Build A Simple, Lean and Profitable Author Business

Hi, I'm Matt Holmes, and I help self-published authors build a simple and profitable business without the "hustle".

I spend 60-90 minutes per day building my wife’s six-figure author business.

And in my FREE daily(ish) newsletter, I’ll share real-time, real-world, actionable insights to help you do the same.

I'll also send you my FREE Facebook Ads mini-course as soon as you sign up.

SSA #017: A Facebook Ads Revival Story

Apr 29, 2023

Read Time: 3 minutes

 
Today's edition of The Saturday Self-Published Author is more of a personal story than anything else, but with some key lessons in there that I'm confident will help you improve the performance of your Facebook Ads.

The Backstory


A few months ago, November 2022 to be precise, we had our best month ever with my wife's books (4 books in the main series plus 1 companion novel), earning just over $17,200, as you can see in the screenshot below.


And much of this success was due to the Facebook Ads I was running. Sure, the Amazon Ads were doing great for us as well, but it was the Facebook Ads that were driving the largest volume of traffic.

However, a couple of weeks into December 2022, performance started to decline, quite noticeably. More noticeable than the typical downturn many authors see in December in the run-up to Christmas.

The issue was that our Facebook Ads weren't converting like they were in November and the many months before that, which led to a worsening Amazon Bestseller Rank and declining organic sales and borrows, which had a considerable impact on our bottom line.

Something Had To Change


With Facebook Ads being our primary driver of sales and our biggest spending platform, I set to work on figuring out what was happening with them and why they weren't converting like they were just mere weeks before.

I tried everything:

  • New Audiences
  • New Ad Creative
  • More Budget
  • Different Placements
  • Scaling strategies I've used before

But, no matter what I tested, absolutely NOTHING worked. Nothing would bring back the performance and conversion rates of what we were achieving before.

So, instead of trying to figure this BIG problem out on my own using my existing knowledge, I knew I needed to test something new, something outside of my comfort zone, something that challenged me, something that I was sceptical about.

So that's what I did.

This new strategy, however, goes against EVERYTHING I believed about Facebook Ads, but I had nothing to lose, so I went for it.

Want to discover what my Facebook Ads strategy is? I lay it all out for you in my Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass: Sign up for FREE here.

Over the first few weeks of implementing this new strategy, I really started refining and tweaking it to my own specifications and getting it running like a well-oiled machine.

As I did so, conversions from the Facebook Ads started to improve, organic sales and borrows began to increase, bestseller ranks started improving, and our bottom line was moving in the right direction once again.

The conversion rates of our USA Facebook Ads have doubled from what they were when I was using my old Facebook Ads Strategy. And in the UK, our Facebook Ads conversion rate has tripled since implementing this new strategy.

The Lesson


I learned the hard way that being rigid in a single strategy and not being willing to adapt and evolve can have a detrimental impact on your business as a whole.

We are now spending around a third of what we were back in November on Facebook Ads, which although has improved profitability, we're now driving less traffic to Lori's books.

This has meant that Amazon's recommendation engine isn't firing on all cylinders like it once was (i.e. emailing people who viewed the books but didn't buy, recommending the book to these people in relevant placements across the Amazon store).

I am gradually increasing the budget of our Facebook Ads, by 10% - 20% per week, and once we're spending what we were back in November 2022, I'm confident that things will really start to take off again.

The biggest takeaway I've had from this experience over the past 6 months or so, is that rigidity and one way of doing things isn't the answer.

Something I've always lived by, that I've only really applied to my Facebook Ads within the past 6 months, is to question everything.

If I had been too stubborn to change and refused to go against all the best practices and recommendations out there about Facebook Ads, we'd still be in the same boat as we were back in December 2022.

By questioning the status quo and testing something that very few, if any, people are talking about in the Author space, I've been able to revive our struggling Facebook Ads and bring performance back in line with our goals and targets.

Advertising platforms change, algorithms change, people change, and audiences change. As one author shared with me the other day, there is a great quote that sums all of this up perfectly...

Change is the only constant.

And with that, thank you so much for reading and I'll be back with you again next Saturday.

To Your Success
– Matt

Build A Simple, Profitable and Sustainable Author Business

Hi, I'm Matt Holmes, and I help self-published authors build a simple and profitable business without the "hustle".

I spend 60-90 minutes per day building my wife’s six-figure author business.

And in my FREE daily(ish) newsletter, I’ll share real-time, real-world, actionable insights to help you do the same.

I’ll also send you my FREE Facebook Ads For Authors Masterclass as soon as you sign up.