It could be anywhere from 20% to 400% depending on what we’re advertising.

Needless to say, it’s worth sharing with you guys.

We’ve learned everything we know on this subject from Brian and Scott Moran at Get10kFans and their Facebook Ad Academy course.

If you haven’t already, I would suggest reading my ‘Top 10 Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid‘, as it will start you on the path to making money more before you’ve even started.

The Basic Premise

Lets say you’re selling a $100 (for the sake of round numbers) digital product online. Every sale makes you $100 clear profit.

So long as you spend less than $100 on advertising that product (and make a sale), you’re making a positive return on investment.

Just how much that return on investment is all comes down to how you market the product.

So how do you advertise the product?

Advertising Option 1

We’re first going to look at a popular technique of collecting emails first, and then redirecting people to sales pages, and chasing them up with emails.

Step 1 – Collect The Email

You set up a Facebook ad campaign to advertise a free ebook / report / course, in return for someone’s email address. This can be done with a page template in OptimisePress, and a whole host of other software.

When they enter their email address, they get added to your list, and the first followup email they receive contains the free offer.

Step 2 – Direct Them to a Sales Page

You have their attention; don’t waste it.

You can automatically redirect your leads when you collect their emails. Either when they enter their details, or confirm their email address. This is when you want to send them to a sales page.

I send people to my sales page, only I change the video to include a small introduction so that I can connect with people, rather than just saying ‘Here, buy my stuff before you’ve even received the free stuff I promised you.’

This is called a thank you video, and my introduction goes a little something like this:

“Hey, thanks for signing up for your free ebook, it’s on its way to your email inbox, but real quick, while I’ve got you here…”

And then I lead into a sales pitch.

That’s just one way of doing things though.

You could send people to a one-time-offer page, where they can a limited discount on a product if they purchase within the next hour.

Or you could send people to an affiliate page.

Or you could send them to a page with a bunch of discount codes for multiple affiliate products.

I’ve tried all three, and I prefer the first method as I can easily do the other methods later on through email too.

The possibilities are endless, and you should test for yourself, but there’s one thing that they all have in common: each page is monetized.

This means that the traffic you’ve paid money for is then being sent to pages which will make you money.

Step 3 – Add Them to an Auto-responder

You’re only going to make an initial return on investment from a handful of people in step 2, so it’s important that you keep in contact with these leads, providing them with a mixture of content and sales.

Because there’s still loads of money in that list.

Auto-responders are a different subject altogether though.

The Cost

Lets say for example that it costs you 20c a click to send someone to your squeeze page from Facebook.

And that your conversion rate on the squeeze page is 40%.

That means that for every dollar you spend, you will get two leads.

50c a lead, if you will.

Now, looking back at our $100 product, we know that for $100 we can get 200 people to our sales page, while collecting 200 emails at the same time.

All you need to do is ensure that your page converts, your offer is great, and you’re targeting the right people on Facebook.

If you can get everything right, and one in every 100 people purchases your product, you will double your money.

It’s that simple.

It’s not always that easy, but it is that simple. The most important factors here is making sure you have an offer which converts, and you’re targeting the right people.

If you can get that right, you’ll be laughing.

Of course, you can completely skip step 1 and 3, and send people directly to your sales page, but I find it’s best to build a list at the same time.

After all, the money is in the list.

But lets look at that option now.

Advertising Option 2

You can simply send people directly to your offer.

Why would you want to do this?

Well, for one, if you’re paying 20c a click still, then you can send 2.5 times as many people to your page before breaking even. Rather than sending 200 people, you could send 500, which is quite an appealing idea.

But this is not an option I recommend, and I’ll show you why now.

3 Reasons Why I Rarely Choose Option 2

First, it’s unlikely that you will still only be paying 20c a click.

Your cost per click depends on your click through rate (how many times your ad is shown before it’s clicked on), and people are much more likely to click on an ad for a free offer, than a paid one.

This means that your CPC goes up. In my experience, it’s usually by around 50%.

Second, if people choose not to buy your product, then you’ve kissed that advertising money goodbye. At least if you send people to a squeeze page first, you can collect their email.

Third, people like to know who you are before they buy something. Especially if it’s an info product, and not software.

They want to see that you can provide quality content to them, before they start paying for it. Which you can do in the form of a free report or ebook.

You have to make that human connection.

As I sell info products, I rarely choose option 2, but there are times when you might want to.

When To Choose Option 2

If you’re targeting your fans with information on a sale you’re having, then option 2 is a great idea. They already know who you are, and they’re much more likely to buy from you then.

It’s also a good choice if you’re marketing an affiliate product. I’ve seen lots of people advertising OptimisePress 2.0 in the past few weeks, because it’s killer software which people actually want to buy. All you have to do is send people to the page, and the software’s found, James Dyson, does all of the hard work.

Another good idea is if you’re advertising a customer testimonial.

Brian Moran, the founder of Get10000fans runs a sponsored story every day, detailing a customer’s testimonial for his Timeline Blueprint course. The reason that ad runs every day, is because it converts like mad. It leads people direct to his sales page, but the conversions on the ad are great.

Bonus Tip: Be Careful About Tracking Conversions with Facebook

I’m not saying you shouldn’t track conversions using Facebook’s methods, as it does work; you just need to be careful.

If you’re running a campaign and you have it optimised for CPC, and then you go in and edit the campaign to track conversions, Facebook will automatically change the ad from CPC to ‘Optimised for Conversions’.

This essentially means that you’re going to start paying a lot more for those clicks.

That’s at least what happened to me.

Rather than paying 20c per click, I ended up paying around $2.50, with terrible results. It spent my whole daily budget in just a couple of hours.

I don’t know if Facebook is trying to be sneaky with this one, but watch out for that.

So there you have it, there’s an introduction to Facebook advertising.

Read more: ‘Drive Traffic With Google Adwords’

The post How I Doubled My Money With Facebook Ads appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Free traffic sucks.

This is something I learned the hard way.

I have over 17,000 fans, and not only is the traffic minimal, but when I get it, the quality sucks.

And I can prove it.

Last week I was running a Facebook ad campaign. Nothing major, just a couple hundred bucks on a free ebook squeeze page.

And I’ve just started using OptimizePress 2.0, so I was split testing three different page templates at the same time.

Below is a screenshot of the conversion rate of this split test, over the top of the when I was spending money on Facebook ads.

It’s pretty clear from that image that when I paid for high quality, targeted traffic from Facebook, the conversion rates on my squeeze pages went up.

Way up.

We’re talking the difference between 10-20% and 40-50% conversion rate.

If you have something to sell, then you need to send quality traffic to it if you ever want to make any money from it.

So long as you’re seeing a positive return on investment from your ad spend, you can ramp up your ad spending, and watch your profit increase.

Today I’m going to help you get a positive return on investment by pointing out the top 9 mistakes that Facebook advertisers make.

Avoid these and you will be well on your way to turning a profit with Facebook advertising.

#9 Targeting Your Fans

Your fans already know you, they know what you have to offer; you don’t need to advertise to them.

They’re your fans, so if you want to reach them, just create a status update.

Offer them something good for free to that it gets shared and liked and commented on, and then when you’ve got their attention with that, you can then sell to them.

The only time I ever advertise to my fans is when I’m having a sale on a product, and that’s usually in the form of a promoted post.

#8 Not Setting Clear Goals

I can’t believe how often I see this.

Ask yourself a very simple question when you set up your Facebook ad. “What do I want to achieve with this ad?”.

More sales?

More opt-ins?

More free sign ups?

Whatever you’re advertising has to have a goal which is ultimately going to make you money. Don’t bother with page views if they’re not going to make you any money.

#7 Choosing The Wrong Landing Page

Don’t advertise your Facebook page, or blog post.

This is a just a great way to burn through piles of money.

Fans look great, they’re social proof, and they make you feel good, but they don’t do a whole lot to your bottom line.

And that’s what it’s all about – making more money.

You need to choose a landing page that will make you money somewhere down the line.

Advertise your products, or a squeeze page. This way you will either make a sale, or gain a new lead, which you can sell to in the future.

This ties in nicely with setting the right goals.

#6 Broad Targeting

Facebook allows you to be really specific about who you target, so pay careful attention to this.

You can target people based on age, location, gender, sexual preference, language, education, interests and more.

The most important of those is interests.

I’m going to use myself as an example here.

My target market is beginner photographers, but it would be a big mistake to go into Facebook and choose people whose interests are ‘photography’.

Why?

Well, because my mum likes photography, but has no interest in learning about it.

You need to be much more specific than that.

What I do is search for entry-level camera models that I know amateur photographers use. Canon EOS 550D, Nikon D3200, etc.

If someone has listed these as one of their interests, then they’re likely to be amateur photographers.

Think carefully about who the people your targeting are, and what their interests may be.

#5 Weak Ad Images

I’m a photographer by trade, so I’m pretty good when it comes to creating images that get attention.

When it comes to images, we are drawn to those with the strongest ‘visual weight’, as it’s known in composition.

We’re naturally drawn to certain elements in a frame, and I’m going to list the top three now, so that you can use them to get your ad clicked on.

First and foremost is human eyes. Whenever we talk to someone, or look at someone (for the most part), we look into their eyes. If you look at a photo of a person, whether you realise it or not, this is where your eyes are drawn.

And remember, you’re competing for attention on the sidebar, against 4-5 different ads. Yours need to stand out the most, so adding a human element to your sidebar is a good idea.

The ad below has been in my sidebar for months. It wouldn’t be if it wasn’t still converting.

The next most powerful visual weight is size/color/contrast. Something that stands out in the frame.

This is a little harder with the limited space you have on Facebook, as you can’t really create anything too big.

If it was just a big orange box (not sure if that would be approved), it would certainly stand out, but it doesn’t really advertise what you’re selling, so bare that in mind.

The third most powerful visual weight is writing. Specifically the ABC alphabet. We’re naturally interested by writing, and want to read it, so we’re drawn there quite easily.

So there’s a brief introduction to visual weight, for more information on how to create ads that get clicked on, keep reading.

#4 No Clear CTA

I see this time and time again, and I’m going to show you a couple examples.

Which text do you think drives more people to click on the ad, this one:

Or this one:

The second one, clearly.

It doesn’t just say what it does, it commands you to click on it with ‘Click here’.

#3 CPM Rather Than CPC

CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions (M being the roman numeral for 1,000). CPC stands for cost per click.

You want to use CPC bidding, because then you can control the price of your bid. It will save you money in the long run as you will never go over that price.

You see, as your ad starts to get older, and people have seen it a few times, they’re less likely to click on it. They become blind to your ad. But this doesn’t mean Facebook will stop showing it, which ultimately results in you getting less clicks for your 1,000 impressions.

#2 Using The Suggested Bid

This scared me when I first started using Facebook Advertising.

I entered in exactly who I wanted to target, and Facebook told me that my suggested bid was 67c. When I ran the campaign, I was only paying 13c a click.

Don’t be put off by Facebook’s suggested bid, which tends to always be grossly exaggerated.

#1 Not Tracking

How are you supposed to know if your marketing efforts are working if you’re not tracking them?

There’s countless tools on the market for tracking, including Google Analytics, which is completely free. You’d be a fool not to track everything you do.

In internet marketing, there’s two things you should be doing. Always be tracking, and always be testing. That way you will get the best possible results, and know how you should move on.

If something’s not working for you, it’s important to know about it.

Read more: ‘How I Doubled My Money With Facebook Ads’

The post Top 10 Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Images, not Links

This point was actually the inspiration for this post, because it seems so obvious, works so well, yet no one else seems to be doing it. The idea is that instead of using your links to attract visitors, you use a relevant photo instead. This works better in three different ways.

Firstly, people are more interested in looking at photos, than reading articles, so if you can ‘trick’ someone into clicking on the photo and reading your description, you’re easing them into the article. Also, if the image is relevant (which it should be), you spark an interest in the article too. The images also appear much larger on the page too, so they’re more likely to be seen, and then clicked on.

Secondly, your links become much easier to browse. When you post a regular link on your Facebook, it’s shown for as long as it’s on the page, or in a person’s timeline, but when you add that link to an image, it stays around indefinitely. How often have you gone to view a photo, and then clicked next? That is what is happening with your links. A reader could be viewing your image and then click through the rest of them, all the while viewing your old links, and reading their way through them. As your fan-base grows and people view more images, these old links are going to get more clicks.

Finally, we have people’s news feeds and ticker. Think of how often ‘Dave has liked BLANK’s photo…’ has appeared in your newsfeed, rather than a link. Facebook tends to share that sort of content in news feeds more, and when they do appear in news feeds, people are more likely to view them. The same is true for the new Ticker, where people will mindlessly follow everything a person is doing, and stumble upon photos, such as yours.

An extra little bonus feature of using an image to promote your content is that you can always change what you’ve written about the link, by editing the description. This means that if you’ve changed your mind about something, or you’ve made a spelling mistake, you don’t have to remove the link and lose all of your likes, you can simply go and edit it.

Quotes

This is all about creating content that you know is going to be shared by many people on your Facebook, which will then find you new fans. Some content can be more viral than others, but I find that interesting quotes work really well. Again, you’re going to want to make sure that you turn these quotes into images so that they can be shared much more easily. If you make an image, rather than share one you’ve found somewhere else, add your logo too; my image below was shared from another source on the internet.

When you’re choosing a quote, make sure it’s something that appeals to as many people as possible, with an element of humour, and preferably something that annoys your reader. Remember that the idea is to get as many people as possible sharing this, and that includes fans’ friends. Focusing on an annoyance or something negative always works better than something positive, I’ve written about this before here, and I’m no psychologist so I don’t know why this is, but I do know that it works. The image below was shared on my page, when I had around 2,500 fans, and it received 118 likes and 47 shares.

Questions

The right questions typically result in lots of interaction from readers, because everyone likes to have their say, and as your page grows bigger, people will see it as a way of having one on one contact with you. My post below was put up rather late at night, but still managed to receive 86 comments and 31 likes, and even a week later, I’m still getting comments on it.

Not only did I manage to increase interaction on the Page, but I managed to learn a little bit more about my readers, what they like, and what they don’t like. You’ll notice that I’m not talking about polls here, I’m using an image and appealing to the photographer in them, to find out what they like. I’ve noticed in the past that polls really don’t work all that well, perhaps because people are less inclined to vote on them. I put this down to the fact that they show up in people’s newsfeed after someone has voted on them, and often people don’t want this.

Think about what people in your niche are interested in and appeal to them. It can be done for almost any niche.

Share Old Content

This is great for when you can’t be bothered, or don’t have time to write an article one day, but you still want some Facebook traffic for the day. My fan base is now at 4,000 fans, but I have load of content written from the months when I was struggling to even reach 1,000 fans, but that content is still just as good. When I link to my website on Facebook, I link to the post that I’m trying to promote, not my homepage, so chances are, when I share an old post with my fans, the majority of them won’t even realise that it’s old. Not that it really matters.

Not only does this bring me the traffic I’m looking for, but it makes me feel a bit better about my writing because it means that all my old posts aren’t going to waste, which is what it can feel like when you write some of your best content, when you first start your website.

Like their Comments

Make commenting on your Facebook an enjoyable experience for your fans, and thank them for doing so with a simple Like. It’s a personal touch that costs nothing, and takes next to no time at all. Don’t go liking everything, and certainly not negative comments, but liking comments that you agree with, or are compliments, are important. This is especially important as you grow and people have less of a chance of personally interact with you. When you like what someone else has written, then you’re encouraging them to come back and comment again, which will increase your reader interaction, and in turn make your content appear in more news feeds.

If your readers asks you questions, then answer them too.

Don’t use Custom Banners

This added feature from Facebook is a little bit misleading because many people think that they can use it to make their page look better, when it doesn’t really work like that. You would have seen it before, either on fan pages or friends walls, where people have used custom banners to display a single image, such as a logo. This is something that I have looked into, but ultimately decided against.

Firstly, it’s hard to keep them in order in the first place, especially if you take my advice and use images to promote your posts. Secondly, these little thumbnails are an excellent way to spark interest in new fans, because it’s easy for them to explore the posts when they’re all listed at the top of the page. Set up the banner, and then just leave it.

Custom Profile Picture

Most people choose a simple image as their profile picture, and whether that’s landscape, or portait, it’s still wrong. If you pay close attention to Facebook marketing, then there’s a good chance that your profile image is 180 x 540 pixels, but there’s more to it than that, and the good thing is that you can do it yourself.

The first thing to consider is your thumbnail image, which is what will appear whenever you comment or post something. If you have a look at my posts above, you’ll see that my thumbnail image is the simple logo pictured below at the top of the image. You will want to make this smaller than the width of your image, and ensure that it’s not cluttered by any other part of the photo.

I’ve backed away from using excessive writing about what I do, and I’ve opted for this much simpler design instead. My full logo at the bottom of the image, my logo at the top, and an image in the middle. It’s the image in the middle that makes this really special for me though, because I can change this whenever I want, so that I can keep things fresh an keep people noticing it. The reason I’m using my logo at the top, rather than the title of my website, is because I want to build up some brand recognition for the image. If I change my picture once a month, people will continue to be drawn to it, and in turn, the logo too. Soon enough, my website will be recognisable by the logo alone, just like many other famous brands.

Use Memes & Trends

Keep up to date with current trends on the internet, whether they’re internet memes, or funny pictures like the one below. A great example of this, was how I received 500 fans overnight, which you can read about here. It was something that I had seen twice already on Facebook, and something that I wanted to get involved in before it was too late, and people were starting to get annoyed with it.

One thing I spotted last night, was the image I’ve shared with you below. It’s referred to as the ‘six perspectives…’, where you compare six different perspectives of the same thing. There are many variations of this, and I had originally thought that I would talk about what it’s like to be a photographer, and what people thought of it, but I decided that this was a little bit more niched and people would find it more interesting, and want to share it. It took me about an hour and a half to put together, and then I simply posted it on Facebook, and over night it got, 71 like, 7 comments, and 24 shares. If the right people pick it up, then it can be a lot higher than this. If you have friends in the same niche as you, ask them to share it too. This image found me 20 new fans over night.

You can always share it more than once too, through your Google+ and Twitter too. Like I mentioned earlier, if you’re going to come up with your own original content to share, slap your logo on it so that people know where it’s come from incase someone decides to download and share it as their own, which is something that I found this morning with another photography fan page, sharing a different version of my own. One final thing to note is that you want to include your website address is the description, so that if it does go as viral as you would like, then you can always get a few more hits on your website.

Have a look at the one we posted on IncomeDiary today. Click here to go to the image and share.

Post Interesting Facts

This is all about providing valuable extra information for your readers, which they can’t find anywhere else on your website. Have a look at the one I posted on the IncomeDiary fan page last night. It’s exclusive to our Facebook, and through that, Twitter too. This keeps our readers interested, and helps them to feel like they’re getting something that no one else is getting. Not only that, but it reassures them that IncomeDiary is a valuable resource for them to be following, and makes us more of an authority.

Ask Their Opinion

Make your readers feel like their opinion matters, so ask them what they think. Whether you personally care about what they think is one thing (I personally do), but making them feel like what they say counts is what really matters. I changed my profile picture the other night, so I asked them what they thought of it, and I got likes on both the image, and the wall post, all of which were positive. It helps you to understand your fans better, and what they like, which is all useful information for providing them with better content, and finding more people like them.If you’ve enjoyed this post, then please press like below to like our fan page.

The post 10 Facebook Promotion Tips You Don’t Know About appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I should warn you first, that I’ve since found out that this is again Facebook rules and regulations for these promotions, and had I been a much bigger page, and been reported, there’s a good chance that I would have been banned, or at least been the subject of a strongly worded email. The specific guideline is on line 3 of their promotions guidelines and is as follows: “You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.” That is basically a lot like what I did; I didn’t get caught, and I will be deleting the image now that the competition is up, but it’s certainly a risk. I personally think it’s a bit of a gray area because the reason I give for liking a page is so that they will see their name when they win, and this is a very new type of promotion, so there’s every chance that you’ll get away with it too, but it could be perceived as spammy so be very careful about your decision.

I got the idea from this campaign from the clothing brand Fly53, which was a giveaway of lb7,500 worth of clothing, where all they had to do was click share to be in with a chance of winning. This is a fantastic campaign, but I immediately saw some problems (and how they could improve them), which I’ll get to further down the page. One thing that does stand out to me is that they manage to follow Facebook’s guidelines, not follow the guidelines, and mislead all of the fans in just one small paragraph.They follow the guidelines of Facebook by making the readers enter the competition via an app, but as you see, they tell the readers to share the post to be in with a chance of winning. The give the impression that all you have to do is click share, because it doesn’t say anywhere in the text that you have to enter the competition through the app that’s linked in the text. If a big name brand with over 40,000 fans can get away with this, then I should imagine that most people would. I still recommend exercising caution though because the risk may not be worth the reward, and I would hate for any of you to lose your accounts. I imagine there will be a crackdown on this sort of promotion pretty soon.

I wanted to test the water myself, just to see how well it would work, but without spending any of my own money. Without going into too much detail, there’s a lens that I recommend as the first upgrade any budding photography should buy, it’s a lens that I’ve written about in length before, and it’s had a pretty good response. The lens also isn’t that expensive, so getting a hold of one wouldn’t be too hard either. I decided that this would be perfect for my readers to win, but it’s not a decision I brushed over, and you shouldn’t either.

If you think about what you want to achieve by holding this giveaway, it’s ultimately so that you can find new fans for your page, whom you can share your website with in the future, so the prize has to be something that will appeal to them. Not only does the prize have to appeal to people in your niche, but it has to ONLY appeal to people in your niche. Sure, you could giveaway a $200 giftcard for Amazon, but everyone wants one of those, so you’ll likely get it shared by a lot of people who aren’t into whatever your niche is selling. By choosing a lens, I knew that everyone who liked and shared my post, would at least have a digital SLR camera, and would therefore be interested in my content. The unfortunate thing about this rule is that not every niche can do one of these giveaways so easily, in fact we’re struggling to come up with one for Income Diary. We had considered the top 20 business books, but again, that has a much wider appeal than just our niche.

The second thing that I took note of was the worth of the giveaway, Fly53 were giving away lb7,500 worth of clothes, but I wanted to only give away between $110-220, so it was a slight risk because I wasn’t sure it was going to work as well. Of course, I knew it was never going to work quite as well, they have around 40,000 fans, and I had just 1700 at the time, and they were also giving away something a lot better than me, but I was still surprised with just how well it has worked.

Ok, so now you’ve chosen a prize to give away, how do you pay for it? Well, there’s three options for that. Firstly, you could just pay for it out of you pocket, and consider it a worthwhile investment in your website. Secondly, you ask for a freebie from whoever makes what you’re giving away, which I’m planning on doing soon with someone who’s already sent me a free camera strap. And finally, you could use your Amazon Associates commissions. Every couple months I promote a new post, where I recommend different products that people should buy, and then use Amazon Associate links to earn commissions. I posted this on my website a couple weeks ago, which links to 70 different products, and since then I’ve earned $179.19 in commission, from that post, and various others. These posts provide me with content to keep my readers updated, and money that I can spend on giveaways.

When you know what it is you’re giving away, then it’s important to share it on Facebook as soon as possible. I actually left a little tease on the Facebook page earlier in the day, saying how I was thinking about arranging a giveaway, and I asked what everyone would like for Christmas. Then I started designing a little image that would contain all the important information, and grab the reader’s attention at the same time. It’s important to put all of the necessary information into the image because you’ll get a better result. Below is the image that Fly53 used, and although their campaign went well, it really doesn’t tell you anything about what they’re doing from the image itself, nor can you differentiate it from the other competitions that they were running, using exactly the same image.I went for a very different design, making mine on Photoshop in a couple of hours. I’m not very good at photoshop, and you don’t have to make it on there, you could easily make a PDF in word and use that instead. When you’re designing your own, it’s important to only include necessary information, detailing very clearly what the reader has to do. For me it was very simple:

1. ‘Like’ Expert Photography on Facebook
2. Share the image on their Facebook wall

The fist requirement was a trick that most people seem to be missing, because if you can get people to like your fan page, then there’s a good chance that you can get them to come to your website multiple times in the future. The reason I gave for making people like the page was so that I could tag their name in the post if they won, and it does have that use, but in reality, I just wanted to be able to market to them again in the future. How much would you pay for 500 new fans on your page? How much would it cost you in Facebook ads to reach it? When you consider those options, this starts to become a very cheap way of generating new fans.

I included a few images at the bottom of the post, before revealing a few finer details about the terms and conditions, such as where I’d ship to, which brand I would be giving away, and when the winner would be announced, but for more detailed information, I used the description of the image on Facebook to really sell it: “To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is share this photo on Facebook, and make sure that you ‘like’ the Facebook fan page (so that we can tag the winner). You have to be in the USA, Canada, or UK to be in with a chance of winning, and you have to own either a Canon, Sony, or Nikon DSLR. It’s an essential lens for every camera bag, and even if you already own one, it makes for an excellent present, I’m sure you’ll agree. Happy Holidays!”

With the image posted, it became a waiting game to see how people would react to it, and I didn’t have to wait long at all. I started receiving likes pretty regularly, but I really wanted to promote it, so I decided to ask others to help out. I emailed Jim who has written on this website before and is in the same niche as me (you can see his post here), because he has 15,000 fans on Facebook, and seeing as it’s something every photographer should have, I asked if he minded sharing it with his fans. I did this just 33 minutes after I published the photo, and just 42 minutes later, he had shared it on his Facebook to thousands of people. This is when things really started to pick up.

I don’t have a huge following on Facebook yet, but it’s growing steadily now as the site is also growing. I do however know a few people in my niche though, usually because I’ve included them in one of my top lists, or I’ve been mentioned in one of their lists too, so I can use these relationships to my advantage. You shouldn’t be worried about sharing other people’s content through your own website or Facebook; they are NOT your competition – the success of your website is up to you, not down to how good someone else’s website is.

With this boost from Jim, I was able to reach a lot more people, and the sharing soon grew to hundreds of people. After just an hour and a half, I have 92 new shares and 87 new likes on Facebook, and just 35 minutes after that, the numbers had gone up even further to 185 and 182. I posted the image late in the evening, and when I woke up the next morning, I had 500 new fans on Facebook, which is now up to well over 700. It took a little over 24 hours to reach 500 shares, which meant that people were liking the page and not sharing the image, probably because they were confused by how Facebook works, but I had a feeling that was going to happen because I’ve seen it happen before.

There’s no doubting that the viral nature of this sort of marketing has clearly worked, and when you consider that the average Facebook user has 130 friends (although I suspect it’s more), and I’ve had 592 shares as of writing this (it’s still going up), then my post has been shared to 76,960 people, for what may only be $110.

Not only are people sharing my image, liking my page, and visiting my website, but they’re also talking about my website. The ‘talking about this’ statistic underneath the fan page likes, will dramatically increase from this, and that will cause Facebook to include more of my content in people’s news feed, as I will be considered to be worthy.

When you’ve got your big new following, you’ll find that there are more people interacting with the content that you put up. I put up my first article since the campaign started, and where I would usually get up to about 6 likes, and a couple comments, I received 15 likes, and 8 comments. This increases reader interaction, and helps my website to grow.

There are a few things that I would have done differently to how I’ve done it, for example, I’ve said that I’ll announce the winner on Christmas day, which is when I planned on ending it, but it’s started to lose steam, and I think that 24-48 hours would have sufficed. Next time I do one, I will probably be giving away a camera strap, and for that, I’ll only doing it for 24 hours. That giveaway is going to be part of a promotion for both my website, the strap, and the commission that I can earn through Amazon, so not only will it not cost me any money, but I’ll be able to actually earn money too. I also would have widened the area that I would have sent the lens too as well, because I have a fan base in Australia who couldn’t enter the competition, so that’s something I will consider next time.

If I were to run the competition again, I would definitely run it through the app, and follow the Facebook guidelines, because it’s taken me a long time to get to the point that I’m at today, and I would hate to lose it all. It’s been a very interesting experiment and I’m glad that I’ve done it, but those rules are in place for a reason, and I’m sure Facebook wouldn’t feel bad at all about quickly deleting your page from their servers. Since the promotion started just 6 days ago, I’ve had over 750 new likes, 592 shares and around 200 comments, all for the cost of a cheap lens. I chose my winner and, although I’m yet to hear back (don’t worry, I will definitely chase them up), everything has ended up a little bit better than expected.

The post How I Gained 500 Facebook Fans Overnight appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

On the other hand, Internet research firm Sysomos reports that only 4% of Facebook fan pages ever achieve 10,000 followers…. ever!

Follow these simple steps and you’ll be well on your way to growing a successful following on Facebook. And by the way, I receive 600% more traffic per Facebook follower than per Twitter follower (meaning my Facebook following is larger than my Twitter following, but I still get way more traffic from Facebook even if you take the discrepancy into account).

#1. WIIFM

The acronym stands for “What’s in it for me?” and it is exactly what people who visit your website are wondering when you ask them to like your page on Facebook. Stop for two seconds and take an honest look at your website. Have you really, truly, given them a reason to want to like your page?

If not, drop everything you have on your plate and fix the problem immediately. So what kind of incentive can you offer? I introduce you to the second way to make your Facebook page boom…

#2. The “In crowd”

I have seen fan pages do all sorts of different things to get people to like their page. Some pages offer a free eBook, others promise “Facebook only” deals, etc. However, I have not personally found these methods to work.

The best converting method I have found for getting people to like your page is to simply explain that liking your page is the only way to become part of the “in crowd” in your community.

Here is how I do it: At the end of most of the photography articles on my website, I put a little blurb that says something like “If you haven’t joined our community by LIKING Improve Photography on Facebook, you’re missing out on half the fun! Our Facebook page is the perfect place to ask photography questions and get answers directly from Jim.”

No need to give free stuff, no advertising needed, no need to sell a kidney or bribe a foreign official.

#3. Make it OBVIOUS

When I find a website that I like, I usually try to find their Facebook fan page so I can get their articles in my Facebook feed. To me, it’s much easier to get my articles through Facebook than remembering to head over to Google Reader.

It is shocking to me how many website make it so difficult to find their Facebook page, and then they are perplexed why no one likes their page. Yes, this is another moment when you must stop reading and go to your site. Pretend you’re a new user and you truly want to find the Facebook page. How easy is it?

#4. Create something worth liking

Huh? I liked your page and all I get from it is a bunch of articles shoved at me each day and the occasional post where you post a video of your kid when you’re “trying to be really personable and likable”? Yikes. If that is your idea of creating a page that provides worth to your followers, it might be a good idea to go back and get a day job.

In my photography niche, I provide a worth-while community on Facebook by promising that either me or someone in the community will respond to any question you post on the Facebook page within 24 hours. Most of the time, one of the photography enthusiasts in the community takes care of it for me, but I also try to chime in on most posts so that I can be… yes, you guessed it… “personable and likable.”

#5. Exclusivity

When I release a new video tutorial, I frequently post it on the Facebook fan page a few days before releasing it on the site. Providing seemingly insignificant bonuses to your fans this way helps to make them feel like they truly are part of the core of the community.

None of your readers are interested in anyone more than themselves, so give them what they want! Make them feel special and that they really are in a community rather than just saying you have a community.

#6 Generate content through Facebook (You’d be a fool to miss out on this tip!)

Every 14 days or so, I like to post a status on Facebook that I use as content for the website. For example, I wrote a status a few weeks ago that said (remembering my niche is photography), “You might be a photographer if… (Using your comments as funny responses for an article).”

That status generated over 300 replies. Better yet, the article was tremendously popular because my community had participated in generating it so they were great about sharing it on social media.

I have used the same technique with other posts as well. Take this one for example, “Writing an article with 101 portrait photography tips. I came up with about 60, but I am stuck in a rut. Can you guys help me out?” I honestly needed their help and they honestly wanted to play the part of the teacher for a while. I finished the article in 15 minutes when I had spent several hours trying to come up with things. Not surprisingly, the article was extremely popular, because they were a part of the process and I credited them for their ideas.

#8. Quit bugging people

Nothing makes me click the “unlike” button faster than an annoying status update. I used to live in Naples, Florida, USA. The newspaper there, the Naples Daily News, constantly posts on its Facebook page things like “What are you guys doing this weekend?” AAAAaaaah! I can’t stand it! Do they think I followed the newspaper so that I could shoot the breeze? No! I want the news!

Remember that every single post must provide value to your followers. I know you’re starved for followers and you’re desperate to find something that they will respond to, but this post will only frustrate your followers and get a tiny percentage of them (who are probably starved to be asked what they are going to do this weekend) to respond. Write about things that have value.

An example? How about this status update that drew 200 responses in less than 20 minutes: “Since I’m the photographer in my family, there are VERY few pictures of me with the kids. Is it just me, or do you have that problem too?”

#9. Your fans don’t know they like you

Facebook is (those of you in the UK would say “are” but let’s not start a culture war) a moving target. Sit complacent for too long and your entire following could become useless.

When Facebook recently changed its (ug.. “their”) algorithm of what it shows in users’ news feeds, I suddenly started to see posts from pages that normally don’t appear in my feed. Curious, I clicked on the pages and–sure enough! I had liked the page, but I hadn’t seen their status updates in ages.

If your fans stop interacting with your page by clicking the like button, sharing your stuff, or answering surveys, then they might as well not be followers at all because Facebook will stop showing your posts in the news feeds of your fans.

So how do you get people to engage with your Facebook page? By now you should know that you must read on…

#10 Questions

When I notice that the engagement for my posts on Facebook has dwindled over a few days, I always call in the heavy hitters… the questions feature.

Asking questions is a terrific way to better understand your market and to get hundreds of people to interact with your page. I frequently get 1 out of every 15 followers to engage when I post a question with polling options. Pretty much any type of question seems to convert.

#11. Be culturally sensitive

I know this point sounds like the heading on a Powerpoint presentation given by the H.R. reps in your old company, but there is one TREMENDOUSLY common mistake that I see blogs make nearly every day that makes their websites look trashy.

Take this post I read this morning for example, “10 Things I Learnt from Visiting Google.” If you are from the UK, that probably looks just fine. However, Americans don’t ever, EVER use the word “learnt” as a replacement for “learned” in common language. Every American reader who saw this site today probably did what I did. We read the headline and thought “Ick! What a trashy article.” Not surprisingly, we didn’t click the link.

I am still learning what words and phrases to avoid when writing for the web where 40% of my audience does not live in the United States. If you have an international following, it truly is worth your time to learn the lingo. I have seen many more mistakes recently where writers boldly used words that make them look like idiots to people in other countries: “torch” may be a flashlight to those in the UK, but the word means a flaming stick to people in the United States. Biscuits, water closet, trousers, chips, units of measure, and dozens of other words are also common problems.

When you write for your website, it can be easier to write without errors and to take things like cultural differences into account; however, I see far too many great writers make stupid mistakes when they write for social media. Make sure everything you put out on social media is of the same quality as what you put on your site. Unlike your blog posts that can be edited later to correct errors, status updates are all or nothing.

#12. Create a post launch via Facebook

I tried out a new technique last week that worked tremendously well. I was writing a blog post that I thought could really go viral in the photography community. It was entitled “12 Myths that Every Photographer Should Know.” I think the content was good, but sometimes that isn’t enough to get traction on social media. I needed something to really make this post go viral.

I started with something we mentioned earlier, I asked my Facebook fan page what common beliefs among photographers I should test for them. This post alone received many responses, but it built up anticipation for the article.

Two days before the article was released, I posted a photo on the fan page that I took while preparing the article and gave a little teaser as to my findings.

One day before releasing the article, I posted “It’s almost here! The photography myths article will be released at 2PM EST tomorrow.” This post also got a lot of responses.

Finally, when I was ready to post the article and was a few minutes late, people were actually writing on the Facebook page frantically asking where they could find the article. This was my signal that the plan had been a success. There was real anticipation for this article.

Then, after the article went out and 300 people shared it on social media, I posted again on Facebook saying “Thank you to over 300 of you that kindly shared my 12 Photography Myths article on social media today. I really appreciate the support. In case you missed it, here’s a link to the article.” Not only did that provide social proof that the article was good, which caused even more people to read the article, but it encouraged people to share my stuff in the future because they were thanked for their kindness.

#13. I missed number seven on this list, and I did it on purpose

One of the tricks that I LOVE to play is to intentionally forget something or make a “mistake” on Facebook. For example, when the iPhone 4s was announced and it was said that it has an improved camera, I posted on Facebook “Wow. The camera on the new iPhone 5 looks really good.”

100 people wrote in to tell me that it was actually the iPhone 4s and not the iPhone 5. It was just a small thing, but I got 100 people who otherwise would not have interacted with me that day to write something. That means that my status updates continue to show up in their news feeds and I get the joy of refreshing the page 15 times and watching the comments pour in.

P.S. Now we get to look at the comments for this post and see how many people missed the tip about me messing up the numbering on purpose and will undoubtedly call out my “error”

The post 12 Reasons Why Some Facebook Pages Boom But Most Bust appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Insights

This is sort of like the GA Dashboard; it allows you to look at the general overview of all of your key statistics, which is good for people who don’t really know what to do with the information. The first thing you’ll see is the four key statistics at the top of the page which covers the amount of likes you have, your reach, and how much is has changed in the past week. All of these stats have an arrow with a percentage going up or down, based on the changes in the last seven days, compared to the seven days before then.

The total likes is obvious, but the friends of fans is the amount of friends that all of your combined fans have – it’s the number of people that would potentially see a post if every one of your fans shared a link. ‘People Talking About This’ is the amount of people who have interacted with your page in the space of that week, whether it’s a comment, a like, or even a poll. Finally, ‘Weekly Total Reach’ is the amount of impressions that your posts have had – the number of times one of your posts have come up in a fan’s page.

Below these details, there’s a timeline of the ‘Weekly Talking About This’ stat and your ‘Weekly Total Reach’, the graph also claims to show you the number of Posts, but that statistic is so small in comparison, that it doesn’t show up in my graph. On the left you’ll see that I’m reaching a lot of people, but not that many people seem to be responding (talking about this). This graph allows you to compare time periods and see the improvements that you’ve made, as you’ll see that further into the month, my fans start to notice me better and start to respond more.

Further down the page, you’ll see all of you page posts listed in the order that you posted them, although they can be rearranged. You do have the option to change the type of pages that you want to see, such as photo, video, post, or link, but I tend to look at all of them because a month long period really isn’t that long. You’ll see from the screenshot below that besides the date, you’re also provided with information such as reach, engaged users, talking about this, and virality. The reach is the number of unique fans that have seen a particular post, engaged users (which is a lot smaller), is the number of people who have clicked on any part of your post, talking about this is the interaction (likes, shares, etc.) and the virality is just the percentage of people reached who had an interaction (talking about this). This is what it looks like.

There’s more to all of this than meets the eye though, as you’ll soon discover by clicking on the numbers in the results. When you click on the reach result, you’ll see the amount of organic reach in comparison to the paid and viral reach. The viral traffic is the number of people who have seen the post as a result of their friend engaging with it, such as a like or a comment. When you look at engaged users, you’ll see that Stories Generated has a smaller share, and that’s because it’s the amount of people who have done something that would be seen by a friend who’s viewing their profile. That’s a smaller number than all the Other Clicks put together which can be along the lines of clicking on other peoples names. The Other Clicks section is a strong indicator of the users attention to a post. The Talking About This section is very simply broken down into comments and likes.

I typically don’t view this section the way that it’s laid out, as I like to organize them to see which is the most popular or effective. You can click on the top bar on the reach, engaged users, the talking about this section, or virality to organize them however you wish. As my page is still in the growing stages, I like to organize by virality so that I can see what makes my fans interesting in what I have to say. It’s easier to work on the interest of the fans that you’ve already got than it is to find new fans. To be fair, it’s worth organizing by all of these factors, as they each tell you something a little bit different about what your fans are interested in.

Fans

When you enter the Fans tab, you start to see information about your demographic that not even Google can tell you, such as the ages and sex of you fans. Facebook breaks them down into helpful bar-charts as seen below, divided up into percentages of fans. This is particularly useful to know as you can start to direct your writing towards a different demographic. How I may talk to someone in their 20’s is different to how I may speak to someone in their teens on 50’s.

The location of our visitors can be found through Google Analytics, but Facebook provides much more revealing information about the people who are actually going to become dedicated fans. No only do they break up the fans by country, but also by city and language too. The results actually surprised me somewhat, the UK only makes up 10% of my traffic, compared to the 66% that America provides, so I was expecting to see that section a little bit smaller, although I am British and do have British friends who have liked the page so that may explain it though. I don’t have many friends in London so it surprises that it’s my most popular, but I guess that’s because the UK is much more densely populated than America.

This following section is one of my favorite as you can track when your popularity goes up and down with new like and unlikes. It claims to tell you where your sources come from, but the detail that you’ll see below and to the right is very minor and don’t provide the depth you may be looking for, at least not in this section. It’s good to be able to see which days are the most popular because then you can see which post was most popular that day, who sent you the most traffic, and what you were writing on the fan page, and use all of that information to create content that will provide you with more fans.

Reach

The first thing you’ll notice is that this page looks a lot similar to the Fans section, with a bar chart of the demographics, only this time it’s sorted by your reach. I won’t go into too much detail because after the section above, it’s all fairly self explanatory, and again, you’ll see all of the location info from before as well. Even though the reach is greater than the fans, I haven’t found that my overall results have changed by any noticeable amount, in fact, I expect them to stay pretty much the same for a while now.

Where it starts to get interesting is when you scroll down to see how you reached people. You’ll see from by screenshot below that Facebook kindly break up all of your traffic into sections of organic, paid, viral, and total reach. This view is a really good way of seeing how effective Facebook can be for Facebook marketing as the number of people who saw the name Expert Photography is greater than the amount of people who saw my page organically. You’ll notice that there’s no stat for the paid reach because I don’t currently run any adverts on Facebook. Please note that these results are not by the day, they’re the day that the previous 6 day period has ended on. The unique users by frequency section on the right, above, is very similar to the visitor loyalty section in your GA. It breaks down the amount of users that you’ve reached, by the number of time that they were reached in a 6 day period, helping you to see how strong your following is. There’s an increase in frequency when you get to the 6-10+ section on the bar chart, which means that you have a strong following as these people are seeing something from your page at least once a day.

All of these results start to change when we change what sort of content that we want Facebook Insights to examine. When you click on the ‘All Page Content’ tab in the top left, you can change it to select ‘Your Posts’ and you’ll start to see results for only your posts. You’ll notice that for me, the amount of organic reach is now much higher comparatively to my viral reach. That’s because it includes things such as photos, which I happen to have a lot of, as it’s a photography blog, and a great way to get your name out there. The unique users by frequency is down, but actually provides better results as I see that the people who are actually looking at what I’m posting are doing so more often.

The final section on this page is the ‘Visits to Your Page’, broken down into page views and unique visitors. This can be incredibly useful if you know what you’re looking for as you can see how exactly how many times people have visited your page. When you take this information and compare it with the content that you’ve been promoting, from links and statuses to polls and photos, you can see what drives the most amount of visitors to like your page. One spike that stands out in particular, is the second main one that happened on the 2nd of October. This was a the day that I posted a photo album of an event that I had worked at, and a lot of the people from that event came and viewed my profile. We’ll look at how you can further track this sort of data later on.

There’s another small section just underneath this which provide information on what exactly was viewed the most, and who sent the visitors. The most viewed tab is the photo viewer application I believe, which stands to reason as my photos are fairly popular, and I’m constantly uploading new content there.

The external referrers results are actually quite surprising to me, and help me to realize how effective or ineffective my methods have been. ‘goo.gl’ is the URL shortener that I use with my Tweet Adder to post daily links my fan page through Twitter, and it’s been much more effective than I imagined. ‘t.co’ is the URL shortener that I use to send people from my Twitter to my Facebook through a personal message, and in the past I’ve found that about 25% of people will click on this link, which seems to correlate well with my results. My own website produces surprisingly low amounts of referrals, despite all the hard work I put into convincing people to come over, but with so many people coming through other means, it’s not necessarily a problem.

Not only does the external referrers section tell me how well my own marketing is going, but it reveals people who are linking to me that I didn’t even know about. Incomediary.com sent 5 visitors in the last month, which is of no surprise, but what’s confusing is that the website I’m blurring out is sending even more. Because this is unusual, I of course check out his website, and I can see straight away that he’s in the making money online niche. You may see where this is going.

Now, because I have a good understanding of how referrals work, and the nature of this niche, my first thought is to search Income Diary in the search box, and sure enough, there’s a list of our post. They’re not simply linked to ID though, they completely reproduce all of the content, including images and links, and the only credit available is a small ‘[viaIncomeDiary]’ at the end of the page. This sort of thing is common when you’re writing good content, and I discovered another website writing suspiciously similar content to me just last night, and there’s things we can do to stop it, but for now I’m blocking out his URL, so that he doesn’t make any more money of our backs.

Talking About This

As I’m sure you’ll know by now, the talking about this stat is all about the number of people who have interacted with your page, whether it’s a comment, a like, or a share, etc. I’ve shared my results because I’m a little bit surprised by them. There’s a spike in the amount of people who are interacting with me in the female ages 45-54, which is useful to know, because that tells me a lot about the sort of shooter they are. When I do my Twitter marketing, I can’t help but notice the amount of profiles that look something like ‘wife, mom, photographer’, and it seems that this is becoming an increasingly popular demographic, which I can easily target my content to. This is just one of the many things you’ll discover when you start to explore your Insights. The final section that you’ll see in your Insights is a graph of how often people are interacting with your page, based on a 7 day period. The great thing about this is that you don’t have to see this in the view shown below, you can always change it so that it looks at different facts, rather then just all the stories. You can change it to page likes for example to see how often someone is liked your page in the last week, as well at the viral reach that comes from that. You can also look at stories from your posts, mentions and photo tags, and posts by other people.

Looking Further

Facebook have clearly upped their game when it comes to providing useful analytics that you can actually do something with, rather than what they provided you with before. We can take the insights a step further though, by studying what happens on a particular day, one that’s perhaps quite popular, so that we can see what we’ve done and how we can use it to improve. For me that day was the 4th of October, the day after I published an article on the top Twitter users in my niche and I received 22 new likes that day. When you narrow down all the stats to a certain time range, you can see where they’ve come from and what they’re reacting to, which will help guide you in the future when you’re trying to create material that will drive traffic to your fan page.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the new Facebook insights, especially because I didn’t think much of them before. If you don’t have a fan page for your website yet, then you’re behind the times because that’s something you should have started on day one. Get one started and start having a look at where your fans are coming from and market to them to build a following to your website. I link to my fan page and not my website on my Twitter because I know that If I can convert them into fans, I have a good chance of them coming back more than just once.

The post The Complete Guide To The New Facebook Insights appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Most welcome pages still exist primarily to fulfill this purpose, but large companies have started to dabble with more creative uses of the almighty welcome page.

You can have an affordable and high-end web designer or developer get more out of your welcome page by visiting AwesomeWeb.com

Here’s 20 of the best designed Facebook fan and welcome pages in terms of how well they convert and how creatively they’re promoting their brand.

Bob Marley

I included the Bob Marley welcome page because it doesn’t ask you to “Like” Bob Marley. It asks you to join a movement that Bob Marley dedicated his career towards promoting, “One Love”.

Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola fan page emphasizes the “Like” button with a simple, 5-word call-to-action. It coincides with their latest “The Secret is Out There” YouTube campaign and they creatively incorporate fan photos as well.

Cranium

What better way to promote a board game than to showcase YouTube videos of real people playing the game and clearly enjoying themselves? This isn’t Cranium’s welcome page, but it’s a creative use of pages to help promote the fun nature of their brand.

Eminem

Eminem is the second most-liked page on Facebook (behind, you guessed it, Facebook). It spotlights his latest music videos, but before you can play them, you need to “Like” the page.

Gary Vaynerchuk

If you read IncomeSup, you probably know Gary. But most people don’t. So the first question his Facebook page answers is, “Who is Gary Vaynerchuk?” It’s a creative way to tell Gary’s story as well as make you think, “This guy is worth becoming a fan of.”

Get 10K Fans

Brian Moran’s Get 10,000 Fans is one of the world’s most interesting Facebook case studies. His welcome page is simple, highly effective, and you get the sense that it’s the tip of the iceberg as far as how much there is to learn from him and his page.

Jones Soda

The Jones Soda welcome page is simple, well-designed, and captures the essence of the brand they’ve been building for 24 years.

Kit Kat

Kit Kat is one of the few brands that creatively highlights a “Fan of the month” in their profile picture. They’ve also integrated the Facebook Comments plugin within their fan page to capture their visitors when they scroll to the bottom of the page.

Liverpool FC

Most fan pages use arrows draw attention to the Like button. Liverpool FC, however, uses one of their players to point out the button.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s uses their welcome page to promote their annual McDonald’s Monopoly game by trying to get you to play online as well.

MysteryGuitarMan

With 344,000+ fans, MysteryGutiarMan is one of the most-liked, non-celebrity people in the world. Partly because of how simple his welcome page is. Notice that he included another “Like” button at the bottom.

Nutella

Nutella’s fan page is my favorite of the bunch. The product looks delicious, the arrow points directly to the “Like” button, and “Join our world” makes me want to know more about their world.

Porsche

Porsche’s Facebook page is simple on the surface but they subtlety include transparent images below as though, “once I click ‘Like’ I’ll be able to see what those images are.”

Pringles

Pringles has one of the older Facebook welcome pages in this list. All the sparkles make it exciting.

Red Bull

Red Bull uses their welcome page to promote an extreme sports movie they’ve created called, The Art of Flight. The trailer is as captivating as their brand.

Skittles

In terms of design, I think the Skittles Facebook page takes the cake. Similar to Kit Kat’s Fan of the month, they have a “Rainbro of the Week.” It’s well-designed, well-branded, and makes them seem cool.

Starbucks

The normal Starbucks welcome page is used to promote their latest drinks and specials. But below you’ll find a page where you can send Starbucks eGift Cards to your friends through Facebook. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the near future.

Starburst

Starburst uses their welcome page to promote the Contradictions Project which is aimed at keeping music in schools.

Windows

What? Windows made a “Best Designed” list? Yep. Not so much because of the graphic design, but because of how they segment their audiences so they can capture up to four new fans with one welcome page.

Zappos.com

The Zappos.com fan page is simply gorgeous.

3 Common Facebook Page Elements

Looking back at these examples, I noticed three common elements between most of the pages.

1. Arrows – Arrows direct your eyes to the most important part of the page, the Like button.
2. Red – 12 of these 20 pages use red as the primary color to grab your attention and create an exciting sense of urgency as though you’re going to miss out if you don’t “Like” the page.
3. Like vs. Join – “Like” implies a one-time encounter while “Join” involves commitment to the brand/movement. You want people to join you, not just like you.

I hope I’ve inspired and enlightened you as far as what makes a great Facebook fan page design.

What other welcome pages are you a fan of?

The post 20 Best Designed Facebook Fan Pages appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I got started in August 2009 when I created Train Baseball. I played college baseball and wanted to use my success in college to help young players, parents, and coaches. After using Facebook to get Train Baseball off the ground, I decided to start Get 10,000 Fans.

Now, both of those sites are booming, and earning far more than I make in my full-time job. Yes, I should have quit a long time ago, but I wanted to give it a year before I left my job, especially after getting married in 2010, I have a wife to take care of.

I anticipate leaving my job in 2011 and working on my businesses full-time.

Currently, I’m working about 20 hours per week on both businesses, combined.

After starting Get 10,000 Fans, it took me only 2 months to replace my income from my full-time job. In just 8 months, I’ve been able to reach over 30,000 people using Facebook alone.

Useful Info Box:

Book Your Currently Reading?

Kickass Copywriting Secrets – John Carlton

Best Business Purchase?

MacBook Pro + iPhone. Facebook Ads. Hiring my brother full-time as soon as he graduated college.

Favourite Business Resource?

OptimizePress because it saves me so much time and money and makes me look like an awesome designer.

Biggest Inspiration?

My dad is really who got me started. He engrained in me the desire to never work for anyone except myself, and I can confidently say, at 24 years old, I will never again take orders from someone else.

Favourite Business Website?

AllFacebook.com

1. What gave you the idea for your business and what motivated you to apply yourself and get it done.

When facebook started really working for Train Baseball, I was showing a mentor of mine everything I was doing and he encouraged me to start a new website based on what I learned. I saw an opening in the market and knew Facebook was a hot topic. The instant results are what kept me working hard at it.

2. Comparing your business from back then to now, what has been the main thing that allowed you to expand your business?

Investing my profits back into my business. I used the income I generated to purchase more advertising, buy more traffic, buy the tools I needed to save more time, hired freelancers to get things done faster, and purchased licenses of products I could sell to generate more customers.

3. Whats the most profitable aspect of your online business, why do you think this is and how can others apply this to what they are doing.

Using Facebook Ads. The amount of leads and new customers that FB Ads brings in keeps my entire business running without me.

4. How Do You Work:

I get home from work around 3pm, hang out with my wife, then check email before dinner and get a few things done. Then I’ll work from 6:00-8:00pm on creating products, networking, etc. I focus only on the things that will bring in money that day or the next so I don’t get distracted or off track.

5. When did you realize you were successful/made it.

After my first product launch in February 2011. I was sitting at work running the launch and before I left for the day, I had made more than my yearly salary. The feeling was something I can barely describe. I knew I had a lot of work to do, but knowing that I had done the work myself and seeing paid off was an awesome feeling.

6. Looking back, what could you of done sooner to of got to that point quicker.

Taken the first action. I had the idea months before I started.

Brian with friends in Spain: Myself, James Dyson, Brian Moran, Aimee Moran & Clement Yeung

7. What should other Internet entrepreneurs reading this be focusing on to expand their own Internet business.

Learn as fast as you can. Study everything. Find someone doing what you want to do, and introduce yourself. Ask them questions. Learn from them. If they are where you want to be, they can help you get there.

8. What do you consider the main differences between those people who have been successful in your industry and those who have failed?

The successful ones don’t get distracted and they know what works They don’t chase after endless opportunities looking for the next dollar. They create valueable products and unrefusable offers.

Want to find out more about how Brian makes money from Facebook? Visit his Fan Page Now!

The post Brian Moran – Why Get 10k Fans Is Successful appeared first on How To Make Money Online.