Read Time: 3 Minutes

You check your ads dashboard in the morning with your coffee.

And for the first time in months, you actually smile.

For three months, you've been running Facebook Ads and things are finally starting to work.

Not spectacularly. Not life-changing. But profitable.

The clicks are coming in. The sales are trickling through. For the first time in a long time, you feel like you've cracked something.

Then one evening, you're scrolling through a Facebook group.

And you see a screenshot.

Another author, posting their numbers. Better click-through rates than yours. Lower cost per clicks. More sales in a week than you've had in the past month.

And just like that, your morning coffee doesn't taste as good anymore. 

You start to doubt everything you're doing.

Maybe your targeting is wrong. Maybe your ad copy is outdated. Maybe you've been doing this all wrong and everyone else is quietly laughing at your results. 

So you start changing things.

You read their post again.

They mentioned their targeting setup, so you rebuild yours to match. They said video ads are the only thing working right now, so you scrap your best-performing image ad. They said they doubled their budget last month and saw their sales explode, so you double yours too.

You're not running your ads anymore.

You're running theirs.

A week later, you check your numbers.

Your results have tanked.

The clicks have doubled in cost. The sales have dried up. The thing that was working... isn't anymore.

And the worst part?

You did this to yourself.

The Comparison Trap

I've watched this pattern play out with far too many authors.

Every ad platform rewards consistency. But comparison does the opposite of consistency.

It makes you tweak. Change. Second-guess. Restart.

And every time you change your campaign because someone else is doing something different, you're resetting the algorithm's learning.

You're paying the ad platform to start over.

You're not just losing money. You're losing momentum. And momentum is the hardest thing to get back.

What That Screenshot Isn't Telling You

Here's what that perfect dashboard screenshot didn't show:

→ You don't know their book 

→ You don't know their genre 

→ You don't know their budget 

→ You don't know their backlist

→ You don't know how long they've been running that campaign

→ You don't know what's happening on the days they don't post

A romance author with 15 books and a huge email list will have completely different numbers to a debut thriller author running ads for a single book.

Comparing your ads to theirs is like comparing your first marathon to someone else's tenth.

On paper, they look like the same race.

In reality, you're running with a backpack full of bricks they threw down years ago.

And very few people post screenshots on their bad days.

You're comparing your messy reality to someone else's highlight reel.

No wonder you feel behind.

The Authors Quietly Winning

The authors I see making $1,000/month, $5,000/month, $10,000/month (and more) aren't the ones watching everyone else. 

They're the ones watching themselves.

They don't spend hours in Facebook groups. They don't chase the latest hot take. They don't turn on a dime when someone tells them some fancy new strategy.

They know:

→ What their average click costs

→ What their conversion rate is on their book page

→ Which ad copy consistently outperforms the rest

→ How their numbers trend over weeks and months

They have their own baseline. And they improve against it. 

Not against someone else's screenshot. Not against the author in the Facebook group who might have been running ads for five years longer than them.

They've stopped performing. And started paying attention to their own data, and making decisions from their own data.

A Simple Rule

The next time you catch yourself about to change your campaigns because of what someone else is doing, pause.

Take a breath.

Ask yourself one question:

What do my numbers say?

Not what does the Facebook group say. Not what does the author with the impressive screenshot say.

What do your numbers say?

That's the only question that matters.

This Week's Challenge

I want you to do something that might feel uncomfortable at first. 

Unfollow. Mute. Leave.

Anything that's pulling you out of your own data and into someone else's.

Give yourself 30 days of just watching your own numbers.

No comparisons. No screenshots. No "but so-and-so is doing X."

Just you, your ads, your book, your readers.

It's going to feel strange for the first week. You'll reach for your phone to check the groups. You'll wonder what you're missing.

You're not missing anything.

What you'll find, on the other side of those 30 days, is clarity. A calm that's been missing. And, very likely, better results than you've had in months.

Because the authors who build sustainable ad strategies aren't the ones consuming the most information.

They're the ones who've learned to trust their own.

That's all for this week. 

Eyes on your own numbers.

To Your Success
– Matt