Facebook Bans Dating Affiliates

[K]

So it's now official they have closed the door on more affiliates.

I read the article on my buddy Charles Ngo's blog.

Check it out: It's Official: Facebook Bans Dating Affiliates - CharlesNgo.com - Affiliate Marketing. Internet Marketing.

Reason(s): It looks like you submitted an ad for a dating service through one of our self-service advertising tools.

Unfortunately, ads for dating sites and apps are only allowed from approved advertisers at this time.
If you’ve read the guidelines in the Help Center and think your ad follows the rules and should have been approved, please let us know.

If you’d like to advertise your dating service on Facebook, please follow this link to learn more.

If you would like to become an approved advertiser, an application form may be available from February 15, 2014. If you have any questions about this policy or feel that your ad is compliant and was incorrectly disapproved, please contact us.

Thoughts?

 

[charles_ngo]

Thanks for sharing.

If anyone has a question that I didn't cover in the post, then feel free to ask here. I'll be checking on this thread.

 

[cpadatingmaster]

There will always be some nice idea how to avoid Facebook rules legally and continue to promote dating offers what convert great on it... People brain invent Facebook rules, not machine, so can be overpass like I did till now.

Play by the rules in an eye of Facebook but...

 

[T J Tutor]

When I look at this and see a vendor that is fighting and plotting against a specific and highly targeted group such as affiliates, it brings to mind 100's of stories like this throughout history. This type of battle is not new, not only recent, it is ages old. You see, when a new industry begins, or a new product type is introduced, there is always going to be fall out in every extension and every area of them. This fall out is always due to the retention's of what works to continue the strength and success of the original business model or product model as well as to eliminate that which doesn't fit or what has been discovered as unwanted. Modifications are an ever present standard in progress, and with regards to FB, and we haven't seen the biggest and boldest of modifications yet. We've only seen the first stages of retrofits and fallout with FB (IMO).

If you give it some thought. We, as marketers, we as people, we as a business, we as anything we may be, go through growth and are continually modifying. Do you ever scrub your own mailing lists? Have you ever decided to eliminate a practice, a tool, or an individual from your business or personal world? Of course you have, we all do.

I have looked at FB many times in the past few years and every time I considered it I would have to back the hell out of doing business as an affiliate with them simply do to the need to try and work around their latest modification aimed at making life more difficult for affiliates. I know many will say that I am not making the most out of my business if I'm eliminating FB from my affiliate marketing efforts, and you may be right. However, I can say that I have never had to manipulate a vendor to achieve my goals. I have a tried and true profitable business model that stands the test of time without the need to "game the system" with FB. There are simply to many other pastures to plow that not only want me in their fields but help me to do the job better.

Now, that said, I am always keeping on top of what FB is doing. I can say that it is likely that enough dust has settled with FB to earn with them, I simply don't think the typical affiliate model will ever be an approach with them that has long term viability. To much work for too little reward. As for what does work, Getting the folks on FB to a product of your own where you can sell the hell out of them.

A recent article on the marketing Sherpa Blog, "Finding the Goldylocks Zone", is point in fact. Build content that works for a specific audience and they will come. Market that content with FB Ads and you may see the relevance in FB come back to life for your affiliate efforts.

Finding your Goldilocks zone

Blogging is a lot of work, but it offers an opportunity to cultivate an audience that finds value in your message.

With that opportunity comes the responsibility to place your audience first and deliver on your promise of value because true value is at the center of everyone’s universe.

I know this is nothing new guys, but this is a model that has stood the test of time in the small window of FB's existence and the longer more stable existence of online marketing. In fact, we have had many contributors here in the forum, including Charles, Zach, and our resident Ninja Stoner Jay (and several others) show us the value of the blog. Isn't it funny how many miss this powerful step of leading prospects to an affiliate offer through your own content instead of sending them direct to a landing page or redirect to a direct linking offer. FB is eliminating affiliates in favor of giving the affiliate business directly to the golden child of a product owner who has hand selected the affiliate. In case you don't recognize this for what it is, it's simply a funnel by design and through corroboration with the ad company, the product owner and a company that essentially has billboards. So what's the answer? Replicate it in a fashion that models your efforts after what this corroboration has produced.

Work from within to gain the strength of your competitors without fighting them for your needs. When you work this option, FB will gladly hand you the prospects and will likely never truly understand that you have simply retrofitted their own model to work for you.

Example: Dating Offers
I have a dating advice blog (I actually have two). It doesn't look like a blog. It looks like a woman's site that is dedicated to helping men find and meet women. I bought a program called iSpring Quiz and created a questionnaire that sends the results directly to the prospect upon completion. At the beginning of the quiz they must enter their name and email so they can receive the results and, of course, be added to a list. You see, on the site they inevitably see loads of dating site options and I tell them "Don't sign up to another site without knowing from our experts which sites will absolutely work for you". This way I have created two funnels. The first is the result of telling them not to do something. 17% to 23% of my visitors proceed to an offer without the quiz, 14% to 23% take the quiz. My overall CTR to an offer runs between 14% and 19%. Not everyone that gets the quiz results goes to an offer immediately. Very often, it's weeks later after receiving a couple of emails from the site.

Overall, I'm simply doing what has worked all along for online marketing. Time to get back to providing quality content which encourages the prospect to click and convert.

I'm not the finest of marketers (yet), and you can tell I have some strong opinions. What I know for certain is, it's still the Information Highway! Get them to your real estate with quality content through FB ads and sell the hell out of them. Don't try to get them to an offer from FB's ad real estate.

I know this will be controversial for some, but I do like to mix things up a bit. Your responses often teach me a thing or two. I am forever a student, and always at your service Fix'ers!

 

[valhen]

Ow my gosh.. No wonder my campaign (dating site) has just rejected on facebook. How about using fanpage? or maybe i have to place to POF?

 

[T J Tutor]

POF is still working for many. Just make sure you do a lot of searching on POF under different profiles so you can see which ads may be working. Or you could get POF Pro from iPyxel (great tools $79 to $129 per mo.) and then there is Mr. Greens POF Uploader which is $100.

iPyxels tool is far more powerful with not just uploading options, but comes with a host of other features including analyzing and ad management. Mr. Greens tool is primarily a bulk ad uploader. If you are on POF, you truly need one of these two tools.

 

[K]

Is anyone still getting dating offers approved?

 

[church]

Have any of you tried those campaigns on PoF?

 

[JakeMA]

We still have affiliates doing well with facebook fan pages and cloaks for dating offers.

 

[java]

I and a few others of my close friends are not effected. no cloaking as this will only be short lived.

We all setup a dating advice/ membership site that offer users with what they want, then we show affiliate offers.

Use mint.com as a great example. It takes more work but pays off... I know most affiliates are really lazy and will try everything just to make the fast dollar but this is the reason their accounts banned.

 

[T J Tutor]

Agree! Content & member sites do it well for me too.

 

[melgib]

Hey guys and gals!

facebook will banned your accounts if you make Thin affiliate sites without providing any value.

They also close your accounts if you don't follow their Editorial Guidelines.

They don't allow sites that have exit pop-ups or all hype stuff. So there could be lot of reasons why your account gets banned.

This goes for Bing and Google too.

Good luck!

 

[T J Tutor]

Hey guys and gals!

facebook will banned your accounts if you make Thin affiliate sites without providing any value.

They also close your accounts if you don't follow their Editorial Guidelines.

They don't allow sites that have exit pop-ups or all hype stuff. So there could be lot of reasons why your account gets banned.

This goes for Bing and Google too.

Good luck!

Yes, yes , yes. Create sites these days that are providing true value and regularly update with new content. If you build real sites with real and regularly update with great content then you can sell the hell out them and FB will not ban you, we hope!

 

[Andy Haskins]

It just comes back around to that old argument that you need to really think about whether you are providing value to the end user... as mentioned above if you're creating sites that are not only beneficial to your pocket but also the end user then you'll be on to a winner. I am however unsure how anyone will get any form of dating ads through in the mean time??

 

[dustinp]

Yea it all comes back to provide value and you will be rewarded. Don't look at as a negative, instead look at as a positive way to weed out the people who don't want to put the work in, more money for the people that do!

 

[Snoop]

Facebook has pretty much just banned all affiliates, I think all major RTB platforms will benefit hugely