Facebook Business Manager + the warmup that prevents bans
Facebook is paranoid about new advertisers. Most beginners create an account, drop a credit card in, and launch a $50/day campaign within the hour. Facebook reads that pattern as "either bot or scam," and disables the account before the campaign even spends. The fix is mundane: set the account up like a normal person would set up a business page, then leave it alone for a few days.
Step 1 · Create the Business Manager
Open your personal Facebook profile (the real one — not a sock puppet, not a friend's account). In a new tab, go to business.facebook.com/overview. Click Create an Account.
- Business name: anything plausible. Doesn't need to be your LLC name.
- Your name: your real name.
- Email: use a Gmail (or any address) that has never been used for a Facebook business account before. If you've burned through accounts already, a fresh email is non-negotiable.
Submit. You'll land in Meta Business Suite. From there, click Help → Go to Business Manager.
Step 2 · Add a backup admin profile
This is the most-skipped step in the playbook and the most painful one to skip. From Business Manager, go to Users → People → Add. Add a second Facebook profile (a friend's, a spouse's, a separate one you own) as an admin with full control over the Business Manager.
Step 3 · Create your first ad account
From Business Manager → Accounts → Ad Accounts → Add → Create a new ad account. Set the timezone and currency to where you actually live and bill — changing them later requires creating a new ad account.
A brand-new Business Manager only lets you create one ad account. After your first ad account has spent roughly $20–$25, the limit will lift to three. After a few hundred dollars of clean spend, it lifts higher. Don't try to game this; just spend a little and wait.
Step 4 · Add payment
In the ad account, open Billing & Payments → Add Payment Method. Add a real card. If you can, use a card you've used for other normal purchases (not a freshly-issued virtual card) — Facebook scores payment instruments for fraud risk, and a card with history scores better. Save it as the primary.
Step 5 · Warm the account up before you launch
This is the difference between a fresh account that lasts a year and one that dies in a week.
For the next 5–10 days before you run any affiliate campaign:
- Log into the personal profile that owns the Business Manager every day from the same device + same Wi-Fi (don't VPN around).
- Scroll the feed for 5–15 minutes a day. Like a few posts. Watch a few Reels to completion. Comment on something. Add a friend or two.
- If you have a real Page tied to this profile, post once. If you don't, create a Page and post 2–3 things that aren't ads. A photo, a thought, anything.
- Spend $1–$5 boosting that organic post (not an affiliate offer) just to put a clean transaction on the ad account.
The pattern Facebook trusts
Normal user → has a Page → posts occasionally → boosts a post → eventually runs structured campaigns. That's a creator becoming a small business. Bots skip the first four steps and go straight to step five — which is exactly what gets caught.
Step 6 · Read the ad policy (yes, actually)
Most affiliate marketers learn Facebook's Ad Policies by getting hit with disapprovals. Skim the high-risk sections once, especially:
- Personal attributes — you can't imply you know something about the viewer ("you're overweight, click here"). Reframe as a question or third-person ("Tired of stubborn belly fat?" rather than "You're overweight").
- Before/after imagery — banned outright for weight loss, skin, etc. Use lifestyle imagery, not transformations.
- Misleading health claims — never "cures," "guaranteed," or specific medical conditions in the ad copy. The vendor's sales page can say more (that's their problem); your ad has to be clean.
How the operator does this for you
The tools/facebook package has two relevant tools:
fb_open_business_manager()— logs in, navigates to BM, verifies you're set up.fb_warmup_profile(minutes=8)— drives the browser to scroll, like, and dwell on the feed for the given duration. Run it daily as a cron during the warmup week.
You still set up the account by hand the first time (Facebook is hostile to automated signups). The operator takes over once the account exists.