# Best Advertising Buck - Online Ads?



## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

So far my research has Facebook as the cheapest(and most flexible) place to advertise online. I don't know if the reach Facebook has compares though, does anyone else have insights?


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

It depends what you're advertising for. I've used Kijiji before. Free postings can work decently well, and you can pay to keep your posting on the top of the heap.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Yeah, I think you need to tell us what you're advertising: is it something for sale, or are you advertising products, services, etc.? 

I played at a concert last year that was advertised only through Facebook -- the organizers spent a lot of money on a hall, got lots of musicians to perform, and advertised it heavily on Facebook. They were expecting hundreds, but when I left, about halfway through the evening, there were 25 people in the audience.


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

I'm advertising a music album that's available on iTunes, so I'm going for a wider reach than a local concert or an item on Kijiji. Google Ads were horrendously expensive, iTunes itself has minimum start at $5,000.00(!?). I'm not Carly Rea Jepson or Justin Bieber, so that is way out of my ballpark. Anyway, Facebook, allows you to set a "lifetime" amount on your ad and that's all you pay, plus, you can target by province, State etc...and target by peoples preferences on Facebook. So far it's been pretty good, I won't know the actual sales figures for a few months yet but my "landing page"(love all these terms I learning) has been very active. My product is an 8 song album of progressive rock influenced instrumental halloween music, so i'm targeting specific States in the US that have a high number of halloween fanatics, and only those who have shown an interest in halloween on Facebook. This keeps my cost down and spreads the word mostly to potentail buyers.(I hope). I would like to find other affordable venues as well, but time is running out for this year. I am planning a follow up for next year so the more I can learn on this run the better.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

That's cool. It does sound like something Facebook would be good for. I didn't realize Google ads were so expensive -- you see them everywhere so I figured they must be cheap, but maybe they're very effective so people are willing to pay for them. The revenue that successful bloggers get from Google ads posted on their sites are amazing -- I have never in my life intentionally clicked on an ad, so it seems incredible to me that some bloggers are making $60K or more per year on Google Ad revenue alone. J.D. Roth of the Get Rich Slowly blog ended up making more than that each year from his blog, and then eventually sold the blog for a large sum.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

The trick with google is not to bid on the most obvious keywords. "Halloween music" is going to be relatively expensive.... You can browse the bids for different keywords and find some that seem reasonably priced.


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

andrewf said:


> The trick with google is not to bid on the most obvious keywords. "Halloween music" is going to be relatively expensive.... You can browse the bids for different keywords and find some that seem reasonably priced.


They quoted me $5.00 per click! So if 20 people clicked on my ad and none of them bought anything(either the whole album or a single), I would be out a lot of money. It's way too complicated for me, maybe over time I will reach both a level of sales and a level of knowledge that makes it worthwhile but for now it's too scary. At least with Facebook I can pay up front a set amount and the cost per click is under fifty cents. I need the keywords that work best, not the cheapest ones that sort of fit.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

It's all a matter of ROI.

Best of luck--it seems you have it figured out. You may want to check out Bandcamp.

I think your findings are interesting wrt to value Google gets out of ads vs facebook.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Have you got anything on Youtube?

Lots of music on there.......with links to Itunes.


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## hystat (Jun 18, 2010)

play live and sell music at the show. Advertising that pays you.


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

hystat said:


> play live and sell music at the show. Advertising that pays you.


Been there, done that, it's become so difficult to get paying gigs in the last 6 or 7 years it's ridiculous. Venues are either closed or can't afford to pay, plus, that means you have to get CD's pressed, an enormous cost, and in todays world a hard sell. I gave up playing live and now I write and record multi instrument music that I would need a band of at least 4 people to perform, plus, it's halloween theme makes it an even harder sell for live venues most of the year. I knew all this going in, I don't want to perform live anymore. As it is I am getting a lot of response at my website from a cheap Facebook ad, I just won't have sales results for a couple of months. I am doing all this in my home studio, all the writing, playing all the instruments, my daughter does most of the graphics and I have a publisher/administrator getting it into iTunes and all the subscription services and collecting the royalties etc..., I don't need no steenking live shows!(or expensive CD's).


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I don't understand the delay in sales info. Shouldn't that be available in real time?


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

andrewf said:


> I don't understand the delay in sales info. Shouldn't that be available in real time?


Apparently not, at least with iTunes. They make it known to all involved that sales figures are a month or two behind at all times. It's worse with radio airplay, I get those royalties about 9 months after the fact.


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## tiffbou2 (Jul 4, 2013)

I run fitness classes - I rent a hall and sell a 10-class punchcard for my classes. I have run Kijiji ads (the top ads and the ones that appear on the header), Google ads, and Facebook ads. I found FB ads most effective. The Google ones are pricey and tricky to navigate. I could see that website views went up by about 50% when I had the google ad, which was pretty good. The FB ad - I ran it recently for a week to promote a free trial class and I got more than 200 new "likes" to my page in a week. The night of the free class, over 150 people turned up. About half were former members and the rest seemed to have heard about it through facebook. I like how you can select your target market on there, so I selected women over 18 within a 25 mile radius of my class. I also like how, when people "like" your page, they rarely take the time to unlike it, so my posts will still pop up in their newsfeed and remind them of my class.


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