some Rockstar guests and I’m humbled to be among them.
