Believe it or not, the original add group only had a handful of ads. Like any zip/email submit offer, I targeted males age 13-20 in the US ( Non inclusive!!). Literally that’s it… No keywords no nothing, and just one image variation.  The most important factor that I found in these ads was including user attributes. By this I mean creating headlines like ‘Free iPad: Age 17 ONLY.” This technique alone allowed me to get over 13 million impressions for under $1.5K, and over 33,000 clicks at just $.04 cents a pop on day one. Impressive.

On day two I just let it ride, getting about the same results with higher numbers (campaign ran all day instead of half of the day as I had submitted them around noon to get approved,) and I dropped the dead weight of ads that were not performing. Pretty much anything over age 17 started to drop after day 1. My AM also contacted me and said the merchant liked the traffic quality and my commission was bumped up .30 cents.

However, when day three came thats when the real shit hit the fan. Facebook bans all my ads with user demographics in them (all of the ads I had at the time.) and copy cats started to appear. I immediately got some new ad variations together and created some new campaigns.

The ads were still making money so it became a cat and mouse game of creating ads over and over to keep up with Facebook deleting them for being “deceptive.” Finally on day four I got an email that free offers were coming to a close and I decided to pull out at the end of the day instead of risking a ban. I had plenty of other profitable campaigns running and it was not worth the risk. Literally a week or two later they updated the TOS signifying the death of “free stuff” offers.  The final numbers were in:

Clicks: 120,888

Cost: $4,835.52

Actions: 20,496

Net: $22,624.80

Profit: $17,789.28

Given the issues I ran into, if the offer had came out a month earlier I probably could have netted a lot more. I won’t say this particular offer is what ended free shit on Facebook but I can guarantee you it had something to do with it. Facebook needs to get with the picture and understand that marketing is deceptive for a reason, of people knew they had to complete X number of surveys and offers to receive something they would never click in the first place. They are completely anal about their “user experience” and its killing the ad platform. If people do not want to see the ads, they don’t have to, the ability is there to x them out so why ban the ads if the user can already do so for themselves?

Combine the spend cap with all of the new rules about “free” offers and the touchy subject of their “user experience,” a lot of people are having a hard time making profitable campaigns on Facebook. Gone are the days when you can throw up a few ads to “Test and Keep” your free ipad, throw a few user demos in the ad, and make $5,000 in a day. (More on that to come )

Right now is probably the best time to stop relying on Facebook for traffic, and start diversifying. Of course you should already be hitting up other large channels like Bing and the Google Content Network. Here are some other places to get some good traffic:

http://www.adside.com – self serve ppc contextual inline text ads
http://www.reseauselect.com – banner and offline targetted at quebec
http://web.blogads.com – banners/text ads on high traffic blog network
http://www.adtoll.com – self serve banners etc, similar to adbrite
http://elephant-traffic.com – ppv type ads on parked url’s – cheap
http://mediatraffic.com – ppv ads
http://casalemedia.com – self serve banners
http://www.widgetbucks.com – self serve text/widget ads
http://tribalfusion.com – media buy banner network
http://adclickmedia.com – self serve banners and contextual widgets
http://premiumaccess.com – premium banner ad networ
http://kontera.com – inline contextual text ads
http://www.adroll.com – self serve banners
http://pubmatic.com – ad network
http://bidvertiser.com – contextual and banner ads
http://cpmstar.com – banners display aimed at gaming sites only
http://adengage.com – banners/text, similar to adbrite, allow weekly buys
http://finditquick.com – text ads
http://technoratimedia.com – banners
http://chitika.com – search related contextual display ads
http://www.mediawhiz.com – banners/display, media buys
http://cpxinteractive.com – banners/display, media buys
http://clicksor.com – banners
http://advertising.com – display/benners, media buys
http://www.interclick.com – banners, high volume media buys
http://adtoll.com – banners/display/text ads, adbrite clone, cheap
http://valueclickmedia.com – banners, display/media buys
http://google.com/adwords – you already know about this…
http://advertising.aol.com – variety of solutions on AOL inventory
https://adcenter.microsoft.com – search and content text/contextual ads
https://marketingsolutions.yahoo.com – search/content contextual ads
http://miva.com – cheap search ads
http://www.specificmedia.com – banners/video display, media buys
http://www.canoeklix.com/accueil – text ads on the canoe.ca network
http://undertone.com – premium banners/display/media buys
http://7search.com – cheap search/direct domain ads
http://advertising.microsoft.com/ad-network – microsoft banner display/media buys
http://adbrite.com – display/contextual ads
http://www.adconion.com – video/banner ads, media buys
http://advertise.myspace.com – self serve banners on myspace
http://facebook.com/ads – self serve ads on failbook
http://plentyoffish.com – coming soon self serve ads
http://www.collective.com – media buys, banners/display
http://buysellads.com – self serve banners on a range of design blogs
http://sponsoredtweets.com – sponsored twitter posts
http://ad.ly/ – more twitter ads
http://trafficvance.com – good ppv ad network
http://www.tattomedia.com/advertisers/ – banners/display/media buys
http://platform-a.com aol banner ad/media buy network
http://adready.yahoo.com – display ads/self serve banners on yahoo sites
http://adsonar.com – text ads on high traffic US site
http://adblade.com – self serve display ads, very good service
http://adsdaq.com – banners/media buying exchange
http://traffiq.com – self serve banners, media buy type thing
http://openx.org/market – banner exchange on open x ad network
http://adbuyer.com – media buying search/display exchange
http://searchfeed.com – search/contextual on parked pages. shit.
http://www.isocket.com/ – closed beta, but will be banner/display ads
http://www.rightmedia.com/ – self serve banner exchange
http://www.etology.com/ – banners/text ads, cheap
http://pulse360.com – ads on good high traffic inventory
http://www.bidplacesb.com/ – self serve banners, owned by AOL
http://advertising.ezanga.com – cheaper search and contextual
http://www.leadback.com – re-targeted ads at search traffic
http://appvert.com – farcebook apps ads, display
http://trianads.com – failbook app ads, display
http://www.burstmedia.com – banners/display/media buys
http://offerpalmedia.com – socialmedia app ads
http://userplane.com – social media advertising for media buyers
http://adchap.com – ads on various social sites, hi5, facebook, bebo et
http://cubics.com – social media ads
http://adknowledge.com – cheap ads, slow approvals
http://rockyouads.com – social media display ads
http://statusplug.com – ads on facebook fan pages
http://zohark.com – facebook app ads
http://xtendmedia.com – banner/display media buys
http://advertisers.federatedmedia.net – cpm banners on good inventory of sites
http://www.adperium.com/directads – display banners, self serve, similar to adbrite
http://z5x.net – display banners, media buys, large inventory

Page load times were below the 5 second mark but being a scalability engineer at heart, I knew I could get the site under 1 second page loads with a little work. The first step was to put a bullet in the dynamic images. They had moved to using the GD library to render thumbnails a quarter of the size of the larger images. Some of them being larger than 5 mb in size and 3200×2500 + in resolution. Doing this over and over again on a page of 25 thumbnails is quite intensive. Simply caching a static version of the image cut load times of the pages back to the 1.65 second mark.

Next, non of the static images on the site had any type of cache control or expires headers.  This is much easier to do when all of you images are in a certain location:

Version 1 - Filetype Directives > Add this to an .htaccess file and it will only cache the allowed extensions.

<FilesMatch ".(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000"
</FilesMatch>

Version 2 – Cache it all > The method I took in this case was to simply use an .htaccess file in the root images folder containing:

Header set Cache-Control “max-age=2592000″

The result? First page-loads stay in the 1 second range, and cached views load in less than half a second! A great feat when you are getting a million plus hits a day.

What did we learn: static images are your friend, a lot of people like to use the GD lib / imagemagick lib because they are easy and you do not have to worry about file management. But, it takes much longer to render those images every time than to render them once and then copy() them to the server and cache them out. If you need some php post a comment and maybe ill through up some source.

I should also note we obtained the 1.65 second base load by pre-caching images on upload. That way the user never actually has to generate the thumbnail on page view. It’s generated on upload so the user simply caches it as soon as the page comes up.

This is actually very easy to accomplish with a little PHP. You can download the script (free of course) from here at the Twitter Bot Script forum.

Keep in mind that most people only get 150 API calls per hour on their account. The only way to add people to a list through the API as of right now is to use their Twitter account ID number. So you have 1 API call to create the list, 1 API call to get the user ID automatically, and then a third API call to add them to the list. (Way to go Twitter.) This means that you can create a list with up to 74 people on it, and add people to that list at a rate of 75 an hour. Keep in mind each user is limited to creating 20 lists each with a max of 500 users. That’s room for 10,000 accounts that suggest authority and influence Muahaha.

Use this script wisely they are getting smarter at Twitter… Updated version on the way that will allow you to use either user ID’s if you have them cutting API calls to 1 request per user on the list allowing you to add 149 at creation.

I also recommend storing your created lists in a MySQL database or something as a way of tracking / managing them from your toolkit. For instance when you get the 200 OK status back from creating the list, it also returns all the xml data for it. Store that in a row so you can keep track of what you have made, and make it easy to build up.

So I made a quick tool that does the same thing except it uses OAuth authentication making it trustworthy and secure, and you also don’t have to wait. Just submit your Twitter account and within 10 minuets your account will be purged.  A much safer, faster alternative.

Check out the Unfollow All tool with OAuth Here.

The reason being: Its simple to use, its constantly evolving, it allows you to expand your Twitter account (and marketing efforts) extremely fast, and its FREE. Think of TBS as an open source twitter bot script. Not only can you download it but its easy to build on with your own ideas and a little PHP experience.

Twitter Bot Script comes with what has been dubbed the TBS Toolkit, lets look at some features:

• Full GUI tweet management including “Show Status” which allows you to pause that tweet from appearing in your activities.
• Import tweets via a CSV file with the ability to set their status and type on the fly.
• Create globally used tweets, or create special tweets to be used only for replies and direct messages.
• The Mention Reply Tool will allow you to see all the recent @your tweets and automatically respond to them using the bulk responder option, or quickly write up a custom response. TBS will also keep track of the tweets you respond to so you don’t continually send duplicate responses like with other bot scripts.
• The Make Friends Tool is another awesome tool only available from TwitterBotScript. This tool will give you a bunch of new ways to make friends on Twitter. Account sourcing will allow you to randomly follow users from your friends or followers (toggle) while allowing you to reselect the target, and the required amount of followers for each person you try to follow on the fly. You can also find new friends via keyword searching, or by directly inputting lists of user names.
• TBS of course includes a status update tool that works just like your Twitter homepage.
• Sleep Mode will allow you to randomize the time at which your tweets appear on Twitter. When you automate with CRON, your script is run at the same time interval every time. By using sleep mode, the script will essentially sleep for a random amount of time making your tweeting look more natural to Twitter users.
• Tweet counter. So lets say you don’t have a larger number of tweets to work with and you don’t want to keep repeating them. You can globally set a tweet limit in TwitterBotScript limiting the number of times each message can be used.
• API Rate Limiting integration.

Another bonus is Twitter bot script requires almost nothing to run... A basic installation of Apache, MySQL, and PHP (and cURL of course) will do the job. But you will need CRON in order to use automation. In the next release, Twitter Bot Script will have a synthetic version of CRON like what WordPress uses.

Twitter Bot Script has been installed 598 times since it was released four days ago. I think with a little push Twitter Bot Script could easily become the king. I looked around today at the competition and most of the stuff out there is either very basic or very expensive.  This puts Twitter Bot Script at a distinct advantage as users get an advanced tool set that is constantly seeing additions and revisions, for free. Yeah, there is definitely work to be done but that’s the point. As I get more and more emails for I’ll know what direction to move in.

So go download Twitter Bot Script and play around with it. You don’t have to be marketing your Micheal Jackson t-shirts to have fun with Twitter Bot Script. Its great for easily finding new friends and exposure.

Also: If your handy with PHP and working with APIs, shoot me an email if your interested in working on this project.

Facebook has recently surpassed 200 million users and is reportedly seeking up to $100 million for additional servers.

The first route I took was manually trying to split the file but I quickly realized it would take forever with that many lines of code. I took my problem to Google and found a nice little gem called “Shoes.” Its a WXR file splitter written in ruby by  mvManila. The program is very easy to use and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux and there’s also a command line version for the nerds. You can get the latest version here (just pick the latest version number for whichever platform you are running.) The program will then install itself and your ready to roll.

Select the local copy of your WXR file, then pick how small you would like each chunk to be. You can even append a name that will automatically be ordered in number. For example entering “backup-part-” will create WXR files labeled “backup-part-1″, “backup-part-2″, etc. Then all you have to do is import all the files through WordPress and your good to go.

Although there is a recession I don’t think it will have much effect on music downloads. The people who pay for music now will continue to pay for it until it becomes ridiculously high. Personally I don’t see the incentive of download music online for the same price it costs to buy the CD without getting the CD or anything that comes with it. Especially when you can still find all the music you want online for free. It won’t be long for others to follow suite. Best Buy and Target where listed as the 3rd and 5th largest online music sellers my bet is they will change their pricing structures by the end of the year. Cant wait to see the numbers that Apple posts from its iTunes sales this year.

The artists seem to be making plenty of cash… I don’t see any rappers complaining about their Bently’s and bitches which says something. I think the music industry has seen a sift in consumer use like watching videos online or using online radio services. While im not a huge fan of Little Wayne his success is a perfect example. Up to the release of “Tha Carter III” album he flooded online mixtape outlets with music. Not only did this create an amazing hype train, it combated the leaking of his album material. Putting out over 80 tracks and remixes before putting out an album will make it so people really dont know what to expect on the album. And if the content is good, the hype and interest of whats on the album does the rest of the work. Some of the tracks on the album were songs released on mixtapes that were later extended or remixed.

The industry is not the problem. You just have to make the right records.

NPD Data.

I have not gotten any response back from Facebook as to what the issue is but I really hope they get this shit ironed out soon… I cant even get to my Ads Manager to pause my campaigns… Which really sucks because I happen to be doing loads of split testing right now. If you know anything drop a comment or shoot me an email.

Note: If you can still manage your ads I would recommend pausing them if you will need constant access to them.