Dave Chesson built Kindlepreneur into one of the most trusted book marketing resources on the internet — so trusted that Amazon KDP itself recommends it as a go-to resource for authors. When Amazon first opened its advertising platform to book publishers, authors flooded online forums trying to understand how to use it. Chesson saw the gap and built a course to fill it.

He made it free deliberately. His logic: a free course would spread further than a paid one, build his brand, and naturally lead authors to his paid tool, Publisher Rocket, which makes keyword research for Amazon Ads dramatically faster. The strategy worked — the course has been taken by tens of thousands of authors, and its reputation has held up through multiple platform updates.

The course was last updated in December 2024, making it one of the most current free Amazon Ads resources available. It covers the redesigned Amazon Ads console interface that confused many authors after Amazon's 2022–2024 dashboard overhauls.

What the Course Covers

Amazon Ads Fundamentals

The opening modules cover the basics: what Amazon Ads are, why they work differently from Facebook or Google advertising, and how they affect your book's visibility beyond the direct sales they generate. Chesson explains how Amazon's algorithm interprets ad spend as a relevancy signal — making ads valuable for organic ranking momentum, not just direct click-through revenue.

Campaign Types and Setup

The course walks through the three primary campaign types available to authors: Sponsored Products (the workhorse — ads that appear in search results and on product pages), Sponsored Brands (for authors with multiple books, allowing branded banner placements), and Lockscreen Ads (reaching Kindle readers on device screensavers). Each campaign type gets dedicated setup walkthroughs, including the exact clicks inside the Amazon Ads console.

Janet Margot — The Amazon Insider

A distinguishing feature of Chesson's course is the co-instructor: Janet Margot, who spent nearly a decade at Amazon helping develop the Ads program for books. Margot's insider perspective on how Amazon's system actually functions — the signals it responds to, the metrics that matter, the common mistakes that waste budget — elevates the course well beyond surface-level instruction. Her segments are the most technically precise content in the course.

The Dashboard and Optimization Routine

Chesson walks through his preferred Amazon Ads dashboard customization — the specific columns to display and how to read them for campaign health signals. The optimization module covers what to look at weekly (ACOS, impressions, click-through rate, conversions), when to raise or lower bids, and how to identify bleeding keywords to add as negatives.

Real Campaign Walkthroughs

One of the course's most practical elements is Chesson's use of live campaign examples — including campaigns he ran for major authors like Ted Dekker. Watching a real campaign at scale, with real data, ground the abstract concepts in observable outcomes.

💡 TOOL NOTE:  Publisher Rocket integrates directly with Amazon Ads keyword research — it can generate hundreds of relevant keywords for a book in minutes rather than the hours of manual research required otherwise. The course teaches the methodology fully without requiring Publisher Rocket, but the time savings for authors who use it are substantial.

How It Compares to Paid Alternatives

Bryan Cohen's 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge (also free, reviewed separately in this series) approaches Amazon Ads from a profitability and ROAS perspective — it is more focused on whether ads are making money and how to optimize toward profit. Chesson's course is more technically oriented toward setup, structure, and the mechanics of the Amazon Ads platform itself.

The two courses complement each other well. Take Chesson's course first to understand how the platform works, then take Cohen's Challenge to understand how to make it profitable. Between the two, you have a more complete Amazon Ads education than most paid courses offer.

• Free, no signup required to access the content

• Updated December 2024 — one of the most current free options available

• Co-instruction from a genuine Amazon insider (Janet Margot)

• Pairs naturally with Publisher Rocket for keyword research (separate purchase, ~$99)

• Best combined with Bryan Cohen's Profit Challenge for a complete profitability framework

Considerations

The course is Amazon-specific by design. It will not help you with Facebook Ads, BookBub, or other advertising platforms. For wide publishing authors who want a broader advertising education, start here for Amazon and supplement with resources on other platforms.

Some advanced optimization strategies — particularly around scaling campaigns and managing larger budgets — are covered more deeply in Chesson's paid Authorpreneur Academy or in Bryan Cohen's Author Ad School. The free course gives you a solid foundation; the paid resources go deeper on the strategy layer.

Tracking Your Results with ScribeCount

📊  Every course teaches strategies. ScribeCount shows you whether those strategies are working — in real numbers, across every platform you publish on.

Amazon Ads drive traffic. ScribeCount's Ads & ROAS panel tells you what that traffic is worth in real revenue. After building your first campaigns using Chesson's course, connect your Amazon Ads data to ScribeCount and watch your true ROAS — ad spend versus actual book royalties — update in real time. You will see immediately whether your campaigns are profitable, breaking even, or bleeding. No more guessing from the Amazon Ads console alone. The course teaches you to build the campaigns. ScribeCount tells you if they're working.

Final Verdict

Dave Chesson's Free Amazon Ads Course is the best zero-cost starting point for indie authors who want to understand Amazon advertising from a technical, platform-level perspective. The combination of Chesson's data-driven methodology and Janet Margot's genuine Amazon insider knowledge makes this course more valuable than the free price tag suggests. Take it before spending money on any paid Amazon Ads instruction. Return to it whenever Amazon updates its interface — Chesson has a strong track record of keeping it current.

✅  Bottom Line: The best free technical foundation for Amazon Ads — updated December 2024, co-taught by a genuine Amazon insider. Take this before paying for anything else on Amazon advertising.

About the Author

Hello, I'm Randall Wood. When I'm not pounding the keyboard or entertaining my giant dog, I like to build tools for my fellow indie authors. In these articles, you'll find lessons learned over sixteen years spent in the indie author world. I share it all here to help you get one step closer to where you want to be.

More at randallwoodauthor.com