Spamming by Numbers

One of my pet hates is people who spam, or just post once in a while only posting their book with a direct link to their book on amazon or smashwords. It’s not that I have a problem with people promoting themselves, as authors we must promote ourselves in order to gain sales. But spamming groups and forums is both a waste of time and not pleasant for the general readers of a group. As normally spammers don’t tend to listen to the “please don’t promote” or “we’ll ban you if you advertise” I thought I would come down to the level everyone understands, numbers.

First of all let’s start with a couple of rules of business.

Direct marketing comes in many forms. Spamming falls into the same category as those companies that carpet bomb your house with leaflets through the post or cold calling or door to door sales people. The reason why these people phone constantly hundreds of people a day is because only 1-2% of their ‘sale pitches’ will result in a sale. Even the good sales people only achieve a 4%, but the average is about 1-2%.

Second, Pareto’s principle dictates that 80% of the traffic of a website or forum or facebook group will be generated by 20% of the members. The number of that can go up and down slightly, but the two numbers always add up to 100 and it is very rarely higher than 25% of the population but often can be as low as 5%.

Thirdly people on forums and facebook tend to only look at the top 5 / most recent posts.

So let’s use three good facebook groups as an example with the two rules applied above on how well your book sells.

1.       BookJunkies – 1,374 members

Book Junkies is a great group to be a member on. They do allow promotions, but only on certain threads with certain criteria but have a sub group which is specifically set up for promotions. Let’s say that you did you post a promotion in this group and it didn’t get noticed so wasn’t deleted. According to Pareto’s law you not really advertising to 1374 members but closer to 275. Book Junkies is very an active group with good topics staying close to the top of the group for long period of times and some discussions that have little community value would quickly lose the top spot.

Personally I would say that 275 regular posters is way off the mark. I would say at most there are 50 people who regularly post on the group. So at most, a post would gain you 2-3 sales (1% of 275). However if only 50 people use the site regularly you are more than likely not to get a sale at all.

2.       The Indie Exchange – 1,092 members

The Indie Exchange is a favourite of mine. It’s not why it is on the post, it is on the blog post because it has a lot of members. At this group they are completely against book promotions and will remove users that do. But let’s assume as before. Those 1092 members come down very quickly to a core audience of 209 people. Now the group is active beyond belief with new topics started at a rate of nearly one an hour. Plus the group is very tight knit – which is one of its main appeals to an author in my opinion.

Honestly, again I think 209 core users is a high value again. Personally I haven’t seen more than 50 people use the group regularly. So although technically you achieve 2 sales, I would argue you are more than likely not to achieve a single sale.

3.       The Indie Author Group – 949 members

This is a great group. They are very community based and the people who run it are very enthusiastic. Conversations often stay close to the top for a long time compared to other groups and there are fewer new topics, but what is said on the group can be worth gold to authors.. This was the first group that I joined when I started writing and to be honest, I probably spend more time on here and the sub groups than any other group. It’s what I call my facebook home! (Although I will admit that I spend a significant amount of time in the two groups above as well). The IAG is very anti promotion on any day except Friday, which they allow one post per member. But often there aren’t any more than 20-30 promotions on any given Friday. But let’s assume as before. Those 949 members become 190 core users and potential sales figure of 2 people.

But as with the other groups I can’t say that I see more than 50 people use the group regularly. So again I would argue again you are unlikely to get a sale.

4.       Authors, Agents, and Aspiring Writers – 2,859 members

This group has no limits on promotion or advertising. New conversations are started at a rate of one per 10 minutes or less. But let’s assume as before.  Those 2859 members become 571 core members with a sales potential of 6 sales.

Great News!

But as always there is a catch. Those conversations are 99% of the time, sales. Most of those topics are from the same 20-30 people. These people don’t want to buy anything they just want to sell. So they aren’t going to even look at your post, they will just simply advertise their own services. This completely devalues the point of posting there.

Here’s another point to make. Those 50 people who post regularly on Book Junkies, about half of them are regular visitors on The Indie Exchange which again half of those 50 people are regulars on the Indie Author Group. Each group offers something unique that the others don’t. Those three groups are good groups which authors can hone their skills and pick up good tips. But marketing to those three groups is a complete waste of time. Even if your post wasn’t deleted, which it most certainly would be, you are really only advertising to about 75 people. And 1% of those 75 isn’t even 1!

These groups frown on spamming and by doing so will get you a bad reputation; which will only make it harder for you in the future to communicate with potential readers. Ask yourself the question; do you really want to spend your time getting a bad reputation with the likely hood of earning nothing?

I welcome comments.

Like the Facebook Page