Today I’m doing a review of a new training called Penny Clicks Academy

When I first heard about Penny Clicks Academy I thought it was a training on Facebook ads. I love Facebook ads so I was instantly interested. But then I found out it actually is about using Facebook ads to build up a fan page. Anyone who has followed me for a while probably knows that in my mind fan pages have been dead for quite a while. However I wanted to keep an open mind and I wanted to at least give the vendors a chance to ease some of the very real doubts I had about using fan pages now so I asked one of the product creators to jump on a live chat with me where I asked him the ‘tough questions’ I had. Watch the interview below:

A while back Facebook made some huge changes to fan pages. They removed like gating (the ability to force people to like your fan page). Their new ‘edge rank’ (the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what shows in your news feed) made it harder to reach your fans with your posts. For all intent they seemed to be dead.

It seems one of my biggest personal problems with using fan pages and something that might have been making me personally bias though is that I am in the internet marketing niche. One thing that James made very clear was that the internet marketing niche is not viable for fan pages. As he explained to me well ,internet marketing is all about selling, people do not like to engage with ‘selling’. They don’t share ‘selling’ posts. They don’t like them and the rarely comment on them. Something he made me understand and that makes a lot of sense now that I understand it is that fan pages are about being social, you need to choose a niche that is fun, exciting, and that is something people will want to share, comment on, and  like.
In my interview with him I mentioned that I’m very interested in riding sports bikes. That would be a great niche to use for fan pages. I could post pictures of cool bikes, of action shots, of funny riding memes etc. These are things that people will want to share, that they will want to like and that they will want to comment on. All of that sharing, liking and commenting will not only spread my post, get more people to be aware of my fan page, but it will also increase my affinity with my fans making sure that they see my future posts more often. So not only will I get great engagement but I can spread in a viral way as people comment and share my cool, exciting, fun posts about a subject they are interested in.

When I think about it this is actually much better than like gating anyway. The point here from Facebooks perspective is that you have to earn the right to be on peoples timelines and the right to have people like your page by making posts that people interested in your pages subject want to see. From your perspective as a fan page owner its actually better to because all of your fans will be engaged with you and interested in the topic of your page.

Making a fan page about a subject your interested in could be a fun hobby but lets be honest in the end we are here to make some money. Fortunately that is easy to do. There are any number of affiliate products (everything from Amazon to Coffee mugs, to Teespring) that you can promote to your fans which will pay you a revenue share of each sale your post generates. Penny Clicks Academy teaches not only how to find these kinds of products to promote, but also teaches you how to do it in a way that is not going to annoy the loyal fan base you have already built up.

Now of course for all of this to work you need to actually have fans. While you will for sure get fans from the viral / social nature as people share your post that can only happen if you actually have some fans to start with. You need to have a few thousand people as fans to ‘seed’ the page. This makes sense, no one is going to be commenting and sharing for other people to see if you don’t have at least some people as fans in the first place. But where are you going to get the fans from?

Well this is where the Facebook ads come into play, and its where this product gets its name. Penny  Clicks Academy teaches you how to use Facebook ads to get people to your fan page for as low as one cent per click and sometimes even less than one cent per click. One thing that I want to make clear though is that fan gating is gone now. So not everyone who visits your fan page will end up being a fan of yours. In my interview with James is was forthcoming in admitting that he does not force people to be fans of his fan page. He just sends them to his page at a very low cost per click and hopes that they will like his page enough that they want to like it. However since he is using Facebook ads he can target people by interest that are very likely to enjoy his page and want to be fans. He said that while he pays 1 cent per click on his ads, he generally pays between 2-5 cents per fan he ads to his page from the ads (the viral fans from people sharing his posts are totally free and are a bonus).

Lets use the median number here and say three cents per fan. What this means is that if you want to build a niche fan page and have 1000 fans to seed it with you can expect it would cost you about $30 using the advertising methods taught in Penny Clicks Academy. If you where to just invest five dollars a day (skip the morning Starbucks run if you need to). In a month you could have 5000 new fans interested in your specific niche following you. Now thats nothing to sneeze at and its a great start especially if you have people engaging, commenting, sharing and liking (which will bring you even more fans for free)

Now I know for sure that you can get low cost clicks when you promote a fan page with ads. But the question I had is are people really going to engage with your posts. Are they really going to share them and comment on them. James said they would, but I needed him to prove it to me, so I asked him to show me one of his fan pages so I could see what kind of results he was getting. Here is what I saw.

Just look at that engagement! And these where not cherry picked posts. I picked these at random. Almost all of the posts on this page where getting this kind of engagement. Even better is the fact that the last one was a ‘monetization’ post that generated money for James (and it got 505 likes and 76 shares). Best of all James told me that he does not boost these posts, this is all organic / viral engagement. Nice!

The Penny Clicks Academy training is presented in video format. Both the members area and the videos are high quality and very well done. The training is easy to follow and full of actionable content that covers everything from selecting your list, to creating your page, posting content, and of course running your Facebook ad to build your initial fan page for a very low cost.

While James made it very clear that Penny Clicks and specifically Facebook ads are probably not suited well to people in the MMO (make money online) niche there are a million other niches out there. I think perhaps the best thing to do would be to select one that you personally enjoy. Honestly I like that fact that this is not for the MMO niche. The MMO niche has a bad rap and a reputation for being a bit shady. In fact for a while now I have been thinking of putting some of my efforts into a different niche just because I dont like the rep that the MMO niche has. Using the methods in Penny Clicks Academy I can start using the viral nature of Facebook to build a following in any niche I choose with a very low investment (so dont be surprised if you see me running a sports bike fan page next year).

Whats really cool is that you can decide what level you want to be at with this system. Do you want to build one page on a subject your interested in and use it as a hobby that pays you a few hundred dollars a month? Do you want to ramp it up and run your page full time? Do you want to build a network of pages in several niches and go for the ‘big money’? Its totally up to you. Either way though this training has made me totally rethink what I thought I knew about fan pages (what you don’t see in the interview is that James and I talked for about 40 minutes longer after I stopped recording)  and I honestly think it is something totally worth considering, especially for someone who would prefer to capitalize on the viral nature of social media as opposed to building a website and trying to drive traffic to it via SEO and ranking.

Bonus: When you buy though my link you will also get free access to the upgraded OTO version of the “Social Traffic Alchemy” system as well as a few other goodies 🙂

Click here to get Penny Clicks Academy as well as free access to the upgraded (oto) version of Social Traffic Alchemy (and a few other ‘surprise’ gifts). I have added the bonuses right inside of JVZoo so you can get instant access.

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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