How to lose money before Christmas

As an indie author, you are used to doing all singing, all dancing, one man-power thing to sell your books. Writing, editing, finding the editor that does the job but doesn’t change your choice, cover design and finding an illustrator that will execute your designs, book typesetting, social media boosting, marketing strategy, and adverts. You name it -we indie did it.

So when I delved into a world of AMS or, as we call it now, Amazon Ads I thought I would learn it as everything else on the way. So far, I have learned everything, and I was optimistic I could get another thing added to my craft.

I watched all the necessary tutorials, applied all I learned to create the ads and watched it rolling. The thing is – I don’t have a head for numbers. I never had. I can do maths, but I don’t have what some people have – the vision of numbers. With writing or my medical work, I see a fragment, and I can piece it together. I can see the bigger picture, and I can make logical decisions based on it.

With numbers, I just see numbers. I don’t feel it, I may know what it means, but tieing it up to another value and make evidence-based decisions following it – not happening. My brain simply shut down.

Giving Amazon ads a trial for a month, I learned two things. I lost a lot of money really fast because I don’t know what I’m doing, and… and it is fucking addictive. It is like betting on a horse race or playing poker. You lose but you keep thinking – maybe if I up the big or change the keyword, I will win this time, and my sales outweigh the costs.

Then you wake up after a month with a hand in proverbial poo, and you still don’t know what the hell you did wrong because you followed every tutorial to the dot.

Amazon Ads prove to me that even being an intelligent, highly dedicated woman I can’t do everything, but I didn’t give up yet. I uploaded copious amounts of marketing books and sat down through online courses. Just to spite the algorithm, if for nothing else.

Now all I need is more self-control and maybe even more tutorials. Unless any of you know and would be willing to guide me through the treacherous world of numbers.