Using Facebook to Make Money Online
Written by Mr Javo
Image via Wikipedia
Nowadays everything is becoming social. Everybody use social media networks to communicate, share stuffs, make friends and even to make money!
You should know that marketers always look for one thing: Masses. They analyze a market and study its potential depending how many people they can target and how many people could be willing to buy.
In the matter of marketing, there are many, but many factors you need to study before stepping forward. In this post I just want to talk about how you can use the traffic from social networks, specifically on Facebook to make money online.
Facebook’s Traffic is Huge
Do you know how many people visit facebook a day? According to Compete.com, Facebook receive over 100 millions of visits a month, which makes it an incredible place to run ads.
So now, I’m gonna step you ahead Facebook Ads, giving you my personal tips and thoughts about the system:
Creating and Ad
social media advertising
I don’t remember if you need to register or something like, but you can create an ad by going to the next link -> facebook.com/ads. Once there, you could see case studies and a step by step guide for creating an ad.
[tip 1] Selecting a Title is key for your ad. You have only 25 characters to write something to attract people’s attention, so do it well. This is something like Google Adwords, if you have created advertising before you know that you need to call to action within the title. Using verbs such as “buy, learn, get, celebrate… etc” (a.k.a. active verbs) is key to succeed.
About the content, this is the ad itself. You have only 135 characters so you need to think well how to write an interesting ad. Describing and complementing what you wrote on the title is the purpose of this field.
The other factor you need to consider is the photo. This is a 110×80 pixels image that will be shown in your ad. [tip 2] I highly recommend you to put a image with these dimensions; avoiding putting images such 80×80 or whatever. This is because facebook don’t center the image, so if you don’t use 110×80, your image will be aligned to the left, which leaves a white space at the right – which sucks!
Targeting
This is the most important step and the reason why many people fail with advertising. It is very important to target the right crowd for certain product or event. People tend to target large audiences, but that not always works.
Study demographics and psychographics of your market (i.e. real state, gaming, acai berry etc) so you will be able to configure the different filters such as: location, age, sex, relationship status among others.
[tip 3] The more accurate your targeting is, the better. Don’t try to be flexible with the filters in order the display your ad to more people. That “extra” people you get by doing it, will not convert!
Campaign and Pricing
The next section deals with choosing a campaign to attach your ad to, and also, for setting your budget. You can choose between running your ad since it is approved or running it in certain dates, perfect for holidays such as Halloween or Christmas!
[tip 4] Choose Pay for Clicks in your ad (paying for impressions sucks, I’ll talk about it later). Facebook is gonna suggest you an interval for max bid. Do not care about it!! My experience says that setting a max bid lower than the minimum according to facebook works well. I’m used to set my max bid 20 cents lower than the min suggested by facebook.
Extra Considerations
Despite the great traffic of facebook, the clicks through ratio (CTR) sucks, so your goal is to improve it as much as you can! That’s why I recommended you before to choose PPC as method of payment.
Also, they probably will reject your ad many times. The first time I used facebook advertising I got rejected like 5 times or even more, no kidding! But why? I have no idea, I was following their policies and rules so I think they didn’t like my ad.
[tip 5] I suggest you to create a couple of variations of your ads. In fact, once you get approved, continue creating variations of them. Then, see which one provides the greatest CTR, discard the others and keep the testing by doing other variations of the selected one. Then, the cycle repeats over and over until you get “the best” ad. Variations also include different pictures for the same texts!
I recommend reviewing: Suggested Best Practices and Common Reasons for Rejection, both sources of help provided by facebook.
Did I miss something? If so, leave a comment to let me know!
Hey! my name is Javier but you can call me Javo, everybody does.
I’ve heard that getting your ad accepted is very difficult on Facebook, is that true?
.-= Clara Hall´s last blog ..7 Simple Weight Loss Tips for Teenagers =-.
Yes it is hard, but with the practice you get used to write good ads… It’s a matter of practice!
I wish I could share your enthusiasm for Facebook, but as I posted last week (http://www.zanderchance.com/2010/02/19/my-first-week-using-facebook-ads/), it’s just been a nightmare for me so far.
I’m sure if/when I decide to give it another shot, I’ll have better results, but it’s not for those of little patience.
Let us know how you make out with your campaigns!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about facebook ads.
When I get the idea for this post, I wanted to create a campaign, running it and giving you my reports… Now I’m having problems with my cc so I cannot pay to fb for my last campaigns :S
Definitively I will do it in the future!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about making money through facebook ads. There are many other ways of making money on Facebook – one is by creating facebook groups which would generate lot of followers and then use CPA networks for monetizing these groups.
.-= Clara Hall´s last blog ..Stop Anxiety Attacks =-.
That’s a great idea! I would include fb Fan pages there… Thanks for the tip
Quite new to all this and only just started making some money. I’ve only just begun my facebook campaign so your tips were really useful, particularly extra considerations.
Cheers.
Nice Steve! Feel free to share your experiences in this post so it could be full of feedbacks!
Cheers
I could never quite get it right on Facebook. Any time I thought I had a winning campaign they wouldn’t approve my ads and would suspend them once they started turning a profit. I suppose the network might be better used to simply get traffic rather than seriously trying to profit from the ads.
.-= Jimvesting´s last blog ..Welcome to the New Face of The Net Fool… Jimvesting dot com! =-.
Good point Jim, but if you target well your ads you could get a profit from them. The last time I played with fb I got a ROI of 200%
Thanks Mr Javo for pointing this topic out…I’m hoping to apply this technique as soon as possible.
I have used Facebook earlier but never to make money, the ideas you have present here gives people like us a perspective, who are thinking of using Facebook and a tool. Thanks.
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Facebook is great for some quick cash but I prefer SEO for the long term strategy.
.-= Steve´s last blog ..Fast Weight Loss – Is It Possible? =-.
With any PPC campaign you should always try and do some organic seo, if you can get natural listings for targeted key phases in the top search engines then that can be far more effective than PPC. My only query is why would be the advantage of using Facebook Ad’s over Google Adwords?
I have to agree with Steve on the last comment. Facebook can be a source of quick online money but nothing beats well targeted keywords along with SEO for the long haul.
.-= Anthony´s last blog ..Learn Affiliate Website Marketing =-.
Facebook is the largest community website. Trying facebook out for internet marketing is a good idea. Thanks for the tips.
I have heard a bit about Facebook advertising. I am still trying to decide if I should give them a go while paying for views or clicks are cheap with them.
Your post has given more tips to see if I should give it a go. But I think if you are on a tight budget, Facebook is good to test a product on a small scale. If the results looks good, then going the organic way would be my mass scale long term traffic strategy.
.-= Louis´s last blog ..My Blog Stats As Part Of Alex Jeffreys 3.0 Coaching =-.
I also thought of putting up a fan page which has a ‘statement’ that relates to people. For example, “I love you”. Then people relate to it will join. Voila! instant marketing!
I have personally found that Facebook advertising is just not that great for me. I want to emphasize that this is my personal experience, and I am not saying that it doesn’t work.
I have found with many of my niche affiliate websites that simply adding friends related to my niche and creating a viral following is a great way to monetize facebook traffic.
.-= Matthew@Atlanta Internet Marketing´s last blog ..How to Write Great Content That Sells: 5 Tips that You Must Have! =-.
Facebook ads are a great source of traffic and conversions… just make sure you test like crazy!
What is more profitable using facebook ad campaign is if you are promoting make money type of ads. People are always looking for ways to earn extra income which makes them click whatever ad presented that is related to making money. This makes the market as well very enticing for online promoters to take advantage. Like google PPC, running facebook ad is a definite alternative to gaining huge traffic to site if done correctly.
>Despite the great traffic of facebook, the clicks through ratio (CTR) sucks, so your goal is to improve it as much as you can!
I hear people say that about Google too. I don’t think it matters much. What is important is the conversions w=once they reach your site. That determines your ROI.
.-= Ned Carey´s last blog ..What was that Sound? =-.
Thanks for the posting this helpful information Mr Javo. I was looking for some kind of method for profiting off of Facebook and various other social media. During your campaign did you send the traffic directly to a sales page or did you try to capture their email to build your list.
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.-= Gabriel Mendoza´s last blog ..Technical Skills For Your Online Business Part 2 =-.
I have seen a lot of stuff about how to make money on Facebook but I never purchase one because I don’t want to be a victim of those hype stuff anymore.
I think your post shows me some basic understanding about how people are making money of Facebook. Nice one. I will apply some tips in here to my FB account
.-= Mike´s last blog ..How to stop playing and start treating make money online as your real business =-.
I tried advertising on facebook late last year without much luck. For the most part, all of my ads got declined. The few that did get accepted didn’t perform very well. Maybe I should give it another shot. You have some good advice, and point out a few things that I didn’t do so well before. Just like any PPC, practice makes perfect I guess.
.-= David Clow´s last blog ..Actual Results with Mobile Monopoly! =-.
Great Facebook info. I’ve been running ads for a while and there is some trial and error. Just don’t leave them running when you go on holiday. The traffic can be huge.
I have found clipart images or amateurish photos outpull professional looking shots. Also, titles that are a question tend to do well. Split test pairs of ads just as you would with Adwords. A good basic test order would be Title, Image, then body text.
Also I agree that a massive demographic of over ten million for your campaign can sound great – but you’re better off targeting more and reaching fewer, even if that’s less than 100K.
Finally, if you get a 1% CTR on a Facebook ad you’re doing well. Cost per impression can then be a better bet but don’t even think of switching to it from PPC unless your CTR hits 1%.
Happy Facebooking!
Alun from England
Thanks for the tips Mr Javo,Facebook is an avenue i’ve not tried yet.
.-= Peter Dunin´s last blog ..Featured Post Of the Week =-.
I am still not sold on Facebook. I understand the affiliate marketing and the social aspect of it but it isn’t for all verticals. People are putting a little too much stock into facebook I think.
.-= cam@ SEO Tools´s last blog ..Google Will Soon Let You Jump Between Multiple Accounts =-.
Thank you for pointing to the topic Javo… I want to use this technique as soon as possible.
I tried it a couple of years back and it got thrown out. Back then I didnt really know what I was doing and given the laser targetted nature of Facebook its probably worth another crack at some point
Theres something in me thats off any PPC type advertising. Perhaps I need to start thinking more lateraly
Regards
Pete
.-= peter´s last blog ..Finding And Commenting On Other Blogs =-.
I send them directly to the sale page. However, if you build an optin page so you could catch their email first, so then you can run an email marketing campaign and increase you profits for the same audience.
Cheers!