PermaFree Conversion Results

[VydorScope]

Lots and Lots of people do not seem to understand how perma free works. It is a form of marketing. You give a way a book, so that people will take a chance on you with the goal of them buying your other books. It is adversting that costs zero dollars. Expensive advertising campiegn net you a 1-2% conversion rate if your lucky. That is 1-2% of people that click on the ad go on to buy it. Here is the hidden power of perma free in REAL HARD NUMBERS:

Here are my hard percents of conversion rate for each Month since the release of Book 2 (book 1 was permafree for several months before Book 2 existed):

June-2011 2.95 (partial month)
July-2011 7.17
August-2011 7.64
September-2011 4.7
October-2011 7.64
November-2011 5.81
December-2011 5.34
January-2012 5.05
February-2012 6.37
March-2012 7.85
April-2012 5.41
May-2012 4.43
June-2012 6.07
July-2012 4.46
August-2012 6.87
September-2012 9.89
October-2012 5.74
November-2012 10.74
December-2012 6.02
January-2013 5.19
February-2013 4.03
March-2013 6.9
April-2013 5.53
May-2013 3.27
June-2013 4.13
July-2013 5.3
August-2013 6.08
September-2013 1.65
October-2013 6.49


AVERAGE CONVERSION RATE TO DATE = 5.82 --> That means almost 6% of the shopers that grabbed book 1, went on to buy book 2. My conversion from book 2 to 3 and 4 is nearly 100%. NOTE: These numbers do not count the purchases of my omnibus, if i add them in the conversion rate is even better.


September-2013 was the first month I tried using actual advertisements, note the step fall in conversion rate. My downloads that month TRIPLED, but they did not carry over to book 2. So the lesson for me is do not do what I did in September.

In conclusion -> permafree works as a form of advertising.

[gmw]

That is interesting VydorScope. Do you get accurate figures for downloads of your permafree book from all sources?

My second book should have been out by now, and my third book is almost ready too, but everything has stalled for me at the moment (for reasons I'd rather not go into). When these books, concluding the series, do come out I was going to review my marketing strategies (which basically don't exist at all at the moment, and it shows). You make a convincing argument for permafree, and considering how little other marketing I expect to do, something like this is worth thinking about. If my short story collection would grow a bit faster I would think about making that my free option - although whether that would actually translate into conversions to the series is an interesting/open question.

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by gmw

That is interesting VydorScope. Do you get accurate figures for downloads of your permafree book from all sources?

Those are only Amazon numbers. I guess I should have mentioned that. Since Amazon is my bread and butter currently I only have been tracking them close enough to have these numbers.

[BeccaPrice]

I get virtually no conversion from my permafree short story to my story collection.

[cromag]

My current situation is 2 free stories, one non-free. I don't see any carry-over, but I wonder if that might be due to the fact that all three are stand-alone, not part of a series.

[VydorScope]

Permafree as a tool works best when you are writing a series and end the first book with a cliff hanger. I did not have said cliff hanger so that hurts my success some.