Frustrated With Facebook Ads
I've been trying to make money online as an affiliate for a few years now, and up until now have had very little success.
The only method I've found that can consistently generate affiliate sales for me is email marketing. This is definitely where I want to focus my future efforts.
The problem has always been generating traffic to build my lists.
I've tried SEO with very poor results.
I've tried content marketing (article syndication) with fairly good results in terms of conversion rates and sales, but not huge amounts of traffic.
I've tried Adwords - I can get loads of targeted traffic, get lots of sign ups and make plenty of sales, but it's always cost WAY too much for me to make any profit or break even.
So...... recently I thought I'd give Facebook Ads a try. Going by past experience with PPC I wasn't holding out much hope, but.....
I set up a single ad targeted to people interested in my niche in the major English speaking countries.
I directed it to my squeeze page which normally converts at around 30%
I set a budget of £5 per day and set the ad live. I had no idea what to expect.
The results....
I left the ad running for just over a week. In that time I spent £47 and got over 800 clicks to my squeeze page, meaning I was paying less then 6p per click. My ad was getting a click-through rate of just over 10%
This was great
My squeeze page converted as expected at over 30% meaning I got nearly 300 subscribers to my list, so I was paying just 15p per subscriber.
From this list over the course of about 3 weeks I generated over £160 in affiliate commissions, meaning I had more than trebled my initial ad spend.
This was the first and only time in all my years of trying that I had managed to make REAL profit. I was very excited.
So.... time to repeat....
I used the exact same settings and targeting for my next ad, and added a few variations to test.
I directed the ad to the same squeeze page as before, but this time I set a daily budget of £200. Then the ad went live.
About 3 hours late my £200 was spent and I'd only got about 200 clicks - I'd paid nearly £1 per click - more than 20 times what I paid before!! I got about 80 subscribers, but they'd cost me over £2 each, compared to just 15p the last time. There's no way I'll be able to turn a profit from this.
I ran another test a few days later with similar results.
What has happened??
What was I doing right the first that I'm doing so wrong now?
The exact same ad, same targeting, same settings. The first time getting a click-through rate of over 10% resulting in 5p clicks, the second time getting a click-through rate of about 0.1% making clicks cost about £1
Was Facebook just trying to lure me in with really cheap traffic the first time before hitting me with the full price?
Or does it just vary this much from week to week, month to month.
I really thought I was on to something then BAM, back to square one.
Any thought or advice from anybody with experience of Facebook Ads would be much appreciated.
Thanks a lot
Adam
The only method I've found that can consistently generate affiliate sales for me is email marketing. This is definitely where I want to focus my future efforts.
The problem has always been generating traffic to build my lists.
I've tried SEO with very poor results.
I've tried content marketing (article syndication) with fairly good results in terms of conversion rates and sales, but not huge amounts of traffic.
I've tried Adwords - I can get loads of targeted traffic, get lots of sign ups and make plenty of sales, but it's always cost WAY too much for me to make any profit or break even.
So...... recently I thought I'd give Facebook Ads a try. Going by past experience with PPC I wasn't holding out much hope, but.....
I set up a single ad targeted to people interested in my niche in the major English speaking countries.
I directed it to my squeeze page which normally converts at around 30%
I set a budget of £5 per day and set the ad live. I had no idea what to expect.
The results....
I left the ad running for just over a week. In that time I spent £47 and got over 800 clicks to my squeeze page, meaning I was paying less then 6p per click. My ad was getting a click-through rate of just over 10%
This was great
My squeeze page converted as expected at over 30% meaning I got nearly 300 subscribers to my list, so I was paying just 15p per subscriber.
From this list over the course of about 3 weeks I generated over £160 in affiliate commissions, meaning I had more than trebled my initial ad spend.
This was the first and only time in all my years of trying that I had managed to make REAL profit. I was very excited.
So.... time to repeat....
I used the exact same settings and targeting for my next ad, and added a few variations to test.
I directed the ad to the same squeeze page as before, but this time I set a daily budget of £200. Then the ad went live.
About 3 hours late my £200 was spent and I'd only got about 200 clicks - I'd paid nearly £1 per click - more than 20 times what I paid before!! I got about 80 subscribers, but they'd cost me over £2 each, compared to just 15p the last time. There's no way I'll be able to turn a profit from this.
I ran another test a few days later with similar results.
What has happened??
What was I doing right the first that I'm doing so wrong now?
The exact same ad, same targeting, same settings. The first time getting a click-through rate of over 10% resulting in 5p clicks, the second time getting a click-through rate of about 0.1% making clicks cost about £1
Was Facebook just trying to lure me in with really cheap traffic the first time before hitting me with the full price?
Or does it just vary this much from week to week, month to month.
I really thought I was on to something then BAM, back to square one.
Any thought or advice from anybody with experience of Facebook Ads would be much appreciated.
Thanks a lot
Adam
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