Are Amazon Reviews Really THAT Important?

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Amazon reviews – are they really that important to your success in Amazon whether you’re selling Kindle books or physical products?

I've found that most Amazon sellers and Kindle publishers put a little bit too much importance on Amazon reviews and don't focus enough on the OTHER elements of your book/product.

Amazon reviews are important, yes. They help by providing social proof and when all products look the same or are identical, customers will choose products based on reviews.

BUT… one of the biggest problems I see is that most publishers and sellers don't think creatively enough to find ways to stand out or differentiate their book in any way from all the rest.

If Amazon reviews is your ONLY way of differentiating your product, then you're competing with everyone else with reviews.

Why not instead be creative and stand out more in other ways?

Instead of investing so much time/energy/money into reviews, why not put some of that into creating a really awesome, creative cover that stands out and is better than all the rest?

Why not create a title that is compelling and different, which makes people stop and want to check out your book or listing?

Why not focus a bit of extra time or energy into your book description or pricing strategy?

I've found that a lot of people cheap out on these other crucial elements and instead just throw something up there, then put all of their focus and energy into reviews.

Or… why not change the game?

Why not promote or market your book OUTSIDE of Amazon and utilize all the other forms of marketing that are available?

Most publishers focus on having 100% of their sales for their book coming from Amazon search – but is this really the best solution? I don't think so, because you're competing with many other books and products and in this case customers will compare products based on reviews.

The people that have the best long-term success are the ones that always go above and beyond all the rest! This is how it's always been and how it'll always be!

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

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Do you want my proven step-by-step system for publishing books on Amazon? CLICK HERE to purchase my new and improved Mastering Book Publishing course!

Video transcript

Hey, everyone, this is Stefan from ProjectLifeMastery.com, and in this video, I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about Amazon reviews. Are Amazon reviews really that important? Are they really that important to your success on Amazon whether you're selling Kindle books or physical products?

Now I believe that Amazon reviews are an important selling feature of your book or your product on Amazon, but many publishers, many sellers on Amazon they end up ignoring or forgetting all the other selling features of your book and your product as well.

Amazon reviews are just one element

Amazon reviews are just one aspect, and there are many aspects of what influence the sales and the success of your product.

Amazon reviews are important because it basically provides other customers to leave their feedback on your product, on your book, other customers can see what other people have said and helped them make a purchasing decision on your book or your product.

Also, it provides social proofs, or typically any product that has a lot of testimonials or success stories or reviews the more that they have it's going to give people more certainty in your product and they're going to be more likely to buy it as well.

However, there are other important factors that I believe are even more important than the number of reviews that your product or your book has. One of which is being the title – 

The title of your book and product

Make sure that the title is something that stands out.

The title is something that grabs people's attention, it captivates people in some way. Maybe the title provides a benefit, a promise. It meets the customers needs, it solves their problem in some way. When people read the title they should be compelled by that and just want to buy the book or the product just based on the title alone.

A lot of sellers don't focus enough on their title. It's great to have keywords in the title because that will help you rank better in an Amazon search, but also having a title that's different than everything else out there that really sells it. Because the title is the headline and it's really what's going to get people to click on their product and having a great title is very important.

The cover

The cover, the product images, for selling a book then the book cover, is very important. The cover is really the most important thing because that's what going to get people to actually click on your Amazon listing and the cover should stand out, get people's attention, should be attractive. People see this cover, they should want to buy your book just based on the cover alone, or on your product images.

Very, very important to stand out. Really focus on that. It's even more important than the title or the reviews is the cover because that's the very first thing that people see. People are very visual. When they're scrolling through Amazon search or looking on Amazon they're looking at the images first. They're looking at the cover or the product images first.

Your product description, your book description, very important as well as the price, the price point, and how that relates to other prices on Amazon as well. All very important factors that you really need to make sure you take good care of and really improve all of them, not just the reviews, but improve all those other elements in order to make sure your product, your book is selling and is successful.

Where the number of reviews matter

Now when it comes to reviews, reviews are important. The number of reviews is important in regard to how you're selling your book or your product on Amazon.

For example, if you're primarily focusing on getting sales for your book or your product on Amazon from the Amazon search, meaning people search for a keyword they're going to find your product, then in that case if you're focusing on selling that way and that's the number one way you're trying to sell your product, then reviews are very important.

Because when a customer searches for a keyword, let's say weight loss, they're going to see thousands of books.

As they go through the books they're going to look at the covers and the titles but for the most part if you're not standing out from the title or the cover in any way and they're all just kind of looking like the same, then customers are going to make their purchasing decision based on reviews. So if one product has 200 reviews and the other one only has 10 reviews and everything else looks relatively the same in terms of the cover, the title, everything else, then of course the customer is going to be more likely to chose the book or the product that has 200 reviews as opposed to one that has 10 reviews.

In that case, if you're dependent on an Amazon search, then reviews are very important. Whoever has the most reviews, whoever is ranked the highest that's the person that typically is going to make the most amount of money.

Where reviews don't matter much

However, I don't believe reviews are as important if you're marketing your product or your book from outside of Amazon, and that's the key thing. The Amazon search is competitive but when you focus on promoting your product from outside of Amazon, which not enough people are doing because it does require more work and more effort and all that sort of stuff as well, by doing that you don't really have to worry about competition.

You don't have to worry about how many reviews that your book or your product has because you're driving your own traffic directly to your Amazon listing and customers don't have other products or books to compare that to. They're not looking at a search result of all these books or products and comparing, they're just going directly to yours and you've already kind of pre-sold them on your product.

For example, let's say you are a blogger. You write some articles either on your own blog or other people's blogs and you're providing content, you're providing value. Well in that article what happens is when someone reads that they're receiving value from you, you're building a relationship with that person. There's trust, there's authority that's being established there.

So when they read it, and then you're going to have a link to your Amazon product or your Kindle book or whatever, when they go and they click it they're going to be more likely buy that specific product or book because they've already consumed content from you. They've already received value. You've already established yourself as an authority.

You've already built trust. They're going to be more likely to buy it regardless of the reviews. You can have five reviews and they're still going to be likely to buy it because of the value and they have nothing else to compare that too.

Same way on YouTube. If I create a YouTube video for you guys right now and I talk about something and then I, let's say we're talking about Amazon reviews, right, and I'm providing value to you guys. I'm building some trust, some relationship, maybe you're watching this and going, “Yeah this makes sense, this is really good information and everything, and then at the end of this video I say and by the way I've got a great book on Amazon on how to get Amazon reviews.

Click the link and go to Amazon and check it out. If you received this content from me, this value, this relationship and I direct you there to my book it can only have one review, okay, it doesn't matter how may reviews that book has, but because you're already pre-sold and you already know me on some level, you're going to be more likely to buy that book regardless of how many reviews it has because, again, you're not comparing it to other books or products on Amazon.

Focus more on marketing

Now, of course, having more reviews definitely will help, no doubt about it, because it will give, again, like I said, more social proof, but it's not as important as people think if you're marketing your book from outside of Amazon. The lesson that I'm trying to get across on this video focuses more on marketing, focus more on marketing more than reviews. Focus more on driving traffic to your book or your product on Amazon.

Focus more on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, focus on all of those platforms to drive traffic to your book or your product on Amazon. Start putting content on your blog. Start publishing content to medium, to CORA, to Lead Daily, to Life Hack, to eZine articles, to all of these different websites out there provide content, provide value, direct that to your product or your book.

Put out YouTube videos, put out a podcast, there are so many different channels and opportunities out there online to promote and sell your product.

Be an online marketer

Now the key thing is that you need to become an Internet marketer and not just be a Kindle publisher, not just be an author, and not just be an Amazon seller. If you're only focused on being an Amazon seller, if your only identity is a Kindle publisher and author, you're limiting the success that you can have because you're going to make a lot more money and have a lot more success as an internet marketer, as an online marketer.

An Internet marketer has the ability to sell any product online no matter what it is because they understand how marketing works. They understand how to promote something and drive traffic. When you cultivate those skills, that's what's going to allow you to be successful. Guess what? When you market your product in the ways that I'm sharing with you guys, you're going to get reviews.

You're going to have people that are going to leave reviews on your product because you're going to have all these new customers that are coming in and checking it out. As long as you've optimized your book or product and followed up to get reviews, you will get reviews and your product will be prosperous and successful on Amazon. So, very important.

Also, I will mention as well, another benefit of this when you drive traffic from outside of Amazon to your product you're getting other sales that your competitors aren't getting. You really don't have to work about competition anymore because your competitors, they're all focused on the Amazon search.

They're just trying to get all the customers from Amazon and sharing that with everyone else. When you drive traffic from outside of Amazon you're going to rank your product higher than every other product on Amazon. They're not going to be able to compete with you because they don't have the systems and the marketing that you've been able to do to promote your book or your product. Very important.

Reward of driving traffic to Amazon

I will mention another thing as well, another benefit of this, is Amazon, they want to acquire more customers and when you send traffic to Amazon, let's say from Facebook. Someone comes from Facebook, they go to your Amazon listing, they buy your product. Amazon sees that. Amazon is able to see where people are coming from in their analytics to basically go and buy your product.

So when they see someone come from Facebook and they buy your product, Amazon ranks you higher. They reward you for that.

Even going deeper than that, if someone comes let's say from Facebook or your blog and they go to your Amazon product and they don't even have an Amazon account, they sign up for the very first time for their Amazon.com account, they buy your product, Amazon knows that as well. They're going to reward you even more for that.

Similar with Audible, ACX which is Amazon owns for audio books, one program they have is the bounty program, so when somebody that doesn't have an Audible account, they go and they buy your audio book and they sign up for an Audible account for the very first time and your audio book is the very first one they buy, ACX or Amazon, they reward you for that.

They give you a $50.00 bounty for every customer that you acquire like that. So they know when someone's buying your book or your product for the very first time and they're just setting up their Amazon account. They're going to reward you for that because they know the value of a new customer that you just provided for Amazon.

It goes even deeper than that, these are all things that we've tested, all things that we've learned, all things that I try to teach and emphasize in my Mastering Book Publishing program for Kindle publishers, when somebody goes from let's say a blog and they go to your Amazon listing, and let's say they don't even buy your book, they don't even buy your product but they go and they buy someone else's product.

Guess what? Amazon rewards you for that as well because they saw that that person came from a blog or Facebook to your listing and you get credit for bringing that person to Amazon even if they didn't buy your product. Amazon even tracks this in their Amazon associates program, which is their affiliate program because they pay affiliates and their associates based on any sales that someone generates through their affiliate link within 24 hours, regardless of what product it is.

Develop the skills on marketing

Very powerful stuff guys. That's why you need to become the marketer, you can't just focus on being a Kindle publisher, an Amazon seller, and author. If you're just an author or a Kindle publisher you're not going to have as much success as you want to have. You need to develop the skills on marketing and online marketing in order to really flourish and succeed.

Now I teach all of this and a lot more inside of my Mastering Book Publishing program and if you're not yet a member I recommend to check it out. If you want to know more about Kindle publishing and online publishing, a lot of the strategies that I've developed that have helped hundreds of people now make a lot of money online from Kindle publishing.

You can learn more about it just by going to kmoneymastery.com, or click the link below in the description, but head on over there. It's a reasonably priced course that I put together that shares a lot of the different strategies and marketing as well as the publishing and all that sort of stuff to help Amazon seller's, Kindle publishers, sell on Amazon and start making money.

Thank you for watching this video. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Leave a comment below, let me know what you think and I will see you in the next video. Take care.

Do you want my proven step-by-step system for publishing books on Amazon? CLICK HERE to purchase my new and improved Mastering Book Publishing course!