#1 In NickyCakes’ Xbox 360 Contest
Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Facebook Marketing on April 21st, 2008 by AminTwo weeks ago Nickycakes started a contest where anyone could win his Xbox 360 by being the first to make $1K with Advaliant after signing up to the network through his referal link. I thought I’d give it a shot, so I signed up and got approved the next day. I actually expected some big shot affiliate to hit the $1K mark pretty soon, but after the ‘cakes posted his update two days later, I knew I could do better than those already in the lead.
I was the first person in the contest to hit $1000 in earnings with Advaliant . You can read Nickycakes’ post here .
I made my $1K by running debt relief ads on Facebook. I made and tested dozens of ads. Here are two of the more interesting ones I posted which despite having poor CTRs, managed to get a good volume of traffic without getting slapped with $1 clicks.

This ad did best when targeted at 25-45 year olds in the United States. I had a 0.06% CTR on this ad, which was the best CTR I managed to get in this particular campaign.

This ad was targeted at all college kids in the United States. I had a weak 0.02% CTR on this ad, probably because of the mention of a zip submit, but it converted well.
I kept these going until I won the contest, upon which I killed them and scrapped the campaigns because the profits were eventually simply not worth the ad spend.
I will definitely be working with Advaliant in the future, my account manager Geoff Marcy is a top guy to work with too. In fact, Advaliant sent an Xbox 360 to Matt Marcin who came second in the contest. Matt definitely deserved it more than I did, because he made the $1K in less than 24 hours, while it took me 3 days to hit the $1K through Facebook. Having said that, Facebook did severely limit the amount of traffic I could have potentially done, for the simple reason that lunatics are running their social ad system.
A big thanks to Nickycakes and Advaliant for this contest and for each sending out an Xbox 360 to me and Matt!
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