Evil Viral Facebook Trick
written by Gary Jones
Facebook is one of the fastest growing Social Networking sites on the net, even John Chow is on it. If you do not have a facebook account yet I do suggest you go and sign-up. Using social networking sites to launch new products, sites or services is becoming a new trend.
Recently we launched our XmasRadio site and Facebook Application to drive traffic to our Christmas Music radio station. Using our network of friends we drummed up some good traffic to the site and application. We pushed our launch out to 300+ users and now we have 300+ unique visitors a day coming from Facebook to our site. We also have 20-30 people adding the application a day to their profile. Using the viral nature of Facebook our numbers will increase from 300+ visitors a day to 1000+ day before Christmas.
So How Is This Evil?
To this point there is nothing evil about using facebook for viral marketing.
John would say “if you want more traffic then simply get a bigger network of friends.” To do that you could spend all day doing it yourself adding people randomly and possibly getting banned. Instead you can find someone else to do it for you and only pay them when they provide you the service in full.
I noticed at ScriptLance that they have projects to get large networks of friends on facebook with people bidding from $5 to $35 for 250 people in your network. For a network of 5,000 people would cost in the $100+ range depending on which programmer you picked. You could then leverage that large network to push traffic to where you would want it.
Do you use Facebook to do your launches?
This post was guest blogged by Gary Jones from BlueFur.com. BlueFur provides Dedicated Servers in Canada like the one that runs John Chow’s sites.
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Hmmm not sure why using Facebook to promote one’s site is considered evil….but no I haven’t used Facebook yet.
Good idea though!
facebook sucks at promoting and selling affilaites - I tried it studied it and tested it - I have poor conversions, poor traffic, and poor clicks - with over 10K impressions 2 clicks, are you serious. I think facebook is more for teh socializing era and not promoting - I tried it with 2 products and both failed miserably
I found the advertising “flyer” system sucked. Having a large network and having your profile set up “import notes” to stream a preview of your feed from your site has been great for traffic for me.
i can only agree…
it might look interesting at the beginning but i am sure it will only make you some money when you have a profile like Tom or Tila Tequila.
Ian is right, Facebook people will not convert at all, they tend to remain on facebook and thats it.
I’ve had some success with direct to affiliate ads from facebook but they limit how much money per day you can spend on campaigns.
Sending traffic to your site wanting it to convert? Not happening without amazing content, visitors tend to backpage right back to facebook.
Thats exactly what I meant to say, similar thing happens with Stumble folks and with them also it works good on the affiliate links but nothing to be excited about honestly.
There are some people making an insane amount of money off facebook, it’s all a matter of knowing how to make it convert. I know some guys pushing 5 figures profit DAILY!
create a fun application and give credit to yourself and it should help drive some traffic
I haven’t been onto the whole Facebook thing yet. I guess it’s time to get on that bandwagon as well.
Just my 2 cents from a university student/original Facebook’er - Applications seem gaudy and annoying to me, and are more of a hindrance than a help. People sending spam invites to your profile gets very annoying, and it is rare that I will actually add an application. This is just my opinion however, I would be interested to know if this application works out for you.
True about the applications. When you first join Facebook they’re kinda fun…after a while, you really start to hate them.
The applications are making some of the big players massive money. The truth is, Facebook is now a lot more like MySpace with the applications and fun stuff people can add to their pages. It’s opened up a whole new way for people to cash in too.
I actually really enjoy Facebook, but I haven’t used it for any commercial purposes. It’s interesting how different Facebook and MySpace are. When I was on MySpace, I would accept friend invitations from anybody, and I would get 10+ per day that I didn’t know. Facebook is the exact opposite. Everyone on my friends list I’m actually friends with, and I’ve never gotten a spammy friend request. It’s a far superior social networking site, in my opinion.
I think this facebook thing is a great idea. Nice post John
This was written by a guest blogger, not John Chow.
FaceBook and other social networking sites in general has become the main tool for promoting new sites for many people. I have seen well known figures on the internet use them, abuse them whatever you say to market new sites. And it works, as per the traffic stats.
Facebook is a possible social network to market on, but Myspace is much better. If you are looking to market that way I would consider getting a friend adding software that enables you to send 200-400 friend requests a day. A good one that you can have multiple accounts on and lasts forever costs about $60 and standard ones go for $20.
well which one is still working?
Myspace pretty much banned them all.
MySpace was (still is) one of the greatest goldmines ever… and I’m not talking about for big companies. Smart individuals took advantage of the opportunity and now there are a lot of rich teens/20 year olds.
Sounds a lot like some of the Myspace techniques used a few years ago. History is repeating itself.
Well…facebook do need to get some ideas
Wow, great post, we will have to use this method.
I most admit..I have… some would maybe call it spam, but I call it promoting myself
My own group, sending requests to all my friends, update the group with the latest news..haven’t found any rss feed for groups yet though..so manually feeds is my thing for now
Check out my group at facebook : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7879665959
I personally can’t stand all the cluttered pages filled with all sorts of applications and whatnot. But then again, I certainly see a lot people with them on their pages. Just because it’s something I don’t like, doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Clutter is sometimes a good thing, you just need to find a sweet spot in your tactics that works with the clutter, and stands out from it.
Todays Google “navigation” arrows have messed with one my templates by making the ad stick out too much. I need “new clutter” apparently
I think a lot of people are overlooking the fact that most of the Facebook users are college kids. College kids tend to not have extra money to spend on ebooks and affiliate programs - any extra income goes to beer on the weekends!
hmmm, there those few that are marketer newbies or entrepreneurs, so you never know. its also good to know that and be aware of the fact that you should target your product or whatever you are pushing to that demographic.
College kids are making survey/freebie companies an amazing load of money. Ever fill out one of those forms for a FREE TV or something, guess who is filling out most of those forms and clicking banners. Not to mention you can market college/scholorship information to them. Every niche has it’s riches.
I have noticed a very interesting phenomenon with Facebook: It is virtually impossible to find one person between the ages of 15-40 in North America that has not heard of Facebook.com.
The phenomenon is that in that same demographic you will find it equally as difficult to find a single person that you personally know of that has made a single dollar through the website Facebook. (And I am talk about money that facebook actually sends you, NOT through self promotion through the site i.e. emailing old friends to generate new business.)
Does anyone smell an opportunity?
So…what’s the evil trick exactly? Promote your site using a facebook app?
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Havn’t signed up at facebook yet but if it drives traffic i will sure do.
Thanks for mentioning john.
Regards,
Maher Saleh:razz:
A lot of apps are spam machines - don’t use much
Nice - I am currently trying to find ways to use Facebook to help with my ventures.
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Scriptlance is indeed a very good place to find freelancers do “bulk jobs” at low prices. I say this from experience, since I used to work for a while on Scriptlance and lost some projects I bid on to some “cheap” guy. oh well, most buyers on SL seem not to care about quality (or at least, when they pick someone, they don’t) - just if the price is low enough for their budget. Anyway, Facebook is indeed a huge network, with a great potential to promote stuff.
I have not used facebook. Have not gotten the hang of all this social marketing yet.
I want to learn more so off I go to study..
How can i post my own web application at facebook?
It sounds good adea, once implemented.
I would like to know how can i place my application to facebook?
Need to find a programmer to make an application, then you can just implement it into the network for members to use and grab. Most programmers are running around $100 an hour for facebook apps.
I have not used facebook to drive traffic yet but it could happen in the near future.
Facebook can be very powerful tool for generating free traffic and money.
I’m still waiting for a flood of facebook bots to launch just like they did with myspace.
~ Dave