I’m sure everyone knows about the phenomenon that is Facebook! Now one of the worlds most visited websites, it seems that everyone & his dog is facebooking, poking, posting & answering incredibly pointless quizzes! Does anyone in Britain’s offices NOT have a minimised window open for a sneaky look when the boss isn’t around?!

So, when Facebook started taking ads, it seemed only sensible to consider this as a new advertising arena for affiliate marketeers. I originally set up a couple of ads for Cashback Shopper, but these were rejected by Facebook for contravening their terms & conditions / It would appear that because my cashback site contains a section on Gambling sites, it cannot be advertised, presumably due to the Americans laws on internet gambling!!!! Don’t get me started on how ridiculous I think that is!

However, I decided to leave the Facebook ads for a while but placed a few yesterday relating to My Travel Extras.

Facebook ads let you target the ad to a users interests, so I decided to create a separate ad for each product on the site. For example, Theatre Tickets targets “people age 18 and older in the United Kingdom who like Billy Elliot, Buddy Holly, Dirty Dancing, Going To The Theatre, Grease, Hairspray, High School Musical, Les Miserables, The Lion King, London, Lord Of The Rings, Musical Theater, Musical Theatre, Musicals, Nights Out, Oliver, Oliver Twist, Phantom Of The Opera, Restaurants, The Sound Of Music, Theater, Theatre, or Wicked.”

Facebook’s ad creation system is VERY picky about punctuation & proper use of capitals & symbols, so a few mistakes led to repeated rejections & a lot of frustration! However, once you are familiar with what you can & can’t do, it was pretty straightforward to create ads for Theatre Tickets, Car Hire, Theme Park Breaks, London Theatre Breaks, Airport Parking, Airport Hotels, Airport Lounges & Short Breaks.

Initial assessment of the stats shows that click through rates are pretty low compared to what you would be aiming for from Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing, so the jury is still out. The best result so far is from Airport Lounges, with 0.12% click throughs! I’ll give the ads a week to see if they are worth continuing with.

In between the 2 cashback sites, I was trying to find another project that I could design an affiliate website for. I decided on the Travel Extras market & built My Travel Extras, which initially offered Airport Parking, Airport Hotels, Airport Lounges, Theatre Breaks, Theme Park Breaks, Car Hire & Travel Insurance.

The search tools that I used on the site were provided by Holiday Extras, the market leaders in UK airport parking and airport hotel packages. The only other tool used was for car hire, which was provided by Affiliate Future.

Our search tools offer:

• airport parking at 24 UK airports & there are a variety of options available when choosing parking at the airport.
• we offer airport hotels at ALL 25 UK airports, from 2 – 5 star with & without parking and transfers to the airport are available to book on-line.
• pre-book airport lounges at 18 UK airports; executive lounges are great value for money, coming with a best price guarantee.
• choose a West End theatre break to suit you, from the theatre production on a night or afternoon of your choice, a 3 or 4* hotel for your overnight stay & loads of optional extras.
• stay overnight at a top hotel and receive entry to the UK theme park of your choice and all at unbeatable prices.
• compare a large selection of competitive car rental rates from the top car rental companies, in 9,000 locations & 134 countries worldwide and book directly with them. Deals from the following rental firms are included: Alamo, Advantage, Budget, Dollar Rent A Car, Europcar, Hertz, National, Sixt and Thrifty.
• enter the insurance requirements in the booking engine, making sure you enter the location of your trip, the dates you wish to have cover for and who will be included on the policy. A quote page will load after a few seconds wait, then simply select the best policy for you and enter your payment details!

In addition to the search tools listed, I provided directories listing most of the other main suppliers of these products in the UK.