marketing

Facebook Advertising: The Second Wave

CatchMePopUp

For those of you following my marketing hijinks, you might have seen this post from last year, detailing my first attempt at running a Facebook ad. This year, I decided to repeat the experiment with slightly different parameters. Instead of advertising a single retailer purchase page, I directed people to sign up for a free novella. Everyone loves freebies, right? So here’s how it went…

Unlike last time, I only had one ad in my set, and it looked something like this:

CatchMeAd

Note the # of people reached… My FB Ad manager gave me different numbers. But I’ll get to that…

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DIYDay Lesson 23: Facebook Advertising – A Case Study

Marketing, marketing, marketing: the life of an author when not writing, writing, writing. Like it or not, if you want your books to sell, you have to tell people it’s out there. Sometimes, Lady Luck smiles down on you and you strike gold. Most of the time, however, you just keep trying different things, repeating what works, dropping what doesn’t. This cycle has recently led me to try out the Facebook advertising option, and I decided I might as well share the results with all my lovely author friends. This will be a brief walk-through of how to create a Website click Facebook ad campaign, and an overview of the results I got from mine. Be warned: lots of text and numbers follow. Hopefully, it helps someone, since it didn’t do all that much for me… (spoiler alert)

 

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DIYDay Lesson 21: Graphics Editing – The Evolution Of A Book Cover

There are gifted individuals out there who can sit down at a brand new task and instantly excel at it. The rest of us learn by trial and error. And if we (yes, I’m mostly speaking about myself here) insist on going it alone, there is a lot of trial and error. What I’m sharing today is the evolution one of my self-made covers has gone through. It wasn’t the only one, by any means, but it was the one with the most revision. I do this to show you that sometimes stubbornness, perseverance, and versatility pay off. Most of the time, actually. Sit back, relax, and watch me screw up.

A lot. And then finally get it right. I give you…

 

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Author-y Stuff

Happy Friday to all! I write to you today for a couple of reasons. The first is to give you an update on Wolfen. Which is that I am about ten chapters away from finishing my first self-edit. And that means… Read More »Author-y Stuff

DIYDay Lesson 20: Author Websites

And we’re back! This time I thought I’d get into a little more detail of things like style, layout and content. Things every author should know and wield with impunity.

First thing’s first. DISCLAIMER: Everything that follows is totally subjective opinion content based on a few years experience trying to sort my own website into some kind of order, and browsing other authors’ websites and (more often than I care to say) cringing at what I found. Take everything you read here with a grain of salt.

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DIYDay Lesson 19: Excerpt Graphics

Another late post (sorry!!) but I wanted to get this info out there ASAP.

If you’re on any form of social media and following an author, you’ve seen excerpt graphics before. They are basically pictures with text over them, sometimes info about release dates, the book cover, etc. Some are so great you look for the Buy link only to realize it’s still “coming soon!” And some you can barely read. In terms of marketing value, excerpt graphics are right up there with cover images. They make a huge first impression. I’ve done a fair number of these as well, and I’ve learned a trick or two from all the greats, the not so greats, and my own experiences. This is a quick guide on how to catch your audience’s eye.

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DIY Resources Every Author Should Know About

Greetings and salutations! I come to you a few days late with my DIY post. I apologize for the delay. If you follow me on Facebook, you already know about the miserable plague that has taken hold of my respiratory system. Thank you to all for your well wishes and prayers. I am slowly getting back to myself and the only thing that now bothers me is how behind schedule I’ve gotten because of it.

To make up for my absence, I have decided to do some spring cleaning on my Links and Resources page. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do! All the info on it is for your benefit, whether you’re an indie author, traditionally published, or just looking for some help in marketing yourself or your business.

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On The Topic Of Reviews And Conspiracies

I meant this to be a Facebook post, but it got away from me and turned into a bit of a rant, so I am sharing here instead.

I keep seeing posts about this topic, from both sides of the fence, authors publicly asking for reviews (me among them) and reviewers annoyed that authors feel entitled to reviews from readers. It got me thinking. I think both sides are wrong. But then both are right at the same time. What follows are my two cents on the topic.

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