How Daniel Berry Generates Thousands of Free Visitors from Facebook

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Before Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) in September 2023, most niche website owners focused primarily or exclusively on organic search traffic. Those who prioritized social media traffic were in the minority.

But with so many content-based sites losing huge chunks of search traffic from the HCU and subsequent Google updates, many site owners have shifted their focus away from SEO in favor of platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.

You may have heard or read about people using Facebook pages to replace lost organic search traffic. With simple Facebook ads able to attract cheap page likes, growing your page’s following is surprisingly achievable. Then, the key is to post engaging content that leads Facebook users to stop scrolling and click on the link. If you’re successful, Facebook can be a substantial source of traffic, with the potential to go viral at any time.

Although the model is fairly straightforward, subtle nuances can be the difference between driving floods of traffic or wasting your time.

Daniel Berry has achieved incredible success using Facebook to drive traffic to a gardening blog, and earlier this year he released a course titled Facebook for Niche Sites. In the course, Daniel shares his exact approach in a step-by-step way that’s easy to follow.

I purchased and completed the course myself, and I reached out to Daniel to see if he’d be willing to share some tips for those wanting to use Facebook for traffic. Daniel agreed, and you can find his insight in the interview below.

I highly recommend Daniel’s course if Facebook traffic is something you really want to pursue. As I mentioned, I completed the course and am currently working on growing Facebook traffic to one of my own sites. Daniel’s course is surprisingly inexpensive (currently only $99) and also comes with a 14-day moneyback guarantee.

Now, on to the interview with Daniel about using Facebook for traffic…

What is your background and how did you get started with niche websites?

I used to work for a digital marketing agency as an SEO specialist. I then went into freelance work in all areas of digital marketing, and that is when I began to set up my own sites. After a while my niche sites were out earning my freelance work and became the obvious area to focus all of my attention on.

How long have you been focusing on Facebook for traffic and what types of results have you been able to produce?

I think it has been around 3 years now with a heavy focus on Facebook. Luckily, I had already swapped over my focus to Facebook long before Google’s Helpful Content Update hit!

I managed to drive over 100,000 sessions in a single day to one website, using Facebook traffic.

What niches or types of sites are a good fit for Facebook, and which ones are unlikely to work?

Any interest niche works very well, so hobbies and activities are perfect. News, especially niche news (celeb, sports, etc.) can also work well for traffic.

Then you have your viral niches, with things like feel-good stories, animals, quizzes, etc. These always have done well on Facebook and continue to do so today.

Can website owners repurpose their existing content on Facebook, or is new content necessary?

Old content can 100% be repurposed and that’s how my gardening site got started on Facebook. My best-performing post on Facebook is about pruning tomatoes and was originally written for Google.

You just need to work on your titles and featured images to make them more suited to FB.

What are some of the biggest challenges that need to be overcome to succeed with Facebook?

Learning what your audience wants. With SEO you’re working on the inbound side of marketing – you write an article and then wait for the audience to come to you.

With Facebook or any social media platform for that matter, you are outbound marketing. You have to attract the users’ attention and give them something that interests them right in that moment.

This is a big shift in how you work and is the one thing I see people struggle with most often.

Does most of your Facebook traffic depend on posts going viral, or can you generate steady traffic without needing a post to go viral?  

Facebook traffic tends to go in waves, you get your viral hits and traffic goes crazy for a few days or weeks, and then it quiets back down for a bit. You can still build up a baseline of traffic that can become reasonably steady.

It is nothing like SEO though, if you stop posting, then the traffic will inevitably dry up. Or if all your posts are duds, then traffic will also dry up.

What are the biggest pros and cons of using Facebook for traffic generation?

The biggest plus for me is the amount of traffic you can generate, and it is valuable traffic too. My Facebook RPMs are higher than organic search traffic.

Another big plus is how quickly you can get set up and generate traffic. There is no sandbox period. Once your page is up and running you can start pushing good traffic numbers.

The biggest con is that Facebook is a machine that needs to be fed. While this can be addressed in some part by scheduling content ahead of time, you still need to be analysing and checking what’s working and what isn’t.

How do you recommend bloggers and website owners balance organic and paid traffic efforts on Facebook?

Paid traffic is a whole separate ball game for me, and requires a different set of skills. While there is a section all about FB Ad Arbitrage coming soon to my course, I would recommend most people either do one or the other.

You can be successful with arbitrage, my current experiments are seeing me earn roughly 2-2.5x what I spend on ads. But I think to be truly successful with this method ,you either need to give it your sole focus, or have a team member who can.

What skills does someone need to succeed using Facebook as a traffic source?

They need to know their niche, the more involved they are in their niche the more successful they’ll be. This is why gardening worked so well for me, I love gardening. So straight away I knew whether an idea would be good or not. Would I click that article? If not, then I knew it probably wasn’t worth writing.

I also know the pain points a gardener might have and when they might have them, allowing me to post the right article at the perfect time.

The more you know about your niche, the easier you will find it to write the kind of content your audience loves, and this really shows on Facebook.

Interested in learning how to generate traffic from Facebook? Be sure to check out Daniel’s course Facebook for Niche Sites.