Marketing Matters - Advertising on WTRAFSOG...

For the first 6 months of existence (as an author, of course) I kept my head down and wrote. I'd read widely that I shouldn't worry about marketing until I had 5 books written, and I followed that piece of advice*. 

My first real marketing thing was my free book giveaway, which was totally worth it, and made April my most profitable month yet as a writer. 

My second marketing thing was in early May. I did my first advertising buy; I bought a promoted post on the Facebook behemoth - WTRAFSOG, choosing to promote the House of Pain at the same time it was on a 99c special**. 

The results? Better than I could imagine. I'd hoped to break-even on the cost of advertising. I definitely did that. Also: 

- House of Pain was in the Top 100 BDSM books on Amazon all weekend. (The highest it got was 12, which was amazing and exciting and surreal.) Top 100 Paid BDSM books. That was awesome.

- For a very brief moment, I was in the Top 100 Erotic Authors listing as well. That didn't last for long, but hey, it was nice to see that it could happen. 

The one downside? No noticeable back-catalog lift. That being said, I'd definitely do another WTRAFSOG promotion - if you write erotica, it seems like a no-brainer for the amount of money you spend on the ad. 

* That advice is fucking gold. Follow it. I see so many authors churning their wheels on finding reviews and doing promo for their first book, when they should be writing book two. Not doing any marketing to speak of for the first few months, until I had 5 books under my belt was probably the wisest thing I ever did. 

**I do think the fact that my book was 99c mattered. 99c is an impulse buy. For a new-ish indie author with very little name recognition, anything more would have been a stretch.