“Implementing The Nick Stephenson Method – Week One”
Having spent three months re-editing my books and re-building my brand, on March 23rd, 2015, I went live with all three of my books on Amazon, D2D and with the new-look website, http://www.jamespsumner.com. I followed Nick Stephenson’s “Your First 10K Readers” programme via his website and Facebook group, and I was eager to implement his suggestions. These focused on:
– Make Your First Title Perma-Free
– Better Keywords
– Building Your Mailing List Via MailChimp
– Working Towards Long-Term, Sustainable Downloads And Visibility
Briefly, this is how I went about it…
I published my first title using D2D, which reaches out to Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes and a few others, and made it FREE. Once live, I contacted Amazon and asked them to price match it, which they did within 36 hours.
I purchased a piece of software called Kindle Samurai, which uses Amazon.com to help you find the best keywords to use when publishing your title through KDP. These help you find popular keywords that produce low results, meaning you have a better chance of appearing on pages one or two of that search enquiry. It rates each suggestion as Excellent, Difficult or Bad. You get seven excellent-rated ones, and use them for your title.
The next thing I did was place an advertisement at the beginning and end of each book, offering my second book as a free download to anyone who signs up to my mailing list. This list is important, because you’re essentially building your own audience and own promotional tool. Long-term, if you have a decent list, you can promote yourself, meaning you have no need to pay other people to do it for you. The added bonus is that your list will contain solid leads, who are fans of you, and your genre, so they’re more likely to be receptive to your product.
Finally, if the first two things work, this will, in theory, lead to Amazon’s algorithms working for you, and you gaining more visibilty on the site, in the “Also Bought…”, “Books You Might Like…”, and Category Chart sections, which leads to regular, organic, downloads of your titles.
I’d read of other people’s experiences, some of which spoke of overnight bumps from $300/month to $1500/month, for example. That’s great, but the thing I had to bear in mind was that they were already doing $300/month… Since publishing my titles in February 2014, I think my best month as $70, and that was a result of a paid promotion run that cost me $110…
My point is, I wasn’t doing all that well to start with, so while a big bump would’ve been great, ANY improvement would be a victory.
So, this past week, I’ve monitored my downloads and my rankings, to see if this would work for me. I’ve tried other people’s techniques in the past, to no avail, so I was optimistic, but slightly skeptical.
It’s worth mentioning, I have done absolutely ZERO promotion on my books. I usually choose some promo gigs from Fiverr.com to give my downloads a boost, but, as Nick himself pointed out, this typically leads to a huge spike in the first three days, then a decline to nothing again – which Amazon take as an exception, rather than the rule, when it comes to your book’s popularity, and ultimately ignore you.
So, here are my figures for the first seven days. These are download stats for my FREE title (found HERE on Amazon US and HERE on Amazon UK):
March 23rd, 2015
Amazon US:��57
Amazon UK:��59
Subscribers:��3
March 24th, 2015
Amazon US:��39
Amazon UK:��22
Subscribers:��6
March 25th, 2015
Amazon US:��42
Amazon UK:��17
Subscribers:��4
March 26th, 2015
Amazon US:��31
Amazon UK:��42
Subscribers:��7
March 27th, 2015
Amazon US:��24
Amazon UK:��52
Subscribers:��4
March 28th, 2015
Amazon US:��21
Amazon UK:��82
Subscribers:��5
March 29th, 2015
Amazon US:��22
Amazon UK:��117
Subscribers:��6
Total Free Downloads:��627
Total Subscribers:��46
Both US and UK started off equal. A general decline followed, with it being slightly more rapid in the UK. Then, a huge spike in the UK, alongside a steady decrease in the US.
The impact in the UK has been great, and as of March 30th, 2015 at 9am, these are my rankings:
I have seen very little retrospective sales of my other titles, which I expected. Firstly, the second book is free if you subscribe to the mailing list, so by default, I’m kinda hoping not as many people buy it. The third book is a paid title, but before people (hopefully) start buying that, they need to read the first two, which takes time.
I wasn’t expecting an overnight success story, but I have to say I’m very happy with the figures, considering I’ve done nothing to influence them.
I do find it strange that very little is happening in the US, especially given the keywords (which are arguably the most important factor through all this) are geared towards the Amazon.com site. Some of the ones I’ve used don’t even show up in the Amazon.co.uk search bar, yet I’m clearly having a bigger impact in the UK.
Here are some more stats about my mailing list. I sent out my first newsletter on March 27th, 2015, which, at the time, reached 35 subscribers:
Newsletter Sent:��March 27th, 2015 (19:00 GMT)
Audience:����35 subscribers
Opened By:����28 subscribers
Open Rate:����80%
Clicked By:����4 subscribers
Click Rate:����11%
Both my Open and Click rates are well above industry-standard, which is a great start. Interesting that 49% of my subscribers are based in the US, yet they account for only 37% of my overall downloads…
So, am I happy with my first week? Yes – I’m ecstatic, if I’m being honest! It’s early days, and I’m hoping these figures continue, and grow, over the coming weeks, but overall, this is a fantastic start.
It’s also proof that Nick Stephenson knows what he’s talking about, and I would absolutely recommend spending time to work through his strategies for publishing/marketing your ebooks.
I’ll post again after the second week is in the bag, so we can see if the trend continues.
Thanks for reading!
JPS
