Ep 29 | Are FB Fan Pages Dead?

The first question is by Raymond Oickle. Raymond said,

Any plans on producing an instructional video on how to properly install a FaceBook Pixel on a WP site with an Ecwid store?

For WordPress it is a little bit technical when you’re installing your Facebook Pixel. I don’t use any apps or plug-ins for Word Press to install Facebook pixel into my Word Press site. Here’s what I do. It does get a little bit complicated so you need to follow me through. I don’t think I will shoot an instructional video about it. I mean I can maybe but I think it is wise for me to just touch base on how to do it. Rewatch this video Raymond and any of you guys who are actually on Word Press and want your pixel to be installed.

First things first, simply go into your Word Press account. Inside your Word Press account, under your themes you will be able to actually customize your themes with the actual code. You will see a box and then on the right you’ll see a lot of PHP files. There’s header.php, footer.php, page.php, post.php and a lot of those files. What you have to do is simply look for the header.php file and click on that and you’ll have that box with a lot of codes then scroll that window all the way to the bottom and right before what we call the closing head text so it’s going to be the bracket forward slash head and then close bracket, right before that line of code you copy and paste you base code for your Facebook pixel. It’s basically the entire code that Facebook gave you and you need to actually have it in every part of your site.

Obviously, you are running a store and this is very important. You would then have to basically look for the thank you page, on the page where people actually complete the registration. So, you will see that there is going to be a particular page that people land on when they buy a product from you. From that page you have to add in the standard event pixel which is the purchase. It is wise for you to put in a dynamic code. I’m not sure what easy web is maybe you put in like a number that you’re selling. It should be dynamic. If you’re running a store it has to be dynamic so it fires back to Facebook, reporting the exact revenue that you have made from your Word Press website. This is the easy way.

The harder way which my team usually does is that for every different landing page or even sales funnel we create a separate header. What we do is that obviously you need to know that Word Press is basically a PHP platform. For those of you who don’t what a PHP is, in simple explanation it is a code that says if the person sees this then this will happen or that will happen. So it basically combines all different codes on different PHP files into one big one to actually show to people. It’s very hard for me to explain what it is but PHP is basically is like an if, else, or scenario. I think that I may lost some of you. So I think it is wise for me to shoot an instructional video about it but at the end of the day you have to basically know a little bit of programming in order for you to do that.

Are there plug-ins inside Word Press to do it? There are maybe, I don’t know. I don’t look into that only because we do all our stuff hard coded and we manually do it. So is there any plug-in? I seriously don’t know.

Now put in a YES into the comment box of Facebook and YouTube if you guys want me to shoot an instructional video about it. It seems like it’s a little bit hard for you to visualize especially if you are not that tech savvy. Again, that’s really the process that you want put, most importantly is the base pixel right into the header.php file. That’s what you have to get accomplished. I’m actually getting a lot of YES pouring in so it’s definitely something that I can really take a look into.

Moving on to the second question by Gordon D. Evora. He said,

 I’m in the process of selecting products from AliExpress. I see a nice product priced at X. I looked at Amazon and I see a similar product or the identical product priced at Y. In your experience what is the relation of X to Y, say 25%? 50%? for Fred Lam to consider that product as viable for your store?

Great question! Whenever I actually sell a product online I don’t really worry about Amazon right out the gate. Unless if you’re driving an insane amount of sales then it maybe something that you want to take a look at. For me, what I usually look at is my cost of goods that I’m getting from Aliexpress. It doesn’t matter what margin people make from Amazon. It doesn’t matter what margin your competitors make because what matters the most is how much you make and if you are profitable or not. You have to eliminate all those guesswork and assumptions and say, “You know what this is a nice product and if I mark it up by 4X or 3X will I still see the perceived value in my product and my customers in my niche will still buy the product?” If that is yes then simply test out the product, run some ads and let the data tell you if that product is going to sell or not. Again, I cannot basically stress the importance of this. This is very important. You may see that there are products that are selling really well in Facebook or in Amazon or in Aliexpress but because there are so many factors involved it doesn’t mean that if your competitor is actually selling it and you may think they’re in profit but they may not be in profit. You never know, right? Those are basically numbers that only they know. What’s most important is if you are profitable or not. It doesn’t matter if Amazon vendors are making 20%, 30% or 40% margin. It all drills down to, are you making the margin? That’s the most important thing. So you don’t have to really worry about all those other things. I think it is a waste of time because at the end of the day it is your business. You can be selling a product that is like $100 and on Amazon it’s selling for $20 but you are still getting customers and you’re still making a profit then that means that the Amazon part is not going to affect your business because you’re making so much profit. Again, it all drills down to your business, to your data and what your profit margin is going to be.

Moving on to the next question by Kriska Navarro. Kriska said,

Is it advisable to have multiple suppliers in your Shopify store? what if one supplier does not have all the products you like to sell?ts you like to sell?

Krista, the beauty of running a Shopify store that you’re overcharging inventory of your suppliers is that you can actually have 10, 20, 30, 40 different suppliers in your store and your customers never know. It is wise for you to actually have more suppliers because if you only have one supplier then you’re putting all your eggs into one basket and that is very, very dangerous in running a business. You want to make sure that you have a diverse portfolio of suppliers so that you can have more products in your store and that there’s more variety within your niche. If supplier A runs out of stock, you can go to supplier B that may have an identical product at the same time. So, having multiple suppliers is absolutely great and it’s recommended at the same time.

Moving on to our fourth question of the day which is by Yeng Vang. This is basically what I want to feature today in our daily huddle. Yeng said,

Hi Fred, love your content. When is a good time to start monetizing my fan page? I’ve heard mix opinion on this. Some say you should wait until you get up to say 5K likes or followers. Other says you should monetize right away when you create your fan page. Which method do you prefer? Thanks!

Here’s the moment of truth. The truth is 5,000 right out the gate or 1,000 or even 10,000 or even 50,000 you’re not really going to have the ability to monetize a lot of money out of it. Fan pages that actually make a lot of money, they simply have millions of followers or even let’s say at least 200 or 300 followers and they have to be organic and actual followers. They are not followers that you simply just bought or basically click-bait them to actually like your page because in Facebook the algorithm really changes right now. In order for your simple fan page to have all the posts to show in your news feed, you have to actually ask them to go to your fan page and then instead of the default they have to click on the following and change to see first. That is an additional process for your followers and I will tell you not every single person will do it. As a matter of fact 95% of the people don’t even know that that function actually exists. And if you actually have that follower only on the default setting then guess what, your content is either going to be buried or is not even going to be featured in the news feed of your followers. Let’s say you have 5,000 followers maybe you’ll get a like or two likes so you technically waste a lot of time to get one or two likes on a post you’re trying to monetize but with one or two likes and not even getting a link clicked out that means that you are basically not going to make money. You can’t really monetize it.

Back in five years ago fan page monetization is absolutely amazing because any time you post something on your page things just pop up right away into user’s news feed. Obviously, Facebook has done a lot of algorithm changes on the news feed. Right now in Facebook fan pages when you actually post something inside their page it doesn’t always get featured right away so basically you’re going to waste a lot of time. Now, can you still monetize from it? The answer is yes. Unless if you have a lot of big following. Even right now and I’ll be very honest with you, with my page right now I have close to 50,000 followers on Facebook fan page and a lot of you guys are joining each time I come on. There’s a good amount of you guys actually here live with me. But the truth is each time I do a post, I would get like 20, 30 and sometimes max 100 clicks. Out of those 100 clicks, am I able to turn it into profit right away? That’s going to be another question.

Now, if you’re saying like you know what I just want to basically make sales just on my fan page that’s all I want to do. I’m just going to spend all my time on basically doing post. If that’s the case then you obviously need to post at least 10 to 20 times in a single day and spread out in the entire day at different times and each of your post cannot be a post that you simply monetize, you have to give value, you have to record some videos and you have to do a lot of things if you genuinely want to monetize from your Facebook fan page.

Now is it dead? Well I can’t say it is dead because you need a Facebook fan page in order for you to actually advertise on Facebook. It is the number one thing that you need so I can’t say that fan page is dead.

Is this something that I’ll focus a lot of time and effort in? The answer is not really. Unless if you have a lot of followers like over 200,000 to 1 million that’s when you actually see some great results coming in. Again, you’re maybe like “I just want to build my social presence. I want to eventually hit to that 100,000 or 200,000 or a million follower mark where I can actually start monetizing from it.” Then you can actually spend some time on figuring that out. But if I were you and especially for those of you who are watching this right now or even if you are watching the replay, I prioritize things and this is very important for you. You need to prioritize on what you should be focusing on first that will make the most impact not just to your business but to your financial at the same time. Every single person right here only has 24 hours. You and I, we all share only 24 hours. There’s not  a single human being in the planet right now who has more than 24 hours, not Mark Zuckerburg, not Bill Gates, not Elon Musk. We all have only have 24 hours. In order for you to accomplish the most of that 24 hours is really depending on what you prioritization is and what your focus is going to be. So let’s say that if you’re starting out on creating a business right now and you don’t even have a customer or traffic yet and you’re trying to spend all your time on figuring out the social media stuff, how to monetize for your fan page whereas at that time you could have figured out how to become an ad ninja or an ad expert to drive traffic and turn that traffic into customers and sales because there you actually see results right away rather than on this side you’re going for like  a way longer time. You’re wasting a lot of time and then maybe a couple of months you’re still not getting results and you feel defeated and you’re like, “Alright, this doesn’t work for me. This online thing doesn’t work for me. I quit.” These are the things that you need to prioritize and to really figure out at the same time.

Moving on to the last question of the day by Kendrick Miller. Kendrick said,

My question is what is about eCommerce dropshipping and I want to know what the best way to spy on competitor’s and see what is working such as what niche’s and what products are currently selling that I could turn around and do and even sell myself?

Kendrick the answer to the question is there is not really a way. The only way is for you to do your own research for you to be in market, for you to basically be that customer of your competitor’s website. There are some tools out there called Xpareto that I look at. There’s another tool ASIN inspector; I forgot what the entire name is but Xpareto is a good one. You will never know that product is going to sell the most or not and what ad and targeting they’re using. I keep telling every single person that by following is that you have to be in the niche. You can’t basically just say,” I want to sell that product.” “I’m not passionate about that niche; I’m just going to randomly sell it.” That is not going to work. You need to basically love what you sell. You need to love the niche that you are in because when you are doing that that means that on Facebook you are going to be the person that most likely be targeted through an ad for a product that you may want to sell in your store at the same time. From there, you will see on the top right corner of a Facebook post if it is a sponsor post which is an ad, you can click on that and then you’ll see a link that says “Why am I seeing this ad?” That data is going to give you so much value.

Let’s say that you are in the kitchen niche and you love cooking and buying recipe books. If you basically have been showing a lot of interest on Facebook that you love kitchen stuff and you own a kitchen store, guess what at the end of the day your competitors are going to find ways to actually target you. And from there you can actually see, “Oh this is a product that I can actually source from Aliexpress. Well, let me take a look and why I am being targeted.” Then you click on that little drop down menu. If you see an ad on Facebook on the top right, there’s a little arrow pointing down, click on it and you’ll see that link that says “Why am I seeing this ad?”  It would actually tell you the targeting on why you have shown that on the top right, there’s a little arrow pointing down, click on it and you’ll see that link that says “Why am I seeing this ad?”  It would actually tell you the targeting on why you have shown that ad. Guess what because you’re a market, you will know that if your competitor or someone who’s targeting you with that ad is targeting correctly and you can simply replicate that. You go after the same targeting as what you want to sell. d. Guess what because you’re a market, you will know that if your competitor or someone who’s targeting you with that ad is targeting correctly and you can simply replicate that. You go after the same targeting as what you want to sell. There’s no such way as spying or drilling down to what sells or not. You simply just have to do a lot of research.

I hope you guys enjoyed our daily huddle. Put in a ME right into the comment box if you guys absolutely loved out daily huddle. I got a lot of people saying a big change or a big thing happened in the United States last week. I did not really talk about this publicly; I’m sharing my thoughts and feedback. I am no political guy. I am not in the United States. And one big thing was the new neutrality. For those of you who are in US you know that the FCC has actually won the case on getting net neutrality in place. Put in 1 in the comment box if this is something that you’re like, “You know what, this is going to affect me as a small business or not.” I have people asking me about this in our daily huddle right now. Based on what I know, if I define it right and obviously any person in the US will know more than me on this end.

So previously when Obama was the president he actually had the net neutrality, the internet was all equal basically ISP which is the Internet Service Provider served all sites at all speed but at the end of the day, now the FCC basically went ahead and said, “We’re cutting that off. There’s no more net neutrality.” So, what’s going to happen next? Well, there are a lot of debates going on. At the end of the day, people are saying, “Does it mean that it’s going to kill small businesses because now the ISP gets to actually choose what website to loads faster and slower?” ISP also gets to choose what the pricing is going to be and of course it will affect those websites. Again, I’m not a political person and I’m just thinking from a business perspective. Is it going to affect? Well, in the first month, it’s going to be a lot of questions, unknown variables that’s going to happen. But what I can see and what I can feel is that with the net neutrality being gone it may open up smaller companies to become an ISP and provide maybe a lower payment plan on internet providing or a one that is all-inclusive and loads every site very, very fast. I feel it basically doesn’t let the ISP be monopolized because now small companies can actually come in and maybe undercut these large companies there’s an opportunity and window for them. It’s kind of like the phone when it comes with AT&T and all those other stuff, now there are smaller companies that are coming out and that can have cheaper payment plans.

If you are on Shopify, of course your site is hosted on Shopify and obviously Shopify doesn’t want this to happen they may have to pay this ISP to get a faster loading speed for their servers. I just feel that I don’t think it is a big issue but again it is a long-term play we’d never know. I’m not into US stuff a lot but I have been getting a lot of information about it. The answer is I don’t know. I’m just saying based on what I’m feeling and thinking. Am I going to be right? I don’t know yet so we have to monitor from there. What I do feel is that I think it’s not going to have a drastic impact because in the entire world small businesses are like main driving forces for economy and I don’t think they want all that to happen and mess things up.

So let’s move on to the most amazing part of our daily huddle today which is our winner for the Kick start 500. I have to say that this kid is a hustler. This is the comment that I got after reading all the applications that we have. Again, we actually look at every single application. If you think that you are a hustler put in a ME right into the comment box on Facebook and on YouTube. Listen, I love hustlers because obviously you have to basically hustle to make things happen. You can’t just seat and stare at the screen or TV and hope that your business will actually come alive. I’m got Michael Jameson saying ME. I got Jose, Jeniffer, Griselda, John. We have a lot of people saying ME right now. With that, let me tell you this. Today our winner, the person that I chose to invest $500 in is Mik Martinez. He is in the ecommerce and here’s the story. I’m only 16 years old and not being stuck in the rat race is really my burning motivation to start my own business. I love to actually see young hustlers. This is absolutely great because I can remember when I was a kid at 16 I started to hustle. He said, “I am currently in my last year in high school C student and have made a decision not to go to college as I will only be stuck with the student loan debt. I work 10 to 12 hours a day on my ecommerce store during the weekend and 6 hours a day on weekdays learning and implementing everything that I can allow me to succeed on my Shopify business. I have literally spent all my savings on courses and what helped me in my eccomerce journey. Aside from working 6 hours on weekdays and 10 to 12 hours on weekends, I read two books a week on average while going to my classes. I have read each and every book of Robert Kiyosaki, Tony Robbins and ton of other authors totaling over 100 books because I believe that knowledge form books are one of the keys to success. I am dying to achieve success but what I love about ecommerce is that I can actually love doing which allows me to enjoy the process. To sum it up, I’m a 16 year old that really badly wants to be an entrepreneur and loves writing. I spent all my money on courses, books, testing ads, and I almost forgot ice cream.”

Mik, you are such an inspiration. Listen, I feel guilty. I feel bad right now. You as a young hustler reading more books than I do like two a week, that’s crazy. And reading over 100 books that is crazy and the amount of time that you spent on gaining the knowledge and experience the process; you’re a real deal buddy. I’m really, really stoked and excited for you. You have a long way to go but you are starting out quick. Congratulations Mik for getting my $500 Kickstart 500 grant! We’re going to send you an email about it and I seriously hope that you by the age of 17 will start generating 6 figures a year and really make your parents proud and prove to all your friends that hey entrepreneurship is the route that will work. You don’t always have to actually take on into the old education system that is going to ask you for a student loan and you paying it back. Everybody congratulate Mik.

That is it for today’s daily huddle. Again, tomorrow I am going to be live to answer five burning questions that you may have. If you want your question to be featured simply go to www.fredlam.com/ask. If you want to be live with us for all our daily huddles, make sure you like my Facebook page, click on the following and make sure you see first so that each time I post you actually see something. If you are on YouTube make sure you subscribe to my channel to get some new questions answered which I turn into content for you guys and to drive it for your business. One quick note, if you’re on my email list this week I am going to send out a survey to your inbox and I’m just looking for feedback on what you want me to talk and teach about or shoot video train about for 2018. I just want to get your feedback because I don’t want to assume those are the things that you guys want to learn. I want to get your feedback and have this training all interactive so look out for may email and help me answer that survey. I’ll send that email later this week and I look forward on seeing you tomorrow in our daily huddle. Bye now.