Easy as pi

Today, with the assistance of Uzair from India, I launched my first Facebook advertisement. Normally, I wouldn't consider myself an idiot, but Facebook's advertisement creation process made me feel like one. Hence, Uzair.

One observation I noticed is that we didn't use the "power editor" for FB ads. I've heard that the power editor is robust, powerful, effective, and all sorts of wonderful things. It's also damned confusing and difficult to use. If there's anyone out there who'd like to teach me how to use it, please contact me. I promise not to hurl my computer through the window during the tutorial.

I attended a couple of webinars on FB advertising and neither one proved helpful. They were sales pitches. Look, folks, if you're going to promote your webinar as offering useful information, then said useful information should not be "Hire me to do this for you."

So, let's get back to my ad.

FB's ad creator doesn't allow for scheduling advertisements--unless you're willing to pay an outrageous fee--which seems totally absurd. Why wouldn't scheduling be included to make it easier to coordinate marketing efforts? For instance, to run an advertisement (which I am) for the first week of December, then I have go launch the ad today or really early on December 1. I can't just set start and end dates, which one might think would make common sense.

FB has the advertiser set daily rates. They offer default amounts: $5/day, $50/day, etc. Or you can enter in the amount you're willing to pay per day. I'm not sure how this works, but apparently the ad remains effective until a maximum number of "clicks" (determined by the daily rate) are tracked. Since you may be curious, let's just say that I'm betting my second year's royalty payments on this marketing effort. Fingers are crossed.

FB also has weird campaign objectives, especially in the power editor. My campaign objective is simple: I want people to buy my books. (Honestly, every author wants that. I'm just being blatant here.) My books are sold on Amazon. I want the link to take people to my author page on Amazon to buy my books. Pretty simple. FB doesn't have a "go here to buy" option, which I find frustrating.

I'll quit griping now.

So, dear reader, if you've been waiting for my books to go on sale, now's the time to buy. Every e-book in the Holly Bargo catalog is on sale for $0.99 through December 7. Stock up your digital library. And leave good reviews. I need those, too.