Facebook advertising: Your budget? Your experience?

[just "JR"]

Advertising to large networks is, of course, not free of charge.
But, should you visit any of these sites, you will have to go through the WHOLE process BEFORE you get some idea of costs... :-)
I.E.1: Google Ads.
- Go through the process of creating an ad, then pay the minimu allowed ($/€/£100).
- Your ad will "appear" somewhere, sometimes.
I experimented it, and, to get the SMALLEST result (SOME orders, but less value than the expense!), it cost me €500 per month. Anything below led to nothing. Lesson: if not $1000/month, useless...
I.E.2: a banner on a well visited "similar" site. (for a client of mine)
- Cost: $900/month
- Good results, with over $5000 orders every month. Much better than Google ads...

FB has a lot of "success stories" but they ALL relate to multinational companies who have invested hundreds of thousand in their campaign! Nothing to compare with you and I... Hence, these are NOT "success stories"...
I am looking for someone who has spent less than a $1000 and GOT some return...

My questions:
Have you experimented FB advertising?
How much did you spend?
How "profitable" was the advert? ("Profitable": the advert expense, at least, covers the profit made on the product! If you spend $1000 and make $2000 orders, but your profit margin is 20%, you have "made" $400 for your $1000 expense. That is NOT "profitable"!)
What is the "threshold" from which an ad/promotion becomes profitable? (from what level of expense did your campaign brought "Profits" ? Google ads, for example, will NOT bring any profit, [unless you sell wind], or spend more than $1000/month on adverts with them...)
Please, REAL stories, REAL values!

[Andy]

At the moment I use adblock, so I dont get any adds on Fb, but when I did get ads they were normally suited to whatever you put in your profile area. Myself wouldn't go for them as they are the usual spam (get ripped in 6 weeks ect).

But looking at other people I'd say it does work, I mean in general adds bring awarness, I guess you could sort of see that as a 'success' the mere fact that someone knows about your product. As FB is a social site this word of mouth might be whats wanted from the adds

[Angela Q]

I have considered advertising on Facebook, but I haven't done it yet.

My experience with Adwords is not too far off from yours. The site I advertised got a small but measurable increase in traffic, but no increase in sales. ∠°)

[Eli]

i told you about my experience with facebook ads before, so now i want to show you the experience of other people

http://www.salesnexus.com/blog/are-faceb...effective/

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/02/25/how...ebook-ads/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_YvY0irr2I

http://blogconduit.com/2010/07/is-google...-the-cost/

http://yenajeon.hubpages.com/hub/Is-Goog...-the-Money


now let me tell you a secret in a public forum lol!!

the MOST effective way to advertise on facebook is free!!!

here's how:

you just have to create fake facebook accounts, invite friends, when you reach about 500 friends on each of your fake facebook account, create a group for your site on facebook and a facebook page

add all of your friends to your facebook group, they'll be added without being asked to accept lol

once you invite all of them to your group, they'll know about your site and if they like it they'll like your page and become members on your site!!!

that's how i advertise my sites from now on! i tried with my friend this method to advertise musicville.fm and you can see the results

https://www.facebook.com/MusicVille 3000+ people like the page

https://www.facebook.com/groups/186457104785042/ around 6000 people in the group

and we have more fake accounts so my friends are not done inviting just yet

as for the traffic on the site

2000 to 3000 UNIQUE visitors daily, thousands of page views, more than 2 tb of bandwidth per month...