Successful Free Promo

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I have been struggling to run a successful free promo.  One-day promos don’t work as well as they used to, unless you have a brand new book, and free rankings are not going as low as they used to.

I recently bought Wesley Atkins’ new software, KDROI, and I tried it for some free promos this week.  I was especially interested in trying it on books that I had published a couple of years ago (my first books, actually) to see if they could be revived without having to re-publish them.

I set one of my very first cookbooks, Easy as Pie, for a 3-day free promo from Tuesday-Thursday.  It typically does well in the summer months and is hit or miss on free promos.  I set it up through KDROI and kept track of its performance.  Here is the progression of its free ranking:

• at the beginning of day 1 (noon EST) it was ranked #13,119 (free)
• at 5pm EST it was ranked #1,636
• at 8pm EST it was ranked #429
• at the beginning of day 2 (8am EST) it was ranked #298

I was really tempted to pull the free promo at 8am on day 2, but I didn’t.  I was on my way to school for a class.  So, I checked it after class when I got home (2pm EST) and it was ranked #373.  I checked again at 4pm EST and it had gone up slightly again to #423.  At that point, I cancelled the free promo.

Then, the waiting began.  My hope was that it would enter the system in an hour or two at a low paid ranking and continue to go down over the course of the evening and into the next morning.

When the pie book showed up with a paid ranking later that evening, its first paid ranking was #181,399.  I went to bed hoping it would be much lower in the morning.

The next morning, I checked the ranking after the kids were sent off to school and the paid ranking was #14,447 and it was ranked #2 in Dessert Baking.  I’m quite happy with that considering I didn’t cancel it when the free ranking was #298.  Live and learn, I guess…

Next, I will watch it to see how it performs over the next few days and see where it settles in at.

All in all, I was very impressed with KDROI and how it helped my book reach a great free ranking and, ultimately, a great paid ranking.  I wonder how it would have performed if I had cancelled it earlier in the day when it was ranked at #298.  On a go-forward basis, I will consider setting my free promos for two days instead of three and cancelling before it starts to climb, although I have trouble guessing when that will be.

Barb