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Facebook is no longer the great advertising spot it once was – or so they say. Personally, I think that’s a load of bull. It’s not the same, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a place where you can start making your first few dollars with affiliate marketing. It’s changed a lot. Ad approvals are less consistent, clicks are more expensive, and its a lot more competitive than it used to be. Times change, so if you’re like me, you’ve been changing with them and adjusting your affiliate campaigns to work with them, rather than keep them stuck in the past. For those of you just getting started with Facebook Ads, I recommend starting with dating campaigns. They work, and they work well. Here are some tips you noobies, as well as some of you veterans, to get your dating campaigns on track.

Pictures matter. Test hundreds. Test thousands. I find a lot of my coaching students get frustrated easily by this part. Starting up on dating with zero idea of whats working, and what kind of images get the clicks is tough. But when you are only testing 20 images with 20 clicks, and wondering why you don’t have a conversion yet, you’re just not trying hard enough. Pictures are the most important part of getting an ad with a high CTR. Those high CTRs are what drive your click costs down and bring your ROI up. In the beginning, you will be spending a lot of money trying to find these great images, but, guess what? When you’ve got those images, you can scale them across borders and advertising platforms to make all that money back. I put that all into my research budget category.

What kind of images work well? Boobies and cleavage! Yeah, they work well for getting your account banned. Forget about that, and forget about squeezing one in between 100 clean images. I almost strictly use shoulders and up images (we’re talking about females). They get approved much more consistently, and YES, they do work. Sometimes, full body shots work, but they aren’t approved as consistently.

Likewise, Facebook Ads headlines and ad bodies make up for a larger push towards actually converting. Again, something you will have to test out considerably. These do affect CTRs, however not as much as the image. What I like to practice is making my headline a question, and then finishing up the ad body with a concise and clear call to action that lays out exactly what the user has to do and what they will receive after clicking the link. This makes sure the user is prepared for whats on the other side. Also, always remember to put the name of the site you are promoting in the ad. Facebook likes that.

Clicks 18 – 29 are cheap, but they don’t convert well. Ages 30 and up convert much nicer, but are more expensive. It’s a game of give and take. This is mostly due to the mindset of the users when they sign up to a dating site. The younger they are, the less they actually care about maintaining a real relationship (applies to men, mostly). Targeting women requires more emotion inducing ads and landing pages. You need to work to build their trust that they will meet the right guy more than doing so for men.

Weekends, ad approvals are less consistent. If you are having trouble getting ads approved, wait a few hours before trying again. Also, never submit 1000 ads all at once. If you have 300 ads you want to submit in one day, do 100 ads once every 5-8 hours. I think if any Facebook Ads staff saw 1000 dating ads from one publisher they would probably disapprove them all rather than having to look through all of them.

Start international to test ads. US/UK clicks are expensive! There are other countries where you can buy cheaper traffic and get good information on your ads/images first. South Africa or Ireland for example. If you can translate any language, go for those countries first! France, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, or anywhere in Asia are good testing beds for later campaigns.

Don’t let Facebook’s slow pacing or disapprovals faze you. It’s part of the game. It’s what they do. The sooner you shrug it off, the better. I get a lot of complaints from clients and random emails asking how they can fix this, and besides following the ad guidelines, there really isn’t any other advice I can give other than “Suck it up and submit some new ads.” Until Facebook decides to better implement some consistent approval process (which they probably never will), you’ll just have to go with the flow and take whatever Facebook dishes out for you.

That’s it for now folks. Facebook and dating isn’t dead. It’s just a changed game. Shit happens. Times evolve. Anyone that says x-traffic source is dead is simply because they’re trying to do the same things people were doing there 3 years ago. Now get out there and start making some ads!