I Paid For Some Ads To Drive Traffic To My Blog

google ads app on my desk

That’s right. I have an MBA. I have marketing skills. I bought ads last week. Google ads, Facebook ads, and Twitter ads. I took a test and wrote a few papers about it so I know what I’m doing. I pushed the buttons and I turned them on and I let them go. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE FINE!

It was thrilling. I felt so alive. What a rush of endorphins. I might do it again. Have you ever used ads to drive traffic to your blog or website? Totally my first time, I think.

I mostly did it because I was curious if I could apply some of the stuff I learned in the MBA program to my creative stuff. I mean, I know you don’t NEED an MBA to understand ads and marketing and paid SEM, but it was certainly helpful. I don’t know why I never dived into it before. My blog’s niche isn’t exactly and easy one to generate organic traffic with. I write short fiction which hardly anyone reads unless they are forced to by a professor or are short story writers themselves. I’m not well-known so no one is going to be searching for me on Google. Also, I’m honestly probably not all that good at blogging anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I still do it. No one said I had to be good at anything that I enjoy. So, after thinking about all of that, I decided I’d cancel my gym membership for a little while and place some Google and Facebook ads and see what happens.

Running Ads Actually Worked Really Well

Turns out, I got A TON of traffic from it. It was kind of crazy. The majority of the ads ran Monday through Friday. I ran both Google and Facebook ads throughout the week. The Facebook and Twitter ads ended on Saturday. I kept the Google ads going into the weekend. For some reason, I’m getting better Google ad results on the weekend than I was throughout the week. I don’t know if that’s a trend that checks out with Google or not. Maybe I’m forgetting to turn something else off, I don’t know.

traffic stats for my blog

I wouldn’t consider most of the traffic to be “converted readers” yet or anything. I don’t think anyone stuck around. But, the cool thing is that now I have numbers to look at and try to tweak and do better next time. I can look at my ad results and analytics and ask myself “how can I tweak these ads to get to my target audience a little better?” Or, “what does my blog offer and how can I show it in these ads to get people who click on them to stick around next time?” You know, stuff like that.

Anyways, it was a fun little experiment. I’ll definitely do it again. I don’t have unlimited funds for it or anything, but maybe a few times a month it wouldn’t hurt. I might keep the Google ads going, because they are fairly cheap compared to Facebook and Twitter ads.

Have you ever experimented with ads? How did it go?

By Eric Shay Howard

Eric Shay Howard lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He's the author of the fiction collection, Crushes, and is a literary editor. He also works at a law firm and is writing his second book. He's a graduate student in the Bluegrass Writers Studio MFA in Creative Writing program at Eastern Kentucky University.

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