Thursday 20 August 2009

Do You Know That You Can Make Money With Facebook?

Make Money With Facebook Social Ads

Last summer, I decided to see what the Facebook hype was all about. Interestingly, I discovered some very simple ways to make money with it. Soon a few of my friends were asking me to show them, which led me to write the official Make Money With Facebook guide. In this Squidoo Lens, I'm going to show you one of my techniques that you can use to profit on Facebook, WITHOUT having an account.
Contents at a Glance
Facebook Social Ads Exposed
How Social Ads Work
Why Social Ads Don't Always Work
How You Can Profit With Social Ads
Choose A Category to Promote
Where To Get Products (to Promote)
more...

Contents at a GlanceFacebook Social Ads ExposedHow Social Ads WorkWhy Social Ads Don't Always WorkHow You Can Profit With Social AdsChoose A Category to PromoteWhere To Get Products (to Promote)How To Post a Social AdSetting Your Bids, Budget, And Determining ProfitsEnjoy the Extra Cash!Make Money With Facebook Blogless...
Facebook Social Ads Exposed
What Are "Social Ads"?
If you've been spending time on Facebook, you've probably seen some of the advertisements at this point. Other than banner ads, which are quite expensive and reserved mostly for big companies, Social Ads are a quick and affordable for anyone who wants to reach the Facebook market. These ads appear either on the left hand side of the page, or more recently, they can also appear on the user's News Feed, and tie into their friends' activities, LIKE THIS.

Please understand that without the step-by-step guide (that's been nearly 7 months in the making) that I'm about to show you, chances are you would crash and burn the first time you tried using these ads. It's not as easy to make a profit as you think, or as some of these other scam artists make it out to be. Sure, it is quick to setup, but you can also lose money quickly. So be careful and don't jump in before reading the following guidelines and tips.
How Social Ads Work
On Facebook, the advertisement system is either CPC (cost-per-click), which means that you pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad, or CPM which charges you for impressions (the number of times your ad shows up). When you first post the ad, you purchase account credit that will go towards the clicks. For example, if each click costs $0.50, then you can purchase $20 of credit to get 40 clicks. Your advertisement will keep running until you get all the clicks and your credit runs out. You can refill your account if you want, and you can also modify the ad after it runs it's course.

When your ads are running, Facebook will keep track of your ad statistics with a tool that it calls Facebook Insights, which gives you reports on the number of impressions, clicks, and other useful metrics, that help you figure out how to improve.
Why Social Ads Don't Always Work
Ads on Facebook are generally a bit more expensive than most other CPC or CPM ads, due somewhat to the hype, but also because you can target your audience very specifically. The only problem with targeting your audience is that not all audiences respond well to Facebook Social Ads, regardless of how good your ad is. This is one of the reasons I lost money early on when I tried the ad platform. And this is why you may notice articles on the web about how the Facebook Social Ad platform is ineffective - because it IS ineffective for certain categories.
How You Can Profit With Social Ads
There are a few select groups of people that respond well to the ads - I'll show you exactly which categories work and which ones don't. Your ability to profit also depends on how you present the ad, such as the title, picture, and description. Writing ads is a skill that takes lots of experience. Luckily for you, you can skip that entire learning curve and just follow my tips.

You will need to design the ad to create more revenue than it costs to run the ad. The first step is to figure out how to make a profit, and the second step is to maximize that profit. You have to realize that depending on the ad category, there may be a limit to how much profit you can make. Don't believe the BS claims about people making $3000/day, it's not going to happen. Especially now that the Social Ads have been around for a little while, there is a lot of competition within certain categories, so the amount of potential profit decreases (because more competition increases the cost of ads). You have to know which categories to promote and how to promote them.
Choose A Category to Promote
Now that you have an overall understanding of how the Social Ads platform works, you need to figure out what you want to advertise.

You're not allowed to promote certain products such as ringtones, software downloads, alcohol, tobacco, and all that other good stuff. and some other stuff. Make sure you check the Facebook Advertising Guidelines for exact details because they may have changed since this lens was written.

Like I've mentioned before, some categories simply don't work. When I say a category "doesn't work" I mean that you will lose money with it. An effective category will make more money than you are paying for the ads, so you turn a profit. With that said, here are the 3 categories that actually work:

> Online Dating Sites
> Health/Diet/Fitness
> Money-Savings Related
Where To Get Products (to Promote)
Don't worry, you don't have to sell your own products, all you have to do is post affiliate links. Here are some affiliate programs and networks that you can use very effectively with Social Ads.

Online Dating Sites

> SinglesNet (publishers.singlesnet.com/register)
> Mate1 (mate1.com/affiliates)
> True (true-affiliates.com)
> SpicyOrSweet (copeac.com/affiliates/signup.asp)

Health/Diet/Fitness

> ClickBank (clickbank.com)

Money-Savings Related

> ClickBank (clickbank.com)
How To Post a Social Ad
Time to make your first ad. In my guide, I give you exact step-by-step instructions for how to create and write an ad for each category, but here is a basic overview of how to post a regular Social Ad:

To get started, click here to create a Facebook ad

1. Get Started

Enter your affiliate link in the website space, LIKE THIS

2. Choose Audience

You can target your audience by location, gender, age, keyword interests, education level, workplaces, and relationship status and interests. Your ad will be shown only to the people who fit the description you set. Targeting is helpful, but it depends on what you're promoting.

3. Create Ad

Add a title (up to 25 characters), description (up to 135 characters), and ADD A PHOTO! Here is a little trick about the photo that most people don't realize - the photo gives you extra space, 110x80 pixels of extra space to be exact. There is no rule against putting text in your image. If you have an image-editing software, make sure you add large, bold text to your picture. This will make your ad A LOT more effective. I could be wrong, but I have yet to see anyone else do this other than myself.

4. Set Budget

Since this step is a little longer, I'll cover it thoroughly in the next section.
Setting Your Bids, Budget, And Determining Profits
To set your budget, you have to figure out a few things. Here are 4 simple steps to follow:

1. Potential Revenue

Figure out how much commission you will make from a single ad conversion, or find out what your minimum commission would be. For example, if you are using a ClickBank product, it usually gives you this amount under the description in the Marketplace, as shown HERE.

2. Average Costs

Look at the suggested range for your Cost-Per-Click, which will be based on the contents of your ad. This means that you will compete with other people who are trying to show similar ads as you, so you will need to bid between a minimum and maximum. I recommend bidding a little higher than the average.

For example,

(Bid Range/2) = ($0.35 + $.050)/2 = $0.425

Thus, if the average Cost-Per-Click is $0.425, you should bid $0.44-$0.45. If the bid ends up costing less, you will be discounted the difference, so don't worry about bidding high.

3. Potential Clicks

This depends on your budget, bids, and the product's potential conversions. Continuing the same example from above, let's assume you set your budget to $15. There is a $5 minimum, but typically you don't want to set it higher than your potential revenue (which in this case is $20.99). You'll need to figure out how many clicks you can get from your set budget:

(Budget/Cost-Per-Click) = ($15/$0.45)
= 33.3 clicks

So, if you set a $15 Budget, and pay $0.45 Cost-Per-Click, you will get 33 clicks.

4. Potential Profit

This next part requires a little estimation. You don't know how many of those 33 clicks will make you money, so you have to guess and hope that you're right. There is no way of knowing for certain unless, a) you ask the person who sells the product, or b) you start running some ads and get some statistics in your ClickBank account, which will give you an idea of how certain products convert. "Conversion" is the ratio of clicks to sales, usually expressed as a percent.

Typically, you're safe to assume that conversions are less than 5%. That means, out of 33 clicks, less than 5% of them will actually buy the product. Out of 33 clicks, 5% equals 1.65. Since you can't have 1.6 people, or 1.6 sales, you have to assume the worst-case-scenario, which is 1. ALWAYS round to the lower number, to prevent losing money.

According to your budget of $15, you will get 33.3 clicks, and 1 sale, for which you'll receive $20.99 of commission. Your profit is the your commission minus your budget.

Commission - Budget = Profit
$20.99 - $15.00 = $5.99

This is the absolute worst-case-scenario, and I highly recommend that you analyze your ads from this perspective to make sure you profit. Sure, $6 is not much, but you have to realize that as long as you have a profit, no matter how small it is, all you have to do is to increase your budget and you can increase your profit.

The most important thing is figuring out a consistent ad that will make A PROFIT, don't be fooled by how little it seems. I could go into more in-depth ad analysis, but it really all depends. You have to play around with the wording in your ads to try and lower your bid range, while also finding products to promote that have the best conversions.
Enjoy the Extra Cash!
Now that you know how to make money with Social Ads, you can enjoy a few hundred dollars of extra income each month. I hope you like the lens. Please leave me your comments and feedback!

If you would like more tips on how to make money with your Facebook profile, with groups, and other ways to make money with Facebook, feel free to try my guide, Make Money With Facebook, free for 30 days. I guarantee you won't find anything like it on the entire Internet.
Make Money With Facebook Blog
Also be sure to check out my blog for more great tips for boosting your Facebook profits and enhancing your overall experience on the site!

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