There’s a LOT of promotion going around for Ryan Deiss’s Facebook Advertising course.
First of all, Ryan is a friend and anything he comes out with is worth buying, IMO.
But, I have to inject my own experience into this ‘Facebook advertising is the Holy Grail of traffic’ hoopla.
Facebook advertising has sucked serious ass every single time we’ve tried it.
I’m talking my ad spends were sucked up within minutes and NO LEADS what-so-ever.
Now let me say this, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to make my advertising dollars profitable.
To date, Facebook has been as effective as AdBrite (meaning, not very) for us.
I’ve tried optins, free report without optin (optin mechanism within report), direct sales (low and high end), free giveaways, CPA and more… none with much success.
What am I missing here?
Is this just more ‘let’s jump on the bandwagon and promote the hottest product of the day’ or are the people promoting this product actually profitable with Facebook ads?
(I know the answer, but just wanted to put it out there anyway.)
Keith
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Thanks for the heads up Keith. A friend sent me his notes from that product and I was about to drop a bunch of money into it. At least I didn’t buy the product.
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Hi Keith,
So you’re saying that most of the promoters of Ryan’s product have made nada, nuffink, zilch on Facebook advertising… the emperor’s have no clothes?
Muddies the waters for Ryan’s product though…
Thank you for your honesty. Appreciate it very much!
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I’ve found this whole promo a big fat joke. Didn’t this guy just promote Gmail ads a week ago? Now all the sudden, Adwords sucks according to Ryan. Gimme a freakin break already!!!
It’s so fu**d up how all the buzz in the forums up til last week was that Facebook sucked and now all the sudden Facebook is the best thing ever. Whatever!!
Facebook wasn’t as bad as bad as “they” claimed before and not nearly as great as “they” claim it is now. It’s just another way to market.
The biggest lie of all is this notion that Facebook is so much cheaper than other forms of ppc. I’m not seeing that at all and it certainly won’t be so after all this madness.
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I haven’t tried it yet, but read a post somewhere that made a lot of sense. Even if it does work for a while for a certain offer, the leads my drop off after a few months since the same people will be seeing that ads again and again. Even though facebook has a huge audience, at some point I’d think you’d see a saturation point where you are advertising to the same pool of people. Again, no experience with this myself, but something to think about.
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>Is this just more ‘let’s jump on the bandwagon and promote the hottest >product of the day’ or are the people promoting this product actually profitable >with Facebook ads?
LOL. I swear I think the same thing damn near every week. It’s evil.
I was talking to one the a fairly successful IMer who has had lately a huge slump in their business of selling big training packages… aimed at making money. I asked if he used it and he said no. I was like if what you’re pushing isn’t working for you, then how do you know it works at all, and why sell something you wouldn’t do yourself?
I already have Ryan’s Facebook early program, back last August when he and Perry Belcher were still kicking it. However I’ve been focusing on product creation, so haven’t been using it yet. From talking to affiliates who use it successfully. Facebook is like PPC in that the majority of the money comes from losing money up front trying everything tweaking. Since Facebook has more sophisiticated demographics, it differs significantly from PPC in you have to talk to a particular avatar/demographic rather than one-size-fits all. As always watch the competition if you can to see what’s working for them. The ads that Perry showed were pretty ugly and attention getting, basically classified ads with a controversial photo (as is that a guy or a girl?) which had nothing to do with the product.
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Thanks for saving me $197 Keith
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Hey Kieth,
All of my tests with Facebook Ads has been the same. I was one of the early adopters of Facebook Ads, signing up for it as soon as they released it, and it was horrible, and after a recent test I can safely say it hasn’t gotten much better.
Here’s what I found:
1. No tracking! Sure, they’ll tell you impressions and clicks, but they don’t even offer basic conversion tracking. That tells me Facebook doesn’t care if their advertisers see conversions. Or, they know their traffic sucks so they don’t want to give people an easy way to see that.
2. Poor ad approval process. They’ve gotten a “bit” better at this, but still, their ad approval process is horrible. Worse than Google ever was, though not by much.
3. Expensive. I know some people who are able to get pretty affordable clicks on Facebook, but that’s with super-targeted traffic that doesn’t bring in much volume. If you’re going after a good demographic, like I was, you’re gonna be paying upwards of $0.60 a click or more to start. Even if you go for paying per impression, if you set your bid too low, you’re ad will never show up – ever – because of the competition on the network. As long as some idiot is willing to outbid you, you’ll never get your ads to show up unless you overpay.
4. Facebook users don’t buy. Most of Facebook is made up of teens, or college students with no money and no credit cards, and lots of people who don’t feel like buying anything. Your ads get tons of impressions, a handful of clicks, but very few leads and even fewer sales. I’ve heard of some people finding a “sweet spot” on facebook when it comes to sending traffic to the right type of offer, but how do you scale that? Answer – you don’t. You can’t. Maybe you can get lucky with a good CPA offer that pays off a zip submit or something, but I doubt you’ll have an easy time getting Facebook to approve that landing page.
The only success I had (and I’m not sure if you’d consider this a success) is to buy ads for a fanpage I set up and send people directly there to capture them as leads “within” facebook.
Facebook loves when advertisers buy ads for other Facebook pages, so you have ZERO problems getting your ad approved if you’re promoting a fan page. Also, you’ll have lots of people agreeing to be your fan because, well, its free and that’s what people do on Facebook.
Running a fan page allows you to email your fans directly through Facebook, and you can also communicate with them through status updates, so it’s kind of like a mini-email list in a way. But there is also a way to put an opt-in form on your Facebook page, so you can actually generate newsletter leads that way.
However, I was spending a lot of money on ads and though I got 1,000 people to become a fan, the cost per fan was too high and I wasn’t seeing any real return on investment. There are much cheaper ways of building profiles and getting people to friend you, or promoting a fan page than paying Facebook money to send random people to you.
So overall – my experience was very similar to yours. I’m extremely skeptical of any product Ryan Deiss puts out because he seems very geared towards “trends” that make him money and no one else. I bought his Gmail Secrets course and tried to use the tactics, and Google basically told me to go violate my anus of my own accord and didn’t show any of my ads on the Gmail interface because of “poor quality score” (even though the same ads were getting 7/10 on the search network). Then, Google said to raise my bid to upwards of $2 a click, and even doing that didn’t get my ads to show up. So I basically wrote off Gmail Secrets as a dud, and once his Facebook Ads blitz started, I wrote him off completely for being a hypocrite.
For those of you who missed it, the events on his list unfolded like this:
Ryan: Adwords blows! I’m shutting down all my traffic and moving to Facebook! Facebook rules!
Customers: Um… but didn’t we all just pay you $97 each to learn how to run ads on Gmail a week ago?
Ryan: Oh, uh… yeah… I meant Adwords blows EXCEPT for Gmail. I’m still running a bunch of… um… (what are those called? Oh yeah…) Content Network campaigns. Yeah… but for everything else, Facebook is so much better!
Customers: But Facebook won’t approve our ads, there’s no way to track conversions, and the clicks are even more expensive than Adwords now that you’re telling everyone to move over to Facebook and increased the competition ten fold!
Ryan: No, no, trust me, Facebook is the place to be. Just… um… target your ads towards demographics no body else is targeting.
Customers: You mean pre-teen girls with no credit cards?
Ryan: Yeah! You can’t find those on Google! Now excuse me while I go swim in a big pile of money. Mwuahahahahahaa!
I’m just hoping Yahoo and Bing’s alliance bears an ad system that will actually make people money. To me, Google and Facebook are black holes of business capitol. :-/
Matt
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Thanks for your input Keith. I’ve seen other marketers (non-guru) who have claimed to have spend $500 to $1000 on Facebook ads with little to no results. It really makes you wonder what the best form of paid ads are for the low budget marketer.
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This is just one more case of a bunch of affiliate marketers promoting something they have no experience with. Its the reason the FTC is cracking down so hard on them. I’m done with all the gurus and prefer to listen to people like Keith who are actually doing it and tell what’s working for him. Thanks for your honest review Keith. Its refreshing.
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Wow! I think that it’s awesome Keith that you will actually be honest about such a huge promotion that sucked in so many people, especially when you could have just as easily promoted it yourself and pocketed a lot of cash.
I pretty much buy everything you promote but after piecing together your most powerful traffic getting software programs I would have been disappointed if you had said that I needed that as well.
Your followers trust you and when you come out with such honesty it just reassures us that we are all following someone with massive integrity. Very classy move and very much appreciated.
By the way can I buy some more ping.fm accounts? You had to know I was going to have a question!
Thanks Keith!
Sincerely,
Howard
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I maintain a nutural position as I haven’t tried Facebook advertising for myself.
Ryan’s a buddy of mine and he’s a genuine credible guy.
It could well be that Ryan has had success with Facebook, and that’s what he’s trying to share.
As for those who are peddling the course however, I can almost guarantee you that 90% of them won’t have tried it for themselves.
-Matt
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Hi Keith,
Certainly appreciate your honesty (It’s what we’re used to from you eh!) and I have to agree that, in all my attempts with Facebook all I have found is quite expensive, low return advertising.. This despite extreme targeting and all the other benefits FaceBook supposedly offers. Folks are just so numb to the onslaught of promotion wherever they turn it seems that it makes it harder to be unique enough to complete the whole process without losing them somewhere along the way…
My feeling more and more is it’s all about sheer scale and volume which means other lower cost, lower return avenues like CPA are the most efficient by far…
Cheers
Andy FH
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Ryan says that facebook is easier to deal with the google,well at least i can get my ads approved with google,getting your ads appoved with facebook is almost impossible not to mention their U.S. traffic has become quite expensive just recently.
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Maybe you need to buy Ryan Deiss’s Facebook Advertising Course or since he’s a friend see if hell give it to you for free..
That should help … No?
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I didn’t buy Ryan’s course, nor do I intend to do so later on down the road; none the less, all the hype around the product did intrigue me enough to place an ad on facebook and see for myself.
I didn’t do this out of pocket, mind you. I searched for a facebook coupon code, 2010. I came across one offering £50, which translated into $78.08 American when I entered the code into my account.
Only having my ad running now for approx. 12 hours, results are tentative. But as far as cost goes, my CPC is at $0.41 whereas if I were to bid on keywords at Google I would be paying $4.00 and up for many of them in this particular niche.
Downside to facebook advertising is that every ad goes under human review and so it can take 24 hours + to get your ad up and running. Something to consider if an ad is time sensitive. Furthermore, their support for advertisers is through email ONLY. Not very conducive for getting things quickly resolved when problems arise.
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I’m sick of all these guys promoting their buddies products too. I’ve lost a ton of respect for some big name marketers I used to respect. It’s just one promotion after the next when they obviously haven’t tried or probably even looked at any of these products they promote…it’s getting pretty sickening.
I’m getting 3 and even 4 emails per day from some of these guys. I would unsubscribe from their lists but it’s almost entertaining at this point to see how far they’ll go to make a buck.
Watch for Ryan’s next product in a week or so titled “Facebook Advertising Sucks”
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On the future speculation of Facebook there’s good information in Ryan Deiss’s course.
Until veteran internet marketers Michael Campbell or Ken McCarthy shout Facebook Advertising praises for lead generation its safe to assume this is hot product hype of the moment.
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Yeah, that was my experience with Facebook advertising as well. And I didn’t even try all the different approaches like you did either.
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Thanks, almost bought that also.
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There’s some gold in these comments and I appreciate everyone’s opinion.
I’ve also received some comments that were truly ugly and made accusations about Ryan that were just not true.
Ryan was my business partner in 2005 when we hosted the initial Traffic Domination Workshops.
I have a LOT of respect for him and will not let posts attacking him be approved.
Whether you buy this course or not is of no concern to me… I just thought that it would be prudent for at least one person who actually does test different ad sources to give you an honest opinion of this.
Keith
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Had not heard of Ryan before following over here from twitter.
Go ask your dentist if you can send him some patients with facebook ads, and watch what happens.
Facebook does work for some. It is HARD to figure out.
I have a campaign that is rocking now, but took me $10k and a year of work to figure out, quite a painful learning curve.
One of the guys above is right that facebook can be profitable for small niches, “try other countries than the U.S.” I still get 2 cent clicks and 100% ROI on some affiliate stuff internationally, but it is tiny niche stuff.
I do know guys who kill it on facebook affiliate stuff, Scott Richter at Affilaite.com The gang at Globalizer etc. etc. but you have to be smart, patient, and have some money to play with in figuring it out. Local still kills it.
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I think people are missing the point of Facebook and how to best use their advertising. FB is about “Socialising”, people want to interact with others or be entertained with gossip or “interesting” bits of information. Start a relationship process and use FB Ads to spread the word and not “Direct Sell”…
Start thinking about a customers lifetime value.
Anybody seen/used Robert Grants Crowd Conversions? I think that must be one of the better FB marketing courses about.
Nick
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Keith,
Thanks again for being so candid, especially since Ryan is your friend and I suspect you take somewhat of a risk.
I have found some of Ryan’s info to be outstanding and I have respect for him and have gained tremendously from him as well.
Shame that some of us jump to casting dispersions upon Ryan himself.
Not his fault that some marketers hype his product without having success with the content themselves.
Easy to see though how this over hyping can lead to some thinking it’s a panacea or “holy grail”, later being disappointed and blaming the info seller.
I think FB ads being hard to make profitable makes his product in ways that much more valuable if he’s figured it out. Obviously it won’t work as well for all markets and all offers.
Thanks again Keith
~ Shane
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Keith, your integrity is second to none.
I have tried Facebook advertising and simply couldn’t make it profitable, no matter how I structured my campaigns, and I spent a lot of moolah trying. I would love to know the secret voodoo behind the guys claming to be killing it with Facebook. I mean come on, if so few people are making even a decent return on their investment, then what’s the catch? I agree with the poster above who wrote that Facebook users don’t buy.
Recently I have unsubcribed from a LOT of lists. I have become so sickened with the sales and promotion practices of most marketers, and the sheer amount of emails and promotions that is going back and forth. It’s a total joke to see the same old tactics being used over and over: wrong link, server was down, card processing didn’t work right, my programmer made an error, the list of lame excuses to re-promote goes on, and I’ve had it. Anyone who markets with integrity does not use any of these tactics.
Keith, you are one of a select few that I subscribe to now, always first class stuff.
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Thanks for the heads up…..I am experiencing all the same whoaa’s as everyone else….. Just recently decided to try facebook traffic and it is very hard to make conversions with it…..I heard that there ad approval teams are people from other countries (mostly women) that they have hired out for cheap, and it shows! I had one ad that I submitted twice with only keyword changes which should’nt matter, and it was once approved and the next time rejected…..go figure! I have made a few conversions…..but no profitable campaigns as of yet…..I will try till my free code runs out….but it is not looking good. Google must be getting wind of all the frustration a lot of affiliates are expressing cause they have sent me two free 100 dollar coupons in the last three months if I open a new adwords account….is anyone else experiencing this….I also thought it was against there rules to have more than one account anyway…unless you used one of there in house services ( cant think of the name of it) that allows you to open multiple adword accounts…..
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Keith,
Now I know why my paid IM mentor likes your stuff! I became aware of the FB stuff last week, but have been busy creating my first product. Finished it Yesterday, yea! Anyway, I’m now looking into how to promote it, and was thinking about trying the FB advertising first to get ahead. Big mistake, will stick with the “old school” methods on this first offering. Will recommend your site to others!
Thank you kindly,
Marshall
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Hey guys. I can guarantee you that making money on FB is possible. I’m actually having good (but not giant) success with facebook promoting cpa offers. But I have to say one thing : don’t go in the US or similar countries. Not that you can’t make monnies but it’s hard. CPC is very expensive and if you want to pay less, you have to target young people (below 18 years old) and your offer should not have nothing to do with spending money or stuff like that. So, go international. Hire a swedish blonde student to translate your swedish offers (you get the point!)…you’ll be amaze how easy it is. Split test age groups and pics. Collect data. Spend a little bit. You’ll soon find a winner.
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I also think before that Facebook would be a great help to promote but as you’ve said only few leads from there. We can do a lot of advertising not only focusing Facebook. Thanks for the great post.
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I just happen to be running my FIRST Facebook Ad today using a $50 coupon
Here’s the promotion: http://twitpic.com/1yy6aa
Also happens to be Ryan Deiss latest promo telling the story of Kate and the $10K she makes using her cellphone. I’ve never seen Ryan sell anything but himself and then he markets his wares using stories.
Ryan has what’s known as a “gift” and those who hate him, don’t. They want to BE him but haven’t got a chance in China and they know it. That’s what they hate. You do haters a favor by not exposing them as fools in public. They should Thank-you for that.
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Keith Baxter Reply:
June 25th, 2010 at 6:12 am
There are a million ways to sell (online).
I love stories and incorporate them into everything that I do.
Keith
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I completely agree with you Keith, Facebook advertising blows. Its our worst performing PPC campaings. Have tried all kinds of graphics in the ads, but so far almost no clicks and they are not even that cheap. And hey I appreciate your honesty.
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Keith, I too have spent now over a few thousand dollars testing on Facebook only to find little if any ROI. Are you getting any results yet?
The only thing I have found somewhat effective is posting notes about current trends and linking those notes to offers… direct linking has not yet worked for me.
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