Traffic Experiments: Free Facebook Traffic? 

Over the years, Facebook marketing has always been an Achilles heel for me.

Maybe I’m just not a social enough guy. I don’t know.

But I have had some recent success with a couple of Facebook traffic experiments. Today I’ll share a few things that did NOT work and a few things I’ve tried recently that did work. (Really well!)

First of all, I know there are lots of people killing it on Facebook with paid advertising. I tried paid advertising on Facebook a few years back and made some affiliate sales. Not enough to keep at it though. I worked about 20 hours building ads and running them, and my net profit was about $4/hour.

Not worth it.

I realize I could have studied more and spent more, and kept testing, etc., but it wasn’t fun for me so I jumped ship.

Mostly because paid advertising is not my thing. I like my traffic to be free.

So I did what most webmasters do and added a passive Facebook strategy to my blog. That included the like button you see over there to the right.

I slowly grew a Facebook audience with that, and I added a plugin to my blog so it would automatically publish my posts on Facebook. Then I pretty much ignored it.

When I logged into Facebook occasionally, I’d see my posts along with the number of people they reached. Here’s a typical example…

As you can see, the post reached 13 people. Whoopee.

Other times I’d see better results like this…

33 people reached. Earth shattering.

Then this week something changed. I logged into Facebook and clicked on insights and saw this pleasant surprise…

What? A 1755% increase in reach this week? Could this be right?

I poked through my posts and found the two that were responsible…

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

After seeing the results of these posts, it was immediately obvious to me I had been posting all wrong.

It seems to me Facebook likes simple images like this for some reason. If you know why, comment below this post and tell me!

As for now, my little experiment is going to continue. These image posts take me about 5 minutes and they work 1755% better than my regular posts!

I just open my Facebook account then select an image from my mega-pack of 1000 pre-made social posts. (I sell it as an upgrade to own of my products.)

Then I share it with my friends. Done.

Now, onto my other Facebook experiment…

The only other way I’ve been getting free traffic from Facebook is by using their message button.

I simply click through my friends list on the right and find a marketer who promotes products and services similar to mine.

Then I click the message button that looks like this…

It opens a small dialog box and I send them a message like this…

Hi NAME,

Your name in my friends list just caught my eye. What have you been up to? Any new products or services I can review for my BizWeb eGazette readers? 

Jim Daniels – bizweb2000.com

Then when they reply, and they usually do, I get a review copy of their latest program to check out. If it’s up to snuff and something I can recommend to my readers, I send back this message…

Thanks! It looks great. Send me an affiliate sign up link and I’ll let my peeps know about it.  

Also, would you like review access to my latest program? It pay 50% commission on sales and it’s been selling really well. Let me know…

Jim

As you can see, this is a very basic strategy to get free traffic from Facebook. But I’ve generated literally thousands of visitors to my sites with this method. In fact, I’ve made more money on Facebook using this strategy than any other I’ve tried, including their paid advertising.

Of course you need to grow your friends list in order to utilize this method. But that’s easy enough. Just search for some leaders and competitors in your niche right though the Facebook search bar. As you find them one by one, you can send a friend request. Most marketers accept friend requests even from people they don’t know.

Plus, when they see all your snazzy, inspirational posts they’ll know you’re active on Facebook and serious about success. 😉