I see that you can create your own facebook ads and you are charged per click. You can set a maximum budget and control what categories your ad appears on. For example, people that like to travel might see it. I was wondering if anyone has put an ad on this medium before and had any luck, good or bad? I also wonder how quickly you swallow up your small ad budget since you are exposing your ad to over 40M people? I have a website and sell images off that and am looking for more exposure.
Any input?
You can actually choose two payment options: pay per click or CPM (pay per 1000 impressions or "views"). I recently tried a short ad run and figured I'd get a better deal out of the latter. However, after very few clicks it was obvious that PPC was the way to go. I'm pretty sure I generated zero sales out of the whole endeavor, despite several thousand impressions.
So I'd say start with PPC. If you start getting a ton of clicks, then you can switch over to CPM and get more for your money. By the way, you can bid under their suggested rates too.
Rather than choose broad advertising categories, you may be better off setting up a few different campaigns targeting specific keywords or phrases, which point to specific galleries or photos on your site. For example, if you have photos of a specific destination (say, Denali National Park), you probably want to set up an ad campaign targeting Denali-centric groups, which point to your Denali photos. Just running a general "nature photography" campaign probably won't do much for you.
Hey Donald,
PPC is the way to go. I limited my target audience to a few states, basically, and it generated 400 fans over about 6 weeks for about $450. I've made 1 sale from it worth $100 - after about a year, it's not been much of a money maker. You'll get a ton of folks that are interested in photography themselves who follow your work without any intention of buying stuff from you, and ask you questions about technique, camera choice, etc... all that aside, it is kinda fun interacting with fans and getting compliments on your work!
Discussion
2 repliesAny input?
So I'd say start with PPC. If you start getting a ton of clicks, then you can switch over to CPM and get more for your money. By the way, you can bid under their suggested rates too.
Rather than choose broad advertising categories, you may be better off setting up a few different campaigns targeting specific keywords or phrases, which point to specific galleries or photos on your site. For example, if you have photos of a specific destination (say, Denali National Park), you probably want to set up an ad campaign targeting Denali-centric groups, which point to your Denali photos. Just running a general "nature photography" campaign probably won't do much for you.
Max
PPC is the way to go. I limited my target audience to a few states, basically, and it generated 400 fans over about 6 weeks for about $450. I've made 1 sale from it worth $100 - after about a year, it's not been much of a money maker. You'll get a ton of folks that are interested in photography themselves who follow your work without any intention of buying stuff from you, and ask you questions about technique, camera choice, etc... all that aside, it is kinda fun interacting with fans and getting compliments on your work!