Is anyone else reluctant to spend on advertising?

[alhawke]

Here's another thing that happens with ads and costs $$$.

Sometimes a ton of clicks dominate one particular vendor on BookBub ads. This happens from time to time and can hurt the ad. I'll have a ton of clicks on apple, for example, and have to shut it down because I'll quickly go over my $10/day ceiling. Are the clicks from interest or from someone trigger happy?

Recently this happened over a period of 4 days with Apple and I sold one book. Great. But that's one book 3.99 with $40 lost over 4 days. It also drew the ad away from the other vendors.

It will happen less often to me with AMS. Here it can occur with a particular phrase or author. Could be fraud, could be bots going crazy with +feedback. I dunno.

Ideas? Do you guys shut it down? And, if you do, do you turn it on again in the future?

[dgcasey]

It will happen less often to me with AMS. Here it can occur with a particular phrase or author. Could be fraud, could be bots going crazy with +feedback. I dunno.

Ideas? Do you guys shut it down? And, if you do, do you turn it on again in the future?

That's been bandied about in here before. A competitor, either a writer or advertiser, will get click happy on your ad, first to get your ad to budget out for the day, then hopefully to get you to see your ad isn't producing and get you to discontinue it. Either way, it's to get your ad to stop showing.

[alhawke]

 
Once I even got a refund from BookBub as it was clearly a ridiculous ctr, costing like $20 in thirty minutes. They claimed it was a computer error. If it is fraudulent, there should be a way to shut it down--like block the same IP from clicking on the ad.

The weirdest thing is it can trigger the bots to drive more ads in the region and then land real sales. 

When it happens, I usually stop the ad and then wait some time to restart it later.

But, anyway, I had to vent.

[Mysterywriter]

Facebook is the cheapest way to get readers eyes on your book and to get them on your mailing list to push the rest to.

On the last 7 days 480 people clicked my link and around 300 joined my mailing list and it cost me $35

Yes, but, how many of them actually bought a book?

That's my experience with Facebook. I can get readers to engage in various ways (over 55,000 people have liked my author page, most of those have also followed it--for all the good that does these days, and ads always get high levels of engagement). However, book sales from FB are a trickle at best, at least for me. I will say that some people who started out as FB followers ended up as real fans, but that was a long process. It's difficult to quantify how many sales have resulted.

This is an issue with narrowing your audience to one that buys the kind of books you sell in my opinion. The tighter you make that net, the more fish you catch. I have very specific criteria I target after lots of experimentation and therefore have better results with smaller numbers.

[LilyBLily]

TBH, my head wants to explode when I even consider doing a Facebook ad. I recently paid for a FB boost; FB charged me a mere $1.03 because obviously it didn't show the post to many people. So I'm back to FB ads. Oh, my head...

[TimothyEllis]

The thing which narks me the most about FB ads, is there is no way to ensure the people who want to see your posts actually do.

They nerfed groups and pages, so only 5% of the people in them see the post on their feed.

And yet, the other 95% are the perfect advertise to people, and you can't reach them.

The way the ads are set up, the only people you can't reach, are the ones you most want to.

And that is just ridiculous.

[Bill Hiatt]

The thing which narks me the most about FB ads, is there is no way to ensure the people who want to see your posts actually do.

They nerfed groups and pages, so only 5% of the people in them see the post on their feed.

And yet, the other 95% are the perfect advertise to people, and you can't reach them.

The way the ads are set up, the only people you can't reach, are the ones you most want to.

And that is just ridiculous.

I'm not sure I understand. You can target FB ads to the people who follow your page if you wish. (Of course, in the old days, when pages had more organic reach, you'd hit a higher number of them without having to advertise.

[Bill Hiatt]

Facebook is the cheapest way to get readers eyes on your book and to get them on your mailing list to push the rest to.

On the last 7 days 480 people clicked my link and around 300 joined my mailing list and it cost me $35

Yes, but, how many of them actually bought a book?

That's my experience with Facebook. I can get readers to engage in various ways (over 55,000 people have liked my author page, most of those have also followed it--for all the good that does these days, and ads always get high levels of engagement). However, book sales from FB are a trickle at best, at least for me. I will say that some people who started out as FB followers ended up as real fans, but that was a long process. It's difficult to quantify how many sales have resulted.

This is an issue with narrowing your audience to one that buys the kind of books you sell in my opinion. The tighter you make that net, the more fish you catch. I have very specific criteria I target after lots of experimentation and therefore have better results with smaller numbers.

I wonder if that varies by genre, though. Since you write mysteries (judging from your screen name) and I write fantasy, the situation could be different. If you mean demographic groups, it's hard to know who buys fantasy books and who doesn't. And I could be missing something, but FB targeting by interest seems clunky at best. If I type in fantasy, most of the initial suggestions relate to fantasy football. (Not a hopeful sign!) Fantasy books works, but trying to get a specific sub genre is tricky. (Last time I check, for instance, urban fantasy wasn't an identified interest.) There appear to be a lot more interests connected to fantasy films and TV shows of various kinds, but people who watch fantasy aren't always fantasy readers, though I suspect that kind of targeting is better than nothing.

In other words, I can't get FB to focus narrowly enough on my genre. The fans I come in contact with are all over the place demographically. I always narrow the targeting to predominately English-speaking countries and younger age levels (though I have at least a few fans who are senior citizens). Beyond that, the fans I know of are scattered across groups rather than concentrated. I don't know whether that's true of fantasy fans in general or not, and as far as I know, there's no way to tell.

[TimothyEllis]

The thing which narks me the most about FB ads, is there is no way to ensure the people who want to see your posts actually do.

They nerfed groups and pages, so only 5% of the people in them see the post on their feed.

And yet, the other 95% are the perfect advertise to people, and you can't reach them.

The way the ads are set up, the only people you can't reach, are the ones you most want to.

And that is just ridiculous.

I'm not sure I understand. You can target FB ads to the people who follow your page if you wish. (Of course, in the old days, when pages had more organic reach, you'd hit a higher number of them without having to advertise.

How?

Whenever I've tried, it comes back with exactly zero people. You try to activate it, and it won't.

The options are there to target your group or page, but they don't work. Or never have for me.

[C. Gockel]

How?

Whenever I've tried, it comes back with exactly zero people. You try to activate it, and it won't.

The options are there to target your group or page, but they don't work. Or never have for me.

There are two types of ads: Boosted posts where you create a post on your timeline, and then boost either to an audience you create or to your fans and their friends. These can be text only, or in a vertical format, or just basically ANYTHING that doesn't violate FB's rules.

The other type are targeted ads. These can be videos, slideshows, or single pictures. You create an audience by selecting their interests and narrowing their habits. For instance, you might pick people who like Robert Heinlein who also own or are interested in pages relating to Amazon Kindle.

Both types of ads work for me.

I use boosted posts for new releases. I create a post, share it, and when it stops getting clicks I boost it to all my fans and their friends. The nice thing about boosted posts is you can have more than one link. So I'll usually say, "Get the new release <link>." and then, "Haven't started the series yet? The first book is FREE <link>"

I boost them to fans and their friends because my fans, when they see the boosted post, usually comment on the post saying lovely things like "I love this series" or "I'm reading it now and it's so exciting." That gives you social proof.

I also run targeted ad campaigns mostly for the US and UK, although I am experimenting with worldwide iBooks ads right now. I am sending everyone directly to the vendor of choice.

Facebook ads are more expensive, but I find that FB viewers are more likely to buy paperbacks and to buy audiobooks. Also, since they aren't LOOKING to buy books on FB, if they click through, they tend to be very motivated. I'm advertising a permafree, but the sell-thru from freebie to first paid book with FB is the best of any advertiser.

I learned to use Facebook by picking up a book from my library. Also, I regularly Google things like "Facebook advertising in year 2020" to catch up with current trends. I tend not to follow authors teaching authors because I feel like I'll just wind up doing what every other author is doing. I have found that general advice works well for me.

[TimothyEllis]

How?

Whenever I've tried, it comes back with exactly zero people. You try to activate it, and it won't.

The options are there to target your group or page, but they don't work. Or never have for me.

There are two types of ads: Boosted posts where you create a post on your timeline, and then boost either to an audience you create or to your fans and their friends. These can be text only, or in a vertical format, or just basically ANYTHING that doesn't violate FB's rules.

The other type are targeted ads. These can be videos, slideshows, or single pictures. You create an audience by selecting their interests and narrowing their habits. For instance, you might pick people who like Robert Heinlein who also own or are interested in pages relating to Amazon Kindle.

That's the general, but not the how.

I'm looking for exactly how you include your group and page people in an ad. The exact steps.

As I said, each time I've tried it, it results in a zero target number.

[C. Gockel]

How?

Whenever I've tried, it comes back with exactly zero people. You try to activate it, and it won't.

The options are there to target your group or page, but they don't work. Or never have for me.

There are two types of ads: Boosted posts where you create a post on your timeline, and then boost either to an audience you create or to your fans and their friends. These can be text only, or in a vertical format, or just basically ANYTHING that doesn't violate FB's rules.

The other type are targeted ads. These can be videos, slideshows, or single pictures. You create an audience by selecting their interests and narrowing their habits. For instance, you might pick people who like Robert Heinlein who also own or are interested in pages relating to Amazon Kindle.

That's the general, but not the how.

I'm looking for exactly how you include your group and page people in an ad. The exact steps.

As I said, each time I've tried it, it results in a zero target number.

If you have fans following your page, it works.

[dgcasey]

In other words, I can't get FB to focus narrowly enough on my genre. The fans I come in contact with are all over the place demographically. I always narrow the targeting to predominately English-speaking countries and younger age levels (though I have at least a few fans who are senior citizens). Beyond that, the fans I know of are scattered across groups rather than concentrated. I don't know whether that's true of fantasy fans in general or not, and as far as I know, there's no way to tell.

You need to target a specific author and then hope to God they come up as an Interest in the list. You and I as fantasy authors, could try to target someone like Jeff Wheeler and see if he comes up. Sometimes, FB acts like they've never heard of the author. I also write horror and tried to target K. F. Breene. She is #37 is ALL of Amazon Kindle store right now and she's a mystery to FB. I can't target her in any way. About the only authors I can target are the likes of Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but then I end up with an unwieldy audience in the tens of millions.

[TimothyEllis]

If you have fans following your page, it works.

No, it doesn't.

If I only specify people on the page, I get a zero audience.

It demands you add in extra criteria, and then that becomes the ad, not the people I wanted to send it to.

Age group? Irrelevant.
Geographic location? Irrelevant.
Interests? Have liked my page or joined my group. Nothing else is relevant.

That's my criteria, and it's always a zero audience. My numbers are not large, but they are tangible.

[C. Gockel]

If you have fans following your page, it works.

No, it doesn't.

If I only specify people on the page, I get a zero audience.

It demands you add in extra criteria, and then that becomes the ad, not the people I wanted to send it to.

Age group? Irrelevant.
Geographic location? Irrelevant.
Interests? Have liked my page or joined my group. Nothing else is relevant.

That's my criteria, and it's always a zero audience. My numbers are not large, but they are tangible.

Errr ... works for me, Mate. Can't help you.

[TimothyEllis]

Errr ... works for me, Mate. Can't help you.

So if you have a page with 500 likes, you get an audience of 500 for the ad?

If so, exactly what options do you click?

[C. Gockel]

Errr ... works for me, Mate. Can't help you.

So if you have a page with 500 likes, you get an audience of 500 for the ad?

If so, exactly what options do you click?

Did you watch the tutorial I posted? You can select people who like the page and their friends.

[TimothyEllis]

Did you watch the tutorial I posted? You can select people who like the page and their friends.

Yes. And it gives me an audience of Zero. Then demands I add geography and age and interests in order to get a number. So I get a general ad, and no-one who liked my page gets sent the ad.

[Simon Haynes]

You have to add geography.  Otherwise you're paying to show your ads to people in countries where there's no Amazon (like Brazil ... soon. Hah.)  I recommend USA, UK, Aus, Canada and no more.

Then you have to specify age, such as 25-60, because you really don't want to be showing ads to 17 year olds who may have no means of buying.

Finally, if you have less than about 10,000 likes (I think it is), FB will usually warn you the ad will barely be seen, and will ask you to widen interests. That's why 99% of the indie authors I try to target won't show on FB. Even big names.

Personally, I target trad-pubbed authors in the same genre, plus the genre. Then in a separate filter I specify people interested in Kindle  (not employees, or the category which guesses they MIGHT have a kindle)

Finally, I go for CPC instead of CPM with a limit per click, not per view. (Google that - the process just changed again.)

It's definitely not for the faint-hearted.  I would suggest Bookbub CPC ads before attempting FB - at least there you can target other indies easily.

[TimothyEllis]

You have to add geography.  Otherwise you're paying to show your ads to people in countries where there's no Amazon (like Brazil ... soon. Hah.)  I recommend USA, UK, Aus, Canada and no more.

Then you have to specify age, such as 25-60, because you really don't want to be showing ads to 17 year olds who may have no means of buying.

Finally, if you have less than about 10,000 likes (I think it is), FB will usually warn you the ad will barely be seen, and will ask you to widen interests. That's why 99% of the indie authors I try to target won't show on FB. Even big names.

But that's not what I want.

I just want to make sure everyone who liked my page and joined my group sees my post. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

All I want is a guarantee those who've said they want to see my posts actually do. I'm happy to pay for it.

That's all I want.

If that ad is not big enough for FB, then stuff them. It's not about ad size. It's about posts being read by people who ask for them.

[Mysterywriter]

Facebook is the cheapest way to get readers eyes on your book and to get them on your mailing list to push the rest to.

On the last 7 days 480 people clicked my link and around 300 joined my mailing list and it cost me $35

Yes, but, how many of them actually bought a book?

That's my experience with Facebook. I can get readers to engage in various ways (over 55,000 people have liked my author page, most of those have also followed it--for all the good that does these days, and ads always get high levels of engagement). However, book sales from FB are a trickle at best, at least for me. I will say that some people who started out as FB followers ended up as real fans, but that was a long process. It's difficult to quantify how many sales have resulted.

This is an issue with narrowing your audience to one that buys the kind of books you sell in my opinion. The tighter you make that net, the more fish you catch. I have very specific criteria I target after lots of experimentation and therefore have better results with smaller numbers.

I wonder if that varies by genre, though. Since you write mysteries (judging from your screen name) and I write fantasy, the situation could be different. If you mean demographic groups, it's hard to know who buys fantasy books and who doesn't. And I could be missing something, but FB targeting by interest seems clunky at best. If I type in fantasy, most of the initial suggestions relate to fantasy football. (Not a hopeful sign!) Fantasy books works, but trying to get a specific sub genre is tricky. (Last time I check, for instance, urban fantasy wasn't an identified interest.) There appear to be a lot more interests connected to fantasy films and TV shows of various kinds, but people who watch fantasy aren't always fantasy readers, though I suspect that kind of targeting is better than nothing.

In other words, I can't get FB to focus narrowly enough on my genre. The fans I come in contact with are all over the place demographically. I always narrow the targeting to predominately English-speaking countries and younger age levels (though I have at least a few fans who are senior citizens). Beyond that, the fans I know of are scattered across groups rather than concentrated. I don't know whether that's true of fantasy fans in general or not, and as far as I know, there's no way to tell.

Yeah, you're probably right Bill that genre plays a large part. I know that the demographic that buys my books is predominantly on facebook.

For ads... forget targeting people on author names etc. Never worked for me.

What works is finding out the demographics of the kind of person who buys your books. For me that is women between the ages of 50-70 who are normally retired or working part-time and read a LOT. Targeting that group on facebook gives me low cost ads (around 9c a click), and gets them on my mailing list where I can push new books at them.

[Simon Haynes]

You have to add geography.  Otherwise you're paying to show your ads to people in countries where there's no Amazon (like Brazil ... soon. Hah.)  I recommend USA, UK, Aus, Canada and no more.

Then you have to specify age, such as 25-60, because you really don't want to be showing ads to 17 year olds who may have no means of buying.

Finally, if you have less than about 10,000 likes (I think it is), FB will usually warn you the ad will barely be seen, and will ask you to widen interests. That's why 99% of the indie authors I try to target won't show on FB. Even big names.

But that's not what I want.

I just want to make sure everyone who liked my page and joined my group sees my post. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

All I want is a guarantee those who've said they want to see my posts actually do. I'm happy to pay for it.

That's all I want.

If that ad is not big enough for FB, then stuff them. It's not about ad size. It's about posts being read by people who ask for them.

What happens if you post something to your page, then click the 'promote this post' button? Doesn't that allow you to choose people who liked your page (only) and then specify how much you want to spend?

I've only done 2 sponsored posts like that, so perhaps someone else can chime in.

[TimothyEllis]

What happens if you post something to your page, then click the 'promote this post' button? Doesn't that allow you to choose people who liked your page (only) and then specify how much you want to spend?

As I said, it comes back with a zero audience.

Makes me wonder though if FB ads has a minimum people threshold. If your page has say less than 500 people in it, it becomes an unviable ad, so returns zero.

It maybe works for people with a lot larger like count.

[Simon Haynes]

You still have to specify a region. I think you can specify 'world' if you really want everyone.

My page has 960 likes, apparently, and I just tried boosting a post and setting up the various options. It would have worked, except I cancelled.

[Gerri Attrick]

Timothy, I have a mere 185 followers/likers, call 'em what you will, on my FB author page. I can Boost a post for £15 and (FB reckon) reach up to 8000 people. The last time I tried this, they didn't ask any supplementary questions, they just  took my money and told me more people had seen it.

No way to analyse anything, but it wasn't a sales post and I've no idea if it did any good - but it's another option. (If you can get it in Australia.)

[TimothyEllis]

Timothy, I have a mere 185 followers/likers, call 'em what you will, on my FB author page. I can Boost a post for £15 and (FB reckon) reach up to 8000 people. The last time I tried this, they didn't ask any supplementary questions, they just  took my money and told me more people had seen it.

No way to analyse anything, but it wasn't a sales post and I've no idea if it did any good - but it's another option. (If you can get it in Australia.)

Have you checked if those 185 actually saw it? Because I doubt it.

[C. Gockel]

Have you checked if those 185 actually saw it? Because I doubt it.

It won't tell you how many people were followers and how many people were their friends. If she just boosted to her followers, the number reached would be closer to how many of her followers saw it, but would not be exact because whenever a follower likes or comments a post, their friends / family are more likely to see it.

[LilyBLily]

I suppose I ought to question why FB only spent $1.03 on my post boost a month ago, but I find it hard to care. FB advertising has never worked for me.

[The Bass Bagwhan]

I'm glad the conversation turned to FB ads. Amongst all the frustration, they seem a better option to me than AMS, which appear to be indecipherable and expensive.
So question: when you boost a FB ad, does FB care about the image you've created for the post? Because with FB ads, although it's relaxed the criteria somewhat, FB analyses and "approves" the ad and, in particular, the image. Are the criticisms, etc., about "too much text" and so on applied to boosted FB ads?

By the way, as an aside, in the good ol' days (or bad, depending on your POV) advertising by Big Five was more of a back-scratching exercise than any attempt at effective adverts. Books reviews in Literary columns, mentions at book festivals ... any kind of organic, name-dropping, promotion by print or television media was all discreetly dependent on how much money was spent on buying advertising space.
An exception - to which I fell slightly victim - was when Bryce Courtney switched publishers for a huge amount of money, and suddenly his books and advertising were everywhere in an attempt to recoup ROI. Piles of 'em in petrol stations, supermarkets ... you name it. Late nineties? There wasn't a cent of budget left for promoting the publisher's other new releases ... including mine and some colleagues.

[dgcasey]

I'm glad the conversation turned to FB ads. Amongst all the frustration, they seem a better option to me than AMS, which appear to be indecipherable and expensive.
So question: when you boost a FB ad, does FB care about the image you've created for the post? Because with FB ads, although it's relaxed the criteria somewhat, FB analyses and "approves" the ad and, in particular, the image. Are the criticisms, etc., about "too much text" and so on applied to boosted FB ads?

I'm having a lot more success with FB ads than I am with AMS ads at the moment. As for text in an image, I would just say, don't. There plenty of room above and below the ad to say whatever you want. FB will approve you ad with text in the image, but I suspect they throttle it if you choose to ignore their warning about it.

Also, I would never advocate "boosting" a post. I have never seen an post I boosted bring anything worthwhile. If your just looking to get your post in front of a few more eyeballs, it can work, but to use it to sell books, it doesn't appear to work. Just create a stand-alone ad and run that through the Ads Manager.

Here is the current ad I'm running right now. No text in the image and short and sweet blurbs.

[notthatamanda]

Slick ad.

I'm not on Facebook but I will chime in to say AMS is increasingly awful lately.

[Pyram King]

Thanks for the thread and I did find some helpful tidbits.

My first novel was just released (first a series).
I took Kindlepreneur's free AMS course https://courses.kindlepreneur.com/courses/AMS and started several campaigns using his strategy - so I will see how that goes.


With only 10 sales in 10 days with no advertising, I need to do something.

[Anarchist]

Thanks for the thread and I did find some helpful tidbits.

My first novel was just released (first a series).
I took Kindlepreneur's free AMS course https://courses.kindlepreneur.com/courses/AMS and started several campaigns using his strategy - so I will see how that goes.


With only 10 sales in 10 days with no advertising, I need to do something.

FWIW, that course is dated and shallow.* It's still valid info. But AMS has undergone huge changes over the last 12 months. These changes have resulted in AMS strategy becoming more complex as competition has increased.

It's like learning to play checkers. The basics are simple. But while learning, new rules have been enacted allowing lateral jumping and triple-kinging. These new rules have led to complex strategies like The Pincer Move, The Stronghold Gambit, and The Hungarian Offense. lol

So while most AMS advertisers are still doing the simple "bid on authors and titles and hope for the best" strategy (hello 2017!) the smart money is doing much more.



* That's not a hit against Dave. His 5-day course isn't meant to be comprehensive.