Six Reasons Not to DM People About Your Book

So I got three DMs in the past week asking me to buy X book from the sender. I’m not the biggest fan of door to door sales people, I am not the most tolerant person for telesales. In fact I am probably their worst kind of potential customer. They are unlikely to finish a sentence with me. If you are sending DMs to users on twitter, you are likely to get blocked by me let alone dozens of other accounts and possibly Twitter itself.

But that isn't a big enough reason why people shouldn't use DMs to advertise their book. If it were then people wouldn't do it. So here are five more reasons why DMs are not a good advertising medium: 

1.       The money just isn’t there

If you advertised to one person every minute for twelve hours a day, you would advertise to 720 people a day and 262,800 people a year. But you are unlikely to achieve a sale from more than 1% of those people, meaning you are earning just $5500 a year – or $1.26 an hour. That is very low.

2.       You would have to work 365 days a year

No seriously, to achieve $5500 a year on the above figures, you would have to work every day of the year. Who doesn’t want a break now and again? Even I do and I am up at 5am every morning to write because I love it so much! But if you did try this method and want to take four weeks holiday a year that is only $5063.39 a year earned.

3.       You aren’t writing a second book

No matter where you look, most blog posts about getting more sales say a second, third, fourth, etc book will increase your sales. So why aren’t you writing it? Because you are DM-ing people on twitter? That isn’t a good enough reason. Writing a second book is more important than flogging your first.

4.       You aren’t creating a public profile

By going for people one at a time in direct messages you aren’t creating a public profile that you control. If the general public are made aware of you it is likely that it is in a negative vein from all the inbox to inbox sales you are conducting. If it is negative feedback that you garnering, you can’t control it and it will hurt organic sales.

5.       It is a lonely life

Social media, the clue is in the name, is for socialising, interacting and engaging. How many people will send you messages back if you are DM-ing them. Use social media for what it was designed for and you can have great conversations, make wonderful contacts and not feel lonely.

I hope that I have made some good points. If you have any other points please feel free to comment with them. I love to read your thoughts and I promise to respond to every comment!

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