The Marketing Underdog — Episode Two: My "Nearly Half a Million Dollars in Cash" Moment Is Here.
If you did not catch the reference in the title, that is a quote from Breaking Bad. Walter White said it. It is a brilliant scene and I love saying it here with my whole heart, but let us get to the real numbers.
Parenting Unpacked pre-orders: 9 🎉
Maternity Abroad pages read in the first week after moving to Kindle Unlimited: 23
Email subscribers: 13 (up 2)
Instagram followers: 18 (doubled from last time)
RSS subscribers: 74 (down 1)
What worked.
The foundations were already in place before launch. The Google panel page was organised. The website was updated. Parenting Unpacked had its own page ready. When the book became available, the infrastructure was there.
Parenting Unpacked also received the bestseller badge on Amazon Brasil in the category Importados de Emigração e Imigração. IngramSpark only reports a book order once it is out for delivery, so there is a lag in the numbers I can actually see. The full picture will arrive later. I am taking the badge at face value and leaving it there.
What did not work.
Mostly me missing the moment.
When I got the email saying the book was available for pre-order, I was on holiday. Everything I needed was on my laptop at home. So I posted on social media and updated the website, but I did not send the email, and I did not have the time or the headspace to think of a better way to take advantage of that window. Pre-orders were new to me and I was not sure they would work, so I had not fully prepared for the moment they did.
That is on me. Now I know.
Two people contacted me because the book was not showing up on their Amazon, one in Singapore and one in Mexico. Both markets are now live, though I lost those two sales in the gap and I do not know if either of them came back.
The RSS question.
RSS went down by one, from seventy-five to seventy-four. I have been wondering whether posting every day is too much for my readers and whether that is connected to the drop. The previous months the number went up consistently, so I want to watch it for another month or two before drawing any conclusions. It might be frequency or timing or simply one person who moved on for reasons that have nothing to do with any of this. I am reorganising the content cadence and I will report back.
What the numbers mean right now.
Nine pre-orders. Eighteen Instagram followers. Thirteen email subscribers. A bestseller badge in Brazil and two readers in Singapore and Mexico who wanted the book and briefly could not find it.
The demarketing experiment is still running and the surface area grows whether the numbers show it yet or not.
See you in a month.
WW
The demarketing experiment is still running and the surface area grows whether the numbers show it yet or not.