You will have access to the course until December 31, 2026. If I continue offering the course past that date, you will continue to receive access without repurchasing it.
The 80/20 Amazon Ads System I Used to Help an Author Hit #1 in the Store…
“We hit #1.”
I finished typing the email and hit send. Looked at the book’s rank on Amazon again one last time.
Then I shrugged and went back to playing guitar.
How could I be this relaxed? After all, just a few days before, basically no Amazon Ads had been running for the book. Which was when the client had emailed me, concerned because Facebook had rejected every single ad for their new release (without any clear reason). Leaving them with no ads running for their brand new book.
So the Amazon Ads had to carry the launch alone.
But I wasn’t stressed out. No scrambling. No random flurries of activity.
I was just following the ads management system I’d developed over 7-figures in ad spend.
And this system works whether you’re trying to spend a couple thousand bucks a day and hit the top 100. Or just run backlist ads for a book you wrote 10 years ago.
You can quickly and accurately figure out if a book works with Amazon Ads for less than $200 ad spend.
In as little as 2 weeks.
And know with confidence what to do next.
All without spending hours a day in the Amazon Ads dashboard.
How can this be, if so many authors struggle with Amazon Ads? Well, there are a few myths that just won’t die. And thus end up killing a lot of authors’ ads.
So let’s start with the biggest myth holding people back, which is…
Amazon Ads are Just Like Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are an ad platform.
Amazon Ads aren’t. Now, that may seem like an odd statement. After all, Amazon brought in over $46 billion in ad revenue in 2023. But their ad revenue is a byproduct of their eCommerce business.
If Amazon’s eCommerce business doesn’t deliver a good customer experience, then it doesn’t have anyone to serve ads to. So Amazon's focus isn't on getting your advertising dollars today. They're much more concerned about readers coming back to buy more books and products five months or even five years from now.
For authors using Amazon Ads, the fact that Amazon is first and foremost a retailer means three key things:
Key #1: Ads can take awhile to start spending money.
Most authors have encountered an unexpected problem with the Amazon Ads: getting them to even take their money. Shouldn’t an ad platform be willing to spend your cash? Well, Amazon wants to know that a book resonates with their customers before opening the ad spend floodgates. Which leads us to our second key...
Key #2: Books with existing visibility are easier to spend money on.
When a book is selling well, that’s a clear signal to Amazon that customers are interested in that particular title. One of the main reasons Amazon Ads can take time to start spending is because the ad algorithm favors serving ad campaigns for books they know are already selling. So if you're getting sales and page reads without ads (or from another traffic source, like Facebook Ads, TikTok, or your author newsletter), then it's easier to get the Amazon Ads to spend money.
Key #3: Ads that have proven to convert tend to serve more cheaply and more easily.
Amazon is an eCommerce site. So it wants to recommend and show customers products that sell well. That means ads that have proven to convert will have a bit of an advantage in the ad auction. So longer-running campaigns often have an advantage when it comes to a) spending money and b) getting slightly lower CPCs (this is not a gamechanging shift in cost, probably 5 - 10%, max).
So if your book doesn't have existing visibility or you don't have a bunch of long-running ads, are you screwed?
Absolutely not. The Amazon Ads can still be extremely effective. It's critical to know these things precisely because many campaigns you'll be running won't tick those boxes. And then people will give up before any real data comes in because they've gotten 212 impressions and 1 click over 3 weeks.
The methods in the course will show you how to get ads running relatively quickly, even if you're starting from a standstill.
The other big difference between Facebook and Amazon Ads that trips people up?
On Facebook, you can lower your cost-per-click (CPC) substantially by testing more ads.
On Amazon, there is a "bid floor" in most genres and regions. That’s around $0.70 in most fiction genres in the US. If you bid below this, your ads won’t serve very much (or at all, if your bid is really low). This is the #1 reason why people have trouble getting their ads to spend money.
They're just not bidding high enough.
This bid floor is due to other authors bidding on the same keyword. Basically, if a keyword is valuable, then other authors will be competing to win ad clicks from it. So there's no secret for massively decreasing the bid cost. If other authors are bidding high on a keyword, then you're going to have to bid high, too, if you want your ad to get shown.
So if we can't lower our CPC a ton, does that mean it's impossible to improve our Amazon Ads?
Nope. You can still massively improve the performance of your ads by testing on Amazon. But most people go about this incorrectly. Because they're thinking like a Facebook advertiser.
Due to the higher click costs, you need to approach Amazon Ad testing with a completely different mindset. What does that mean? You focus on refining the Amazon page and keywords you’re targeting to improve the conversion rate. Instead of futilely trying to find a bunch of secret keywords and ASINs that have an insanely low CPC.
The Amazon Ad Data is Inaccurate
Being able to tell which keywords and ads are generating sales and page reads is critical. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know where to direct your budget. And what shouldn't be getting any budget at all.
However, many authors mistakenly believe that the Amazon Ad attribution data (sales and page reads) is inaccurate.
From managing millions of dollars in ad spend for clients in genres from romance to thriller to fantasy to sci-fi, I have found that the data is 85 - 95% accurate.
The reason most people believe their data is inaccurate comes down mostly to incorrect ad setup. In the course, I walk you through how to properly set up all the major ad types (auto, keyword, ASIN, and category ads). I see even many experienced advertisers set these up wrong. Which makes all the data the ads much harder to analyze (and much less valuable).
Amazon Ads are About the Keywords You Target
People are always asking “what tool should I use?” to find their keywords and ASINs.
I’ve tried a lot of different, expensive tools over the years. Some of them were simple. Others were complicated, with a bunch of bells and whistles.
And you know what tools I used to find effective targets when managing over 7-figures in ad spend?
None of them. My method is extremely simple. I get 99% of my keywords straight from Amazon and the Amazon Ad reports.
That’s because the actual secret to finding keywords (and ASINs) that work with the Amazon Ads has less to do with what you target. This matters, but it's relatively straightforward. I explain how to do this in the course.
Instead, it’s about being able to analyze which targets are performing best. Turning off the ones that are burning money. And dialing in the bids for the stuff that's working. So you spend more money on your best performers over time. And waste less money on the losers.
Which leads me to the actual secret behind the campaigns I ran for 6- and 7-figure authors.
It’s simple. So let me take a moment to explain…
The REAL Secret to Running Effective Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads are all about data.
They generate more data than any other marketing activity or ad platform we do as authors.
This data is incredibly valuable. But only if you know what to do with it.
Which means the “secret” behind running effective Amazon Ads really comes down to just two things…
One, you need to be able to analyze your ad data with confidence. That way you know which books in your catalog work well with the Amazon Ads (many books don’t). And then you need to know which ASINs, keywords, and other targets are working the best. That way you can spend more money on them (and eliminate the losers).
And two, you need a way to organize all that data. So you don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of numbers the Amazon Ads spit out. And so you can look back on historical data to build on your experience over time. This organization transforms your data from a bunch of loosely connected numbers into an actual asset that you can use to make better advertising and marketing decisions in the future.
If you can analyze and organize your Amazon Ad data, then you can win. Because this creates a feedback loop where every ad you run builds your skillset and knowledge.
Test a keyword and it doesn’t work? Because you can analyze the numbers you're seeing on your Amazon Ads dashboard, you just learned something about that book (i.e., what not to target). And because you have the data organized, you know not to go down that path again. That way, even if you take a three month break from the ads, you can pick up right where you left off.
Consider, by contrast, a typical advertising approach. Where you test a group of keywords. Then maybe revisit the dashboard frantically every 3 hours to see if they're working.
Then you forget about the ads for awhile, come back a month later, see some clicks across the keywords, and try to guess which ones are working best by eyeballing the numbers. You turn a couple things off, increase a handful of bids, but don't feel very confident that you're actually moving in the right direction.
And then you add some more keywords to a different ad. Six months down the line, when you remember to check on the ads again, you realize that you already targeted half of these in the first ad. At which point, upon checking your profit and sales, you also find out that your ad performance seems good some months...and then not so good other months.
And you can't figure out why.
This is more like wandering through the woods in a snowstorm. With great resolve, you start trudging through the wind, determined to reach the final destination.
And then, some hours later, you mysteriously wind up in the same spot. With frostbite, no less (or, in the case of the Amazon Ads, significantly poorer). And each time this happens, it's easy to get more and more frustrated.
But this isn't because the Amazon Ads don't work.
This is just what happens to basically everyone when they don't have a clear, proven system for analyzing and organizing your data.
But when you do have that system, all those numbers the Amazon Ads spit out aren’t overwhelming or confusing.
And you don't end up testing the same things over and over again, spinning your wheels.
Instead, that data becomes a valuable asset that you can use to systematically improve your ads over time.
I call this system the 80/20 Benchmark Method. And its foundation is a metric that's missing from every other course I’ve come across: revenue per click.
The "Magic" Metric
Revenue per click is the “magic” metric that forms the foundation of the entire 80/20 Amazon Ads system. But there’s no magic, really. It just provides you with a clear point of comparison across your various ads and keywords.
This is a simple idea that we’re all familiar with elsewhere in our lives. A yard-stick is an example of a consistent measurement: it’s always 3 feet long. This allows us to measure completely different objects like a rug and a desk and accurately compare their size.
But there is no metric on the Amazon Ads dashboard (or any other ad platform, for that matter), which allows us to directly compare ad performance in an apples-to-apples way. So people try (and fail) to do this with cost per click (CPC) or conversion rate. But by themselves, neither of these metrics can tell you the full story.
To accurately be able to assess what keywords and other targets are working–and how the Amazon Ads are performing versus another ad platform like Facebook–we need a common measuring stick.
And that measuring stick is revenue per click.
Using revenue per click, we can:
Dial in the bid for specific keywords, ASINs, and other targets down to the cent.
Compare how different ad types are performing and finally answer questions like “are my auto ads working better than my keyword ads?”
Compare how different keywords and ASINs are performing–allowing you to turn off those that aren’t effective.
Compare how Amazon is performing versus Facebook (or any other ad platform you’re currently running ads on).
Which means you can finally analyze and optimize your ads with confidence.
Rather than just guessing.
Whether you’re spending $5 a day. Or $500.
The Course
80/20 Amazon Ads contains 6 modules:
Ad Best Practices
The current settings you need to know, with step-by-step walkthroughs so you can quickly set up effective ads.
Benchmark
The 80/20 Benchmark Method that allows you to easily assess whether the ads are working for any book (takes as little as 2 weeks and $200 or less in ad spend)
Tracking
The spreadsheets and systems you need to keep your data organized and easily accessible. Organization is how you turn your data into an asset. Because that means you can access it on-demand and actually use it to make marketing decisions.
Test
Improve your book’s performance by learning how to sequentially test different parts of the Amazon page.
Analysis
How to tell which ads, books, and targets are working and profitable using revenue per click and cost per unit.
Optimize and scale
Put everything together and learn how to optimize and scale your ad spend.
Ad Best Practices
The current settings you need to know, with step-by-step walkthroughs so you can quickly set up effective ads.
Tracking
The spreadsheets and systems you need to keep your data organized and easily accessible. Organization is how you turn your data into an asset. Because that means you can access it on-demand and actually use it to make marketing decisions.
Analysis
How to tell which ads, books, and targets are working and profitable using revenue per click and cost per unit.
Benchmark
The 80/20 Benchmark Method that allows you to easily assess whether the ads are working for any book (takes as little as 2 weeks and $200 or less in ad spend)
Test
Improve your book’s performance by learning how to sequentially test different parts of the Amazon page.
Optimize and scale
Put everything together and learn how to scale your ad spend.
Just a handful of the things you’ll learn over the course of the 6 modules:
Each module has action exercises to ensure that you learn and implement the key points.
The modules are each designed to take around a week if you’re investing around 10 hours a week into watching the videos and implementing the materials. This is if you want to get through the course in around 6 weeks.
You do not need to spend this amount of time each week to see results. The course is self-paced, so you can watch the videos and do the exercises whenever they fit best into your existing schedule.
Once you implement the system and learn the skills taught in the course, the ads management can take as little as 15 minutes a week. If the Amazon Ads are your main source of traffic and you want to really dial things in, then you’re looking at about 1 - 7 hours a week (e.g., anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour a day on average) spent managing your ads. The upper end of that range is if you’re spending a lot of money, running ads to a lot of different books / regions, and / or are testing a lot. Or just diving ridiculously deep into the analysis. But this isn’t required.
There is also an 80/20 summary of the course included called (Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Amazon Ads. This boils things down to the absolute essentials. So if you want to jump in and get started in around 2 hours, you can do so today without having to watch the entire course.
The Tools
80/20 Amazon Ads also includes three spreadsheet tools to help you analyze the performance of your ads.
Amazon Ads Profitability Calculator
An easy-to-use spreadsheet tool for crunching your numbers (so you don’t have to do it by hand). Just copy and paste your Amazon Ad data in to analyze your ads’ performance and precisely calculate the bids, down to the individual keyword or ASIN, in seconds (no math or advanced spreadsheet skills required).
Advanced Targeting Tracker
A spreadsheet tool for tracking all your keywords and other targets, so you know what’s performing best, what you’ve already tested, and what you should try next.
This spreadsheet takes the Amazon Ad Targeting reports and transforms them into a treasure trove of data insights.
Ever wondered “have I targeted that keyword or ASIN for this book yet?” or how a target’s current performance stacks up against its past numbers? If you’re using this spreadsheet, you can answer common questions like these in seconds (instead of hours spent sifting through old campaigns on the ad dashboard).
Advanced Benchmark and Test Tracker
A spreadsheet tool for storing the results from your various tests and benchmarks from all ad platforms in a single location. This allows you to easily compare performance across books and ad platforms. If you're testing elements of your Amazon page like covers and blurbs, it also allows you to keep track of this in one centralized location. So you're actually making progress with your testing, rather than taking 1 step forward and 5 steps back.
Who This Course is a Good Fit For
Authors who have run Amazon Ads before and want to take their ads game to an intermediate or advanced level. Foundational topics and best practices are covered, but this is not a course for complete beginners.
Authors with 5+ books in a series. The Amazon Ad bids are expensive in the US ($0.70+). You’re unlikely to be profitable with fewer than 5 books.
Data-driven marketers who are serious about learning about Amazon Ads and want the real-deal in terms of what works and what doesn’t, with zero BS.
Are willing to work hard and endure the inevitable frustrations that come with leveling up your ads game.
You have at least $1000/mo to test. Ads require testing; the methods in the course show you how to efficiently gather data without breaking the bank, but you still need money in the bank to apply them.
People with at least solid foundational spreadsheet skills.
If you are looking for your ads to turn around tomorrow and start printing money, this course is not for you. If your author business is a three-alarm fire, your problem is very unlikely to be due to the ads. Running ads is challenging and takes testing; there are no magic bullets. That test data requires time to gather and analyze. There are no shortcuts.
This course contains advanced level material. If you are an advanced marketer who watches 2 videos and then complains about “knowing” all the material already, then do not buy this. These foundational concepts are necessary for the advanced material. Also, many people who think they’re good at the ads get these wrong, thus costing themselves a bunch of money. So they are worth reviewing for ideas you may have missed.
Important: don’t join this course if your entire catalog is reverse harem or books with the word "alpha" in the title; Amazon doesn’t allow these titles to be advertised on their platform, so you can’t use the ads.
You have 3 Options...
Option 1 is you do nothing–you keep being confused about whether your ads are profitable, how to analyze them, what you should target, and so forth. You stay stuck in a loop of half-hearted action-taking followed by frustration: maybe you try again in 6 months, then stop after a couple weeks. This cycle continues, and the entire year passes by without any progress.
Option 2 is you look for other resources. For example, you may be comparing this course to other ones available. But the people offering them are unlikely to have the experience managing all kinds of ads (low spend, high spend, different genres, launches, backlist, promos) that I do (although they will claim as such). And their systems usually haven't been stress-tested from teaching authors 1-on-1 and managing ads for clients. So they're rarely complete systems; they're often a loosely assembled collection of tactics and ideas that may have worked for their own books (and may or may not work in your genre).
Option 3 is, three months from now, you’ve gone through this course. You've done the assignments. Have the ad testing process down pat. The included spreadsheets are cutting down on your ads management time and giving you more insight into the ad performance. You open up your Amazon Ads dashboard and you’re confident that you know what’s going on. If there’s a problem, you have the tools and skillset necessary to troubleshoot it. Your data is organized and accessible at a moment's notice. And if something changes with the Amazon Ads, you’re no longer worried about how you’re going to keep up. You’re excited about these new features and changes, because you know you can quickly, confidently, and easily test if something will work for your books.
Option 3 means you can stop going to sleep at night wondering “what if there’s something that works that I’m not doing?” or “I’m not sure…” about your ads. Because you’ll be able to answer those questions (if you do the work and go through the course).
As we’ve talked about, the Amazon Ads are a data game. You need two things:
- A way to crunch through and analyze all the numbers to figure out which keywords, ASINs, and other targets are the most effective.
- A way to keep all that data organized.
This course provides you with a complete system that will teach you how to do both of these things–and, not just that, provide you with the templates and tools you need so you don’t have to spend hundreds of hours putting them together yourself.
And unlike most other courses out there that claim their system works in most genres…
Or teaches you how to scale…
Or can be implemented by mere mortals…
I can say that the systems in this course work across most major genres, can help you scale, and can be learned by someone who isn’t a marketing professional…
Because I’ve done those things.
I have taught multiple authors this system 1-on-1, including people who had essentially no prior book marketing experience.
I have managed 7-figures in ad spend for some of the most popular and bestselling indie authors on the planet, even spending upward of $1,000/day on a single book.
I have ran Amazon Ads in almost every major genre, from romance to thrillers to science fiction to fantasy.
Other people offering courses have usually done none of this. They have a system that might work for their own books, in a very specific genre, with a very specific level of ad spend. And they explain it in a confusing way, because they’ve never actually sat across from another human being and taught them in person to see how they apply the info.
I’ve done those things.
So if you want to stop wasting money and time and finally learn how to run better Amazon Ads, then this course is what you’ve been looking for.
The Group Workshop Option
If you'd like to get direct feedback from me on your ads and go through the course with a group of authors (so you can learn from other people's data, strategies, and mistakes), then I also offer a Group Workshop version of the course.
The Group Workshop contains the entire 80/20 Amazon Ads course and all the tools plus direct feedback from me to help accelerate your progress.
Here's how it works.
We will cover one module of the course per week. You will watch the pre-recorded videos in the module during the week.
Then there will be 8 live group sessions on Mondays at 2 PM EST starting January 6 and ending February 24. They will run about an hour.
In the group sessions, I will answer your specific questions and cover specific topics / tactics based on what I see in the assignments. These sessions will be custom-tailored to get you unstuck and moving forward as fast as possible.
We will go deeper on the optimization / scaling aspects. That's why we have 8 weeks to cover 6 modules.
Then, during the week, you will do your weekly assignment.
You submit these 8 weekly assignments directly to me via email. I will give you personal feedback tailored to your books / skill level / goals / sticking points etc.
So you get the structure of the course with the customization + accountability + feedback from the live sessions and assignments.
If you want to learn ads fast, and you want to work hard, then this is for you. In 2 months, you can be a completely different ads manager. If you put in the work. This will probably take 15 hours a week between the calls, assignments, and going through the course.
I am keeping the Group Workshop small to ensure that everyone has ample time to get their questions answered on the calls without them being 18 hours each. Thus, there are only 8 spots available.
I don't know if I'll ever offer this option again, so if you're interested, I'd jump in now.
Join 80/20 Amazon Ads
80/20
Amazon Ads
80/20 Amazon Ads Group Workshop
80/20 Amazon Ads 1-on-1 Accelerator
Refund Policy
Since the course contains multiple downloadable templates / resources, there are no refunds.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Any course (or ad agency, blog post, book etc.) promising that is lying. Ads are difficult. Most books don’t work with Amazon Ads. This course will teach you how to identify if your books do work and are profitable, so you can focus the spend there. And if you find out none of your books are currently profitable, then it teaches you the analysis skills required to figure out what to do next.
If your aim is to get through the material in 6 weeks (e.g., 1 module per week), then you'll need about 10 - 15 hours a week. But the course can be done at any pace.
I do not offer direct feedback on your ads with the course. If you want feedback from me, join the Group Workshop edition, where there are 8 assignments you submit for direct feedback. Or email me at [email protected] about the 1-on-1 Accelerator to see if you're a good fit.
Since the course contains multiple downloadable templates / resources, there are no refunds.
Copyright 2025 | Nicholas Erik
