Many people don’t even know it: When internet content is created, someone makes money on it. Any and all content. If you post an idea, article, photo on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MeWe, or other sites, the owners of those sites sell advertising. When your stories attract visitors, they make money. Your content makes them money.
Who is making money on my content?
Got me to thinking, why should we post on other websites to make them money? Why not post on our own website, and put on our own ads, and we can make money. We’ve been writing this blog for a few years in hopes that someday it might generate enough revenue to pay the hosting bill. We just want to make money from our own content, instead of giving it away for free.
Building blog traffic isn’t easy, pay the piper
So on we go, writing articles every few weeks about local events, product reviews, service reviews. Traffic has been slowly increasing as we continue to write new content. But not as quickly as we’d like. So we turn to advertise our site to attract more visitors. One of the places we’ve done that is Facebook. We’ll sponsor an ad, or ‘Boost’ a post, for a popular blog post. Seemed simple…
Facebook advertising isn’t so simple
Until Facebook’s apparently automated policy monitoring algorithms get their grips on you. After years of posting, all of a sudden, within a weeks time, my posts have been flagged. Repeatedly over a 1 week period. Now all we get is a Boost Unavailable… for unspecified “unusual activity.”
The first time it happened, I clicked the link on the learn more, and at the bottom of the screen, in the Facebook Business Help Center, it says:
OK. Well, I’ve read over that. I’ve read over the Facebook Advertising Policies, but I didn’t see where my posts violated any of the thirty-one categories of prohibited content, thirteen categories of restricted content, any of the other many many categories of conditions, constraints, controls, regulations, rules, stipulations. So, I requested a review.
Facebook Ad Account Disabled: November 10th
What did facebook say? Nothing. They said thanks for reaching out, and reactivated my ad account. They didn’t tell me what policy was violated. So again, a few days later, same thing.
Facebook Ad Account Disabled: November 12th
Same thing… disabled Facebook ad account, again. Same thing… requested more information. Same thing… Facebook replied again saying thanks for reaching out, and reactivated my ad account. They still didn’t tell me what policy was violated.
Facebook Ad Account Disabled: November 15th
Same thing… disabled Facebook ad account, again. Same thing… requested more information. This time I’m still waiting. It’s been a few days and they haven’t replied. They did reply on the 3rd day: Same thing… Facebook replied again saying thanks for reaching out, and reactivated my ad account. They still didn’t tell me what policy was violated!
Big advertisers
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big advertiser. In fact, I spend the minimum. Just $10 at a time, a few times a month. It’s hard to imagine anything I post would be such big concern, a few bucks and a few hundred post views to a billion dollar corporation like Facebook. But it seems every other time I Boost something, my account is suspended without explanation of any kind.
So why does this happen? Do your job!
I’m still waiting for an answer. It’s my thought maybe this is a humans job, to respond to my requests for information about what Facebook advertising policies I violated, and they simply didn’t do it. They never told me what I did wrong. LOL
I will post an update when Facebook’s algorithm decides to respond to my request.
Sorry, it’s not revealed yet. Still waiting on their reply.
Did Facebook disable your ads account?
Leave a comment below, or send me a message. Tell the world about your experience with Facebook…
