4 ms·

The point about revenue != profit isn't very clever, though 1/3 of the existing comments are making it. The actual point is that he was able to successfully dri

The point about revenue != profit isn't very clever, though 1/3 of the existing comments are making it. The actual point is that he was able to successfully drive traffic to his event using FB ads. Every comment addressing profit vs. revenue entirely misses the point.

jmduke 14y ago
The argument OP makes is 'I made $10,000 in one day thanks to Facebook, thus Facebook is a superior platform' which is undeniably faulty. 1. The OP did not make $10,000 in one day. 2. We don't know how well this would have done on a non-Facebook platform. My point is that this is like arguing that Facebook is a wonderful platform because Apple makes a lot of money and Apple uses Facebook to advertise. Apple would be making a lot of money without Facebook ads, too; if a company using Facebook ads generates $X revenue, that doesn't mean those Facebook ads were responsible for a specific amount of the revenue. In short: congrats to the author! But this doesn't really prove anything.
- dionidium 14y ago
  The OP did not make $10,000 in one day. Now you're almost willfully missing the point.
  - vavb 14y ago
    You're almost wilfully ignoring that the poster is claiming that he's devised a way of making $10000 profit at 3000%+ ROI but decided instead to make a startup aimed solely around facebook ads - which coincidently were the things he took advantage of to achieve this massive product. Surely something with stats as lucrative as this yard sale would mean that he would create a startup based around selling other peoples stuff after advertising through FB events instead??
    - brendanib 14y ago
      It's actually an idea that I've entertained before, and I think there's tons of businesses that could be built in this space (for example, I'm a huge fan of Yardsale, and this could be an interesting growth strategy for them, to build Facebook Ads directly into their platform). Right now though, I'm having a blast working on Facebook Analytics with my team at PageLever.
    - taligent 14y ago
      Are you so naive as to think that the only reason people do startups is to make money ?
      - clarky07 14y ago
        Are you so naive as to think that someone would create a Facebook ad analytics company for something other than money? Not exactly changing the world bettering humanity type of stuff.
        taligent 14y ago
        A lot of people happen to find analytics and mathematics quite stimulating. So many in fact there are even university courses for it.
        vavb 14y ago
        And then they usually use that degree to get a job in analytics or mathematics.
      - vavb 14y ago
        No sometimes they want to change the world. One secondhand vinyl at a time.
  - dlikhten 14y ago
    Yes, but you did not read the title did you. It's an obvious Jab at the fact that FB overcharges. However the point was, the OP made a net profit of < 10k. The OP used it as a facebook EVENT not a click-through link. So this is not an Apples - to - Apples comparison.
- brendanib 14y ago
  I'm curious - what other ad platform could I have turned to drive local commerce? Always interested to hear how other folks would approach the same problem. I still have some records left over, thinking about doing another sale, would be game to test another means of customer acquisition and report back with results.
  - jefflinwood 14y ago
    Really quickly, the first thing that I would turn to would be Craigslist - is there a reason you chose Facebook ads over Craigslist?
    - veyron 14y ago
      His business is in facebook ads ...
  - jmduke 14y ago
    jeff chimed in before me. if I were in your shoes, I would have probably leaned on Craigslist and the area subreddit (the latter is very hit or miss, but I could see something niche like records doing really well.) I'm not a vinyl guy, but I'm sure there are a TON of niche forums out there worth looking at as well. I really wish you could apply multi-armed bandit approaches to physical problems like these more easily; obviously its hard to do A/B testing when you only have one actual supply.
    - brendanib 14y ago
      Yeah, I actually only recently started to understand the impact that area subreddits can have - great channel for certain audiences. My intuition is that most of my target audience for vinyl isn't yet on Reddit, but maybe that's changed and I just haven't realized it yet. There are certainly a lot of forums out there too, but most of them aren't local to one area, so most of the sales are online (I did a lot of business through these forums in the past). In retrospect, it would have been rad to run this as a fully fledged A/B test. I honestly just didn't know that the ads would have quite the impact that they did.
Draiken 14y ago
But you have to agree this is a very specific case. It's a real life product, at a very low price with a very specific niche. If this was a rule and not an exception, every big company in the world would be using these ads. Another point is that it was an event ad, so it was there for a very small window of time, limiting the exposure to any kind of botting. Funny how he tries to say people should use utm campaigns and not care about bots clicking your ads.
- engtech 14y ago
  Maybe more local business should be using these ads? Facebook captures location + interests.
- brendanib 14y ago
  I totally agree that this is a specific case. At the same time, there are a lot of smaller, brick and mortar businesses out there trying to figure out how to use Facebook Ads, and to me, hosting Events is a great way to drive people into stores (or in my case, a backyard :) ) Also, most big companies in the world actually are trying to figure out how to use Facebook Ads right now. The problem is that most haven't figured out how to create a compelling enough value proposition - I click on the ad, but what compels me as a user to take the next step? It's a big challenge for companies and agencies who are accustomed to being able to pay for captive audiences.
dendory 14y ago
Honestly I think this shows more the power of Facebook Events, than how a traditional business should be able to make Facebook ads work for them.
- brendanib 14y ago
  Yeah, in part, but after I invited people I knew, plus posted the event on my business's Facebook Page, there were only 40 or so people attending. To me, it shows the power of combining native Facebook functionality like Events with Facebook Ads.
  - spinlock 14y ago
    I've also talked with a LinkedIn "expert" who claimed that advertising LinkedIn events on LinkedIn had a much better conversion because you loose people when you go off site (i.e. from linkedin.com to yourdomain.com). By keeping people on the same platform, you should have a higher conversion rate. (according to one guy who does have a book deal but whatever)
joelrunyon 14y ago
He titled the post "how I made 10k" - making it very clear that the "point" of the article is that FB ads made him money. The people who are asking about his profit are just asking him to clarify and validate his title and entire premise for his argument. I would say that's not missing the point at all.

jmduke 14y ago

The argument OP makes is 'I made $10,000 in one day thanks to Facebook, thus Facebook is a superior platform' which is undeniably faulty. 1. The OP did not make $10,000 in one day. 2. We don't know how well this would have done on a non-Facebook platform. My point is that this is like arguing that Facebook is a wonderful platform because Apple makes a lot of money and Apple uses Facebook to advertise. Apple would be making a lot of money without Facebook ads, too; if a company using Facebook ads generates $X revenue, that doesn't mean those Facebook ads were responsible for a specific amount of the revenue. In short: congrats to the author! But this doesn't really prove anything.

dionidium 14y ago
The OP did not make $10,000 in one day. Now you're almost willfully missing the point.
- vavb 14y ago
  You're almost wilfully ignoring that the poster is claiming that he's devised a way of making $10000 profit at 3000%+ ROI but decided instead to make a startup aimed solely around facebook ads - which coincidently were the things he took advantage of to achieve this massive product. Surely something with stats as lucrative as this yard sale would mean that he would create a startup based around selling other peoples stuff after advertising through FB events instead??
  - brendanib 14y ago
    It's actually an idea that I've entertained before, and I think there's tons of businesses that could be built in this space (for example, I'm a huge fan of Yardsale, and this could be an interesting growth strategy for them, to build Facebook Ads directly into their platform). Right now though, I'm having a blast working on Facebook Analytics with my team at PageLever.
  - taligent 14y ago
    Are you so naive as to think that the only reason people do startups is to make money ?
    - clarky07 14y ago
      Are you so naive as to think that someone would create a Facebook ad analytics company for something other than money? Not exactly changing the world bettering humanity type of stuff.
      - taligent 14y ago
        A lot of people happen to find analytics and mathematics quite stimulating. So many in fact there are even university courses for it.
        vavb 14y ago
        And then they usually use that degree to get a job in analytics or mathematics.
    - vavb 14y ago
      No sometimes they want to change the world. One secondhand vinyl at a time.
- dlikhten 14y ago
  Yes, but you did not read the title did you. It's an obvious Jab at the fact that FB overcharges. However the point was, the OP made a net profit of < 10k. The OP used it as a facebook EVENT not a click-through link. So this is not an Apples - to - Apples comparison.
brendanib 14y ago
I'm curious - what other ad platform could I have turned to drive local commerce? Always interested to hear how other folks would approach the same problem. I still have some records left over, thinking about doing another sale, would be game to test another means of customer acquisition and report back with results.
- jefflinwood 14y ago
  Really quickly, the first thing that I would turn to would be Craigslist - is there a reason you chose Facebook ads over Craigslist?
  - veyron 14y ago
    His business is in facebook ads ...
- jmduke 14y ago
  jeff chimed in before me. if I were in your shoes, I would have probably leaned on Craigslist and the area subreddit (the latter is very hit or miss, but I could see something niche like records doing really well.) I'm not a vinyl guy, but I'm sure there are a TON of niche forums out there worth looking at as well. I really wish you could apply multi-armed bandit approaches to physical problems like these more easily; obviously its hard to do A/B testing when you only have one actual supply.
  - brendanib 14y ago
    Yeah, I actually only recently started to understand the impact that area subreddits can have - great channel for certain audiences. My intuition is that most of my target audience for vinyl isn't yet on Reddit, but maybe that's changed and I just haven't realized it yet. There are certainly a lot of forums out there too, but most of them aren't local to one area, so most of the sales are online (I did a lot of business through these forums in the past). In retrospect, it would have been rad to run this as a fully fledged A/B test. I honestly just didn't know that the ads would have quite the impact that they did.

Draiken 14y ago

But you have to agree this is a very specific case. It's a real life product, at a very low price with a very specific niche. If this was a rule and not an exception, every big company in the world would be using these ads. Another point is that it was an event ad, so it was there for a very small window of time, limiting the exposure to any kind of botting. Funny how he tries to say people should use utm campaigns and not care about bots clicking your ads.

engtech 14y ago
Maybe more local business should be using these ads? Facebook captures location + interests.
brendanib 14y ago
I totally agree that this is a specific case. At the same time, there are a lot of smaller, brick and mortar businesses out there trying to figure out how to use Facebook Ads, and to me, hosting Events is a great way to drive people into stores (or in my case, a backyard :) ) Also, most big companies in the world actually are trying to figure out how to use Facebook Ads right now. The problem is that most haven't figured out how to create a compelling enough value proposition - I click on the ad, but what compels me as a user to take the next step? It's a big challenge for companies and agencies who are accustomed to being able to pay for captive audiences.

dendory 14y ago

Honestly I think this shows more the power of Facebook Events, than how a traditional business should be able to make Facebook ads work for them.

brendanib 14y ago
Yeah, in part, but after I invited people I knew, plus posted the event on my business's Facebook Page, there were only 40 or so people attending. To me, it shows the power of combining native Facebook functionality like Events with Facebook Ads.
- spinlock 14y ago
  I've also talked with a LinkedIn "expert" who claimed that advertising LinkedIn events on LinkedIn had a much better conversion because you loose people when you go off site (i.e. from linkedin.com to yourdomain.com). By keeping people on the same platform, you should have a higher conversion rate. (according to one guy who does have a book deal but whatever)

joelrunyon 14y ago

He titled the post "how I made 10k" - making it very clear that the "point" of the article is that FB ads made him money. The people who are asking about his profit are just asking him to clarify and validate his title and entire premise for his argument. I would say that's not missing the point at all.