Dropshiping with FB Ads

Nope.

No large fanbase required, not in the beginning (many make that mistake). Watch out for those who tell you it is needed, you won't find many/any ecommerce business successes that recommend starting there.

Instead get very, very good at direct advertising. Facebook Ads. Instagram Ads. Amazon Ads (if appropriate). Some of us sometimes get success on Google Ads too. Twitter, less so. Pinterest, depending on your market. You get the picture. You have to test as each product and each market is different.

Send them from your ads to landing pages, purposefully built to suit each individual traffic source (and ad). Unless, that is, your product is particularly cheap in which case you may find that straight to product page works. Test.

Many of us started without a fanbase but built very successful ecommerce businesses. I now have a large ecommerce business with a large social media fanbase too, but most shouldn't start there.

Social media posting (not ads) is best for brand building over the medium to long term.

Hope this helps.

Good luck with your venture.

Start with free expense. Create a fan page and build your audience. Periodically, post interesting post in your page relating to your products. Surely, overtime, you can have a hundred of likes.

Make your website, create fan page. Then post your products. Run ads. Offer something interesting.

I would not spend thousands of dollars for likes. That's crazy. Even if you post on a page with 10000 likes how many people are going to see your post? On average 2% but depends on the page engagement.

But growing a page is always a good idea. You can buy a few hundred likes at the start, then boosts your good posts for $5. Depending on how interesting and viral material are your posts, you will get a a very good organic reach beside the paid reach from the $5. You should invite everyone that liked your posts to also like your page.

How about buying ads directly to product sales page? Well it worked for awhile with t-shirts, now not so much. It could be done but it is not easy and some split testing is involved. Companies spend billions on Facebook advertising I assume many of them sell directly. With your budget you could find out if it works.

You should also build an email list which is the best solution especially if you cannot sell directly. To do this you ca launch a contest or giveaway and people have to subscribe to win. In the emails you can market your own products.

Create your FB fan page with your business name and promote your product.

Regarding list building with the help of Facebook Ads. Is it or is it not against Facebooks rules to launch a campaign offering the chance to win something in change for an opt-in? Is there a risk that Facebook will ban us if doing that?

You don't need to run expensive "Like" campaigns to build a fan page.

Matter a fact, if you run an ad with it and you are offering something good, your page WILL get many likes!

What the most important thing to do is to be strategic and build a list with that traffic, so that all your ad money don't get wasted.

Facebook is a beast! You can even retarget those who didn't opt-in with a different ad (little more advanced but possible).

So with testing, I'd say start with 5-20$ a day with your ads, test your landing pages, targeting audiences and etc, until you find the sweet spot! And while you are testing, you are building your OWN fan base, with is people in YOUR list.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

If you are going to run a Facebook ad, ensure that it directs them to your product which your promoting and not to yourself and your page.

Its hard to gain traction with the latter option because people aren't going to buy from a page with 2 likes.
If the ad is good and they like the look of your product, then they'll buy it.

FB ads with customer audiences is effective but don't overlook Google Shopping. It's fairly easy to setup though can take time to organise product data sufficiently. That said it works well when everything is setup and is probably the most cost effective ad route.