Update: Interested in AMMO? New students will soon be required to start with Steve Pieper’s Click Testing for Authors course. See my Click Testing for Authors review for more on this.
If you’re looking for Steve Pieper AMMO reviews from actual, paying students to see if the price of the course is worth it, this is the ultimate review for answering that question, written by someone who paid to take the course.
Later in this AMMO review I discuss my thoughts on AMMO pricing, especially since this can be a pricey course for some people. I’ve provided the best price I could find for AMMO, but be aware from the start that its cost will likely be one of the largest factors to consider when evaluating for yourself whether the course is worth taking.
Also, be aware that the cost of implementing AMMO strategies goes beyond the price of the course, since you’ll invest in tools and advertising to make Steve’s system work.
Finally, this review might contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on a link and purchase something afterwards, I could make a commission at no extra cost to you. So thank you in advance if you do that.
Steve Pieper AMMO review from someone enrolled in the course
This Steve Pieper AMMO course review answers as many of your questions as possible about this online course, so you can better determine whether it’s for you before investing in it. I enrolled in Steve Pieper’s course, largely because I was interested in learning his optimization techniques for advertisements, landing pages, and book sales.
I can tell you that AMMO has definitely been worth the price of admission for me… Although it might not be worth it to you.
Would AMMO be a good fit for you?
What will make this course worthwhile to you? This largely depends on your goals for your author career (this course doesn’t treat writing like it’s a hobby, but instead as a viable, profitable business and career), as well as how financially comfortable you are investing in the course and additional tools that make the AMMO strategy work.
On top of this, there’s the matter of time and effort. We’ll get to that, since this course requires an investment of time and effort in addition to money.
Is there a question that you’d love for this review to answer that I haven’t answered? If so, you can email me at dave AT onlinesuccessgenie DOT com, and I’ll see what I can do.
What is the Steve Pieper AMMO course for authors all about?
AMMO stands for Author Marketing Mastery through Optimization.
This course appeals to writers who want their books to be more widely read and – heaven forbid – actually make a profit from the books they’ve written.
The course teaches you how to market and advertise your books to prospective readers through Facebook ads, and then sell your books directly to these interested readers through your own online store, which is set up using Shopify.
Along the way you learn how to set up landing pages and funnels, which you optimize using Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) techniques, as well as how to collect interested readers onto an email list, where you can then market to them directly via email marketing software.
Why do all this work and sell your books directly to readers instead of using Amazon?
Well, this already sounds like some work, doesn’t it?
Selling on Amazon is so much easier. You just upload your book to Amazon and let Amazon handle everything. Right?
Except:
- Except that you’re at the mercy of Amazon’s whims, which can change at any time
- Except you don’t have a direct relationship with your readers and audience, because Amazon doesn’t share any of that information with you
- Except you have much less profit potential, because you’re not doing anything – like bundling books or marketing directly to readers on an email list – which could make you more money
So, the point of doing this work is to get you what you ultimately want: a lot more readers who are interested in your work and more money in your bank account for the books you write.
Does Steve’s AMMO method actually work? Or is it a scam?
These are two of the biggest and most important questions to ask when someone asks you to pay money to learn their strategy for…making money.
Yes, AMMO works. No, it’s not a scam. But…
And here come the “buts”, which will ultimately help you decide whether this course is worth the time, money, and effort for you:
- But you’ve got to implement the strategies he teaches, and this takes time and effort
- But you’ve got to invest additional money in tools that will make the strategy work, such as landing page software, analytics software for studying how people interact with your landing pages, email marketing software, a Shopify store, and Facebook ads
- But you’ve got to be able to keep going, testing, and learning, even if your ads aren’t working well, or you’re not instantly making a lot of money
- But you’ll likely need more than one book you can sell to be profitable
- But you’ve got to write books that are actually well written and interesting to other readers, if you’re going to be successful selling them
- But you’ve got to love writing so much that all this work you’re doing is well worth it, especially since there are way easier ways to make money
Is Steve Pieper legitimate and trustworthy?
Even if the AMMO method works, is Steve Pieper someone you can trust with your time, effort, and money? Is he someone you’d like to learn from?
This was my big question after clicking on his Facebook ad – because, of course – to learn more about his AMMO method for selling books directly to readers.
I’ve been making a living online since 2011, and I can tell you that the “Making Money Online” world can be a shady world, filled with scam artists as well as BS artists who have no idea what they’re talking about.
I’m happy to tell you that Steve is legit. He’s the real deal. What he’s actually teaching you is more than how to get more readers and sell more books to them – he’s teaching you how to set up and run an online business as well as optimize your business flows and sales strategies. And this is why it’s “hard”.
Is the AMMO course “hard” but worth it?
If you come across other students talking about the course, I’m sure you’ll hear the familiar refrain that the course and everything you have to do is “hard” but worth it.
I put “hard” in quotes, because, yes, there are lots of new things you’ll probably have to learn, and lots of new, unexpected challenges you’ll face…
But who created the rule that this necessarily makes things “hard”? If you enjoy the challenge, the learning, the joy of acquiring a new, valuable skill, the amazing possibility of reaching more potential readers with your work…
Then why does the time and effort you put into it have to be “hard”? I understand where other people are coming from, but I’ll go on the record as saying that becoming a more successful author can be fun, exciting, and challenging… And not nearly as “hard” when you approach it this way.
Why did I purchase AMMO without hesitation after talking with Steve via Zoom?
I understand the hesitation to pay anyone a considerable amount of money, especially when you don’t know them personally. So I’ll briefly tell you why it was very easy for me to purchase AMMO after talking with Steve.
The short story is that I got interested in Steve’s version of AMMO that is more focused on nonfiction. Let’s call it the AMMO Nonfiction Program to differentiate it from the AMMO Foundations course, which I ended up buying, and which is more geared towards fiction writing…but can still be used for nonfiction purposes. (I’ll get more into that later.)
Anyway, I talked with Steve over Zoom for well over an hour. The goal was for him to try to understand my nonfiction goals, as well as whether his nonfiction program would be a good fit for me.
The key thing to understand for this story is that his nonfiction program costs significantly more than his AMMO Foundations course which focuses more on fiction. I could afford this higher price tag, and yet, after talking to me for over an hour, Steve talked me out of it.
Why did Steve talk me out of paying for a higher cost program?
Steve thought I wouldn’t get the kinds of results I’d want from his nonfiction program, and he wants the students who take his courses to get the kinds of results he talks about. He thought the AMMO strategies in the fiction program might better help me with my objectives, so he recommended that to me instead, even though that meant way less money in his pocket.
After this conversation, it was super easy for me to purchase AMMO without any hesitation just a few minutes after we ended our call.
Hopefully, this story can help put your mind at ease about the kind of person you’d be learning from and doing business with if you decide to purchase his course.
What is the AMMO Nonfiction Program?
Since I mentioned the AMMO Nonfiction Program – and since you might not even know it exists, if you were first introduced to the AMMO Foundations program, which focuses mainly on fiction – I can tell you briefly more about it.
Like I said, it’s considerably more expensive. I’m not going to name the price, because Steve might very well experiment with different price points (no idea if he does, I just know that testing prices is part of his methodology), so I don’t want to throw a wrinkle in that.
The AMMO Nonfiction Program is an expert deep dive with higher profit potential
The main idea is that if you go down the nonfiction path, you ideally want to be a super credible expert on a particular nonfiction topic that can help people transform their lives for the better (think: health and wellness, finances, relationships), and become THE PERSON that people go to for overcoming a particular problem or achieving a particular outcome.
Due to your credibility and the high value of what you’re helping people achieve (like helping them become successful, profitable authors, like Steve does), you can charge a much higher ticket for your service. So there’s a lot more potential money to be made here via selling a high ticket course or other high ticket services.
By following this path, you depart from the AMMO Foundations path of writing lots of books that you can sell to your growing fan base.
What is the AMMO Foundations program for authors?
If you hear people talking about Steve Pieper’s AMMO course, they’re talking about his AMMO Foundations program for authors, which helps authors sell books directly to their readers and cut out the middleman, like Amazon or whoever else.
And this is what this review is about – his AMMO Foundations, often just referred to as AMMO – although I took a quick detour to share my experience exploring Steve’s nonfiction option, in case that’s of any interest to you.
Can AMMO be used by both fiction writers and nonfiction writers?
AMMO is more geared to fiction authors. And if you enroll and join the AMMO Facebook group (which is amazing), you’ll find that the vast majority of the course participants are fiction authors.
That said, you can use the AMMO principles and techniques and apply them to marketing and selling nonfiction books. Although there’s not as many nonfiction participants, they’ve had success with the strategy as well.
Why?
Because at the end of the day, Steve is teaching you how to figure out who your audience is, what your readers want and expect, and how to give it to them. These exact same principles apply to both fiction and nonfiction.
Just be aware, though, that the lessons and examples are geared towards fiction, so if you’re interested in marketing and selling nonfiction, you have to extrapolate just a bit how the exact same principles will work with your nonfiction books, since there are no in-your-face nonfiction examples provided.
Is the AMMO Facebook group and AMMO community worth the price of admission alone?
One of the biggest perks of the AMMO program is that you get to join the AMMO Facebook community, which is composed only of people who have paid to take the AMMO course.
So, a nice perk of paying more money for this course than some other courses is that you become a part of a community of people who tend to be more invested in their success than in other groups. As a result, not only do you learn Steve’s methods when taking his course, but you also learn from other course participants who share their progress in the group as well as what they’ve learned that’s working for them.
An example of how the AMMO Facebook group benefits you
For example, here’s what one person shared in the AMMO Facebook group along with images backing up the claims:
“Celebrating over $100k in 30 days! Shopify’s around 80k and Amazon is 23k! FB ad spend is around 68k and another 6k in Amazon ads.”
If you do the math, that’s 103K in revenue and 74K in ad spending, so that’s 29K profit in one month… Off of fiction books. That’s eye opening, isn’t it? Also, it’s eye opening how much people can spend in advertising and make a profit. Little lessons like these are another way you get more inspired and nudged towards being more successful.
FYI, people in the Facebook group followed up with questions about how this kind of success was achieved, and this person answered their questions. That’s the power of this kind of group.
Can you still sell books on Amazon with the AMMO strategy?
I just shared a quick Facebook success story where someone sold $80,000 worth of books on Shopify in one month, and $23,000 worth of books on Amazon in the same month.
So, yes, AMMO participants can and often do sell their books on Amazon, as well as directly, via their Shopify stores. What often happens is that by promoting their books on their Shopify stores, somehow their Amazon sales also increase without them doing too much of anything on the Amazon side of things.
Steve Pieper calls this a cross channel marketing effect, I believe.
But here’s my take on the phenomenon: someone promotes a book via a Facebook ad, and the book looks interesting, but you don’t know this person. You look up the book and find it’s on Amazon. Well, you’re familiar with Amazon, they’ve got all your payment information, you trust Amazon… So you just go ahead and buy the book from Amazon.
I’ve done this numerous times, so I suspect this is what often happens. But in any case, yes, you can still sell your books on Amazon with AMMO, and you just might see your Amazon sales increase without lifting a finger – other than putting your direct sale books in front of potential customers with advertisements, of course.
What does the AMMO course actually teach you?
The big picture is that AMMO teaches you how to be a more profitable, successful, widely read author by treating your books like a business. In this course, you’ll learn how to acquire new potential readers with advertisements and then convert them into paying customers so that you can maximize your sales.
While there are others who teach how to use Facebook ads for this kind of thing, Steve’s approach is next level in terms of all the steps you take to optimize your advertisements and landing pages, including sales pages, for conversions.
Anyway, here are some things you’ll learn along the way…
How to market test your book idea before writing it
This got me interested in AMMO from the start, since I have a number of both fiction and nonfiction books I’d love to write. The big question for me has always been: which book would my readers most love to read and why?
AMMO helps answer that question.
How?
Well, you learn how to set up advertisements to see what ideas or “hooks” people respond to the most. The ads that get the most clicks help tell you that you’re on the right path, and then if the readers click on the ad and go on to read the opening of your book… Well, you can be more confident you’re onto something. Even before you’ve written that much!
Do you have any idea how powerful that is? Not only do you have proof from the beginning that you’re working on something people actually want to read, but you already know you can likely market and sell it to them. Amazing.
How to sell books you’ve already written
I suspect that most people who purchase AMMO have already written a book or two and they simply want help selling books they’ve already written. So AMMO walks you through the nuts and bolts of how to do that, including how to set up your Shopify store.
How to integrate ebooks, audiobooks, and paperbacks into your sales system
Want to maximize your profit and grow your audience? Then it helps to understand that different people enjoy consuming content in different ways. For example, while I love reading everything I can on my phone, via ebooks, other people might be appalled by that and gravitate only to paperbacks.
And then there are others who simply want to listen to the book and not actually do any reading. So there’s the audiobooks market.
Bottom line, by allowing your content to be consumed in different ways, you can increase your number of fans as well as sales.
How to set up Facebook ads and optimize them
Like I said earlier, plenty of people will teach you how to set up Facebook ads, but AMMO takes things to the next level with Steve’s CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) strategies.
These strategies are quite anal. And effective. The whole philosophy is that you have to optimize your advertisements and landing pages extremely well, or else you won’t be profitable running ads.
How to set up landing pages and optimize them
In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a landing page, all it means is that if someone clicks on your advertisement – or on a Google search result or any other link for that matter – they go to a website page where you want them to take a specific action.
This specific action could be providing you with their email address, or it could be clicking a “buy” button. It depends.
The name of the game is to see how well you can optimize that page so that a healthy percentage of people who arrive on that page end up taking the exact kind of action you want them to take.
How to do upsells and maximize profits
If you’ve already got someone who’s interested in purchasing something from you, why not see if you can sell a little more to them? This is kind of like going to McDonald’s and getting a meal, only to be asked “Do you want to supersize that?”
It’s an effective tactic. And why the heck wouldn’t you if you have more than one book to offer a potential customer? All it takes is learning the technical steps to do this, and AMMO walks you through it.
How to use email marketing software to grow an audience and drive more sales
Remember, one of the fantastic things about selling your books directly to customers is that you can collect their email addresses, and then sell directly to them again in the future. But how do you do that?
The course walks you through the steps of doing this, including how to use email software that integrates with your Shopify store, so that you know which people on your email list have bought particular books – or not. It also walks you through the kinds of emails you’ll want to send to people on your list to help increase your sales.
How to do other things that will help your business
I’m trying to maintain a somewhat bigger picture focus of what AMMO teaches. But I want to point out that you’ll learn more things than just the things I mentioned.
For example, there are a couple interesting lessons focused solely on how to improve your mindset so you can weather the inevitable challenges you’ll face as you go on your AMMO journey. As part of one of these lessons, there’s an interesting video showing how an ad lost a considerable amount of money for about a week… Only to become extremely profitable the next week.
On the flip side, maybe you run a profitable ad, and then you start losing money on it. The point is that it helps to have a more confident, relaxed mindset that helps you ride out these kinds of changes, so Steve included a couple lessons just on that to help prepare you for this kind of thing.
My overall conclusion is that Steve has given a considerable amount of thought to what can help you best succeed as an author – especially because he wants you to become a huge success who proves the effectiveness of his course. Your success is very much his success in this sense.
AMMO success stories: do people actually make money with AMMO?
Steve shares the following success stories on the enrollment page for AMMO:
- Lydia Sherrer, over $1,000,000 earned
- Katie Cross, $506,000 in book sales in one year
- Diana Orgain, $527,000 in book sales in one year
- Gordon Carroll, $111,000 in book sales in one year
- Naomi Rawlings, over $1,000,000 earned
In the AMMO Facebook group you’ll see additional success stories of all sizes. Some people are pulling in some very big numbers and sharing their success, while others are sharing the progress they make from scratch.
In a way, the smaller success stories are even more exciting, because you see how someone evolves from struggling to make ads work, to breaking even, to… Profit! It’s exciting for them, and also fun and exciting as a bystander to see.
Just for fun, I’ll give you an example of some success stories I’ve enjoyed seeing, so you can get a flavor for people in different stages of their AMMO journey.
Facebook AMMO community success story 1
“I’m so excited…because this is finally profitable! Today was my best day yet. $560 total, and about $160 of that is profit. Ad spend is $150 and the rest goes to printing and shipping (I only sell paperbacks.)”
Facebook AMMO community success story 2
“Closed Aug with 9.5k of Shopify sales. That’s about 40% growth from last month. I was hoping to double it but didn’t happen.I started AMMO Sales ads in May and have been profitable until July. I posted a small loss in Aug. (small ~ 1.2k)
AMMO works. Not every day/week/month will be profitable. Think longer term.”
Facebook AMMO community success story 3
“62k in the month of August (52k in Shopify + 10k in Amazon KDP) with 19.6K of Advertising Spend (16.5k on FB Ads+ 3.1k Amazon Ads). My best month so far! Since I mostly sell paperbacks, if you count the cost of printing + shipping, this is around 35% net profit.”
Can you be profitable with AMMO with just one book?
I’m sure it’s possible to have only one book and be profitable with it… But I’d bet that the odds are very low and I wouldn’t bank on it. The problem is that Facebook advertising can be expensive, so in order to cover your costs and turn a profit, you ideally want at least some of your sales to be for multiple book bundles.
Also, the typical strategy is for you to give one of your books away for free so that readers can get a sense of who you are and whether they like you – and if they do, then they’ll be more inclined to purchase from you in the future. In other words, you give away a book for free in the hopes of acquiring a potential reader who you can convert into a paying customer.
Is AMMO still worth it if you have just one book?
This will depend entirely on you, your goals, and how financially stable you are.
Remember, you can still use AMMO techniques to determine whether your next book ideas will be marketable and catch the interest of readers, and that’s already huge.
Also, if you’re okay with playing the long game and losing money up front while you acquire new readers, with the intention of making money from them with future book sales, it might still be attractive to you from this angle.
How many books is it best to have to be profitable with AMMO?
I think it’s ideally best to have at least three to five books to increase your chances of being profitable with AMMO from the beginning. Basically, the more books you can bundle together for a larger upsell, the better.
The more these books are related to one another – whether being in the same series, or world, or genre – the better from a bundled upsell perspective.
Does AMMO work for all genres of fiction?
The strategies AMMO teaches are timeless and apply to any genre. Basically, if there’s an audience out there for your genre, then you can market and sell to them. Sure, if your genre is so niche that it only includes a total of five people on the planet – you’ll have a much harder time turning a profit.
But even this is good for you to understand as a writer. Bottom line, do you want to write something that appeals to more than five people in the world and be more widely read and profitable? Then do that!
Ultimately, AMMO will help you understand if you’re writing things that people want to read, and whether you can market and sell to them. And this is fantastic knowledge to acquire, even if the news isn’t what you would initially prefer to hear.
Does AMMO work for all categories of nonfiction?
Again, AMMO strategies are timeless in that they’re about figuring out what’s interesting and compelling to readers and then delivering that to them. This applies to nonfiction as well as fiction.
That said, AMMO caters more to fiction writers, so you’ll have to figure out how to apply AMMO concepts and strategies to your nonfiction books.
Are there any upsells in the AMMO course?
If you’re an AMMO student, you can pay for additional help from Steve for live coaching calls where he analyzes data. This is not mandatory, however.
Also, AMMO provides a record of past coaching calls that you can listen to and watch. Not only can you learn from these calls, but you can also decide whether paying for additional coaching is something that would be of interest to you.
Is there a money back guarantee for AMMO?
Yes, there is a 30 day money back guarantee if you pay for AMMO in full from the beginning. But you don’t get this money back guarantee if you pay for AMMO via a monthly installment plan.
How much does AMMO cost?
I paid $997 for AMMO. But my gut tells me that the price of AMMO will increase over time. (I’ll explain this more in a bit.)
But how much does AMMO really cost?
In addition to the price of the online course, there’s also the price of a bunch of other tools you’ll be using, as well as Facebook ads. So I would not go into AMMO thinking that the price is just the price of the course. Instead, I would have a much higher figure in my head to account for paying for the tools as well as Facebook advertising.
How much more?
Well, I’m sure people can get creative doing free trials for tools, running minimum Facebook ads, and so on…
But if it were me, I would mentally add at least another $1,000 to comfortably give AMMO a shot.
That might sound like a lot. But you’ll be a lot more mentally stressed if you’re not prepared to pay extra money for using the tools, running the Facebook ads, and so on. So I would encourage you to ask yourself: can you afford the course price of AMMO as well as additional monetary costs you’ll incur as you test out its strategies?
AMMO coupon code and discount information
I love saving money whenever possible, so I’ve looked for AMMO coupon codes and discounts.
The best discount I could find was the discount that comes from paying for AMMO in full instead of in monthly payments. There wasn’t any AMMO flash sale or surprise promotion that popped up.
Part of the goal of this site is to help other people save money on their online business journey, so if I discover any AMMO promo codes, coupon codes, or discounts in the future, I will update this AMMO review with that information. Even better, if possible, I’ll apply any promo code or coupon code directly to the link, so that any potential discount is immediately applied.
This is the best price for AMMO that I could find. (If you can find better, let me know, and I’ll update this review.)
Why do I think the cost of AMMO will increase?
Steve did not tell me he’s planning on increasing the price of the course. But after talking to him over Zoom, I get the sense that as AMMO grows and becomes more popular and reputable due to increasing numbers of student success stories, it will make sense to him to increase the price of the course.
Why?
Because Steve’s philosophy is that the more he charges for AMMO, the more his students are invested in it and will do the work, and the more successful they will be as authors. All of this is good for the students, AMMO, and Steve.
As Steve put it to me, if he barely charged anything for the course, then most students would likely choose Netflix over doing the work, when it came time to do the work. But if students pay a significant amount of money – they’ll be more inclined to do the work over watching Netflix. He says he has the stats for different price points to back his argument up, and I believe him.
For these reasons, I believe it will be a no-brainer for Steve to increase the price of the course the more traction and credibility it gains over time.
Is AMMO worth it?
This is the million dollar question! I’m laying everything out to the best of my abilities to help you decide this for yourself the best you can. In many ways, I’m writing the AMMO review I wish I’d been able to read online before purchasing the course, providing all these considerations from someone who’d actually enrolled in the course.
I can say that AMMO is definitely worth it to me. As someone who has spent a fair amount on online courses and online tools over the years, I was able to suss out fairly quickly that this course is the real deal and worth the investment of time, money, and effort.
That said, whether AMMO would be good for you completely depends on your goals and situation, including your financial situation. I would never feel comfortable recommending this course to anyone if it were to cause a great deal of financial stress and hardship. Because remember: you won’t just pay for the course, but also for the tools and ads to implement the strategies.
On the other hand, if you can comfortably afford AMMO, and you’d like to acquire more readers and be more profitable as an author… I’d say go for it. This was my situation, and it ended up being a no-brainer purchase that I’m glad I made.