Innershell Affiliate Empire » Facebook

First Facebook campaign wrap up.

Melvin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:48:52 +0000

Today, I wrapped up my first Facebook campaign. I can tell you right now that it was an e-mail submit offer from Neverblue that pays $1.60 for a visitor to upload their baby photo to The Great American Photo Contest. I was able to get 4 days of impressions from Facebook before it completely crapped out. The problem with this offer is that you need to upload a photo of your baby. That means the user has to go hunt down that baby picture. I found that most of my users were clicking on my ad during the day time, perhaps when they were at work, using the work computer. It was unlikely for them to have their baby photo on their work computer. Hence the weakness in the Facebook system for not allowing ads to run on certain time slots only. I have since dismantled this campaign and moved on to others. But I came out making $16, which I am quite proud about. Remember, that I started out with FREE money from Facebook.

January 2009 Stats

So what is next for me? I am going to try out some offers with MaxBounty on Facebook to see if they can convert a little better. My goal is to minimize input that is required to convert. No hunting for photos to upload. Just enter your e-mail address or ZIP code and that’s it. Let that be a lesson for others. Keep user input to a minimum for conversion.

My 48-hours Facebook advertising summary – 269% profit WTF?

Melvin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:32:58 +0000

If you read yesterday’s post, notice that I had a -58% ROI. My first campaign with Facebook was quickly going down the shitter as my EPC < CPC.

Fast-forward another 24-hours with a lower CPC set at $0.13 and all of a sudden I get a 269% profit? I assumed that by lowering my CPC to $0.13, Facebook would drop my impressions considerably to promote higher paying ads. I guess that theory was also flawed as I was given >40,000 impressions today. Truly a WTF moment.

The reason Facebook kept promoting my ad was because I was maintaining a 0.08% CTR with Facebook. Word around town is CTRs lower than 0.01% will automatically get your ad decommissioned by Facebook. I cannot reasonably explain why with more impressions, I was getting less clicks, but much better conversions. I am tempted to attribute this to the unpredictability (read psychoticness) of human nature.

Another 24 hours. I am letting this ad run for another 24 hours at the same CPC to analyze if I encounter the same results as I did today. If this ad is able to maintain its current earnings, I stand to earn $150 month based on $5/day net earnings. Not bad for a little side-income eh?

P.S. I do not believe that this offer is sustainable over the long term on Facebook. The demograhpics is too small (~100,000) and I cannot keyword-target my audience more specifically for the best results.

My 24-hours Facebook advertising summary.

Melvin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:51:17 +0000

My first Facebook campaign didn’t do too well. My ROI was -58% because my cost per click ($0.30) for advertising was lower than my earnings per click ($0.13). So instead of abandoning this campaign, I decided to lower my CPC to match my EPC to get a better feel for this game.

With $0.30 CPC, I was given approximately 31000 impressions by Facebook and a click through rate of 0.13%. With the new $0.13 CPC, I am wondering how much impressions I will get and whether my CTR improves. My budget has been set to $10 so that I can keep this experiment going. I have been using free sign-up money from Facebook, so none of this is coming out of my pocket yet.

However, with just 24 hours of campaigning, it has become pretty obvious how I need to improve my strategy.

I need an offer with a payout greater than $1.60/lead to give a bigger gap between my CPC and lead payout. Either that or significantly lower my CPC, which I have already done.
I need to provide enough information so that Facebook users are not unnecessarily clicking on my ads. This is a good thing for me, but bad thing for Facebook revenues. I need to find a good balance to keep me profitable (and Facebook) profitable. The users who click through my ads should be those who are already in the mindset to fulfill the offer.
I should pick newer offers. With older offers, most Facebook users would have seen the offer landing page already and won’t bother proceeding further. Newer offers will look fresh to them.
I need to work on my advertising skills and create a sense of urgency for the Facebook audience. My ad text should indicate that the offer is limited, or while quantities last, etc.

So I will see what the next 24 hours will do for my campaign with a lower CPC. I am interested in seeing my impressions, CTR, and conversion rate. I was told by my affiliate manager that the offer I am promoting has a conversion rate of 14%. Today, I managed a measly 7%.

Launched my first Facebook ad.

Melvin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:02:33 +0000

I launched my first Facebook ad today. I ensured that my ad was very simple, one-liner sentences. The ad title and description only had one sentence that was short and sweet. The ad description was very direct as to what the user needed to do if they wanted to participate. Not only does this prevent unnecessary clicks (clicks cost me $0.30/each), but is also quick to read for the user.

However, immediately after launching the ad, I realized that the target URL for my ad would be changing due to the way Tracking202 tracks CPC. Everytime you change an ad CPC, you get a new URL from Tracking202. DOH!!!! Changing a URL in an ad requires re-approval from Facebook. This is going to be a problem because I will need to tweak my CPC to find the optimal value that works for my campaign. I implemented a fix for this and I will illustrate this later today.

Facebook advertising workflow.

Melvin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:43:20 +0000

This is how I envision the workflow for my campaigns working. Unfortunately, there are 3 hops before the visitor will see the actual offer page, but I consider these hops a necessary evil for adequate tracking of ad campaigns and conversion rates.

Facebook Ad > Landing Page > Tracking202 Site > Offer Page > Trackback (URL

Facebook Ad

This is the ad banner that the Facebook user sees and clicks. The destination URL points to my landing page and is provided by Tracking202.

LandingPage

My landing page will be doing a few things. The main purpose of my landing page is to up-sell my offer before forwarding my user to the actual offer page. But behind the scenes, a JavaScript is fired to my Tracking202 site to count a click. This JavaScript is provided by Tracking202.

I am going to be lazy and have one landing page per ad campaign. It is just easier that way.

Tracking202

If the visitor decides to proceed and sign up for the offer, he/she will click on my large call-to-action button. This button URL points to Tracking202 which tracks that the user clicked through to the offer page. Then Tracking202 will forward my user to the actual offer page. The URL for the call-to-action button is provided by Tracking202.

Offer Page

This is the page that I have no control over. The offer page is hosted by the advertiser and requires the user to perform a certain action (e.g. filling out a form) to complete the offer. Nothing for me to do there other than ensure that my landing page matches in look and feel to the offer page. We do not want to shock the user with something different.

Trackback (URL)

This is a script that is inserted on the advertiser’s page when the visitor successfully completes the offer. This will send a notice back to Tracking202 to record a successful lead. The script is provided by Tracking202.

I am certain that this is not the only way to accomplish ad tracking. In fact, I will not guarantee that this is the most efficient way. However, this is the best strategy I can think off without making it too complicated. In general, most of the magic is happening within the Tracking202 software. If you have not looked at Tracking202 yet, please do so. This little piece of software will do a lot for you.

Advertising with Facebook.

Melvin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:10:22 +0000

My Pick

For my first campaign, I am using Facebook to advertise. Facebook has advantages over Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a person starting out in affiliate marketing.

Facebook uses demographic targeting alllowing me to restrict my scope of advertising to a smaller subset of audiences. This is especially useful when trying to test the offer and the ads. Once the sandbox proves to be profitable, then it can be expanded to a greater audience and should (in theory) scale the profits just as equally.
New Facebook advertisers are given free money to evaluate before committing your own money. So if I was going to lose money with a weak ad campaign, I would rather lose somebody else’s money than my own.
Facebook has been receiving a bit of a bad reputation lately for unprecedented ad rejections. There is a group of individuals that review ads that are placed on Facebook and even if the ads fall perfectly within the guidelines, they may be rejected without reason. This has caused many advertisers to leave Facebook, but that also means a lower saturation of advertisers. This is an ideal test bed for me.

So during the course of this week, I will be evaluating the ideal demographic for my offering and designate a few keywords to target for my ads. I will also try to keep the potential traffic to a minimum to see what the CTR looks like and the conversion rate. I can spend a lot less money this way before exhausting $1000 on a full-blown ad campaign with Facebook.