Sold 17 book copies and made almost 300$ - Shall I pay for ads?
Last week I published my first info product.
It went well (surprisingly) and I was able to get some attention from my Twitter account and probably some word of mouth.
I have almost 4% conversion rate on Gumroad. I am thinking about placing some ads on Reddit. Is it worth given the numbers? What do you think?
Hey @tropianhs I feel you should try ads but with smaller budget. Think of it more like A/B testing your messaging than a selling process.
First, I would first try to figure out my audience. Start with dividing it into different segments and prioritize different segments based on highest numbers of users + highest numbers of users most likely to pay (and any other metrics you like)
Second, figure out which online websites does this segment of users hangout. I'm sorry I don't know much about soccer betting but my wild guess would be lets say soccer memes groups on Facebook, soccer forums on reddit, soccer forums on external sites. Again, prioritize these channels (Fb, Google or reddit ads) based on size of audience + how likely they would pay etc.
Now that you have your channel locked in, do ads for a small budget, do multiple campaigns and A/B test your messaging and figure out what exactly converts
Yes, your guess about where my audience hangs out is pretty much right.
In the past 2 years I explored FB, Reddit and Twitter and found Twitter and Reddit the most promising. That is where I get most of my Alfa Data daily visitors from. While I am getting some book sales from Twitter I am not getting visits directly from Reddit though. That is mainly why I was thinking of spending from some Reddit ads.
I like your approach, will probably try that, not spending much and treating it like A/B testing. Thanks!
Nope. Don't waste your time on ads yet.
Find 10 people you think should buy the product. Reach out to them. Learn from them. What do they like, what do they not like, why do they buy and not buy.
Then take what you learned and put that on your landing page.
Then do it again. Another 10 people.
Then maybe start buying ads.
Ads are faceless. You don't know WHY someone doesn't buy or does buy. You will spend a lot of time setting them up, and not knowing why you got the results you did.
ANNNDDD it is easy to get addicted to paid channels. Once the competition goes up or your audience is saturated it can get harder to grow.
Focus on directly helping others first.
I'm in a similar situation. But I had most traffic from a subreddit. surprisingly, my post survived and was in a hot section for a long time on
r/docker. It's an introduction course in pdf. Not sure about running ads, probably I'll repost it somewhere else, once I'm familiar more with each subredditsI was also surprised that people would pay it, although my price was way lower than yours. Anyway, nice experience.
It's amazing you were able to keep the post there. Must have been very helpful content!
I am thinking of posting on a particular sub where I am active since almost 2 years (50k subscribers and peaks of 200 online in the weekends). So a bit smaller than r/docker but not so much.
The thing I noticed is that there is no ad in the sub I am eyeing. So maybe a big opportunity there? Or maybe I am missing something?
Yeah, probably it was helpful. I would suggest to include some intro of the content, but also what it will mean for them if they buy it. Don't just drop the link and write 2-3 sentences... Write a story.
I don't know much about reddit ads, so I don't know what to say about that.
Nice!
Do you have a link to your reddit post so I can get inspiration from? Thanks a lot for the help!
https://www.reddit.com/r/docker/comments/gvb964/for_docker_beginners_ive_prepared_material_for/
It's very difficult to make paid ads work with such a low price point. I'd consider turning the ebook into a course and raising its price.
Thanks Andrea! Yeah that was also my worry. Maybe if I had a higher volume...
I think there is a big audience on some subreddits that may be interested in my content. I will consider expanding the book and turning it into a course. Is 50 $ a reasonable price point to start running ads?
Yeah it is! However why don’t you start by going into that subreddits and writing your story, how/why you created your product and ask for feedback?
It's a good idea. I think I am going to craft a post and direct people to the free chapters of the book and ask their opinion on it. Sounds right?
Yeah!
First, congrats!! Nice achievement. It's very hard to say if you should do paid advertisement on reddit, I would suggest just trying it on a low budget. Nothing to lose and only to gain!
Thanks!
I mentioned Reddit because I receive a lot of traffic on Alfa Data from a couple of subreddits so seems promising. Will try to spend the minimum amount and see how it goes.
Let us know how it goes! Redditors can be brutal, but fight the fear, make sure you enable comments on Reddit ads and try to stay engaged with what they say.
Yes! I will try to!
My biggest issue at the moment is trying to find out how their ads work. I think I am going to target a subreddit and run it in the weekend.
Want to share a link?
It's an info product about building a soccer betting model, I don't know if it can be interesting for an Indie Hacker :D
Anyway, since you asked, here it is https://gum.co/bettingmodelwe
Interesting topic. I’ve worked at 2 places where people do that for a living, and know someone who did it solo for a while.
SEO might work well for you here and Google ads. I think a good product in this space could be worth $100-$1000 it may need videos and some code / excel sheets. Once you have a high paid up sell product those $50 ads don’t seem so expensive.
Nice! Thanks for the tip! I am probably going to spend some time on creating a course as suggested in this thread.
I know there is definitely demand for content like this (my customers keep asking for more content) and a course can be sold at a higher price point. Thanks!
Yup you should definitely try out ads on a low budget cap per day and see if the ROI comes in. I have seen targeted subreddit ads working well
Agree. I am looking into reddit docs and it looks like the lowest budget cap is 50 $, which given the numbers above sounds a bit too much...
I would spend almost 20% of the current revenue on ads per day...