Thanks for being committed to starting your blog, your online business. I also want to congratulate you for getting started.
Getting started is the most crucial step that every successful entrepreneur has to make. And since you have taken your first step, you are ready to become a successful entrepreneur. The rest, you just need to be consistent.
Now, let’s get into the lesson.
In this last lesson, I will show you the exact tactics to get your first $10,000 from your blog.
As I said yesterday, you only have one month left out of three months as you already used your first two months to prepare everything prior to the launch/promotion.
With only one month left, you need to use the most efficient traffic type.
There are three traffic types when it comes to internet marketing. Those are:
- Traffic you own
- Traffic you control
- Traffic you earn
Before I break the above list down, let’s understand the real meaning of traffic. I need to cover this because most bloggers have a misunderstanding about traffic.
Most bloggers think that traffic is the number of visitors and page views that their blog gets. While this is not wrong, the definition of traffic is broader than that.
As a blogger — an online business owner — you will be using any medium to grow your blog. From social media, email newsletter, YouTube, podcast, and so on. You will be creating content for any medium you choose, other than content for your blog.
Every view that your mediums get is also traffic. There are chances that this traffic turns into a conversion (course student in our case).
That’s why offering value is crucial.
Now that you already know the real definition of traffic, let’s break down the traffic types on the above list.
Traffic Types
1. Traffic You Own
This is the best traffic that every online business owner dreams of.
Why?
Because with this traffic type, you have direct access to your customers. This is the type of traffic I meant on day 1 of the course when I said “email list is your main asset”.
And, throughout this course, I have been teaching you how to build this traffic type.
2. Traffic You Control
The second type of traffic is traffic you control. Called so because you have the ability to tell it where to go.
For instance, when you buy paid ads on Facebook, you can tell Facebook where it should send every click on the ad you are running. Normally, the click is sent to a landing on your blog.
Also, you can control the volume of traffic according to your budget.
Any type of paid traffic counts as traffic you control, including:
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
- Reddit Ads
- Pinterest Ads
- Etc.
3. Traffic You Earn
The last type of traffic is traffic you earn. The traffic you get from SEO, social media, online PR, and referrals fall into this type.
Although you have earned the traffic, you have no control over it. You have no control over this traffic type as you can’t control the algorithms. Neither controlling people.
All you can do with this traffic type is to hope and pray.
Since you have no control over the traffic, it is nearly impossible to achieve your goal using this traffic type.
And for the above reason, we won’t use this type of traffic to achieve our goal. Instead, we will use the second type of traffic: traffic you control.
In other words, we will use paid ads.
In this course, I will use Facebook Ads as it is more affordable to small businesses than Google Ads.
According to WordStream, the average conversion rate of Facebook Ads is between 3 – 11 percent.
But I will take a lower number to anticipate the worst scenario. Instead of 3 – 11, I will use 1 percent (1%) on the following calculation.
Yesterday, I said that I would get $200 commissions for every course student who takes action after completing this course.
Now, let’s do simple math.
Say I will spend $2,000 on Facebook Ads for a month. Referring to the 1% conversion rate I set above, I will get 60 conversions as the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Here are the details:
- Facebook Ads budget: $2,000
- Estimated daily clicks: 203 – 593 (let’s take the lowest number, 203). 203 x 30 (days) = 6090 clicks in total
- Estimated conversion: 6,090 x 1% = 60.9 (rounded to 60)
- Estimated affiliate commission: $12,000 (60 x 200)
Note: 203 – 593 is the estimated clicks based on the following audience setting:
- Location: USA
- Interest: WordPress
From the above calculation, you will get a $10,200 ROAS (12000 – 2000).
Now you may be asking.
“But, I can’t run an ad on Facebook, Aliko”.
Running an ad on Facebook is super easy. You just need an account (your personal account) and a Page.
I am pretty sure that creating a Facebook Page is not a big deal. You can do so by clicking the Pages menu on the left side.
Next, you can click the Create New Page button. Simply follow the steps to complete the Page setup.
Once your Page is ready, you can start running an ad on Facebook. To do so, go to the Ads Manager menu on the left side. Clicking this menu will take you to the Ads Manager dashboard.
Before you can run an ad, you need to add a payment method first. To do so, you can click the Billing & payments menu. Next, you can click the Payment settings tab.
Running Ads on Facebook
Once you are done setting up your Facebook Page and payment method, you can start running an ad on Facebook.
But first, you need to understand the ad structure on Facebook.
On Facebook, an ad consists of three levels:
- Campaign Level
- Ad Set Level
- Ad Level
# Campaign Level
On this level, you set the objective of the campaign you plan to run. The objective can be traffic, awareness, leads, engagement, and so on.
# Ad Set Level
On this level, you set the audience you want to target, ad budget, ad schedule, and ad placement (the location where you want your ad to be displayed by Facebook).
You can implement the Customer Avatar you created yesterday on this level.
# Ad Level
On this level, you set the content as well as the format of the ad. The elements you set on this level include headline, image, and link.
A crucial thing to note. A campaign can consist of multiple ad sets. Similarly, an ad set can consist of multiple ads.
Take a look at the following image to better understand the ad structure on Facebook.
Now that you already understand the ad structure on Facebook, you can start running your first ad.
Select the Campaigns menu on the left side and click the Create button.
On the appearing dialog, since you have no campaign yet, you need to create a new campaign first. Start by picking an objective. For the purpose of this course, you can select Traffic. Click the Continue button.
On the next step, select Manual traffic campaign and click the Continue button.
Give your campaign a name and click the Next button.
On the next step, you will be asked to set your ad set. There are four settings you can set here:
- Conversion
- Budget & schedule
- Audience controls
- Placements
# Conversion
In this setting section, you can set where you want to send the traffic to. Whether to your website, your app, Instagram profile, and so on.
For more detail about your destination (web address, etc.,) you can set it later on the ad settings. You can set the destination to Website. There is no other setting you need to make here.
# Budget & schedule
In this settings section, you can set the budget and schedule. In Facebook Ads, you can run your ads whether daily or for a certain time span.
First, you can set the budget on the Budget option. Then, you can set the ad schedule on the Schedule option.
# Audience controls
In Facebook Ads, there are two settings sections you can use to control the audience.
These are the locations where you can apply the customer avatar you created in the previous lesson (lesson 6).
First, you can set the target of your audience by their location (geography). You can set this option in the Audience controls section on the Locations option.
For a more specific location (e.g., city), you can zoom-in the map. Specify the city(ies) you want to target and click the Drop Pin button.
From the same settings section, you can also set the language and minimum age of your audience.
Next, you can move on to the Advantage+ audience section where you can set the demography and interest of your audience. You can click the Browse link to show all of the detailed targeting options offered by Facebook.
In this settings section, you can apply all the criteria of your customer avatar. Such as education, work status, relationship, hobby, and so on.
Please note that this settings section is extremely crucial. Ideally, you need a team to brainstorm your ideas.
If you have no team, that’s fine. Just set every option carefully, with a deep consideration. Usually, this step takes time. It’s normal if you take hours to complete this step.
Crucial to note that the narrower your audience, the better since it is more specific. 500,000 to 1 million people is a considerably good audience size.
You can view the estimated audience size on the right side of your screen.
# Placements
In this settings section, you can set where you want your ads to be displayed. From Facebook feed, sidebar, story, and so on.
For the best results, I strongly recommend you to set locations manually. To do so, hover your customer over the Advantage+ placements label and click the Edit link.
Select the Manual placements option and select the location you want your ads to be displayed.
Once you are done with all the settings, you can click the Next button to proceed with the next step: setting the ad content and placement.
Setting the Ad Content
Before setting the ad content and placement, you first need to set the ad name and identity (Facebook Page).
Once done setting the site identity, you can move on to the Ad setup section to set your ad format. You can select the Single image or video option. There is no other setting you need to make in this section.
Next, move on to the Ad creative section to add your ad content. From this section, you can set the ad image, headline, and description. You can monitor the ad preview on the right side of your screen.
Lastly, you can move on to the Destination section to add the link of your landing page. Place it to the Website URL field on the Website option. Click the Publish button to publish your ad.
Monitoring Your Ad Performance
Your ad is running. What’s next?
First, I want to congratulate you for that. However, your real job is not to make your ad running. Instead, your real job is to monitor the ad metrics and make sure you get the decent ROAS aka make profit.
As your ads are running, you need to monitor the performance by looking at some metrics.
To do so, go to the Ads Manager dashboard and select the dates you want to check the reports on.
After selecting the dates, you can click on the Campaigns tab, Ads set tab, or Ads tab, depending on which level you want to monitor.
One thing you need to know, there are over one hundred metrics you can monitor on Facebook Ads, but you don’t need to monitor them all. Instead, the only key metrics you need to monitor are:
- Reach: The total of people who view your ads (different people)
- Impression: The total of people who view your ads (one person can view ads multiple times)
- CTR: The percentage of people who view your ads and make the clicks
- Link Clicks: The number of people who view your ads and make the clicks
- CPC: The amount of money you need to spend per ad click
These are the core metrics you need to understand on Facebook Ads. To make it easy for you to monitor these metrics, you can hide unnecessary metric columns from the table.
To do so, click the three-block icon above the table and select Customise columns.
On the appearing window, pick the metrics you want to display on the table and remove the ones you don’t need. Click the Apply button to apply the changes.
The question is, which columns do you need to add to the table?
Outside of the core metrics I have just mentioned above, here are other metrics that you need to the table:
- Delivery
- Ad Set Name
- Budget
- Amount Spent
- Results
- Cost per Result
- Reach
- Impressions
- Link Clicks
- CPC
- CTR
- CPM
Fixing the CTR
You already know the metrics you need to achieve your goal. Out of them, there is one metric you can fix instantly as your ads are running — and it is the most crucial metric.
The metric is CTR — Click-Through Rate.
The higher the CTR, the better. 2% is the minimum CTR you should get for your campaign. If you have lower CTR than 2%, you can replace the ad content. From the image, headline, and description.
Replace your ad content one by one instead of at once and monitor the changes each day.
Making the Report
Once you understand how to read the metrics, the next step is to create the custom report. You need to create it to figure out whether your ads deliver the ROAS you expected or not.
You can create the report for the campaign level.
To create the report itself, you can use Google Sheets to create the custom report. Make sure to include the necessary metrics to calculate the ROAS. The necessary metrics you need are:
- Spent
- Link clicks
- Affiliate conversion 1
- Affiliate conversion 2
- Conversion rate
- Margin
I have created the following spreadsheet template to make it easy for you to monitor your ROAS.
Please note that affiliate conversion 1, affiliate conversion 2, conversion rate, and margin on the spreadsheet are custom metrics I create myself.
- Affiliate conversion 1: The number of affiliate sales (Rocket.net) that managed to make by the campaign. The commission is $150 per sale
- Affiliate conversion 2: The number of affiliate sales (Elegant Themes) that managed to make by the campaign. The conversion is $45.5 per sale
- Conversion rate: The percentage of conversion. Calculated by dividing the number of conversions (affiliate conversion 1 and affiliate conversion 2) by the number of link clicks. For instance, if I get one conversion for every 49 link clicks, then my conversion rate (CR) is 2.041%
- Margin: This is the metric that determines whether your campaign is profitable or not
Based on the ROAS spreadsheet template I created above, if you have the total margin of $10,000 by the end of the month, then you already achieved your goal.
However, the reality is not that simple.
The worst scenario, your course students won’t start their blog right away after completing your course.
If this is the case, you can remember again my main goal of creating this course: to help you build the email list.
So, if your course students don’t start their blog right away after completing your course, you can send them educational email newsletters on a regular basis.
Maximize email as the tool to build a strong relationship with your course students. Send them regular, valuable content.
Remember again what I said in day 1 of the course: being a blogger, you are also a content creator.
Best Practices
We are in the end section of the course already. But before I end this course, there are some tips I will share here with you.
First and foremost. Never put too much money on the beginning days of the campaign until you find the best results.
It takes trials and errors before you find your dream audience on Facebook Ads. Never expect instant results from day one you run the campaign.
Start from $10 per day while you keep monitoring the metrics.
Wait until day two. If you don’t get the results you expected on day 2, it’s time to fix what’s not performing well.
You can start by editing the audience. When editing the audience for a testing purpose, edit only one element. For instance, if you want to test a different interest, then you only need to edit the interest.
By editing the parameters one by one, you will have a clear clue which parameter determines the performance of your campaign.
After editing the audience, you can edit the ad content to improve the CTR. Same as the audience. When editing the ad content, make sure to replace the elements one by one to figure out which elements determine the ad performance.
Monitor the metrics on a daily basis. If you find your campaign delivers the results you wanted (profitable), put more money to extend the reach.
Pause the campaign or ad immediately once you find it under-perform.
If you need some ideas about the ad you want to run, you can find them on Facebook Ad Library.
Final Words
As I promised, you can download the raw formats of my texts here.
Finally, everything will come to an end. So is this course.
But before I end this course, I want to say once again that I will always be here if you need help. You can find me on Threads. Or you can also email me at aliko@totheweb.net.
If you find my course useful, please help me to share it with the world so that more people who want to start an online business can be benefited.
Also, it means a lot to me if you can share your thoughts here.
Thanks again and good luck!
Rooting for you,
Aliko.
P.S
Don’t forget to follow up your course students if they don’t take action after completing the course.
You can use Mailsuite to track the status of every email you sent.