BlaqReaper
Junior Member
- Sep 7, 2011
- 130
- 207
Hello!
Recently I've been getting into Facebook PPC and learning everything I can about it. Since most of the knowledge I've learned through BHW, I feel like it should only be fair that I record my journey and provide a semi-guide so people starting out don't make the same mistakes I do.
Disclaimer: Am I a pro? No, not at all. But I am seeing success through my efforts and I want to share what worked and what didn't work. And as a fairly new advertiser to Facebook, I can provide a newbie perspective.
Why Facebook?
Originally I was deciding whether to do Adwords or FB, but eventually settled on FB. The reason was that I do not have the $$ to compete with the big boys in Adwords and being new to PPC, I feel FB would be easier competitor wise. Now, don't get me wrong, Adwords is great, but FB definitely has it's advantages.
So what are the advantages? In my opinion FB has a very good system on targeting your ads. When people initially sign up they have to fill out their interests. Here's an example:
hxxp://i.imgur.c0m/BWTH7.jpg (Can't post pictures or link them yet. Replace xx and 0). Now looking at his profile you can tell he's a music fan that listens to all sorts of pop, but has interests in classical. It also seems he plays the violin.
One thing that I feel people do not mention enough is you have to make sure what you're goal as an advertiser is when using Facebook and MORE IMPORTANTLY the people are you are advertising to.
Advertiser:This is pretty obvious: to make money. But you have to ask yourself, are you in it for the long-term or the short-term gain? By short term I mean, advertising a CPA offer, while for long term you would build a fanpage, build up a list, and then use that list to promote products of their interests. Facebook can help with both, but long-term (from my tests) is definitely more easy to do.
User: Now here is the most important thing you have to consider and understand is Facebook is not a platform for you to sell things. It simply doesn't work well. Whereas with Google, people are looking for reviews and recommended products, people on Facebook are socializing, connecting with friends, or sharing what they like. It is crucial to keep that in mind.
Now Let's Begin
Obviously, if you haven't you're going to want to make an account (yes this guide is that newbie). In fact even if you do have an account, make another one. Facebook likes to ban and it would suck to have your main account banned. Once again- do not use your main account to advertise. Now if you already have a niche in mind to target, it would be good for you to fill in your interests as that niche. For example say your niche is dog lovers, put your interests as poodles, german shepards, pitbulls, etc.
Pro-tip: The dog market is saturated at the moment and is resulting in a lot of bans. In fact pets in general at the moment are pretty hard to get into.
Now you have your advertising account you're ready to move to the next step. Setting up ads, billing, and payment.
Facebook accepts PayPal,but requires a credit card too. Don't think I need to explain much here. HOWEVER, for new accounts (like the one you just made) are allowed to use $50 ad coupons. You can find these for cheap here or on E-bay (~$2.99). There is absolutely no reason not to buy them, unless you enjoy losing money...
So once you have your account and billing set up, it's time to go make some ads and earn money! Now remember, I previously said: you can try to make fast money on Facebook, or go for a long-term strategy. I'll cover both as I have a current fanpage and promoting CPA offers, but I can already tell you my fanpage is doing much better (but I haven't monetized it yet :X). For now, I'll cover CPA offers since most people are impatient and want money right away.
KNOW THESE SITES
Actually, regardless of what approach you want to take, there are three websites I highly recommend when deciding your niche. It kinda sucks that I can't link yet, so I'll just name them:
pagedata.appdata(dot)com
quantcast(dot)com
Google Insights
Choosing Your Niche
Unlike making a website, you're not looking for golden keywords, exact domain matches, etc, because for now you aren't trying to rank in any search engine. Instead, put yourself in the shoes of a Facebook user and think what's trendy and popular or what's easy to share. Now the best topics would be those that have both CPA offers and long term fanbase so you can build both a fanpage while still throwing out some CPA offers. If you have no idea where to start, head over to pagedata. In my opinion, it's the least useful of my recommended sites, but still take a look. It shows the weekly and daily growths of Facebook pages. If you're promoting CPA offers you can see what's "hot" right now and if you plan to make your own fanpage, you can also get some ideas. I like to look at the daily gainers, choose a category that I'm interested in and look at fans 1-10k, or 10-100k. The higher ones in my opinion have too much competition.
Now remember, most CPA offers only accept US residents and a lot of pages are foreign, so use pagedata as INSPIRATION, not a way to copy ideas.
Now I'm not going to reveal the current niche I'm in, but I'll give a good example. I tend to go for current or even approaching trends rather than build on old ones since competition is smaller and there's a better chance to build a fanbase. For instance video games is a good niche for me as I am quite a gamer myself. In my opinion, it's pretty important to pick a niche you like or are at least somewhat interested in (unless you plan to solely promote CPA offers directly). Building a fanpage requires content and without some decent content people will just go be fans somewhere else.
Now there's a couple of reasons on why I chose video games (besides being a gamer).
1). There are a lot of CPA offers revolving around games.
2). Gamers are passionate about their interests and like to join fan pages.
3). Gamers socialize online a lot and well Facebook is a place to socialize.
4). There is long term gain for targeting gamers (Amazon products, affiliate marketing, etc).
So with a broad niche set up, I want to narrow my audience even further when using my ads. There are a couple of high profile games I can think of such as Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, GTA V, Guild Wars 2, and so on. If you want less competition you could target promising iOS games, independent games, etc.
Before I go on to my next step, let me explain what the bigger picture is. As the saying goes "not seeing the forest for the trees", it's easy to get bogged down in the details, and forget the overall goal.
For Facebook, the goal is to get ads that not only convert well, but also a low CPC rate (the magical 1 penny clicks).
What that means is, you have an add that only costs 1 penny for a user to click, which basically gives you the most bang for your buck. A dollar will get you 100 clicks for instance. And with a super targeted ad, I'd say 80% of those people will become fans of your fanpage, while a lot lower percentage will sign up for the CPA offer.
Now with that in mind, the goal is to find the correct place to target your ads. Now, I said, this is both a guide and a journal. So I'm going to pick a real example to target and will show you my progress. I already have one successful ad campaign running at the moment so wish me luck on the next one ^^.
Recently I've been getting into Facebook PPC and learning everything I can about it. Since most of the knowledge I've learned through BHW, I feel like it should only be fair that I record my journey and provide a semi-guide so people starting out don't make the same mistakes I do.
Disclaimer: Am I a pro? No, not at all. But I am seeing success through my efforts and I want to share what worked and what didn't work. And as a fairly new advertiser to Facebook, I can provide a newbie perspective.
Why Facebook?
Originally I was deciding whether to do Adwords or FB, but eventually settled on FB. The reason was that I do not have the $$ to compete with the big boys in Adwords and being new to PPC, I feel FB would be easier competitor wise. Now, don't get me wrong, Adwords is great, but FB definitely has it's advantages.
So what are the advantages? In my opinion FB has a very good system on targeting your ads. When people initially sign up they have to fill out their interests. Here's an example:
hxxp://i.imgur.c0m/BWTH7.jpg (Can't post pictures or link them yet. Replace xx and 0). Now looking at his profile you can tell he's a music fan that listens to all sorts of pop, but has interests in classical. It also seems he plays the violin.
One thing that I feel people do not mention enough is you have to make sure what you're goal as an advertiser is when using Facebook and MORE IMPORTANTLY the people are you are advertising to.
Advertiser:This is pretty obvious: to make money. But you have to ask yourself, are you in it for the long-term or the short-term gain? By short term I mean, advertising a CPA offer, while for long term you would build a fanpage, build up a list, and then use that list to promote products of their interests. Facebook can help with both, but long-term (from my tests) is definitely more easy to do.
User: Now here is the most important thing you have to consider and understand is Facebook is not a platform for you to sell things. It simply doesn't work well. Whereas with Google, people are looking for reviews and recommended products, people on Facebook are socializing, connecting with friends, or sharing what they like. It is crucial to keep that in mind.
Now Let's Begin
Obviously, if you haven't you're going to want to make an account (yes this guide is that newbie). In fact even if you do have an account, make another one. Facebook likes to ban and it would suck to have your main account banned. Once again- do not use your main account to advertise. Now if you already have a niche in mind to target, it would be good for you to fill in your interests as that niche. For example say your niche is dog lovers, put your interests as poodles, german shepards, pitbulls, etc.
Pro-tip: The dog market is saturated at the moment and is resulting in a lot of bans. In fact pets in general at the moment are pretty hard to get into.
Now you have your advertising account you're ready to move to the next step. Setting up ads, billing, and payment.
Facebook accepts PayPal,but requires a credit card too. Don't think I need to explain much here. HOWEVER, for new accounts (like the one you just made) are allowed to use $50 ad coupons. You can find these for cheap here or on E-bay (~$2.99). There is absolutely no reason not to buy them, unless you enjoy losing money...
So once you have your account and billing set up, it's time to go make some ads and earn money! Now remember, I previously said: you can try to make fast money on Facebook, or go for a long-term strategy. I'll cover both as I have a current fanpage and promoting CPA offers, but I can already tell you my fanpage is doing much better (but I haven't monetized it yet :X). For now, I'll cover CPA offers since most people are impatient and want money right away.
KNOW THESE SITES
Actually, regardless of what approach you want to take, there are three websites I highly recommend when deciding your niche. It kinda sucks that I can't link yet, so I'll just name them:
pagedata.appdata(dot)com
quantcast(dot)com
Google Insights
Choosing Your Niche
Unlike making a website, you're not looking for golden keywords, exact domain matches, etc, because for now you aren't trying to rank in any search engine. Instead, put yourself in the shoes of a Facebook user and think what's trendy and popular or what's easy to share. Now the best topics would be those that have both CPA offers and long term fanbase so you can build both a fanpage while still throwing out some CPA offers. If you have no idea where to start, head over to pagedata. In my opinion, it's the least useful of my recommended sites, but still take a look. It shows the weekly and daily growths of Facebook pages. If you're promoting CPA offers you can see what's "hot" right now and if you plan to make your own fanpage, you can also get some ideas. I like to look at the daily gainers, choose a category that I'm interested in and look at fans 1-10k, or 10-100k. The higher ones in my opinion have too much competition.
Now remember, most CPA offers only accept US residents and a lot of pages are foreign, so use pagedata as INSPIRATION, not a way to copy ideas.
Now I'm not going to reveal the current niche I'm in, but I'll give a good example. I tend to go for current or even approaching trends rather than build on old ones since competition is smaller and there's a better chance to build a fanbase. For instance video games is a good niche for me as I am quite a gamer myself. In my opinion, it's pretty important to pick a niche you like or are at least somewhat interested in (unless you plan to solely promote CPA offers directly). Building a fanpage requires content and without some decent content people will just go be fans somewhere else.
Now there's a couple of reasons on why I chose video games (besides being a gamer).
1). There are a lot of CPA offers revolving around games.
2). Gamers are passionate about their interests and like to join fan pages.
3). Gamers socialize online a lot and well Facebook is a place to socialize.
4). There is long term gain for targeting gamers (Amazon products, affiliate marketing, etc).
So with a broad niche set up, I want to narrow my audience even further when using my ads. There are a couple of high profile games I can think of such as Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, GTA V, Guild Wars 2, and so on. If you want less competition you could target promising iOS games, independent games, etc.
Before I go on to my next step, let me explain what the bigger picture is. As the saying goes "not seeing the forest for the trees", it's easy to get bogged down in the details, and forget the overall goal.
For Facebook, the goal is to get ads that not only convert well, but also a low CPC rate (the magical 1 penny clicks).
What that means is, you have an add that only costs 1 penny for a user to click, which basically gives you the most bang for your buck. A dollar will get you 100 clicks for instance. And with a super targeted ad, I'd say 80% of those people will become fans of your fanpage, while a lot lower percentage will sign up for the CPA offer.
Now with that in mind, the goal is to find the correct place to target your ads. Now, I said, this is both a guide and a journal. So I'm going to pick a real example to target and will show you my progress. I already have one successful ad campaign running at the moment so wish me luck on the next one ^^.
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