The biggest boost in book sales I’ve ever seen is from when the review of FMSE went on Reddit’s sysadmin board.
Reddit has a self-serve advertising platform, with a minimum buy of $5 for 5000 impressions. I’m willing to risk $5 on an experiment.
So I now have a sponsored link on Reddit, pimping Sudo Mastery. I would post a link, except you lot would click through and mess up my impressions count. If you’re reading my blog, I’m going to assume you are aware that the book exists. If you have not bought the book, me shouting BUY MY BOOK will not change your mind.
I spent $13.75 to run this ad from 3 February to 1 March on /r/linux.
I then put $7.14 to run this ad from 3 February to 05 March on /r/bsd.
I investigated /r/sysadmin, but they didn’t have advertising space available.
So far this morning, I have 137 impressions and 2 clicks. But it’s the first day.
To break even on non-time expenses alone, I need to make $21. That’s not a huge hurdle. I did spend a couple hours on this, but most of that was figuring out how the advertising platform worked. (Hint: while the self-serv advertising platform defaults to two-day campaigns, running campaigns over a month or so gives you much more chance your campaign will be accepted. And I’m told that repeated exposure to an ad, over a long period, is more effective than a short sharp insistence.)
I am curious any of my readers who are regular Redditors happen to see the ad in the course of their normal day, however.