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Would this offer be allowed on Facebook, Im trying not get one of my accounts banned! (18)

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Im trying to find Facebook friendly offers to promote in the health niche, and came across stuff like this which does not look to me like your typical "rebill" offer. Waddaya think, can I just direct link this puppy?

http://www.vita-web.com/shop/krill-oil/

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Thats not a rebill. Thats a cps offer. Users who buy know they pay 34 dollars and theres no fine print saying they will get rebilled.

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It should be ok.

But the problem with Facebook is there are so many factors that can get your account banned

1) Getting your ad reported aka user complaints
2) Irregular activity on your account.
3) HUMANS review your page so ultimately it's up to the reviewers to decide if your offer is compliant enough.
4) etc.

I've seen people with perfectly compliant white hat campaigns get banned. Facebook's one of the best traffic sources in the world. The problem is you can't have a "cross your fingers and hope you don't get banned" approach to it.

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Thanks... I just found these products on Amazon too! Is it acceptable to sell via an Amazon link too? I would think it would be a higher conversion rate coming off of Amazon.

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It's fine by any measure but again, like Charles pointed out, users who are cynical/hate supplements will complain, ad reviewers might be having a bad day, etc.

Anything where you are trying to sell people things in the health vertical carries some risk on Facebook.

That aside, promoting CPS products directly on Facebook isn't going to be straightforward - especially direct-linking. People on Facebook aren't in a buying mindset, and it will be hard to change that with just an ad direct linking to a product page.

Test it, just don't expect it to work well.

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@Dr_Ngo: Everybody keeps telling "us" that Facebook is not safe for newbies. You named a few of the reasons WHY it is not safe for us there. Because you can be rolling today, and have nothing tomorrow because of a ban.

Is it safe to assume that top affiliates like you have connections with people inside of Facebook and thus have less risk than the average affiliate to get the account banned?

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Zuck is his homeboy didnt you know?

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It was a serious question.

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..and im not joking. They are friends.

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There are two types of affiliates running on FB.

1. Black hat.

They will cloak and run offers and/or creatives that aren't allowed/frowned up. But they don't care about bannings because they will just open up or buy another account. Some may have contacts inside FB that give them access to more accounts...but a lot do it without.

2. White hat.

Run offers and products that are allowed, using creatives that are regarded clean. You don't need "connections" or help inside Facebook to make this work. Even though it may be nice to have help along the way.

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If you do white hat and run very large volumes, you actually can get a lot of proactive help and connections from Facebook reps.

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^^ Agreed. But what I'm saying is that contact is not needed to keep accounts active, nor needed to build a successful white hat campaign.

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Facebook has become Google circa 2008/2009. It’s actually amusing to see how they’ve reversed their policies and restrictions over the years. The two companies have actually flip flopped their policies. It doesn’t matter if you’re running white hat or black hat on FB right now, you run the risk of getting banned. I have WH friends doing 5 figures per day on FB who’ve been banned and I have BH friends doing 5 figures per day on FB who’ve been banned. If you want to play, you’ve got to be willing to pay. Having said that, FB has taken a page out of Google’s old playbook and if you look at things from their perspective their goal becomes a little more clear.

That click you’re getting from FB isn’t yours … even though you paid for it … it’s theirs and they want to guard it jealously. From their point of view, you’re lucky they ALLOWED you to get that click in the first place. Once you understand that, then their frequency score makes more sense. FB doesn’t want you to be in THEIR customers face at all times. Always keep in mind, its THEIR traffic not yours. So pay attention to your frequency score. Keep it below 2.0 … 1.0 is better. DO NOT try to ram an offer down THEIR visitors’ throat with a frequency score above 2.0 or you will get banned. Most affiliates get greedy and try to run a winning campaign on FB day after day after day. As the old Wall Street quote says, “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Instead, run your FB campaign for 1 day … 2 days max then pull it for 2 days. Then run it again for 1 day then pull it and run a different offer. Don’t try to ram and jam ads down THEIR visitors’ throats and you’ll have a better chance of succeeding. Hope that helps.

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I've been running FB for quite a while and this is the first time I've heard of the frequency issue and frankly I'm not sure it makes to much sense.

I do think a high frequency ad could increase the chances of users reporting the ad because they are tired of it, but I don't think high frequency by itself would cause a ban.

Also, being purists, you should only run one offer per account as their policies clearly state that is one account per advertiser. So the advice to change offers might actually get you in hot water... eventually.

My rep has confirmed many times that as long as the offers are clean and there are no user reports they don't normally enforce that rule.

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@fabian,

Based on your comment "you should only run one offer per account..." it sounds like you're not using a FB business account. Please confirm. It's much easier to "cycle" offers using a FB business account.

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I don't know of too many affiliates who have connections inside Facebook. I'm sure there are some, but it's not one of those things people go around bragging about it.

The problem with whitehat these days is you can be 100% legit, and STILL get your account banned. My friend was spending $5k a day in gaming up to around August. His account got banned without explanation and he cannot for the life of him get it back. Has tried calling, emailing, and even contacting official FB reps. Nothing.

Now he's forced to go "blackhat" to get more accounts just to run Facebook approved ads.

There's 3 main ingredients to run FB these days:

1. a way to get accounts

2. a way to keep the accounts lasting as long as possible once you get them aka avoiding getting banned.

3. The normal affiliate marketing (finding offers, optimizing, how to bid, etc.)

Facebook keeps changing and becoming tougher. The guys who are currently running have been doing it for years so it's easier for them to adapt to change.

The reason why I tell newbies to avoid Facebook is I rarely see anyone succeed with it as a beginner. The typical scenario is that they get a campaign profitable and then the account gets banned. They can spend the next few weeks / months trying to get it work with no success. Even if they do succeed, there's no telling if they can keep up with the changes.

I feel diving into something like mobile is a better use of your time, and better to "future proof" your business.

It doesn't matter what traffic source you pick, it's always going to be "adapt or die."

I hope that answers your question.

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Hello @dr_ngo,

First of all thank you for your great blog. It has helped me a lot, even in life, and I love it!

I’d like to express my own opinion about Facebook and if I’m wrong then it’s better to expose my thoughts and get criticism so I can improve my thinking.

Even though I’ve never made any money yet and I’m all theory because I’m always over-thinking instead of taking enough action, I have some reasons to believe that mobile is actually a VERY difficult traffic source to master and I have tried to stay away from it after a small test I made . I understand that it’s the future and its volume is only gonna increase, but it's well known that in mobile you have to deal with a lot more variables (carriers, handsets, connection types, etc...) which means a lot more testing. In addition, the data in mobile display networks is being spread across 3000+ small placements (apps, sites) which means having to spend a lot more money in order to get enough statistically significant data for each placement. Facebook on the other hand, is a linear traffic source. You are only dealing with 1 single HUGE placement so collecting the sufficient amount of data is much more cheap, quick and easy. This also simplifies the scaling process since when something works on low volume there, it’s very likely to keep working and making money on higher volume as well. On Facebook, the volume is always there so scaling is vertical meaning it's just about increasing your budget where you 're already profitable. In mobile traffic sources though, scaling needs to be horizontal across different sites, apps or even ad networks and it takes a lot more additional testing budget and effort to achieve that because every different segment of traffic needs to be tested and approached individually. Another thing that makes Facebook a great traffic source is how easy it is to target the right audience because it’s a social traffic source and the amount of personal information about every user that’s being used for advertising is incredible! You also don’t have to worry about fraudulent publishers sending you fake bot traffic which seems to be quite an issue in mobile DSPs. Facebook’s also popular for providing usually high quality leads, meaning it's less likely to get kicked off an offer. Mobile is generally known for being harder to turn leads into paying customers.

Of course there are also unique disadvantages with Facebook like getting your account banned for absolutely no reason and I admit that this has been the reason I never dared to use it so far. Lately, I’ve changed my mind about this though. Just having it without making me any money doesn’t serve me any better and if I can make even $5k profit and then get banned I will have made so much money that I’ll have enough testing budget for a good chance to find success in any other traffic source I want later on. Let's not foget that while many white hat affiliates get banned some others (like zeno) have never been banned so luck is also a factor there.
Another thing I dislike is the very limited number of “safe” verticals that can be advertised.
Facebook can be also too expensive, however its native ads can get a higher response rate than banners and combining this with the magic of social targeting the high costs can be easily outweighted by profits, I guess.

In the end, IMHO there’s no best traffic source (unfortunately). I’m on a low budget so I’ve been doing nothing but thinking every day for months where is the best place to invest on but there’s no best answer and there will never be. Each traffic source has it’s own pros and cons but some of the pros on Facebook are really worth considering I think.

Just my thoughts...

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In only run with biz accounts. Terms are the same for all I believe. Again, is not something that actively enforced, hence the being purist bit.

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