The current thinking is that you need 1,000 keywords when you run an Amazon ad. Yes, you read that right – 1,000! How in the heck do you come up that many? Well, I’m not sure. But, by using the techniques below, I was able to come up with well over 500 keywords per ad. (Although I’m unsure why 1,000 is necessary as my hits seem to be concentrated on five or six words, but that’s a blog for another day.)

Each of these methods is free, but they do take time. I spend about four hours per Amazon ad searching for keywords.

Auto suggestions. Open incognito mode in Chrome and go to Amazon.com. In the kindle store, slowly start typing in words that relate to your book [think setting (e.g. Victorian age, character types (single dad, veteran, etc.), character roles (strong female lead), plot themes (coming of age)…