Research: Does sex sell? Examples from Facebook.

The answer is Yes-No-Maybe or it all depends. For some products sex images work for some they just don’t. Beer brands advertising are good examples of how sex sells. On the other hand bikini models in Caribbean travel cruise advertising have negative effect because women who eventually will book the travel feel threatened.
Let’s look now at the ads on Facebook.

This is a free listing at Marketplace and the ad is for home business opportunity – by the way, in 99% of the cases in ads like this you are lured to buy an e-book that teaches you how others have made millions on the internet. The ad is done to attract attention - it has the two topics that capture the imagination of both men and women for all times in the history – sex and money. The way it works is fairly simple. Someone registers 50 profiles, logs into 50 regional networks and floats the marketplace with attention grabber pics and promises for richness. And yes, it sells.

Making Money with www.CafePress.com While Having Fun on Facebook

Just take a glimpse. This is a smart way to promote your affiliate business on cafepresse.com (an online T-shirt printing web site that offers % to people who lead buyers to them on-line)

It makes total sense to post photos of T-shirts with things written on them related to the thematic of the group. In this particular case the group has funny outlook on drinking as a way to improve foreign language communication. The name of the group is “Alcohol Improves my Foreign Language” and the T-shirts posted in the photo gallery have the similar fun outlook.
The good thing for the person who posted those photos is that she put her affiliate link under the photo. Eventually, few out of the hundred visitors who join this group every week will visit the link and will buy that particular T-shirt.
That’s what I call ‘smart’ way to make money. The quotation marks ‘ ’ are a sign of caution that maybe the moderators of the group or other members will report them as inappropriate. Btw, the smart thing is that she posts a set of 3-4 pictures in a row; just enough to be noticeable, but not too annoying. As they say no risk, no profit.

Viral Marketing on Facebook

In brief: It is not viral if no one wants to share it. The good thing happens when the right people forward the message to the right people.

Let's imagine that you have started a group dedicated to the art of eating with chopsticks (or the benefits of drinking beer). You invited your hundred friends and twenty joined the group. All you guys started sharing ideas and stories related to eating with chopsticks. Some really useful and entertaining dialogs happen.
Out of the twenty people that you invited ten decided to spread the news and send invitation to their circle of friends. If we assume that everyone has hundred friends, which automatically mean that the news for your newly created group has reached thousand readers.
Although a bit optimistic, this is the way how things can happen. I have noticed that interesting groups that have 1000-2000 members grow with average 10 members per day, while bigger groups grow with hundreds, even thousands members per day.

Advertising Small Business on Facebook: Examples & Effect

Facebook can become a great vehicle for spreading the message about your business and ultimately getting more customers, if you know how to use right the four spots where you can advertise on Facebook.

1. Marketplace - great for selling your stuff. For example, you buy electronics from eBay and you sell it through Facebook's marketplace - the rationale in doing that is in the fact that most people are still scared to give their credit card number online even when the seller is eBay.

Paying for Sponsored Listings in Marketplace can increase the visibility of your message.

2. Groups - great tool for promoting your competences, videos, website, store, dancing studio, etc… How?! - Simply by posting interesting catchy posts on the topic of interest.

3. Share a link - great option attached to your wall. Can be used for promoting website articles (like this one) that will be interesting to the people in your friends network.

4. Flyers - all of the above are free ways to promote your business - actually it is not free if you count the time and energy to make the writing work - but flyers, that’s the paid form of advertising on Facebook. More on flyers here. Actually, they are now called Social Ads, but the principle is still the same.