Affiliate marketing tips

It seems that affiliate marketing is simple: you place a few affiliate links and watch how the numbers on the account are updated. In practice, between posting a link and the first client who will bring you money, there is a huge amount of work (as in any business).

It is important to correctly identify the target audience, find its needs, wishes, and actually put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. But even if it’s all there, a single campaign, video, or article has limited potential and can attract 50, 100, or 1000 leads. After – sales will drop. To earn consistently, you need a marketing strategy that involves a comprehensive promotion through different sources.

What, in order to earn a stable income, you need to go to university to study marketing? No, you don’t have to be a certified marketer. As well as not necessarily long-term training. You can learn everything as you go along. We offer TOP working tips on affiliate marketing. With you Leadbit team, and this handy guide for marketers and arbitrageurs. In this review, you will find tips for both novice publishers and experienced marketers. Let’s get started! Below is a lot of interesting things.

Tips for novice arbitrageurs

A small digression for beginners. Affiliate marketing is a product promotion model. The company helps to attract more customers by reducing advertising costs. A partner or publisher can earn money without their own product, receiving a good commission (sometimes comparable to the cost of the promoted product) for advertising other people’s services. But payment upon sale or other useful action, such as registration, downloading the app.

Read more about what affiliate marketing is, how it works and how to make money with it there is a series article in our blog. Here are some tips for a novice partner:

Choose the right niche and offer (affiliate program offer)

What are the best niches to choose? If you have your own blog, then you should choose the one that echoes the topic of the posts. Otherwise, don’t expect readers to click on the links. Do you describe your travels? Choose partner hotels, tour operators or various gadgets for tourists, from suitcases to tents. Blog about extreme recreation? Work with commodity affiliate programs, selling action cameras, equipment.

When arbitraging traffic, the strategy is slightly different, here the main thing is profitability. The most profitable destinations with a high conversion rate and ROI:

• dating: dating sites, including chat on “one night”;
• gambling: online casinos, various games and puzzles for money;
• betting: bookmakers, sweepstakes;
• nutritionology: means for improving potency, weight loss, dietary supplements, vitamins.

But which one will be more profitable for you is an unresolved question. So experiment and test. It may be possible to make good money in other verticals, for example, finance, commodity affiliate programs, on the promotion of hosting services, website designers, services for booking tickets.

It is not difficult to find offers from partner programs. Hundreds of offers from trusted partners in the LeadBit CPA network. In addition, there is a 24-hour support service and a lot of training materials. It is more difficult to choose a vertical. There are many subtleties here.

Features of working with partners in different verticals

A lot depends on the promoted product or service: from the potential conversion to the work strategy. It is necessary to take into account the audience, the channels through which the affiliate program is best promoted. Naturally, the regional binding is important, which determines the amount of payments, advertising approaches.

Here are some examples. Affiliate programs of online casinos go perfectly in almost any GEO, both in developed countries and in regions with a small income. But the target audience and methods of influence will differ significantly. For example, in TIER 2 countries (relatively small affluence, on average $ 200-600, these are: Russia, India, Mexico, Brazil, most of Eastern Europe), success stories with wonderful winnings work best, promotion through strategies that will help you earn money. I do not argue, this is not entirely fair, but in poor countries, in most cases, the main motive is to get rich quickly and quit the hated job. The main target audience is men, from 18 to 28-30 years old.

In TIER 1 countries (income from$ 1000 per month: EU, USA, Canada, other English-speaking countries), the main argument for attracting online casinos is the opportunity to relax, relax, and get rid of stress. Here they give the effect of mini-games, reviews of functionality, emphasis on the variety, complexity of games, and an unusual interface. CA – people a little older, from 30-35 years. Pensioners and even a little more women play actively.

In dating, it is easy to attract a lot of leads, so the payouts are not very large, and search and contextual advertising are expensive. One of the ways to reduce costs is popander and clickander. Adult and gambling affiliate programs are well promoted through Facebook, Instagram. Here, the conversion rate is several times higher than that of other sources. But verticals are not desirable for advertising under the rules of Facebook Ads. Cloaking will help. But get ready, big earnings require a lot of effort, you can not do without hassle.

These are a few examples. In reality, there are more contradictions and pitfalls. Therefore, carefully analyze the niches, it is better to choose two or three directions and not jump from one vertical to another.

Use landing pages

Many partners underestimate the benefits and opportunities of landing pages (capture pages or funnels), pre-landing pages. They give results in 2021, both when promoting partner programs through their own website or blog, and in conjunction with paid advertising (traffic arbitration).

Landing Page is not just called a capture funnel. They allow you to go through all the stages in the marketing chain:

• tell;
• get interested;
• arouse desire;
• motivate to buy.

Always remember. An advertising banner or a blog review only notifies you. This is a hook that can be used to hook a potential client. If the posts on the site are openly advertising, they will not cause trust. Unlike the landing page.

In the landing page, you can tell in detail about the product, describe how it will solve the customer’s problems, and what benefits it will bring. Close all questions: dispel fears, fears. And offer an “imaginary choice” that will help to push the client. For example, “buy online course ” or “get a trial lesson”.

An alternative, more rigid approach: “subscribe to the service” or “then spend three times more time doing everything manually” (continue to suffer from fullness, continue to work the old-fashioned way). The effect of landing pages: an average lead increase of 47% for white partners. For gray verticals (gambling, betting, adult), the number of leads increases two to three times.

You can read how to use it, how to compose mobile landing pages correctly in this review.

Optimize your site

This applies to landing pages used for capturing, as well as blogs, entertainment sites, and useful services. What does this mean? First, the download speed. No one will wait 20-30 seconds for the page to load, even 5 seconds is too long. Ideally, if the page loads for less than one second. If it is longer than two, 10-15% of the traffic will disappear, if more than three-up to half of the users will leave.

To speed up the download, you need to:

• clear the code of errors, extra lines that do not carry any load but waste resources, occupy the data stream;
• remove unnecessary widgets, such as clocks, calendars, various metrics (just leave one or two), complex flash animation (flash support is already discontinued, this is the past). CSS, Java scripts can be passed;
• optimize the size of images: convert to PNG format, compress to the screen size (for most sites, these are HD and SD templates), regardless of the ratio, choose the size of the sides of images in the range from 320 to 1300 pixels (for example, 400×640 or 560×1280 pixels);
• choose a server that is geographically closer to the potential target audience, if you are read in the United States, then you should choose hosting in this region. You can use distributed CDN networks (the site is copied on servers in different geos) to reach a large audience, as Google and other large services do.

You can check the site loading speed using PageSpeed Insights tools by Google and GTmetrix. WebPagetest.org create a full report on the page operation. The PageSpeed browser extension (Chrome, Firefox) will show the reasons for slow loading, site freezes. Tools for compressing scripts: PageSpeed Insights, GNU Gzip.

Another way to optimize is to remove visual garbage. The excess of advertising, bright banners, headlines, sparkling inscriptions – all this is in the past. Such a resource will not cause trust, as if it is from the 2000s. It is difficult for the visitor to find information, it seems as if it is a bulletin board for placing ads, even if there are not many ads. All this will alienate the user and force him to leave immediately, without even reading the content.

You can read more about how to optimize your website and landing page here.

Remember about mobile users

According to statistics, the mobile audience is about 53% of Internet users in the world. Although in developed countries, desktop devices have a small advantage, potentially, every second visitor to the site came to you from a smartphone or tablet.

The experience of using mobile and desktop devices is different. Desktops and laptops are most often used in a cozy home environment, sitting comfortably in an armchair, on the sofa, or sometimes from the workplace. With mobile gadgets, users work on the go: in the subway or bus on the way to work, at a table in a cafe, on a bench in a park, in the waiting room of a railway station or airport.

Another factor is the size of the screen, it is several times smaller, while part of the available space on the screen is occupied by the keyboard while searching for information or when entering a message.

How to make a website friendly for a mobile user? Here are a few ways:

• use adaptive templates with free markup – the content automatically adjusts to the screen size;
• before launching, check how the site looks on different devices and browsers – at a minimum, check the download speed, display quality in Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Safari, UC Browser, QQ, Samsung Internet;
• simplify the design – the information should be presented concisely and concisely, think in screens, one screen – one block.

There is a free tool for testing the site for convenience for mobile users: Think With Google. You can learn more about optimization here.

Experiment

Just post a list of affiliate links in a blog or launch an ad and immediately make money on it will not work. Users will click on the link and buy something only if they trust you or the ad. How to achieve this? Nothing works better than the truth.

If this is a blog, the reviews should be based on personal experience. If this is the promotion of affiliate programs through paid advertising, you should use landing pages and pre-landing pages with a detailed description of the product. Everyone loves beautiful stories. It is necessary to describe not the advantages of the product itself, but the benefits for the CLIENT, how HIS problems are solved, what HE will receive.

But you won’t be able to work on a deferred scenario forever. As time goes on, the audience’s interests and view of the problem change. Therefore, you can earn money in affiliate marketing only with the help of experiments and tests.

If you have a blog – change the approach to writing articles, you can run several different categories: comparison articles, TOP ratings, reviews, “unboxing”, tutorials, entertainment posts, and even fiction stories. If this is a paid ad, we run tests of several banners, landing pages, compare the effectiveness and continue working with more profitable ones. This is not difficult to do. Most advertising exchanges and landing page designers offer an A/B testing tool. It involves the simultaneous launch of two or three creatives or arbitrage bundles.

Top Traffic Arbitration Tips for 2021

Online marketing, including the promotion of affiliate programs, is one of the most volatile areas. The situation may change in a few months. For example, if previously bright fonts, flashing labels and annoying pop-ups were used to attract attention, now all this will alienate the user.

Pieces that work in 2021:

Use social networks

Facebook Instagram, Tik Tok, and other social networks are a bottomless source of traffic for your blog and affiliate programs. Here it is relatively easy to find a CA for any vertical. For example, the audience of all Facebook apps is more than 3 billion, and Instagram has more than 1 billion. Taking into account the automatic translation of posts and the global distribution of the service, you can quickly contact consumers for any niche and from any country.

If you have your own online service or blog, create groups in popular social networks. They will become an additional source of traffic, simplify communication with the audience.

Regardless of whether you promote affiliate programs through a blog or engage in traffic arbitrage, use paid targeted advertising. In social networks, the conversion rate is at the level, and often higher, than that of contextual advertising and smaller ad networks.

Follow the changes in the ad networks policies

Facebook Instagram, Twitter, and Google’s contextual ads, as well as targeted ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are constantly updating and tightening their policies for advertisers. Creatives with explicit images, banners in the format “it was and became”, propaganda of cigarettes, adult webcams, ads promoting unregistered bookmakers or online casinos will not pass moderation (gambling can be advertised in a country where they are not prohibited).

The list of prohibited topics is large. For example rules Facebook 31 categories. If you do not follow the Rules of advertising networks, the ads will not pass moderation. If you persist in trying to promote deliberately prohibited niches, such as weapons or porn sites, you will be banned from blocking money in your account.

Is it possible to bypass the Rules? Several legal and not-so-legal ways:

• cloaking – this is a popular method of circumventing restrictions, suitable for arbitrageurs. It involves the substitution of ads: moderators and robots see the “white” banner, and visitors see the targeted ads;
• be creative, there are other ways to pass moderation: for example, instead of the image “before” and “after”, insert a picture with a slender figure without focusing on individual parts of the body;
• when working with gambling, betting, promote the allowed services. If a 1xBet bookmaker is banned in the Netherlands, promote a legal bookmaker Bet365;
• do not misinform customers, do not indicate personal characteristics (age, gender, race), in targeted advertising it is better to do without numbers at all.

Problems can also occur for other reasons: too much text (one long phrase is enough), the URL is specified incorrectly, the name of the social network is specified incorrectly (correctly – Facebook, only so).

Pay enough attention to targeting

If you mindlessly buy traffic, it is easy to merge the budget into zero. Targeting saves you – the ability to select an audience by age, gender, country or city of residence, and interests. The bottom line is that banners are only seen by those users who can potentially be interested in a service or product. For example, the advertising of fishing rods will be seen by men who are interested in hunting and fishing, baby nutrition – young mothers. Dating site-single men and women in active search.

Flexible settings for social networks and search advertising. But other traffic exchanges are trying to keep up. Unfortunately, the audience for the same vertical in different geos is different, and changes over time. For example, 10 years ago, online games were played mainly by teenagers and students, now – people under 40-45 years old. Dating sites with adult webcams in Europe and North America are mainly viewed by people under 25 and single men under 45, in India: from 20 to 60, more often married men.

Targeting also applies to the ad format. In Eastern Europe, some Latin American countries, and Africa, pre-landings with success stories of lucky people who have won a fortune work perfectly when advertising casinos. In Western Europe, the United States will be repelled by this approach. There are mini-games with the wheel of fortune, the promotion of online games as a way to relax, get a charge of emotions. Segment your audience, show each group your creatives and USPS. This way you will increase traffic, sales, and the investment will turn around faster.

Bloggers should also work with targeting. For readers to click on the partner link, it is not enough that the blog topic coincides. You need to bring the user to the purchase – for example, to find a solution to a specific problem with the help of an affiliate program.

Audience parsing

There is a more effective method than targeting – to show ads to specific users, this option is available from Facebook, VKontakte. You can advertise a bank card with cashback for online games to members of the community of gamers, or show a banner advertising a bookmaker to bettors.

But where to get the information? You can, of course, manually view thematic communities. But it is more convenient through special services, for example: ZennoPoster, FB. Target, Pepper. ninja. The tools provide a good set of settings, generate reports that can be immediately uploaded to Facebook Ads.

Don’t focus on just one offer

The market situation can change in a few hours and a successful marketing campaign will become unprofitable. What can kill an offer:

• the market offer is withdrawn when the affiliate program has reached a certain limit;
• the conditions change: the payment is reduced, the requirements are tightened, which reduces the percentage of approvals. The bottom line is that the company is becoming unstabl;
• the market was sated as a result of an aggressive advertising campaign;
• advertising CTR drops due to banner blindness.

Risks can appear at any time, and it is almost impossible to influence them. In order not to be left without income and not to waste the advertising budget, it is recommended to simultaneously work with several offers in at least two verticals. You do not need to be sprayed on dozens of affiliate programs. But you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, either. First of all – the balance.

Connecting backup offers is:

• insurance – if one of the campaigns goes into negative territory, the rest of the affiliate programs will cover the losses and bring income. For a blogger, this means that the effort and money spent on purchasing content will not be in vain;
• more sales. It turns out to reach a wider audience, which is especially critical for bloggers;
• ability to test different verticals and choose the most profitable ones.

You can find new offers through the search engine. But it is more convenient to search in the LeadBit CPA network, you can ask your manager for advice. The specialist will study your statistics and select offers based on your strategy.

Use services to automate traffic management

You can monitor traffic and manage advertising campaigns manually. But if you work with at least fifty offers, it’s the same as trying to calculate the integral with your fingers, instead of using modern programs.

Now there are dozens of specialized services for the arbitrageur. Basic functions:

• traffic management – trackers allow you to simultaneously run different versions of ads for different users and reach a large audience;
• tracking the effectiveness of traffic from different sources – you can quickly calculate the channels that have a lower conversion rate and disable them;
• analytics – tracking visits and conversions, you can track exactly how much you have earned and whether the affiliate program is cheating;
• replacing an affiliate program with a new one in a few clicks. In fact, you connect the tracker to advertising networks once and manage your advertising campaigns from a single center;
• analyze competitors, search for keywords, spy on advertising campaigns – you can see the creatives used, evaluate their effectiveness to build your campaign.

There are dozens of online services to choose from. Powerful analytics are given by SemRush, SimilarWeb, StatCounter. Flexible trackers: Keitaro, AdsBridge, Zeustrack, Peerclick. Popular SPY-services: AdSpy, Publer, AdPlexity, AdFind, Anstrex.

CPA marketing tips for webmasters and bloggers

For most bloggers, affiliate marketing is the main source of income. It brings in many times more banner ads. Allows you to earn money without much effort. And the cherry on the cake – you can earn even without your own website by creating a blog on platforms such as LiveJournal, Blogger, Medium, Yandex Zen or video hosting sites such as YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo.

The more videos or posts , the higher the potential profit. But simply placing a link in the next post is ineffective. I offer a few tips on how to win an audience and successfully promote affiliate programs through a blog.

First of all, trust

Unlike earning money through banner advertising, in affiliate marketing, simply collecting a lot of visitors is not enough. Users will only click on links if they trust you. To become a successful partner and get a stable flow, you need to build relationships with the audience.

Gaining trust is not easy, but it is possible. Here are some tips working in 2021:

• focus on the audience, not on the product being promoted – it is the reader, with their problems, who should remain at the center of each review. Put yourself in the place of the user and describe it, think about how the partner product will help;
• offer an alternative – by not focusing on one product, you minimize your risks and increase the trust of your readers. No need to turn into an advertising agent (no one likes them), become an independent expert;
• express a private opinion, and for this you need to first personally familiarize yourself with the product. If you tell the truth (you do not need to openly praise the partner product), subscribers will be happy to support your blog and follow the partner link, but only if you are honest and do not try to deceive;
• show your face. Literally. Add personal contacts (e-mail, profile in social networks), show a photo, put yourself in the frame of a video blog. People are much better at remembering faces than names. This is a great way to show that you have nothing to hide – the path to a trusting relationship with visitors;
• use all available channels to communicate with your audience. Send e-mail messages, communicate in social networks and messengers, and simultaneously run a text blog and a YouTube channel. The more accessible you are to the audience, the higher the trust in you.

  

Sell stories

Make no mistake. Followers recognize advertising content with affiliate links in no time. Trying to cheat is going nowhere. The best way to attract an audience is to sell stories. For example, if you are advertising a service for finding and booking air tickets, write about your last trip and how it helped you.

This approach will kill two birds with one stone: it will inspire confidence and show the benefits of the partner service in the user’s world, increasing the clickability of the referral link.

By telling stories, add salt to the wound, remind the problem, and provide a solution. We “Process” the client in four stages:

• making the problem worse. For example, if you are overweight, it affects your health (heart problems, diabetes), shortens your life by 10 years;
• that will give a solution to the problems. We can say that according to medical research, after losing excess weight, working capacity, energy, life satisfaction improves, and chronic problems go away;
• visualization – after solving problems, you will have more strength to communicate with friends, success at work, career growth;
• the solution – of course, there are no problems, you need to start somewhere, this training course or pills will help.

Properly constructed stories help you sell products in almost any vertical.

Give out gifts, arrange promotions

One of the ways to get visitors to click on partner links more actively is to organize promotions and distribute gifts. For example, to give regular customers bonuses from a bookmaker or a discount on the purchase of goods in an affiliate store.

Promotions in the eyes of the average user are a gift that they receive for loyalty. Such bonuses look not only as an opportunity to save money. They push you to place an order or top up your account right now, there is a limited time effect. The approach significantly increases the conversion rate, and increases loyalty to you. At the same time, the amount of payments is not reduced. As a result, we increase the profit by 25-30%.

Conclusion

In the last few years, affiliate marketing has become much more complex. But the opportunities have also increased. Today, it is really possible to earn many times more than five or ten years ago. But proportionally, you need to make more effort.

Modern tools save you from routine work, allowing you to focus on promotion. And most importantly, they allow you to get a good income for both bloggers and arbitrageurs when promoting affiliate programs through paid advertising.