Only Four Hours

A “Johnson box” is literally just a border around the edge of a picture. Many people suggest that it improves click-through-rates with adverts that use images.

This is something you might consider doing with Facebook ads as, the higher CTR you can generate the lower your per-click costs will be.

Popularity: 38% [?]

I’ve been previewing a CPA marketing course called ‘DirtyCPA‘ today and here is, in a nutshell, their advice for advertising on Facebook.

1. View the ads board daily to get an idea of what ads are being displayed regularly
2. Use OfferVault to locate the same offer and join the affiliate program that offers it
3. Copy the ads images and ad copy – although the course suggests using ’similar’ ad copy and contacting your affiliate manager for similar images (however I doubt that’s what happens in reality).
4. Use Google Campaign Manager or Quantcast to locate the demographic information of the website’s visitors to use when constructing your Facebook Ad.

Actually this really is nothing but common-sense and theoretically it’s likely to work. What’s kind of shocked me though is that this really is so stupidly obvious I’m surprised I’ve not just set aside a day to do exactly this.

I could reel out a few ‘inspired’ ads each day and stand a pretty good chance of identifying at least a handful of profitable campaigns.

I think the main reason I’ve not done this before is because, deep down, I don’t like the idea of copying other peoples work. I certainly wouldn’t appreciate other people doing it to me and I kind of view this as cheating.

You’ll hear ‘gurus’ pay lip-service to creating your own ads, providing value to customers, keeping things ethical, working outside of the box etc. but I’m pretty sure that a lot of these twenty-something-year-old marketers who are doing well for themselves have trodden over customers and competitors along the way. Let’s face it, this isn’t a business you’ll go to heaven for.

I recently opened a new Facebook account specifically for my business. I’ll explain why in a different post but one benefit of doing this was that my Business Facebook account is set for the USA (rather than Thailand where I’m currently living). This lets me see all the adverts that are targeted to the US market.

Popularity: 28% [?]

If you try to add an image to your Facebook ad with Facebook and you find that it isn’t displaying, then my solution might help.

I’ve no idea why this works but thankfully it does.

If you are using Firefox then upgrade to the latest version, select the private browsing option, unselect it and then try again.

This seems to have fixed the problem for me and I’m now submitting a few hundred ads again.

Popularity: 26% [?]

I’ve been advertising (albeit unsuccessfully) on Facebook Ads for the past 2 weeks but decided today to apply for a business account rather than use my personal one.

There are a few advantages in doing this …

• I like to think that Facebook treats registered businesses a little better than hobbyist advertisers. I’ve not heard any evidence supporting this but I can’t see how using a business account could ever be worse than a personal account
• Although I certainly plan to run my ad campaigns ethically, it’s not unheard of for Facebook to close down advertisers accounts. If these are connected to a persons personal Facebook profile then there’s a risk that this too may be closed down.
• By registering with a business name you’re able to realize a $100 coupon from Visa Business Network. Registering here is free and seeing as I’ve flushed away a few hundred dollars in ad spends this past week, a bonus $100 will help to offset this loss
• Increased account limits. It’s been suggested to me that Facebook treats advertisers who have high account limits better than regular account holders. Apparently Facebook send higher quality traffic to your ads in the hope that you’ll increase your spends each day. I’m a little cynical about this myself but have nothing to lose in applying anyway. I’m going to ask for a $10,000 a day spending limit although I’ll not come close to that for a very long time.

A friend told me recently that he knows of people who applied for an increased spending limit and found all their ads on their account disapproved the next day. I’ve decided to open the business account and to apply for the increased spending limit on the same day. If it draws attention to my account whilst there’s no active campaigns set up then I’m at least protecting myself from this happening to me.

I’ve heard that if you redeem your Visa Business Network coupon for a personal account, you put your Facebook account at risk of closure. As with so much gossip online I’ve no idea how true this is, but I’m not taking any chances.

All I’ve done so far is …

1. Opened up a new Facebook Advertising Account
2. Joined The Visa Business Network and claimed my $100 Facebook Coupon (they also provide a $75 Yahoo Search Marketing Coupon too)
3. Sent an email to affiliates@facebook.com to request an account limit increase. I also mentioned that I’ve chosen to move from my personal account o a business account just to clarify to them that I’m not deceptively trying to operate multiple advertising accounts.

Popularity: 54% [?]