A month ago I posted I Bring the Fire Part I Wolves on...
A month ago I posted I Bring the Fire Part I Wolves on Free-Ebooks.net, and promised I’d follow up with a review of the service. I have a permafree first in series. The main objective of the story is completed (Loki finds out the fate of his missing children and former wife and lover), but then I wander off a little bit further and set up a wicked cliff hanger (if you do this, be prepared for hate…but also love.)
It’s free to upload your stories there, but I signed up for the homepage promotion service, and also to have it put in a weekly newsletter. The total cost was $190—my most expensive advertising outlay to date. Honestly, it was a moment of weakness—it’s normally more expensive I saw the words “SALE”, and I just did it without really even thinking and then later kicked myself. That said…I paid, and now you don’t have to!
The results:
970 downloads
I saw no significant bump from being in the newsletter
Being on the homepage *DID* give me a bump, after my homepage promotion stopped my downloads did too.
Sell-thru: uncertain. I put links to the Amazon page in the front and back matter. *I THINK* that it kept sales stable through last month when my downloads on Amazon were low until my BookBub promo.
Will I do it again?
The Homepage Promotion, yes, probably. I’m going to update the back matter to have links to Smashwords, Google, and Barnes and Noble. I may even quote some reviews for Monsters and the whole series there too.
Typically, I can expect on a promo where I get 1,000 downloads to earn about $500 down the line...at least on Amazon. (It may be more than that with Fates being out now, and In the Balance being priced at $2.99).
Amazon sell-thru may be better because there are more reviews there, and Amazon offering 70% commission on sales. (B & N, Kobo, and Apple rates are about 50%. Smashwords is 80%, but the site looks dated, and I think it is slightly more cumbersome to upload Smashword docs to your eReader?) Google Play has a nice effective royalty of about 67%…so I’d like to encourage more sales there.
Why Wouldn’t I Do It Again? I am keeping an eye on traffic on Free-ebooks.net. If traffic starts to dip, and I don’t expect to get 1,000 free downloads for my money, I will not attempt it again.
Would I Recommend the Site to Anyone? YES! You don’t have to select a promotion option. Uploading your book is completely free, and if you get a 300 downloads for free, that’s better than some advertisers out there. :-P
