The following is a guest blog entry from one of our readers. Thank you!
I wish I could tell you that making money buying and selling fan pages is a slam dunk and an easy way to make a few bucks every day. Unfortunately, if I were to tell you that, I would be flat-out lying to you. Buying and selling social media assets is not much different from any other kind of business you have. You will need to pay attention to details, and you have to know what you are doing. You have to buy low and sell high, naturally. The rules are pretty much uniform across the board. Still, when it comes to digital assets like fan pages, there are certain red flags you need to watch out for, otherwise, it is just too easy for you to be separated from your hard-earned dollars. I know you worked hard for your money. It really would be a shame if you were relieved of them without much of a fight.
By being aware, you can you can avoid getting ripped off. You can also avoid money losers. You will be surprised as to how many people are trying to do what you are doing. A lot of them are not having a fun time. Why? They keep buying fanpages that are actually traps. They keep falling into these traps, and they keep losing money. Keep in mind that the more of these features you find in a particular fan page, the more you should want to avoid buying that social media asset. Here are a few tips to look out for to avoid the bad, money-wasting fanpage investments.
What are dead giveaways of bad fanpages?
Nonprofessional cover or avatar and other signs of non-professionalism
Make sure that if you are buying a niche page that all the graphical elements are that page should be niche-specific. For example, if you are buying a Facebook fan page on Forex, the graphics must be Forex related or at least the finance related. This increases the likelihood that people who would want to view that page as professional and providing real value. If you notice that the seller of the page did not even bother to come up with niche specific customized graphical materials, you should be suspicious.
Non-commercial niche
This actually is quite obvious. If you look at the niche of the website in terms of its name, its graphics, its description and it does not fit a commercial niche, you should skip it seriously. Do not even think of buying it. Even if there are niche specific graphics and descriptions and everything lines up look at the content, if the vast majority of the content of that particular fan page is not related to a commercial niche or not related to a niche that has a high advertiser base or high advertiser demand, be very suspicious. The chances are that the vast majority of people who like that fan page are not interested in the claimed niche or the “obvious” niche of the of the page.
Maybe they are in it for the funny cat pictures that the operator shares from time to time. Perhaps they are in it for the inspirational quotes that are all over the place and do not fall under a specific niche. You see how this works? Test the niche specificity of the page in the two ways I outlined above.
Overly general or generic niche focus
Even if the website has a tight focus on a commercially valuable niche, do not leave the discussion there. Do not stop your analysis there. Look at their content. Is the content talking about the niche in a general way? Is it so general that you can pretty much find that content anywhere on the internet? Or does the material drill down and talk about specifics that only people who are genuinely interested in the niche would one would find fascinating? If it is the latter, then consider buying. If not, skip and look for other pages.
Overly commercial or spammy page posts
Even if you find a page that is dedicated to a highly lucrative niche and almost all its content is very deep and niche targeted, you might still want to avoid buying that site if you notice that a lot of its posts, while being a niche specific and packed with content, are spammy.
In other words, it seems like every other post is all about asking for money. That gets old quickly and is often a turn-off to page fans. On the other hand, the operator of that fan page might have commercialized the page and its fan base so much that there is really not much money left to be made by the poor, unfortunate sucker who buys that page. Do you see how this works? People burnout from overly commercial messages especially if they get sent all the time
Supposedly “active” accounts that have almost zero engagement
This is one of the most lethal traps in this list. If you see this you, you would be safe if you just forget all the other signified five traps on this list? If you notice that the amount of comments, likes, and shares of a piece of content or of a post on our Facebook fan page is so low compared to the total number of likes that page has, you should be suspicious.
You should come up with an engagement score by dividing the total number of engagements by the supposed number of likes. You will get a percentage score. Come up with an average percentage score of most of the content. Of course the higher the percentage, the better. If you notice that the overall score is very low, you should not buy that fan page. By checking for things I’ve outlined above, you make things so much easier on yourself. If you are trying to buy fan pages low and sell them high, you have to know what you are doing. Otherwise, it is too easy to get burned in this business. Take note that it is still a business-it is a lot of fun and you do not have to work like a horse-but it is still a business. Treat it like one, and you will be greatly rewarded.
The following article was a guest blog entry from one of our readers. Thank you!