Book promotion - A few magic stats/numbers

I have now accumulated 9 months of empirical data from promotion of my first book TAINTED HERO (released by Champagne Books in Jan). I thought I'd share a few magic numbers that surprised me. I'm sure each author's views may be different, but I've bounced them off several author friends and their own experiences are very close, so here goes:

1. I've advertised on about a dozen sites. Three provided views per week that allowed me to estimate hit to view rates. The hit to view rate was approximately .5% (or 1 out of 200), which was much lower than I suspected.

2. I divide my site hits into two categories: strong (visit excerpt/link/blurb/buy pages) or weak (in and out in less than two minutes). For the strong hits (about half of total hits), 10% result in potential buys (how do I know they're buys? I have an algorithm that estimates it based on visits to a separate buy page and exists to a buy link with an expected value calculator).

3. 80% of my hits across an ad campaign come from the first 6-8 weeks (e.g. new viewers bleed out fast)

4. I get about a 10% submission response rate for contests I run to my mail out list (could very well correspond to the 10% buy rate in item 2. In other words, - about 10% of site visitors/contest submitters are serious.

5. My "unknown source" hits vary between 25% and 40% of total hits depending on how many chat loops I'm in or book markers I've sent out (that's were many of my unknown source hits come from).

Hope that's insightful to some. Other authors may have different experience, but that's mine for what its worth.

Isatar - Try Statcounter. Its free and provides a ton of options.

Ref my sales, have not got my first royalty statement yet. And my purpose was not to say I was doing things right, just to share what I considered interesting stats.

You're right feathers, it can be very helpful.

For example, for me, I know that book markers are effective, when used to focused vs broadcast audiences. Case in point, when I distributed them to coffee shops, motels, restaurants, etc as I travel, I saw zip. But when I use in contest, book signings, book site give aways, I see my hits go up ~20% and come specifically from those areas. I have experimented with promo activities (cut them on and off) and have learned which ones return little, which return signiificantly, and which are still uncertain. Another example would be mailing labels. They are very cheap when made yourself and I place the cover art and tag line on a portion of a 3X4 label. When I send out a package to an area, I can actually watch hits come in along a general path to the destintation (I guess from POs and processing centers). Neat stuff.