Pragmatic Look At Getting Your Banned Facebook Ads Account Back

Igor Kheifets:
I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the List Building Lifestyle, a podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world, and help people improve their lives in the process, then this podcast is for you. I also invite you to attend a free workshop at Igor.ac where I’m teaching how I made $21,779.45 in affiliate commissions by sending just 481 clicks to my affiliate link in one day. I’m also explaining why I walked away from ClickBank and I don’t promote ClickBank offers anymore as well as the five things I look for in the perfect affiliate offer.

I’m even going to show you the one-page website that I used to make over half a million dollars in affiliate commissions this year, and I’ll even drive you to attend this workshop by giving you a $497 value course that shows you how to cherry-pick high-converting affiliate offers for your next affiliate promotion. In addition, I’ll even give you the three offers I’m promoting right now that are making me money as we speak. All that and more at Igor.ac. And now, it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

Terrance Lackey:
You are listening to the List Building Lifestyle. My name is Terrance Lackey, and I’m here with the chief list builder himself, Mr. Igor Kheifets. How are you doing today, Igor?

Igor Kheifets:
I’m doing amazing, man, because we’re going to talk about my most favorite thing of them all, why you should stop doing Facebook ads.

Terrance Lackey:
Oh, wow. Yeah. I already know a few reasons why, but can you tell us about that? Why should we not do Facebook ads?

Igor Kheifets:
Well, for one, because I said so, but if we’re serious, you should stop doing Facebook ads because even if you get them right in some way, maybe you got lucky or something or maybe you’re selling that sort of product that has that super instant, super compulsive need to purchase, like if you’re marketing to firemen or firemen wives and you sell t-shirts and the t-shirt says, “I’m a proud wife of a fireman,” obviously, you can get that compulsive, impulsive purchase.

But if you’re trying to run a serious longterm business and generate leads, what’s going to happen, even if you do figure out Facebook ads, is you’re going to get banned. Now, you may lose your ad account or you may lose your personal account or you may lose your business account, but you’re going to lose an account. That’s just a given. Anyone, whether they’ve done really well with Facebook ads or not, eventually lose accounts.

In fact, one of the biggest affiliates that is using Facebook ads almost primarily and even is not building a list says you need to figure out how to start new ad accounts because that is the secret to success with Facebook ads. He’s like he knows up front, he warns his students upfront, “You’re going to get your account banned because Facebook does not like when you promote products.”

I’m not sure why exactly and what Facebook wants. Maybe they just want to work with huge advertisers that have millions of dollars in ad budget every year that just spend it carelessly for, quote-unquote, “brand advertising” or image advertising, but when it comes to direct response and promoting products like weight loss or dating or make money or financial or a bunch of stuff like that, most of the time, Facebook eventually shuts you down, so be it 30 days or three years, eventually they ban you.

The other day, I got on YouTube. There’s this guy I follow who’s some people may consider to be a Facebook ad authority because he built a name for himself with regards to teaching other people how to run Facebook ads for small businesses. He put up a video showing how to get unbanned, meaning… The title of the video was “if you got banned, if your ad account got banned, how do you get back on Facebook?” Do you know what the plan is? Do you know what the technique or trick or hack is, Terrance?

Terrance Lackey:
I’m very curious because I can imagine if you have your Facebook account banned and you built the business, that’s going to be pretty major to get back on. What is this technique?

Igor Kheifets:
The technique consists of 12 steps, 12 steps, which something I already don’t like-

Terrance Lackey:
Yeah, that’s huge.

Igor Kheifets:
… but 12 steps… But let’s say you have to. You have to get back on Facebook ads. 12 steps, and the first step is buy a new laptop.

Terrance Lackey:
Well, that’s an easy one, right? Just go out and grab another laptop.

Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. I mean, you get banned, so just buy a new laptop. What’s the big deal? “You only use that laptop,” he says, “to log into your Facebook ads account.”

Terrance Lackey:
Wow.

Igor Kheifets:
That’s it. Right there, right there, just that first step of that system already tells you why you should not do Facebook ads. Why work so hard to try and advertise on a network that doesn’t want your business? Sure, you can appeal and you can re-appeal and appeal, et cetera. Maybe, maybe there’s a chance they get you back and ban you again in six months. Who knows?

But at one point, I was spending $2,000 a day on Facebook ads. It was back in 2013. I was putting in 2,000. I was making about 10 back for every 2,000 investment, so I loved it, but then they banned me, and they would not accept an appeal. Then I got back with a different account, different IP, logged in through a virtual private network through a computer located somewhere in a different country, and I logged in through that server and eventually lost that too.

I got new credit cards. I virtually went out there starting back accounts just to get new credit cards with different banks so I can do that so I can get on Facebook. I just eventually got tired of that. I said, “Why would I continue to build my business on such a shifting foundation that can basically be pulled from underneath me any day?” because at one point, like I said, I was putting down 2,000 bucks a day on Facebook ads and bringing about 10 back. Can you imagine what it’s like to be making that, and then you wake up one day, you log in, and then at the top of your Facebook ads account, there’s this notice that says, “You are not allowed to run ads anymore. There’s been some suspicious activity in your profile.”

They never tell you, by the way, why either. I’m not sure why. They don’t tell you, “This ad right here, it’s a bad ad. Remove it, and we’ll let you run the ads.” No, they just say, “There’s been some activity in your account, and piss off.” That’s it. End of story.

Yo, it’s Igor. If you’re loving the content, hop on over to listbuildinglifestyleshow.com for more free training and a free transcript of this episode. Oh, and I’d really appreciate if you logged into iTunes and rated the show. It really helps. Thanks.

Terrance Lackey:
Well, that’s like losing your whole business overnight, waking up in the morning, and everything’s gone. I can’t imagine having to go through that multiple, multiple times, and each time having to… You shared with me a graphic showing the process of getting this Facebook ad back, and I literally sent you an email back saying, “Holy shit.” I mean, it’s like a spaghetti craft of different things that you had to do. I wonder how many times you have to actually go through that before you actually lose heart and want to find something better. That’s definitely something that that would be so high on my factors of considering risks in dealing with Facebook.

Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, absolutely, and ” holy shit” is right. I think that sums up the whole thing pretty well because that’s, I mean, same thinking that led me to eventually drop AWeber completely because if they just keep banning you, why coming back? I remember one time back in 2014, I’ve had a student who really succeeded as a solo ad provider. Now, he built a really big solid business and he was at one point selling more clicks than I was, and I knew he had a network, a network of AWeber accounts.

He would actually hire assistants in the Philippines, and every time he would hire someone else to start five AWeber accounts a day and warm them up because he knew that every single day or once a week or once a month, he’s going to lose an account. Now, he had such a big business and had so much traffic coming in that all he had to do is just switch some code, and he was a coder actually, so he coded that the system to be automated and interchangeable, et cetera, but even with resources like that, he could only go on for one year before he just said, “Fuck it.” He said, “I can’t do it anymore. I can’t run this business anymore. It’s too much stress. It’s too much anxiety,” and eventually, he switched to selling football gear, which I’m thinking he’s most passionate about anyway.

That’s his thing now, I think either dropshipping or e-commerce or selling football memorabilia, something like that. But even he couldn’t do it, and he was one of the most resilient students I’ve had. He was a very, very, very smart, brilliant guy, could code anything, could automate anything, could foresee and deal with almost any challenge, and yet even he said, “At some point I’m throwing in the towel. I can’t do it anymore. I want some peace and quiet. I want my peace of mind back.”

Terrance Lackey:
Yeah, man, I tell you what, you have convinced me. Running a business, and I’ve run a lot of businesses, and you’re supposed to spend your time, ideally spend your time maximizing your systems, making your business more efficient, creating content, establishing relationships, and when you’re wasting time going back and forth and rebuilding your entire marketing platform over and over again, I can’t imagine the amount of opportunity and potential profit and value you lose in just doing the physical fact of jumping all through all the hoops of getting that set up. Man, Facebook ads are looking a lot less attractive to me, for sure.

Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, absolutely, man, absolutely. Facebook, as much as they were great when they just started selling ads, I really don’t see a reason to keep using them anymore unless you really can’t access your customers in any other way. If that’s the case, great. I mean, you’re sort of hostage to it, but if there’s other ways, develop other ways. Don’t be dependent on Facebook so much because that diagram I sent you included about 12 steps, and it actually doesn’t take just like three hours. It takes like, what, two or three weeks-

Terrance Lackey:
Yeah, I saw that.

… according to the diagram because you can’t just buy a new laptop and start a new profile. You have to buy a new laptop, start a new profile. Then you have to build the profile, make it look organic. Then you have to wait three days. Then you have to start running $2 a day or $5 a day in ads. Then you can let that run for a week or two. Then you wait for like three charges to your card to see if you get banned again. If not, okay, you’re past the first checkpoint. You wait three more days, five more days. Then you run some other ads. Then you wait two more weeks. Then you get another account. I mean, really? When do you have the time to actually work on your business if that’s what you’re doing there? Facebook ads, big thumbs down for me. Instead of trying to get your account back, why don’t you just work on other traffic sources?

Terrance Lackey:
That’s a big thumbs down for Facebook ads. Well, that’s good stuff. All right. That’s a wrap. List Builders, thank you very much for being on board for this conversation. Thank you, Igor. We’ll be back in your earbuds next week.

Igor Kheifets:
Thank you for listening to the List Building Lifestyle. Get access to previous episodes, the transcription of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, don’t forget to claim your free seat at the workshop I’m hosting this week where I show the two-step system that made me the top affiliates for people like Matt Bacak, John Crestani, Richard Legg, Michael Cheney, and many, many others. In fact, on this workshop, I’m going to show you the exact approach I take whenever I promoted an affiliate offer, the exact offers I promote, as well as how I was able to make over half a million dollars in commissions using my small list of just 18,000 people promoting a weird type of product that almost no one else promotes. All that is yours at Igor.ac, so go ahead, claim your seat right now, and I’ll see you there.