If you follow my blog posts, you will know that I write fiction on this platform and also work on multiple open source projects.
Because my publihsed fiction as e-books have pretty much dried up as a source of income, and because my open source efforts are maybe 1% or 2% funded as an activity compared to my day time job, and a little bit more compared to my fiction, I decided to see if I can use my fiction as promotional material for my fiction.
At first the idea was to only use Ragnarok Conspiracy, because that novel is all about a world going through a post-cryptocalipse time in the not that distance future (the book starts with a quantum blockchain heist in the year 2027), and part of my open source efforts are concerned with protecting Web 3.0 and utility chains from just such a quantum computing attack factor in the future.
I've been restructuring my HIVE and social media pressence a bit as you can see here, bringing all of my activities under the InnuenDo brand. Part of this effort was branching out to social media where intill recently I hadn't been all that active.
Orussian Quarantine as series of AI-voice audio-book chapters on social media
Books ans social media aren't that great a match, but AI (also a topic I touched on in Ragnarok Conspiracy long before AI became the factor it is today) to the resque, voice generation is quite OK in 2023 is quite good now, at least in a way. Dialogs and inner thought aren't really usable and Ragnarok Conspiracy is filled with those.
Fortunately my first work of fiction, Orussian Quarantine was all tell and hardly any show, not what most readers prefer, but a good match for posting some promotional fiction on Youtube, Instagram. Facebook and TikTok.
Youtube
So that is what I stated doing. I started posting on Youtube first.
Then once I had the hang of that, I communicated with my cover artist and with the illustrator of Ragnarok Conspiracy about doing some Amazon Merch On Demand, and after I had that sorted, I posted chapter 5 of Orussian quarantine, mentioning the merch and mentioning my open source project donation options.
So that was my first one, Youtube, I prompted my post and things seemed OK, for a day or so.
Instagram/Facebook and TikTok
So I had Youtube sorted. At first I couldn't manage to get my videos (created with ffmpeg from PNG files and WAV files) to get accepted by TikTok and Instagram but after some struggles I managed to post on Tiktok and on instagram/facebook. I couldn't figure out how to promote my post on TikTok, but Facebook worked OK, so I chose a mixed Facebook/Instagram promotion.
X
So because I couldn't figure out how to promote on TikTok, I thought why not promote my TikTok post on X, so the third thin I did was make an X post linking to my TikTok post, and ptomoting that post.
The results
So I tried throwing $75 at YouTube, $50 at Facebook/Instagram and $20 at X. And guess what? Each and every one of them went wrong in one way ot the other.
X won't take my money
Let's start with X. I actually tried twice, but the promote option on posts in X simply doesn't seem to work. X won't take my money. It is simple, you create a post, tell X you want to promote it with a $20 day budget for one day, and X is supposed to show my post and take my money. They did neither.
I tried a second time, $10 budget for two days, alzo zero result.
Facebook/Instagram, zero new followers
The Facebook promotion is still running. So far I've spent $12.24 and got reach of 3,616, but when it comes to new followers on Facebook and Instagram?
A persistent zero on Facebook and the exact same two followers I already had on Instagram
Youtube
YouTube STARTED a whole lot better.
€13.52 spent so far, 102,423 impressions, 1,787 views and a whopping 308 new subscribers to my channel. It seems YouTube is a much better bang for your buck when it comes to promoting posts. None of these views or subscription has led to a MOD purchase but thats not the important part right now, These numbers are really good, or at least I felt they were untill this happened.
I didn't eve know that I was using a GoogleAdds account. I just pushed the promote option on my video and set a budget and an audience.
No clue what I could have done to aparently try to circumvent their system in some way.
The least crappy one?
Which one of these three is the least crappy one do you reckon? I think X is silly, Facebook/Instagram is useless and YouTube is hostile. If I had any stocks in any of these companies, today would be the day that I'dd sell them because I truly don't think either of these experiences translates to something that can be long term sustainable.
Not sure what my alternatives are to get myself some initial exposure boost on these platforms. The initial boost on YouTube was great but they basicly pulled the plug on me. Think I should probably appeal the suspension and see where it leads, but it doesn't exactly build confidence.
Facebook seems like a total waste of money so far, but I'll sit out the campaign.
As for X, I truly can't understand why they don't want my money, this seems broken to me.