Do Facebook Ads Work?

In the last couple of months since the release of my new book, Blood Moon, I've been attempting various ways at marketing myself. There are so many books out there and so many good writers. One book scores while another book bombs without any real rhyme or reason that I can see. I am pretty confident saying it doesn't really depend that much on one book being better than another. There are LOTS of well written books.

(Side Note: Case in point would be the book, The Cuckoo's Calling, which was barely scraping by in the sales department. Then the word was out that the author was J. K. Rowling and sales skyrocketed. Was her book somehow better than other crime novels because it was written by her? I am dubious. But her name has built-in marketing power.)

Today on Facebook, I accidentally clicked on their marketing link. I'd never considered an ad on Facebook. I think I've maybe clicked twice on ads I see in the sidebar. But I found myself thinking, "What the heck?" What could it hurt to try?

So I created a Facebook ad this morning for my book, The Ninth Curse. I chose to only pay for clickthroughs, rather than impressions. Who knows if an impression does anything at all?  An impression probably works better for a product that has a multi-faceted ad campaign, and I was only going to be advertising on Facebook.

I set my daily advertising budget at $2.22. That would allow for 3 clickthroughs per day. The total period of my advertising will be 30 days. So even if I spent my entire budget, I would be well under $70 for that month of advertising. Not bank-breaking, by any means.

Not sure if this will do anything to boost sales, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I'll keep you updated on my results over the next month.

UPDATE: After only 1/2 hour of my ad being available on Facebook, I have had 3 clickthroughs! This suprised me. Also, I clearly do not understand the cost per click. Although I had 3 clickthroughs, I've only used 74 cents of my $2.22 budget for the day. It looks like the price per click varies depending on a number of algorithms I don't understand. We'll see if any of the clickthroughs result in an actual purchase!