FB/IG Ads — Anyone using Steve Pieper's Click Testing for Authors? Sharing my early experience.

I'm a self-published children's book author currently about halfway through Steve Pieper's Click Testing for Authors course and wanted to share my experience so far in case anyone is considering it or is currently using it.

Quick background: I have one book, a niche children's picture book. I sell directly from my Shopify site. I had essentially no paid advertising experience before this. I was terrified of wasting money on ads that wouldn't convert.

What surprised me: How much I'm enjoying this! (aside from meta ads being a tangled antiquated lesson in patience) My very first round of motivation testing produced results that blew past the minimum benchmarks. Steve's criteria calls for a 2.5% click-through rate and $0.40 max cost per click. My worst performing ad out of 12 variants came in at 8% CTR and $0.08 CPC. I'm enjoying nerding out watching the campaign variant's performance in real time. 😅

I'm now moving through the sequential tests — motivation, transformation, testimonials — and each round gives me more confidence that I'll come out of this with a real, data-backed ad/(s) to run. It's methodical and honestly kind of validating — Steve says 90% of authors guess wrong about what will win, but I've been pleasantly surprised that several of my instincts actually held up. The data confirmed some and surprised me on others, which is exactly why you test.

A few things I appreciate: Steve personally answered a question I submitted via their help desk with a video response the very next morning. Extremely helpful and encouraging. The twice-weekly zoom calls with his coaching team have been genuinely useful for getting unstuck or having knowing eyes give the nod on something like audience selection. And the course is structured so you're not guessing — each test builds on the last.

I'm not affiliated with Steve or his team in any way. Just a self-published author who finally found a process that feels like it's based on data instead of a wing and a prayer and unreturned money into Zuck's pocket.

Has anyone else gone through this course? Would love to compare notes, especially if you're in a niche market. Curious what your results looked like and how your final ads are performing long-term.