Facebook Ads.

I've given FB thousands with ZERO results....My art sells very well, so it isn't me. I feel people do not go to FB to buy art...They go there to be outraged over something and to argue with anyone who doesn't agree with their particular flavor or outrage. So I won't give them anymore money...I don't even spend much time there anymore. I check in on a few friends and dump some FAA automated posts.

I didn't spend thousands but did spend some money boosting some posts and like Sharon had no luck selling but did gain followers, (and a couple jerks. lol). Also like Sharon I don't really use FB anymore, definitely not for promoting my art, haven't been to my page in over a year.

No, followers a few and sales none

Thanks Sharon, David and Abbie. I certainly do not have thousands to waste on it. I do not even have hundreds. LOL I was hoping for cheap advertisement and possible results. I will see what others have to say.

If you find cheap advertisement with results...let us know!!!

They can put your art in front of people who they know like to click "like" on everything. And that's about it.

I ran a FB ad for one of my more recent uploads. FB claims that the ad reached 84k people and had 4.1k link clicks. The visitor count on FAA is currently at 2387 for that image, but no sales. I think the ad cost me about $13 Canadian.

I've run FB ads multiple times. The only one who made out on the ads was FB.

I pick up some followers when I run them, that's about it though.

John, no way you got 4.1k link clicks on $13, lol. Even a good ad will get your a .30 / click. So maybe 30(ish) clicks for that amount of money.

I spent a $100, it was like flushing it down the toilet without the weird plumber visit after.

It made no sense to who would get it, and you would need to spend a ton to see anything. When I send stuff to a group and i'm bummed I got only 15 hits, paying for it only got me like 6 hits. Not worth it. Free is better. And right now no one seems to be buying (from me anyway). So it won't help to pay for it.

Paying for advertising is best for hyper local, like down to a 3 block radius. A pizza place, a store etc. But country or world wide, you don't have enough money to send it off. And you have no idea if real people are looking or if bots are doing it.


----Mike Savad

I do get sales from Facebook, but my experience with the way they charge daily for the ads is expensive!! Not worth it!!

Consider the alternative of charity donation.

hahaha although somewhat of a daft answer, as far as Facebook ads go, the charity is a better money spender

I would go with Google AdWords. One of our larger sellers used AdWords

From my experience, it's a better use of your money to use the type of ads that find followers for your page vs. ads that are trying to sell something via website clicks. Link clicks are a one-off for the most part. At least with followers, you'll have more eyes on your work more often and they can do things like share your work as well. This way you get some kind of return on your investment whether you make a sale or not.

I might give Adwords another go, but the bounce rate was like 90% with them. I swear most of the visits were bots.

I know quite a few painters who regularly promote their original art directly on the news feed and don't bother with setting up a Facebook business page. One posts the size and price and sells quite a lot of her paintings that way.

Robert, I was wondering about that. I always thought we could have our personal FB page taken away by doing that. Is that not true?

Believe it or not, FB has been pushing me to use a $30 credit on one of my business pages and I still haven't done it. I did FB ads a long time ago and I found them very slippery as far as what they charged. I don't think I had any good results but I honestly can't even remember. Whatever happened, I guess it wasn't impressive in any way if I don't even remember it.

That's what I thought also, Peggy. I did set up a business page, but sort of abandoned it after a few weeks. I guess I'm a bit jealous and annoyed to see so much good original art every morning on my news feed. Most of the artists don't blatantly advertise, but followers often express an interest in acquiring the artwork.

Well ...on fineartamerica there are several sales made with Google Advertisement and a 50% cut ... so google ads seems to work.
Now there is the problem of understanding whether adding further ads on our part for the same articles is misinterpreted by google :/

Robert, I've also been seeing it more often. I used to share from my business page until a few months ago when I wasn't able to...I assumed FB changed something. I think it's great if artists can make some $$ through sharing on their personal pages. My business page is pretty hit and miss as far as how much it's shown, I think.

I do pretty well on facebook as far as sales. It is a whole lot of work and some ugliness from people though. I have to admit that sales have been slow in the past month or so. Will continue to read your thoughts on this. :)

I'm done with FB business. They keep freezing my account with no warning and now want extra verification which didn't work. I don't know if anyone from my FB art page ever purchased anything from FAA, but not worth the hassle any more. No more boosting or ads.

You are right, Peggy. Most of the painters I know on Facebook are in their 60's and up. They either had active galleries or worked the exhausting outdoor art fair circuit for many years, so it's any online port in the storm now, I guess.

I did okay with Marketplace sales then they changed it. I never liked the new format.

But that was not the real problem. I would post an image of wild horses, or a fricking shark and they would remove the posts saying they do not allow selling animals on FB.

You could ask for a review and about half the time they reinstated the post and half they did not.

So I just got ticked off and said the hell with them.

Wow, Floyd, that's insane! I doubt we're ever dealing with a real live person when there are problems like that.

I also got a lot of attention using Marketplace however it was a problem too because only local people responded and they figured they could drop by for a print. It was like they didn't understand the concept of a POD company. Too many messages back and forth trying to straighten things out for my taste.

Peggy said it all when she said this,"Believe it or not, FB has been pushing me to use a $30 credit on one of my business pages and I still haven't done it. I did FB ads a long time ago and I found them very slippery as far as what they charged. "

I had one sleepless night over just this. Once I understood the payment program, I blocked Facebook ads from charging my paypal, venmo, square, and credit cards. I also went into Facebook and blocked myself from ever buying ads, but they still market to me because they got me long ago.

Peggy, I still have problems with my Facebook clients understanding a POD site. LOL

My personal FB page is more popular than my business page, both get promoted equally. FB keep pushing me to pay for ads, which I assume is why my business page gets less visits (they show it to less followers).
Groups is the way to go as has been commented many times. They generate as many visits as my other SM if I post regularly, according to Google analytics and feedback from FB users. Groups often don't allow links but most folks who are interested will go to your page to find your site or link for that image.

As for PODs, people don't get it. There is here on FAA, then I have local POD (local shipping costs) and then a local printer, I'll deliver to the local metro station and charge the same as postage. Anything else is not worth it (for prints). Originals I give more delivery options.

Wow! Glad that I kept this open. Lisa, that is enough to stop me right there. Thank you all again.

I am really trying to save everyone from that one sleepless night when I excitedly checked my paypal because I had a great month of sales...only to find that facebook had been retrieving payment for a TWO DAY ad for over thirty days 10.00 per day. I thought I had completed their form to perfection simply double checking everything and the only way to stop it was to block facebook from all my accounts. smh.

I was actually scared. I had no idea what they were up to and I hope they are more transparent today. The two day ad for 10.00 per day was a scam job!

It's not like I don't fill out contracts, do my own taxes, fill out excel forms, many forms daily on line at my job and at home and for my business, so why was Facebook, a simple entity able to fool me into idiocy? Well, I solved that problem easy enough, but never again will I trust online payment stuff with the exception of Paypal and Fineartamerica.com People can pay me check or credit card and I dread facebook pay everytime I see it.

This was a very interesting read. It confirms what I thought/ Advertising there is hideously expensive and doesn't deliver results. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my perception is that they charge small entities like us, pretty much what they charge biog brands. Am I right?. I'd much rather they let us do it this way; We pay them a monthly premium and they remove all the algorithms, blocking us from our followers. I'd pay for that...

Facebook sends me personal requests to buy ads right to my email address. I once started to go through with my "credit" of
$20.00 once. Well, it took me to a page I had to let them know what age group I wanted, then the area,etc and by the time I answered all that info, the ad would cost me 400.00 for one ad!!! Never did that again and not crazy about FB anymore. They have frozen me several times for putting an image on and adding the link from FAA which we all do to display it. I may try doing some more during the Fall and Christmas but will see. Right about the News Feed and personal profile is better, but have to be careful.

Jason, I'm just going by what FB tells me. It said 4.1k link clicks, but I have no idea why it thinks that. Google Analytics shows about 800 visitors during the week my ad was running - much more than I would get without the ad, but much less than what FB claimed.

I wouldn't say that advertising there is "hideously expensive". They let you set your own limit, so it certainly CAN be expensive, but you're in complete control of that. So far, I haven't seen any of the payment issues mentioned in this thread. I set my maximum spend at $12, and it charged me $12 (plus tax, putting it just above $13). The ad got me a bunch of FAA views plus a few followers on my FB page, but no sales. It was a cheap experiment, though - $13 really isn't enough to mourn.

I think maybe there's some are confusing ads with boosting posts, two different things. I've only ever boosted posts, never bought an ad. I know boosting posts wasn't expensive really but never got me any sales. I don't know what ads cost.

okay, so boosting isn't as expensive as an ad, that is good to know.

I tried the exact same thing as Sandi OReilly. I had to choose my audience just like she did. It took a long time but was kind of fun. I didn't want any of my friends or family chosen to get the ads, just simply people who lived in the vicinity of my art gallery and I wasn't marketing for my Lisa-Kaiser.pixels.com. It took a long time like an hour or so to choose my audience and that was fun.

I have much better luck posting images on google maps believe it or not!

Sandi, if they froze your account several times because you were linking to your site with an image, that confirms what I thought...that we aren't actually supposed to do that. I was never totally sure if that's the case or not. We're taking a chance by doing that.

Posting images on Google maps? That's a new one on me.

I'm a top contributor to Google maps, or so they tell me, with my photos being viewed millions of times. Not done me any good though lol

I'm going to start putting some of my paintings there if they fit...

I have a personal profile and a page. Most of the time I post the same to both. Then I post to some groups where I know it is acceptable to promote. Sometimes I do get a sale from a post but not really sure which one. When I see my visitor count go up from an image I recently posted I assume that is the reason. I have paid $10-$20 for boosting ads and saw high numbers of views as a result but can't say they resulted in sales.

I also got in trouble with images of animal art accusing me of selling animals. It took time and effort to protest and convince the powers that be that it was art.

I've dabbled a bit with FB ads and the only time it seemed worthwhile was for promoting a photo exhibition I had running for a couple of months a few years ago. For promoting something like a specific event to a local audience it's probably worth trying (you can control the budget and adjust it depending on how its performing). For just trying to promote your art or page generally running FB ads seems to be a waste of money

So promoting or sponsoring an image is probably better than running an ad from what I am reading and much more affordable. I may have to look into that instead.

Lisa wrote, I have much better luck posting images on google maps believe it or not!

I have never heard of doing that (but see Abbie has done it too).

I have only seen photos on Google maps that pertain to a business or location (like a park) I have just searched. So do you first post your business location, and then add photos of your art?

Not to be a negative nellie, but I found Facebook ads to be a waste of money and Facebook in general to be a waste of time after about 8 years of trying everything there including my own pages and groups and all.

Ps: I also want to know more about Google maps. how innovative Lisa!

You have to be someone like myself who isn't scared to share locations I'm at. As I've said before, i use location in case anything happens and people will know where i was, or even am.

I also use Google photos

Google asks me about locations I've been, then asks me to share images of the place. Which of course i do.

I boosted twice for a minimal amount of 5$ or something, just for curiosity to see if it makes at all any difference. The boosted posts got far less interactions than the non boosted ones. So I am not curious anymore :)) and no budget for it, so I wont do anymore anything like that

I don't think boosts are very useful for accounts that already have thousands of followers. I have a couple of hundred, so it's helpful, but there's probably a point where boosts are pointless for a larger account that already has the same reach as a $5 boost.

So Donna, I rely heavily on my gallery and putting my business out there. I create commercials and stuff, so as a result, that is why I like Google maps. It tells art buyers where to go to buy original art locally in my area. There is no better thing for me than google maps, and I really like promoting artists in my gallery especially one who is a top seller. This keeps me having a place to hang my art.

Read Abbie's post on Google Maps. I simply share my location and pictures of experiences there. It gives me a presence and then I share to art buyers in my area. A lot of strangers see my posts and become patrons to my art gallery.