I recently started using paid Facebook ads as a part of my marketing strategy. As I do with most things writing related, I asked the ladies in The Powder Room For Writers Facebook Group if they have used the service and how has it helped their sales.

Many of them said they used it but not one person could say how it has helped or hurt their sales. Now, I don't think that this is because they truly didn't know how. I'm gonna attribute it to them not fully understanding the question. For those that may not know exactly how to measure whether or not their marketing strategies are working or not keep reading to learn how to find out...

• Get acquainted with your KDP, CreateSpace, Smashwords, etc. platforms. You HAVE to self-publish a short story if you never have. That's the only way you're going to learn about the business inside out. No matter what platform you choose to release your writing through you have to learn how they report your sales and earnings. Every website has some type of forum to explain these things. Login in and read up on them.
• Choose your marketing strategy. After you have decided which platform you are going to release your books through, you have to decide which marketing strategy you're going to measure. Let's use paid Facebook ads as an example. 
• Download your most recent sales report. Do this even if you haven't sold one copy yet. Open up the file and take a look at how the report is setup and be sure that you understand how to read it. For bloggers, you want to check your Blogger/Wordpress stats and your website stats using Google Analytics. You'll learn how many visitors you have, where they're from, how they find your site, and much more. 
• Decide on how long you're going to measure the strategy. I like to do things on a monthly basis. So I'll run Facebooks ads for one month then see how it works. You can do this weekly, daily, or however often you choose.
• Check your sales again once your measurement time is over. Go back to your platform's website and download the last report. You should see an increase in sales, views, followers or whatever it is you are measuring. If not, then your marketing strategy wasn't really effective and you should try something new or switch up how you use that particular strategy.