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What works on FB in 2020? (47)

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I've just had a long and lovely read of the FB ad policies, what a fantastic way to spend the last half hour.
Can anyone point me in the right direction of what actually does work on FB as we begin 2020?
Thanks in advance.

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The million dollar question : are you looking for something that is in line with their policies or you want to bend the rules a bit and run cloaked campaigns?

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their are some guides on here about sweepstakes and how to run them on Facebook by @stickupkid. I personally have never had a interest in Facebook though because all the account hassle just sounds annoying and time consuming. I know that people make lots on Facebook though especially if you want to cloak

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Thanks for the replies
I've read all the @stickupkid posts and am loving the sweepstakes - I think that's gonna be my first campaign. I feel confident to begin like, now! I'm just waiting for my programmer to send me my finished lander.
Both of you mention cloaking - I'd like to try and bend the rules a little. I've looked into how to get images approved using techniques like deepart etc. It's SUPERinteresting to me that both of you mention cloaking.. I've put out a post or 2 on here and another blackhat forum but 100% of responses (also a lot of things I've read and watched on YT) said not to bother with cloaking - it's expenive.. it's hassle.. it's not necessary.
I believe one problem I have is I don't fully understand what cloaking is. I read that if you have a landing page that has imitations of FB comments your ads will get banned. This is what I'm having made - could be a massive fail.
Maybe you could offer some insight into this and how it could affect my creatives/landers when it comes to sweepstakes?
As soon as my lander comes through I plan to buy one month of adplexity native and see if my ideas tie in with what I discover there..

Thanks again

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Whilst we're talking @stickupkid - would be nice to know your opinion on running ads on FB like "Who will win the champions league?? Barcelona or Manchester City - answer now and you could win a free iphone".

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My opinion sucks, don't listen to me.

But.

I wouldn't bother cloaking. Even the biggest BH players on FB are going WH now.

Just start small, run clean WH camps, and gradually increase spend on profitable camps.

Your account will get suspended eventually once you start making money. But that's a ways off.

I've run sweeps in SG, ZA, and US with only one suspension which was alleviated within a few hours after I contacted them saying they made a mistake.

Granted, I only use FB to scale and test certain camps, so seriously: don't listen to me

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i can’t speak to what is and what isn’t allowed on Facebook since I’ve never ran on it but I can try to explain what cloaking is. I personally do not cloak but what a cloaker does it shows one landing page to the moderation teams and spy tools and another landing page(your money page) to your actual visitors with the exception of some because of bleed rate. It does this im pretty sure by knowing what IP ranges to block among other things. With Facebook you will for sure hear quite a bit about cloaking.

Its not secret blackhat makes bigger ROI than whitehat but you get all the risks associated with it. I’m very interested in blackhat personally but I don’t think it’s something worth focusing on in the beginning because you first must learn how to run campaigns in general and like you’ve heard it isn’t necessarily needed. It also won’t bring instant profits or everyone would just cloak if it was that easy.

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It’s mostly about getting good and positive interaction with your audience. WH offers can still result in bad feedback. BH offers with good angles can result in positive traction with your audience.

Give them something to share/comment on so the good feedback covers the negative side.

A good cloaker with negative feedback on your ads will give bad results and quick bans.

On topic: ecomm, especially your own product. Most other verticals are hard for newbies. The banhammmer will hit you.

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Spot on! Listen to this and you wouldn't go wrong whether you do BH or WH.

However make sure you have a plethora of accounts as back up because FB will always be a juggernaut and temperamental beast.

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Promoting self-owned products is definitely the best approach for 2020 and possibly beyond.

But that isnt the easiest setup.

Whitehat ecomm is another good choice, there are some affiliate networks that really try hard to bring WH products to the table, so affiliates have some legit stuff to promote... jumbleberry, giddyup

Clean lead generation will always be a thing with FB traffic... sweeps is kind of leadgen too, so if you can find some solid ones, you can still take that path.

And as for cloaking, in case you plan to use more aggressive LPs, cloaking is a must or your accounts will die like flies I personally do not cloak, since I hate to play the hide & seek games, but its still an option.

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As far as running whitehat goes (i.e. no cloaking), collecting leads and monetizing them is one of the safer/safest routes.

(This is something I'm looking into personally at the moment - may do a case study later or include it as a module in the upcoming FB tutorial.)

Once the leads are collected, you can sell them to one or more businesses, or monetize them yourself via email marketing etc., or both.

More work is involved, but the benefits can be worth it.


CONS (as compared to traditional affiliate offers):

-Need to build a simple site to collect the leads (although: FB's lead gen ads can work).

-May need to approach businesses directly to negotiate a deal on selling them the leads.

-Need to have a setup to deliver the leads automatically (so businesses can reach out while leads are hot).

-Need to design backend monetization (e.g. email marketing, social media marketing, sell them your own products and services, sell them products and services via affiliate programs).


PROS (as compared to traditional affiliate offers):

-A LOT more freedom on how you monetize, as FB won't bother to sign up and wait days to observe how you monetize your list (at least they're not doing this yet as far as I've heard). You only need to make the lead gen site look professional and legit. You can send subscribers affiliate links afterwards without worrying about FB bans.

-No need to run affiliate links, and no need to promote the same offer site as other affiliates. Some say FB hates affiliate links. Others say FB is fine with them. The way I understand it is that ultimately, FB can track the final destination of redirect links, so it only takes one affiliate to get caught cloaking and/or running aggressive for the offer site to become tainted in the eyes of FB, so that the campaigns of other affiliates promoting the same offer page would come under scrutiny. You'd be promoting your own lead gen site, which can be kept "clean".

-Higher profits potential. Once you get people on your list, you can keep monetizing them until they unsubscribe. The higher LTV = higher profit margin can allow you to bid higher than competition that are merely promoting affiliate offers to make that one-time commission.


As far as losing accounts goes: As was mentioned in some of the posts above, even when you intentionally run 100% whitehat, losing accounts will still be possible. However, there are so many ways to get accounts these days - ask a few affiliates that specialize in FB and/or affiliate managers and you'll get good leads.

The main thing is whether you're burning through accounts so quickly that it's seriously affecting your bottom line. When you run whitehat, chances of getting banned are decreased. Having to get a new account now and then won't be a major issue.

Also: Each FB user can have up to 2 BMs and up to 5 ad accounts per BM. That's 10 accounts. And I'm sure everyone has family/relatives/friends/acquaintances that will not be needing to run FB advertising in their conceivable future, that can lend/rent their ad account.

Nice discussion! Looking forward to more suggestions on what can work on FB - especially 100% whitehat stuff!



Amy

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Also: Since FB+sweeps was mentioned a few times above, someone may find the links below helpful.


All of @stickupkid's threads related to the topic:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post377238

@itzpeter shares how he runs sweeps on FB:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Peter-s-System



Amy

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@stickupkid @matuloo
You guys have given me a really nice idea to push my own product. If I ran an ad that then put people through a short survey that lead them to a sales page, what would you recommend is then the best way to sell an ebook?
Literally a straight up sell - "buy now - PayPal - download link to inbox - get email on process". Clearly display social proof.
Or.. what about a "download free sample" then after 15% of the book gets read it shows them a buy button to get the rest?
I've been writing this book for about 6 months so still need to finish it.. could be an awesome way to sell it!!
It's a self help / self study guide so people could be in the mindset like "I need this now" and go for a straight buy. But.. if it's like that can I just use a simple PayPal button with a download link? Or would it be better to go the expensive route and get a Shopify store etc. I have no idea with e-commerce.
Maybe you can point me somewhere???
Really appreciate everyone commenting on this post!! Giving me a lot of inspiration - thank you!

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For ebooks, the easiest way to start would be to offer it on clickbank.

As for funnel design: I would suggest to examine the best CB products (ones with the highest gravity), especially ones in the same niche, and take a lot of notes.

Also browse their affiliates page to see what kind of marketing materials they have for affiliates. For example a lot of products have opt in pages where a free lead magnet is given out in exchange for emails, and they give you actual email content to model yours after.

Most importantly, subscribe to the mailing lists of these products, and also buy a couple of the products yourself. Sign up and purchase using a separate email. Then monitor that inbox to see how they:

-deliver the product,

-follow up to ensure your satisfaction (to decrease chargebacks),

-ask you for feedback/reviews to add to their testimonials,

-ask you to join their FB group and like their FB page etc. (you may want to set up similar social presence)

-sell/upsell/cross-sell you on their other products or other products using aff links, etc. etc.


Modelling after the best CB products in this way will help you to get started asap and ensure you're on the right track. Once you're up and running though, there are numerous things you can track and tweak to improve conversion rate. There's a ton of info available for free just a google away. Google "landing page optimization" or "landing page split-testing ideas" and you'll find lots of fun split tests you can do.

Good luck and have fun!




Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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Wowwww @vortex.
Thank you! What an amazing post. Putting this up on clickbank crossed my mind but I kinda brushed it aside in favour of Amazon. You're totally right though.. a little bit of effort goes a long way.
Don't really know what else to say. I have a business plan. Just need to execute. To say this post alone makes the whole of my stm membership worth it is an understatement.
So much gold in this forum! ����❤️

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is there a difference in the type style of ads on Facebook meme style posts vs a blog post? I have been hearing a lot about this but cant seem to find any other confirmations on it

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I think, based on what I've learnt in this thread - it's most important to make sure your creative creates positive engagement and can be shared / commented on without too much negative feedback.
So, I'd imagine a meme could be shared a lot with potential for a "viral" effect - but could also burn pretty quick. A blog has more chance of lasting a lot longer assuming it's written well in a strong niche.

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Hey @vortex,
So.. there's a slight issue - there are no other products like mine on clickbank. There is only 1 ebook that I've seen before and surprisingly I actually downloaded this book about 6 months ago to get a few references for my book! Coincidence? lol.
With this book there is no funnel.. no nothing.. just a straight up "over 10,000 copies sold - this has everything - look at everything that's included - you definitely need this - buy now $9.99".
Some t's & c's at the bottom and obviously clickbank secure.. they've also gone as far as to release a 2nd and 3rd volume which is great for them!!

Stats:Initial $/sale: $6.13 |Avg %/sale: 75.0% |Avg Rebill Total: $0.00 | Avg %/rebill: 0.0% | Grav: 0.04

I believe their stats are so low because this book is available in a handful of places - zipped and ripped. That's how I found it.
Fortunately my book isn't like this one, it could actually work nicely next to mine.
Do you think I could just dump my book straight on clickbank and offer aff's a nice payout? I really think mine would sell itself really well.. just need to put it in front of as many people as possible worldwide.

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If your ebook is a good one, using the approach of offering part of it for free then aiming for the full sale, would be a good choice imo.

This way, you should be able to sell enough copies, as the users would really want to read the whole thing (assuming its good again) and at the same time, you would collect way more leads compared to offering a straight sale only. Part of these leads could convert later on, plus you'd have a chance to sell them something else too.

This system is used very commonly and it can work very well, but let me repeat this again... the content of the sample has to be really of high quality.

And I would still try to run a test with a straight sale anyways. A properly compiled sales page can do wonders, sometimes it can sell better than offering a sample for free.

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@matuloo
Makes total sense.
I have some work to do!
Thanks again.

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Cloaking bh on fb is definitely a dying art and has been on the decline for a while now (especially as of late with all the endless scrutiny on FB for the past couple of years). That said there are always going to be some diehard savages out there that make it work but the barrier to entry for a beginner starting from scratch is extremely high.

Your better off getting really good at using the spytools, seeing what people are running at volume uncloaked (any big campaign doing volume can't hide for long anymore with the spytools and FB adlibrary) and networking with a bunch of the am's at wh networks to catch whats trending and then try to reverse engineer.

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Failing to find CB products in your target niche, the next best thing to do would be to check out products in other niches, that are of similar price-point.

That product you found: Does it have high gravity? The idea is to model after the BEST products.

Getting affiliates to promote your product may not be as easy as you're thinking. Think: As an affiliate yourself, which CB products would you promote? Probably products that:

1)Have high gravity
2)Have low refund rate
3)Have sales letters with great copy
4)Provide lots of affiliate resources (emails, creatives, etc.)

The product may not convert too well right off the bat - usually you'd need to collect data in order to tweak your copy/angle/funnel/etc. Unless you can persuade affiliates to run an unproven product, you'd need to fork out that cash in the beginning to do this tweaking.

Because: If you, at 100% commissions (so to speak), can't run campaigns profitably, then it may be even more of a challenge for other affiliates to do so at a lesser commission.

Sure, by offering high commissions, you may attract a few strays to test out your product. But if your copy and funnel isn't solid, and they don't make money, they would stop throwing money into it.

HOWEVER: There are many affiliates that make profits using organic traffic. You can contact them to see if they'd be interested in promoting your product on their site.

This is how I would approach this:

-Do extensive keyword research to compile a giant list of relevant keywords for your product.

-Make a list of websites ranking in google for each keyword (it would be a pain to do this manually - use a scraper).

-Locate the contact emails and/or contact form urls of each website.

-Email/message them.

You'll need to have affiliate resources prepared ahead of time for them to use though, to make it absolutely painless for them to promote you. Stuff like banners they can put on their site, promo emails they can send to their list, freebie they can give out etc.

You may also want to be selective as to which sites you want to collaborate with. There are tools you can use to check their alexa rankings (in bulk) for example. For sites that have good traffic, offering to write free unique content such as a review of your product can be a good way to get webmasters to say yes.

Worth noting is the fact that unless your product is the only one (or one of very few) of its type that exists, webmasters will STILL stop promoting it if it doesn't convert as well as the next product. So having a solid product with proven salesletter and funnel will be important in any case.

Hope I've provided some food for thought!




Amy

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level of difficulty going up, detecting ability going up, profit margins going down in blackhat, its a total contra-curve... we used to see 100-300% roi on volume, now if we see 50% thats amazing...

you can't get spend out of accounts, they ban you at 2-3k or less, if you launch 10 accounts, 8 will die very fast, 2 will run, 1 will profit - in the end you might cover your expenses on the 10 accounts you might make a lil profit.. is it really worth it??

these days own product, own service, own funnels is the way to go, way more work, for way less profit, but the only way to stay alive and not quit altogether...

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I cloaked for about 6 years on Facebook. The roi was great but while you're cloaking you don't really get to use all the features that Facebook has to offer to marketers. You're constantly just trying to spend as much money as possible before the account dies. As said above its getting harder and harder to make accounts spend more than 10 to 20 k. The amount of work involved to warm these accounts up, then you have to spend more for clean ads makes the process tedious...to a point I got burned out. It wasn't really worth it to go through this constant hustle for me in 2019 so I made the switch to white hat. The funny thing is that when I made the switch and started running whitehat campaigns I was still getting banned and I thought WTF... But the beauty of it was that I was winning every appeal. I must say it's nice to be able to use all the features that Facebook has to offer but the ROI is definitely lower. But I must say it's a lot more fun now.

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What Attila says ^

Affiliate has always been leveraging the on the following factors to survive:
1. Cheap traffic cost on the traffic side
2. High Converting Offers that brings good EPC.

while some affiliates that tend to take things to the next level would:
1. Cloak and run the campaign with super aggressive LP to push the extra miles - $$

With all these advantages, affiiate have been reaping the ROI by knowing how to operate on these factors. I am talking about 200-300% ROI at scale... how crazy is that. However due to the changing scene:
- Higher traffic cost (thank to the emerge of dropshipping)
- Better detecting technology (come on, all cloaking happens within FB App... you really think that they wouldnt know?)
- Shrinking offer conversio rate (dying MIDs, mastercard policy etc...)
- Higher operating cost (accounts... environments... payment solutions etc...) <--- this wasn't never a thing in the past and it has became a major cost in recent years.

The ROI for average affiliates have dropped to 10-30% from campaigns... But hey, we still have employees to pay, rentals to pay.... So after doing so many things, you realise that it's no longer making money... That's what the current scene of most BH guys are.

2020... own product, own funnel, and if can, go WH, is definitely the way to go. With the skill sets which you can learn from STM, by using the same media buying techniques pushing your own offers, you'll find the reward and time spent is much worhtwhile.

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I kinda disagree on the "higher traffic cost", rest is spot on! Geo's like UK, IE, BE, NL I don't see higher cpc's than let's say 5 years ago. Only thing that might be different, it's harder to stay consistent with your CPC for weeks in a row.

It takes so much time to keep accounts live, up and running and have a decent amount of accounts running simultaneously with the same campaign. You need to avoid any trends between your accounts so they can't catch you in one hit. Different images, different domains, different text, different payment method etc etc (that's only the front-end part).

But, once you found a way to streamline above tasks well, it's still very do-able to hit xxxx profit a day.

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^THIS!

When I was running blackhat and accounts got banned, I didn't even bother to appeal - because I knew it would be in vain.

Now, running whitehat, when an account gets banned, I would appeal with a "hey why did I get banned I did nothing wrong", and the account would get reactivated with a "sorry for the inconvenience!"

The whole experience feels better. Instead of feeling like a criminal playing cat-and-mouse with the authorities, I feel like I'm collaborating with FB to bring value to users.

(Of course, being compliant doesn't automatically equate to providing value, but choosing quality products and services to promote tends to make it easier to be compliant.)

Safe to say, no more blackhat for me.



Amy

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Jay 100% right. For beginners FB and BH offers to complicated and expensive. In our affiliate network, we run Casino and Sport Betting offers, only 2-3 afiiliates use FB to bring traffic, we have 300 affiliates. So only 1%
Sometimes they buy each fb account from $100 up to $1000(they make 3-40k profit) with active manager and other stuff to keep it working.
And this account can work 1 day or couples weeks. When FB banned all your advertising money freez in FB and your traffic stops. So you loose FB money and your commissions from Bookmaker.
So to start doing it you need experince and at list $3000-5000 . Its still no garanty that you will make profit. Are you ready for this kind of risk?

If yes, do it.
If not, start from WH offers, get experince with FB regulations, make at list 3-5k profit, then start to play with BH offers.

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Can you really run sweeps on Facebook uncloaked? Can you give an example of a basic ad and lander that would run fine on FB. Just a basic example, not looking for your profitable campaigns lol. I just want to understand the possibilities.

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I see crypto ads still can make good ROI on fb.

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For longterm thinkers white hat or let's say a kinda grey hat is the way to go.

Don't get me wrong blackhat will be always around.

There will be always windows of opportunities here and there.

But it will be always "churn & burn".

Find a method, milk it out and look for the next thing.

And I'm guilty of this too.

I love to run "blackhat" campaigns, it's exciting, it's fun, but it's not something someone can do for the rest of his life.

Just my 2 cents. ;-)

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Sure. Sweeps are just a fancy Lead Gen if you think about it.

Stickupkid has some really good examples of it.

Grocery store vouchers work really well. Just get a clean .com domain and use it only for FB ads.

Stick a question or spinner lander like you would see for pops or push.

Remove ALL backbutton, timeout, push sub requests, and sneaky js shit as possible.

Have the FB pixel fire an 'add to cart' on the button click which would go to the offer page.

Check your network's dashboard for actual conversions and you can check against your FB impressions and CTR from your tracker.

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I've been running FB WH for the past 2 years. The landers are super clean without affiliate elements to increase the ROI (back buttons, etc..) and i still get banned. You can always get your accounts back until you get your BM banned. That's a game over.

Having said that, i also know people non-affiliates who have their own brand, products, etc.. and still get banned lol.

Facebook has a big problem, "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" and that leads to bans everytime they change something on the platform.

My advice is to promote WH stuff while expecting a few bans every year

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I've been promoting white hat ecommerce offers for the past year or so. I've had account bans here and there but always managed to get them back with one exception. It's annoying but I don't consider it the biggest challenge if you're running white hat.

The biggest challenge that I have had with Facebook is the performance volatility. I have had days where I'm super profitable and others where I lost money. The back and forth on an offer that does work essentially keeps me at breakeven or slightly above. But I have yet to profit in such a high amount to grow and make this my primary source of income. It's simply not there for me.

I am in the process of launching my own brand and offer. I think this is important because you can make money on the front end and even more on the backend through repeat purchases and introduction of new products. @vortex makes a great point about generating leads and monetizing them through other means. From my experience, Facebook performance is much more volatile for ecomm than it is for lead generation.

It sucks because I never made bank through affiliate marketing in the same way that others have. But my goal is to build a real business with predictable and sustainable revenue, always keeping in mind the long-term. And building a brand seems to be the answer to that.

Edit: Another thing I would like to add—a sound business is not reliant on one channel. The successful brands that I have worked with utilize email marketing, Google, Facebook, SEO, etc.

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^In complete agreement with all this!

Having your own product/service is a moat that can't easily be taken from you. This is the direction I'm headed as well.

Although - I know that FB has been banning accounts of perfectly legitimate products/services that have been around for ages. Good thing though is appeals are almost always successful.

Still, there's a risk - and that's where your advice of going multi-channel is gold.

BTW it's been a while since you were last active - so nice to see posts from you again!



Amy

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It has been a while. I appreciate your kind words.

I wanted to come back and see what the sentiment around Facebook and white hat affiliate marketing was. I've been trying to make it work for more than a year now and I can't say I've been successful. It's been weighing heavily on my mind whether to keep trying to make white hat ecomm affiliate marketing and Facebook work but the volatility of the platform doesn't help.

What are you leaning towards nowadays? Is Facebook your primary traffic source?

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I almost stopped running campaigns for a while - I was making a transition into energy healing and was spending time learning and practicing:

https://www.facebook.com/amy.cheung....62564860885484

Been focusing on FB for the last while. Haven't made millions yet but know enough to write a newbie tutorial on it - which is something I'm doing at the moment. At the same time, I'll going outside my comfort zone to test more offers so I could "bulk up" the tutorial. Also doing testing to try to systematize my testing and optimization strategy to present to beginners.

I'm definitely not a pro yet, but hopefully with this tutorial, I'll spark more discussions. With all the FB experts around here, we can jointly figure out more things together than if we were just running alone.

Would love to hear more about your experiences with WH ecom aff marketing, especially the challenges! Were you running ecom CPA offers from aff networks? If so, would you mind sharing your setup (tracker or not; direct-linking or using landers; aff link or destination link with parameters / redirectless; how and where pixel was placed; how many other affiliates were running; etc.)? Was the headache from account bans or just volatility in performance?



Amy

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Thanks for sharing your post! I'm happy to hear about your journey and growth and hope that you continue to get from it what you seek.

I'm happy to share more about my challenges. If you need me to provide more detail, just ask.

So yes... I mostly promote white hat ecommerce offers from affiliate networks - mainly GiddyUp. I'm not trying to plug them but they are a great white hat network. They give affiliates the ability to place multiple Facebook pixel events for offer funnels which is huge. I don't know how other ecomm networks do it but being able to fire pixel events for add to carts, checkouts, etc. give one the ability to create lookalike audiences from that data.

I do use a tracker but I stay away from using the campaign tracking link within the Facebook ad. Instead, I have to use the actual link to the advertorial page (more in a bit) with the campaign parameters from the tracker. This is because Facebook absolutely does not like redirects. You may be asking: how do I split-test landing pages? After an ad has been approved, I setup the split-test of my pages with Google Optimize. But only after an ad and URL has been approved.

For ecommerce offers, advertorials are common for pre-selling, especially offers priced in the $30 to $80 range. I stuck to advertorials. You'd typically want an LP CTR of about 30% or higher but that depends on your costs. I've had offers with CPMs of $6-$8 and others with CPMs of $40. Competition not withstanding, I've noticed a correlation between how engaging and valuable Facebook deems your ad to be and CPMs.

The headache has never been from account bans because if you're running white hat, like you said, Facebook will just reactivate your account and apologize for the inconvenience. The headache comes from making $300+ one day and losing $350 the next. I think volatility is to be expected as a media buyer. But it's easier to stomach if you're a brand because you're still making money from repeat purchases, email marketing, or someone searching your brand on Google. But if you're in my shoes and you're trying to turn this into a sustainable business, it's like trying to build a house's foundation on quicksand, lol.

BTW, a big thing to consider and another "pro" for having a brand is this — when you're promoting ecomm offers on Facebook or natives as an affiliate, you are helping drive brand searches on Google that will convert into sales for the advertiser/product owner but may not be attributed to you... so you lose out on the commission. I have worked with 2 somewhat known brands that were multi-channel... their Facebook advertising was helping drive sales on their websites and on Amazon, indirectly. Can I prove that? Attribution is difficult in this case so I cannot. But you have to imagine that a portion of those people will research on Google before buying on your offer page, if ever.

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Thank you for your blessings! Doing energy healing has indeed provided me with a lot of satisfaction. It was a choice to listen to guidance from my higher-self, which always puts me in alignment.

GiddyUp is great. Another great network is Jumbleberry. They provide redirectless links and with some offers would even allow you to use the product owner's FB page directly, which is a big plus when it comes to looking legit. I don't even need to use a landing page - just use their link in the ad directly (although testing landers would still be good - it's just nice to have the option of not having to use one).

The volatility IS an issue - especially when FB's rolling out algo changes (or, rather, when they're doing their secret testing and tweaking which complexes the hell out of people). What I do is set up rules so that if numbers look good in the first part of the day, I would continue to run. Otherwise the rules would stop camps/adsets from running. When you've been running something for a few days/weeks you know what "good" and "bad" numbers look like, and there would be the criteria for your rules.

And yup we can pretty much bet our asses that brands are doing cross-platform retargeting. That should be the best-converting traffic. We could actually do the same as affiliates if our pixels are on the offer site. It's something I've been meaning to test.

In any case: Transitioning to a business model that does not involve any 3rd party links (aff links, tracker links) would be wise, as major browsers such as chrome will be phasing out 3rd party cookie tracking. It's not immediate, but will sneak up on us sooner than we know. Please see these threads by @Mr Baffoe:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...iate-Marketing

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...kies-in-chrome

So: Selling from our own ecom store, collecting leads and selling/monetizing them, promoting products/services as an agency (or better, promoting our own products/services) so we can run traffic directly to the final destination without using redirects - are all business models that should continue to be viable for the next while.

Thanks so much @dtalexone for taking the time to share your experiences, and please feel free to continue doing so. The more we all post about our experiences, the better we can learn how to tame this beast. I just remembered about your follow-along - will go and subscribe there.



Amy

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That's interesting that they provide redirectless links. I've heard of Jumbleberry. I will have to give them a try and see what kind of offers they provide. Do you have success with just direct linking? Do you use advertorials at all?

I try to use rules but often see conversions come in later during the day. For example, I use a basic rule of pausing the ad for the day if it's reached 3x CPA with no conversions. But there will be times, like right now, where most of the ads meet that criteria so I'll essentially have no ads left running for the day. This is where the loss essentially wipes any profits I may have had from the previously successful day.

What I meant here was that people will perform a Google search for the product that you are promoting and land on the Amazon page for it and purchase. Obviously, you can't place a pixel there so you will not be attributed for the sale. With GiddyUp, I do place my pixels on the offer site and sometimes get attributed "brand site" conversions. What I'm trying to say here though is that attribution is not perfect and people will prefer to buy from Amazon than from your funnel.

I have not updated that follow along in a while, haha. I think I started it when I was in the second round of the 6WAMC. You are a respected member of this community and I value your thoughts and opinions. I really wanted to hear from your experiences on Facebook or affiliate marketing in general.

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Yup simple direct-linking works. Offer domain + parameters, with my FB pixel on the offer site.

But this kind of setup can ONLY work IF all affiliates are running compliant. It really helps when the network limits the number of people they allow to run each offer.

Even if a single affiliate 'goes rogue' by running in a non-compliant manner and gets banned, the offer domain can come under FB's scrutiny or get blacklisted. And since my FB pixel is on that offer page, chances are my ad account would get flagged by association.

I have yet to test advertorials - need to find the time to do that soon.


You don't have to just use conversions to set up criteria for the rules.

After running an offer for a few days/weeks, you'd KNOW what would be considered "good" values for CPC, CPM, and/or CTR. So you can set up rules that say "if CPC/CPM/CTR are below average, pause the campaign" - using lifetime averages. Or, if you want to be more conservative, "if CPC/CPM/CTR are not IDEAL, pause the campaign", using values from your best-performing days.

Also: Even when using conversions as criteria, you can be conservative by pausing out a campaign e.g. at 2-3x CPA with no conversions, but set up another rule to resume the campaign later in the day once some conversions roll in.

This conservative strategy may leave money on the table, but can be very effective in protecting from losing money. And if you're promoting several products, they would "hedge" against each other, where chances are good that at least one product will stay running throughout the day on a daily basis.


Understood! I don't yet have first-hand experience with multi-channel marketing - there are so many more things to test and learn and this is just one of them.


Haha I JUST noticed the date on that follow-along! I thought you started it earlier this year - but no - it was from January 2019.

Thanks again for the kind comment. Everything I know about FB, I'll be putting into that newbie FB tutorial. Attempting a project like that can REALLY highlight one's weak areas. When I was just running on my own and making profits it felt great, felt like I knew what I was doing. But now that I'm trying to write a tutorial, I'm seeing all these different things I haven't yet tested, such as different linking structures, different business models, different FB features - I'll try not to be a perfectionist and just get something posted first, then elaborate later.

However, any testing I can do myself would still be limited. This is where reading about other people's experiences - such as yours which you've so generously shared above - is immensely helpful. When my own experiences is inline with those of several other respected marketers / longterm members, I can be confident about sharing them in the tutorial, knowing readers will likely get similar results.

Nothing is ever definite when it comes to FB, and they're constantly changing their algorithms. But hopefully, the tutorial will minimize the learning curve.

Let's keep in touch and update each other on progress.



Amy

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So after this post, I actually did start direct linking an offer that I was promoting at a price point of $23. And that's all it took for the offer to become profitable. The funnel KPIs were lower than when I was using a presell lander.

It made me conclude that presell landers may not be necessary for low ticket ecomm offers. We'll see if that holds true for future low ticket items that I will promote. Thank you for the inspiration though!

As luck would have it, just when the offer had become profitable and was doing well in AU and UK, the Coronavirus became a much more serious threat in the West and my sales plummetted.

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Nobody mentioned something about Push or Native.

What do you think about these?

I've learned some things from Caurmen already that automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning is king in order to succeed as a super affiliate.

What do you think when we talk about newbies? Is the long learning curve worth it? Can newbies succeed with push/native? Or should they indeed also focus on wh ecom products or organic reach for own products on fb?

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Push is actually quite newbie friendly... reasonable volumes, easy campaign setup, less bots compared to POPs (for example), more relaxed rules than with FB...

Native is a bit different, the volumes are very high and large budgets are required to make it work, so it's not really the best format for newbies.

And the reason why these two were not mentioned in this thread is that the OP asked about FB (facebook)

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Still lots guys running nutra in fb, it works!

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do you experience less bans and disapprovals from FB? I can imagine they lost a bunch of money during corona/budgetcuts, so they might losen up a bit?

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Lots of bans, but corona does not affected the revenue

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