I Waste My Money So You Don't Waste Yours
This is just a quick message to say sorry for the recent dearth of new reviews on Reviews Boss. I’ve been crazy busy with work and setting up my new project – Ace Digital Marketing.
However, I can say that Reviews Boss is going to be hitting the ground running again as of now. So keep your eyes peeled for more great reviews.
I’m also going to be launching a new type of review, where I purchase and evaluate Internet marketing services from sites like Source Wave Market.
Click here to join Group Funnels yourself and start generating leads (and saving time) with your Facebook Groups.
Hey, what’s up? It’s Sam Frost here from reviewsboss.com. In this really short video, I’m going to give you my initial impressions of Group Funnels. So this isn’t a full in depth review, that’s going to be coming soon, but I have been using Group Funnels for a couple of weeks now and I just want to, I guess, share a few thoughts about what I think of the product so far. So basically what Group Funnels does is it makes the management of a Facebook groups easier from the perspective of collecting information. So if you’ve worked with Facebook groups before and if you’re interested in Group Funnels, you probably already have a Facebook group. You’ll know that when people join your group, there’s a few different settings you can have and one of those settings is that you can basically set questions for membership. So you can say, specify up to three questions and people have to respond to those questions, and depending on their responses, you can approve or disapprove their request.
Most Facebook groups, especially business or sort of, yeah, more specialist ones don’t just allow anyone to join. You can make a group to just allow anyone to join it when they click the join button, but generally that’s not a good idea because you’ll get a lot of spam requests. So basically where Group Funnels sort of comes from as a lot of people will run groups, I guess half as an education resource and half as a lead generation resource. So for example, I run a group, a digital marketing for Kiwi businesses, so it’s a digital marketing group specifically for New Zealand based businesses. It’s got only a few hundred members in it, but a great little community in there. When people join, I ask them a few questions basically, are you going to accept the rules of the group? What is your business? So I can confirm that they actually have a business. Then the other question I ask is do you want to get our newsletter and if so, what’s your email address? That’s an optional question, but if people do want to join the newsletter list, they can fill out their email address and click submit and I’ll get that response and I can add that to my autoresponder.
There’s a massive problem here and that’s when you approve someone’s request in Facebook groups. So, you open up your group and there’s a moderation queue of people who are looking to join, you can review all those answers and you can filter on people who answered and people who didn’t and so on and so forth. But when you click approve the request, what happens? Basically that person is approved into your group and their answer’s disappear forever. So if you didn’t catch their answer at the time, if you didn’t grab their email address at the time, if that’s what you’re looking to do, or didn’t grab the name of their business or whatever information you’re trying to collect, that’s it. You can’t get it again without just reaching out to them really and asking them directly.
So what’s the solution? Well, the solution or one solution is Group Funnels. So basically what Group Funnels allows you to do is set up a Google Sheet, so you use Google Sheets, a free product. Most of us are probably familiar with it. You add a basic template so each column becomes a specific field and then when you ask questions, you set up your Group Funnels’ system using a Chrome extension and plug in your group, Group Funnels sheet and do a few little things on the back end. Basically when you click to approve members, either individually or generally, you’ll be doing it as a bulk approval process. So you filter for every unanswered questions and you then hit approve for those ones. What happens is those people’s details are pushed the Group Funnels. Then from there you can push those people’s details to the specific sheet for that group. So if you run multiple groups, you’ll have multiple different sheets.
Yeah, basically that’s all Group Funnels really does. It just allows you to capture that information at the time of approval and that’s really useful if you’re trying to gather things like email addresses, for example. So Group Funnels is proving pretty popular with people who run those coaching Facebook groups or how to run Facebook ads or SEO agency secrets or the kind of thing. Probably if you’re watching this video, you know exactly the conduct group that’s popular with Group Funnels.
I’m doing things a little bit differently. Apart from my digital marketing group, all the other groups I use it for, like entertainment groups around, so I have the world’s largest Futurama fan group for example. One of the questions when you join that group is, do you want to receive our newsletter? I get people, not huge numbers, but decent numbers saying, “Yes, I’d like to receive it.” Well, I can grab their email details and I’ve got evidence then as well and time, date, name, written proof that they wanted to receive those emails. So if I ever had any issues with spam requests, I can go back to that group sheet and say, “Well, actually, look, here you go, you did request that content. So yeah, basically, that’s what Group Funnels does.
My initial impressions so far that it’s pretty functional product. It’s not exactly got the greatest interface have ever used. I mean it’s definitely a bit sort of pieced together. The interface could be better. It could have much, much better instructions for set up. But the actual process works. I mean, it would be nice if it integrated directly into autoresponders like MailChimp or AWeber or whatever you use, but I suspect that would require a lot of development work. I mean, actually putting everything into Google Sheets is pretty nice. I wish it would just push things automatically to a Google Sheet. Instead you have to go and approve your queue in Group Funnels, on the Facebook group membership panel and then you go into the Group Funnels’ Chrome extension, so you have to be using Chrome. I don’t think it supports any other browser. Then from there you push to the relevant sheets.
So for Group A, when you submit from Group Funnels’ extension that pushes everything to the relevant shape of a Group A. Then you can do things like filter out duplicates or filter people who didn’t respond to the questions you wanted. So you can grab all those email addresses and upload them into your autoresponder or do whatever you want with the data. But yeah, initial impressions of Group Funnels, it does work quite well. The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what it is. I guess it all comes down to how seriously you’re taking your groups. If you’re growing a very small niche group, you’re the only one doing approvals. You don’t get a lot of requests. It’s probably just easier to manually copy and paste the responses to each question and it’ll save you a bit of money.
But if you are doing a higher volume of approvals, maybe you’re having to approve probably 20, 30 plus people a day into any given group, it will save you quite a lot of time. Just the fact that it does it all for you, apart from having to push the data from Group Funnels to the sheet, that is really nice. I mean, the other thing I’ve found as well that is quite cool about it is Facebook groups doesn’t debug out quite badly when you try and bulk approved people into a group, so my Futurama fan group is a great example of this. I get a lot of membership request every day. If I, without Group Funnels, if I select [inaudible 00:06:43] answer to the membership questions and click approval, generally I have to sit there and keep clicking over and over again and only a small number are approved at any given time and it can be quite laggy and buggy and sometimes you have to manually approve a few and then refresh the page and it’s just a bit frustrating. With Group Funnels that actually worked really, really nicely. You just click approval and it sort of sequentially goes through and does each one and it does work well.
So what I’m basically saying at the moment is Group Funnels seems pretty good. I think the value of it will really come down to how aggressively you are trying to grow and develop groups and what you want to collect the data for. If you’re just collecting membership request information and you don’t actually have any commercial value in that, well don’t bother because it’s just a waste of time, but if you are looking to collect email addresses or want to collect business names for example, so you can follow up and do some manual outreach, might well be worth it.
I’m going to do a more in depth review of Group Funnels where I screen capture and show you through the product and show you how it all works and cover pros and cons and more detail. But for now, my initial review of Group Funnels is quite good. Like I said, I don’t love the interface. I think there’s ways it could be improved, but it doesn’t do the job it says it’s going to do and that to me is an important thing. So yeah, do stay tuned for my full review of Group Funnels. Or otherwise do check out the product. In the meantime, I’ll leave a link in the video description. Thanks.
I love experimenting with new and interesting ways of building websites.
I’m not a web developer by trade, but I know enough to throw together an okay looking and functioning site.
My first foray into building websites was all the way back in the days of dialup Internet and Microsoft Frontpage. Since then, it has become a heck of a lot easier to build a good website.
The likes of WordPress, and then even easier platforms like Wix and Squarespace, have made building yourself a decent website more accessible than ever before.
But what if you want an even easier option? Maybe you don’t need a huge amount of flexibility or customisation – you just want to be able to put up a simple, one-page site (or maybe even a few pages) with a nice template and great mobile responsiveness?
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Introducing Strikingly.
I first came across Strikingly when talking with a consulting client (Nick Burns from Sell More Tech – you should check this guy out, he is truly one of the most talented people in the tech sales space that I know)
Nick was telling me how he used Strikingly to turn his LinkedIn profile into a basic, yet attractive and functional website. I knew I needed to try it!
Strikingly is a simple website builder. It’s in the vein of Wix, Squarespace and Weebly, but even simpler.
It is primarily focused on helping you build single page landing pages, portfolio sites, single product sales pages, and otherwise very basic “brochure type” sites.
You don’t need any coding, design or programming knowledge. As long as you can type (and drag and drop) then you’re in business.
You can sign up here for Strikingly.
Strikingly has three pricing plans:
I’m a Pro customer, for reference.
The current prices are:
That is the month-to-month pricing. There are actually some very tasty discounts available depending if you’re willing to stump up for a year or two year pricing at one time.
I’m just paying month-to-month as I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like Strikingly, but when renewal time comes I’ll probably be buying at least one year at a time.
My recommendation is to sign up for free and enjoy a 14 day trial, and then decide from there if you want to continue with a paid membership.
There is a massive difference between the three pricing tiers.
Here’s what you need to know:
Basically, free is a waste of time because you cannot connect a custom domain.
Limited is okay, but really I think that if you have any intention to use Strikingly in a commercial sense, then you’ll be wanting to opt for Pro.
Pro has so many more features for such a marginally higher price, that you’d be crazy not to take it in my opinion.
I’m a big fan of Strikingly. Not because it’s the most advanced or feature-rich site builder, but simply because it kicks ass as a platform for turning your existing LinkedIn profile into an attractive, functional website that you can use to boost your personal brand.
I created my new business website, samfrost.co.nz, using Strikingly. It took me about 15 minutes from account setup to have a decent-looking and functional site launched.
I’ve probably spent no more than a couple of hours total (excluding writing blog posts) to get this ticking over nicely.
The biggest issue I have with Strikingly is with regards to its in-built eCommerce solution. It could be really good for selling individual products, but it falls short due to the lack of tax control and confirmation email customisation. If these items could be fixed, it would make a massive difference.
To conclude my Strikingly review, I believe this platform is definitely worth your while to check out. If you know that all you need is a simple, attractive site that acts as a bit of an interactive brochure (maybe with some basic extra functions like a blog included) then Strikingly could be a perfect solution.
I think it is especially good for anyone who wants to create a basic “personal brand showcase”. Take a look at my website, samfrost.co.nz, to see what I mean. With regards to consulting, my name is my business. If you are looking to do anything similar, then Strikingly is a great choice. This is even more the case if you intend on importing your LinkedIn profile and turning that into an attractive, functional showcase site.
Overall, I think that if you value speed and simplicity over complex features, then you won’t go too far wrong with Strikingly.
Click here to sign up for a 14-day free trial and see if you agree with my opinion!
Running a business based in Christchurch, New Zealand (or maybe you’re based somewhere else in the world but you just really love the Garden City)?
If so, then you’ll probably be after a good Christchurch SEO service, right?
After all, it’s only normal to want your business to perform better online. You want to get to the top of Google for those crucial terms that are key to the success of your business – and you want to stay there.
Because the barriers to entry are so low, there are a huge number of different companies offering SEO services at all manner of price points. From people offering “guaranteed first page rankings” for some unbelievably low sum, through to super-premium agencies charging many hundreds of dollars per hour; the choice is almost limitless.
However, if you’re after an SEO company that offers great value for money and excellent results for its clients (with a real focus on helping them to make more money from their web presence) then you’ll want to check out Christchurch SEO.
With SEO packages to suit every business type and budget, you’ll be looked after like you won’t believe. Don’t fall for the hype of agencies promising the world for pennies … instead get ahead with www.christchurchseo.co.nz and do things right the first time.
Coinexchange support finally got back to me, informing me that they would re-process the withdrawal I had made that was “lost in cyberspace” with a TX ID of 1.
It’s good to see some support finally come through, although it is absolutely unacceptable that support should take that long to receive.
If anyone from coinexchange.io is reading this, please consider hiring more staff to take care of your support needs!
Something I’ve been reviewing more of recently is product and services related to cryptocurrency. In particular, I’m starting to “find my flow” when it comes to reviewing cryptocurrency exchanges.
The exchange is where you buy and sell cryptocurrency. It’s like a big marketplace for crypto, and there are loads of exchanges all around the Internet. For example, I recently did a review of Cryptopia – one of the larger exchanges. I’m also planning on doing reviews on other ones like Binance, Poloniex, TradeSatoshi and more.
Today I’ll be doing a review of coinexchange.io and trying to see whether it is good or if it is a “scam exchange”.
There are some positives about coinexchange. Their interface isn’t terrible, and there are definitely opportunities to profit on this exchange due to the proliferation of low market cap coins – you wouldn’t want to hold (or should i say HODL) them, but if you are shrewd enough you can do really well putting say $500 into one of these coins, riding it up on a pump, and then getting out with a nice profit. Of course you can also get massively burned as well!
The fundamental issue with coinexchange.io is that it is plagued by the same issues that tend to ruin all other cryptocurrency exchanges:
Is coinexchange.io a scam? Probably not. It’s not as glaring bad as say coinsmarkets.com (which almost certainly has turned out to be a scam). The withdrawal issue is probably just a bug as it can be fixed by support when you eventually reach them. However, due to the unregulated, rapidly-changing nature of the cryptocurrency world you need to be careful. For example, uring my use of the site it has gone down a couple of times for unscheduled maintenance. And that could easily turn in to permanent maintenance and the site owner(s) running off to the Seychelles with your Bitcoin in tow. I suspect it’s just an amateur-run outfit that has been developed on a shoestring budget.
Fundamentally, I think you should avoid coinexchange.io like you would tertiary syphilis or Ebola – that is to say run a million miles in the opposite direction. It’s buggy. there are known issues with withdrawing, and you have no way of knowing the financial or even infrastructural backing of the platform. However, in the crazy world that is cryptocurency you have to accept that sometimes you can find diamonds under piles of dog turd. Coinexchange.io is a great example of this. It’s basically horrendous to use but if you can tolerate it (including the risk of not getting your withdrawals) then you can potentially do okay if you feel the need to dabble in the dark side of truly garbage cryptos.
What I would say is that you should avoid using this exchange for any crypto where there is a better, more trustworthy alternative. For example, you can swap BTC for Dogecoin on Bittrex, Poloniex, or Cryptopia – these are all far more trustworthy exchanges. You should only use “fringe” exchanges like coinexchange.io for buying something you basically cannot get anywhere else (a good example would be something like Stronghands. I used coinexchange for this precise coin as I liked the idea of getting millions of something for less than a hundred bucks … it’s just a good laugh really). As always never leave anything on the exchange you aren’t willing to lose, and make withdrawals immediately – bearing in mind that with coinexchange your withdrawal might never show up at all!
If you do want to register for this exchange, then you can do so here. I could provide you with my affiliate link (so that I earn a cut on the trade fees you make for the exchange) but I think with the issues I’ve had that would be immoral to do so. If I get my withdrawal sorted and the support picks up a bit, then I might change my mind. That being said, if you’d like to thank me then you can always send me a tip in the cryptocurrency of your choosing – just comment below and I’ll leave you my address 😉
Also, if you’re new to cryptocurrency investing and want to get a concise and effective “quick start” guide that will help you avoid common mistakes, then I recommend this book – Cryptocurrency Investing Bible. It’s available on Amazon for less than the price of a cup of coffee (for the Kindle edition). It’s well worth checking out to get a sound grounding in key crypto investing concepts. Click here to check out the book.
A while back a did a review of a free online tool called Keyword Shitter (you can read the review here). Despite the bizarre name of the product, this review has become one of the most popular on my site … people just love free keyword research software as opposed to paying a fortune for tools like Long Tail Pro.
There’s now a newer, prettier turd on the block. It’s called Keyword Shitter Pro – and today I’m here to review it in order to determine whether the original is still the best, or whether this new contender is the king of keyword crap.
Keyword Shitter Pro is, as the name kind of suggests, a keyword research tool. Unless I’m much mistaken it’s basically a Google Suggest scraper like the original one.
All you do is load in a seed keyword or two, select some basic parameters, and then go to town with finding loads of keyword phrases.
Here’s an example result:
It’s free. Nothing more to say here. No account even needed!
Although OG Keyword Shitter is awesome, I must admit that Keyword Shitter Pro is better. Although the pagination thing drives me up the wall, it is much nicer to be able to get the same great functionality but with much nicer design and layout.
Go give Keyword Shitter Pro a try and let me know how you get on. I think it’s a real hoot to use, and I’ve already found a bunch of useful keywords. Combine the CSV export with something like Keywords Everywhere for volume and CPC data, and then do some manual analysis and you’ll be in keyword heaven!
One question I get asked a lot on this blog is “does AffiloJetpack work?”
I could do the most detailed and in-depth review of the product ever (oh wait, I already have – you can read it here) and people would probably still want to ask me the same question.
On that basis, I thought it appropriate to write a completely separate article examining whether or not AffiloJetpack actually works as a genuine, bona-fide way to make money online.
So, does it work?
The honest answer is that it totally depends on you.
I want to let you in on a little secret here: There is literally no “guaranteed” method to making money online (whether from affiliate marketing, product creation, freelancing, consulting or whatever).
There are many products that teach methods that do work for other people.
But what really counts is YOUR ability to take a method and put a spin on it that works.
Far too many people expect results to be handed to them on a plate. The truth is, that simply won’t happen.
When I started out trying to make money with affiliate marketing over ten years ago, I followed a method called the “bum marketing method: Basically, it involved writing articles focused around specific long-tail keyword phrases, and then submitting them to article directories like Ezinearticles.com. At the bottom of the article I would have a call-to-action, encouraging people to click on an affiliate link for a product that would solve their problem.
I spent over 6 months working on this method without success. But then I started to think slightly outside of the box, ensuring that I wrote my content in such a way to not only rank but also “pre-sell” the product I was promoting.
Within a few weeks, I had made my first sale. Within 12 months, I was making thousands a month while only working on this part time (I was still at high school).
So what’s the moral of the story? And what’s the relationship with AffiloJetpack and whether or not it works?
Long story short – you need perseverance and the ability to think a bit outside the box in order to succeed with affiliate marketing (or any form of Internet marketing, in fact).
AffiloJetpack is actually a bit different, in the fact that it is really a set of resources designed to fast-track your success rather than a method per se. However, this is a bit of an advantage. You can take these resources and then come up with your own approach, rather than taking someone else’s approach and coming up with your own resources (if that makes sense).
As long as you are willing to work, then AffiloJetpack will work as well.
Welcome back to another honest Reviews Boss review. Today we are taking a look at Affilorama Premium. This is the monthly membership upgrade option to the free Affilorama membership. Because this isn’t the deepest product out there, it won’t be the longest review on the site … but hopefully you will still get some good value out of it.
Affilorama Premium is an upgrade option for
In case you need your memory jogged, here are the different Affilorama-branded products that are available:
Affilorama Premium – as the name suggests – is part of the Affilorama family of products. This also includes Affilorama free, AffiloJetpack (which is currently not taking new members) and Affilorama Premium.
It is the brainchild of legendary super affiliate, Mark Ling.
Affilorama Premium is a monthly rebill product. I’m not the biggest fan of monthly billing (as I have expressed in a number of reviews) as it often becomes one of those niggly things that you forget about until you check your credit card bill and you’ve racked up big bucks from all sorts of different subscriptions.
You can get your first 30 days’ access for just $1. After that, you’ll have to pay a not insignificant $67 per month.
Payment is processed through Clickbank so you are able to pay with Paypal and all major credit cards. Furthermore, you can get a refund at any stage within the first 60 days of membership as well.
From my perspective, there are three main elements to Affilorama Premium. I will talk to each of them in turn.
There is definitely some useful content to be gleaned from these affiliate magazines. However, the issue is that a lot of it is quite outdated. For example, you can see “Issue 9” is all about building backlinks with article marketing. Anyone who knows anything about SEO will tell you that article marketing is basically dead. It was never even a particularly good way of building links – the benefit came from “parasite” ranking pages in Google and then driving traffic from them. These days, article directories are total graveyards.
You will find that while there are some handy insights in the affiliate magazine content, too much of it is too outdated to be of any real use. What a shame 🙁
There are a bunch of video lessons included with your membership. The main ones are as follows in the image:
That’s quite a bit of content to work your way through. However, some of what you will learn in these lessons is a bit outdated. The best bit is probably the guide to digital product creation … get that right and create a good digital product and you can make a FORTUNE.
One of the biggest selling points of this product is its bundled hosting. You get enough hosting for up to 15 websites, which is pretty reasonable when you work it out at a monthly rate per site (and you’re getting all of the other content on top as well).
Each hosting instance you create will have full cPanel access, which is handy and gives you a lot more control than you get with some bundled hosting options that only allow you to install WordPress.
However, the hosting is not particularly good. There is a lot of it in terms of the number of sites you can host, but the quality just isn’t there in my opinion. The biggest reason for this is that it doesn’t seem to be very fast. Every site I have built on this hosting has had slow loading times, and when I investigate further it is often because the server is simply slow to respond. Not cool 🙁
Another annoying thing is that you will find yourself constantly getting hit with WP Admin captcha screens. 50% of the time I find that I am unable to progress past the captcha, no matter how many correct attempts I make. This means I just have to come back at a later time in order to log into my site (or remember to leave myself persistently logged in).
NB: One way I did find to get around this limitation was by using one of those WordPress plugins that allows you to change your WP login address. So instead of going to /wp-login.php (which would trigger the captcha) I would just log in at /reviewsbosslogin or something that I defined myself.
Overall, I don’t really think that Affilorama Premium is worth the monthly fee of $67.
The crazy thing is that the complete opposite would be the case if the hosting platform provided was faster, more reliable, and more flexible. However, as it stands you are paying quite a high monthly price for what is fairly dated training, and less-than-stellar hosting.
The PLR is kind of useful if you want to whip it up through a spinner or cheap rewriter for Tier 1 Web 2.0 links or something like that. But then again you can buy SCREEDS of PLR from Fiverr for next to nothing.
Here’s how I think Affilorama Premium could improve big time:
I reckon that if Affilorama Premium had a bit more freshness of content, and the hosting was improved (at least to the point where you don’t constantly get smashed with login captchas) then it would become worth a buy. So I’m definitely not saying that the product is bad – especially compared to some of the absolute tripe that is available in the Internet marketing training space – it just needs a little bit more value added, either through more content or a lower price, before I can recommend it to most people.
Welcome back to another honest review on Reviews Boss. This time we are adding on from my previous review of Affilorama, and taking a look at one of the most popular premium products that is offered through that brand. In this AffiloBlueprint review, you’re going to get the straight dope on this affiliate marketing powerhouse product!
Fresh and relevant for 2019, we will be dissecting the latest version of AffiloBlueprint (3.0). Although this product is getting on for being a few years old now, it still receives regular updates and remains a popular fixture in the affiliate marketing space … that means the task falls upon yours truly to ensure that it is reviewed to a higher standard than what is out there at the moment.
Go here to visit the AffiloBlueprint official website to learn more about the product as well.
If you’d rather watch a video review of the product, here is one I did a while back:
I’ve also just created another video, which you can watch here:
I actually did a review of AffiloBlueprint on my old website, which I’m phasing out in favour of focusing more on Reviews Boss (as my passion really does lie in reviewing products). So if I have already reviewed the product once, why am I doing it again?
Basically, because all the other reviews out there on AffiloBlueprint suck. I must admit that even my original review on my old site simply isn’t up to the standard I expect from myself these days.
I mean look at some of these so-called Affiloblueprint reviews:
I don’t like seeing hard working people waste their money on products that are pushed by unscrupulous affiliates only because of the commission they stand to make. I have nothing against affiliate marketing at all in principle – in fact I am an affiliate myself, and promote products on this site. However, I only promote something with my commission-earning link if I truly think it is worth a buy.
One day I’ll do a big discussion piece on the state of reviews in the Internet marketing sphere … especially on the affiliate marketing end of spectrum, which is like the digital equivalent of sub-prime loans.
This product is the flagship course from Affilorama. It is an affiliate marketing training course, designed to teach you a step-by-step method for creating profitable affiliate sites. The strategy you will learn is supposedly based on the one used by Mark Ling (the super affiliate/guru behind Affilorama, as well as other brands like Traffic Travis) to generate some of his best successes as an affiliate in his “up and coming” days.
Whether or not Mark actually builds any sites in this manner these days remains to be seen. But it certainly sounds nice to learn the step-by-step methods used to a super affiliate, right?
You should also note that this is a course which has been around for a number of years, and has been through several iterations. We are, in fact, up to version 3.0 of AffiloBlueprint, which originally dropped in mid 2012 … maybe a new one is just around the corner?
I don’t know much at all about version one of the course, and can’t seem to find out much about it online. However, I had membership to version 2.0 for a while. Unfortunately all access to that version of the course was removed quite some time ago. From my recollection, the AffiloBlueprint 2.0 method was focused on the following:
That site, WOW Black Book, was actually the site Mark Ling created as a sort of live case study to demonstrate the AffiloBlueprint method in version 2.0 of the course.
As you can see, not much has changed on it since it was made … I wonder if it actually makes him any more money these days? Quite possibly, if there is some residual traffic.
To be honest, not that much in terms of overall strategy structure. You see the whole point of the AffiloBlueprint system is to provide a strategy that could theoretically work until the day the Internet dies (or at least until the day that people stop searching for stuff in Google and other search engines).
What changed between the earlier versions of the course and the most recent version are things like:
So we have established the rough idea of Mark Ling’s strategy that is being taught in this course. But what exactly is included in the current version of AffiloBlueprint when you part with your $197?
My aim with Reviews Boss is always to give you the most accurate picture possible of a product before you decide to purchase it. In order to achieve this aim, I’ve actually taken screen captures inside the member area of AffiloBlueprint. Each one also includes a caption to further explain what is included. This will take some scrolling; if I get enough feedback saying it is too much, then I will change this to a slider type layout – please voice your concern in the comments section or send me an email.
And here’s a “helicopter view” of the course overview page:
If you’ve been paying close attention to this review, then you’ll know that I linked to the site Mark built for version 2.0 of the course – WOW Black Book.
But what site was made for this newer version of the course?
This is important, because the whole point of ABP is that it is meant to be a step-by-step course where you follow “over the shoulder” as Mark and his team (the lessons are narrated by different people) build . It also gives you a good idea of what the end result might be once you’ve finished going through all 90 or so lessons.
The site created is called Enlightenment Gateway, a classic self-help site that features a number of different sub topics and promotes a wide variety of affiliate products:
AffiloBlueprint retails for $197 USD, which makes it a fairly expensive product by the standards of make money online courses – especially compared to the endless litany of $7 WSOs and such like that are out there.
If you’re looking for a discount on AffiloBlueprint, then I’m sorry but I don’t have one to offer. However, I can tell you to keep an eye on the Affilorama site, because from time-to-time you will see special offers announced via a notification bar at the top of the page.
Also, if you’re signed up to Affilorama’s emails through your free account, then you should get notification of any sales. I have definitely seen it advertised for $97 in the past, but that special price seems to come through very rarely.
Because AffiloBlueprint is sold through the Clickbank network, you are guaranteed a 60 day money-back refund window. Basically, this means that if you are in any way unhappy with your purchase, you can return it within 60 days for a full refund. If you do this through the Affilorama/AffiloBlueprint support, you’ll find that you will probably have to do some back and forth emails as they will try to ascertain what you’re unhappy about, and see if they can placate you. Nothing wrong at all with this approach on the part of the vendor, and actually a much better way of providing service – but I think you ought to be aware of it.
As alluded to already, AffiloBlueprint is part of the Affilorama family of products. This brand is spearheaded by Mark Ling, who has already been discussed in detail elsewhere.
There’s not really much need to add any more detail here.
Joining AffiloBlueprint is simple enough. Simply head on over to affilorama.com/affiloblueprint and then scroll through the sales pitch until you hit the add to cart button.
If you are already a free member of Affilorama (if not, then go here to learn more about it in another one of my reviews) then you can also join through your members’ dashboard. It shouldn’t be too hard to find where to do this.
When you add AffiloBlueprint to your cart, you will be taken to a page that looks like this:
As you can see, the first portion is the $197 membership fee for the main course. Fair enough, you knew it was coming! But take a look at the section that says “Affilorama Premium – Free Trial”. If you read the fine print, you’ll find out that when you purchase the main AffiloBlueprint course you are automatically signed up to Affilorama Premium and you receive a free 30 day trial of it. That’s a nice bonus, right?
However, there is one problem here. You don’t have the option to opt out at this stage by unchecking a pre-ticked check box. There is literally nothing you can do to not be set up with an auto rebill membership to Affilorama Premium at the time of purchasing ABP. And after 30 days, you will get hit with a $67 charge that will recur each month unless you make a conscious effort to cancel your Premium membership.
Inherently there is nothing wrong with this practice, as you will definitely be able to get out of the Premium subscription with a quick email. However, I am also fairly certain that there will be people out there who perhaps aren’t so great at keeping on top of their subscriptions and checking their credit card statements, and they will wind up paying this recurring fee without realising it.
Giving people a free trial of a rebill product when they purchase a one-off item is probably great business practice in terms of generating profits. However, it would be nice to see this changed to a check box where you can remove Premium access before continuing to the payment gateway.
Here’s what I like about AffiloBlueprint:
Here’s what I dislike about the product:
When it comes to assessing make money online products, this is the question that really counts. If you buy AffiloBlueprint today and follow its training to the letter, will you actually make any money? After all, it does not matter one iota how well produced a course is, if it doesn’t actually help you to line your bank account.
So what’s the rub with this one?
Certainly, you should be able to build a nice enough looking website – especially if you take the initiative to change from AffiloTheme to a mobile responsive WordPress theme, and spend a bit of time learning how to make your site look great. You should be able to have a fair crack at finding a niche and products to promote as well. The instructions really are quite simple to follow. But will you succeed?
The members’ forum for this product is littered with lots of posts about people who started out with high hopes of making big affiliate bucks, but who are now languishing with a poorly performing site that’s never got them anywhere except for maybe a couple of cursory sales. Does that mean the method being taught is broken? No … far from it:
The harsh truth is that affiliate marketing isn’t easy. And if there is an easy method that goes public (like the infamous “bum marketing” back in the day where you could just spam article directories 24/7 for easy rankings and traffic) it soon gets saturated with every Tom, Dick, and Harry having a go … and then it becomes a sort of Tragedy of the Commons type scenario. Soon that easy goldmine will be exhausted. Everyone will be off to the next shiny object, and you could be left holding your shovel!
A training course or method for any type of web marketing should be seen more as a INSPIRATION than a “paint by numbers” system to follow. Anything that is truly capable of making you money with 0 creativity or independence is almost certainly guaranteed to get exhausted very quickly.
Being able to follow the instructions is, of course, important. If you can’t follow them to get your hosting configured, or create your affiliate links, or set up your Aweber account, then you’re never going to get anywhere. However, what separates the people who go through the motions and never really have any success from those who do well with this ABP method (or ANY web marketing method, for that matter) is the ability to apply their own twists. If you cannot see beyond the 91 video lessons and exactly what they teach you to do, then you aren’t likely to have much luck. Without imagination, without initiative, and without the will to experiment and learn from your mistakes, you are probably better off investing your $197 in an index fund!
This is a hard concept to explain neatly, but once you start affiliate marketing yourself I think you will quickly see what I mean. The forums and blogs out there are littered with people who want everything spoon feed to them, and who refuse to ever experiment or learn by doing and failing. These are the same people you might see in the member forum for ABP, complaining that they aren’t getting anywhere. If they’ve listed their website for help or advice, then check it out and see why. You’re almost bound to find that they followed the course instructions but never went any further than that. Instead of using the method as an inspiration, they’ve become a slave to it and cannot escape its confines!
Sorry for such a bunch of esoteric waffle – but this is something I feel very passionate about. This isn’t an indictment on a method like AffiloBlueprint; building niche sites is a basic strategy that has worked for years, and will probably keep working until the Internet gets switched off by World War 3 or something. ABP teaches a sound method. It can and has worked for loads of people, myself included. But unless you can learn organically, and develop your skills beyond relying on step-by-step strategies, then you will always struggle.
If you’re thinking of purchasing AffiloBlueprint, then I really do suggest that you hold on and save your pennies. It’s not that the product is inherently bad; there is a lot of useful information, and the method it teaches has worked well for a lot of people (it just requires a lot more work and/or luck to be successful than is perhaps made out in the training). If you combine the ABP method with a bit more focus on clever traffic generation, then I think you could do very nicely indeed out of it.
However, the big problem is that most of this information can be found for free on affiliate marketing blogs and forums. In fact, I outlined the basics of the method a number of times in this review.
If you’re looking for a premium affiliate marketing product, and don’t mind saving your pennies up for a bit longer, then I really do recommend that you hold off on AffiloBlueprint and instead look to AffiloJetpack (read my review of AffiloJetpack here). The difference between AffiloJetpack and AffiloBlueprint is that with Jetpack, you’re actually getting a whole lot of content that can be used to kickstart the niche site creation process. With AffiloBlueprint you get decent training, some okay hosting, and a very outdated theme.
On this basis, it is my honest recommendation that you join Affilorama for free instead, and then make the best use possible of the lessons available through it. Because the method taught in AffiloBlueprint is such a bread and butter one, you are probably better off trying to learn it for free and then investing the money you save into promoting the website you wind up building. $197 will buy you a decent amount of targeted traffic with Facebook Ads or Google Adwords, in order to test if your conversion funnels etc are working okay.
If you are dead set on getting AffiloBlueprint for whatever reason, then I also advise you to wait for a sale to come along. They seem to happen once every couple of months. These usually coincide with American holidays or retail events, e.g. Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
You can check out AffiloBlueprint here if you would like to buy or find more info. Once again, I want to re-assert that it isn’t a bad product. It’s head and shoulders above 90% of the affiliate training products out there. It’s just I do think that if you are patient and dedicated enough, you’re better off to learn the ropes for free and then dive in the deep end with AffiloJetpack.
This guide is under development – but there’s a lot of useful info in here for the time being. I spun this out from an eBook I was going to write and sell, but decided I would give it all away for free instead!
So sit back, relax, and learn how to make money with Facebook pages in an ethical and sustainable fashion.
Facebook is big, like really big. Every day, millions of people use the platform to connect with friends and family, get informed on current events, and be entertained through content posted on pages and groups that they like.
As you can expect, with such a big audience of people who are passionate about all kinds of things, there is huge opportunity to make money on Facebook.
This guide – The Profitable Pages Blueprint – aims to be your quick-start solution to building, growing and monetizing Facebook pages.
I’ve tried to write it in such a way that you learn everything you need to know to get started now, and the rest can come later on.
You should be able to chew through this guide in around 30-40 minutes, leaving you just enough time to set up your first page.
Of course, if it takes you longer than an hour to get everything underway, don’t panic – good things take time and patience is a virtue!
I’m a freelance digital marketing consultant, based in Christchurch, New Zealand. For my “day job” I help businesses around the world develop and implement winning digital strategies that help them reach their target audience and become more profitable.
You can connect with me on https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfrost/ (just mention you bought the Blueprint), and find out more about my consulting business at www.acedigitalmarketing.net
I’ve been selling products and services online for over 10 years now, and have been fortunate enough to work for a number of leading brands.
I also love creating short, sharp “to-the-point” digital information products that are packed with value, and devoid of the fluff and filler that accompanies most products.
When I’m not working on my business, I love playing guitar, hitting the gym, and taking my dogs out for walks. I’m also partial to a lazy evening in front of the TV every now and then as well!
I stand by the products I create, and want to offer top-notch support. You can get help at any time by emailing me on sam@acedigitalmarketing.net
Before we get into specifics, here is a high level overview of the process we will be following in the Blueprint.
Everything below will be expanded on in its relevant chapter:
There’s a lot to get through, so let’s crack into it. Remember, this guide is very much “to the point” – I’m only telling you what you need to know to get started today. As with all things in life, this Blueprint largely boils down to your ability to execute and take action!
Now you know the overall process we will be following through this guide, it’s time to look at the goal of what we’re trying to achieve with pages.
This is slightly esoteric, so pay close attention so that you get the gist of what you need to achieve.
Basically, what you are aiming to do is create pages that reach a lot of people who are all interested in the same topic/niche, and then engage them (not in the marriage sense – in the sense of getting them to interact with the content you post).
If you know anything at all about Facebook, then you’ll know that Facebook has a problem with pages getting organic reach.
In fact, only a couple of months ago, a new update dropped that significantly hammered a lot of businesses that were completely reliant on Facebook for driving traffic to their websites.
I’ve been lucky so far – the tactics I’ve used have allowed me to enjoy good results, in spite of all this.
And there’s a reason for it. That reason is that I focus on delighting my audience and growing a real community, by posting first and foremost content that gets good reach and engagement.
This means that when I do go and post “monetization content” I get decent cut through.
The truth is that FINISH
There are a few basic tools and resources you’ll need before you can proceed.
In order to follow the Blueprint, you’ll need:
Once you’ve got those items sorted, you’re ready to move on to the fun part – picking the niche/topic for your first Facebook page!
This is perhaps the most important thing to get right if you want to see success from Facebook pages.
The right niche/topic will allow you to build up an engaged, target audience of people who are passionate about the subject you’ve chosen, and who share it with other people they know who share that passion.
The wrong niche/topic will result in you struggling to get traction, and you’ll burn out quickly through no results.
Here are my high level tips:
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When you purchased this Blueprint, you should also have received in the ZIP file it came in a “cheat sheet”. This has a whole bunch of niche ideas listed. If you’re struggling to come up with something, pick one of those.
Also feel free to email me on sam@acedigitalmarketing.net if you need help picking a niche. I even provide a consultancy service where I can do the entire process of building your page, optimizing it, finding initial content & products etc (that is at an extra cost, but just asking me for niche advice is totally free).
This is an important concept to get your head around if you want to maximise your potential to do well down the track, and is something you should think about before you even begin building your first page.
You want to pick a niche/topic where there is good potential to leverage the audience you build to grow more pages down the track.
I’ll use the example of a Ferrari fan page. People who like Ferraris are also likely to be interested in:
This is where having a passion for your niche/topic comes in handy. Because you already know the subject, you will be in with a good shout to understand other related topics that you can use to build more pages in the future.
However, if you picked Amazonian Dung Beetle Fancy as your niche, chances are that even though you potentially could build an audience on Facebook, there isn’t a logical “next step” to leverage that audience to grow another page.
Once you’ve got your first page created and growing, provided you picked a good topic, you’ll be able to leverage off it to build your next one, and so on until you have a powerful “network” built up in a wider topic, like cars, pets, live action comedy shows, horror movies, country musicians or whatever.
Getting a head start on the new pages you create – using the leverage of your existing network – opens up massive opportunities and saves you time and money when it comes to growing your empire.
I’ve used this approach to great effect, growing a network of about 6 pages in a short space of time, all leveraged off one main page.
This can be a confusing concept to get your head around, so I’ve recorded a video here that will help:
VIDEO LINK
Now comes the fun bit, we get to put everything into action. You should have a niche picked, and you’re now ready to build.
I’ve tried to make this step as concise as possible. If you get confused, consult the accompanying video at fanpageblueprint.net/pagesetupguide
For this Blueprint, I’ve actually taken to creating a new page called “Rick & Morty Fan Club”. Throughout the remainder, I’ll show you the exact steps I take with all new pages I create.
In this section, every step is accompanied with a photo to help you understand what you need to do. Remember, you can also visit that link above for a detailed video (it shows me setting up a generic test/example page).
Firstly, go to facebook.com/pages/create:
Next, select the type of page you want. Usually you’ll be picking from any of the last four options. I’m doing a TV show, so I pick the relevant category from “Entertainment”:
Once that’s loaded, you need to give your new page a name. Remember to choose wisely. I like to pick a page name that accurately describes to a prospective follower what the page is about. That’s why I chose “Rick & Morty Fan Club”.
Other formats that work well include:
It just needs to be clear what your page is about from the outset. Try to avoid using group in the title, because Facebook Groups are a different thing altogether.
Once you’ve named your page (check carefully for spelling errors, of course) you should hit “Get Started”.
You’ll be greeted with something like this:
This is prompting you to upload a profile picture for your page. Go to Google Images and find a suitable image for your page. Something that immediately conveys what your page is about.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll be prompted to upload a cover photo. Same thing goes here:
Upload your cover photo, and then continue on to your freshly-created page. You’ll see something like this:
Too easy. Now, Facebook will prompt you to do two very important things (short description and username).
Let’s start with the short description. This is where you write a few sentences describing what your page is about and who it is for:
Save that, and move on to the next step which is picking a username/vanity URL for your page.
Unless you’ve picked a totally obscure niche, you’ll probably find that the exact username you want is taken. Don’t worry – just pick something that communicates the purpose of your page and is logical:
I often like to add “unofficial” in places, so that people know I’m not the official page (if it’s a TV show, brand or whatever). However, I also know some people who have done really well by pretending to be an official page, but this is a deceptive and black hat strategy, albeit potentially highly effective.
Once you’ve set up your username (once again, pick carefully and spell check it), you should click the “About” link on the left hand navigation.
This is where you can add a whole raft of extra info. It’s worth filling this out because you want to make your page look as legitimate as possible.
Depending on the page type you selected earlier, what you see here will vary significantly:
After that’s done, you can create a Story for your page. This is your opportunity to wax lyrical about why you created the page. Don’t go overboard here, just talk about the fact that you wanted to make a great place to go for fans of [your niche] to hang out on Facebook.
Once you’ve created the Story and filled out any other relevant data, the basic set up of your page is done. Here’s what mine looked like:
Great work! Now it’s time to connect FPTraffic and start populating your page with some content.
By this stage, you’ve got a niche and you’ve got a page.
Now it’s time to do two key things:
This is actually super easy. Firstly, you need to have registered for FPTraffic. If you haven’t done that, then do so here.
Once that is done, just log in to FPTraffic:
If you’re also logged in to your Facebook account, then the pages under your control will pull in after you authorize the application.
This whole process takes about 30 seconds.
Boom, you’re ready to move on to the next step!
Before you can go any further, it’s critical to set up your page schedule on FPTraffic. You need to do this before you start adding content. Why? Because any content you add without a schedule configured will simply be removed automatically from your queue.
Here’s how to do it:
Start by clicking on Pages, and then Schedules.
At this stage (unless you have created other pages in the past) you’ll only have one page to select. So pick it and manage schedules.
I usually always pick 9am and 9pm for my pages. My experience has been that 2x per day scheduled posting is good. 3x can be okay, but is often too much (and you’ll burn through your queue quickly). 1x generally isn’t enough.
I learned the 2x rule from Luke, the creator of FPTraffic, and it has always served me well.
Also remember that the schedule is based off the time that the FPTraffic server is running. It’s a USA timezone, so if your main audience is in the USA then this won’t be relevant to you. However, let’s say you were based in Syndey, and your page is only relevant to Australians (“Victoria Bitters memes”, anyone?). You’d want to work out 9am and 9pm Syndey time, and then convert that to server time to pick the right posting time.
You’ll see a drop down like this:
Whatever you do, make sure you save your schedule before proceeding. Look out for the yellow notification. If you don’t have a set schedule and you go off and load in content, it will just be deleted and you’ve wasted that time:
Now we’re ready to move on to finding content!
This is a real “how long is a piece of string” question. There is no easy way to say, and the focus of this guide is NOT on giving you some unrealistic expectation about what you’re going to make.
My view of Facebook pages is primarily that they can be a fun, enjoyable, relatively passive source of income. Due to Facebook’s recent crackdown on organic reach, you’re probably not going to become a millionaire.
Therefore, the way to view the potential of Facebook pages (in my humble opinion) is as a profitable hobby.
Realistically, I believe you should be able to hit at least $10 per day profit within 3-6 months of working on your page for no more than 15 minutes a day (on average).
However, results will vary significantly, depending on your niche, what products/offers you monetize with, and your ability to put your own spin on things.
For reference, in the past 12 months I have made around $10,000 in revenue from affiliate sales, ad clicks and viral media site sales, spending no more than 15-20 minutes a day (on the couch, watching TV I might add) to get there.
By now you should have a Facebook page set up and ready to go, as well as a good understanding of how to:
At this stage, you’re ready to take the training wheels off and hit the ground running.
Before you get too involved, I want to cover some key pitfalls you need to be aware of, as well as tips and tricks that will help you to get the best possible results out of your pages.
These messages are always fake, and are scams. Avoid like the plague. Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam.
Recommended reading:
As mentioned in the required tools section, you need to have an account set up for FPTraffic.
FPTraffic is important for three key reasons:
Go here to sign up for FPTraffic. It’s only $10 USD a month. That is peanuts for something that will save you dozens, if no hundreds of hours a year. Without it (or any other scheduling tool) you will have to spend significantly more time managing your page(s), reducing the effectiveness of this method.
Remember, the Blueprint is all about teaching you a method you can complete in 10-15 minutes a day, sitting on the couch, while watching TV and having a beer! Without FPTraffic you’ll have to put in a lot more effort.
Go here to register now for FPTraffic.
By now, you’ve got a page set up and basic info filled out. You’ve also got FPTraffic set up and your schedule set.
Now you’re ready to dive into finding content for your queue.
There are heaps of different ways to get content (in fact, so many that I could probably write another whole guide just about that).
But what I want to focus here is on five key methods that will get you up and running in no time at all.
Additional, more advanced methods will be shared:
The first method I recommend when you create a new page is using the Bing Image scraper in FPTraffic.
Due to API restrictions, there is no Google Images functionality. But this is the next best thing.
To get started, hit “Find Content” on the FPTraffic nav bar, and then hit Bing:
Select your page, and then add a keyword to search for content.
What you search here will largely depend on the niche you’ve chosen. For example, if you made a page called “British Bulldog Fans” then you might search for:
And so on.
I know that quote-style content works well with my target audience, so I picked “Rick and morty quotes” as my search:
Once you’ve hit “find images” you’ll see the results:
You can scroll down, and load more as you go along. Depending on your keyword selection, there could be hundreds of images to pick from.
To add a post to your queue, all you do is click on it. It will appear on the queue pane on the right:
Congratulations. You’ve now got your first queued posts! Once the server time hits your scheduled time, the first item in your queue will be posted to your page.
Another technique I always use with pages (where possible) is scraping relevant subreddits for content.
FPTraffic has an inbuilt Reddit tool, which is super handy.
Reddit is a website that has various boards (subreddits) that are focused around a specific topic. If you’ve picked a “passion niche”, chances are you will be able to find at least one subreddit that has great content for your pages.
To find a suitable subreddit, just Google “site:reddit.com [your niche]”.
For example:
The first result looks gold!
Doesn’t this look like it’s going to be jam-packed with awesome content for my page? Hopefully your subreddit will be the same.
Remember that there can often be 3, 4, 5+ subreddits for a particular topic, so look around for more than the first one you find.
What you need to do is grab the bit of the subreddit URL that sits after reddit.com/r/ – in this case that would be “rickandmorty” (no speech marks, of course).
Copy and paste that, and then from the nav menu, select Reddit:
On the screen that loads, select your page and then add the Reddit URL snippet you copied earlier. Then hit “Search Images”.
FPTraffic will scrape suitable image posts from that subreddit, and as with the Bing image search you just click on the ones you want to add to your queue.
I regularly use Reddit as a source of great content, and have found some of my best-performing posts on there.
Funnily enough, a couple of my pages are now so big that I frequently see the subreddits for the topics I cover re-posting the content I post to my pages. What goes around, comes around!
One thing to note is that the FPTraffic Reddit scraper just grabs content in a chronological order – newest to oldest.
This is great for finding fresh content, but I want to show you a quick trick that will help you find content with massive potential to go viral.
All you need to do is head back to the subreddit you visited earlier, and find a set of links that say “hot, new, rising, controversial, top” or similar.
Click “top”
Then click “all time” – this will show you the best performing content from the history of that subreddit.
Some of the content won’t be suitable (text posts, links etc) but you will find some pure gold nuggets here.
The next method for grabbing content I want to share is using the FPTraffic browser extension.
This is actually one of the fastest ways of all to grab content.
Here’s what you need to do.
Firstly, Go here and install the FPTraffic Chrome extension. If you don’t already use Chrome, you’ll obviously need to have that installed first.
Once the extension is installed, find a page that has content you’d like to scrape. For example, I just did a quick Google for “Rick and Morty quotes” and picked the first thing that looked good.
Once the page has loaded, click the extension icon in your extensions bar:
This will show something like the following:
There are basically three things you can do here. The first is click a checkbox next to an image. You’ll see the “X of Images Selected” counter go up when you do this. You can also Select All and pick every image on the page, but bear in mind this means literally every image that FPTraffic can identify.
Once you’re done selecting, you hit the blue button, and a window will appear with a bunch of links:
Copy all those URLs, and then click the link that says fptraffic.com/urls.
On that screen, pick your Facebook page, paste in the URLs, and save. Boom, you’ve just added even more content to your queue! Nice work!
The great thing about the FPTraffic Chrome extension is that it makes it super easy to grab content while you’re browsing the net.
The final content getting tactic I want to teach you at this stage of your pages journey is finding awesome posts in niche groups.
Facebook can basically be divided into three main “things”:
Facebook groups often attract huge audiences of passionate people. And for this reason, they can be a fantastic source of high-quality, user-generated content.
Here’s how you can find great content in groups.
Firstly, head to the search bar on your Facebook timeline:
Manipulating your queue in FPTraffic
At this stage, you’ve got a page set up, as well as a schedule of content.
Now you need to get down to business and start getting likes.
There are a few key ways to do this, which I want to cover:
There are, of course, many strategies above and beyond those – but these four key approaches will get you started as quickly as possible, and yield initial results.
Facebook “Like Page” Ads
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The next form of paid advertising for growing your page is “post boosting”. As mentioned elsewhere in this guide, Facebook only shows your posts to a small percentage of the people who like your page (the more popular/viral the post, the higher that percentage).
A workaround for this is post boosting. This is where you basically pay Facebook to show your posts to a bigger audience.
Starting at just $2 per boost, this is an effective method to grow your page and increase reach.
Boosting is easy to do, and you can be up and running with your first boost within a few minutes. What I do recommend, however, is that you hold off on boosting until your page has hit at least 1000 likes. This gives Facebook more of an audience to work with, especially when you follow the guide below.
The first step to boosting is simply to load up your timeline, find a post you want to boost (see my criteria for this at the end of the section) and then select “Boost”.
A window that looks like the following will pop up. NB, I’m showing some screen grabs from established pages of mine here, so hiding a bit of data.
This window looks a bit confusing, so I’ll talk you through what you need to do in order to run a successful boost.
The most important thing to pay attention to is the “Audience” panel in the bottom left corner of the window.
The default option will never be what you want, so you need to edit the settings.
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This is a great question, and one that I’m asked frequently. It’s also, thankfully, fairly easy to answer.
You should consider boosting top-performing, non-promotional content.
Remember back to the intro section of this guide, where I talked you through the high-level overview of what we’re trying to achieve with building Facebook pages.
There are two key things you need to succeed: Reach, and engagement.
Boosting top performing posts will help you get more reach (i.e. more people see your post) and increase engagement (more people interact with the post).
The biggest pitfall I see people falling into is trying to boost content that hasn’t already shown good virality/popularity. Thanks to Facebook’s algorithm, some posts simply suck and they never get anywhere. These are not the posts to be boosting, as you’ll be throwing good money away.
Instead, the posts you want to boosts are ones that perform so well you’ll probably go “why the heck would I want to boost that anyway? It’s CRUSHING it.”
My advice sounds counterintuitive, but I promise you it will work.
Once you’ve got that initial following for your page – especially once you cross into five figures of likes – you’ll start to notice significantly better organic growth.
You should still be boosting top-performing posts and running the occasional like campaign (remembering to put the hammer down if you get a very favorable cost per like, e.g. 1 cent or less).
Over time, you want to see your likes chart grow like this:
[example]
Nice, consistent growth (with the occasional spike when a post goes super viral) is what we like to see!
It seems overly-simplistic, but the truth is that the bigger your page is, the faster it is likely to grow as well. A big audience attracts more reach, engagement and post likes, which in turn attracts more fresh fans for your page.
No, no and a thousand times no. Buying fake likes does NOTHING for your success. You’ll kill your engagement metrics (those 10,000 likes you paid $5 for on Fiverr aren’t going to like your content, end of story) and genuine likers will see through the BS.
There is no circumstance where buying fake likes is going to help you improve the results you get from following the Blueprint.
This is a good question, and the true answer is that both are important. You need a good number of likes to really see results, but you also need to focus on getting quality likes who are interested in your niche, and who are from countries where there is good potential for monetization (tier 1 – USA, UK, CAN, AU, NZ etc).
As long as your average follower quality is decent, then you’re good to go with growing your like numbers. Basically, provided you don’t sacrifice quality, then you can never get too much quantity!
Once you’ve got your page set up and growing each day through awesome, engaging content and advertising, it’s time to look at monetizing.
This is where you start to see the $ come in. And man what a feeling it is!
In this chapter, I’m going to talk you through what I believe are the best, most effective ways to monetize a growing page.
I usually hold off on making any attempts to monetize a page until it has hit at least 5000 likes. If you’re following my advice, you should be able to hit 5000 in a month or so.
Remember, this isn’t an overnight “millionaire maker” method (I mean we’ve all been burned in the past by those, right?)
This is a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race strategy.
75% of the monetization I do relates to this. Remember how you (hopefully) picked a niche with passionate, loyal followers.
This usually means there is all kinds of awesome merchandise that your followers can – and will buy. People who love Rick & Morty, for example, will buy R&M t-shirts, DVDs, posters, action figures etc.
Merchandise affiliate offers have made me thousands of dollars since I started building and growing pages about 18 months ago.
My favorite way to monetize niche pages is with relevant merch that is available on Amazon.com.
Amazon operates on the of the most famous affiliate programs in the world (Amazon Associates)
If you don’t already have an Associates account, then you’ll need to set one up and get approved.
This is a topic big enough for an eBook of its, own. So I’m going to give you the 101 you need to get approved:
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Once you’re ready to go with Amazon Associates, it’s time to find products and start promoting them.
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By now, you should know the basics of promoting merch products. But I want to talk you through some additional strategies, tips and tricks you should be aware of to get even better results from your monetization. This will help you take things to the next step, and make you more $!
When posting an affiliate link on Facebook, it’s often hugely more effective to post a picture first (of the product, usually) and then write a little blurb and add a link in there. This is as opposed to just pasting the link in and letting Facebook “generate” the link content.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
[example 1]
Versus
[example 2]
It is the top example we want. You’ll get far better click through rates and more sales from this approach. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I’ve done it enough times to know that it works!
You can go one step further, and find a video of your product in action. Upload the video to your page, and then write a short blurb + CTA. You’ll enjoy the bigger reach that video drives, meaning more link clicks and sales.
My record is driving over 6000 clicks within 24hrs to an Amazon link when it was included in the blurb I had written for a video.
However, you need to be careful that your video doesn’t contain copyright music etc.
If you’re going to try and make money by selling niche merch/products, then here are some tips that will help you out:
Once you’ve got underway with product/merchandise-based affiliate marketing, the next thing to consider is building a viral media site for your page.
Think about big sites like Buzzfeed and Viralnova. How do they make money? They have massive audiences on Facebook and other social networks, and they drive clicks to articles on their sites.
These articles contain ads and affiliate links, and they make money from that.
A viral media site for your page is doing the same thing, only on a smaller scale. It’s usually focused around one topic, or at least a broader theme (e.g. you might have 10 pages about 10 different anime, and then 1 site that is about anime in general).
If you grow a Facebook page big enough, and start to monetize it and generate profit, then it stands to reason that you could sell it, right?
It’s not a dissimilar concept to building up affiliate websites and then selling them on a platform like Flippa or Empire Flippers.
However, it’s not as easy as that. You see selling a Facebook page by itself is actually against Facebook Terms of Service. The chances of getting caught are low, but you will also struggle to find a platform that allows you to just sell the page directly.
Creating a viral media site therefore makes it easier to sell your page. You can include the page as a bonus/freebie when the site is sold.
I’ve sold one of my VMS sites that I built up, along with a few different pages that accompanied it. I sold the site through Flippa.com, and the process was relatively painless (although the buyer was actually rather difficult to work with).
I will be providing more training about this in the Facebook Page Profits group, so stay tuned.
By my calculations, you should have been able read through this guide in about 30 minutes. That gives another 30 minutes to get setup with your first page. What are you waiting for – get on with it!
But in all seriousness, here are the next steps you should be following:
Most of all, remember that this can be a really fun hobby that makes you some great, semi-passive side income. Imagine waking up to $100 days (I’ve had many) where you didn’t do anything but schedule a few posts the day before. It can – and will – happen if you follow the right strategy.
You’re probably not going to be driving around in a Ferrari in 12 months time, but you could well be making 1,2,3,4,5 hundred dollars extra profit each month for almost zero effort.
In fact, I do not consider building these pages to be work at all as it is so much fun. Instead of playing video games these days, I sit down and grow my pages and groups.
Now’s your turn to make a success out of this. Head over to Facebook, create your first page, and start growing your empire!
Thanks so much for your time, and here’s to your success. Remember, any time you need help you can reach out by emailing sam@acedigitalmarketing.net – I’m here to help you do well, and I want to hear from you any time!
Sam Frost
Author of Fan Page Blueprint
If you need support (including refund requests) please email sam@acedigitalmarketing.net
I aim to respond within 48 hours, excluding weekends.
Please note that I am based in New Zealand, and timezone differences can affect the speed with which I can respond.
As part of my commitment to selling only the highest quality products, I want you to know that I endeavour to respond to all requests (provided they are not clearly spam).
Whether you’re struggling to pick a niche, finding it hard to set up Facebook ads, or looking for me to review your page, I’m here to help.
Also note that I reserve the right to recommend additional products/services that I offer as a solution to your support request, but I will always attempt to help you for free first.
Bonuses:
Upsells
Affiliates
80% on front end, 50% on all others.
Refund policy
Full refund available if not satisfied within 7 days of purchase. By discretion after that time. Max 50% refund available on upsells 4 and 5, and by agreement only.
Promotional strategy
Goals:
$10,000 in profit within 30 days of launch, list of at least 500 that I can use to grow future products.
Start to establish my name as a vendor of top quality products who looks after his affiliates.
One Pager Checklist
This is like a “prelaunch list” to ensure you have all your ducks in a row for your pages:
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Content selection tips
Here are a few tips and tricks to help you pick content that is going to do well for your page and help you to get more reach and engagement:
Thanks for opting to purchase the premium edition of Fan Page Blueprint. You’ve made a great choice to discover more advanced strategies for expanding your Facebook empire, helping you to grow a bigger audience and make more money.
The biggest component of the premium edition of Fan Page Blueprint – in my humble opinion – is this one, the Profitable Groups Guide.
Facebook groups are an increasingly viable way to get reach and engagement, even as Facebook continues to modify its algorithm (much to the detriment of its platform, I might add).
With groups, you have the opportunity to literally build a community of like-minded individuals, and then have a decent element of control over what that community sees.
With the right system, you can also largely automate the process of growing your group (or at least cut down the time required to manage your group to the bare minimum).
This Profitable Groups Guide is a short, sharp, to-the-point blueprint for leveraging your existing Facebook audience to kickstart the growth of groups.
I’ll also teach you how to
By now, you should have a good handle on what Facebook pages are, how to build them and grow them, and hopefully how to make money out of them (if you’re struggling, remember you can email me any time on sam@acedigitalmarketing.net)
I just want to recap quickly what a Facebook group is, and how it differs from a conventional page.
The best way to think of it is like this:
Groups really are like discussion boards or forums for many different people to come and talk about a particular topic.
Groups are hugely different to pages – although there are excellent cross-promotional opportunities (as I will share in this guide).
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I want you to pay really close attention to this chapter of the Profitable Groups Guide, because this is a super-important one.
You see I love groups. But compared to pages, groups do have one massive pitfall (and potential for headaches) – and that’s the members themselves.
Most of the people who join your group will be awesome, either actively contributing or watching from the sidelines and helping you grow your numbers (although bear in mind that you don’t just want members for numbers’ sake, you want them to be active and interact in your group as that will help grow the group even faster).
However, it’s an unfortunate fact of life that you are going to run into some crappy people.
There are three main types of crappy people that plague groups:
All three (especially spammers) can have terrible consequences for your group, putting people off and reducing your engagement.
Therefore, it’s crucially important that you are proactive in moderating your group. Basically, that you take meaningful action to stop the types of negative people listed above from harming the growth, engagement and development of your group.
So how do you do this?
As I mentioned above in the moderation chapter, boosting group engagement is really important.
I’m a member of dozens of groups, and can testify first-hand to the difference that engagement makes.
Strong engagement and activity can make a small group with 500 members feel like the busiest, most vibrant community in the world, whereas a group with massive numbers and little engagement feels like a total ghost town. I’m a member of an automotive group with about 200,000 members, but posts in there are lucky to get four or five comments. Talk about terrible engagement!
A group with good engagement is going to grow so much more effectively than one with low engagement.
Therefore, I want to share with you some high-level tips for helping to grow the engagement of your group(s). Next to each bullet point I have shared a tidbit of advice that will help you to make your group a more active, entertaining and enjoyable place for members to be, resulting in better results from your efforts.
By now, you should have your first group set up and some initial members.
Now comes the fun bit – monetizing your group.
Monetizing groups is actually a little bit different to pages, primarily because of the fact that when you post in a group, your post is “lost in the mix” with all the other content that gets posted in there.
So how do you actually take this awesome group you’re building and turn it into cold, hard cash?
After all, that’s why you’re reading this, right?
If you’ve already got a Facebook page (or hopefully even a burgeoning empire of pages) set up, then you want to start using your group to boost the performance of that page.
The easiest way to do this is to share top-performing content from your page directly into your group.
To do this, go on to your page and grab the post URL of a top-performing post (you can share any post you want, but I always recommend focusing on the posts
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Here are some high-level tips, tricks and potential problem areas you need to be aware of when it comes to building, growing and monetizing Facebook groups.
Hopefully this guide has given you good insights into how to build and grow a profitable Facebook group.
The more I do with groups, the more I realize how much I enjoy building and running them. Money aside, there is simply something incredibly satisfying about seeing a community grow from your efforts.
As I discussed earlier in this guide, Groups are probably one of the biggest channels left for serious growth on Facebook.
Groups get better engagement than pages, and Facebook hasn’t yet worked even implemented a system for paid advertising of groups (apart from that convoluted process outlined earlier).
“Reading the tea leaves” it does appear that Facebook is going to continue to invest into growing Groups as a channel on their platform.
Therefore, now is the right time to start building your groups.
In conjunction with building up good pages (which you’ve hopefully learned to do from my Fan Page Blueprint) you’ll be setting yourself up for success on Facebook.
Thanks so much for purchasing my product – I welcome all questions, queries and feedback. Just email sam@acedigitalmarketing.net