Hi I'm wondering if you guys could help me out.
I'm looking to run whitehat on Facebook.
Every link though, from gaming offers through networks, to products from Clickbank - obviously have an affiliate link.
I had also hoped to run 'internal' dating, linking to apps within Facebook as I hoped that they might be considered MyWot clean etc.
As far as I'm aware Facebook won't allow me to place the 'final' link into the URL and set up the affiliate link elsewhere.
So as it stands I'm left with an ugly, dodgy looking webpage under each of my creatives.
Is there any way around this? Or do I need to just create a generic domain name ('1234gaming', '1234dating', '1234books') for each
offer I might consider running and then redirect from there?
I am seeing other ads with clean URLS and can only assume that they are cloaking (which I know nothing about) or that they have
partnered directly with the companies they are promoting.
If I were to switch out the links after the ad was approved, would this change the website name on the ad? I am not sure and I am
aware that I might need some kind of georedirect on the back end anyway (although I am not sure whether that is necessary for Clickbank?)
If anyone could shed some light on the above (and particularly with the direct linking to apps), it would be very much appreciated.
Don't try to run dating... it doesn't matter if you're going to run ads to apps, external domains or pages... if you are running dating, FB will catch on and likely ban your account for attempting it.
As for the whole affiliate link thing, it's not really a problem since you should link to a tracking URL > redirect to an offer page.
The URL Facebook displays will be the final destination URL, not anything intermediate.
So, when submitting ads, just have the tracking system redirect all clicks to the offer directly - presuming it is clean and compliant...
Afterward, establish rules to send users from within X country to your affiliate link, all users outside of this to the offer page, and ISPs associated with FB to the offer page (as covered in my FB guide).
In this situation, the display URL should always be the offer domain since that's where all the clicks are going -- and where FB's bots get sent to.
If you use a lander, it will show as the domain, so just choose something appropriate.
Finally, this is only an issue for RHS ads, which at the moment seem to suck - so if you are using news feed ads there is no reason to care at all about some display URL.
That's great Zeno and thanks for the reply.
The first thing I did when I logged in today (re-subscribed) was run through your guide and it is excellent, thank you.
So even apps and clean mywot sites- if they are dating related, are out - cheers.
It is a bit of a killer because everything that I know to be a profitable niche, is all blackhat.
Can I ask a broader question? Do you think that there is room to $x,xxx a day campaigns on Facebook, running completely whitehat offers?
I bought SocialNinja today in a frenzy of optimism but as soon as I started researching longstanding campaigns it tends to be the same story - dating, health, dodgy teeth whitening, dodgy credit score links. I threw in the tracking links for the networks I am on and each returned campaigns which were rebels, cloaked etc. I'm not the moral police, I ran Acai back in the day but I would rather build on something that can be maintained. It is very difficult to learn much of value in terms of actual marketing when the majority of your time is taken shadow boxing with Facebook.
I have searched through Clickbank, CJ and the four affiliate networks I am with and again, the offers that are pushed would, no doubt, get my account banned.
I understand gaming might be an option, although I am not sure how many affiliates achieve big numbers as they are capped. In addition when I ran gaming through SocialNinja it only pulled up one game (WarTune) that has been seen recently- I surmised that the others have lost steam.
Thanks again for your reply and your well-written guide.
You can absolutely make $x,xxx a day on whitehat offers on Facebook.
Let's be clear -- the majority of all advertising on Facebook is 'whitehat'.
You can certainly spend $xx,xxx daily running campaigns for legitimate insurance, financial, retail, gaming, solar, etc. types of offers.
With gaming you are right - caps are likely and may be lower than something like a retail product or insurance offer.
But, that's not always the case - and a lot of mobile apps that launch with burst campaigns, or dominate the app stores for a while, will garner collective likely millions in ad spend on Facebook. They are monsters.
Almost anything on CJ.com will be fine since these are generally rev-share or PPS offers on retail products - and this network is not a traditional affiliate network.