Hello, I know a lot of people who have tried Facebook ads have failed miserably. Many reportings were, super high impressions, but extremely low clickthrough rate, hence little to no conversions whatsoever. I seldom hear a marketer boasting success! I want to try this myself, however something's bugging me! Does Facebook allow affiliate marketers to promote other people's products, i.e: using their affiliate links..? - So basically, can I use affiliate links is the question I've never come across. Do let me know if you know anything about this.. Cheers
Not sure if you can use affiliate links I don't see why not. I have tried 3 different campaigns and on two of them had no conversions what so ever on around $50 of impressions and had 2 conversions on $150 of advertising. I think in all 3 campaigns I lost $146. I know many others that have tried as well and it just doesnt convert well at all even if you get clicks, for your information as well my clicks ended up costing me around 45 cents a click on a niche that would cost me around 10 cents a click on adsense.
I'm not surprised. However, why did you bid $0.45 p/click on what you could have easilly gotten at $0.05 - $0.10 p/click...? Regarding conversions, from what I see, most marketers who try this for a day or two give up without even considering how well their niches/campaigns corroborate with the facebook demographics! Choosing the right affiliate offers to promote is just as essential as targetting them properly! Just out of curisoity, what what the particular niche/landing page you were trying to promote on Facebook? Perhaps I could give you a pointer or two...since I'm quite familiar with Facebook user-base.
Has any of you tried using a payment processor WITHIN Facebook? I asked this because you might want to try this new application I found called Coinjars. I was wondering if an app like this can make things "easier" for both the marketer and the would-be client...what do you think?
I did not bid that I used CPM method. And that is what it came out to after all my impressions were over.
I have no idea if you can do affiliate links, but my brother used facebook advertising for his offline business for quit smoking and he got quite a few clients from facebook at $500 a piece. So it does work you just have to know how to do it.
I did some facebook ads before xmas last year and got decent results - obviously at that time of year I should have! Anyway, since then I've given up on them because the staff admin of them got on my nerves - I kept getting ads rejected for not having the right punctuation. Now, I'm used to dealing with ad programs that have very specific rules, I've used adwords for years, but this was just ridiculous. I was being told that certain rules of punctuation had to be adhered to when I could see they were running ads that didn't, the rules they were dictating were grammatically wrong, and they contradicted themselves from one email to another! Lately all I see on facebook are weight-loss and loan ads - to be honest it looks a bit tacky, but I think they've exhausted the patience of most other types of advertisers.
If you are looking for facebook users, it isn't just facebook that has 'em. The application eco system is alive and well with lots of user engagement and a few good ad networks. I cannot speak about all of the networks but the one I run will allow you to advertise affiliate links. I find that the demographic slants younger on facebook so offers that appeal to "kids" for lack of a better word tend to work well. I would stay away from mortgage, ED treatments, etc. and concentrate on the more "fun" stuff. Always happy to answer any specific questions here on this thread or via PM. Cheers, Stas
To answer the OP - you CAN link directly with Affiliate links (no landing page needed) however you should read their TOS up and down - they require you to state very specific things in the title - like when I was promoting a dating site- I needed to include the name of the dating site - also on giveaways I had to state in the ad that they must complete 3 offers before they get the Free thing. Not worth the headache especially since there were abysmal clickthorughs and even worse conversions. I summed it all up in this post.
Thanks a lot for that, it really helped! Thus far, my research entails somewhat disappointing results as of yet! No-one seems to be keeping a sustainable and profitable campaign on Facebook Flyer ads... Even worse, what baffles me the most are the ridiculous punters that valued Facebook at $15 Billion 'all american greens', so to speak...thats just absurd! I mean, what has Mr Zuckerberg done to justify this over-valued, super-hyped social network, when at the heart it still struggles to offer a solid revenue model...? Is it me, or am I forseeing another "dot-com" bubble with all this hype and overvaluation...? It's like 1999 all over again! Apparently, according to critics, one of the main reasons why it was valued as such strings down to Microsoft's desperate measures to restrict a relationship with Google, in which case...I personally think, Facebook's advertising model may have been dramatically converted over-night, seeing as Google are the online advertising Kings! The other reason that supposedly 'justifies' the valuation is the tremendous "growth potential" Facebook have shown. Fair enough, but how thats been converted into cash...? I don't see that being answered anywhere! Reality is Facebook are still struggling to get those social obsessed freaks that use Facebook from dusk till dawn to click on their friggin' ads! They've created such a damn good social network that it's almost impossible to divert users' attention away from their facebook pages. Looks like us marketers haven't got much to benefit with this ever-growing and vastly popular social network. {Sigh...}
I've actually been considering running a Facebook campaign for my new web series for a while, but I'm glad that I read this thread. I think I'll hold off for the time being.
I have had several partners try Facebook to promote some of our offers and not one person has generated anything to really brag about....Some of these guys make a few K a month with us every month.So I know they are very experienced Online Marketers. My feelings are that the kids who visit Facebook are too busy playing around with all the cool applications and connecting with friends to be clicking on Ads..It is however a great tool for gaining brand recognition but I believe that this only applies to larger more establish advertisers. Thoughts?
I am glad to see this thread as I too was tempted to run an ad. I always had second thoughts, and it seems my fears were warranted. I have heard not a few people tell me that social networking is it. It is the IN thing and you gotta do it. Well, I have 14,000 twitter followers and not much from that if anything. Facebook, same thing. I used to tell people that I thought "social" meant just that. Social and not business. If you want to socialize, go for it. if you want to business-ize, then do some business on a business network. I know people swear by facebook, and more power to em, but for me, it just has not been there. I always thought it was just me. Stephen C
Well personally I think that for a niche site, you won't get much traffic out of FB advertising. FB is a place where people come up for some entertainment and fun. If you are going to advertise some serious topic ads, then definitely they will fail to attract people. On the other hand, if you advertise some entertaining sites, movie/fan page, mobile app. store, web store etc then surely you will get a better response.
Tip: Think about when you go on FaceBook, do you ever clicked an ad? In the years I have used FaceBook, I don't think I ever clicked an ad. Maybe once or twice by mistake but thats all. Also, do you see how FaceBook advertising buying there ads EVERYWHERE on there site. There isn't a day that goes by without seeing FaceBook trying to sell my ad space. Hope I helped. Good luck! wisefool