Jeff Bullas

Taking the step from creator to business partner is a smart move.

Short Answer: You need to start by creating a professional media kit, then proactively pitch brands you love with specific collaboration ideas for their image and video content.

Brands aren’t just looking for exposure from your various text and visual content; they’re looking for professional, reliable partners who can create quality assets for them.

First, professionalise your approach by creating a one-page media kit. This is a simple document that acts as your account’s resume. It must include your key stats, especially your engagement rate which is more important than follower count for a small creator, along with your audience demographics and a few examples of your best photo work.

Don’t wait for brands to find you. Make a list of brands you genuinely use and pitch them directly via email. Your pitch needs to be short and specific. Don’t just ask for free product; propose a clear content idea, like ‘a Reel showcasing three ways I use your product in my daily routine’.

To begin with, you should expect to do ‘gifted’ collaborations, which means you receive the product in exchange for the post. Treat these as your portfolio builders. By delivering high-quality, professional content on these gifted campaigns, you build a track record that you can use to start charging a fee for your work down the line.

Cheers,
Jeff

• This reply was modified 6 months ago by Neil Anthony.

I’m very sorry for your loss, and taking care of this is a thoughtful and important step.

The Process in Brief: You will need to submit a ‘Memorialization Request’ through Facebook’s Help Centre, which will require you to provide a link to your uncle’s profile and proof of his passing.

This process is designed to respectfully preserve their profile, which serves as an archive of all the text, image, and video content they shared with friends and family.

Once the request is approved, the word ‘Remembering’ will appear next to his name, the account will be secured, and it will no longer appear in public spaces like birthday reminders. You can find the official request form by searching for ‘Memorialization Request’ in the Facebook Help Centre. The form will ask for his profile URL and require you to upload verification, such as a link to an obituary or a scan of the death certificate. If your uncle had designated a ‘Legacy Contact’, that person can manage tribute posts; if not, the account will simply remain as a place for friends and family to visit.

Cheers,

Jeff

Having control over your digital memories is incredibly important, and thankfully, Facebook provides the tools you need.

The Short Answer: While you can’t turn the feature off completely, you can turn off all notifications for it. More importantly, you can create specific filters to hide all memories that involve certain people or specific date ranges.

These settings give you direct control over which of your past content formats, like old text posts or photos, are resurfaced for you.

To find these controls, navigate to the ‘Memories’ section on Facebook and look for the settings icon. Inside, you will find two powerful filters. The ‘People’ filter allows you to add friends to a list to stop seeing any past text posts or image content where they were tagged. The ‘Dates’ filter lets you block out specific days or even entire year ranges, which is perfect for avoiding difficult periods. If you prefer to stop seeing the notifications altogether, you can also manage your notification settings for Memories and select ‘None’.

Cheers,

Jeff

This is one of the most important and common questions for anyone starting a business on Facebook.

The Simple Answer: Yes, your business page is publicly separate from your personal profile. Your personal information and posts are not visible to your page’s followers.

The two are designed to host entirely different types of content formats; your personal text posts and family photos are kept separate from your professional product images and business updates.

You are correct that a personal profile is required to be the administrator of a business page, but think of your personal profile as the key holder, not the shopfront itself. When you post, comment, or interact on behalf of your business, you must ensure you are acting as your Page. When you do this, your customers will only see your business name and logo, and they will have no way of clicking through to your personal profile or seeing its content from your business page. The separation of your personal and business presence is maintained.

Cheers,

Jeff

Getting your GST settings right from the start is absolutely essential, so well done for tackling it.

The Short Version: You are responsible for GST, and you must configure your tax details within the Commerce Manager. Best practice in Australia is to list your prices as GST-inclusive.

How you configure these settings directly impacts the price, which is the most critical piece of text content on your product image listings.

You will find the tax controls within your Commerce Manager under a section typically called ‘Settings’ and then ‘Taxes’, which is where you must enter your ABN. There will be a crucial setting that asks if your prices include tax. For selling to Australian consumers, you should select this option and ensure the prices you enter for each product already have the ten per cent GST factored in. Facebook does not remit the GST to the ATO for you; it provides you with sales reports which you then use to complete your BAS. Think of Commerce Manager as your cash register, not your accountant.

Cheers,

Jeff

This is a smart question, as choosing the right objective is the difference between a good and a bad ad campaign.

The Simple Answer: Use the Reach objective to show your ad to the most people possible for general awareness, and use the Engagement objective when you want to encourage likes, comments, and shares.

The objective you choose tells Facebook’s algorithm how to handle your specific content format, whether it’s an image, a video, or a simple text post.

Think of the Reach objective as a digital flyer. When you have a simple image or video announcement, like ‘New Frappe Now Available’ or ‘We’re Open on Holidays’, you should use Reach. The algorithm will focus on showing that visual content to the maximum number of unique people in your local area. The Engagement objective is for starting a conversation. Use it for a text post that asks a question or an image that’s part of a competition, as the algorithm will find people who are most likely to comment and share that piece of content. So for your new frappe post, if the content is a simple announcement, Reach is your best bet; if the text asks a question, Engagement is the better choice.

Cheers,

Jeff

A great question. AMP is one of the most exciting but also challenging technologies in email today.

Short Answer: AMP for Email is a framework created by Google that allows you to embed interactive, website-like components directly into an email. It goes beyond static text and images, allowing for things like live forms, image carousels, and accordions that a user can interact with inside the inbox.

The goal of AMP is to turn a static, read-only email into a dynamic, app-like experience, reducing the friction for a user to complete an action.

With a standard email, if you want a user to fill out a form or browse a gallery, you need them to click a link and go to your website. AMP for Email aims to eliminate that step. It allows you to build emails with interactive elements, such as a product review form with text fields and a submit button that works inside the email, an image carousel a user can swipe through, or collapsible content sections that can be expanded or hidden. It can even pull in live data, so the content is up-to-date the moment the email is opened.

However, there are significant challenges, which is why it has not been universally adopted. The first and biggest issue is limited email client support. AMP is primarily supported by Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Mail.ru. It does not work in Apple Mail or the vast majority of Microsoft Outlook clients, which make up a huge portion of email users. This means you must always build a standard, non-AMP version of your email as a fallback for those recipients.

The second challenge is technical complexity. Building and testing an AMP email requires specialised development skills and is far more time-consuming and expensive than creating a standard HTML email. You also have to go through a strict registration and approval process with Google to even be allowed to send AMP emails. For most businesses, the effort required currently outweighs the benefit, and focusing on creating a great traditional email with compelling text and images that links to a fast-loading landing page is still the more practical and effective approach.

Cheers,
Jeff

A great question. Countdown timers are a powerful tool for creating urgency when used correctly.

Short Answer: Yes, you can put a live countdown timer in an email. It works by embedding a dynamic image, usually an animated GIF, that is generated by a third-party service. This service creates a new image frame every time it is requested by the email client.

The key is to understand that you are not embedding a piece of code that runs in the email, but rather an image that is being constantly and instantly updated on a server.

It’s a common misconception that there is complex code running inside the email itself. For security reasons, email clients block scripts, so a different approach is needed. The countdown timer is actually a dynamic image generated on the fly. When a subscriber opens your email, their email client sends a request to a server to download the images. The third-party timer service receives this request, instantly generates an animated GIF image showing the correct time remaining until your deadline, and sends that image back to the email.

To create one, you use one of the many online countdown timer services. The process is simple. You go to their website, enter your specific deadline date and time, and customise the timer’s appearance with your brand’s colours and text styles. The service will then provide you with a small snippet of HTML code. You simply copy this code and paste it into your email template’s HTML where you want the timer image to appear. Your email marketing platform will then display the live, animated timer.

The most important best practice is to ensure the urgency is real. A countdown timer for a fake deadline will quickly erode your customers’ trust. The timer image should also be placed directly above a clear call-to-action button with text like “Register Before Time Runs Out,” so the urgency is immediately followed by the solution.

Cheers,
Jeff