You can see with Sprezi.com that I bid less than $50 as I was quite unsure about it, but thought at $50 it was a good punt. croots.com was not part of this case study, but a domain that I wanted for my main portfolio. I think it’s a great domain name and that someone got a good deal. It just wasn’t my focus to bid high enough to win it and I didn’t do any proper research before bidding. My highest bid was $750.
My favorite domains out of the ones I bid for were:
obesitymatters.com, cutetopshop.com, bassfishingworld.com (in that order)
In retrospect, I was pleased that I didn’t win kahunaproperties.com, startupgovernment and especially iheartyourcoffee.com . I think that I misread the last one as iheartcoffee.com which I why I bid on it.
The Good News!
So, the good news is, that I didn’t actually win 1 auction which was for….
(Drumroll)
otcinvestmentsxxx.com (remove the xxx).
I won the auction for $20. Taking into account the registration fee, it cost me $39.17 in all.
Why do I like the domain?
OTC is a well-known shortened form of Over The Counter which is a term used with investments. It is both a good keyword domain and also a good branding name with around 5-10 companies in the US called OTC Investments.
With the way that expired domain works, it will take a few days to clear and push to my Godaddy account at which point I will put it on Afternic and a couple of other marketplaces and hope for the best.
One thing that has become very clear to me already, is that it is much more difficult to buy a sub $100 domain name than I had thought. I have bid on 15-20 domains at $100 and only won 1 auction. There are several obvious reasons for this.
Many people see that there is more than 1 bid on a domain name and that therefore becomes more attractive to bid on. Especially, if the original bidder auto bid against me.
There are probably more people who are prepared to bid on a $100 domain than a $3k domain.
I assume that there are certain bots out there who are programmed to immediately bid on signals that I am setting off when bidding on a sub-100 domain name.
So, I now have $9,960.83 left to buy domains. And I also have 1 domain with zero domains sold.
I have been buying and selling domain names for quite a while. The vast majority of my sales are $3k-$20. I like the price range, as each time I make a sale I receive 2-3 times the amount that I paid when taking into account my fees.
So, if I purchase a domain name for $1,500 and sell it for $5,000 then I receive:
+$5000 (Sales Price)
-$1000 (Commision with Afternic, Dan etc.)
– $60 (Approximate Paypal Fees)
– $20 (Approximate registration fees)
= $3,920
which in my opinion is a nice bit of cash that I can then use to buy further domain names and build up my portfolio.
My portfolio consists of approximately 100 domain names and the rule of thumb industry standard is 1%-5% sales a year. So, if I made 5 domain sales a year, then my profit would be approximately $20k ($3,920*5). However, I also need to pay the renewal fee per year on domain registration. On 100 domains, that would be $1k if renewal is $10 each. So, the profit would be approximately $19k a year.
Obviously, the above figures are approximate but are based on my experience.
For example, you can omit the 20% commission fee if you sell directly. However, in my experience, most of my sales come from Afternic and are usually at full price.
Using the above approximate figures, that is a $20k return on $150k of spend or an annual return of 13.5%.
Problems with the $3k-$20k market:
The biggest problem is the infrequency of sales. They are fairly random. I could go a few months without any sales and then a few sales in a week. I haven’t even noticed any particular seasonal trends.
There is a large outlay. Most people don’t have $150k lying around that they can tie up in an investment that isn’t so liquid (in general).
Mistakes are expensive. If you buy a domain name that never sells, then you have lost potentially 1000s of dollars. I recently bought a domain name on a whim which I regret as it was an impulse buy rather than a thought-out buy.
These may not be problems with a more active trader, however, most of my selling is fairly passive. I put it on the marketplaces and then it sells (or not).
Domains That I Buy
Generally, I buy expired domain names from Godaddy. I realize there are other places to buy. I also realize that I could potentially make more money using other places. However, this suits me and my style of business especially as I put very little time into this.
Domain names that I buy are generally branding names. I consider whether a new (or old) company would be interested in buying this domain as their main website. Also, if a company would be prepared to spend the amount of money that I need to sell it for in order to make a profit.
My three most recent sales were similar to:
hatshop.com
ph33.com
powertothenation.com
NOTE: These are NOT the domains that I sold. They are just similar in concept so that I can describe why I bought them.
hatshop.com is a great name for an eCommerce shop that…well sells hats. If you are setting up a new hat shop then you may be prepared to spend several thousand dollars on that name.
ph33.com is a bit of a funny one as it seems quite generic. However, if a company calls themselves ph33, then it would be a perfect domain name and they actually have little choice but to buy it from you. You need to be lucky with this one. Obviously don’t buy a domain that already has a trademark etc.
powertothenation.com is a very different kind of domain name and not one that I usually buy. However, it is very brandable for an organization or someone that wants to use that slogan or a new company.
Another kind of domain name that I also sometimes buy is a keyword domain name. An example here could be farmersinalaska.com . However, I generally wouldn’t buy this to resell but to use myself to build a content site around. It’s not very brandable and I don’t think that a farmers union would pay a premium to buy this domain name. However, if I wanted to do a content site about farming in Alaska then it would be the perfect domain. I very rarely am able to sell a keyword domain name to an SEOer. I assume because if they don’t get the exact domain name, then they buy something similar. eg. afarmerinalaska.com that is available to register from new.
Plan for the $10k Domain Buying Case Study
Taking the above into account, I want to try an experiment to see if a different tactic will work better. That is to take $10k and use it to buy approximately 100 domain names at $100 each. I am keeping the number of domain names approximate as there will be some cases where I consider a domain name so good that I need to bid higher. However, that will be on a rare occasion and only up to $250.
I will then list each domain name for $500 and hope that sales will be more frequent.
Doing the maths if I buy at $100 and sell at $500:
-$100 (for domain)
– $3 (Paypal fees)
– $20 (registration fee)
+ $500 (sale)
-$100 (commission)
This basically means, that using this figure I will get back $277 for each $100 that I spend.
If my sales rate increases to 10%, then I will make $1770 on an investment of $10k or 17.7%.
The other thing to realize is that with each sale, I will be able to buy 2-3 more domains which should increase my sales rate.
How I Find Domain Names:
I’m going to keep it simple. Each day, I will go to Godaddy Expired domains and do a search for domains where the auction is ending in less than 24 hours. Also, that there is at least 1 bid, and that the current price is under $100. I will then put a bid for $101. This is so I will beat people whose standard bid is $100. There are ways that this could be improved in terms of tactics and strategies, but it also keeps it very systemized and automated.
In the case study, I will show you which domains I bid for and which I win and lose, and also a running total of $10k. When I win an auction, I will replace a letter of the domain with an xx so that it won’t appear on a search of a potential buyer. As this blog has started off with next to zero readers, I don’t feel that it gives me an unfair advantage to reveal the names I have for sale as this is tactical that anyone else could use without any name recognition.
After doing that search, I then search by time left so that I have the soonest ending at the top and ‘watch’ any auctions that I find interesting. I then go straight away and bid $101 on each domain.
These are my results from yesterday:
I lost the following auctions:
I didn’t actually win any auctions!
My favorite were:
mraustralia.com
comicbookmuseum.com
hookupnation.com
etheriumsilver.com
I think the best of those is etheriumsilver.com
So, at the end of day 1, I still have $10k and 0 domains!
But it is incredibly difficult to value them when on auction more than seeing what others are prepared to pay.
The latest 3 letter domain name to appear on Godaddy Auctions Expired list is jfx.com. J and X are fairly weak letters when it comes to valuing short domains, but there are some pretty interesting features of this domain which is what led me to write about it at all.
From an SEO point of view, it is not ranking for any keywords apart from the domain name itself. It does have some incoming links, but most of them are either weak and low quality or fairly old.
It doesn’t really look like any attention was given since about 2012 when it was announced that jfx.com was being launched as a forex market.
The main company that launched it is Jiffix Leveraged Trading which is/was registered in Cyprus and has 1 employee on LinkedIn. However, their domain name jiffix.com has now expired and has been put up for resell for $3k by BrandBucket.
Interestingly, there are 2 live trademark registrations on JFX. Both from Chinese companies on a product. They are both registered in the past couple of years, so could be a potential problem. My non-legal opinion is that there are too many possible meanings of jfx to claim the domain but could be interesting if ends up in court.
The value also lies in the fact that fx can be effects as in Visual FX or can refer to Forex.
At the moment, it is on sale for around $11,850 with 9 days left. It’s hard to make a prediction without knowing whether end-users are watching it, but I would be surprised if it were to go for less than $20 or more than $30k. However, with the way that domain names are being bought at the moment it could be many multiples of that!
Will update here once the auction is finished.
EDIT: The domain name sold for $43.5k and is currently unused or parked.
Calculating the value or ‘correct price’ of a domain name is definitely NOT an exact science. Ask 10 different experts to appraise a domain and you will likely get very different answers and a large range.
There are, however, several different factors that can help you appraise the value of a domain and decide how much you want to spend on buying it. Or conversely, how much you want to raise from selling it.
The State of the Current Domain Market
Domain names will go up and down in price depending on how active and hungry the market is. In a downturn, companies may have less available cash to buy a domain name.
During Covid, even though there was a downturn in the economy as a whole, many domain names increased greatly in value due to the influx of new companies being set up and wanting to find the correct domain name.
Individual Demand and Timing (aka. luck)
I often see that domains are bought and sold based on what a particular company is looking for at that particular time. For example, a year ago I was looking for a domain name for a singing competition. In the end, I was able to register a domain at my registrar (distansing.com – since let go), however, I did enquire about eligible domains and would have bought one had there been the perfect domain.
Similarly, I sold a domain this year which was LLNN.com eg. pg21.com. It was a new company, and it was pure luck that a company happened to want to call themselves that and therefore wanted the exact domain name.
The same is true with certain topics. This year crypto, covid, and NFT domain names are popular and have gone up in value because they are seen as emerging markets. 5 years ago, they probably would have sold for much less.
SEO Domains
Many domain names are sold simply based on the SEO value. This could be an exact domain match (eg. nurseuniforms.com) or because of the incoming links and history of that domain. Expired domains which keep their age are more valuable to SEOers than registering a new domain as they have passed the stage of having to earn credibility with Google.
Number of Words
I very rarely would buy a keyword domain of more than 2 words unless there was some obvious branding attached. eg. Just Do It (note trademark issues). I actually am surprised when I see domain names sold for 4 figures which are just keyword domains of 3 words plus where the third word doesn’t help it.
For example, some domains that sold yesterday were:
LAMusicBlog.com – $1,505
MyRightWay.com – $2,788
SleepDisorderChannel.com – $2,000
Source: namebio.com
I have not researched any of these three domains, so there could be SEO or Brand, or other value that I am not aware of. However, they are examples of domain names that at first glance seem to be sold for more than I would consider buying them for.
lamusicblog.com limits itself with the word blog. lamusic.com would be a far better domain name although is already used by an active company. I can’t see how this domain name can be used for anything other than a blog about LA music. Which doesn’t seem to be very monetizable or brandable as a blog generally refers to reporting on something. As an investor, I wouldn’t buy it at all as I don’t think that I would ever be able to resell it.
myrightway.com is a phrase. I haven’t done the research and could have some value as it is already being used. Alternatively, it could be used in the future by the person who bought it. Or, they are hoping that someone else will want to use that slogan in the future. Here, it is the word ‘my’ that bothers me. Is ‘my’ more valuable than the, them, your, a, etc.?
sleepdisorderchannel.com is probably the domain that bothers me the most. Perhaps bother is the wrong word! Let’s say intrigues me as to ‘why?’. sleepdisorder.com could be a good domain. Not a GREAT domain as the word disorder is a bit high level and negative. The word channel is a bit weird though. Is this a TV channel – that is what would immediately come to mind. Or a channel, as in a way to treat your sleep disorder? I am assuming that this was bought by, or potentially for an e-commerce store selling products to help you sleep.
Is the word ‘channel’ going to a good match for a store or will it just confuse potential end customers? Purely from a marketing point of view, I would also focus on the cure rather than the problem in my domain name.
This post is getting a bit long, so will continue in another post!
By a trademarked domain, what I mean is a domain name that is clearly the name of another company. For example, if I registered facebooknews.com, then it is clear that I am taking advantage of Facebook‘s brand and actually misleading visitors into thinking that I am in some way associated with Facebook.
The general advice given is not to do it. Putting moral issues aside, you can get sued by the domain name holder. They can also bring a UDRP (The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) which means that they appeal to ICANN to take ownership of the domain name.
So, if you register another company’s name or similar to another company name then there is a real risk that you will end up losing money on your domain name investment.
However, the company bringing the complaint needs to prove that they own the rights to that domain and that you registered it in bad faith – ie. to make money by selling it back to the company.
Needless to say, I have simplified the whole process and law and this should NOT be taken as legal advice…
Often, it isn’t so obvious. For example, I may have registered a domain name in 2010 in order to use it for my website. At the time, there was no company with that name. Then a company comes along and names itself that name in 2015. They can fight for that name. However, there is a strong likelihood that they would not win even if they have the trademark as you are already doing business or have a genuine intention to do business under that name.
If a company files a UDRP under false pretenses, then that is called reverse domain hijacking.
As always, with the law, there are many grey lines.
I have personally sold a number of domains which are the name of a company that ceased doing business. If they are no longer doing business, then does the law still apply that they have rights (or the liquidator has rights) to that domain name? How about if they have spent time and money building up that brand which you are then going to use for your own company?
The domain I recently sold was similar in concept to greatshoes.com (different words and products). The company name was Great Shoes (conceptually) and had been liquidated a couple of years earlier and its stores were shut. It is likely that the domain expired due to the fact that no one was now working at that company and any company that had acquired items in liquidation may not have even been aware of the domain name expiration.
A few months after I purchased it, I had a BIN on afternic for $x,000. I don’t know who the buyer was. It could have been the current owner of the brand. Or someone totally different who wanted to use the credibility of the brand in order to apply to their own shoe business.
I am assuming that if the new owner is from the original company, then they either didn’t know about UDRP or they realized that it was probably cheaper just to purchase the domain name at the BIN price rather than get into a potential legal battle (even though they would probably ‘win’).
Neither the .com (which I sold) or the .co.uk (it was a UK business) are currently active. Will report back if anything changes….
Lastly, how do you value a Trademarked domain name?
The positives is that it has brand value and probably existing SEO value. The downside is it can be seized from you.
Unless you are pretty certain that it won’t be seized from you, I would be very cautious building out a website that you could potentially lose.
If you are buying it as an investment hoping that someone else may purchase it from you, then there is a reasonable chance that you will sell it or hold it long enough that your fear of seizure will be reduced. So, it depends on how much money you are prepared to risk. I also think it depends on how much a company would willingly pay rather than having to go through a potential legal hassle.
My personal limit would be about $1,500-$2,000, depending on the multiple you are going to sell it for and the percentage chance that it will be seized.
The domain name candyfloss.com has come up for auction on Godaddy Expired Domain Names.
There are about 30 hours left and the current bid is $7k. As much of the action on auction sales happens towards the end, I would expect it to reach $10k+ . Will update here with the final price!
Until the domain name expired, it appears that a Shopify shop was hosted there. What’s slightly weird, is that to have an active Shopify Store, you would need to pay monthly. So, it is unlikely that someone would be paying for their hosting but yet forget to renew their domain name for about $10-$15.
My guess would be that the store was not very active, and someone forgot to cancel the charge and just didn’t bother to renew the domain name as they were no longer actively using it. The alternative to that is that the owner passed away and the remaining family didn’t know how to deal with it.
Whilst this doesn’t help with estimating its value, it does tell us that there are no major content assets that were on the site that could be continued. Or that there could be some inherited branding.
Its SEO value is very low with virtually no incoming links that are useful. Nor does it seem to have ranked over the last few years for any terms apart from candyfloss.
So, where is the value in this domain name and why is someone prepared $7k+ on buying it?
(and bear in mind that I may be totally missing something here in that there is an alternative meaning to the word).
Candy Floss (or cotton candy) is a food made out of sugar. It is common throughout the world and available from fairs. As it is an exact match domain, this has value. There is a record of candyfloss.org selling for $200 in 2015.
Candy Floss is also pink which could be good branding for a clothing (or similar) store looking to set up a new shop.
It could also be a good name for a start-up as it is highly memorable. However, the first word that comes to mind when I think of Candy Floss is “sweet”. Therefore, it would have to be good branding for a start-up that has a connection in some way that makes sense.
So, the main positives are that it is highly memorable and has ‘sweet’ branding.
A negative though, is that candy floss is also called cotton candy. So, it would only be useful in parts of the world that called the food candy floss else there would be confusion.
Another negative is that candy floss is not a profitable niche. You don’t sell candy floss online. People aren’t looking for information about it. Perhaps a candy floss machine company could find it useful but am not sure that it would be worth $7k+ for a domain name which can probably be improved upon for less money.
Perhaps a catering company or a restaurant could be good for it.
In summary, I do think that it is a cool domain. However, I find it difficult to see how it could be worth $7k to someone unless they already have a brand with that name – which probably isn’t trademarkable. I suspect that it will send to an end-user rather than a domain investor due to the high price already compared to the value.
I would probably pay around $2k-$2.5k for it for the novelty and brandable value but would look to resell rather than use.
UPDATE: candyfloss.com sold for $7,200 with 2 extra bids since I originally wrote this. I would usually expect to see more bidding in the last few hours of an auction. But perhaps, I was correct that the value was already seen as too high. Congratulations to the winner!
So, you caught me red-handed. Truth is, that this is really a post for my own benefit as I always seem to lose this link and then spend hours looking for it!
Basically, if you want help with Facebook Advertising Billing or Payments, then you can use the following link:
Not sure if this will help you if your account is disabled. If that is the case, then you will probably find a link to contact Facebook above your ads manager.
Native advertising is one of the most sought after services in the online marketing and advertising niche. More brands and companies have recently learned of native advertising’s great benefits, and are using the best native ad companies to put up their ads strategically all over the internet. Companies such as Taboola and Outbrain are known to produce the best results from their native ads. More and more people who want to advertise, which calls for a strict vetting process.
Discussed below are the most important tips for native ad companies accepting your ads.
Authenticity.
As much as native ads companies are in the business of making money, they also have the role of upholding a high level of trust. This calls for a thorough audit when an advertiser comes to them for advertising. In addition to the brand and the services being advertised being genuine, the ad content should not be copied from other sites. Native ad companies will reject companies that violate plagiarism and copyrights.
Submit Acceptable Content.
With every advertising company, different categories are acceptable to be posted. The advertiser needs to respect the company’s policies when it comes to acceptable content and ads. As an advertiser, you should only submit acceptable content to the native ad company if you want your application to advertise with them to be successful. According to Outbrain’s guidelines, the advertiser must keep away from any restricted content such as nudity, weapons, drugs, sexual imagery, violence, graphic images, provocative imagery, and profanity. This is the kind of content that is prohibited by most, if not all, native ads companies.
Make sure that any content you submit as an ad, whether an article, slideshow, video, podcast, infographic, or whitepaper, does not violate the guidelines of online advertising by endangering the viewers.
Clarity and Transparency.
Transparency in advertising yields trustworthiness. For an advertiser to be accepted by a native ads company, they need to be clear and transparent when it comes to their goals and objectives. First of all, having a clear and transparent plan for your ads will help you get accepted by native ad companies. For instance, the disclosures for any sponsored content should be conspicuous to enable internet users to know that they are ads. When submitting your ads, make sure that the font sizes, colors, placements, and designs are easy to read and interpret by users. Native ads are designed to match their surroundings, reducing the level of distraction caused by other display ads. Most native ads companies do not accept popup ads or those that contain excessive overlays. This helps a great deal in ensuring that the users have a seamless experience, thus encouraging engagement and increasing conversions.
Communication skills.
Any advertiser must have excellent communication skills. This helps a great deal in coming up with the right kind of ads for the correct type of audience. With excellent communication skills, it gets easier for the advertiser to come up with solid ideas of whatever they need for their ads. The best qualities of an advertiser include the ability to listen, understand, and speak clearly, as well as express their ideas with confidence. These are the kind of advertisers that ensure maximum returns on their company’s investment in the advertising and marketing industry. This is mainly since they know and understand precisely what their company or brand wants in terms of advertisement, and they can easily correct the native ads company whenever they lose track of the advertising brand’s goals and objectives.
Creativity.
Any advertiser should be creative in terms of coming up with ideas and designing their brand’s advert. Creativity and imagination will help an advertiser to be accepted by a native ads company. A creative and imaginative advertiser has the unique ability to work through stressful situations, make swift decisions, and solve problems with utmost ingenuity. According to a journal published on Science Alert, there is a heightened need for advertisers to think outside the box when it comes to choosing the best mode of advertisement, how to present the ad’s message to the right audience and the best way to cater for any limitations of the technique or platform chosen.
Management Skills.
Among the essential qualities that an advertiser should have are practical supervision and management skills. With these skills, it is easier for the advertiser to budget for their ads, manage any unexpected instances that may come up and solve any arising problems quickly. In addition to the advertiser and brand being accepted by the native ads company, these managerial skills, coupled with a little creativity, are enough to get maximum results from any native ad. This makes it easier for any native ads company to accept an individual that wants to advertise their services or products.
Native ads companies hold the right to reject any advertiser. This is usually based on the type and quality of the content that needs to be promoted. This could be due to reasons ranging from violation of copyrights to submitting of prohibited or restricted content. This is in line with their passion for ensuring the most authentic and incredible user experience, as well as the highest return on investment on the advertising brand’s side. Before trying to seek the services of a native ad company, it is always a great idea to go through their guidelines, privacy policies, and terms of service pages. These pages contain all the rules that any advertiser needs to follow to have their content published by the native ads company.
I never thought that I would enter the belly of the dark side of the internet until I found myself wanting to buy Facebook ad accounts.
I wanted to try an experiment advertising something that I knew Facebook doesn’t like your advertising, but without it having a record on my ‘real’ profile.
The nice I wanted to try something in was weight-loss and I didn’t want to risk having my primary ads account banned. So, thought it better to do it on an account disconnected to the original account.
What Even Are Multiple Facebook Ad Accounts?
Facebook allows you to have a personal ads account and also multiple Facebook ad accounts through the Facebook Business Manager.
As you are probably aware, you can have one personal advertising account and then two business manager accounts. On each business manager account, you can have multiple Facebook ad accounts. That is NOT what we are describing here. Buying a Facebook Account is about using an additional facebook profile, which then allows you to create accounts separate from your original one.
What Is Involved In Using Multiple Facebook Accounts?
Using a second Facebook account to advertise with is not as easy as you may think. You have probably not even considered several factors that are involved. And once you do, it may put you off considering it.
Starting at the end of the story, once you have bought a new functioning Facebook Ads account, where are you going to send the traffic?
It has to be to a website that has zero connection to anything that you may have been doing on your original Facebook account. And not even connected to any site that you may have visited before that has a connection to your Facebook account.
Avoiding A Connection Between Your Two Accounts
Let’s say that you have site A which is a blog site, and you have Facebook tracking on there as you want to build a custom audience or have once sent traffic there. That means that you can no longer have any connection between that site and your new account.
A New Website
What you need is a new website and server. Once you have that, you must never visit it on any computer or internet connection that you have used previously with your original Facebook account.
The most convenient solution here is a remote desktop connection where you can build the site and register the domain. However, it must be a new domain on different host. And you must never visit that site from your main computer. And if you have a Virtual Assistant, it’s also vital that they never visit that site.
A VPN Is Not Enough
You may think that you can use a proxy or similar from your computer and delete cookies. However, in reality, this will never be enough. There will remain far too much information on your computer to identify you and connect you to your old account.
Where Do You Buy A New Facebook Account?
I’m not going to link to any sellers or sources here. You don’t need to be too imaginative with a few quick searches on the internet to find one.
If you buy an account, you are advised to do it with Bitcoin. Bitcoin can be risky as you could send the money and never receive any money in return. However, it is also safer in some ways. Because you are doing something that is on the grey side of marketing, you want to avoid your credit card or PayPal account connected to a dodgy transaction.
How Do you Connect To Your New Account?
Once you have paid, they then provide you with a remote desktop connection to the country of your choice. My advice would be to purchase for the country where your credit card or the payment method that you are going to use is registered. If you don’t, then when you start using your ads account, they will query why you are using a credit card from a different country. They will notice that the credit card doesn’t line up with the correct country. Although you can truthfully answer this, it means that there will be another possible point against you.
Once you have the details, you open up the remote connection, and you arrive on the new server. If you are new to this, then you can think of it as someone else’s computer in a country of your choice. You control it remotely.
You open up Chrome, and you will find that you are logged in to someone else’s Facebook account.
Entering weird city 😉
Unbeknownst to the owner, you are using their Facebook account to advertise on Facebook. The account that you are using is their actual real Facebook account that you are using. You are hoping that they will never use Facebook advertising – because the vast majority of people don’t.
You should disable notifications from ads and pages and a couple of other safety measures so that they don’t know that you are using their account.
Certain notifications can’t be disabled (such as Facebook support requests). It is likely that at some point, your victim/target will think something strange is up. But they are probably also unlikely to do anything about it. Think of yourself in the same position where you don’t understand what those messages mean. Aren’t you more likely to ignore them than investigate them properly?
I had another problem with that the Facebook account that I was using. Although the account was US-Based, they were using Facebook in Spanish, which made it near impossible for me to be able to work efficiently. I did change the language to English. If someone lives in the US and the language changed to English, this shouldn’t raise too much suspicion. Or if they wanted to, they would change it back. In retrospect, a better way to deal with this would be to translate the page automatically through Chrome’s inbuilt translator.
Warming the account
So, the next step is to warm the account up. What this consists of is doing a few ads that Facebook will see as very nonthreatening and slowly start to build up your trust level with the algorithm. In this way, you can hopefully begin to do some far more aggressive things.
For example, your first ad may be an engagement ad to a post.
The next ad may have a link into a totally whitehat page that doesn’t even sell anything.
The next ad may start to drive traffic to some money page.
There is no choice but to do this if you want to use multiple Facebook ad accounts.
Algorithms And Machines Are Watching You
What you have to realize is that it is generally not a human that will be judging your account but an algorithm. Therefore, everything that you do must be as natural as possible. It is impossible to say what is and isn’t natural, but likely that a variety of sequences of actions will trigger Facebook to take a closer look at your account. And you don’t want that.
There could be hundreds or thousands of things that Facebook judges. For example, are you using the account to tweak your ads at times when you have never used your account before? I just made this up as a possible thing, but perhaps it is something that could cause Facebook to score against you.
So you want to make sure that everything you do is as natural as possible. Do not start putting up a $1k a day CBO campaign optimized for purchases. This is not what someone is likely to do first on their account. And Facebook has probably found that people that do that on their first day are far more likely to be banned ultimately.
Making Your First Payment
But let’s step back a bit because this can be a complicated part.
When you start an ad, you need to enter payment details so that the ads will start running.
However…as you may expect, this is not so simple.
It means that you can not use any payment method that you may have ever used before on a previous account.
It also means that you can’t use any payment method that will be using the same address as a card you have used before.
Facebook doesn’t let you use debit cards (at least from my experience. I have a suspicion it may be different in certain countries).
So, let’s say that you do have a spare credit card that is registered to another address (do you?). Or you can borrow a family member’s or business partner’s credit card.
If things go sour, then you will never be able to use that card again to buy Facebook ads even if legitimately. And people aren’t generally so keen to ‘lend’ their credit card however much they trust you.
So, if you don’t have that facility, then you will need to find another way. However, remember that prepaid cards and debit cards don’t work when buying Facebook ads, so it definitely will have to be a credit card.
There are ways to buy semi-legitimate credit cards, but they can be expensive as well as having a percentage when you want to add money to them. And often, it’s not so easy to add money to them and has to be done by Bitcoin or something similar. My brief investigations showed them to cost around $100 initial payment and then 5% of whatever balance has to be put on.
How to buy Bitcoin (which you will need) is a whole other post!
But Let’s Say That You Overcome That
So, now you have active Facebook ad accounts and start sending traffic to an offer.
It is likely that within a short amount of time, Facebook will start asking you for more details about your card and your business. They will ask for documentation. If you are going to fake that, then you are starting to enter an area that is crossing a line that you probably don’t want to. And you are stuck.
Another thing to realize is that Facebook doesn’t like it when you start spending money too quickly as you start becoming more of a risk to them. So, you have to scale very slowly. First $10 a day and then gradually up to $100 a day. If you don’t do this, then you WILL get your Facebook account banned.
I’m not sure where that level is, but there is some point when Facebook will start looking at your account more thoroughly by a human. They will notice that something strange is going on as there seems to be a lack of connection between the real profile and the advertiser. The human review is another thing that could cut down your operation.
So, you want to go under the radar. At some point, you realize that the small profit and large amount of time that you are putting into this account is not an efficient use of your time!
Changes to your landing page or website can suck up your time as they must be done via a remote desktop connection. Using RDP can be a real pain and also involves another payment to another RDP company.
Daily Changes To Your Facebook Ads Account
Any change to your Facebook campaigns will also need to be done through a different remote desktop. Using RDP is not only a pain but is also very slow. You are connecting, and then they are putting you through an additional proxy to mask your main IP. Do you have the patience to deal with slow connections and waiting a few minutes for a web page to load up, which generally would only take a few seconds?
Why I Quit
I stopped for two main reasons:
It wasn’t feasible to run a real business with all of the above problems and restrictions. It’s hard enough to make money online anyway, but with these added costs and problems, it makes it even harder.
There is a point where you have to cross over from what is ‘acceptable’ to what is illegal. Once you start having to fake id and addresses, you are breaking laws. Breaking laws is not somewhere that I want to have to do when running an otherwise legitimate business
I hold zero judgment. If you do decide to try, then know it’s not easy buying an additional Facebook Ad Account or multiple Facebook ad accounts after your Facebook Account is Disabled. It is even hard to use them successfully. There are many other stumbling blocks.
If you are more into a burn and crash business model, then this could work pretty well. Realize that much of your time will be taken up dealing with the unique challenges – which some people enjoy!
Where Do Fake Facebook Accounts Come From
I may be wrong about the following, but it is the only thing that makes sense to me.
The accounts that I am referring to aren’t fake. They are real Facebook accounts that real people around the world are using daily. They are genuine profiles, and the users are posting on a regular and natural basis to their accounts. The friends that they have are real friends.
These accounts are accounts that have been hijacked in some way. The person selling you the account (or selling them the account) has found the username and password that are needed to log into the account. The seller may have used illegal snooper software. Alternatively, they have used lists of email addresses and passwords that have been taken from a hacked database.
As people generally use the same login details for many sites, the seller has found accounts where that has happened.
So, you are using the account of someone unsuspecting.
Moral Reasons For And Against Fake Facebook Accounts
I’m not going to pretend that it is a victimless crime. But I can’t see a way that the original user will be affected. They will still be able to log in and continue using their regular Facebook account. If they suddenly decide they want to advertise using their account this could be a problem – but the likelihood of that is pretty low.
Likely, the actual user will never know any difference.
If you have read until now, you will know that it is something that I did. And not something that I regret. However, it was on the border of my desired involvement with the blackhat side of things. I have no idea of the legalities, but even if not illegal, it does kind of feel a bit crappy.
Dropshipping is when you sell a customer a product that you don’t currently own. Once you have made the sale, you then purchase it from a dropshipping wholesale supplier who will send it to your customer.
How Does Dropshipping Work?
customer buys and pays for product
you pay a supplier to ship that product to your customer
you pocket the difference
Is Dropshipping Legal?
Although I can’t answer specific legal aspects of it, the concept of selling products to customers and then buying that product to someone else is legal. That is actually how much of trade works in the real world.
Why would I want to start dropshipping?
Dropshipping is meant to minimize your risk.
In theory, it means that you don’t need to buy stock before you sell it. This has two main advantages:
you never have dead stock sitting there that you can’t sell
it makes your cashflow far easier as you never have to lay out money before you receive it
What are the best dropshipping products?
At the time of writing this article, the best place to dropship from is Ali Express. That is because they have almost every product that you could ever think of and their prices are very reasonable. Most of the sellers on Ali Express are used to dealing with dropshippers and will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
There are a number of disadvantages to buying dropshipping products from Ali Express though which we will go through below. However, the main one is that they are shipping from China and shipping times can be longer. This means that your customers may not be happy with the long shipping times and if your customers aren’t happy, then your payment processor (or Paypal) won’t be happy and things can very quickly spiral downwards.
Why don’t my customers buy direct from Ali Express?
That’s a pretty good question and one that we will go over in more detail once we discuss sales tactics. However, in short the answer is that your customer doesn’t know that what they are buying from you, they can buy far cheaper from Ali Express. You are out-marketing Aliexpress in this case.
How to make money from Dropshipping?
Making money from dropshipping is far from easy and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sell you a course. I have sold well over $1m dropshipping products and it definitely isn’t all rosy. Even when you think that things are going well, things can go wrong very fast.
Before selling a product on Shopify you need to be very certain about you ‘numbers’.
Some things you need to be aware of are:
how much you are paying for a unit
how much you are selling that unit for
how much you are paying to a payment processor (around 3%)
how much you are paying to Shopify or anyone else who is hosting your store
your starting costs. eg. graphics, design copywriting etc.
any additional apps or software that you may be using on your store
the amount you may be paying support staff if you are not doing it yourself
helpdesk software
advertising and marketing
email autoresponder
and a host of other monthly charges that you will suddenly need to start paying.
As a rule of thumb, I only sell a product if I can sell it for 3 times the amount that I am paying for it. So, if I am buying it for $10 then I will want to sell it for at least $30.
ASIDE: At this point you will probably be wondering if Product X is an exception that this rule doesn’t apply to for some reason. Whatever the reason is, the answer is NO. Just no, no, no…
If you don’t stick to this rule then in almost every case you will NOT make money.
Can I lose money by dropshipping?
Absolutely! In fact, you are far more likely to lose money than make money – especially at the beginning.
The reason is that you will find that you are paying more for the sale than you are making in the sale.
Unless you have free traffic, you will need to buy traffic through advertising which can be very expensive. You will need to be very careful that you are not overspending on each customer. This is why it is so important that you know your ‘numbers’ so well.
What products shouldn’t I dropship?
Whilst I can’t give you specific products or this article would be extremely long, there are certain categories of products which I would advise you not to sell.
Some examples are:
anything that goes against someone else’s trademark or copyright. For example. don’t sell fake Nike shoes or Disney hats.
anything that is even slightly illegal. The reason should be obvious, but in addition it just isn’t worth the hassle that you will get
anything that is prohibited by Facebook/Google/MSN etc to be advertised. It severely cuts down your option if you can’t use these
try to find something that sells for at least $30. It is possible under this price-point but I have always found it far harder to profit under around $30.
Any more tips for dropshipping?
I have a load more and will add them on this blog. But just remember that finding a product that sells profitably is just half of the challenge. The other half is being able to actually make money on that by scaling and not running out of cash.
