I’m in the midst of the release frenzy for my newest book, Own Your Niche: Hype-Free Internet Marketing Tactics to Establish Authority in Your Field and Promote Your Service-Based Business. I’ve been doing all the usual stuff—blogging about it, tweeting, sharing with friends, and conducting interviews. But last week a friend sent me an email congratulating me on my Facebook ad with the following screen shot:
The crazy thing was that I didn’t pay for that ad! I simply shared the news of my book on my Facebook page, yet somehow it magically appeared under sponsored ads. My friend suggested that Amazon must have paid for the ad, but that seemed unlikely to me.
But a week later my friend sent another ad—which was actually a Facebook post written by a client:
It was all so odd that I had to do a little investigating. That’s when I found this article from Mashable about Amazon’s new marketing campaign on Facebook. But the article didn’t mention that Amazon would be sponsoring user posts—the ones with purchase links right back to Amazon!
So here’s what I can surmise is happening.
- Amazon is monitoring Facebook to find links back to its books and possibly other products too.
- Amazon then decides to sponsor the post as an ad, and picks up the tab on the $.75+ per click.
- Both the author and Amazon win since ads lead to book sales. (Well, we can assume the ads lead to book sales or else Amazon wouldn’t waste its money, right?)
I have to say that though I found this a bit confusing at first, I’m quite grateful for the extra boost from Amazon.
So if you’re an author with a book to promote, why not share an Amazon link on your public profile and see what happens? Hopefully you’ll hear from a friend or two who see your ad, and more importantly, it could lead to an increase in book sales.
If you’ve benefited from sponsored ads on Facebook, please share details in the comments section below!
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Stephanie,
The process is a little different from what you’ve described. The advertising program is called Sponsored Stories (https://www.facebook.com/ads/stories/). The advertiser isn’t monitoring Facebook; and wouldn’t even have viewing access to all posts that are sponsored. Instead, they set up criteria based on actions, such as likes and checkins. A nice description of the program is given here: http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/facebook-sponsored-stories/.
In this case, the action was a Page post. Amazon has paid to sponsor a certain number of posts that link to pages on their own site. Beyond that, they may not have any control over the specific content they sponsor.
As for whether it makes money, I can assure you that Amazon is always carefully collecting data, evaluating what does and does not make money, and adapting their business practices based on that information. They are committed users of business analytics! (If this topic interests you, you might enjoy some of my videos or articles on analytics for business. A list appears here: http://bit.ly/metaarticles)
Thanks for sharing this additional information, Meta. Regardless of how it’s happening, I’m grateful for the added promo support from Amazon!
Hi Stephanie, wanted to say I’ve just finished your new book – I bought the pdf version to get instant gratification. I LOVE it! In fact I’ve already marked the heck out of it and implemented several of the strategies. I’m going to reread it, probably several times. I don’t normally do book reviews on my blog, but I definitely plan to share with my readers because I belong to a large community of fellow bloggers who would definitely benefit from this book!
Hi Marquita, Well you just made my day! Thank you VERY much for that impromptu review. I greatly appreciate you sharing the news with your community! Any chance you might write a review on Amazon too? When I was done writing Own Your Niche, I it felt like it was my best work yet. Reviews have been slowly rolling in and it’s nice to know it’s being well-received. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
All my best to you,
Stephanie