[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
$2,200,000 white-hat ad spend and still banned
Well, we’re off to a big start in today’s newsletter.
Kosti To posted in the Purple Knowledge Lab group asking for help after his whole Business Manager was banned on Facebook after spending $2,200,000, all white hat…
That’s what he said at least but many people in the group are pretty sure white is not what FB considers white.
Take this pretty clear comment from Jason Akatiff:
I know a lot of people here are saying they’re running WH stuff. Just FYI WH doesn’t qualify as:
- drop shipping
- sub-prime anything
- data gathering and selling methods
There’s also a comment from Kosti himself, where he says “this account is 99% Ecom. completely white. no crypto, no finance, no fx. Nada.”
The issue is that even if it’s <1% not-high-quality, branded you could get caught in Facebook’s automated systems. Plus, if your accounts are connected to others doing a less-than-white approach, you are still risking it.
While sometimes this is just the cost of doing business, you should really try to build an own audience as much as you can.
Sure, you will always want to do paid traffic too, but make sure it’s not the only thing you do when you run your own brands.
Pure media buying for affiliate campaigns is still fine but don’t give FB, Google or another company the power to shut you down completely overnight!
So, if you’re doing any non-super high quality branded campaigns on Facebook, this post might have something for you – whether it’s advice on how to increase your page score or to just connect with people in a similar position to help each other.
E-COMMERCE
Walmart – Flipkart $16 billion deal is done
This has been in the making for a couple of months now. Amazon was also in the race to buy Flipkart, the huge Indian e-commerce company.
After this deal, Walmart will own 77% of Flipkart and sets itself up to battle Amazon in India too. Not sure we’d want to bet against Amazon honestly but OK…
The leadership team stays at Flipkart, and Walmart wants to use this as a learning opportunity for the rest of its business around the world.
Sounds kind of expensive, $16 billion to learn and try to compete with Amazon, and perhaps with Alibaba at a certain point, depending on which countries you go into.
We shall see how this goes, e-commerce is not going anywhere, and performance marketing is a big part of it.
Amazon is still “small” for what it could be
OK, so we’ve covered some of Amazon’s numbers before. One thing to keep in mind about them is that they are not “just” an e-commerce company. Far from it actually. They are turning into pretty much everything that makes sense for them.
That includes advertising. Their ad business grew 132% year-over-year according to last quarterly earnings call. And they absolutely want to go ham on this side of their business in the coming months and years.
Michael Olson, an analyst from Piper Jaffray, said that the ad business could overtake Amazon Web Services and go to over $16 billion by 2021.
And to go together with that topic… If you didn’t know, Twitch is pretty much crushing it with live streams, and eSports are growing too.
And Amazon owns Twitch.
For those unfamiliar with Twitch, here’s a quick intro:
- Live streaming
- Vast majority gaming content, not only professional eSports though, it’s a mix of entertainment and skill
- Creators earn from ad revenue, donations and subscriptions (paid, not free like YouTube)
- If you have Amazon Prime, you get Twitch Prime which gives you one free Twitch subscription, and other bonuses for different games.
- Benefits of being a subscriber generally include chat privileges, like emotes, not affected by slow-mode, and can talk when it’s sub-only mode. Nothing outstanding for outsiders, in our view.
- Twitch subscribers all got an ad-free experience, including Prime ones… until now.
Twitch Prime subscribers, which is a huge part of the whole subscriber base will start seeing ads.
And this goes hand-in-hand with our previous news about Amazon’s growing advertising business. This definitely helps Twitch/Amazon but creators will still get a piece of that so the whole ecosystem should increase their revenue.
While it might not sound too cool for most affiliates, there’s probably some opportunity in the eSports space as Amazon takes it more and more mainstream. Even for affiliates!
Well-intentioned but naive or trying to set up the course sale?
Oh boy, oh boy… There are gurus peddling courses everywhere on the Interwebz.
And those courses are generally not very good, to say the least. There are a few pretty good Facebook groups out there, and some legit teachers of course.
We try to filter content from groups, and also stay away from recommending groups that seem to be a “buy my course” festival.
One of those groups we deem as high quality is the Facebook Ad Buyers group.
Now, we probably have some evidence that the group has quite a few people who know what they’re doing and will instantly call out questionable practices and posts.
Chris Catris posted what he painted as his educational success story of making $80k in 4 months from dropshipping, starting from 0.
There was just one problem. He made $80k revenue in 4 months, with a store that had almost dying traffic and sales.
Here’s a totally accurate representation of how the conversation in the group went:
Group member: “How much money did you make?”
Chris Catris: “$80k in 4 months, so pumped to share my knowledge with everyone else!”
Group member: “But how much profit did you make?”
Probably Chris:
And people instantly brought it up and explained that this is not a group to pass a failed store as a success in preparation for your course pitch.
To us, it also looks strange.
In affiliate marketing, people talk in profit per day. In e-commerce, things are even worse. People talk in revenue per day but basically never mention their profit margins.
What we’re trying to say is, whenever some numbers from “experts” excite you, take a step back and analyze the whole thing very critically.
The basics of the “impulse buy”
One of the most common strategies that successful affiliates use, whether for their own e-commerce store or someone else’s product is the so-called “impulse buy”.
It’s probably a relatively close second to the “fear buy”.
Christopher Fluegge noticed that while this is a powerful strategy, many beginners struggle with implementing it in their strategies so he posted his take on it in the Ecom Empires group.
He goes through what emotions could trigger that impulse, and also uses the popular shopping network, QVC, as an example of how to do things.
Well worth a read!
SPONSORED
15,000,000,000 impressions from people watching “nothing”
Yep, that’s billion, we didn’t make a mistake with the 0s.
That’s what TrafficForce offers. 15 billion premium adult monthly impressions on an in-house managed ecosystem to ensure quality.
These impressions are spread over familiar ad formats like banner, pop-under and rich media so you can get creative with different uhm… creatives!
But OK, we hear you – that’s something everyone brags about. We do have an actual no risk deal from the team at TrafficForce though because they wanna prove it, not just talk about it!
The FIRST 25 people to sign up with the coupon kYTKXLUWh0 will get $100 credit to test their traffic out. No deposit required.
You get a feel for their traffic without any headache. Sounds fair?
Then go sign up before the coupons are all gone!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
3 tips to becoming a small-talk wizard
Whether you’re at an event attempting some networking or your partner just left you alone with their parents, we all know how frustrating small talk can be.
But worry not if you haven’t yet mastered the art of making smart conversation, we have found a quick and easy guide to ace all your future social obligations!
Tip 1: Ask open-ended questions that imply you’re ready to hear a story, rather than receive a “Yes”, “No”, or other dull one-word answers.
Once they accept your invitation, you can react to what they tell you, and thus a non-awkward conversation is created! Good job!
Tip 2: Don’t be a mirror! Often, people try so hard to be polite and not deviate from social norms, they just agree and repeat other people’s statements. But does that make for fruitful interaction?
Probably not. You can pick up on the other person’s simple statement and go with whatever remotely-related thought crosses your mind to make the conversation more interesting.
Which brings us to Tip 3: Surprise them. Imagine someone asks you a question. Now think about what the expected answer would be. And now say something completely different.
If you need some help thinking of fun answers or merely feel like a little chuckle, the original article includes a bunch of example conversation lines that we found quite entertaining.
Remember, always remind yourself to never be scared to think outside the box!
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]