So I tried turning a profit with Facebook ads and this is what happened. We’re jumping right on in!

Okay, so here are the results. We’re gonna jump right into my computer…

Whenever I am not making YouTube videos, I’m usually testing new things in the background.

My most recent experiment has been running Facebook ads to a Shopify store. The topic is astrology. I’m not too familiar with it, that much.

It’s basically these people believing in these signs, and these signs/symbols represent certain things about them.

What I was doing was trying to sell this jewelry. This necklace here has certain signs on it. I ran a good bit of traffic to this.

My Facebook Ads Profits

Right now the profit margin on this is roughly $7.

Going into the results here, I’ve made roughly $65. Of that, only $20 was profit.

Herein lies the problem with paid ads: you have to experiment a lot.

The reason why I spent $200 is because I tested out multiple necklaces. I tested pretty much every necklace there is.

And none of those were a hit!

Now obviously necklaces have a lot to do with personal taste and all that. But where I’m getting at with this, guys, is that it’s very risky business. Not knowing what’s going to return results.

That’s the main problem with paid traffic.

Why It’s Hard To Compete With Established Businesses Using Facebook Ads

The other problem is that bigger businesses  (I’m going to talk more about this in the workshop I’m gonna have in a couple of days)…

…bigger businesses, more experienced marketers, they have a lot of foundation work – a big moat, in other words – built up so that it’s hard for a beginner to come in and be profitable.

So where some experts might be able to make a profit here, as far as having a huge inventory of product they’ve created, getting real high-profit margins on it, they have partnerships…

…they have all that…

…THINGS THAT TAKE YEARS, frankly, to build up… they might be able to turn a profit by doing this. 

But if you’re a beginner and those have those things set up, you’re gonna be spending money in order to get this.

I took a $200 stab at this. And Facebook typically gets more optimized (they call it “seasoning the pixel”). When your pixel gets more “seasoned”, it becomes more efficient at getting sales.

But it costs money to get to that point.

So, right now, my return on investment (ROI) is, like -1,000% and obviously this is not a good run.

Where I’m getting at with this is: paid traffic is VERY, VERY COSTLY.

Here is where this is different from free traffic. Look what happens when I turn the ads on…

When the ads are on – BOOM! – you get some results. That’s great!

But then look at what happens as soon as I turn them off…

BOOM! – drops to zero. No more traffic.

When I turn it back on to test another product, the traffic raises again. Great, great, great…

…turn it off – BOOM! – nothing.

That’s the issue with paid traffic. It’s boom or bust. There’s nothing in between.

Beginners: Don’t Start With Facebook Ads (Do This Instead)

So, for beginners, I don’t recommend messing around with paid traffic. Obviously, I’ve been recommending free traffic to you over the last week, and that’s really been my bread and butter.

I’ve done free traffic over my whole career. I don’t really do that much paid traffic.

Let’s look at some other results…

Here is a channel driven entirely by free traffic. I have not spent a dime on promoting this.

You’ll notice I started in 2012. Why I like this is, it’s still going EIGHT YEARS LATER!

It’s not doing “amazing”, at about 100 views a day recently. In its heyday it was doing 3,000-5,000 or so.

But, to this day, it’s still sending sales. Why is this such a benefit?

Well, even though it might not have been profitable at the first bit of it, over time this channel has been quite profitable for me. Over time, it STILL KEEPS ON TICKIN’.

Let’s say you make your investment upfront, whether it be time or you have someone else do your free traffic generation for you, syndicating the content and all that…

…once that’s done, you have a very, very long tail of profit potential, regardless of what you decide to do.

That’s mainly why I’ve been recommending free traffic so much! It’s so much easier, it’s lower risk. Yeah, it costs you a little bit of time upfront, but if you don’t have money, this is a great way to start.

If you do have money, the one other benefit of free traffic is that it’s a very difficult moat for competitors to overcome.

(I’ll talk more about this in my upcoming workshop.)

Basically, a lot of the big guys don’t like to go after free traffic for certain reasons, and what that means is possible for you… if you put in that little bit of work upfront to really capitalize on it, you’ll reap rewards for many, many years.

Dealing With Upfront Risk With Facebook Ads

My question for ya: Do you want to take that risk upfront?

Now don’t get me wrong, guys. Some people are experts at this. They’ve been doing it for a while. They spend a lot of money. They understand the ins & outs of the Facebook ads game.

And, full disclosure here, I am a Facebook ads beginner. You know, I’m not an expert. I’m reporting this to you AS A BEGINNER in this space. Obviously, if I were to spend more money on becoming an expert, my results would be much better.

I’d be able to find more profitable stuff.

What I’m getting at is: IT COSTS MONEY TO BECOME AN EXPERT IN PAID TRAFFIC.

THAT is the difference between paid and free traffic. This is my attempt at getting rich with paid traffic. So far? No dice!

But with free traffic, I’ve become rich (from the standards of the average world).

That said, I’m gonna recommend free traffic to you guys. And full transparency, I have a stake in offering free traffic to you. It works for me. That’s where I’ve made all my money from.

Quick message for you. Two important orders of business: Chris and Jay just informed me that they’re closing their offer to Ampifire. They’ve almost reached capacity.

In just a couple of days, they have to close the doors. The special Ampifire offer will no longer exist.

My question for you is: do you really want to get free traffic? And not just junk traffic. Traffic that actually converts into sales!

Traffic that has money in hand.

If so, watch this video. Watch it to see how Ampifire works, and then to secure your place before it expires.

Also, I’m putting on a live workshop in the upcoming days. I call it “David vs Goliath”. I discuss why and how you can, as the small guy, use free traffic to beat the big guys.

That’s all for now. Read this if you want to learn how to get more free traffic to your website.