For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing with you all the things that I did for my Sci-Fi Day Promotion for 2020.
Since this is an experiment, it’s fair for me to share with you the result of my recent promotion as well.
Is it a huge success?
Well, I’ll tell you about the verdict in a moment.
But first, let me explain to you what my experiment is all about for those who are new to my blog.
What my Sci-Day Promotion for 2020 is all about
Starting this year, I already made a conscious decision to sell my ebooks directly to readers.
I still have my books available for sales on retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Apple Books.
But rather than driving traffic to these retailers, I’m driving traffic to my own website instead. It takes a lot of work to drive traffic to these retailers, anyway. So, I may as well do myself a favor and drive traffic to my website instead.
Not only I make more money since I don’t have to forfeit 30% or more to these retailers, but I also have complete data where my readers are coming from.
I admit that driving traffic to my own website and convert this traffic into sales isn’t a walk in the park.
Because of that, I decided to follow what retailers have been doing all along. And that is to offer discounts on my books.
Since this is my first time doing this, I decided to begin my pet experiment during Sci-Fi Day.
The Sci-Fi Day falls on January 2, 2020. But my Sci-Fi Day Promotion for 2020 starts from January 2nd until January 5th.
During the promotion, I offered 10% off for my books that fall into Sci-Fi category for the non-subscribers and 15% off for my email subscribers.
Putting my blueprint into action
My plan for Sci-Fi Day Promotion for 2020 is simple: I only use my email list to drive sales. And the rest of the process will be driving sales to a landing page with a coupon link to buy my books.
Driving sales through my email list is also a straightforward process too. The only thing I do is to schedule my email campaign with a coupon link and I’m good to go.
I don’t send that many emails to my subscribers, though. I only sent them three emails during the promotion.
The coupon link for the email subscribers is different since I’m offering more discounts to my email subscribers.
That means I’m creating a separate coupon link for the same promotion.
If you’re wondering how I do that, you can read more about it right here.
As for the non-subscribers, I’m fully utilizing Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and even my blog post to drive traffic to the landing page.
Of course, my landing page won’t be complete if I didn’t place an opt-in form to get people to join my email list.
The people who will join my email list through this landing page will be different than the one who requested my free ebooks. So, I’m fully utilizing the tag feature on MailChimp to organize my email list.
You can read more about using tag right here.
If you’re wondering about how I create a landing page, you can read about it right here.
That pretty much sums up all the things that I did for my Sci-Fi Day Promotion for the year 2020.
What are the results?
I’m sad to announce that I didn’t make any sales at all during the promotion period. I also didn’t get any new subscribers too.
Am I disappointed with the results?
Of course, I am. But at the same time, I kind of know why my promotion didn’t pan out as I hope.
What went wrong with my Sci-Fi Day Promotion for 2020
It’s clear from the start that 10% off doesn’t seem enticing to many people. Well, maybe if I’m pricing my books in yen then 10% off will make a difference.
But 10% off in USD doesn’t seem a lot. And same goes for 15% off for the email subscribers too.
Let’s not forget that I don’t have a huge audience in my email list and also on my social media profiles.
It’s true that you don’t need to have a huge audience if you want to make a living from your writing. If you’re basing it on the 1000 true fans concept, then yes, you don’t need to get millions of people to buy your books.
Though, that would be great if there are millions of people who will buy our books in a heartbeat.
But if you only have 10 people in your email list and only 20-50 people who are following you on social media, it won’t be easy to get them to buy your books.
They will eventually buy your books someday. But it will take a while.
My action plan for improving my promotion
Whether I like it or not, I may have to offer more discounts on my books. 10% off isn’t enticing enough especially when you’re doing a flash sale.
So, how much of a discount do I plan to offer? I will say that offering a 30%-40% discount is a good start.
I won’t deny that it scares me to death for offering such a huge amount of discount to both subscribers and non-subscribers.
But if it can get people to buy the books, then I guess it’s not such a bad trade-off, after all.
Of course, I also need to focus on building my audience at the same time. And my favorite way to do that is through content marketing. So, that’s what I’ll be focusing on moving forward.
My next book promotion will be on Valentine’s Day. As always, I’ll let you know about my plan and also the result in my future blog posts.
P.S Nick Stephenson will be running a free live workshop on how to go from $0 to $1000 per month from book sales.
The registration for the free live workshop is open now until February 13th, 2020 at 3 p.m Eastern.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can increase your book sales, you can register for the free live workshop right here: