Buying data from Mark Zuckerberg. $900 in total revenue and still not profitable

[adaro]

BUT!

Today was our first profitable day :) so far we've spent $10 on ads and have gotten two sales for a total of $63. Not too shabby. The cool thing about Facebook ads is that it gets easier. The more money you give Zuckerberg, the more data he gives you. Today, one of our customers was a repeat visitor who first saw our ad 17 days ago and converted today. Will this experiment continue to work? I honestly don't think so. It seems like to run Facebook ads properly you need a product or AOV that is at least $150.00. The rough math being $1.00 per (highly targeted) click... so spend $100, get 100 visitors to the site, get 1 sale (1% conversion rate) and break even. The goal would be to work towards a higher conversion rate of 3-5%. We'll see. I do like buying facebook data and building out my pixel. Facebook is evil but super powerful.

Come check out our shop and buy a cute enamel pin for a loved one :)

https://shop.senimancalligraphy.com/

[Nextgrid]

You’re proud of stalking people just to make your business succeed and want to continue “building out your pixel” (no idea what that means but I assume putting tracking scripts everywhere you can)?

Meh. I don’t even want to visit your site actually, since I’ll be bombarded with malware trying to stalk me and potentially the odd cookie banner.

[jordansmith]

Building his pixel means as he gets visitors who are interested in his product to his website, facebook can start to link those people together on the backend. It makes his facebook campaign smarter and start showing to people who will actually be interested in his product. Instead of just throwing it to random people.

This is how all businesses advertise, it has nothing to do with malware.

Also in terms of building your pixel OP, posting here is not helping you. We are just going to give you data that is out of the norm for your customers

[Nextgrid]

> facebook can start to link those people together on the backend

Which is one of my problems with this approach. When I visit his website I’m happy for him to know that. I am not happy with Facebook knowing that.

> This is how all businesses advertise, it has nothing to do with malware.

You’re saying that because everyone is doing it then it’s fine? Also it has something to do with malware, or more specifically spyware. Software that spies on what sites I visit and reports that to a third-party without my explicit permission fits the definition of spyware perfectly.

[adaro]

Look, I understand your concern and for example when Facebook uses your phone number that you provided for two factor authentication as a means to target you, that’s wrong. (google “two factor targeting Facebook” and you’ll see what I am talking about)

Now with that said, I honestly think tracking pixels are fine if they are used in non-nefarious ways. I would much rather get ads that are relevant to me rather than ads that have no significance.

Now, I do have a problem with banner ads (Google display network for example) that follow me around the internet, but then again I should be picking a bone with the website that decides to clutter their side columns with display ads!

The truth of the matter is the internet has always used the ad supported model as a source of revenue. We get free tools like Google sheets, drive and docs because of ads. Entire businesses are built using tools that are supported by google’s suite of tools.

And in regards to Facebook, if you don’t want to be targeted stay off the platform. It’s that easy. Now, I do think Facebook SHOULD offer a payed version that has no ads. That seems like an easy solution.

But the truth of the matter is Facebook has allowed an entire new industry of direct to consumer brands to successfully run e-commerce businesses because of their advertising tools. A net win IMO.

But to blast me on hacker news because I am simply trying to help my wife with her craft business (using the very powerful targeting tools Facebook provides) is childish. Pick a bone with Facebook, not me.

And by the way. You’ll notice I didn’t add anything special to the URL I provided in the post. No parameter such as ?source=hackernews so don’t worry about seeing my wife’s BEAUTIFUL pins on Facebook, although jeez you might need something to brighten up your day and perhaps cute little flower pins might help with that.