# Facebook Advertising: $500, 13 days, 1300 new subscribers



## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

As I have mentioned many times in the past few months (http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,203971.0.html), my mailing list strategy is the number 1 reason why I had a great year last year. It has been said that the money is in the list with regard to internet marketing, and I agree with that 100%. Nick Stephenson is doing good work on explaining the ways that you can build your list (we have been working on some of the same strategies since we met last year) and you can see his new programme here: http://www.yourfirst10kreaders.com/?ref=13 (NB: affiliate link)

I mentioned in previous posts that I have been experimenting with Facebook and AdSense marketing, too. I thought it might be helpful to set out a very brief look at what I'm doing witht he former and the encouraging results that I have had.

I started two new Facebook campaigns yesterday. One campaign is video, the other involves a static image. I'll talk about the latter today. The aim of both campaigns is to drive readers of similar books to the ones I am selling to my mailing list sign up page (you can see a version of it at www.markjdawson.com, but there are individual squeeze pages (no navigation leading off them) for both Facebook and Google.

My inducement to sign up is my four book Starter Library.

Facebook allows you a very impressive range of targeting options, and the ability to be very granular in the people to whom your ad will be served. So, given that I write books that are in the same vein as those of Lee Child, one of my audiences would include these parameters:

US/UK
20-65 years old
English Speaking
Have Liked pages for Child and Jack Reacher

Other audiences would be targeted at Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Robert Ludlum, etc.

I set daily budgets of $10 and capped the campaigns at a couple of weeks (although I am likely to run them ad infinitum now).

The early results are positive.

Since I switched the campaigns live on Thursday night (and not including today), I have had:

356 clicks to website squeeze page.
Those clicks are costing me 9c per click.
Counting only unique visitors, I have had 312 people visit the squeeze page.
Those visitors are converting to website sign-ups at a rate of 20%
I have had 63 new sign ups. 
Each sign-up is costing me 50c.

I've tried to run some numbers suggesting how much each sign-up might be worth to me. I've been conservative in my analysis (assuming very low open and click rates on my campaigns to those new readers) and haven't counted the likelihood of backlist purchases. With all that in mind, without any readthrough each subscriber is likely to generate $57, making a profit of $7. _With_ readthrough, revenue per subscriber increases to $74, so just short of a 50% return on the investment.

Early days yet - this could all go south very quickly, but it is an encouraging start. I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks trying to wrap my head around Facebook's Power Editor (the best way to write and run your ads) and, with the caveat that I am very (VERY) far away from being an expert (more of a happy amateur) I'll be happy to help others with questions if I can.


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## A.A (Mar 30, 2012)

Bookmarked. I've dabbled in facebook advertising (just barely) and am interested in your plan and results


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## Jarrett Rush (Jun 19, 2010)

I feel like Facebook has really good potential for this kind of activity. I don't know that it will help sell individual books, but it does seem like a great way to build a list. The ability to really target people who should be interested in what you do is really valuable, especially for as cheaply as you can buy ads. At the very least, the cost makes it affordable to test. Even if it doesn't work you aren't out too much money.

Curious, when you say ad you really do me an ad and not a boosted post from your author page, correct?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

I use boosted posts for some things, but these are ads.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

Great results, thanks for sharing. I agree with you. I first tried to use Facebook Ads to sell books, but that was not effective for me. I was much happier with the results when I used Facebook Ads to build my list. I create a separate list for those campaigns to segment and better track results.

Nick Stephenson's Reader Magnets was awesome. I'm currently changing my home page of my website and my front/back matter of my books after reading it. Right now I just have a basic "click here to join my list" type verbiage. I expect my opt-ins will increase once I've made the changes based on Reader Magnets. I love the way Nick and your website are laid out with the mission to build a mailing list with an irresistible offer, free books.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Alan Petersen said:


> Nick Stephenson's Reader Magnets was awesome. I'm currently changing my home page of my website and my front/back matter of my books after reading it. Right now I just have a basic "click here to join my list" type verbiage. I expect my opt-ins will increase once I've made the changes based on Reader Magnets. I love the way Nick and your website are laid out with the mission to build a mailing list with an irresistible offer, free books.


I've been giving stuff away to encourage sign ups for months now - it is very successful. Good luck with it, Alan.


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## Tim_A (May 25, 2013)

When you say Reader Magnets, you mean things like free ebooks for signing up, yes? (I had a horrible vision for a moment of random readers stuck to my fridge door...)

I'd love to see examples of the ads people post to Facebook, especially if they are successful. Are they just book covers with some blurb, or something else?


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

i've run quite a few facebook ads myself. They are great for listbuilding (cost per conversion was about 50 cent), disastrous for book sales (I did get sales but had an atrocious ROI. . .).

However, i am yet to determine the realy value of those who sign up just to get a free book vs those who sign up via the link at the end of the book.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RomanceAuthor said:


> However, i am yet to determine the realy value of those who sign up just to get a free book vs those who sign up via the link at the end of the book.


I'm going to test that when I have a couple of hundred of sign ups. The first way will be to run a typical broadcast email to that separate list to see how they respond. I'm allowing for very low open and click rates, but it will be good to quantify them. I might also put together a survey to get a little information about their buying behaviour and attitude to the offer and being on the list.

The price per click is so low at the moment that my model breaks even with very low opens and clicks and assumes no other purchases. If the rates are more generous, it suggests that this could be more lucrative.


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> ...With all that in mind, without any readthrough each subscriber is likely to generate $57, making a profit of $7. _With_ readthrough, revenue per subscriber increases to $74, so just short of a 50% return on the investment.


Mark,

Can you explain how you arrive at that $57 figure?

Thanks for sharing your experience!


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

The one thing you have to be very careful of with Facebook is the way they define a click. It's totally bait and switch. If you run a campaign with a link to your website, it will also include a like button (for your Facebook page) and a link to your facebook page. Even though your desire may be for the ad to go to your website page, you pay for every click, including the likes and visits to your Facebook page.

For a lot of people this probably doesn't matter, but I found it extremely misleading and not what I was aiming for with my campaign. After spending $100 on Facebook, I'd say that nearly 80% of the money went to visits to my Facebook page.


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## Cege Smith (Dec 11, 2011)

Tim_A said:


> When you say Reader Magnets, you mean things like free ebooks for signing up, yes? (I had a horrible vision for a moment of random readers stuck to my fridge door...)
> 
> I'd love to see examples of the ads people post to Facebook, especially if they are successful. Are they just book covers with some blurb, or something else?


Pretty sure they meant this. 



Nick's been all over the self-pub podcast circuit over the last few weeks. If I could even increase my list sign-ups by even 10% I'd be really happy. I've been at this for 3 years, and my sign-ups are worse than anemic.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Both Facebook and Twitter (via their leadgen advertising) are very effective at building lists, but I'm still very uncertain about the underlying list value. Open rates on the list generated from my website alone are north of 50%. Those from external sources, especially those where I sweetened the pot with a "magnet," were WAY south of that. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, of course, but I'm kind of moving my list from "interacting with fans" to "tossing stuff to a huge number of people where a small % will act."

Again, the latter is by no means bad (and frankly is really good), but it's _different_, and because it's different I'm still trying to get a handle on it.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Finally, a more normal case study and not someone just throwing out some money on FB ads, without any preparation or research and then writing up a post about it.. saying they don't work.. Good to see someone taking this seriously.

Here is another case study, about serializing ads and experimenting (lowering CPC costs a lot too). It can be done for writers too. Check it out (it is long read):

http://www.jonloomer.com/2015/01/19/facebook-ads-63-percent-ctr/


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jakedfw said:


> For a lot of people this probably doesn't matter, but I found it extremely misleading and not what I was aiming for with my campaign. After spending $100 on Facebook, I'd say that nearly 80% of the money went to visits to my Facebook page.


I'm very careful with this. The ads direct to a squeeze page on my website that is otherwise hidden - the only traffic going there comes from the ads. Also, I'm keeping a careful eye on Analytics and the inbound traffic matches the Facebook reports.

And, at the end of the day, the main metric - the only one I am interested in - is signups. I have dedicated lists depending upon where the signup is coming from, including one for Facebook. I can very easily divide the cash spent divided by signups to find cost per signup.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Bob Stewart said:


> Mark,
> 
> Can you explain how you arrive at that $57 figure?


Sure. It's a calculation that takes into account predicted open and click rates, the number of campaigns I run a year and the average value of a single sale in each campaign. It's an educated guess, but I should be able to be more accurate once I have a larger list and more data. The bottom line is that the cost per sign up is very low - between 40c and 50c - and so it doesn't take too much to beat.


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Sure. It's a calculation that takes into account predicted open and click rates, the number of campaigns I run a year and the average value of a single sale in each campaign...


I guess I just can't picture the equation that gets you to $57. Let's say author X sends an email a month, each advertising a book he makes $3 on, he has a very healthy 50% click rate and 100% of the people who click buy the book. In a year, the average list member would net him $18.


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## SimonPotts (Jan 16, 2015)

I use Facebook advertising extensively for my B&M business (between $50-400 per day depending on what is happening). 

Can confirm that it is pretty good bang for the buck with the right targeting.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

RomanceAuthor said:


> i've run quite a few facebook ads myself. They are great for listbuilding (cost per conversion was about 50 cent), disastrous for book sales (I did get sales but had an atrocious ROI. . .).
> 
> However, i am yet to determine the realy value of those who sign up just to get a free book vs those who sign up via the link at the end of the book.


A subscriber that signed up directly from your book matter is going to trump just about all others. They've bought your book, read it, and joined your list. I have a separate list for folks who sign up via my book vs. a Facebook Ad, my website, etc.

For other sources, you can increase the quality by honing the traffic sent to your free offer so that you're getting folks who already interested in what you're offering vs. just looking for anything free. So the offer has to be so good that it's hard to pass up. I've tried free chapters and such but Mark and Nick give their bestselling books. Mark gives away several novels and novellas. If you're sending fans of thrillers to that offer they will be excited and so even though they're entering into his ecosystem via a freebie it's a well vetted prospect vs a giveaway that just has folks signing up for free books regardless of the genre.

Mark, question for you, if in select is giving away a book for sale in select to a subscriber violate Amazon's TOS?


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

Rodeo Host said:


> Pretty sure they meant this.
> 
> 
> 
> Nick's been all over the self-pub podcast circuit over the last few weeks. If I could even increase my list sign-ups by even 10% I'd be really happy. I've been at this for 3 years, and my sign-ups are worse than anemic.


That's the one. I highly recommend that book. Great tips and he walks you through it, step-by-step, so you can actually implement them pretty quickly. And if you check the sales rank for his fiction books, it's obvious he's doing things right by his sales.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Alan Petersen said:


> A subscriber that signed up directly from your book matter is going to trump just about all others. They've bought your book, read it, and joined your list. I have a separate list for folks who sign up via my book vs. a Facebook Ad, my website, etc.


Makes sense BUT even if half of the people unsubscribe after reading your freebies (because they don't like it), it's still worth doing it.. Down the road, even if you only get a 100 subs out of 1000 that sign up, that 100 people will make a lot of impact on your next book's launch and the ranking. So, directly, the ROI of them might be low, but indirectly, they are causing more ROI by growing your sales rank which means just more sales and new readers!


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

RBC said:


> Makes sense BUT even if half of the people unsubscribe after reading your freebies (because they don't like it), it's still worth doing it.. Down the road, even if you only get a 100 subs out of 1000 that sign up, that 100 people will make a lot of impact on your next book's launch and the ranking. So, directly, the ROI of them might be low, but indirectly, they are causing more ROI by growing your sales rank which means just more sales and new readers!


Absolutely. Giving away something to build a list has been a staple of the direct and Internet marketing world for eons because it works.


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2015)

Thanks a lot for this discussion

1) The first post (OP) is really good. Nice to see someone take a very measured approach.

2) I agree with this: Both Facebook and Twitter (via their leadgen advertising) are very effective at building lists, but I'm still very uncertain about the underlying list value. Open rates on the list generated from my website alone are north of 50%. Those from external sources, especially those where I sweetened the pot with a "magnet," were WAY south of that. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, of course, but I'm kind of moving my list from "interacting with fans" to "tossing stuff to a huge number of people where a small % will act." 

It's fine if you want to shout about 'how many subscribers you have' but conversion is not very good with Facebook.

3) Adding to 2 above, doing promotions causes lots of problems. I've seen lots of authors and sites (of all kinds) focus on promotion based stuff and that just leads to Subscribers of low quality.

All that being said, I think for a lot of people it's better to add lots of subscribers than to not add subscribers. Adding lots of subscribers also has social proof and pre-selection benefits i.e. actual good readers will think - Lots of people have subscribed it must be good + other readers like it, it must be good, i should join.

So you can't really lose provided you understand what that promotion drived subscribers and FB ad driven subscribers give you.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Alan Petersen said:


> Absolutely. Giving away something to build a list has been a staple of the direct and Internet marketing world for eons because it works.


Actually, Guns N Roses group has used this methodology BEFORE there was email.. they collected phone numbers and made the list that way. Here is the story:
http://thetysonreport.com/guns-n-roses-list-building/

So it's been a staple in many many famous occasions. It just doesn't get the recognition it should as it's not a sexy strategy. And it's work.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

OK. Three days of advertising in the can. Some numbers and observations in the event that they might be interesting or helpful for others.

In general: still going very well.

219 new signups added at a cost of around $100.

I've set up five ad sets with five ads. One ad set is served a video as their promo, the other four get static images. Copy is largely the same for each. All are being targetted at authors in my genre.

Cost per click is still around 7c. The audience of Lee Child fans is cheapest at 6c per click, James Patterson's is most expensive at 15c.

Conversion (site visits/signups) is around 26%.

Cost per signup is around 43c.

(Video views are going great, with well over 1000 views at 2c per view.)

I need to add tracking pixels to firm up the conversion numbers. A job for tomorrow.



ireaderreview said:


> I'm still very uncertain about the underlying list value. Open rates on the list generated from my website alone are north of 50%. Those from external sources, especially those where I sweetened the pot with a "magnet," were WAY south of that. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, of course, but I'm kind of moving my list from "interacting with fans" to "tossing stuff to a huge number of people where a small % will act."


I am expecting it to be much lower. My open rates are around 40-50% in "normal" lists, and I'm guessing this will hit around 10% with high unsubscribes if I hit them with my full autoresponder sequence.

But I segment my readers into a lot of different lists - ones for each book, ones for contests, advertising, etc. That means I will be able to test behaviour very carefully once I have a representative number. I'll fire out a reduced offer on the second book in the series (they have the first as their freebie) to see how they react. What is the open rate? What is the click rate? That'll give me the best indication of how valuable the list is likely to be and what the cost of each signup needs to be under to make it viable. And I'll run a SurveyMonkey poll to see how many will say that they would buy a book from me after reading their freebie (if, of course, they read it).

There's a lot of uncertainty in this, for sure, but my philosophy is if you don't try, you'll never know. I've seen enough from others to make me think that the new Amazon advertising is not working as currently configured. For the $100 others are testing on that system, I have over 200 new list signups. Chances are that 175 will never buy anything from me, but if I get 25 to buy even a couple of my books, I'll be in the black. If they don't, never mind. Lesson learned.

I am cautiously optimistic.


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## Rich Amooi (Feb 14, 2014)

I LOVE the idea and have also been following Nick, but what's a guy like me (or Alan) to do with just a couple of books done? I do have a third book coming April 1st and a fourth in July but I would love to do something right now. Curious of your thoughts, Mark. Thanks!   


By the way, I did try some Facebook advertising a few weeks ago to get more likes (that would hopefully lead them to my list) and for social proof. I ended up getting about sixty new likes at two bucks a pop!    Yeah, I pulled the plug on that one fast. lol.


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## Alan Petersen (May 20, 2011)

Rich Amooi said:


> I LOVE the idea and have also been following Nick, but what's a guy like me (or Alan) to do with just a couple of books done? I do have a third book coming April 1st and a fourth in July but I would love to do something right now. Curious of your thoughts, Mark. Thanks!
> 
> By the way, I did try some Facebook advertising a few weeks ago to get more likes (that would hopefully lead them to my list) and for social proof. I ended up getting about sixty new likes at two bucks a pop!  Yeah, I pulled the plug on that one fast. lol.


Yeah, we're on the same boat, but you're ahead of me. I'm so slow, but I have book three in the works (not ready to pick a publishing date yet). I'm just going to giveaway what I have now. It won't be as enticing as the package they can offer with more books, but hey, folks can still get a free book that's only available for sale so that's something. And in the front/back matter of each book, I'll offer the other one for free. So that's what I'm doing in order to get started right away. I'll let you know how it works out.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Rich Amooi said:


> I LOVE the idea and have also been following Nick, but what's a guy like me (or Alan) to do with just a couple of books done? I do have a third book coming April 1st and a fourth in July but I would love to do something right now. Curious of your thoughts, Mark. Thanks!


If it were me, I would give away the first book now. A mailing list signup is worth more than a sale to me - I'm in this for the long haul. I'd probably also find time in my schedule to write a 15k-20k short and give that away, too.


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## Rich Amooi (Feb 14, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> If it were me, I would give away the first book now. A mailing list signup is worth more than a sale to me - I'm in this for the long haul. I'd probably also find time in my schedule to write a 15k-20k short and give that away, too.


Thanks for your advice, Mark. Appreciate it.  
Where are you pointing these readers in the back matter or what are you telling them AFTER they read your free books? 
Also, did you design you own squeeze page and the teaser sign-up on your home page?
Thanks again.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Rich Amooi said:


> Thanks for your advice, Mark. Appreciate it.
> Where are you pointing these readers in the back matter or what are you telling them AFTER they read your free books?
> Also, did you design you own squeeze page and the teaser sign-up on your home page?
> Thanks again.


Each of my free books points to the next book in the series. That's the whole point - they are in your funnel, you want to make sure they progress down it.

And no - I'm hopeless at design, so I paid an agency to do it for me.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

An update on the Facebook campaign. You'll recall I suggested it might be a better source of your ad dollars than the new Amazon scheme. It has been a complete success so far, outperforming the metrics I had set on every level.

I've run a mixture of static image and video ads to a number of different sets of Facebook users who have liked authors in my genre: Lee Child, Daniel Silva, Vince Flynn, etc. 

Since I set the first ad live on 1/29:

- I've added just shy of 1,000 new subscribers to a specific list set up for the purpose (I'm not moving the cold subscribers into my "warm" lists until I have a better idea of the open, click and unsubscribe rates I can expect). 

- My landing page is converting visitors to subscibers are a uniform 23%. I am tweaking that process this week with a view to increasing that percentage.

- Each click to website is costing me between 8c and 14c for the static ads and around 10c per video.

- Each new subscriber is costing around 40c.

I'm offering my Starter Library in this campaign, and it seems to be performing well. I have established a five part autoresponder to provide each of the four books - doing it individually allows me to make contact four times and help establish me as a correspondent that they don't mind hearing from. More contact also allows me to monitor and tweak open and clicks rates, and those have been very robust with very few unsubscribes, even after getting the last free book. The fifth autoresponder is a link to a SurveyMonkey page where I ask some questions as to whether they think they will buy from me in the future. That will allow me to set a value on each subscriber so that I don't pay FB more than they are likely worth to me. 

The acquisition cost is so low, and the early evidence so positive, that this feels like it might be a case of giving Mark Zuckerberg $5 and getting $6 in return; but we will see. It's definitely been a fun experiment.


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## Guest (Feb 7, 2015)

Thanks for sharing.

Also, I don't think M Zucker will have any problems taking $5 from you for generating $6 for you.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Thanks for sharing your expertise, Mark. I'm on your and all Nick's lists and I'm trying to do something similar to you, however I just started and don't have any significant results. First I offered a short story written for this purpose, now I decided to offer a free book #2 in a serial to buyers of a perma-free book #1. Will see how it will work. 

May I ask you a question? Do you send emails to your list all weekdays or you avoid sending in weekends? Do you have any statistics on open rates for emails sent in weekends?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Dmotley said:


> Thanks for sharing your expertise, Mark. I'm on your and all Nick's lists and I'm trying to do something similar to you, however I just started and don't have any significant results. First I offered a short story written for this purpose, now I decided to offer a free book #2 in a serial to buyers of a perma-free book #1. Will see how it will work.
> 
> May I ask you a question? Do you send emails to your list all weekdays or you avoid sending in weekends? Do you have any statistics on open rates for emails sent in weekends?


May I ask you a question? Do you send emails to your list all weekdays or you avoid sending in weekends? Do you have any statistics on open rates for emails sent in weekends?

[/quote]

I don't look to open rates and specific days of the week. That might be worth looking at, but there are only so many hours in the day!

What you can do, however, is use Timewarp on MailChimp. This will analyse open rates from previous campaigns, and then send the emails to specific subscribers at the most optimal times. It seems to work reasonably well.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Thanks for replying, Mark. I'm at GetResponse, not Mail Chimp, but I believe there are a lot of available tools for tracking. I just have too tiny list for gathering any statistics.


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## Shei Darksbane (Jan 31, 2015)

FYI for everyone in this thread, Reader Magnets is on free today.  Not sure how long it's been that way, but I glanced at it and it is free. So I grabbed it.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Arshness said:


> FYI for everyone in this thread, Reader Magnets is on free today.  Not sure how long it's been that way, but I glanced at it and it is free. So I grabbed it.


I bet it's perma-free


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## Nick Endi Webb (Mar 25, 2012)

Mark, thanks for this post. Question: what are you doing to get the CPC so low? I'm doing a similar type of ad, but when I lower my bid below around 35c, then FB stops showing it to anyone. My CTR is decent (4%), my budget is high ($50/day), and my audience is pretty targeted and largish--like 200,000 people. Any tips?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Endi Webb said:


> Mark, thanks for this post. Question: what are you doing to get the CPC so low? I'm doing a similar type of ad, but when I lower my bid below around 35c, then FB stops showing it to anyone. My CTR is decent (4%), my budget is high ($50/day), and my audience is pretty targeted and largish--like 200,000 people. Any tips?


In Power Editor, when you are setting a price for your Ad Set I would let FB optimise for whatever your chosen action is. Don't set a bid. Limit your daily spend to a number you are happy with and you'll be fine. The price will go up over time - I'm at 11c a click, up from 8c - but it has performed better for me than manually bidding.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

I've been sending a ton of traffic to my squeeze pages as a result of the Facebook promo - my ads have been served 65,000 times and I've had 5,000 visits. Conversion had been running at 24%, which is pretty decent for cold traffic. But, even so, it meant that 75% of those who were interested enough to visit were leaving without signing up.

I wanted to bring that conversion metric up.

Until yesterday, visitors to my Facebook squeeze page were presented with an image of the books I am giving away, a little copy and a box with a large SUBSCRIBE button next to it. It did the trick, but it was a little aggressive (asking for something as soon as the visitor arrived on the site).

There is a lot of discussion on internet marketing fora about the counter-intuitive benefits of requiring the visitor to do something before they are asked for their email address. I tweaked my site to make some changes.

markjdawson.com

It make sense when you consider it. This new way is much less aggressive - instead of the first thing a reader sees being an in your face GIVE ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS, it reverses things. Now, it's WOULD YOU LIKE SOME FREE BOOKS? The answer to that is going to be yes, especially as these visitors have just clicked a FB ad to find out more. Once they click the box, the pop-up appears. Even here, it doesn't ask for an email address so that they can be added to my list. It asks for an address so I can send them their free books. It's all about the books.

It's a subtle change but one that seems to be performing well. The first campaign I am using to send traffic to the new page is converting at 45%.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> I've been sending a ton of traffic to my squeeze pages as a result of the Facebook promo - my ads have been served 65,000 times and I've had 5,000 visits. Conversion had been running at 24%, which is pretty decent for cold traffic. But, even so, it meant that 75% of those who were interested enough to visit were leaving without signing up.
> 
> I wanted to bring that conversion metric up.
> 
> ...


This is interesting, Mark. i once did this test as well, and my conversion rate was worse than. . .

what was your daily budget for each facebook ad?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Around $50.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Around $50.


Was that $50 pro ad? how many ads did you have in parallel?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

$50 a day, with around four ad sets and one or two ads per set.


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

Mark,

Is your landing page for the ad your home page?

Also, could you show us a couple of your ad images?

Thanks!


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Bob Stewart said:


> Is your landing page for the ad your home page?
> 
> Also, could you show us a couple of your ad images?


I have squeeze pages for Facebook, Google and general campaigns; they are similar to the home page but with all navigation off them removed.

I would show you an image, but it's late and I'm off to bed. In short - picture of books being given away. For Lee Child fans, the copy reads:

As enjoyable as Jack Reacher?

Decide for yourself. Click download to get your free books (worth $10)

and then...

Bestselling British author is giving away four free books, including the first in his 300,000 selling John Milton series.

This, or variations thereof.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Aloha,

If you are thinking about trying to run FB ads, be careful how you pick your obective when you design your campaign. I initially chose Clicks to Website as the aim, and had good success - several hundred clicks a day at around 10c a click. Once they get to your squeeze page, it's up to you, of course.

I experimented with switching to Website Conversions as the objective and installed the tracking pixel on the Thank You page after signup. The cost per conversion immediately shot up to 77c. Not bad at all, but nowhere near the 40c I had been seeing. Needless to say, I've switched back to what was working before!

It's all good experience, and I've learned a lot. Added 1,400 subscibers, too; the really interesting thing will be to see how they react to a normal campaign after I've given them some time to read their freebies.


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## Dactyl (Dec 27, 2014)

RomanceAuthor said:


> i've run quite a few facebook ads myself. They are great for listbuilding (cost per conversion was about 50 cent), disastrous for book sales (I did get sales but had an atrocious ROI. . .).


I don't use social media for ballyhooing my writing. I have heard about and read too many comments similar to yours. That's partially the reason why. Similar to what I've read about free books galore. Some people are more than happy to give away 50,000 books to sell 50 a few months later. However --- I am not one to judge on such matters. Some people make this kind of effort and profit big time from it. Many fall flat and lose more than time. Hope your efforts are wildly successful.


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## Sever Bronny (May 13, 2013)

Fantastic info, Mark, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Aloha,
> 
> If you are thinking about trying to run FB ads, be careful how you pick your obective when you design your campaign. I initially chose Clicks to Website as the aim, and had good success - several hundred clicks a day at around 10c a click. Once they get to your squeeze page, it's up to you, of course.
> 
> I experimented with switching to Website Conversions as the objective and installed the tracking pixel on the Thank You page after signup. The cost per conversion immediately shot up to 77c. Not bad at all, but nowhere near the 40c I had been seeing. Needless to say, I've switched back to what was working before!


That is very interesting! i've only used website conversions for this type of ads. Will test with clicks to website.

Question: for your squeeze page, do you use leadpages or something similar or is it self-made?

Also, something I've learned by testing a lot of facebook ads: the higher your budget, the higher the cost per click (if you leave it to facebook to optimize it). So if you see that an ad that has a $20 budget has 0.1 CPC, don't be tempted to change the budget to $100. Your CPC will skyrocket (i have tested this repeatedly and also spoken to some fb experts about it. they have confirmed that this happens for their ads too, though they didn't have an explanation for it).

If your audience is large enough it's a better option to set multiple $20 ads to run in parallel.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Question: for your squeeze page, do you use leadpages or something similar or is it self-made?


It's self-made:

www.markjdawson.com

Your other point is interesting, too. I have a number of ads that run in conjunction, all with budgets of between $5 and $15 a day. I was considering increasing the daily spend per ad, but I'll test it carefully now.

The best bang for buck is with video. I was getting views at 1c and 2c per view when optimising for video.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> It's self-made:
> 
> www.markjdawson.com
> 
> ...


Mark would you mind sharing your video for the ad? i've been thinking of doing video too but not sure what type of video works for books. . .

For the record, these were my resuls:
€5 ad budget - CP website click of 0.13
€100 ad b - CP website click of 0.28
€ 200 ad b- CP website click of 0.37

i also had some intermediary budgets but can't find the stats for those. cost per conversion was something like 0.5 when i had a budget of 5 and almost 2.5 when it was 200. i thinkthat up until 50 euros cost don't grow significantly, but any ad budget more than 50 and it explodes.


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## jackconnerbooks (Nov 18, 2014)

This has been an inspiration for me, and I've just started my first FB campaign that sends people to my newsletter squeeze page. Thank you so much, OP!


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Mark would you mind sharing your video for the ad? i've been thinking of doing video too but not sure what type of video works for books. . .


Sure:


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jackconnerbooks said:


> This has been an inspiration for me, and I've just started my first FB campaign that sends people to my newsletter squeeze page. Thank you so much, OP!


Great! Keep an eye on your budget and don't be afraid to experiment. And good luck.


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## jackconnerbooks (Nov 18, 2014)

Thank you!


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## evawallace (Aug 7, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> The one thing you have to be very careful of with Facebook is the way they define a click. It's totally bait and switch. If you run a campaign with a link to your website, it will also include a like button (for your Facebook page) and a link to your facebook page. Even though your desire may be for the ad to go to your website page, you pay for every click, including the likes and visits to your Facebook page.
> 
> For a lot of people this probably doesn't matter, but I found it extremely misleading and not what I was aiming for with my campaign. After spending $100 on Facebook, I'd say that nearly 80% of the money went to visits to my Facebook page.


Thanks for this and others for sharing, I've been reading a look of books based on facebook advertising and it seems their's different strategies for getting sales and getting a mailing list. I'm on holiday over the next couple of weeks but intend to start advertising on facebook when I return. I post the results.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> Sure:


Very professional, Mark. Well done!

I went to Wiki to see what they say about squeeze pages:

"A squeeze page is a single web page with the sole purpose of capturing information for follow-up marketing; that means NO exit hyperlinks. Quality squeeze pages use success stories that the prospect would relate to when making a buying decision. They also use things like color psychology, catchy sales copy and keyword rich text placed with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind.[2] Some advanced marketers even use audio and video on their squeeze page.

Internet marketers borrow copywriting techniques from offline direct response marketing. This includes the use of a headline, bullets, teaser copy, deadlines, testimonials, scarcity, and the like. Aggressive marketers will present visitors with multiple incentives in exchange for their contact information.

As a general rule, Internet marketers try to keep the content on their squeeze pages to a minimum. The goal of the page is to obtain the visitor's email address; additional information could distract the user or cause them to "click away" to a different website. Navigation and hyperlinks are almost always absent from typical squeeze pages. The absence of links is used to focus visitors' attention on one choice: register for the email list or leave the site."


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Yep, that's what you would expect to find on a true squeeze page. Mine isn't quite so Spartan - there is a link off to my main page, but you definitely do want to minimise "leaks." The page is there to collect the subscription so that the reader ca get his or her free books - nothing else.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Squeeze pages in Nick Stephenson's style work well, at least for me. I started two FB campaigns yesterday. One that sends prospects to a squeeze page (Nick's style) has been life for 16 hours and got 26 post engagements on FB and converted to 9 signups. 

Mark, thanks for sharing your experience in optimising the signup form. I changed the signup form title to one similar to yours and, I believe, it helped with better conversion.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> I started two new Facebook campaigns yesterday. One campaign is video, the other involves a static image. I'll talk about the latter today. The aim of both campaigns is to drive readers of similar books to the ones I am selling to my mailing list sign up page (you can see a version of it at www.markjdawson.com, but there are individual squeeze pages (no navigation leading off them) for both Facebook and Google.
> 
> My inducement to sign up is my four book Starter Library.
> 
> ...


How did you target people who liked certain author fan pages? I couldn't find it anywhere when I was setting up my ads, and according to the FB help page it can't be done. :/

Thanks!


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## AJStewart (May 10, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Aloha,
> 
> If you are thinking about trying to run FB ads, be careful how you pick your obective when you design your campaign. I initially chose Clicks to Website as the aim, and had good success - several hundred clicks a day at around 10c a click. Once they get to your squeeze page, it's up to you, of course.
> 
> ...


Mark thanks for this. I have been using website conversion for a few months on and off, and was converting at about 50c per signup, which I was pretty happy with, but paused to try a free campaign on ENT and a bunch of other sites which went really well, and has led to both sales and signups. I'll try the click to site as well and do the math.

BTW, really loved Salvation Row. Great book about a great town.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

RBC said:


> Actually, Guns N Roses group has used this methodology BEFORE there was email.. they collected phone numbers and made the list that way. Here is the story:
> http://thetysonreport.com/guns-n-roses-list-building/
> 
> So it's been a staple in many many famous occasions. It just doesn't get the recognition it should as it's not a sexy strategy. And it's work.


Man, I love this Guns and Roses thing. And that freebie "Reader Magnets" book - can't wait to read it! Great post - and I'm so happy for you, Mark, on the signups. That's a lot of people willing to give their emails out. I expect a good return for you, and am glad you kept the list separate for tracking. So smart.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Emily Wibberley said:


> How did you target people who liked certain author fan pages? I couldn't find it anywhere when I was setting up my ads, and according to the FB help page it can't be done. :/


When you are setting your Ad Set, go into Audience and Edit Audience, and then in INTERESTS, put in the author you are interested in. For me, it might be Lee Child or Jack Reacher. Multiple choices will be treated as OR, rather than AND, unfortunately, but you can still drill down to very specific subsets.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

AJStewart said:


> BTW, really loved Salvation Row. Great book about a great town.


Thanks - too kind!

Good luck with the ads - shoot me a question as necessary.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

FMH said:


> I expect a good return for you, and am glad you kept the list separate for tracking. So smart.


Thanks. I'll hit 3,000 new subscribers some time tomorrow. They are adding at a cost of around 50c per subscriber at the moment, which works for me.

I'm SurveyMonkey-ing all of the signups and am predicting likely buy rates of 4% per campaign I send out (meaning 4 out of every 100 new subscribers will buy). Assuming that I send out six campaigns a year (with something new to offer for sale), I am showing a $13.88 profit over the cost of acquiring each 100 subscribers.

And that takes no account of read through, something that I know I get a lot of. I'll only know for sure when I have something new to sell, but, since that should be Monday, not too long to give this a proper test.


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Great thread. Bookmarked!
Felt inspired and launched my first FB ad.
Not seeing the rates you are, but gotta start somewhere.

Thank you for posting this.


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## AnonWriter (Dec 12, 2013)

Thanks, Mark!


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## charlottehughes (Dec 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Early days yet - this could all go south very quickly, but it is an encouraging start. I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks trying to wrap my head around Facebook's Power Editor (the best way to write and run your ads) and, with the caveat that I am very (VERY) far away from being an expert (more of a happy amateur) I'll be happy to help others with questions if I can.


Not sure I know about the "Power Editor" can you say more?


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Thanks. I'll hit 3,000 new subscribers some time tomorrow. They are adding at a cost of around 50c per subscriber at the moment, which works for me.
> 
> I'm SurveyMonkey-ing all of the signups and am predicting likely buy rates of 4% per campaign I send out (meaning 4 out of every 100 new subscribers will buy). Assuming that I send out six campaigns a year (with something new to offer for sale), I am showing a $13.88 profit over the cost of acquiring each 100 subscribers.
> 
> And that takes no account of read through, something that I know I get a lot of. I'll only know for sure when I have something new to sell, but, since that should be Monday, not too long to give this a proper test.


Hey Mark. 3,000 new subscribers is impressive result, congratulations.

When you launch a new book on Monday, will you track your email open/click rate for new subscribers separately from your long time fans? I'm asking because I've got more than 500 new subscribers during the last three weeks, but my open rate for the last email (a blurb and cover reveal) was only 24.5% (and 3.96% click rate). But I'm a new author, not many readers know me. It's interesting to see how new subscribers will react on emails from an established author.

Another question (sorry if it was answered earlier): do you resend your emails (probably with a new title) to those subscribers who refused to open them first time?


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## cvwriter (May 16, 2011)

Is there a time limit on video ads? Can you use a book trailer as the video on FB or is that not effective for building a list?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Dmotley said:


> When you launch a new book on Monday, will you track your email open/click rate for new subscribers separately from your long time fans?


Yes. I'll have new affiliate links for those emails. I have multiple email lists, so the new FB subscribers will get a launch email tailored to them, plus a link that will allow me to see how they have reacted. If buys are lower than I think they will be, I'll revisit how much to continue to invest in FB ads. If they are better, I'll invest more.



Dmotley said:


> Another question (sorry if it was answered earlier): do you resend your emails (probably with a new title) to those subscribers who refused to open them first time?


I do, although I don't see it as "refusing" necessarily. They might just have been missed. Change up your header so that - say - you thank the subscribers for a great launch. If it were me, I'd be more likely to open the mail so that I could see what the fuss was about.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

cvwriter said:


> Is there a time limit on video ads? Can you use a book trailer as the video on FB or is that not effective for building a list?


You can use it, but I probably wouldn't. That's just me - I don't like book trailers because. I know that unless I put a lot of money down, it'll look amateurish.


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> I do, although I don't see it as "refusing" necessarily. They might just have been missed. Change up your header so that - say - you thank the subscribers for a great launch. If it were me, I'd be more likely to open the mail so that I could see what the fuss was about.


Mark,

You definitely don't miss a trick.

The thing I find most interesting about your success using Facebook to build your list is that it has nothing to do with having a presence on their site.

I wonder if they came to the conclusion that allowing businesses into a person's newsfeed (or whatever they call it) was cheapening the experience and endangering their franchise.


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Is anyone using Leadpages. I can make a landing page myself, but I'd be willing to invest in Leadpages just for the Leadlinks functionality. Basically, the person clicks the link in your email, and that's it... they are subscribed to your mailing list. No need to go to a website to fill in their email address or anything. I'm curious if anyone is doing anything like that on Kboards?

Of course the theory is that the fewer clicks the higher your conversion, which is pretty much a law more than a theory at this point.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jakedfw said:


> Is anyone using Leadpages. I can make a landing page myself, but I'd be willing to invest in Leadpages just for the Leadlinks functionality. Basically, the person clicks the link in your email, and that's it... they are subscribed to your mailing list. No need to go to a website to fill in their email address or anything. I'm curious if anyone is doing anything like that on Kboards?
> 
> Of course the theory is that the fewer clicks the higher your conversion, which is pretty much a law more than a theory at this point.


That's not always true. There is a theory that an extra level between seeing an offer and accepting an offer increases conversion; that has been my experience after testing several iterations of my site. I used to have the signup form visible so that you just entered your details and clicked subscribe. Very simple. But, it was a bit too much like an order: "give me your email address."

I've had better success with a button that says "Get Your Free Books." Click that, and then I ask: "Where would you like me to send your books?" Obviously, I make it clear that this is a mailing list, but there is a very clear no-spam promise and the reference to very easy unsubbing.

Increased my conversion by 10% overnight.


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## charlottehughes (Dec 18, 2014)

When setting up the ad at facebook, there is a selection for Desktop Newsfeed ads. I turned that off thinking that it was going to send people to like my facebook ad (I am setting up the ad to click to my website).


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## Jake Kerr (Aug 6, 2014)

Mark, as I research you're absolutely right. Leadpages has a whole webinar on this. Two click done in a well-designed way OUTperforms one click.

This is an interesting space.

REALLY like the leadpages product. It looks amazing.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

charlottehughes said:


> When setting up the ad, there is a selection for Desktop Newsfeed ads. I turned that off thinking that it was going to send people to like my facebook ad (I am setting up the ad to click to my website).


No - you want that on. Switch off the right-side placement; they are useless. You need mobile and newsfeed.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jakedfw said:


> Mark, as I research you're absolutely right. Leadpages has a whole webinar on this. Two click done in a well-designed way OUTperforms one click.
> 
> This is an interesting space.
> 
> REALLY like the leadpages product. It looks amazing.


I know... weird, right? Leadpages is well reputed, but I can't vouch for it. I'm sure it's great.


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## OW (Jul 9, 2014)

Do you mind if I ask how you have this all set up, in regards to pen names real names etc. I only ask as I heard FB take issue with people using pen names. Could this potentially block those who do from advertising do you think?


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

I made a book trailer for my last launch specifically to get video views using Facebook. BEST money ever spent. 200,000+ views between .02 and .03 cents per click - linked directly to Amazon. That book made NYT and I really think the video ad was the reason why I got so much attention (it's a good trailer). If you have very little money to spend, make a nice SHORT (mine was 47 seconds) video and put it up. I make my own in After Effects, bought a $30 template and plugged in my own stuff, kept the same music (purchased separately I think it was about $25 as well)

I am by no means a FB ads expert, however I had great success with my last launch using FB ads. 40,000 copies sold (and I sell a lot, but 40K is not my usual release). I have spent somewhere between $15-20K on ads in about 6 weeks - mostly direct clicks to Amazon using custom graphics I make - not the video.

It was worth it.

Fb ads are the future (for now) but you have to have a plan. I went in thinking I'd spend $5K but once it started selling I was making back so much, i just let them roll. I'm still running a few and the book is still hovering in a pretty decent ranking 6 weeks after release.

I think it would be hard to repeat this result, even for me. But if you plan your new release right - have everything just so and really have great custom audiences to work with - you will get results.

Also, i did some testing and if you only have $50 or so to run an ad (for a new release I'm talking here, not old stuff) *and* you have a decent fan page that you have cultivated with FANS, then you can boost that post and get similar results as far as click-through-rate goes. I had a lot of luck with fanpage only boosted posts.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

JanneCO said:


> I made a book trailer for my last launch specifically to get video views using Facebook. BEST money ever spent. 200,000+ views between .02 and .03 cents per click - linked directly to Amazon. That book made NYT and I really think the video ad was the reason why I got so much attention (it's a good trailer). If you have very little money to spend, make a nice SHORT (mine was 47 seconds) video and put it up. I make my own in After Effects, bought a $30 template and plugged in my own stuff, kept the same music (purchased separately I think it was about $25 as well)
> 
> I am by no means a FB ads expert, however I had great success with my last launch using FB ads. 40,000 copies sold (and I sell a lot, but 40K is not my usual release). I have spent somewhere between $15-20K on ads in about 6 weeks - mostly direct clicks to Amazon using custom graphics I make - not the video.
> 
> ...


Oooh this is interesting. I get a decent conversion cost for mailing list, but for direct sales (new release) it was definitely not worth it.

1. What is your genre and what was your release price? 
2. What was your conversion rate? (the link in my ad was an amazon affiliate link so i could see exactly how many clicks and buys i had. at 0.99 i had a 10% conversion rate, at 3.99 it dropped to less than 1%). 
3. What did you target? Similar authors in your genre?

Thanks!


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Oooh this is interesting. I get a decent conversion cost for mailing list, but for direct sales (new release) it was definitely not worth it.
> 
> 1. What is your genre and what was your release price?
> 2. What was your conversion rate? (the link in my ad was an amazon affiliate link so i could see exactly how many clicks and buys i had. at 0.99 i had a 10% conversion rate, at 3.99 it dropped to less than 1%).
> ...


Romance - this story was pretty erotic, but I put it in contemporary romantic suspense.

I don't track conversions because I'm in CO and don't have an Amazon affiliate link. I'm also superstitious about shortlinks and Facebook - they get marked as spam sometimes. So I used an unaltered url direct to my book. So yeah, I'm not one of those people with a spreadsheet looking at their bottom line. I stopped the ads for a few days once I upped the price. It started at $2.99 - I released on a Wednesday, so I kept it there until the NYT reporting period was over for the _next_ week. So about 10 days. But once the price went up to $3.99 sales fell (from 3000 a day to 2300) I let that go on for a few days until it dropped to 1700 a day, then I started the ads up again and that slowed the decline considerably. I let the ads run out last Friday, i think. And sales dropped to half (currently selling between 700-800 a day) so i started them back up again next day and did recover from that sales drop. I am only spending about $300 a day right now. But during the week I was going for NYT I was spending about $1200 a day.

I targeted Fifty Shades - every keyword FB had for that was on my target. But I will tell you the real targeting success comes from custom audiences. I have audiences available to me most people don't and I made custom lookalike audiences as well.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Very VERY impressive.

FB ads are too easily dismissed. I'm naturally sceptical, but I've been very impressed by how powerful they are.

But this?

THIS is a whole new order. Wow. Feel free to PM me about those custom lists


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## reneepawlish (Nov 14, 2011)

I'd like to hear about the custom lists too 
My issue is I can't figure out who exactly to target. I sent out an email to my list asking them who my books remind them of, and I got a lot of "it's sort of like this author" but yours is kind of unique - so I'm still over what kind of reader to target.


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## GoingAnon (Jan 16, 2014)

OK, here's my experience so far. 
I got inspired by Mark Dawson's experiment and placed 2 ads on February 15th, targeting people with interest in romance novels. My free book is only a novella, so my conversion rate has been lower than Mark's (it started at 25% then dropped and stabilized at 18% of those who clicked to the website). Even so, I'm very pleased with the results.
I spent $300 over 23 days and added 705 subscribers to my list, nearly tripling its size. Subscriber cost = $0.43.
Mark, you are a genius. Thank you!


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## AJStewart (May 10, 2014)

I've been doing this since December with similar acquisition costs as Mark (approx 50c per signup). I noticed that 60% of my traffic was coming via mobile (2/3 tablet, 1/3 smartphone) so I tried targeting mobile users - especially iOS users likely to use iBooks. Targeting these users specifically has driven up the cost to approx 50c per click, which is 3 to 4 times more. It's all about testing.


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## 56139 (Jan 21, 2012)

reneepawlish said:


> I'd like to hear about the custom lists too
> My issue is I can't figure out who exactly to target. I sent out an email to my list asking them who my books remind them of, and I got a lot of "it's sort of like this author" but yours is kind of unique - so I'm still over what kind of reader to target.


If you guys don't listen to me for anything else listen to this: You must have the right book to make it. You must plan that book and your release carefully. You must hit every objective 100%. This is what sells books. Look at how many crappy books make the lists. My book is not the one I expected to make NYT. I don't even think it's my best book. But it hit every reader objective in every way possible. And my marketing ideas are original and almost never repeated twice. Each book has a new plan. Each release is different. Each response is different.

You can follow the trends or you can make the trends. But making trends doesn't mean making up your own genre. It means finding a high-concept premise to write about that is in demand but underexplored.

So if THIS book of yours is not THAT book I described above. Save your money and write one that is. I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm saying that a strong premise will outperform a strong story on release day every time. Find that premise, write the best book you can, and then execute your release with military precision. It will make all the difference.


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## ErnestDempsey (May 28, 2014)

jakedfw said:


> Is anyone using Leadpages. I can make a landing page myself, but I'd be willing to invest in Leadpages just for the Leadlinks functionality. Basically, the person clicks the link in your email, and that's it... they are subscribed to your mailing list. No need to go to a website to fill in their email address or anything. I'm curious if anyone is doing anything like that on Kboards?
> 
> Of course the theory is that the fewer clicks the higher your conversion, which is pretty much a law more than a theory at this point.


I use Lead Pages and absolutely love it. Their system makes it simple to set up as many landing pages as you want. You can create duplicate pages to make simple tweaks, and split testing is a snap. The dashboard gives you all the tools you need to measure analytics as well.

I am not an affiliate, but I recommend Lead Pages to all the authors I work with. It has more than paid for itself for me.

There are so many great templates that come with it as well. You can set up video landing pages, which convert extremely well, on top of the static image pages you can create. I'm currently working with a few different ones right now for different campaigns to build my email list.

Bottom line: Lead Pages is a game changer.


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## ErnestDempsey (May 28, 2014)

This is sort of in the same ballpark regarding ads and definitely with list building. Someone asked about open rates on various days. 

Most of the research I have done suggests that open rates are best on Mondays, Tuesdays are terrible, Wednesdays and Thursdays are okay, Fridays are probably second best, and weekends are back toward the low end. 

If I can dig up some of the studies I've seen on this subject I'll be sure to post them. This was around a year ago when I was looking into this stuff.


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## ErnestDempsey (May 28, 2014)

My question to all of you who have had successful Facebook ad campaigns is, how do you set up the ad to avoid "LIKE" clicks? 

To get in the newsfeed you have to associate it with your page. When you do that, it will put the like button on there and will charge you when you get likes, correct?

I understand audience targeting and bidding. But when I run ads I get a high ctr (5-7%ish) and almost no subscribers because of it. When I look at the traffic, the ads contributed virtually none. I'm driving the traffic to a Lead Page with an offer that people have loved so far. I just don't think my ad clicks are taking visitors to the landing page. 

UPDATE: After tinkering a little and using website clicks as the objective, I think I eliminated the pointless likes. However, I am not getting a good price per click. I'm getting about .75 cents a click which is way to high. How did you guys get .09-.11 cents per? 

Targeting is for a similar author, English Speakers, optimized for best cost per click, ages 21-65.

Thanks in advance for the help.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

ErnestDempsey said:


> My question to all of you who have had successful Facebook ad campaigns is, how do you set up the ad to avoid "LIKE" clicks?
> 
> To get in the newsfeed you have to associate it with your page. When you do that, it will put the like button on there and will charge you when you get likes, correct?
> 
> ...


Don't avoid 'Likes'. If people liked the page means they want to stay updated. Maybe this time they didn't subscribe but that still shows interest level of some kind. Don't be shortsighted with only going for Sign ups. They are main objective, but long term, every 'Like' is good too.

It's cheaper to advertise to your own fans, than to Interest folks. So once you collect more and more 'Likes' eventually, it's good to rerun that sign up ad again for them only. And that also allows to advertise book launch to your own Fans. And more fans means more reach. So don't be devaluing 'Likes' completely.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

I used to think likes were good, but I know now they are pointless on adverts. It costs money, it makes you think it helps, but Facebook throttle your audience so much that updates to people who liked you don't reach them now (around 5% do)

So, instead of clicks, use clicks to website. Cost per click is higher unless really WELL targeted (and I experiment until mine are) but more importantly, clicks are "real" clicks to the sales page. It doesn't mean people buy of course, but at least they are seeing your offer. I've had good success sending people to my audiobooks in the past, or to my Kobo box set.


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## 41419 (Apr 4, 2011)

Yo Mark, I've been lurking on this thread since you started it. (And thanks for sharing.) I've been waiting until you launched something new to this list to ask you a question.

You've touched on this subject, but I don't think you've answered it conclusively. Have you monitored the relative performance of sign-ups versus the source? 

E.g. Are these Facebook Ad sign-ups performing as strongly as organic sign-ups, or those that come in via a permafree etc.? Is there any variance?


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I used to think likes were good, but I know now they are pointless on adverts. It costs money, it makes you think it helps, but Facebook throttle your audience so much that updates to people who liked you don't reach them now (around 5% do)
> 
> So, instead of clicks, use clicks to website. Cost per click is higher unless really WELL targeted (and I experiment until mine are) but more importantly, clicks are "real" clicks to the sales page. It doesn't mean people buy of course, but at least they are seeing your offer. I've had good success sending people to my audiobooks in the past, or to my Kobo box set.


You're thinking short term instead of long term. What's the point of them just seeing offer once then? Why not see it multiple times in future?

Every 'Like' is useful.. even with FB organic reach sucking balls.. I fully intent to buy ads for just showing updates to fans of the page and reach them. *FB Fanpages have become a bit similar to Email List, but more expensive one. *Yes, you would have to pay $20 let's say to reach most of your fans when new book comes out, but if 20 of them buy the book purely because of that ad, then it will pay off and the increase of Amazon rank will drive additional sales thus just increasing your ROI.

So, in this case, FB Likes are poor-man's email list. Combining both works would be best. Focus on email list but Likes aren't useless.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

dgaughran said:


> Yo Mark, I've been lurking on this thread since you started it. (And thanks for sharing.) I've been waiting until you launched something new to this list to ask you a question.
> 
> You've touched on this subject, but I don't think you've answered it conclusively. Have you monitored the relative performance of sign-ups versus the source?
> 
> E.g. Are these Facebook Ad sign-ups performing as strongly as organic sign-ups, or those that come in via a permafree etc.? Is there any variance?


Hi David. Therein lies the rub! I've added nearly 4,000 new subs since I started the campaign and I was very keen to test their responsiveness. I did this in several ways:

1. a survey at the end of the autoresponder where they could let me know if they bought one or more of my books when I advertised paid titles to them (plus other useful information); 
2. behaviour on the auto responder series, particularly when I had something to sell to them; and
3. a proper campaign with new material.

The results suggest that I had a purchase on the autoresponder series around 4 times in every hundred new subscribers. Assuming no readthrough rate and a set number of annual campaigns, that plays out to a profit of $16 per year per hundred subscribers. Not bad.

But... when I surveyed and asked whether they had bought a book yet, the answer suggested that I would have 1.9 buyers per 100 subscribers per year. That plays out at a loss of $25 per 100 subscribers per year.

And... when I asked whether they would buy one of my books in the future, it amounted to a predicted buy of 8.7 books per 100 subscribers. That's a profit of $85 per 100 subscribers per year.

However... the actual campaign (for my latest Beatrix Rose box set) suggests that the rate is around 2.5 buys per 100. That's a loss of $16 per 100 per year.

(Open and click rates for the mails are way down on my average - which is high - but that is to be expected for cold traffic like this).

The bottom line is - I can't be sure. I have very high readthrough rates on my series, and I suspect, when those are factored in, I'm probably breaking even on this campaign. And that would be fine. One of the useful corrollaries of advertising in this way is that my target audience is seeing my branding and my books, and that is likely to play out in my favour in the future.

I dialled down the ad spend a little so I could divert it to what is really working, but I'll keep it going at $10-$15 a day for the foreseeable future.

What is REALLY working is advertising a higher priced item rather than list building. I'm getting a return on investment of around 100% on that at the moment. For example, I spent $72 yesterday and have tracked sales (verified through affiliate links) plus commissions of $163. I'm doubling down on that right now.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RBC said:


> So, in this case, FB Likes are poor-man's email list. Combining both works would be best. Focus on email list but Likes aren't useless.


Not a bad analogy. And likes do serve a purpose. If I'm advertising a thing, seeing the ad with lots of likes buys me a ton of social proof. I'd rather get a conversion, but a like is not a wasted click by any means.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> Not a bad analogy. And likes do serve a purpose. If I'm advertising a thing, seeing the ad with lots of likes buys me a ton of social proof. I'd rather get a conversion, but a like is not a wasted click by any means.


Exactly. This can be seen as 'Seeding' posts before advertising to non-fans. Your fans build up the Likes and Shares for the post, drive some sales and then when non-fans see the ads they will be more likely to click because of high social proof.

This is the problem with 'Overanalysing' stats. Stats are stats. They don't always tell the full story. They might overstate importance of one thing and leave the intangibles out etc. Timing plays a role in advertising and buying. Maybe new FB Subscribers don't buy as much for now because they simply missed an email or had no time, but will be more active in the future. Polls, surveys and asking people questions aren't 100% trustworthy, because people draw lines in the sand and don't really know why. They change their minds often. So while testing is hugely important, it's limited. 

P.S. Have you tested Lookalike Audiences made out of your email list and running sign up ads to them? Since you've run a lot of ads already, you've probably exhausted a lot of audience but I had good experience with them as tool for targeting audiences too.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RBC said:


> P.S. Have you tested Lookalike Audiences made out of your email list and running sign up ads to them? Since you've run a lot of ads already, you've probably exhausted a lot of audience but I had good experience with them as tool for targeting audiences too.


Yep. Lookalike audiences are the best for me at the moment; I have one for the books I am promoting for sale at the moment, set at the 1% minimum. It's 2.2m strong, so no chance of exhausting it in the near future...


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Mark Dawson said:


> Yep. Lookalike audiences are the best for me at the moment; I have one for the books I am promoting for sale at the moment, set at the 1% minimum. It's 2.2m strong, so no chance of exhausting it in the near future...


Agreed. I'm using the lookalike audiences as well. I've used clicks with them and the predicted likes uses up a lot of budget. I've used clicks to website with them, and sales go up, likes go down, but I still get both. All in all, I've found a Bookbyb and ENT more profitable when considering immediate returns, but FB better for building my list. No idea if that will work out when the next book releases though. I guess I'll find out.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> Yep. Lookalike audiences are the best for me at the moment; I have one for the books I am promoting for sale at the moment, set at the 1% minimum. It's 2.2m strong, so no chance of exhausting it in the near future...


Cool. Did you use it for Sign ups yet?

I think they are 'exhaustable' faster than that big audience because while people are similar, some will not even be readers. Many people are included in multiple LAs. Thus that eliminates a lot of people as they will see ads multiple times and that lowers Engagement. And if you include more interests to target even deeper, than those audiences become smaller and smaller and more similar, which more likely means a lot of overlay.

I've made some of Fan Page Likers, Email list and will do one for Website Visitors Custom Audience. If I apply some more Interests, it goes from 2mil to tens of thousands only. I did apply Friends of Friends too. Some of my experiments here:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,211325.msg2946182.html

So, I wouldn't be surprised if LAs perform a bit worse then your original tests.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

P.S. Wonder if anyone ever targeted BookBub fans on FB and ran ads to them purely? That would be an interesting test!


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

RBC said:


> P.S. Wonder if anyone ever targeted BookBub fans on FB and ran ads to them purely? That would be an interesting test!


That is a really good idea if you are discounting. You know they like Kindle and bargains... Might have a look at that later!


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> That is a really good idea if you are discounting. You know they like Kindle and bargains... Might have a look at that later!


Yup. That's as targeted as it can get pretty much. In theory.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

RBC said:


> Yup. That's as targeted as it can get pretty much. In theory.


It would be awesome, but how to target that? Type in Bookbub and try to make a custom audience. Freebooksy has a Facebook page


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Mark E. Cooper said:


> It would be awesome, but how to target that? Type in Bookbub and try to make a custom audience. Freebooksy has a Facebook page


It's available in the Interests targeting setting so just target that along with US and UK (if you need UK). Between the two countries it's 2.4mil people. Might need to restrict age group to the same you do for other ads. I don't think a Lookalike audience would be good here. Just target the fans of BB. OR them and then restrict it to friends of friends. But that will cut down the audience very very much. Both could be worth testing probably to see difference in pricing.


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## Megan D (Feb 3, 2015)

I hope that this isn't going off topic, but for those making Facebook ads work, have you had similar success with Twitter, specifically for lead generation?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Never tried them, but I am sceptical. Tweets can get submerged easily. That's not to say I won't look at them and experiment.


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## Guest (Mar 23, 2015)

That comes to almost 40 cents per like. Our giveaways value comes to about .10-.20 per like. Sorry, I couldn't help but compare! Still really good!


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> That comes to almost 40 cents per like. Our giveaways value comes to about .10-.20 per like. Sorry, I couldn't help but compare! Still really good!


Wait until I get around to the mega post I should be writing about the ROI on a FB ad campaign I'm running at the moment...


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## Alinka Rutkowska (Mar 19, 2014)

Very interesting thread!

I played with FB ads to build my list in July-August 2014.

I did PPE ads targeting other authors of my genre.

I built a list of around 1000 subscribers by spending around 500 bucks. I was running various ads and my best cost per subscriber was $0,16 with this ad:










which then went up to $0,37 per subscriber.

This was my philosophy:

_I have 1000 subscribers and 10 books. I assume that 5% will buy my books during launch and promotional periods. That means 50 people buy my book each time I do a launch. Assuming I profit 2 bucks per book, that's 100 bucks. Multiply that times 10 books. That's 1000 bucks. If it cost me 500 bucks to get the subscribers I already profited 500 bucks. (That's always assuming a 5% response rate). Add to this the reviews I will get and increased amazon ranking.

If I prove these numbers to be correct (this is my task for August). I can aim for 10.000 subscribers, $5.000 profits, 500 reviews for each book and hitting the absolute amazon best-seller list (If 500 people buy my book on one day - I'm on the lists and that will trigger many more sales)._

But then the numbers came in and this was my conclusion:

_I'm not sure about the QUALITY of the mailing list I acquired through the ads in this thread. When after a series of content emails I asked my subscribers for a review of my book (and gave them a coloring book as a reward for those who'd do it), only 5 people out of 1000 reacted. _

Then I changed my strategy, I started building a relationship with Goodreads readers and Amazon Reviewers and now when I launch a book around 40% of those on my launch team list will review it (there are several hundred on it now).

I'm doing Nick's 10K Readers' course and I love the content. I'm already implementing many of his suggestions (perma-free, keywords, giveaways) but I still remain a little uncertain about the impact of FB ads for authors.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Alinka Rutkowska said:


> This was my philosophy:
> 
> _I have 1000 subscribers and 10 books. I assume that 5% will buy my books during launch and promotional periods. That means 50 people buy my book each time I do a launch. Assuming I profit 2 bucks per book, that's 100 bucks. Multiply that times 10 books. That's 1000 bucks. If it cost me 500 bucks to get the subscribers I already profited 500 bucks. (That's always assuming a 5% response rate). Add to this the reviews I will get and increased amazon ranking.
> 
> ...


What was the content you sent? How much time passed between them subscribing to your list and you asking for reviews?

The Quality thing is a good question. It depends on what kind of content and how much relationship building is happening with that list.

List quality will be 'low' when author advertises and only does this:

Asking for email, then
Asking to buy, then
Asking to review

That's not relationship building. That's just 'Gimme things' mentality. No wonder the responsiveness of the list is 'lower quality'.

I think you're onto a good thing with both FB and GR etc and you will keep seeing increasing benefits as time goes!


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Wait until I get around to the mega post I should be writing about the ROI on a FB ad campaign I'm running at the moment...


Can't wait 

As to the lookalike audience, I got burned by this one. i got some comments about being a pervert and stuff (romance book was given for sign-up. Cover is a bit hot), so I'm staying away from them


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Can't wait
> 
> As to the lookalike audience, I got burned by this one. i got some comments about being a pervert and stuff (romance book was given for sign-up. Cover is a bit hot), so I'm staying away from them


Can you tighten up the targeting to reach more women readers with it? Or even just pick Lookalike Audience but with only Romance Books interest selected?


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

RBC said:


> Can you tighten up the targeting to reach more women readers with it? Or even just pick Lookalike Audience but with only Romance Books interest selected?


I'm now getting leads for 0.4 eurocents by targeting romance author pages so i am sticking with that


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

RomanceAuthor said:


> I'm now getting leads for 0.4 eurocents by targeting romance author pages so i am sticking with that


Brilliant!


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## jackiegp (May 18, 2013)

Great Post Mark! Thanks so much for sharing!
I'm new, so I'm a little confused. Is the ad you speak of at the top of this link here? www.markjdawson.com Or is this just your website draw to the newsletter. How do we see the ad? I'm so green,  sorry.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Alinka Rutkowska said:


> But then the numbers came in and this was my conclusion:
> 
> _I'm not sure about the QUALITY of the mailing list I acquired through the ads in this thread. When after a series of content emails I asked my subscribers for a review of my book (and gave them a coloring book as a reward for those who'd do it), only 5 people out of 1000 reacted. _


What was the % on SALES ?


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jackiegp said:


> Great Post Mark! Thanks so much for sharing!
> I'm new, so I'm a little confused. Is the ad you speak of at the top of this link here? www.markjdawson.com Or is this just your website draw to the newsletter. How do we see the ad? I'm so green,  sorry.


That's my squeeze page - I send traffic there where they can then leave their email address in order to get the free stuff I'm offering.

The ad itself lives on Facebook, and sends traffic to the sequeeze page.


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## jackiegp (May 18, 2013)

Ahhhh, thanks! I get it.  So to see the ad, do I look you up on Facebook? Or does it just generally exist there to the viewers you've targeted? Would love to see an ad.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

maybe we can get TexasGirl on this thread too ?  she's been doing this for a long time so I think she might have some valuable stats to share


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

jackiegp said:


> Ahhhh, thanks! I get it. So to see the ad, do I look you up on Facebook? Or does it just generally exist there to the viewers you've targeted? Would love to see an ad.


If you fall within my target audience, you might see it. I'll screengrab later if I get a chance.


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## Megan D (Feb 3, 2015)

I'm sorry to be such a numpty, when you say you target FBers who have liked Lee Childs or any other specific target, exactly how do you do this within adverts manager? I've tried their help pages and Google but everything I read says I can't do this.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Megan D said:


> I'm sorry to be such a numpty, when you say you target FBers who have liked Lee Childs or any other specific target, exactly how do you do this within adverts manager? I've tried their help pages and Google but everything I read says I can't do this.


facebook power editor - interests


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## Alinka Rutkowska (Mar 19, 2014)

RBC said:


> What was the content you sent? How much time passed between them subscribing to your list and you asking for reviews?
> 
> The Quality thing is a good question. It depends on what kind of content and how much relationship building is happening with that list.
> 
> ...


I agree that this is very important. I sent around 4 emails (one every week) with quality content before asking for a review. But I agree - relationship building is crucial and now I am working on a whole set of autoresponders that will build that relationship more effectively.


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## Megan D (Feb 3, 2015)

RomanceAuthor said:


> facebook power editor - interests


Thank you, I've downloaded power editor but I still can't seem to access this granular detail  All it let's me do is browse very broad catagories. I do feel like a prize chump as everyone else seems to be able to do this effortlessly


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## GoingAnon (Jan 16, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> What is REALLY working is advertising a higher priced item rather than list building. I'm getting a return on investment of around 100% on that at the moment. For example, I spent $72 yesterday and have tracked sales (verified through affiliate links) plus commissions of $163. I'm doubling down on that right now.


Mark, is it possible to get more details on this? Your mailing list strategy is working really well for me - THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING! - so I'm eager to hear your next big idea. 

By the way, since someone in this thread was wondering what audiences to target, I experimented with fans of authors in my genre (average results), and then with interests in my genre (great results). My relevance score for these ads is 10/10, and they cost $0.05 per website click.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Alinka Rutkowska said:


> I agree that this is very important. I sent around 4 emails (one every week) with quality content before asking for a review. But I agree - relationship building is crucial and now I am working on a whole set of autoresponders that will build that relationship more effectively.


I bet that once they have been with you for longer time like 4-6 months, they will be just as responsive as everyone.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Alix Nichols said:


> Mark, is it possible to get more details on this? Your mailing list strategy is working really well for me - THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING! - so I'm eager to hear your next big idea.


Yep - I'll write something, but it's going to be reasonably long so it might be a day or two.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Alix Nichols said:


> By the way, since someone in this thread was wondering what audiences to target, I experimented with fans of authors in my genre (average results), and then with interests in my genre (great results). My relevance score for these ads is 10/10, and they cost $0.05 per website click.


Alix what exactly do you mean with "interests in your genre" ?

10x


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## GoingAnon (Jan 16, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Yep - I'll write something, but it's going to be reasonably long so it might be a day or two.


Fantastic! Thank you.



RomanceAuthor said:


> Alix what exactly do you mean with "interests in your genre" ?


My genre is romance, so I target my ads toward women interested in "romance films", "romantic comedies", "romance books," etc.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Alix Nichols said:


> My genre is romance, so I target my ads toward women interested in "romance films", "romantic comedies", "romance books," etc.


Thanks for this brilliant suggestion  I always targeted romance authors and just set up a BoobBub_as_interest ad. Going to try another ad targeting "romance books" and see what happens.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Dmotley said:


> Thanks for this brilliant suggestion  I always targeted romance authors and just set up a BoobBub_as_interest ad. Going to try another ad targeting "romance books" and see what happens.


Personally, I would avoid "films" as an interest. Films and books are very different media, and don't necessarily intersect. I suspect that would lead to a pretty high cost per click.


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## Dmotley (Sep 26, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> Personally, I would avoid "films" as an interest. Films and books are very different media, and don't necessarily intersect. I suspect that would lead to a pretty high cost per click.


I targeted "contemporary romance" instead of "romance films".


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

Yes, films and books don't intersect each other. I made that mistake with my first ads adn I had to pay 25 c for CT. Great and very inspiration advice Mark.


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## hunterone (Feb 6, 2013)

lots of great advice


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## Guest (Aug 13, 2015)

For $75 we got 1700 subscribers in 7 days. Not on Facebook though. It seems from what people have told us that they felt our subscribers were better quality too. I wonder why Facebook charges so much? 😓


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## Darren Writes (Nov 30, 2014)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> For $75 we got 1700 subscribers in 7 days. Not on Facebook though. It seems from what people have told us that they felt our subscribers were better quality too. I wonder why Facebook charges so much? &#128531;


Probably an obvious question, but from where? If you don't mind sharing of course.


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## Guest (Aug 13, 2015)

Darren Writes said:


> Probably an obvious question, but from where? If you don't mind sharing of course.


It's the company I work for, Free Kindle Giveaway. Not trying to hijack the thread--I was just shocked people are paying $500 for that few subscribers. I'm sure it has other benefits though


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## Dobby the House Elf (Aug 16, 2014)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> For $75 we got 1700 subscribers in 7 days. Not on Facebook though. It seems from what people have told us that they felt our subscribers were better quality too. I wonder why Facebook charges so much? &#128531;





TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> That comes to almost 40 cents per like. Our giveaways value comes to about .10-.20 per like. Sorry, I couldn't help but compare! Still really good!


Hey, sounds like you have a really great setup for getting sign ups! Care to share how your business plan works in a separate thread so that we can use your techniques to help set up our own subscriber lists? Us fellow indies would be stoked to learn from your experience.


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## Guest (Aug 13, 2015)

KJC said:


> Hey, sounds like you have a really great setup for getting sign ups! Care to share how your business plan works in a separate thread so that we can use your techniques to help set up our own subscriber lists? Us fellow indies would be stoked to learn from your experience.


It's all pretty transparent already. We host a giveaway. Everyone pitches in to cover cost of the giveaway. We promote the giveaway to readers. Bam. Subscribers. ✌ It works exactly the way it looks like it does &#128076; my sales are up 600% in the last year, with very little effort. (I should put more effort in my own books but I get busy promoting other authors - is it weird I find that so satisfying?)

The thread we already have goes over this a few times. It's not magic--just a proven and simple and affordable method


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## renae (Aug 10, 2015)

Just wanted to jump in here as an extra yes-man.

I'm here because of Nick's trainings. They are all GOLD and the subscribers through lead magnets, etc.? It works. It just plain works.

The best part? The email list is building a career and not just a few quick sales. Those are all repeat customers on that list and the list snowballs.

Unlike most authors here, my business has already been built and Amazon is the last piece to my puzzle. So I can tell you first hand that everything that Nick and Mark tells you about building that email list, --everything in this thread, works and I've done it and I support a family of 5 on it.

Now I just have to figure out this Amazon thing. I just posted my first resource guide and forgot to list myself as an author. *Face Palm.


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## Dobby the House Elf (Aug 16, 2014)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> We promote the giveaway to readers.


Ahh cool! Where exactly do you promote to?


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## Guest (Aug 14, 2015)

KJC said:


> Ahh cool! Where exactly do you promote to?


Facebook groups and Twitter, which we've disclosed before as well. Easy, affordable. We do the same thing for authors that Facebook does, just targeted by humans instead of a computer system. And we don't charge as much apparently..

We use FKG to build the FKG mailing list. Our users use FKG to build their personal mailing list. Anyone can use FKG to build their mailing list...and it won't cost them $500.

So you want to know how to build your personal mailing list? Through FKG. How is FKG building their mailing list? Through FKG. It seems people want some magical explanation. There is none. It's simple and transparent, just the way we like it


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## Dobby the House Elf (Aug 16, 2014)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> Facebook groups and Twitter, which we've disclosed before as well. Easy, affordable. We do the same thing for authors that Facebook does, just targeted by humans instead of a computer system. And we don't charge as much apparently..
> 
> We use FKG to build the FKG mailing list. Our users use FKG to build their personal mailing list. Anyone can use FKG to build their mailing list...and it won't cost them $500.
> 
> So you want to know how to build your personal mailing list? Through FKG. How is FKG building their mailing list? Through FKG. It seems people want some magical explanation. There is none. It's simple and transparent, just the way we like it


Cool, so you're saying hard work and constant promotion and marketing builds a mailing list? Sounds like sound advice to me.


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## Guest (Aug 14, 2015)

KJC said:


> Cool, so you're saying hard work and constant promotion and marketing builds a mailing list? Sounds like sound advice to me.


Yep 

So does Facebook promotions. And so does FKG. And probably a variety of other services, for those who want to build it faster while others do the hard work, constant promotion, and marketing for them 

This post talked about a paid-for service (Facebook Advertising) that helped them get more mailing list subscribers (for $500). I was just pointing out there are other more effective services (FKG, as one example) they can use for less money ($10-$75). 

What I find most interesting is people are willing to pay more money to FB for the same service and lower quality subscribers...and not ask how Facebook does what they do, but I've explained multiple times how FKG works and people have seen the results of this, but they think there must be more to it. It's simple. Like you said, it's all about hard work and constant promotion. Some authors don't have time for that. They have options in that case, which is all I'm saying. They can pay Facebook $500 or they can use another, more affordable service. Facebook, however, IS automated, and FKG is not. The only advantage I claim we have is that we are run by humans, not machines. So there is no mystery, is there, in how a human-run promotion works. Your questions might be better directed at Facebook and asking them how their computer-run promotions work 

I personally don't use FB for much more than occasionally boosting things (so that the audience I built myself can see it) because the ROI just isn't there. They are probably great for big brands like Target, for example, but for the indie author, I feel they take advantage. JMO. And that's why we created an alternative in the first place. (Which, I will add, our business did not even make a profit until last month. We worked for a year at cost and sometimes out of pocket to help authors build their mailing lists. Some of our giveaways STILL operate at a loss, it's only because we've added more that we are getting paid for the time we put in--time we put in so those who use our services can use that time to write instead of doing "constant promotion")

That said, clearly FB has the better business model in terms of how it benefits THEM. They charge more than people who do the work by hand, give lesser results, and it doesn't use much time for them because it's computer generated, not run by humans.


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## FMH (May 18, 2013)

Hi guys - "video views" question. Making an advert now... should I pick "pay per impression" or "pay per view"

Checked this thread for the answer, and couldn't find it. My brain is mush, though. FB ads making day. wow.


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

FMH said:


> Hi guys - "video views" question. Making an advert now... should I pick "pay per impression" or "pay per view"
> 
> Checked this thread for the answer, and couldn't find it. My brain is mush, though. FB ads making day. wow.


From what you are asking it seems you work with the Ads manager not with Power Editor. I recommend working with Power Editor. The default for which FB will charge you are impressions. If your target it's broad enough, go with impressions. Don't know about views.
FB ads to build email list - I haven't had much success with it./ I got clicks but 10-15% subscribers. And they are colder from those who come through my paid or free books. A lot of authors have this problem with their landing pages or bad copy/image. FB can work but it takes a time to master a good landing page, copy and image. 
Forever Girl Series - what's the cost for an author to participate in the FKG? I am genuinely interested.


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2015)

Antara Man said:


> From what you are asking it seems you work with the Ads manager not with Power Editor. I recommend working with Power Editor. The default for which FB will charge you are impressions. If your target it's broad enough, go with impressions. Don't know about views.
> FB ads to build email list - I haven't had much success with it./ I got clicks but 10-15% subscribers. And they are colder from those who come through my paid or free books. A lot of authors have this problem with their landing pages or bad copy/image. FB can work but it takes a time to master a good landing page, copy and image.
> Forever Girl Series - what's the cost for an author to participate in the FKG? I am genuinely interested.


Our base giveaway starts at $10 and you'll get over 100 subscribers easily for that price. Our top end giveaway is $75 and got over 1700 subscribers. We have options in between as well. Something for every budget ✌ There's a thread on the forum with more info and experiences as well


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> Our base giveaway starts at $10 and you'll get over 100 subscribers easily for that price. Our top end giveaway is $75 and got over 1700 subscribers. We have options in between as well. Something for every budget ✌ There's a thread on the forum with more info and experiences as well


Where is this thread? I don't recall seeing it.

I signed up for the $10 option for October but haven't heard anything back except receipt for the payment.

Philip


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## Antara Mann (Nov 24, 2014)

TheForeverGirlSeries said:


> Our base giveaway starts at $10 and you'll get over 100 subscribers easily for that price. Our top end giveaway is $75 and got over 1700 subscribers. We have options in between as well. Something for every budget ✌ There's a thread on the forum with more info and experiences as well


Yes, I recall, Ihave seen it but can't find it. Can you provide the link? Again this short attention span


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## Mark at Marble City (Aug 17, 2013)

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,185427.0.html


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2015)

Would anyone know what kind of groups I could target with my picture books? I`ve played with two days of adverts and saw nothing. Also, how many days or weeks would be best for optimal results? My budget is small to start with...100 dollars.
Thank you


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Andrew Murray said:


> Would anyone know what kind of groups I could target with my picture books? I`ve played with two days of adverts and saw nothing. Also, how many days or weeks would be best for optimal results? My budget is small to start with...100 dollars.
> Thank you


What's the topic? Who's the ideal reader? What else they read?


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2015)

Its a series about a small dog and his relationship with his family. sweet stories along the miffy lines. 2-5year olds. I'm guessing I have to target mums and dads...In FB you just type in words, like keywords to find groups?


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Andrew Murray said:


> Its a series about a small dog and his relationship with his family. sweet stories along the miffy lines. 2-5year olds. I'm guessing I have to target mums and dads...In FB you just type in words, like keywords to find groups?


Yes, target moms then. You will enter keywords into the Interests field, yeah. Maybe some kids' toys brands could be good. Maybe some parenting blogs/websites/magazines etc.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Andrew Murray said:


> Its a series about a small dog and his relationship with his family. sweet stories along the miffy lines. 2-5year olds. I'm guessing I have to target mums and dads...In FB you just type in words, like keywords to find groups?


Also, $100 is a huge budget if you're starting out. When I'm mucking around with ads, I usually set the limit to $3 per day and kill the ad if it doesn't deliver under $0.30 per click (depends a little bit on what I'm hoping to achieve.


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## Guest (Aug 28, 2015)

Yeah I mean 100 dollars for the first couple of weeks NOT per day. If I had that much floating about, I wouldn't be concerned with selling books, I`d give them away!


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

is it acceptable that the free ebook is one which is available as a permafree on Amazon? I will additionally offer an epub download. 

Since I create picture books I can't simply make an exclusive book for the mailing list. 

I would also like to ask for the first name of the mailing list subscriber. Does anyone have experience if the conversion rate is lower if the people see a second textfield box?


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Roman said:


> is it acceptable that the free ebook is one which is available as a permafree on Amazon? I will additionally offer an epub download.
> 
> Since I create picture books I can't simply make an exclusive book for the mailing list.
> 
> I would also like to ask for the first name of the mailing list subscriber. Does anyone have experience if the conversion rate is lower if the people see a second textfield box?


If it's in exclusivity deal, then no probably.. if its permafree in all distributors then yeah..

Only testing can say for sure. Having the Name is nice touch but sometimes it does hurt conversion rates.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Roman said:


> is it acceptable that the free ebook is one which is available as a permafree on Amazon? I will additionally offer an epub download.
> 
> Since I create picture books I can't simply make an exclusive book for the mailing list.
> 
> I would also like to ask for the first name of the mailing list subscriber. Does anyone have experience if the conversion rate is lower if the people see a second textfield box?


I have the full name but not the address. I wanted just the country but I don't seem able to do that, which is a shame because I have no idea where my subscribers are located. This would be useful if I am doing a countdown deal, as that is not available anywhere but UK and US but I think people are wary of giving their address.


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## jillb (Oct 4, 2014)

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrongly here. I'm trying to target popular FB groups by group name using Power Editor. I use "audience" then "target lookalike audiences" then enter the group/blog name but nothing shows in the search?


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

jillb said:


> I'm not sure what I'm doing wrongly here. I'm trying to target popular FB groups by group name using Power Editor. I use "audience" then "target lookalike audiences" then enter the group/blog name but nothing shows in the search?


Completely wrong. You should be using the "Interests box" and not all will appear. The Lookalike box is used for audiences you create based upon website traffic or customer lists uploaded by you as spreadsheets. Facebook pixels work too.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

Do you use double opt in?

I just started with my mailing list and not a single person verified his email address. All the email addresses look legit though.

These people are not coming for the free book though, since they are probably coming from my author page on Amazon.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Roman said:


> Do you use double opt in?
> 
> I just started with my mailing list and not a single person verified his email address. All the email addresses look legit though.
> 
> These people are not coming for the free book though, since they are probably coming from my author page on Amazon.


How do you know where they are coming from? Do you have a separate list? If you use Mailchimp, the verification process is automatic, so I assume you are using something else. But you have given me an idea; didn't think to put the link on my author page.


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## Dhayaa Anbajagane (Feb 23, 2014)

Roman said:


> Do you use double opt in?
> 
> I just started with my mailing list and not a single person verified his email address. All the email addresses look legit though.
> 
> These people are not coming for the free book though, since they are probably coming from my author page on Amazon.


If your potential subscribers have gmail then there's the possibility your mailchimp opt-in confirmation email is being grouped under their promotions tab. People hardly see their promotions tab so that might be the reason you're not having anyone sign up. Getting your optin email to go to the inbox tab is apparently a little hard. You're supposed to toy around with the subject so that it doesn't look too promo-like. 
Hope things work out for you!


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

Doglover said:


> How do you know where they are coming from? Do you have a separate list? If you use Mailchimp, the verification process is automatic, so I assume you are using something else. But you have given me an idea; didn't think to put the link on my author page.


My website is new and I have so few visitors that I can easily follow them. My ebook sends them to a page with a tracking url but so far all these visitors enter my website url directly. I also didn't set up the Facebook ads yet, so they can only come from my author page.

I use Sendinblue by the way and there I have a list of people who didn't confirmed their email address yet.


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Roman said:


> My website is new and I have so few visitors that I can easily follow them. My ebook sends them to a page with a tracking url but so far all these visitors enter my website url directly. I also didn't set up the Facebook ads yet, so they can only come from my author page.
> 
> I use Sendinblue by the way and there I have a list of people who didn't confirmed their email address yet.


Sorry, never heard of them. With Mailchimp, I wouldn't see the email addresses until they are on my subscribers' list and they can only get there by confirming. I thought there was some law that they had to opt in, an American law at least.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

I set up an advert, but Facebook tried to force me to set a minimum daily budget of 4$. My guess is that they would charge around 1.80$ per click.

Is my assumption right? What can I do to change this?

I changed my bid manually to 0.10$, but so far I get no exposure I think.

Does anyone have any advice?


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## Doglover (Sep 19, 2013)

Roman said:


> I set up an advert, but Facebook tried to force me to set a minimum daily budget of 4$. My guess is that they would charge around 1.80$ per click.
> 
> Is my assumption right? What can I do to change this?
> 
> ...


Although I have mine set to auction, I don't understand the bidding so I have left it blank. What do you mean they will force you to set your daily budget at $4? Surely you can set it at whatever you like. I think using the pixel thing and conversion reports puts the price up, but I am not certain about that. $1.80 per click is definitely not what they would charge. It seems to go down depending on how many click you get. Mine started off at .61 cents and now stands at .31.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

I was quite confused, since I wanted to start with a 1$ per day budget. After subscribing with Paypal, Facebook kept showing me that I set a budget of 1.80$ per day (?), but requires a minimum of 3.80$.

So I did some Googling and found out that they require a daily budget at least twice the minimum bid. I switched to manual bidding and the site recommended me that I should bid something in between 1.75$ and I think 3$. I played around with the target audience settings but it didn't help.

I came to the conclusion that Facebook would probably bid around 1.80$ for every click on auto mode which is way too much. 

I hope that someone can shed some light on this.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Don't set a manual bid. Leave it to FB to bid for you. I've run starter campaigns with tiny budgets, so it's doable.


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## Roman (Jun 16, 2015)

Thank you for the guide Mark. I watched the videos several times while setting everything up.

I was trying to change it again and paid more attention to the messages:



> Suggested bid: €0.80--€2.12 EUR
> Try a bid of €0.80 for a better chance of reaching your target audience. Change bid to €0.80


Switching to automatic bid, with a budget of 1 Euro:



> The advert set budget that you've set is too low. You've bid €1.90, but a daily budget needs to be at least €3.80.


Is anyone else getting similar numbers? According to my Google search a daily budget of 1 Euro (or $) should be possible.

[Edit] I included Mobile users and the suggested bid was halved. But even a higher budget gives me the same error message.


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