Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

Misadventures Experimenting with Facebook Ads

I’ve got a lot of big things planned for Haunt Jaunts in addition to my Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project. Well, I should say related to that. One of them was ramping up my ads…the ones I put out there, not the ones I publish to try and earn money.

Yesterday I got to messing around with Facebook ads. I’ve tinkered with them before, but I never actually placed one. Yesterday I did –but I sort of messed up.

As is usually how I operate, I got a little confused. I put in $30.00 for the amount I wanted to spend. I thought it meant the per month amount you wanted to spend.

Something gnawed at me after and told me to go back and double check what I’d just done. To my horror I discovered I’d specified I wanted to spend $30 per day on an ad campaign!

Gulp! It’s not that much money for a business with a dedicated ad revenue, but for me? Whoops! That’s a little too much.

I quickly deleted the ad.

But that’s when I’d discovered my whoops had an unexpected and unintended immediate side effect: in the three minutes (if it was even that) that it took me to realize my mistake, I’d increased my Facebook page fans by 50%!

If I’ve done my math correctly, which, as this post proves, I’m prone to mistakes. Also, math is not my strong point. But I went from 76 fans to 115 just like that. (Well, just like that and $30.)

So do Facebook ads work? Apparently. And they are WAY more effective than I ever expected.

I placed another ad, this time one my budget can handle. Oh, and I did per impression ads instead of per click. That was another mistake I’d made first time around. I chose the latter instead of specifying the former. (Under Advanced Options, which I failed to click the first go around.)

So now we’ll see what kind of effect this has. How many more fans will the cheaper ads bring to HJ’s FB page? Any? How many of those fans will click through to my blog’s links? What effect will that have on my revenue streams?

Time will tell…and so will I when I have more data.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE

Have you ever posted an ad on Facebook for your business? What were the results?

If you answered no to the above: Have you ever thought about posting experimental ads just to see what might happen? What’s stopped you?

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Week 1 Results of Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project

How’s week one of my Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project (HJMP) going?

Step 1 was to focus on Bounce Rate Redux. Part of that was doing a blog redesign. Done. There are some aspects I can still improve, but overall I have the groundwork laid.

Did it have any effect on my bounce rate? Slightly. It’s down 1% from last week.

Gotta start somewhere, right? We’ll see if I can implement a few more things to lower that even further.

One thing I’m going to try and do is focus on Step 2. (Which I’ll write about in another blog.)

However, I did see some amazing results in ad revenue. Not that I made any big money. Still in the pennies category, but I haven’t seen this kind of increase in my blog’s history before.

The ads I saw the big bump on were my Project Wonderful ads. They’ve been traveling at about $0.03 for the past week/week and a half. Which I was happy about because that was up from $0.02 for the 2 weeks prior.

However, there was a point in time when they’d been at $0.00 for almost a month. That got me very worried. For the past few months they’ve been about $0.02. A few times they’ve spiked to $0.04, even $0.05. The most they’d ever been was $0.07.

Anyway, to see it hanging in there steady at $0.03 was a-okay. It’s not much, but it’s better than $0.00!

But yesterday I about fell over when I saw $0.40 in the ad box. Say what?

I blinked several times thinking I’d misread it. Nope. 40 cents.

But today it skyrocketed to $1.10 at one point! A whole dollar! Okay, it may be nuts to get excited over $1, but if you’ve read all the way to this point I’m willing to bet you’re trying to figure out how to get your blog to do that, too.

With PW ads I can tell you hits most definitely matter. I’ve seen Haunt Jaunts’ spike this past week. (In part due to my increased SEO efforts, but also I got some help in the form of two other blogs featuring mine last week. Very nice surprise!)

As I’m writing this the ad bids have dropped to $0.70. Still, that really beats $0.03!

So now I’m going to ramp up Steps 2 and 3 of the HJMP and see what kinds of hits I can bring in and what impacts it has on my revenue streams.

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Keeping an Eye on Tontine Massacre’s Social Media Strategy

Today I stumbled across a neat example of an upcoming movie, Tontine Massacre, using social media to drive hype. (Think Paranormal Activity.)

Well, I actually found it via an old school method: an ad. But it was via an ad on my Haunt Jaunts blog. One that cost them, literally, all of three cents to post.

So they combined the old with the new there, but they’ve also been making the Twitter and Facebook rounds.

Tontine Massacre on Facebook

Tontine Massacre on Twitter

It’s their Facebook method I’m most excited and impressed about though.

The ad on Haunt Jaunts led me to their “Watch Trailer” Tontine Massacre Facebook page tab. Because I like both Reality TV shows and horror movies, it automatically appealed to me.

The trailer evoked flashbacks to Paranormal Activity’s trailer a là showing audience reactions during a screening. They might be copycating that technique a smidge there, but hey. If it’s effective, why not? (And I do believe that was a very effective component of Paranormal Activity’s hype machine. It was provocative. You wanted to know what they were watching that made them jump out of their seats.)

However, something fresh that’s entirely their own spin (or at least this is the first time I’m seeing it; I have to admit I don’t follow all that many movies on Facebook): they’re offering a free sneak peek on July 1.

To be granted “exclusive access” all a person has to do is “like” their page. The viewing will be online. If there’s enough demand from that, guess what happens next? Yep, it’ll hit theaters nationwide.

I love an underdog, but ultimately the proof is always in the pudding. Let’s hope they whipped up a tantalizing batch that has people demanding more.

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