In a nice counter argument to startup Limited Run’s claim that 80% of the clicks on its ads were bots, an entrepreneur has stepped up to provide a real-life example in which he made $8,000 in one day via Facebook ads.
The entrepreneur, Brendan Irvine-Broque, is the director of growth for PageLever. In a post on his personal blog that made Hacker News, Irvine-Broque claims he made $10,000 on Saturday, May 12, after holding an event in his backyard in which he sold 6,000 vinyl records for $3 each.
Irvine-Broque had previously run a business selling vintage vinyl records and he was eager to get rid of them. He says he spent about $2,000 for the bulk of those records. Marketing costs were cheap: He created a Facebook Event, shared it on the platform and bought about $150 worth of Facebook ads to promote the event.
In response, Irvine-Broque got 341 people who claimed they were attending and 104 maybes. The upshot:
At the end of the day, hundreds of happy customers later, I counted $10,000 in cash (and some payments accepted via Square – yes, I’m reporting the income, IRS). Over 3000 records sold in one afternoon. The majority of my customers came from Facebook Ads, so what is the calculated ROI, 2000%? 3000%? You do the math.
Irvine-Broque writes that the argument over bots is immaterial.
“As far as I’m concerned, clicks coming from Facebook are the realest click in the game right now.”
Meanwhile, Irvine-Broque says he wanted to share his experience to further a dialogue about Facebook ads. “It’s important for people to get out there and be talking about it,” he says.
Too often, he adds, businesses that are successful on Facebook don’t want to talk about it for fear that competitors will steal their ideas. That said, Irvine-Broque isn’t completely objective in the matter: PageLever’s business is based on Facebook analytics.
“I work for a business that’s very much heavily invested in Facebook,” he says. “It’s a fair critique to say I’m a little big biased, but I’m sharing things that I can back up.”
