Affiliate Marketing using Facebook Advertisement Platform
After reading good affiliate marketing experience and success stories using the social network ad medium, I decided to take a plunge and choose Facebook Ads platform as my starting point.
The first thing I did before I setup my affiliate campaign in FB is to search the net for free facebook coupon codes. After 30 minutes, I have found $250.00 worth of fund that I can use to promote my affiliate link in Facebook free. (I compiled the facebook ad voucher here)
Facebook has a tremendous traffic so I know that $250 credits will not last long. However, this amount is enough to give me hands-on experience from running ads in Facebook without loosing money.
Since I have now a budget to spend in ads, I now choose 4 different campaigns that I believe will suit the taste of a typical facebook members, write down the offer url then check the demographics of visitors using the Quantcast. The demographics that Quantcast gave me from the affiliate offer page is the one I used to target the demographics of Facebook users to whom I want my ads to be shown.
Creating ads in Facebook is fast and easy. Unlike Google Adwords, I don't need to build huge keyword list to start the campaign. There is no quality score to think about. I can start my CPA campaign without creating a landing page because FB allows direct linking to the merchants offer. The only thing that might delay the campaign is the ad approval process. FB had a bunch of no-nos list so my advise is to read their content guidelines and common reason of rejections first to avoid disapproved ads. They are very strict in accepting the ads.
The Result:
After running the ads for about three weeks, here is the summary of my affiliate marketing using the Facebook Ad System:
| Ad Variation | Impression | Clicks | Ad Spent | Conversion | |
| Campaign 1 (per sale) | 4 | 467,849 | 147 | $57.68 | 0 |
| Campaign 2 (per sale) | 2 | 3,603 | 0 | $0 | 0 |
| Campaign 3 (ebook) | 10 | 1,102,552 | 374 | $130.43 | 1 |
| Campaign 4 (email sub) | 3 | 310,826 | 77 | $24.56 | 3 |
| Total | 19 | 1,884,830 | 598 | $212.67 | 4 ($35.75) |
Campaign 1 & 2 are Cost per Sale campaign promoting renting service which will convert once the user signed up for free offer that requires credit card.
Campaign 3 is an ebook download from Clickbank. I spent $130.43 for 1 conversion that pays $32. The offer actually converts on the second day of running the campaign so I let it run for 5 days hoping that I will get more conversion. Sad to say, no conversion after the 1st sale. I have ad split testing on this offer as you can see in ad variation. Maybe this offer is not effective for FB user, but this might be hot for search engine and content traffic so I will not give up this offer. Will promote this to google search / content using PPC one more time.
Campaign 4 is simple email submit for free report. The best out of four campaign that I tried based on the number of conversion but still a loser mainly because of high CPC for US traffic. ( I will run this in google content for cheaper clicks. Let see if I can make this a profitable campaign )
Well, well, well.. the result is not impressive. If I use real money I should have lost big money here, but since I'm using the free facebook code I ended up earning $35.75 dollar on the campaign.
How about you, have you had any good experiences with the Facebook Ad System? If you haven't tried Facebook Ad, why not give it a try and share it to us your experience. Here is free facebook coupon code for you to start, create some ad and share us how much money you have made or the experience you have learned in FB ad system?
Facebook comments:
January 20th, 2009 - 21:40
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
January 20th, 2009 - 22:00
Can you tell me who did your layout? I’ve been looking for one kind of like yours. Thank you.
January 21st, 2009 - 04:56
@Matt,
thanks for the add, my feedburner reader +1
@Ben,
this is a free WP layout from Unique Blog Design. You may download it here.
January 22nd, 2009 - 05:41
I am learning the ins and out of Facebook ads submission they are very strict. If you miss period in all you ads it will definitely be rejected
January 22nd, 2009 - 06:26
@Dex,
21 out of 24 ads that I submitted to Facebook got approved. High approval rate eh?..
Here is the detail for the 3 disapproved ads,
- 1 is for health related offer (like acai, wuyitea ),
- 1 campaign is for UK (disapproved because the FB reviewer was redirected)
- 1 is for Zip & Submit with free offer.
January 22nd, 2009 - 09:45
Newbie qquestion..
@ Zalds you have mentioned that direct linking is possible with Facebook.. So that means that I can just copy the URL provided by the affiliate..
Is that what they called direct linking.. What about deep linking..
January 22nd, 2009 - 11:12
@Dex,
in FB you can use direct link, that is the campaign referral link provided by affiliate network for each specific offer / campaign.
Deep linking is when you are going to refer your prospect to specific product or page, like the product link of amazon or ebay.
May 23rd, 2009 - 14:23
i should read a lots of ebook about affiliate marketing in order to understand it more..anyways thanks for a great tips
May 23rd, 2009 - 14:52
@crisiboy
thanks for dropping by.. read, learn & act.
those are the keys. Goodluck.
May 24th, 2009 - 06:51
i have read before this topic on how to use it in facebook and friendster..di ko lang masyadong isinapuso..hehehe
July 6th, 2009 - 21:08
Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?
September 16th, 2009 - 17:31
i tried to start off today with facebook ads. But the account was banned for no reason.
I link the ad with the url to the landing page and was banned. Pretty crappy! when i was pretty excited to try out facebook ads for the first time. ~_~
September 16th, 2009 - 17:38
my apologize on my ranting but i cant help how screw up facebook is.
They banned my ad accounts. I send an enquiry email. And moments later, my ads was approved.
Yet my account is still banned!
September 16th, 2009 - 17:46
@nicklee,
They approve the ads yet they ban your account? strange…
February 24th, 2010 - 11:33
the secret to affiliate marketing is always targeted traffic from developed countries like us, uk and canada. affiliate marketing would not give you a good income if you try it on asian internet traffic.