23 | February | 2016 | YOURS IN STORYTELLING...

Wow.

I’m still riding that big orange train. Chalk up another 24 hours of HOT & TRENDING, bringing me to 352 hours and 1215 views with 9 days to go. By mid-next week I will be swinging in the breeze, awaiting the final decision from the gods of Kindle Scout. I’m freaking out. I’m shaking. I’m snarfing down peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches and snorting cold black coffee.

And what am I doing to promote my Kindle Scout Campaign?

I’m doing nothing.

At this point it all falls to momentum. I have given myself over to cruise control and am sailing along upon a tide of gravity, fate and a dash of panache. I am captain of my own personal Titanic and there isn’t an ice berg in sight, as far as I am concerned.

Iceberg, my big green scaly ass!

But baby, I’m as cool as a frosty glass of ice cold pilsner on a hot August afternoon.

I mean – look at those big wonderful orange bars.

🙂

Benjamin Grimm’s Viagra Test Chart

Now – let’s take a look at those orange bars. Sure, there are some gaps in that big orange picket fence – but there is ALSO an awful lot of consistency.

So, what all could I have done to fill in some of those gaps?

Some folks I have talked to have had an awful lot of luck using advertising – specifically, Facebook Ads. I cannot tell you a thing about that. One of these days I will see a reason to use Facebook Ads. Quite likely I will look into Facebook Ads if KELPIE DREAMS is picked up by the gods of Kindle Scout. After all I cannot rely completely upon Kindle Scout to promote my own book.

But – for now – I have chosen to avoid throwing money at this situation.

All that I spent on this entire campaign was ten whole dollars.

I spent ten whole dollars directly on my Kindle Scout promo on two Fiverr promo pages that were aimed specifically at Kindle Scout campaigns – Book Kitty and Marvelous Maven.

I invested the ten dollars for two reasons.

Reason 1 – I am desperate.

Hey, let’s be honest here.

Reason 2 – and this is the big one – I was curious. THIS, more than anything else is what has brought me into the world of indie publishing over these last three years or so. I want to get out there and test the waters. I want to find out what works for me and what doesn’t. I want to see what happens when you push this button.

So – I had ten whole bucks kicking around idle in my PayPal – and I said, WHY NOT?

There was a third Fiverr site that offered this – I WILL NOMINATE YOUR KINDLE SCOUT CAMPAIGN for five dollars.

Now THAT seemed a little dodgy to me. Paying five dollars to a service that posts your Kindle Scout campaign on their Facebook page and/or Tweets about your campaign on their Tweet feed is fair. If your campaign is interesting enough then some Facebook and/or Twitter follower of this promo site might jump in. That’s worth five bucks to me.

But handing somebody five dollars to nominate you – that just didn’t seem cost effective to me. What’s worse, it didn’t even seem ethical to me. With Book Kitty and Maven I was buying advertising. That was fair. With that other site – whose name I can’t even remember – it just seemed like vote buying – which ISN’T fair.

So – was the ten bucks worth it?

Well, Marvelous Maven’s promo went live on February 10, 2016 – and I had 24 hours of Hot & Trending that day. I can’t in all honesty determine just how much of that big orange bar was directly attributable to Marvelous Maven – but it sure didn’t hurt.

Book Kitty’s promo went live on February 7, 2016 – and she was kind enough to let me know that she was so impressed with the book description that she nominated it herself. And, there are those big orange bars of happiness again on that day.

Did you know that August 14 is National Creamsicle Day?

So – no, there is no REAL way that I can readily ascertain that actual worth of that ten dollar investment – except for this! That day I felt to myself, hey, you have done something to advance your campaign. Looking back then from the last minute floundering of today this was ten dollars WELL spent. In fact, in hindsight, I might even have done it again if I had the ten dollars to spend, just to see if this hoop was going to continue to keep on turning.