 How many reviews do your books really need? In this video we're gonna be answering exactly that question based off of tons of data and statistics so that we can know exactly how many reviews we need on our books to get consistent sales for a long time. Now the numbers and statistics that we're going to be looking at are from a study done by Northwestern University where they looked at buyer psychology and consumer behavior when relating to reviews. So there's a lot of takeaways and in this video we want to also talk about our five biggest takeaways from that study that was done on over 13,000 different products with over 120,000 different reviews so that everything we talked about in this video can be backed up with 99% certainty because of the massive sample size. So that's the great thing about it. This is backed up by science and numbers and statistics. So we're going to hop into the computer and look at this study in depth and share with you guys the five biggest takeaways that we can take from this study and put into our own publishing businesses. Yes. So what's some cool transition we can go into the computer? Here we are looking at the research study done by the Spiegel Research Center where they did a massive study looking at how online reviews influence sales. And then it says the evidence of the power of online reviews to shape customer behavior. First let's just browse over real quick. It is a 20 page document. Now we won't read it. We will link it down below if you would like to read it for yourself but we will give you the condensed version of the important points. So the first takeaway we have which might be an obvious one but now we have statistics to back it up and that is that reviews matter a lot. They're extremely long especially when it comes to selling your paperback books because they have a greater influence on higher price items as opposed to a three dollar e-book. Customers will not look at reviews as much or take them as heavily if it's a lower price item. They're much more influential on a $20 paperback book. So the study actually starts off by stating the fact that nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. So if you have negative reviews or no reviews on your book that's obviously going to hurt your conversions massively. And the only thing we care about on our product page is having a high conversion rate. So that's why reviews matter because it is the biggest conversion booster for your products or in this case four-hour books. Your e-books, your paperback books, and your audiobooks. So yes for the conversion rate when they land on the sales page for your book or the product page but also for the click-through rate when they see your book amongst the amazon search results. Right because you can see the reviews on a book before you even click on it. So it's the biggest booster for click-through rate and conversion rate. Which are the two things that matter. And the high click-through rate and conversion rate is especially important when you're running ads to your books. Because you're paying money for people to see your book. So you better make sure that it's converting and you're actually making money from those ads. Now watch our most recent video before this one where we talk all about ads. So that's a great video. We'll link it up here in the cards. A tie? A card. Yeah a card. So you can watch that video later after you watch this one. Takeaway number two that we took from this study which was actually mind-blowing to me and very surprising. I'll just read it straight from the from the screen. It says across product categories we found that purchase likelihood typically peaks at ratings in the 4.0 to 4.7 range and then begins to decrease as the ratings approach 5.0. Put differently products with an average star rating in the 4.7 to 5.0 range are less likely to be purchased than those in the 4.2 to 4.7 range. Less likely. So basically in the consumer's eyes 5 star rating is deemed as too good to be true. So there is a tipping point where better reviews are actually hurting you. That's insane. I think it comes to the point where like they just don't trust the review. I think trust is the number one factor when it comes to buying anything. Yeah yeah exactly. You need to trust what you're buying. So that's probably come from just online business in general where fake reviews is a real thing and consumers know that. So the sweet spot is between 4.0 and 4.7 rating. So if you get negative reviews embrace a few of them. Obviously don't go seeking after them but if you have 105.0 and no bad ratings a few bad ones will literally boost your conversion. Which is mind blowing to me. So that was a huge takeaway from this. Still continue to chase the five star ratings because believe me the one stars will come in the room. They will even if you have the best book ever they will come. The third takeaway from this study is that follow-up emails are the most powerful way of gathering reviews for your books. Therefore you have to have an email list but let's read straight what it says here in the study. So here it says prior research from power reviews shows that up to 80% of reviews originate from follow-up emails urging shoppers to review their purchases. So with that here's the deal with reviews. People don't mind leaving reviews it's not like a big a big deal it could take literally like 60 seconds. People just won't do it unless they're asked. Like if you just poke someone and ask them hey can you kindly leave a short review on my book they will gladly do it. And that's what you should be doing in your follow-up sequences and this is what we've really started to implement into our publishing businesses recently and what we advise everyone else do as well. So set up email marketing in your publishing business set up an automated sequence of maybe like five emails just every few days asking for a review on your book just hey how'd you like the book can you please leave a review and give me your feedback and what you thought of it. Email marketing really is the one and only truly tested and consistent way of gathering reviews for your books. I mean that you really have no choice but to collect readers emails and follow up with them to ask for the review afterwards. Now setting up this kind what we call an automated review system that is what we call our email automation setup that's really exactly what it is it's all automated and it's a lot easier to set up than people think. Now it can be complicated depending who's teaching you but if we were to show you how to do it it's actually a lot simpler than you realize and it's by far the most effective method of getting reviews so it is definitely a must in your publishing business. Now I do want to make another video going more in depth about that definitely. Say that for another time we can make a whole video talking about email follow-up for your publishing business with the objective of getting reviews and this is also one of the biggest focuses that we've put on inside of AA2.0 and that is the whole email marketing side things we're gathering reviews like we've mastered the process seriously to the point where gaining reviews which I think was a big problem for us at least and most people in the community the entire community the big problem for them and like not knowing what to do I think we've completely solved that problem. Let's move on to the next point now the fourth takeaway from this this kind of relates to the follow-up emails that you want to implement and that is to get the most out of your follow-up emails you need to streamline the process of getting your reviews or asking for your reviews so I'll read what it says here on screen make the process of posting a review as simple as possible by allowing shoppers to submit reviews with just a few clicks. Now how you do that instead of in your emails you say hey go to Amazon find my book and leave a review some people do that that is not effective that's asking for too much that might take people like more time that they want to give you the next best thing you can do is send a link directly to your book but a lot of people don't know you can take it a step further and you can send them a direct review link so that when they click on this link they go directly to a review page for your specific book so like the typing is ready to be done right when they click on it they can just write a sentence I love this book thank you I learned a lot submit within 30 seconds they left a review this could literally I don't want the stats aren't here to prove it but it could probably literally double your review conversion rate when asking for it in your email if not more but that is a perfect example of streamlining the review process or asking for the review I could just put myself in the shoes of the reader now and if you're trying to spend 10 minutes to write a review for you and find it let them know this won't take more than 30 seconds just click here and you're ready to go so the final takeaway we want to take from this study and is also the biggest one and it's answering the question that we asked in the beginning of the video which is how many reviews do your books really need and this study says that initial reviews have the greatest impact so let's just read straight what it says based on our research we found that nearly all of the increase in purchase likelihood occurs within the first 10 reviews and the first five reviews drive the bulk of that increase and you can also see the graph here on the right hand side for both the low price and high price items all of the increase in purchase likelihood happens within the first 10 reviews and the bulk of that purchase likelihood happens within the first five but within the first 10 reviews you've done 90 percent of the increase you can in conversions but after 10 reviews you're going to experience a ton of diminishing returns on those reviews so with that said i just want to say that once your books reach 10 reviews i do not think you should worry about gathering more reviews now still try to get more but do not make it a focus anymore because that's not the reason why your book isn't selling if it's not it's not worth your time once you have 10 you are set and the last thing i want to show you here about that so let's take a straight from the screen having five reviews causes purchase likelihood to increase by a factor of nearly 4x so that's just from five reviews that's insane yeah so it's 50 reviews better than five or ten yes obviously but the difference between 10 and 50 reviews is minimal compared to the work you'd have to put into it so folks are getting 10 initial reviews then after that just let it sit gather organic reviews gather reviews from your automated review system which is where every purchase you make you're going to try and collect your email and then simply ask for a review so you will still gain reviews over time but once you have 10 don't worry about it you're set you are set that is all you need to make a ton of consistent sales for literally years so with all that said that is our five biggest takeaways from this study done on online reviews now i do want to say something real quick before we end the video and that's just a little bit about a promo that we have running and that is that a2.0 is about 85-90% complete but we're still about a month maybe over a month away from launching we are still accepting beta testers and we've opened that of course to a 1.0 students so if you're interested in getting access to 2.0 right now link in the description to audiobook income academy that's all we have to say magic emoji of the video is the pet in paper look at the views na na na na that's it comment like subscribe to the smokey out see you guys in next video let me know what kind of videos you want to see yeah check out all the other videos on our channel for the best publishing videos on the internet that's basically what there is to say in this video