Don't laugh! It's not cool. Almost 10 minutes after posting yesterday about starting some flyers on Facebook, I went back to check my stats and Bang! My account had been disabled. I was gutted. I thought about logging back in to Blogger and deleting that post, but decided against it. I decided to live & learn, and stay off the computer for the rest of the day.
This morning I logged in to Commission Junction to see if anything had come of my efforts with Facebook flyers. Surprise, surprise - I actually ended up making some money with them, even though my account only lasted for about 4 hours! The grand total from CJ was $52.79 (I hope that's not against their TOS to publish?). Sure, it's not much, but better than nothing right?
As to why my account was disabled - I'm not sure. I don't think any of the 4 flyers I created were objectionable? The only thing I can think of is the fact that I created a separate account for this experiment. I didn't realise it was against Facebook's TOS to have more than one account until I read the TOS properly when my account was disabled.
Anyway, I guess it's back to the drawing board for now. Time to try something different :)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Humble beginnings with Facebook Flyers Pro
As I mentioned in my post below (Cashing In With Facebook Flyers), as soon as I saw Facebook Flyers Pro, I really wanted to try something with it. I didn't have enough time to follow up on the initial thought, but today I decided to sit down and try a couple of little experiments, just to see if the well had really dried up already - or was it still possible to make a little money through this monolithic site.
For those who haven't had a chance to investigate it yet, Facebook Flyers come in two flavours:
Facebook Flyers Basic - uses a CPM model, i.e. you pay for a certain number of impressions for your flyer. Prices start from $5 for 2,500 impressions and goes up to $200 for 100,000 impressions.
Facebook Flyers Pro - a CPC model, i.e. you pay a certain amount per click on your flyer. The minimum bid is $0.01 and the minimum daily budget is $1.00. The system is not as complex as Google Adwords, but I guess it will develop over time as popularity grows and the advertiser management options improve.
I didn't even bother with the basic version, mainly because I didn't have any existing campaigns with a proven click through rate that I wanted to run on Facebook - and I'm glad I didn't.
So far I've set up 4 pro flyers that are based on pay per lead offers from Commission Junction. Two of the flyers are a split test of the same offer but with different targetting, the other two are separate offers with rather loose targetting.
I was really surprised to see the impressions counting up within 5 minutes of creating a flyer. My first flyer had almost 10,000 impressions within the first 1.5 hours and the others are showing healthy numbers of impressions. This is the reason why I'm glad I didn't go for the CPM version. The click through rates have been really low, so for example the flyer with 10,000+ impressions would have already cost me $20+ and so far it has resulted in a single lead!
It's still early days, the impressions seem to have stabilised from the initial rush and are still going up, but not as fast. I'm looking forward to seeing how the results look at the end of the day. If things look good, I might boost the cost per click a bit and see what happens.
Who else is trying out some Facebook Flyers Pro campaigns? I'd be interested to hear your results so far.
For those who haven't had a chance to investigate it yet, Facebook Flyers come in two flavours:
Facebook Flyers Basic - uses a CPM model, i.e. you pay for a certain number of impressions for your flyer. Prices start from $5 for 2,500 impressions and goes up to $200 for 100,000 impressions.
Facebook Flyers Pro - a CPC model, i.e. you pay a certain amount per click on your flyer. The minimum bid is $0.01 and the minimum daily budget is $1.00. The system is not as complex as Google Adwords, but I guess it will develop over time as popularity grows and the advertiser management options improve.
I didn't even bother with the basic version, mainly because I didn't have any existing campaigns with a proven click through rate that I wanted to run on Facebook - and I'm glad I didn't.
So far I've set up 4 pro flyers that are based on pay per lead offers from Commission Junction. Two of the flyers are a split test of the same offer but with different targetting, the other two are separate offers with rather loose targetting.
I was really surprised to see the impressions counting up within 5 minutes of creating a flyer. My first flyer had almost 10,000 impressions within the first 1.5 hours and the others are showing healthy numbers of impressions. This is the reason why I'm glad I didn't go for the CPM version. The click through rates have been really low, so for example the flyer with 10,000+ impressions would have already cost me $20+ and so far it has resulted in a single lead!
It's still early days, the impressions seem to have stabilised from the initial rush and are still going up, but not as fast. I'm looking forward to seeing how the results look at the end of the day. If things look good, I might boost the cost per click a bit and see what happens.
Who else is trying out some Facebook Flyers Pro campaigns? I'd be interested to hear your results so far.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Cashing In With Facebook Flyers
Perhaps a more appropriate title for this post could be "If You Snooze, You Lose".
Hands up all the people that only just noticed Facebook Flyers.
My hand is up. After staying away from Facebook for a couple of days, I logged in yesterday and immediately noticed the "flyers" down the left hand side (mainly because it was one of those "Get paid to type from home" offers - and whoops, I actually clicked it!).
My first thought was "I wonder who else has started hitting this already?". Surely everyone was all over it? But that didn't stop my brain from racing with ways to put Facebook Flyers Pro to good use. In the end, I ran out of time yesterday to sit down and plot how I was going to make my first million from Facebook. Ironically, running out of time may have actually saved me a lot of time (wasted), because this morning on my first daily visit to ShoeMoney I read this post by Paul from uberaffiliate.com.
Damn! looks like someone's been all over it already. Paul didn't just make some chump change using Facebook Flyers Pro - he pretty much did a smash'n'grab! In his ShoeMoney post (and others on his own site) he details his approach fairly throroughly and goes on to mention the measures Facebook have taken to prevent others from taking the same approach. All in all I'd say he took full advantage of the opportunity, so props to Paul!
Still, I don't think all is lost. The Facebook Flyers Pro PPC program is brand new and I think it's starting to stabilise. Perhaps the initial opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money very fast have been and gone, but just like Adwords, people will start developing solid strategies and practices to use it just as effectively as any other PPC service. It also proves that there are new opportunities arising all the time, you just have to be able to see them, and act when you do (note to self).
So who do you reckon will be first to release an ebook, or special report on Facebook Flyers Pro? (Someone's probably already finished one before I finished that sentence!).
Hands up all the people that only just noticed Facebook Flyers.
My hand is up. After staying away from Facebook for a couple of days, I logged in yesterday and immediately noticed the "flyers" down the left hand side (mainly because it was one of those "Get paid to type from home" offers - and whoops, I actually clicked it!).
My first thought was "I wonder who else has started hitting this already?". Surely everyone was all over it? But that didn't stop my brain from racing with ways to put Facebook Flyers Pro to good use. In the end, I ran out of time yesterday to sit down and plot how I was going to make my first million from Facebook. Ironically, running out of time may have actually saved me a lot of time (wasted), because this morning on my first daily visit to ShoeMoney I read this post by Paul from uberaffiliate.com.
Damn! looks like someone's been all over it already. Paul didn't just make some chump change using Facebook Flyers Pro - he pretty much did a smash'n'grab! In his ShoeMoney post (and others on his own site) he details his approach fairly throroughly and goes on to mention the measures Facebook have taken to prevent others from taking the same approach. All in all I'd say he took full advantage of the opportunity, so props to Paul!
Still, I don't think all is lost. The Facebook Flyers Pro PPC program is brand new and I think it's starting to stabilise. Perhaps the initial opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money very fast have been and gone, but just like Adwords, people will start developing solid strategies and practices to use it just as effectively as any other PPC service. It also proves that there are new opportunities arising all the time, you just have to be able to see them, and act when you do (note to self).
So who do you reckon will be first to release an ebook, or special report on Facebook Flyers Pro? (Someone's probably already finished one before I finished that sentence!).
Labels:
facebook flyers pro,
ppc,
shoemoney,
uberaffiliate
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Free Affiliate Link Cloaking Service Can Also Earn You Free Traffic
Jon Leger has been launching quite a few web-based services over recent months. From memory the first that he released was 3-Way-Links, followed by RealTrafficExchange and now OffTo.Net.
What is OffTo.Net?
OffTo.Net is a free service for converting your long affiliate URLs (or any other URLs for that matter) into nice short URLs, a la TinyURL.
Why is OffTo.Net better than other free cloaking services?
The beauty of OffTo.Net is that it gives you the option of removing any links on the landing page that points to the vendor's affiliate program. This prevents visitors from visting your link, signing up as an affiliate themselves and then buying the product through their own link - meaning you lose the commission!
OffTo.Net also provides raw click through and unique click through counts so you can compare those figures against the number of sales you've made and you can calculate your conversion rates.
How to earn free traffic with OffTo.Net
If you sign up for a free account, for each visitor that you send to OffTo.Net, you'll be given a credit. Then you can add links through the dashboard and mark them as promolinks. Those marked as promolinks will appear on the homepage of OffTo.Net.
There's also the potential of free traffic from the recently created links section of the homepage.
Jon is a very savvy marketer. Everything he does has some unique marketing spin on it, but the good thing is - he doesn't ram it down your throat like a lot of the other internet marketing "gurus". His free services are high quality - don't let the price fool you.
What is OffTo.Net?
OffTo.Net is a free service for converting your long affiliate URLs (or any other URLs for that matter) into nice short URLs, a la TinyURL.
Why is OffTo.Net better than other free cloaking services?
The beauty of OffTo.Net is that it gives you the option of removing any links on the landing page that points to the vendor's affiliate program. This prevents visitors from visting your link, signing up as an affiliate themselves and then buying the product through their own link - meaning you lose the commission!
OffTo.Net also provides raw click through and unique click through counts so you can compare those figures against the number of sales you've made and you can calculate your conversion rates.
How to earn free traffic with OffTo.Net
If you sign up for a free account, for each visitor that you send to OffTo.Net, you'll be given a credit. Then you can add links through the dashboard and mark them as promolinks. Those marked as promolinks will appear on the homepage of OffTo.Net.
There's also the potential of free traffic from the recently created links section of the homepage.
Jon is a very savvy marketer. Everything he does has some unique marketing spin on it, but the good thing is - he doesn't ram it down your throat like a lot of the other internet marketing "gurus". His free services are high quality - don't let the price fool you.
Labels:
free traffic,
jon leger,
link cloaking,
OffTo.Net,
url redirection
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Why I Swapped WordPress.com For Blogger.com
Yesterday when I decided to start up a free-hosted blog I naturally went to WordPress.com and signed up for an account. I've been using WordPress for years and figured that the hosted version would just be a slightly limited version of the real thing. Guess I was wrong.
After writing my first post I decided it was time to start customising the template, afterall - I had planned to signup for BlogRush and wanted to add my Javascript to the template so I could start accumulating credits. There is an 'Edit CSS' tab in the Presentation options, but when you edit the CSS you then have to purchase an upgrade in order to save your changes! I couldn't find anywhere to edit the HTML for the template either, so I'm guessing they don't allow it, therefore I can't add any custom HTML, e.g. AdSense, BlogRush, etc.
Now, I know - WordPress.com is a FREE hosted blog, I shouldn't expect so much, but I don't think the ability to add some custom HTML/CSS is asking too much.. is it?
And, before you start accusing me of being a tight-a**, the whole point behind starting this blog with a free hosted service is for a case study.. I'm fully intending moving this to it's own domain and paying for full featured hosting, but the blog has to earn it's keep if you know what I mean.
So, my recommendation for someone who wants to start a free blog and still have some control over how their template looks is to sign up at Blogger.com. The only bad thing is that you get that annoying Blogger nav bar up the top. I haven't looked into whether it can be taken out yet or not, but would be nice if it could be absorbed into the template a bit.
In case anyone is wondering why the title for the first post is called "Enter The Wilderness", well - when I was writing it, I was listening the new 50 Cent album ("Curtis"). I can't say I'm a huge Fiddy fan, or even that his latest album is that good. To be honest I only like a couple of tracks, the first being "Ayo Technology" w/ Justin Timberlake, produced by Timbaland (the second would probably be "Straight to the Bank"). Anyway, the weird arpeggio sounds Timbaland used in "Ayo Technology" reminded me of the music from the good old Commodore 64. One of my favourite games was The Last Ninja - which I'm sure plenty of you know. Anyway, the Wilderness is the first level in the first Last Ninja game - that's where it all starts, and that's where this blog starts.. now I just gotta go find, the sword, an apple, some nunchaku..
Oh yeah, and being reminded of that, reminded me of Timbaland getting called out a while ago for sampling an Amiga composer for Nelly Furtado's track "Do it". Interesting stuff, personally I think it's cool that he's possibly been influenced by these old legends. In the past I've thought about including some old c64 elements into some beats - some of the basslines were killer back in the day. Anyway, enough about that :)
After writing my first post I decided it was time to start customising the template, afterall - I had planned to signup for BlogRush and wanted to add my Javascript to the template so I could start accumulating credits. There is an 'Edit CSS' tab in the Presentation options, but when you edit the CSS you then have to purchase an upgrade in order to save your changes! I couldn't find anywhere to edit the HTML for the template either, so I'm guessing they don't allow it, therefore I can't add any custom HTML, e.g. AdSense, BlogRush, etc.
Now, I know - WordPress.com is a FREE hosted blog, I shouldn't expect so much, but I don't think the ability to add some custom HTML/CSS is asking too much.. is it?
And, before you start accusing me of being a tight-a**, the whole point behind starting this blog with a free hosted service is for a case study.. I'm fully intending moving this to it's own domain and paying for full featured hosting, but the blog has to earn it's keep if you know what I mean.
So, my recommendation for someone who wants to start a free blog and still have some control over how their template looks is to sign up at Blogger.com. The only bad thing is that you get that annoying Blogger nav bar up the top. I haven't looked into whether it can be taken out yet or not, but would be nice if it could be absorbed into the template a bit.
In case anyone is wondering why the title for the first post is called "Enter The Wilderness", well - when I was writing it, I was listening the new 50 Cent album ("Curtis"). I can't say I'm a huge Fiddy fan, or even that his latest album is that good. To be honest I only like a couple of tracks, the first being "Ayo Technology" w/ Justin Timberlake, produced by Timbaland (the second would probably be "Straight to the Bank"). Anyway, the weird arpeggio sounds Timbaland used in "Ayo Technology" reminded me of the music from the good old Commodore 64. One of my favourite games was The Last Ninja - which I'm sure plenty of you know. Anyway, the Wilderness is the first level in the first Last Ninja game - that's where it all starts, and that's where this blog starts.. now I just gotta go find, the sword, an apple, some nunchaku..
Oh yeah, and being reminded of that, reminded me of Timbaland getting called out a while ago for sampling an Amiga composer for Nelly Furtado's track "Do it". Interesting stuff, personally I think it's cool that he's possibly been influenced by these old legends. In the past I've thought about including some old c64 elements into some beats - some of the basslines were killer back in the day. Anyway, enough about that :)
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Enter The Wilderness
Up until now, I've never had a personal blog. I think they're a great idea, but I've always been too busy working on other sites and implementing new ideas to take time out to write about my opinions and ideas.
After seeing ShoeMoney talk about BlogRush today, I was inspired to quickly set up a blog and join the rush. I think BlogRush is an awesome idea, not necessarily a new idea, but it's implementation looks great! I want to become a part of it, but how could I without a blog?
Why have I set this up on Wordpress.com? Well, for starters - of all the domain names I own, none of them really suited the topics I want this blog to contain, namely: online marketing and making money online, music and my personal musings about anything and everything. All the domains I own are targeted at specific niches.
Secondly, this is going to be a case study for me. I want to take a free hosted blog, generate traffic, readers and income. Enough to take it from a freely hosted site, to it's own domain. I realise that if the blog has any level of success, someone will probably snake me and purchase the ideal domain name, but I'm willing to take the risk. I'll find a work around - an opportunist taking the domain name I start the blog with is the least of my concerns at the moment.
So, that's it. It starts here. Time to go work on a game plan ;)
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