A YouTube monologue by Lennon Bone (uploaded Aug 25, 2020) warning artists and creatives about the poor economics of using Facebook/Instagram ads to sell art. The speaker gives concrete cost estimates (≈$0.97 per Facebook click; ≈1% cold-audience conversion) and a Spotify example (10,000 streams ≈ $437) to show ads often lose money. He argues ads interrupt viewer intent, urges creators to first make content that provides clear value and connects with the audience, and to build a brand and story that turns casual viewers into fans.
Questions this video answers
About $0.97 per click.
Around 1% (one in 100 people).
About $437.
About $9,700 (calculated from $0.97 per click × 10,000 clicks).
Chapters
Let's start with the most obvious one. If you're an artist, a creative of any kind, whether it's a photographer, musician, visual artist, you're trying to push ads on Facebook or Instagram in order to make money by selling your art. Let's just take a look at the stats. Now, these aren't hard and fast numbers, but on average, you can Google it yourself. Facebook ads cost about 97 cents per click. You can expect that you're going to convert a cold audience at around 1%. So that means one in every 100 people is going to buy from you. So we're looking at $97 to get to that first hundred people. And if you're selling work that's less than that, then already you're in the hole. And this stuff makes me so frustrated, you guys, because I see people that are taking advantage of artists and musicians and saying like, go get the Facebook ads. Go run the Instagram thing, right? They're telling you to do it, and then they're telling you to do it with the least valuable thing that you have to offer currently. So let's look at this. For streaming on Spotify, 10,000 streams may get you on average around $437. Again, at that 97 cents per click. In order to get that 10,000 streams, you're gonna spend $9,700 to get $437. The math just doesn't add up. And again, that's assuming that every single click equals a stream. Does it work? For some people, sure, absolutely. But not for the vast majority. And I'm gonna tell you why. Listen, I want you guys to art as your business. I want you to think of it as this is an investment into you, which means in the short term, you have a lot better options for making investments with your finances. Before you start running ads, you guys are putting the cart before the horse. And we're going to talk about three things here that I think are going to give you some clarity. The first thing is the ads are actually interrupting the viewers intent. How many times have you watched an ad by an artist and been like, oh my gosh, I definitely want to go check out their work? But how many times have you watched an ad by an artist who maybe has a course or something that's going to solve a problem for you and been like, oh, maybe I should actually check that out? You need to remember what the intent of an advertisement is. It's with the intent of solving a problem for somebody. It's with the intent of solving A problem. This means that you need to start thinking about how can you use your art to solve somebody's problem. The second thing is, if your ads aren't converting but you're running them already, you just may not know how to make good content that connects with people yet. If you follow me at all, you know that I believe hands down that you do not need the biggest audience. All these people are selling you on these vanity metrics of streams and impressions and they're not telling you what the actual math is on that. How many times have you went out and bought a piece of art off of Instagram? How many times have you went out and streamed a song? This stuff is not what it used to be. And we have to learn to adapt to the new systems. I love the new systems, I love the way things are going, but we have to learn how to adapt to them. I want you to focus on where you can create value for people. And what do I mean by that? I mean, what brings you value in your life? What saves you time? What helps you, like, save money? What helps you reduce effort? You know, and we're going to go deeper into values in another video, but I want you to think about that first. First, like, how can you bring value to your audience in terms of like, what do you find valuable on YouTube? What do you watch? What do you find valuable on Instagram? What motivates you? Look at those things and start to make some content around that first and see if it sticks. Because if you can't make that stick and then you're trying to run ads, it's just not gonna work. And then the final thing is that you have nowhere to bring them back to. You might say to me, well, now I'm posting my stuff on Instagram, I'm putting it on Spotify or I've got my films on YouTube. That's not enough for somebody to become a fan. You don't create fans unless you have a brand. And a brand is the thing that people talk about when you're not in the room. It's not like how cool your music is, it's where is this music coming from? It's not how good your art looks, it's what's the story behind this art? My wife and I watched the movie, My kid could paint this. It's about a four year old that does these abstract paintings and there's this whole big story wrapped around it. But what the dad said in the movie that I thought was so on point was when they saw her art, they fell in love with the story as much as they did the artwork. This is it, you guys. If you don't have a brand that somebody can come back to. And I'm not talking fonts and colors like, I'm talking like, can people understand who you are and what you're all about when they go back to your social media? And is there something there that makes them want to stick around? Right? And that starts with not being so you centered. Don't make it all about you, your audience. Like, there's something when you're just saying, hey, I'm hanging out at this place, or I'm eating this food, or I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm. It doesn't work if you right now, and I'm guessing you are, or you wouldn't be watching this video. If you right now are at a small place where you're trying to build a business as an artist, you're trying to make some money and do a thing that is meaningful to you, do work that means something to you. You'd like to get some stinking clients just to, like, make some extra bucks and not have to have your normal job. If that's you, think about the stuff that you watch that is valuable to you. And I guarantee the stuff that we enjoy the most are the things where they're engaging with their audience. They're making it about the audience as well. They're bringing them along on something. So again, to recap, ads aren't making you any money on your art unless you have artwork that supersedes the value of what you're spending on your ads. Now, if you're just looking for ideas on how to push your art more on social media, like try to get people to buy it more. I've got a great video here that I think you should, should totally go check out and I'll see you over there.
