As it’s New Years Day I think that we should all make resolutions for this year. Your resolution can be whatever you want it to be - make xxxx amount of money a day, buy a house, get the new porche convertable (Damn you Cam!), quit your job and venture into AM full time.

My personal goal for this year is to reach $5k profit per day consistantly by the end of this year and buy myself a BMW M5 (I love that car). Obviously my two resolutions go hand in hand - if I’m making near $2mill a year - my wife won’t have any reason to rip my head off for buy a car worth that much

Some people might think I’m living in la la land with the cooky toones from smokingcrackville with how high I set the bar and I agree - the bar is infact set high, but not so high that it is unreachable/impossible. I entered 2008 unemployed and on EI (Employment Insurance) for 8 months prior then with a friends help and some give’r I turned around and made enough to make one of the higher tax brackets in Canada. 

So whats your resolution? Lets here it!

Most Facebook publishers know how frustrating it is to have no support, getting ads denied with vague reasons, and overall lack of answers. After getting some BS internal error for over 72 hours I decided to contact my Affiliate Account Manager who was able to get me in touch with a Facebook rep.

I got a call at about 7:00 PM his time, which suprised me. I asked as many hard questions as I could, and here are the answers I got. Some of these will be obvious to people who have doing Facebook for a while, and for others it will helpfully save you the headaches the rest of us experienced.

Is Acai/Wu Yi Dead?

Yes, too many Facebook users were complaining about these “negative” charge diet offers, so Acai and Wu Yi ARE dead. The ads you keep seeing are legacy ads, so if you don’t have an acai ad, chances are you won’t get one through.

Are Ringtones Dead?

Yes… they have been dead for a while.

Are Quizes Dead?

Yes, Facebooks goal is to only allow quizes that do not require any personal information at the end… no credit, zip, or email.

How to get dating ads through?

Do not use the words single, reference the users age, reference to users location, or use provocative language. The ad is more important than the landing page in terms of skin being shown, but neither can be to too reveling. Mention the offer in the ad text itself. Do not make the condition of “being single” as being negative.

How to get health related ads through?

Do not use quantitative numbers that cannot be verified (loose 10 Lbs in 10 Days). Do not put down persons with a condition.

Here are some other nice tid bits I learned…

Their system does assumes your ad has a CTR of .07% when launching, so getting a higher CTR should be your goal. Your bidding does not effect what position you are in when three ads are being shown at the same time. They do not take into account time of day when launching, so the best way to split test is launch the same set of ads at different times of the day.

Here is the best thing I learned “intern.facebook.com” DOES NOT stand for “intern”… but instead stands for “internal”. So here we were bashing Facebook interns, when apparently its a separate team all together. No such thing as an intern nazi party?

If you are running Facebook and need someone to talk to to understand EXACTLY why your ads are not getting through then shoot me a note on my blog and I will hook you up.

Shameless Plug : Google Sucks

Also, I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to post much in the coming weeks due to the holiday season so here are a few blogs that I have frequented to keep you well read over the holidays!

1) Bryn.Me - Bryn odly enough lives only a couple of blocks away from me and does some good work with Facebook Social Ads. He’s been on ClickConsultants Radio Show a couple of times now answering questions for the curious.

2)Neilsweb.com - He touches on pretty much everything about affiliate marketing. I read his blog purely because he points people in the right direction as to what they should be reading. Look out for Zac’s advertising link on his page though - don’t get caught clicking through to the king of cluelessness.

3) Madppc.com - Brad likes to talk and I like to hear him ramble.

Just over a week ago, I decided to give Myspace Ads another go. I had used Myspace Ads when it first opened and spent about $4,000 to make $200 in profit - not exactly what I would call worth it. That coupled with all the bugs and  ad approval time problems they were having - it just wasn’t for me at that time.

Well this time around I decided I would take things a little more seriously and work at it TILL it works. I started off by porting over some campaigns from Facebook that I had been running with an EPC of over $1.00 and was instantly satisfied with the results. On the first day I had spent $2000 and got $3000 back ($1k profit). Unfortunately, that was it. The next day my ads apparently just didn’t have a high enough CTR to show at all and therefore the money train was over (or was it!).

It was obvious to me that it was my targeting that was the issue. Now what is the easiest way to tell what demographic is clicking on ads for that products. Here’s a hint: FACEBOOK TELLS YOU.

As many of you are aware, a month or two back Facebook created demographic ad reports so you could improve your CTR on their Social Ads platform. If you are not aware in you ad manager select “Reports” and then select “Demographic Responders” on the drop down menu of Report Type. It will break down what percentage of people are viewing your ad and what percentage of people are clicking your ad based on age, location and gender.

So, if you are struggling with getting a high enough CTR on Myspace Ads, the solution is easy - run the campaign on Facebook and see EXACTLY who is interested in the offer you are promoting. Using this method I’ve taken a campaign on Myspace that had a 0.03% CTR all the way over 0.8% CTR - trust me, it pays to put in the extra time.

I should also mention that this doesn’t work always work because:

1) Some campaigns you won’t be able to get approved on Facebook to see the click demographic

2) Users are often in a different mindset on Myspace as compared to that of Facebook. Myspace and Facebook share the same userbase, however their purpose (dispite being a Social gathering place) is completely different.

3) Sometimes life sucks.

While on the topic of achieving a higher CTR, I was talking with one of my readers who also has a blog himself and he made a killer post on how important it is to start your ads off with a bang to achieve a lower CPC. Click here to read Alex’s post on PPC Is Like The GRE - it’s quite worth it.

Righto, to the substance of the post! 

There are a few tools that I use that make using Facebook Social Ads soooooo(ooooooo) much easier, so here they are!

1) Greasemonkey - A Firefox addon that gives you the ability to bulk delete, pause and run ads which cuts down on the time you will spend going through them all one by one.

2) Facebook Cloaking Script with Daily Updated IP Database - A cloaking script that sends the interns that approve your ad to a “safe” landing page. This is only useful if you are promoting something that likely wouldn’t be passed based on your LP.

3) Tracking202 - I personally have never seen a need for this one however quite a few Facebook Affiliates use it so I figure it is worth mentioning.

4) I’ve got an auto ad creator that I currently am still keeping to myself. It makes my life a lot easier, and should it become released to more than one person - I am sure Facebook would catch on. So to stave off that happening I am going to keep it to myself. 

A lot of things happened with Facebook while I was not posting, so I’ll cover those in my next post

Finances can be a very tricky thing to keep track of by yourself without proper guideance and alot of willpower. Personally my willpower comes from my anal retentive wife who makes me keep track of how much I make per week.

Step 1:

Open up the appropriate bank accounts. I’ve got FOUR (yes 4) bank accounts to make tracking my money easier.

1. Company chequing account - The money is deposited into this account and you pay yourself a weekly wage out of it.
2. Family chequing account - Money from the business chequing account is deposited to it weekly. You need to pay yourself a weekly salery so if you run into hard times (say all your ads bomb majorly) you have a few months to figure things out.
3. Tax savings account - Money towards taxes goes into this account. I’ll cover later on how much you should be putting in. I personally have this account setup as a high interest GIA which pays me 3.25% annually. It’s a pretty easy way to make a couple extra grand for just putting money into an account.
4. Family Savings account - You NEED savings. Shit happens and life can go down the toilet. You need to make sure you have the financial backing to deal with it. If your car breaks down or your house has a major foundation issue - you’re covered.

Money should have absolutely no baring on who a person is and whether or not the information they provide is legitamit. Either the information I write down is useful and makes you money, or you move along. I have found this blog quite useful just for myself as a type of journal to write down things and put them in perspective, much like a log or a journal. 

Rather than discuss how much I have actually made from Facebook Social Ad’s (as you can blatently tell I’m not going to ever do that) I’ll show you the things I’ve been able to buy because of it:

1. A new car - 2003 Saab 9-3 Linear (click to see it). My wife needed a car that she could drive and wasn’t comfortable driving the manual transmission in our other car.
2. Pay off all my debts aside from half my student loans. Prior to starting affiliate marketing, I and my wife both had about $90,000 worth of debt.
3. A new house. Although we are currently still living in our shitty little apartment, we’ve been preapproved for a mortgage of over $300,000. Not bad for a first house eh?
4. A honeymoon. My wife and I had to delay our honeymoon for an entire year due to lack of funding. We partied it up in the Dominican like nothing else.
5. A bitching computer setup. A Quad-core AMD Phenom (I <3 AMD), two 22″ samsung monitors, a sweet ass desk (which was actually free thanks to a friends failed living arrangement) and a $300 keyboard and mouse set.
6. Alot of other miscellaneous crap.

The previous campaign I posted here, about 10 people (that I know of) ran it - most making over $1,000 off of it. If all 10 people did $1,000 - that pretty much means I gave away $10,000. What a nice guy I am eh?

Campaign Details

Campaign Name: Ipsos - Italy

Advertising Medium: Facebook

Average ROI: 250%

Affiliate Network: MAXBounty

This campaign has had a rediculous ROI for me since I started running it. I’m mostly giving it away because I don’t run it anymore due to the fact that Maxbounty hasn’t set me up on weeklys and I don’t like waiting more than a week to see my money (let that be a lesson to all you aff networks out there).

While I’m giving away a profitable campaign, I am only going to post the ad I use and not my landing page. I feel that this will help everyone to learning more than just plagerizing my work. I have given plenty of examples of how to make successful landing pages for the Facebook audiance, so just look back and take the advice.

Siete Italiano?

I was to lazy to take a screenshot of my ad, so I just posted the text and image. This ad peaked at around a 0.90 CTR which gave $0.02 clicks (hence the massive ROI).

Good luck with the campaign. Feel free to sign up using my aff link if you feel so inclinded.  

Creating review sites of several affiliate offers in the same niche can let the user decide which offer they want to sign up for. Not only do you have a higher chance of getting a sign up, but you may even have the occasional multiple sign up.

I’ll provide one of my Facebook review sites as an example: Paid Surveys

Things To Do When Creating A Review Site:

1. Pick out offers based on geographical location and niche.
2. Use a CMS (I use Wordpress) to speed things up and either make or download a visually pleasing template.
3. Research each and every offer, providing basic content on the company itself but more importantly focusing on what a user will receive for signing up.
4. Remember, you’re essentially combining multiple landing pages into one while not making it look spamy.
5. Entice users to sign up for more than one offer.
6. Get your Facebook Social Ad’s approved prior to adding your affiliate links. It will improve your success of getting an ad approved.
7. Again, if you have any questions, hit my up on AIM as removed. Please leave a comment on the blog and I’ll answer you.

Anyways, enough with the excuses and on with the post.
As many of you are probably aware, in two weeks collage students (and therefore the Facebook key demographic) will be going back to school. This means more traffic and different offers to promote.

How does this effect you?

Prior to school letting out for the summer, my average ROI was about 80% - Since then it’s been floating around 40%. I attribute this to my heavy promotion of “get paid to” offers and the fact that most school students have summer jobs and therefore MONEY during the summer.

With kids going back to school and abandoning their summer jobs, it opens up the “Get paid to” market again as most collage kids are so piss pour at managing their money that they will be broke in a matter of weeks. It’s almost time to capitalize on it.

My Suggestions:

1. Start Looking For Good “Get Paid To” offers.
2. Start creating landing pages for all the offers. Make sure you read my previous posts on landing pages and take your time creating them. You’ve still got about two weeks till school is back in.
3. Once you get your landing pages complete, get ads submitted. Pause all your newly created social ad’s prior to them receiving traffic. Your CTR and therefore what you pay for clicks will be better when the kids are back in school. There is no sense dive bombing your CTR at the beginning, otherwise it’s an uphill battle that gets rather pricey.
4. Research when kids will be back at collages in the countries/states you will be promoting the offers. Different U.S States let school in at different times and same goes from country to country. The easiest way to research it is by looking at the big schools in the countries/states and looking for an online calender. Save the information to a *.txt document and you’re good to go.
5. Add me on AIM if you have any questions. My AIM is removed. Please leave a comment on the blog and I will answer your questions.