AdEspresso Review: How Facebook Ads Helped me Make $10,000 in a Month as An Affiliate


Bottom line: AdEspresso makes it simple to test and pick winning Facebook ads.
This post contains affiliate links and pays a commission should you become a customer.

Updated March 2018 – still using and love AdEspresso to run my Facebook ads and make even more as an affiliate marketer. All of my Facebook ads are run and published through AdEspresso. I've surpassed my initial goal of $7 and have exceeded $10k per month now.

 

AdEspresso Review

To start, I signed up for the 14 day free trial. I wanted to test AdEspresso to make sure I liked it. I didn't read a lot – I pretty much just started because I was overwhelmed trying to learn so many things at once. In my experience Adespresso is SO MUCH EASIER to learn than Power Editor. I know if you're running a high number of ads Power Editor might be a better choice for you, or if you're more advanced than I am, but if you're frustrated with it as I am, it will simplify your life.

Adespresso has a series of training videos called University. Don't sign up for the university if you sign up for an Adespresso account. The university is included in your Adespresso purchase.

Read the emails they send because they have examples of the best and worst ads from people who use Adespresso. There is also a library of ads from all sorts of niches and industries. This helps you get a feel for what works and for ideas on what to test.

What is AdEspresso?

Adespresso is a Facebook ad management tool. With it you can create several versions of your ad. You can use different images, headlines, text, and URLs. Just like in Facebook ads manager you can preview the ads and choose where you want them to show up – in the sidebar, on mobile, on Instagram or in the newsfeed.

After you add variations, you can choose your targeting. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. The text, image and targeting make or break your ad campaign. Adespresso automatically creates combinations of your ads and runs them for you. It publishes straight to Facebook.

Then I use the Facebook Ads app to check my ads. I turn off the ones that are expensive and I add budget to the ones that are performing well. So if my ad costs .55 cents a click for women and .33 cents a click for men, I turn off the ad for women and just have it run to show men .It's easier to manage the ads in the app (after they're created) then it is in AdEspresso.

Who Should Get AdEspresso? AdEspresso is for a small to mid-sized business. You can use it to run Facebook ad campaigns for clients or just for your own campaigns. I use it to run ads for my own affiliate marketing business.

My Frustrations Using Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor

I was running a successful Facebook ads campaign – my first major campaign. I struggled to keep up and keep track of everything to know my profit margin and where to place my ad spend. I only wanted to spend on ads that gave me sales. I was trying to learn Facebook Ads Manager and Power Editor as I was using them. I took classes and asked for help but I was constantly frustrated by how hard the data was to read the data and act on it.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of Power Editor or running Facebook Ads Manager is figuring out what ads perform the best. It should be easy to see but it's not. Even learning how to publish an ad was frustrating for me the first time I used Power Editor. There's a lot about Power Editor that is not intuitive at all. That is what made me look for a better solution. I found it with AdEspresso.

Using AdEspresso I was able to make $7,000 in about 2 months from one campaign (that is net – after the cost of ads)! It split tests all the elements of your ads, optimizes your campaigns, and more. You can read my AdEspresso review below, but the best way to learn is to sign up for the free trial and get started. That's what I did when I started – I signed up and started using it right away. It's literally something you can learn as you go. It's very visual and intuitive, which is what I like most about it.

Split Testing Facebook Ads

With Facebook it's hard to create lots of split tests at once. So you start with a handful of ads and slowly build this elaborate campaign structure with bits added here and there. In AdExpresso it works the other way around. It's easy to start with lots of ads and then run them for a few days and then start killing the underperforming ones.

Instead, you can start a campaign with hundreds of variations of ads. Then pause the worst performing ads so more of your ad budget goes to the high performers. Then when the campaign has saturated the audience, it's time to launch a new campaign. There's no harm in having lots of campaigns vs lots of adsets, a campaign is just a container for adsets.

If you want to try AdEspresso get the free trial and start now.

AdEspresso: FREE 14-day free trial

My Best Month Ever as An Affiliate

This past month I did the best I've ever done as an affiliate marketer – with only a blog post and Facebook ads. Starting with just $5/day in ad spend, I was able to quickly scale up a campaign and see which headlines, images, and audiences performed best. I usually start with either $5 or $10 per day and scale up after there are at least 500 clicks and clear patterns start to show up.

I owe a lot of my success to two things, the winning image idea I came up with and the tool that helped me discover that — AdEspresso. It more than paid for itself, not just in money but in the time it saved me. I needed to get a campaign up and running FAST. So I took a Udemy class on how to use Facebook Power Editor. But after taking it, I was overwhelmed and confused. Looking back I wish I hadn't done that. I wasted a lot of time.

What I learned: you can save a lot of frustration and get better performance with a Facebook advertising tool like AdEspresso. Honestly, I could've made a lot more money had I found AdEspresso sooner. It's painful to realize but if I knew now what I knew then I would've taken a few days off work. I would've started with AdEspresso and not second guessed myself. I probably would've made $10-20,000 on the opportunity instead of $7,000.

Facebook Ad Management Software Recommended by Facebook Ad Expert

I found AdEspresso after I asked this question in a Facebook group for marketers that I'm in: what Facebook ad management software do you use? One of my marketing friends said, get Jon Loomer power editor tool. Jon is very well respected and an expert in Facebook ads. I didn't know what he meant but I searched Jon's blog and found a post about it. It was Adespresso.

adespresso-logo

Facebook Ads Work – When you Do Them Right

Do I think it's worth paying for Facebook ads? Let me just say YES! It's more than worth the time and effort I've put in. I wonder what took me so long to go this strong on Facebook advertising! If you don't like paying for ads and think boosted posts and ads don't work then you're not doing it right (and this review is a waste of your time).

I'm totally on board with advertising on Facebook, my only goal is to get better and better at it. I've never seen so much opportunity in marketing as I do now – and that includes affiliate marketing.

Not only have I made thousands this month, but I also got new likes on my business page. That is starting to pay off and I expect to grow even more because of my advertising. I've also seen incredible engagement on some of my ads, which is like free advertising for me because I get extra views I'm not paying for!

Adespresso Review by Newspapergrl

 

 

What I Love Most About AdEspresso

Two things. Hands down I love how visual and intuitive AdEspresso is to use. The second thing is how easy AdExpresso makes its to A/B test your ads. Power Editor isn't visual or intuitive. Adespresso is. You can easily see your campaigns, the cost per click, impressions and spend. They will show you which ads are performing. You can run a test of up to 250 different combinations of ads in one campaign.

You can easily see

  • See which ad images are doing well and pause any on the spot that aren't working.
  • See what ad copy and headlines perform best.
  • Test the age ranges.
  • Test the wording on your buttons (learn more, buy now, etc).
  • Test URLs and display URLs.
  • Most important: test audiences/interests. AdEspresso shows you the top factors in your campaign. As you can see in the image below my #1 most important factors are interests (by far). Type in the name of larger Facebook pages that are likely to respond to your ad.

Facebook Ad Targeting Tips:

I always search Facebook for keywords that relate to my offer to look for themes and ideas of audiences who would respond well. You can already see social proof.

Also, look for publications, blogs or personalities that have talked about the product that you're promoting. They're already warm and will be more responsive to your offer.

After you set up tests, turn off any ads that are too expensive. Keep or bump up any that are performing well.

Easily See Your Best Performing Facebook Ads

Look at the stats for an ad I ran for a movie that was nominated for an Academy Award. I thought Academy awards would be the best interest to target, but it's not. As you can see it's costing me 57 cents per click. Just movies is only 11.5 cents a click. So I click to the right of “Academy Awards” and pause all ads that are being shown to people who like Academy Awards. I did that with text, headline and image. Next, I'll create a new campaign that targets movies generally.

Adespresso testing

I also really like the automatic optimization option, which I always use. You can manually set up rules but I haven't done that yet. At some point I hope to elaborate on that more. Right now I still consider myself a beginner. I'm still trying to figure out what the best combination is – should I optimize or pay for impressions, clicks, or engagements?

Here's a test I did with Christmas movies. After about 500 impressions I should see if the numbers change but for now obviously my target is Hallmark movie channel. I can turn the ad on/off according to the day of the week and times. If you put your mouse over any day or time it will give you the cost per click, impressions and numbers of clicks.

AdEspresso Review and Screenshot

This is in the “ads reporting” tab. It's where you can see what combinations affect your cost per click. I see that ages 30-35 liked image 2 best. Image 2 cost over $2 a click! Older age groups preferred image 1. So I'd run new ads and separate that out. I can pause any of them right from this screen.

Adespresso-screenshot

AdEspresso has interest targeting that let's you use an  ‘AND’ or an ‘OR’ criteria. So you could target people who like movies AND Academy Awards. I could test that. Right now I have it set to OR.

What I Don't Like About AdEspresso

Well, if I were dreaming I'd like it to say, Janet this is the ad, the copy and the the interests combination that works best. Why don't you add budget? You know, make it even smarter. I need to see if there's a way to say if an ad costs me more than 20 cents a click automatically turn it off (after it gets at least 10 clicks).

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have reached the success I've had without AdEspresso because I was losing my mind with power editor. Note that I haven't tried any other tool. I'm happy with AdEspresso. Everything has a learning curve and I'm not ready to start over learning another Facebook ads tool.

Since I'm only a month in I'm sure I'll have more insights to share. There's so much to test and learn. I have to take it a step at a time though. Remember this is my money not my employer's or someone else's. So I get mad when I waste it. Still, I'm getting smarter.

The guy who runs AdEspresso isn't a native English speaker and he sometimes misspells words, but this is technical and I don't blame him. I just notice it sometimes. Not a big deal. At some point maybe he'll hire an editor.

I use Canva to design my ads, choosing the custom size and making it 1200 x 628. I've tested making the left hand side an image and the right hand side with a call-to-action. You can buy stock photography, I think AdEspresso has some images, or create your own with your own photos. If a Canva rep is reading this and sends me another email asking me to link to you, I'm going to be annoyed suggest that you guys start an affiliate program.

Price of AdEspresso

AdEspresso offers three plans with prices going from $49 to $299 per month depending on how much you spend on Facebook ads per month. I'm at the $49/month plan that is good for up to $3,000 in Facebook ad spend.

I'm tempted however to upgrade to the $149 plan and take advantage of the 1 hour of dedicated training (I hope that's per month). That's my plan when I ramp up and find offers that convert. It would be helpful to have someone give me an outside expert look at my ads and help me optimize them.

With the free trial you can try out AdEspresso to see what you think. The two week trial is fully functional and you'll quickly know if it's for you.

Start My Free Trial

Facebook Ad Tips

In addition to managing your ads and making it super easy, AdEspresso helps make you smarter. It's a company of ad nerds. They send you an email of the best performing ads each week. They have a Facebook group. Their blog that has many tips and information from people who use Facebook ads every day. For me it's the perfect level of depth (enough to help me but not overly technical) and full of helpful data. Here's an example of the education they provide:

adespresso-Facebook-ads

 

I like sending people to a blog post for something that takes explaining beyond the click and also to get the traffic to my site. That helps with SEO and I make money on ads too. Either way, I can highly recommend AdEspresso! Thanks for reading my AdEspresso review, now I want to know…

Have you tried AdEspresso or another Facebook ad management tool? Let me know what you think!


19 Comments
  1. AJ Wilcox January 15, 2016
  2. Janet Thaeler January 15, 2016
  3. AJ Wilcox January 15, 2016
  4. Janet Thaeler January 15, 2016
  5. Alex Michael January 28, 2017
  6. Janet Thaeler January 28, 2017
  7. AJ Wilcox January 29, 2017
  8. Bruce February 7, 2017
  9. Janet Thaeler February 7, 2017
  10. Robin Ashby March 29, 2017
  11. Janet Thaeler March 29, 2017
  12. Thomas Müller April 5, 2017
  13. Janet Thaeler April 5, 2017
  14. Sali Bina December 19, 2017
  15. Janet Thaeler December 19, 2017
  16. Alex May 9, 2018
  17. Janet Thaeler May 9, 2018
  18. Alex May 9, 2018
  19. Janet Thaeler May 9, 2018

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