Affiliate Marketing on Facebook

This description doesn’t match the definition of affiliate marketing - instead of an exchange of value, affiliate marketing generally earns you a percentage of the revenue earned from the sale.

So, in short, you can post affiliate links and promote products if you’re earning a percentage of the revenue earned, but not if you’re getting paid a lump sum as part of a paid campaign.

The main rule when promoting products using Facebook is that you must disclose that you’ll be getting paid if someone clicks the link (or purchases the product). This is a rule put in place by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Facebook itself.

There’s no specific terminology needed when explaining that it’s an affiliate link, but the rules state that you must be transparent - so stating “This is an affiliate link” will be sufficient and clear enough.

Your Personal Feed

A great place to start is with your personal feed. In general, family and friends will be supportive of your posts and are more likely to share and engage with them. Although this won’t give you the best demographic, it’s certainly a decent starting point.

This may not be as effective if you don’t have many people on your friend list. If you have over 1000 friends on Facebook, around 750 will see your post (maybe even less).

If you’re using Facebook to promote content and products, then you must be active and must be regularly scrolling down your newsfeed.

Facebook is full of opportunities, as many people post statuses talking about products and asking for recommendations. This is the perfect chance to step in with your review on a product, or even just the affiliate link.

Be wary if you’re repeatedly posting advertisements, as your friend list will rapidly begin to shrink as your friends tire of seeing adverts on their newsfeed.

Affiliate Marketing on Facebook - Groups

Many affiliate marketers decide to join groups with other affiliate marketers, to share tips, and to get shares and more engagement on their content.

Groups are generally better than pages when it comes to engagement, as members tend to be more active and engage with posts a lot more.

Always be sure to check the group rules, as some groups may ban straight-up advertising, and may be used to give & receive help and advice only.

To avoid this issue, you can share links to your affiliate site instead of the affiliate links themselves.

If you have a niche topic, try searching for groups related to your niche. For example, if your niche is “rabbit care”, search for rabbit-lover groups and check their posting guidelines. In these groups, you should be able to promote your page, but there may be rules in place for advertising.

Video Reviews

More and more people are choosing to do video reviews, as pictures and videos are more likely to be viewed than chunks of texts and links.
On Facebook, videos play automatically when scrolling past, which is perfect for getting your message across. Bear in mind that sound doesn’t automatically play, so be sure to have text in the video.

Your Personal Feed

Your personal feed is a great place to start promoting your website. Even if you only have a couple of hundred Facebook friends, if you get your friends and family to support you and share your website, then more and more people will see it.

Friends and family generally aren’t the best demographic, but can certainly give your site traffic a bit of a boost.

Another great way to utilize your newsfeed is by seeing what people are talking about, and where relevant, share a link to some of your content.

For example, if you see somebody post a status “Why does my iPhone charger keep breaking?!”, then you should comment with a link to some of your content related to phone chargers, or share a review of the best iPhone chargers with your affiliate link included.

Building a mailing list can help you become less reliant on paid ads, as you’ll begin to notice a steady following.

Facebook can be a great way to build your mailing list; especially if you’re a member of different marketing groups and niche groups.

If you already have a mailing list, then post a form for users to fill in to join the mailing list. You may be disappointed with the number of sign-ups you get, so you should try to sweeten the deal.

A great way of doing this is by offering something - whether it be information, a discount, or a freebie. A common freebie that marketers give out is ebooks or a Groupon deal.

Paying a small fee for an advertisement can definitely pay off. Most marketers use ads to promote their affiliate website rather than certain pages or products, in a bit to increase the amount of traffic to the page.

Facebook generally doesn’t approve of running adverts for the affiliate product, so be sure to link the advert to your website’s landing page.

Video ads are also a great way of promoting your website. Video ads are becoming increasingly popular with Facebook users, and generally have a higher response rate than text adverts.