This might be interesting (and it is free)

Steve C

A Writers Joke

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KateESal

True Crime, crime readers and why Stephen King disowned one of his own novels

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Dave Chesson is an enthusiastic promoter of his own services. I'm doubtful about the value of paid advertising services on various venues, including Amazon and Facebook.

As an example of blatant pandering, on my Facebook business page, which I'm in the process of populating with posts from my Paul Pens writing blog, I posted this Colony article:

https://colony.litopia.com/threads/fairytale-book-covers.5868/

I received a message from Facebook, that if I paid them $50 to feature this post as an ad, I'd engage with 43,699 subscribers. Huh? How do they work that out and why should I believe them anyway?

A survey of Facebook advertisers said that 80% of ads failed:

Epic Fail: 80% of authors who used Facebook advertising to sell books.

It all reminds me of the quip by a sales manager: "50% of our advertising is working, the trouble is, we don't know which half."
 
Huh? Que? They should be offering to pay YOU for use of your article. @Paul Whybrow

Worra cheek.

Calling for the conjuring of that classic incantation (or north-east classic, anyway) "Awww. Haddaway and Shite!"
 
I would argue that Facebook ads are not really for selling products (at least in the case of authors and their books), but for building engagement and your brand profile/awareness. From there, you slowly nurture the relationships you create on the platform (e.g. by posting more content they might like—aka content marketing) and sales naturally come from that.

Edit: I should add, the content marketing approach is a slow burn. It can take time to get traction. But you can build a decent sized audience and elist from it over the course of a year or two.
 
Sorry, my post was in response to @Paul Whybrow's observations about Facebook. (Interesting article btw!)

But counter to that, I have heard that Amazon ads do work. If the course is free, could be worth doing.
 
That was my thinking. Did most of the course yesterday. Not sure if I can afford to pay for publicity, but has certainly given me some good tips.
 
80 percent failed... which means 20% worked (Which if true, means that if you get a grasp on it, your competition is low) which goes along with the Pareto Principle I talked about before. Many years ago I advertised online via FB among other platforms. A lot of my peers in the same business did not have success but most of that was down to they had no clue what they were doing or whom they were selling to.
Any advertisement in any business must be dialed in, tested and retried. I think a lot of people think they can throw x amount of money at it and it should bring about great results within the first couple of tries.
Advertising brings about one ego ie 'My pizza is the best they will find me naturally or 'Word of mouth/Recommendations will sell my book' but the truth is you have to advertise.

One last thing and this in my opinion shows the author of the FB ads don't work article is clueless....
"How do you make money advertising a free product?
Answer: You don’t. "

I'm not going to go into a long ramble about this though I am tempted but I will say this. People think that immediate sales is the key metric in advertising. They can be depending on your goal. But that is the problem, most people advertising havent a clue of what their goal is.
What if you advertised a free book to 1 thousand people for 100 euros ? According to the article you lost money. What if 100 of those people bought another book from you at 3.99 ? And out of those 100 people 15 became life long fans buying everything you print?

Simple answers to complex ideas never serves anyone.
 
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Steve C

A Writers Joke

  • Steve C
  • Replies: 0
KateESal

True Crime, crime readers and why Stephen King disowned one of his own novels

  • KateESal
  • Replies: 3
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