So often I get emails, facebook messages, and even tweets from people asking how to get started with affiliate marketing.

It comes with a good reason too; starting affiliate marketing can seem like such a daunting task! You have the landing pages, the advertisement creatives (banners and text ads), traffic sources, keywords, Ahh!

You know, the most common problem I hear is, “I am not a coder” and “I am not a designer” often followed by “I can’t afford to hire them!”

The funny thing is, while I “can” code and I can design, my coders and designers would agree that I suck at it. The other day I tried to modify a template my coder had done for me. He messages me shortly after… “Hey, do you mind if I… recode all of this…” Hahaha.

Anyway, I’m sure many of you know how it can feel when you don’t have this skillset. The honest truth however, is you really don’t need to have those skills to be able to make money online.

Sure, having those skills will help, there is no argument there.

Last year I made over $1,500,000 using a free template that I grabbed from one of the many free CSS templates. No joke. It didn’t matter that it was free or that I didn’t have to do anything except add my own filler text. All that matters is that that it converted and converted well.

So often we get into this mindset that if we don’t have the most beautiful page that we will not be able to succeed. Success really does not come from design. Success comes from your ability to optimize, test, retest, test some more, and focus on details. I truly believe that, and obviously have some proof.

Starting as a marketer is certainly no easy task. It took me 3 years to really start to become successful (2004-2007) but as you continue to press on, you will continue to learn and grow in your ability to generate sales.

So you’ve finally found a profitable campaign on Facebook. Hooray! The problem is, you’re only making $50 bucks profit a day. So how do you scale that? More importantly, how do you scale it to make 6 figure revenues per MONTH like the big guys?

Scaling in Facebook is something that I have been working hard to figure out.

Honestly, I’ve been so used to Google Adwords and other Pay per click keyword engines, that learning how to scale in Facebook was quite a challenge for me. You can see on my affiliate blog, that I write MOSTLY about PPC marketing tips. This was because for the longest time, I would fail at most Facebook campaigns.

I’ve always found however that if you fail enough, you’re bound to find some success. I mean, there are only so many ways you can do it wrong!

I’m used to scaling PPC campaigns (great video interview…) but I had to relearn most of what I knew in order to gain even more revenue through Facebook.

Now, my company is hitting 6 figures per month in revenue just from Facebook alone.

So here are some really helpful tips on scaling your Facebook campaigns:

• More Ads! – Making more ads with little changes can have a big impact. Normally in PPC Engines, I was so used to just split testing 2-3 ads at a time and letting those run that I had to change my mindset. With Facebook, you can run literally hundreds of ads at the same time, going to the same offer.
• Targeting – Targeting on Facebook is where you need to be creative. In fact, if you’ve found a small profiting campaign, chances are, your targeting is actually pretty broad. In my experience, most newbies target very little. So, target more specific things. Remember, people in one place in life might convert differently than another. People at one workplace might convert differently than another. Test them all… ages, geographical location, sexual preference, etc. People at x might convert different than Y. Most people group them all into one large lump of demographic targeting. If the ad is not profitable, you kill entire sub sections which might have been profitable. This might take time, but it’s worth the effort. You can put a small budget on each test to maximize your testing efforts.
• Images – Images are well known as the main factor in producing a maximum click through rate. The higher your click through rate, (usually) the higher your ads get shown. It’s simple enough to know that you should be testing multiple images. If you find a new image that has a much higher click through rate, you’ve instantly scaled your campaign. Test as many images as you can afford. Some images are so odd but work amazingly well. Some images you think would work great, yet perform poorly.
• CPM bidding – Seeing as I am a big pay per click guy, I was so used to the CPC model that it was very hard for me to break away from. Think about it though. Facebook is trying to maximize revenue. If they can get an advertiser to promise to pay a set amount regardless of clicks for 1000 impressions, they have just reduced a lot of risk on their part. Therefore, if you have a good ad, switching to CPM based models really can help you increase your traffic flow. Facebook favors the lower risk (to them) ads.

So now you should be ready to start making some bigger profits with Facebook. The trick is, of course, finding a profitable campaign to begin with.

I have a simple guide about Making Successful Facebook campaigns as well as Shoemoney has a couple great posts on running a successful Facebook campaign.

Now it’s just a matter of doing some actual work…

(Disclaimer: Image ad used above is not my own, just thought it was funny and creative.)