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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: A sneaky Facebook Ad setting you may not know
« Last post by LilyBLily on Today at 11:15:23 PM »
This is why a hard cap on how much money FB can spend can be a help. FB will always tell you if you hit that cap, and meanwhile, it can't go nuts and spend your entire life savings.

Life savings. What a concept.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: A sneaky Facebook Ad setting you may not know
« Last post by Gregg Bell on Today at 06:29:54 AM »
Yeah, let Meta decide how they chew up your funds.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Classes, classes, classes please stop
« Last post by Bill Hiatt on Today at 12:10:22 AM »
It is true that repetition is a valid educational strategy. But its relevance is situational. Teachers use it with very difficult concepts or with material that is necessary but not intrinsically interesting. (Of course, you try to make it as interesting as you can, but if you are pragmatic, you also know that tune-in rates are just going to be lower.)

But authors seeking something like new sales techniques are highly motivated, so tune-in rates will be high. And people with enough background to be able to use the techniques effectively are probably sophisticated enough that they don't need as much time for the material to sink in.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: A sneaky Facebook Ad setting you may not know
« Last post by LilyBLily on December 11, 2024, 02:01:48 PM »
Yikes!  :HB
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Classes, classes, classes please stop
« Last post by LilyBLily on December 11, 2024, 01:59:38 PM »
One can also liken signing up for all these courses to a standard self-help book, in which the author repeats their Big Idea endlessly throughout the book but couches it in slightly different terms each time. The hope of that author is that one of those iterations will strike a chord with the reader. The hope of the class attendee is that one word or sentence--or even one realization during the class--will finally impel them over the threshold from would-be author to real author.

I went to conferences for many years before I finished a manuscript. Maybe some people want an actual secret or shortcut, but I wanted to find or activate a shortcut in my brain to connect the desire to write to the practice of writing. There's a standard piece of advice in the business world that you should hang out with the people you admire and want to emulate. But it's not much fun when you aren't in their league, when you aren't doing the work to join their league, and yet you want to.
 
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Classes, classes, classes please stop
« Last post by Bill Hiatt on December 11, 2024, 12:37:11 AM »
THE SECRET is that there is no secret. You do the best you can with those aspects you can control, and you hope for the best.

I think a lot of people searching for THE SECRET aren't willing to put in the work and/or explore the world of publishing for themselves.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there is an element of luck in success, too--but Lady Luck doesn't kiss and tell.

Having taught at a high school for so many years, I had plenty of opportunities to see luck play out in another competitive field--college admissions. Some students did literally everything right and still didn't get into their first choice school. Other students who were good but not as good did get in. One of my students said, "It's a crap shoot." That's not entirely correct, but there is an element of luck.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Paperback marketing nowadays
« Last post by Bill Hiatt on December 11, 2024, 12:28:31 AM »
I agree. If I had to spend big bucks creating a paperback, I wouldn't do it. Vellum makes it easy to do (as, I suppose, do the PC equivalents).

So far, advertising paperbacks as part of my AMS advertising on selected books seems to have moved some AND improved ROI. However, I am having a very odd couple of months for sales.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Classes, classes, classes please stop
« Last post by Hopscotch on December 10, 2024, 11:47:00 PM »
Oh, well, I know THE SECRET - You are born w/your finger on the pulse of the reading public or you ain't.  If not, then you can have fun writing but make no money.  Period.  Is that one sentence worth US$499 to a conference attendee or subscriber?  Then I'm ready to lecture.  But will an audience of shortcut seekers even hear it?
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Classes, classes, classes please stop
« Last post by The Bass Bagwhan on December 10, 2024, 09:01:14 PM »
Back in my days of being trad published (mid-list obscurity) I spoke at several writers festivals, just in general talking rubbish and anecdotal tales about my favourite subject (me), and I quickly realised that most people in the audience wanted nothing else except for me to reveal THE SECRET.
THE SECRET to getting published, to getting an agent, to writing an entire book. My achievements had nothing to do with long hours, effort, and plenty of failures. I simply knew THE SECRET and I just might tell them.
I think these many, many courses present to a lot of people as a shortcut to avoiding the hard yards. A simple formula, or a template, that takes out any need for creativity, effort or talent.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / A sneaky Facebook Ad setting you may not know
« Last post by The Bass Bagwhan on December 10, 2024, 08:48:56 PM »
Okay, so I'm running a FB ad where the landing page is my website, not the Amazon Product page.
Recently, I started getting warning emails from my Web host service that I was exceeding the resources included in my "deal" and I needed to upgrade to handle the extra traffic. The cost was huge.
Like ... what?
After exchanging some puzzled emails (and getting a bit tetchy) I dug deep into my cpanel and stat's and sure enough, I was getting tens of thousands of "hits" a month ? apparently off-the-charts website traffic.
Facebook ads have a setting where it's allowed (by default, I think) to access external resources in the attempt to garner more impression ? note, impressions. And that external resource was my own website!
In otherwords, FB was pinging my own site with every impression, over a thousand every day, and the system sees that as traffic.
TBH, a friend figured this out for me and my explanation above may not be totally correct. Other settings on this particular ads were weird too ? such as my target audience age was nothing like I ever set. So I dunno if FB just changed stuff somehow because I missed some arbitrary "Let Meta decide for you ..." checkbox.
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