As we all know Facebook is the number one social network and has grown year-on-year since it was launched back in 2004 …yeah it was that long ago ! Created by Mark Zuckerberg back in 2003 it was initially called Face Mesh and limited Harvard University student and wasn’t until 2006 until everyone had their own email address and an age restriction was introduced. For more about Facebook history and the whole story be sure to watch the film The Social Network.
Anyway back to our agenda…
In the early days of Facebook you could promote your links much easier but like anything with it’s growing popularity comes change. This took a huge hit when Facebook launched its advertising platform, Facebook ads.
Marketers found it increasingly harder to get their posts seen and a lot disappeared to other sites or were forced to spend money on boosting posts (which never really worked) or spending huge bucks on ads.
Now I am not saying that you will not make money by spending money on ads, fair from it but that’s for another post and another day.
What Are The Facebook Affiliate Marketing Rules
As I have previously mentioned back when Facebook was emerging and people were starting to get involved you could post affiliate links directly into Facebook and affiliates made huge commissions. Let’s face it no one really knew about what affiliate marketing was on Facebook back then.
It was acceptable behavior.
Step forward to the get-rich-quick scams
As companies and products owners started to grasp the power of Facebook more and more were setting up their affiliates with banners, text and social media posts specifically to post on the social network. A large proportion of these were got rich schemes and scams
This in turn started to result in these affiliate links being banned as Facebook turned the screw against anything that promised that you could make a million overnight by buying their product.
Of course I am all for that, hell I lost loads of money in my early days online.
Fast forwarded to 2019
Although Facebook do allow links on their site it does depend on what you are promoting. They will not allow any get-rich-quick, money making sites, multi level marketing or any other money making site offering compensation for a small or no investment.
That of course doesn’t automatically mean that these sites are ALL scams.
Far from it. Wealthy Affiliate is an amazing training site for anyone who wants to start a business online, but because it mentions money Facebook does not allow their links.
If you have links that are not permitted on Facebook then here is what you can do.
Set Up A Bridge Page
A bridge page is a page you can send someone from Facebook before you offer them your affiliate link. Most commonly used for this would be a blog post. Blogs area great way to engage with your audience and give them information so they can make an informative decision.
If you have no idea about blogging or how to build one then check out this post building a website for free this will get you up and running in just minutes.
The idea is to create a post on your blog about the product or services you want to promote.. Add in some subtle and not so subtle affiliate links and you have your bridge page. You can now promote your bridge page on Facebook and the links are totally exceptable as you are the only one using them so no red flag is shown to the Facebook minions who work in the background.
You could also use sites such as Quora (which is forum) to do the same thing, write a post, or article about a subject add in your affiliate link and then promote your post via Facebook.
Job Done!
There are loads of forums for every niche just search in Google (your keyword + forum) and see what comes up.
You could also use Pinterest to link to your affiliate product (again proceed with caution as they don’t allow all links) and then share the Pinterest image on Facebook
Cloak Your Links
What can help but not always is to use a link shortener to cloak your links.
Okay, what do I mean by this, simply most affiliate links are long and ugly things. By using a shortener this hides the affiliate coding and tidies up the link making it more clickable.
And we all want this as affiliates.
When you have time, and what more info on this click the hyperlinked text above to a recent article all about how to do it.
Anyway back to Facebook.
Where To Post Your Affiliate Links
Now that I have given you some heads up on the basic Facebook s rules with affiliate links let’s now look at where you can actually place these links.
These can also be your bridge pages too.
Start a Facebook Page
The main thing I would do on Facebook is set up a separate page associated with the niche that you want to promote or even just the product itself, beware doing individual pages as these can take time to manage.
Here are a few places were you can post your links.
- In the about section of your page
- In the description on your header image
- In a normal post update, if your page posts a lot then pin the post to the top of the page.
- Set up the call to action button
Facebook Groups
Be careful with this one, check the rules in each group before posting as you don’t want to get deleted from the group. You can of course start your own group too.
Facebook Profile
Although I wouldn’t advocate using your profile to promote your business, there are benefits from sharing your group and page posts to your profile. The engagement will depend on your niche, if you are promoting frugal living this could be quite popular.
More on posting links on Facebook on this article.
Be Social
Above all Facebook is a social network, so if you are going to market on there BE SOCIAL !
Build relationships with people, ask questions, share great content all of these things will help build trust with your audience and when you do share your affiliate links people are more likely to engage with you and even make a purchase.
Let’s face it how many times have you had a message from someone or been tagged in a post that has nothing but promotion on it … I have loads of times and there is only one course of action I take UNFRIEND, BLOCK, REPORT.
So DON’T DO IT everyone hates it and you make yourself look like a total NUMPTY!
Quick Recap
Okay so Facebook does allow affiliate links but stay clear of anything with make money. If you are unsure then try to post a link and see what happens when you click on it.
Use bridge pages to overcome any Facebook ban on a particular link (site). Starting a blog is probably the best way round this as you are in total control over the content.
Utilize the different places where you can actually place your links.
And most of all BE SOCIAL and build relationships building any business takes time don’t blow it all by being a Numpty!
Be sure to share this with your Facebook community so others can avoid being a Numpty too 🙂
Sharing is caring … IMAGES FOR PINNING
I found your post really useful: I have always had problems trying to get to do some promotion of my sites on social media especially on facebook. So much so that I actually stopped completely out of frustration. Thank you for all of your tips I feel I can understand it a bit better now and will give it another try if I follow everything you suggesting I might actually be able to make it.!!
Thanks for your comments Barbara I am glad it has spurred you on to look at Facebook again. I am sure this will help you to make money with your affiliate marketing
This is a lovely post, Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us with respect to facebook..All your reviews here are well constructed and very real, infact i do make million of dollars with facebook ads alone. its a good and great medium for advertising.I would advice more people to look into this because its a medium for standby revenue.Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing. Yes Facebook ads are indeed a great way to generate income although I didn’t really want to touch on this as I wanted to help people without any budget, maybe you could do a guest posts for my visitors just on your experience of using Facebook ads. Contact me if that is of interest.
I can see from your article that you are really using your facebook account very well to publish and advertise your online business and I have just learnt a lot of things from your article about facebook affiliates marketing rules which a lot of affiliates marketers and bloggers have failed to undestand and use properly.
Thanks Kenechi I am glad you have found this article useful. Facebook truly is a great way to get your offers in front of a big audience, but break the rules and it can prove disastrous.