Read Time: 3 Minutes

I get this question a lot:

"Matt, what's a good CPC for Facebook ads?"

I understand why authors ask it. CPC (Cost-Per-Click) feels concrete. It feels comparable.

Some swear a good CPC is under $0.15. Others draw the line at $0.30. A few will tell you anything under a dollar is fine for fiction.

The numbers vary, but the message is always the same: cheap clicks good, expensive clicks bad. 

But here's the thing...

A cheap click can be the most expensive thing in your account.

Let's Put This Into Perspective

Imagine two ads:

Ad A has a CPC of $0.15. Beautiful. Half what you'd expect. You'd happily run that all day.

Ad B has a CPC of $0.61. Roughly four times more expensive. By most benchmarks out there, that's a bad ad.

But here's the most important part...

After The Click

Ad A spent $50 and got 333 clicks. Sounds great. But only 2 of those clicks turned into a sale — a cost per sale of $25.00. 

Ad B spent $50 and got 67 clicks. Fewer eyeballs, sure. But 6 of those clicks turned into a sale — a cost per sale of $8.33.

Which ad would you rather run?

If you'd kept Ad A running based on its CPC alone, you'd have happily scaled it. More budget, more clicks, more "data" — and a worse outcome every week.

Cheap clicks have a way of feeling like progress when they're actually just feeding the wrong audience faster.

CPC on its own is a vanity number. It tells you what something costs. It doesn't tell you what it's worth.

A cheap click from the wrong reader will eat your budget without ever giving you a sale. An expensive click from the right reader can fund your entire month.

The metrics that actually matter sit further down the funnel from the ad itself — sales, page reads, return on ad spend (ROAS). That's the number to optimize for. Not the click.

The Number Behind The Number

Before you can answer "is my CPC too high?", you have to answer a different question first:

How much am I prepared to pay to generate a sale?

Because your answer to that question is what tells you whether a CPC is too high, too low, or exactly right. Without it, you're guessing.

And the honest answer depends entirely on your catalog. Your pricing. Your readthrough. Your customer lifetime value.

Two authors can look at the exact same CPC, on the same ad, in the same genre — and one of them should keep it running while the other should turn it off today.

Let me show you what I mean:

Author 1: One Standalone Book, $4.99 (Not In Kindle Unlimited)

This author has a single book at $4.99, earning roughly $3.50 per sale in royalty. There's no series. There's no back catalog. Whatever they earn from that sale is the entire customer relationship.

For this author, the cost per sale needs to stay under $3.50 to be profitable. Realistically, lower.

Which means if their ad is converting clicks to sales at, say, 1 in 50 — they need a CPC under 7 cents to stand a chance. A "great" $0.20 CPC on the same ad would be a slow bleed they might not catch for weeks.

Author 2: Six-Book Series, $4.99 Each (In Kindle Unlimited)

This author has six books in a series, all priced at $4.99 — roughly $3.50 per sale in royalty. Their data tells them that on average, a reader who buys book one will go on to buy around 70% of the remaining books in the series.

That first sale isn't worth $3.50 to them. Once you factor in the readthrough across books 2-6 though, it's worth closer to $15.

Now run the same numbers:

If their ad converts at 1 in 50, they can pay up to $0.30 per click before they start losing money. They could happily run an ad with a CPC four or five times higher than Author 1 — for the same book, in the same genre, to the same reader — and walk away profitable.

Before You Turn Off Another Ad

Same CPC on the screen. Completely different verdict.

That's the gap between Author 1 and Author 2. And it's one of the most common ways I see experienced authors leave money on the table.

They've been running ads for a year or two. They have a system. And inside that system, they've built habits around the numbers that are easiest to see, not the ones that matter most.

It's also one of the easiest habits to fall into, because Facebook actively encourages it. CPC and CTR are front and center in the dashboard. Sales and page reads live in another tool entirely — Amazon Attribution, or wherever you track your numbers. The data you need most is the data you have to work hardest to see. 

If you've ever turned off an ad because the CPC looked too high, this is worth sitting with.

You might have just turned off your best ad.

To Your Success
– Matt