I saw your shortform video on this topic on IG first and finally got around to watching this full analysis! This is such a fantastic, thorough, dedicated experiment and such a profound conclusion. It's so hard not to play the comparison game when you hear endless stories about TikTok sensations and overnight successes, so I really appreciate this measured approach to the topic :)
It really is so so hard not to do the comparison game. Especially when it feels like this magic cheat code. But it’s a very hard cheat code to crack 😅 and so there’s no point in burning out trying to achieve what is exceptional
I noticed on Tik Tok! I was like did she film in bulk? And I couldn't tell, so I was like wow, she's drafting so many words a day and still has time for all this content?! Now that I've seen behind the curtain, I am still in awe because that was a lot of work. Thank you for doing this experiment!
Okay so, for the book drafting series I am actually writing, filming, editing, and posting a video every week day 😅 that’s separate from the experiment. But the content starting from like a month ago (I did this experiment well before posting this video) where I like have my makeup done and am wearing nice outfits are all the batch filmed things.
Fantastic video! I am not on a lot of social media outlets but the ones I am on, I post every single day (and I schedule posts at times) and I know that if I don’t post a lot, my sales will gradually drop. There are so many people online AND there are about 50 million books on Amazon now, so you have to put yourself out there.
Definitely to each their own always! I feel like whether I post everyday or a few times a week, there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference so I’d rather not 😅 it’s a really high output for me for a reward that doesn’t seem equivalent. But if it works for you then that’s great!
Liselle, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and film this! It's really great to see a behind the screens snapshot. I'm self publishing so it will be interesting to try this experiment at some point. But writing first!
Hi Liselle, really loved the video. Very insightful! One thing that would be interesting is to examine is the percentage difference in the 90 days before the experiment vs the 90 days during the experiments. That way you could measure impact of posting everyday vs not posting everyday on global sales :) Keep up the great work!!!
Happy you loved the video! And yeah that’s a bit of a struggle because Instagram only shows 90 days worth of data at a time, and I didn’t realize so I didn’t record data before the experiment, unfortunately and can’t access it. But I do feel that my follower growth was much slower before.
This was a wonderful video!!! Definitely Pub Houses can do so much more than the author. I hope authors stopped being pressured to be on social media like it’s gonna make or break their career when it’s not realistic.
Yes definitely the feeling of balancing your career on social media success is so stressful and also not realistic. I also feel like it takes a lot of heat off pub houses whose actual job it is to sell the book
This was so interesting!! Thank you for taking the time to do this- I feel like it’s such a good message for all creators out there who are tacking social media on top of their other art 😅
I was curious too so I was happy to do it! And yeah :( it’s so rough because social media and promoting your work and the work itself can be so different
This is definitely the video I needed as my lack of social media guilt has been building 6 months out from my debut. 😅 Thanks for all this great info! (I am team “scared to read horror but then LOVED Delicious Monsters!”)
No need for the guilt!! And I did hope it would help with that because the guilt and pressure is so not needed. Also haha thank you so much for loving DM even if you were scared
This is such an in depth and informative video. Thank you! I've always been curious to know how one might go about tracking things like this but wasn't certain.
Happy to share! And yeah I think there are some things I could have done a bit better but overall I felt like I got a good idea of how things go from this
Thank you so much for this! It's been very insightful to see the impact of consistent posting. I will take all of this into consideration. Thanks again 🤗
thanks for sharing your experiment results! I'd love to know how many followers you gain in a month without daily content in order to compare. would also be interesting to see the differences between points on your book sales graph (i.e. is that big peak 10 more than the previous point or 100) to get a sense of scale but I understand that skews closer to revealing actual numbers. the gold eyeshadow is killer also lol
Yeah, I can’t see those results anymore on Instagram but it wasn’t a lot 😅 I definitely noticed the difference of getting more followers when posting more often because I remember struggling to get to 8k on IG. It just wasn’t a huge like viral amount. And yeah, I didn’t want to say the differences in points because I was concerned someone could use that to guess the amounts, and the sales data is confidential and I didn’t want my publisher to get mad at me haha And thank you!! I love gold shadows ☺️
Good to know that the difference to sales wasn't massive, it kind of sucks that it didn't have a bigger impact though. What I was waiting for is the graphs before the experiment. I did my own test with running amazon ads versus not running amazon ads and the result was in favour of ads, even though it is expensive to run them, but I did have a lot more book sales. But clicks are not cheap, and not everyone who clicks buys but you still have to pay for those clicks so ads are only for people with strong nerves. As you said - some people don't buy straight away, they may buy months later and amazon tracks sales only up to two weeks from the date of the click, so for most people it looks like we're losing money. Congrats on earning out your advances in under a year - that is fab. I've heard some people who said it is better to have a modest advance that earns out - you are more likely to be published again. I also hear about mega advances to celebrities with massive following who sell very mediocre number of books - say 3mln followers sells only 3k books, way below publisher's estimates, so the number of followers doesn't really matter if they don't follow you for book updates. That lemon dress is so lovely! You could wear it for every video, ha ha.
Yeah IG won’t let me see more than 90 days back and I didn’t have the foresight to track for 90 days beforehand. But I do feel that I had a higher rate of followers and certainly more engagement posting, but it drops off. Definitely content everyday is not necessary. But yeah, even a very well performing post didn’t pan out hugely for sales. And yeah I do know that’s the thing with paid ads. You can get results but it can also get pricey. And thank you! I mean, it’s nice to be able to earn out a modest advance but tbh you get a mega advance and you can live off that for multiple years. Sometimes you get a modest advance and struggle to sell your next book anyway. But at least in one of those cases you have a bunch of money to keep you afloat while you work on something new. I’ve also known authors who earn out and publishers still act like they didn’t sell well. So tbh I kind of think it’s better to get as much money as you can. It’s just a nice benefit that if you can’t get a lot of money at least your chances of earning out are higher. And thank you re the dress!
@@LiselleSambury Good to know about the 90 day IG cap. I post there sometimes, but I'm not a fan of the platform so I never track. In one of the conferences one of the editors said authors can always ask for more money, because they always offer less than they could. Publishing is a business so they like to get books as cheaply as possible, apart from celebs - they sometimes get millions, so they do have the money.
Another person here to say that lemon dress is the absolute cutest 🍋😍 But also give appreciation for how much work this was and for sharing it. Love the data and the charts! I've been brainstorming just this week about pitching an article on authors and social media so when I saw the title of this video I was like YES.
This was an interesting experiment! I have a video request: can you try different author routines? I've been rewatching Christy Anne Jones's videos on those, and they're so fun. If you're interested, it could be enjoyable to see where your routine diverges from other authors and see if any of their habits make it into your own curated routine. :)
I have thought about doing that in the past but I’m really set in my ways and very attached to my routines 😅 I really struggle to make changes which is why I don’t do those sorts of videos. Though I also find them really fun to watch as a viewer. I’ve watched Kate Cavanaugh do quite a bit of those. Maybe one day I’ll be feeling more flexible and able to try!
Thank you for sharing! I agree, it's hard and perhaps it does bring in sales, but social media is tricky. For me it barely makes sales most of the time. Building community and learning and having fun I think is a good takeaway from social media. Finding ways to connect. I also like how you said the things you share on UA-cam you forgot you don't necessarily share on social media, and that could be put in a short video for Instagram and other short form content. I checked out some of your promotional posts on Instagram and it inspired me to try some for my books just to test it out. Thank you again for sharing 😊
Yeah and that’s the struggle with it. I feel like the results are not often equal to the amount of effort being put it, it’s unpredictable, and it’s oversaturated. But those connections can happen so much easier because they’re organic and natural, and they do just take time. And I’m glad the promo posts helped inspire you!
TikTok makes NO sense to me. Sometimes I'll get 20 views, and sometimes I'll get 2000 views, and I've tried to figure out if it was the caption or thumbnail or hashtags, but, nope, it all seems random.
RIGHT?? That’s how I feel! I post very similar content all the time and sometimes it bombs and sometimes it does well and none of it seems related to what I’ve actually done lol
We just had a big discussion about exactly this today on an authortube livestream! We were specifically questioning the benefits of buying into websites that share our books with readers or hosting newsletters on pay platforms, which morphed into the ROI, in relation to book sales. What is the better investment of our resources, as self-published authors? Any interest in running the experiment again in that arena? 😅
Sounds like a good discussion! And yeah likely not haha the benefit of the social media experiment is that it didn’t cost me any money 😅 though I tend to be distrustful of those sorts of newsletter payments or websites. But I know my pub has paid for sponsored posts on social media and that’s cool, but yeah, it’s hard to measure ROI in that case.
@NicoleFordThomas it’s hard for me to say because it feels so individual to each author and their journey. For me, personally, I think my best investment is writing a book that my publisher is excited enough about to put money behind and push. But even then, I can’t be sure that’ll happen. So I just write the book that I love and hope is loved by others. And that’s kind of the one thing you can control. Everything else is kind of guesswork. And I think that’s my feeling is that it would be nice as authors to put less pressure on ourselves to get concrete results out of something that is largely guesswork
I don't know if posting every day, helps or not. I do post every day and 3x on friday and no one watches my videos at all. I hope to get popular like you one day in my dreams. Your videos are excellent.
I definitely don’t think posting every day is worth it and it’s so much work!! I hope you’l have some more luck getting viewers. I’ve been on UA-cam for like four or five years now 😅 so it takes a while
i've had so much trouble keeping a SM calendar. I post often, and do all the things but having an additional calendar to keep track of it all feels like extra work that could be used doing the things. Any tips concerning this?
Could it work to just know that you’re going to post say 3 days a week, and just make enough content every week that doesn’t necessarily need to go out on a specific day? That way you don’t need the calendar.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
That lemon dress/yellow eyeshadow combo looks so cute! 💛 Thanks for the insightful video.
Thank you!!!
I love that lemon dress too... but I also wonder what you're saying subconsciously lol
Do lemons mean something?? 😅 I just have it cause it’s cute
@@LiselleSambury It is!
I saw your shortform video on this topic on IG first and finally got around to watching this full analysis! This is such a fantastic, thorough, dedicated experiment and such a profound conclusion. It's so hard not to play the comparison game when you hear endless stories about TikTok sensations and overnight successes, so I really appreciate this measured approach to the topic :)
It really is so so hard not to do the comparison game. Especially when it feels like this magic cheat code. But it’s a very hard cheat code to crack 😅 and so there’s no point in burning out trying to achieve what is exceptional
I noticed on Tik Tok! I was like did she film in bulk? And I couldn't tell, so I was like wow, she's drafting so many words a day and still has time for all this content?! Now that I've seen behind the curtain, I am still in awe because that was a lot of work. Thank you for doing this experiment!
Okay so, for the book drafting series I am actually writing, filming, editing, and posting a video every week day 😅 that’s separate from the experiment. But the content starting from like a month ago (I did this experiment well before posting this video) where I like have my makeup done and am wearing nice outfits are all the batch filmed things.
Fantastic video! I am not on a lot of social media outlets but the ones I am on, I post every single day (and I schedule posts at times) and I know that if I don’t post a lot, my sales will gradually drop.
There are so many people online AND there are about 50 million books on Amazon now, so you have to put yourself out there.
Definitely to each their own always! I feel like whether I post everyday or a few times a week, there doesn’t seem to be a huge difference so I’d rather not 😅 it’s a really high output for me for a reward that doesn’t seem equivalent. But if it works for you then that’s great!
Liselle, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and film this! It's really great to see a behind the screens snapshot. I'm self publishing so it will be interesting to try this experiment at some point. But writing first!
Happy to! I’d be so interested to see how this goes from a self-pub perspective so if you do I’d be excited to see how it goes!
The hardwork you put into this and all of your other videos is admirable. Thanks for taking the work to teach us all fo these things Liselle!
Thank you! I honestly really wanted to see what would have myself, so I was happy to share what I learned
Hi Liselle, really loved the video. Very insightful! One thing that would be interesting is to examine is the percentage difference in the 90 days before the experiment vs the 90 days during the experiments. That way you could measure impact of posting everyday vs not posting everyday on global sales :) Keep up the great work!!!
Happy you loved the video! And yeah that’s a bit of a struggle because Instagram only shows 90 days worth of data at a time, and I didn’t realize so I didn’t record data before the experiment, unfortunately and can’t access it. But I do feel that my follower growth was much slower before.
This was a wonderful video!!! Definitely Pub Houses can do so much more than the author.
I hope authors stopped being pressured to be on social media like it’s gonna make or break their career when it’s not realistic.
Yes definitely the feeling of balancing your career on social media success is so stressful and also not realistic. I also feel like it takes a lot of heat off pub houses whose actual job it is to sell the book
This was so interesting!! Thank you for taking the time to do this- I feel like it’s such a good message for all creators out there who are tacking social media on top of their other art 😅
I was curious too so I was happy to do it! And yeah :( it’s so rough because social media and promoting your work and the work itself can be so different
This is definitely the video I needed as my lack of social media guilt has been building 6 months out from my debut. 😅 Thanks for all this great info! (I am team “scared to read horror but then LOVED Delicious Monsters!”)
No need for the guilt!! And I did hope it would help with that because the guilt and pressure is so not needed. Also haha thank you so much for loving DM even if you were scared
This is such an in depth and informative video. Thank you! I've always been curious to know how one might go about tracking things like this but wasn't certain.
Happy to share! And yeah I think there are some things I could have done a bit better but overall I felt like I got a good idea of how things go from this
Thank you so much for this! It's been very insightful to see the impact of consistent posting. I will take all of this into consideration. Thanks again 🤗
Glad it was helpful!!
thanks for sharing your experiment results! I'd love to know how many followers you gain in a month without daily content in order to compare. would also be interesting to see the differences between points on your book sales graph (i.e. is that big peak 10 more than the previous point or 100) to get a sense of scale but I understand that skews closer to revealing actual numbers. the gold eyeshadow is killer also lol
Yeah, I can’t see those results anymore on Instagram but it wasn’t a lot 😅 I definitely noticed the difference of getting more followers when posting more often because I remember struggling to get to 8k on IG. It just wasn’t a huge like viral amount.
And yeah, I didn’t want to say the differences in points because I was concerned someone could use that to guess the amounts, and the sales data is confidential and I didn’t want my publisher to get mad at me haha
And thank you!! I love gold shadows ☺️
Love and a boat load of gratitude for this video. Thank you so so much! 💜
Happy to share!!
Good to know that the difference to sales wasn't massive, it kind of sucks that it didn't have a bigger impact though. What I was waiting for is the graphs before the experiment. I did my own test with running amazon ads versus not running amazon ads and the result was in favour of ads, even though it is expensive to run them, but I did have a lot more book sales. But clicks are not cheap, and not everyone who clicks buys but you still have to pay for those clicks so ads are only for people with strong nerves. As you said - some people don't buy straight away, they may buy months later and amazon tracks sales only up to two weeks from the date of the click, so for most people it looks like we're losing money.
Congrats on earning out your advances in under a year - that is fab. I've heard some people who said it is better to have a modest advance that earns out - you are more likely to be published again.
I also hear about mega advances to celebrities with massive following who sell very mediocre number of books - say 3mln followers sells only 3k books, way below publisher's estimates, so the number of followers doesn't really matter if they don't follow you for book updates.
That lemon dress is so lovely! You could wear it for every video, ha ha.
Yeah IG won’t let me see more than 90 days back and I didn’t have the foresight to track for 90 days beforehand. But I do feel that I had a higher rate of followers and certainly more engagement posting, but it drops off. Definitely content everyday is not necessary. But yeah, even a very well performing post didn’t pan out hugely for sales.
And yeah I do know that’s the thing with paid ads. You can get results but it can also get pricey. And thank you! I mean, it’s nice to be able to earn out a modest advance but tbh you get a mega advance and you can live off that for multiple years. Sometimes you get a modest advance and struggle to sell your next book anyway. But at least in one of those cases you have a bunch of money to keep you afloat while you work on something new. I’ve also known authors who earn out and publishers still act like they didn’t sell well. So tbh I kind of think it’s better to get as much money as you can. It’s just a nice benefit that if you can’t get a lot of money at least your chances of earning out are higher.
And thank you re the dress!
@@LiselleSambury Good to know about the 90 day IG cap. I post there sometimes, but I'm not a fan of the platform so I never track.
In one of the conferences one of the editors said authors can always ask for more money, because they always offer less than they could. Publishing is a business so they like to get books as cheaply as possible, apart from celebs - they sometimes get millions, so they do have the money.
Another person here to say that lemon dress is the absolute cutest 🍋😍 But also give appreciation for how much work this was and for sharing it. Love the data and the charts! I've been brainstorming just this week about pitching an article on authors and social media so when I saw the title of this video I was like YES.
Thank you for the dress love! And yes I feel like data is so fun lol and helps
This was an interesting experiment! I have a video request: can you try different author routines? I've been rewatching Christy Anne Jones's videos on those, and they're so fun. If you're interested, it could be enjoyable to see where your routine diverges from other authors and see if any of their habits make it into your own curated routine. :)
I have thought about doing that in the past but I’m really set in my ways and very attached to my routines 😅 I really struggle to make changes which is why I don’t do those sorts of videos. Though I also find them really fun to watch as a viewer. I’ve watched Kate Cavanaugh do quite a bit of those. Maybe one day I’ll be feeling more flexible and able to try!
Thank you for sharing! I agree, it's hard and perhaps it does bring in sales, but social media is tricky. For me it barely makes sales most of the time. Building community and learning and having fun I think is a good takeaway from social media. Finding ways to connect. I also like how you said the things you share on UA-cam you forgot you don't necessarily share on social media, and that could be put in a short video for Instagram and other short form content.
I checked out some of your promotional posts on Instagram and it inspired me to try some for my books just to test it out. Thank you again for sharing 😊
Yeah and that’s the struggle with it. I feel like the results are not often equal to the amount of effort being put it, it’s unpredictable, and it’s oversaturated. But those connections can happen so much easier because they’re organic and natural, and they do just take time.
And I’m glad the promo posts helped inspire you!
Thank you for doing this!
Happy to!
TikTok makes NO sense to me. Sometimes I'll get 20 views, and sometimes I'll get 2000 views, and I've tried to figure out if it was the caption or thumbnail or hashtags, but, nope, it all seems random.
RIGHT?? That’s how I feel! I post very similar content all the time and sometimes it bombs and sometimes it does well and none of it seems related to what I’ve actually done lol
We just had a big discussion about exactly this today on an authortube livestream! We were specifically questioning the benefits of buying into websites that share our books with readers or hosting newsletters on pay platforms, which morphed into the ROI, in relation to book sales. What is the better investment of our resources, as self-published authors? Any interest in running the experiment again in that arena? 😅
Sounds like a good discussion! And yeah likely not haha the benefit of the social media experiment is that it didn’t cost me any money 😅 though I tend to be distrustful of those sorts of newsletter payments or websites. But I know my pub has paid for sponsored posts on social media and that’s cool, but yeah, it’s hard to measure ROI in that case.
@@LiselleSambury Would you say, then, that the best investment a writer can make in her career as a writer is to focus energy on writing?
@NicoleFordThomas it’s hard for me to say because it feels so individual to each author and their journey. For me, personally, I think my best investment is writing a book that my publisher is excited enough about to put money behind and push. But even then, I can’t be sure that’ll happen. So I just write the book that I love and hope is loved by others. And that’s kind of the one thing you can control. Everything else is kind of guesswork. And I think that’s my feeling is that it would be nice as authors to put less pressure on ourselves to get concrete results out of something that is largely guesswork
@@LiselleSambury Absolutely agree! Thank you!
I don't know if posting every day, helps or not. I do post every day and 3x on friday and no one watches my videos at all. I hope to get popular like you one day in my dreams. Your videos are excellent.
I definitely don’t think posting every day is worth it and it’s so much work!! I hope you’l have some more luck getting viewers. I’ve been on UA-cam for like four or five years now 😅 so it takes a while
i've had so much trouble keeping a SM calendar. I post often, and do all the things but having an additional calendar to keep track of it all feels like extra work that could be used doing the things. Any tips concerning this?
Could it work to just know that you’re going to post say 3 days a week, and just make enough content every week that doesn’t necessarily need to go out on a specific day? That way you don’t need the calendar.
@@LiselleSambury ahhh... that's great! simplify it. 🥰Thank you!
love the lewk!!
Thank you!!
Im so used to watching your video compilations from Tik Tok that I forgot your videos dont all start with the same intro video 😂.
😂😂😂
❤❤❤