Best traffic sources for affiliate marketing

Want to get into affiliate marketing but don’t know where to get traffic from? Looking for additional channels to promote your goods or services? We live in a time when changes happen lightning fast. What worked yesterday is no longer relevant today. If you don’t adapt quickly enough, you can end up throwing your money down the drain without securing the expected profit. Best case – you manage to get back your investments, but can you get back the tens of hours you dedicated to that task? The LeadBit team and its affiliates have found that to be the case more than once.

We constantly monitor the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, analyze the effectiveness of various tools. We study different advertising methods. We also suggest that you familiarize yourself with the list of the best sources for driving traffic, both paid and free, that work in 2020. In this article, you will learn not only about different sources, but also small secrets from experienced arabas. Let’s head out…

What are traffic sources?

Traffic, in the language of webmasters and affiliates, is the visitors who arrive at your or a partner’s website. Your primary task is attracting them. After all, most websites are created specifically to be visited by readers, users or clients.

Such users are an object of interest to advertisers, who try to sell their goods and services and are willing to pay good money for help in this matter. This is where webmasters and affiliates come in (partners who promote products of other companies for a fee). The more traffic or visitors, the higher the profit.

But how do users get to the site? Most often, they enter a query in one of the search engines, for example Google or Yandex, and follow the link from the search results. Or via a link left in social media or messenger apps. These are examples of free traffic sources. Such methods are time consuming and very laborious.

If you need to quickly promote a company or warm up the audience before a new product is released, you can buy traffic from one of the ad networks or directly from site owners. In a nutshell, a traffic source is an entry point, a platform from which users are sent to the desired site. This can be a search service, a banner on a third-party blog, or a graffiti in a public bathroom with a link to a website.

There are dozens of types of sites, but not all are suitable for promoting a specific product. For example, teaser networks are often used to promote nutra goods, and contextual advertising is used for electronics. Адалт негативно воспринимается поисковыми рекламными сетями, но отлично заходит через попандер. Adult content is perceived negatively by search ad networks, but it works well through PopUnder. Naturally, mobile apps are best promoted via other mobile ads.

Regardless of whether your traffic source is free or not, you spend a certain amount of effort on it. If you fail to identify your target audience you might end up driving traffic into God knows where. This in turn will result in not only you not getting the profit you were counting on, but also you having to deal with losses. Therefore, it is important to familiarize yourself in advance with all available tools, their capabilities and cost.

How to choose a traffic source?

First of all, we take into account three points:

• Rules of advertising platforms or traffic sources. Some networks have a negative attitude towards certain verticals: mainly adult products or services, bad habits, dubious products (for example, drugs for potency or miracle cancer cures), gambling. There are almost no restrictions for white-hat goods and services.
• Geography (GEO) and the niche. Take into account in which regions advertising platforms can attract the most traffic. For example, Yandex is effective only for the Russian-speaking audience, it mainly works in Russia and Belarus. Bing, Yahoo have a multimillion audience, but only in the USA, Canada and other English-speaking countries. In China, almost any traffic source other than Baidu’s ad networks is useless.
• ROI or profitability. Any advertising budget has limitations and, of course, we are interested in the maximum profit, we distribute the available funds among the sources with the highest return.

You can evaluate the effectiveness of the tool only through personal experience, through test runs of an advertising campaign. This is part of an affiliate’s job. But tests take money, and there’s no guarantee they’ll be successful. Unless you’re fine with shots in the dark, you can check out the conversion rate (the efficiency) of different tools. Such information is provided by some partner networks, and advertising sites also publish their own statistics. The data isn’t precide, it’s usually an average among all the participating webmasters. Still, it’s a good place to start.

You also need to understand how much traffic you need to get back your investments and make a profit. It’s not hard to calculate, there’s a simple formula.

Basic indicators:

• conversion rate (CR), shows the ratio of leads to clicks on an ad as a percentage. It is calculated as follows: CR = number of leads / number of clicks *100%;
• clickability (CTR) – The percentage of users who click on an ad is calculated using the formula: CTR = number of clicks / number of impressions *100%.

The cost of advertising using different traffic sources can vary greatly. For example, Google Ads sets the price of one click for TIER1 countries on popular topics at $40-50, while some offers pay only $2-3 for a lead. For teaser networks or popunder, the price can be 50-100 times lower, for example, 4-10 cents. It would seem that Google Ads are too expensive and will lead to losses, so, d’uh, we opt for the teaser ads, right? Not exactly.

Offers pay for a useful action (lead), this can be registering, making a deposit, filling out a form with your contact info or installing an application. With ad networks, we pay per click (CPL) or per view (CPV). For example, in Google Ads, the cost of 1,000 views equates to the cost of one click. The price is not fixed, it is set by advertisers according to the auction format. The ad for which the ad network earns the most is shown first.

For example, a dating offer pays $2 per registration; when placing an advertisement on Google Ads, a bid of $3 per click was the highest. It would seem, we are in a deep crisis with a conversion rate of only 33% (every third user actually registers). In order to attract one client and earn $2 we need to invest $9. However, you can choose to pay per 1000 views. With a click-through rate of 20% and a conversion rate of 33% out of 1000 impressions, we get: 1000 * 20% * 33% = 66 registrations or $132. The cost of one lead is, therefore, only 3/66 = $0.045 and the net profit from one client is 2-0.045 = $1.955. ROI – 4400%.

In practice, it is not always possible to achieve such results (but not entirely impossible!). Sometimes lower rates are enough to make a profit. For example, to get 100% profitability with a payout of $2 and a price of $3 per 1000 views, it is enough for the click-through rate and conversion rate to be only 5% and 6%: if only 50 visitors out of 1000 views clicked and only 3 of them signed up. We get 6 dollars for each 3 spent. For dating offers, the indicators are often several times higher, CR and CRT usually range from 5 to 15%.

If we had chosen teaser networks, we would hardly have achieved such profitability. This source provides traffic of a lower quality. One or two leads out of hundreds of clicks is already a good result. If we superimpose this result on our initial data (average indicators for countries from the TIER1 list), then we barely cover our expenses: 100 clicks * $0.04 CPC / 2 leads * $2 = 1 or 100%. This is our ROI. We will spend $4 and earn the same amount, or in other words return the investment without making a profit. In some verticals, such as dating, adult, where the conversion rate is slightly higher, even teaser networks convert well. Unlike ad networks, they are less demanding of traffic and allow you to promote gray and black-hat offers.

There are other criteria that cannot be ignored. For example, how flexibly you can customize display targeting settings for your target audience. Some ad networks allow you to clearly define the audience by age, sex, GEO, education level, interests. Targeting allows you to show an ad only to those who are actually interested, it increases the click-through rate, conversion goes up 30-40%, and sometimes, for example, in the case of dating – up to 70%. It is easy to mathematically prove that targeting increases conversion rates manyfold, and the ROI can go into thousands of percent.

You encounter the most flexible targeting when you place ads in social media, since the latter receive all the necessary info about the person when they register and also track their visit history. Due to nearly total smartphonization Google has been gradually taking over the social networks’ ad territory. In addition to advanced metrics and the use of cookies, it has his own social network and also access to smartphones, can track not only inquiries from different devices, but also visits to various websites.

Video How to Choose the Right Source of Traffic for Business

Ranking of the most popular traffic sources

It’s hard to say exactly how many traffic sources and advertising sites exist. We have compiled a list of the most interesting ones that members of the LeadBit partner network use to make a profit.

Free traffic sources

The article, first of all, is aimed specifically at beginners who do not yet have a lot of capital. (But we hope it will be useful for affiliate sharks as well). Therefore, we’ll kick off this article by reviewing free or nominally free traffic sources. But allow us to clarify, free does not mean simple. On the contrary, these traffic sources demand a lot of time and exponentially more effort than paid ones. Though, there are many free channels through which you can make good money, so…

Search engine promotion

A familiar to all example of free traffic channels – SEO traffic that comes from search engines, for example, from Russian Yandex, American (though basically global) Google, more local American Yahoo, Bing and Chinese Baidu. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of search engines. Some countries have their own regional search engines, which are nevertheless used in conjunction with Google. For example, Naver in South Korea, Mail.ru in Russia, Meta, ukr.net in Ukraine.

To get organic traffic, you need to generate a lot of high quality content. These can be reviews, helpful articles, or a YouTube blog. Dozens, even hundreds of articles, videos are needed.

It takes months to appear in the search engine results in the top spots, or at least somewhere on the first page. This option is not very suitable for affiliates. If you need to get results quickly, it is better to use popular platforms that sell traffic.

Native advertising on your site

If you already have an established site that shows up on the first page of search engines, you can use it as a platform for native ads by adding links to your landing page or to the advertiser’s website directly (through referral links).

SMM: social media and forums

These can be ads disguised as posts (links to the website you promote that naturally blend in with the surrounding content) on social networks, free dating sites, forums or message boards.

Here’s the algorithm for attracting free traffic via social networks:

• create a thematic group (or page) in a social network (that’s linked to a specific region, it can be Vkontakte, Twitter, but nowadays it’s usually Facebook and Instagram). Can be dedicated to a specific topic, product or company;
• fill the group with useful articles, pictures, add friends to it;
• start liking and reposting other groups with similar topics, gradually adding members of these groups to our own;
• communicate with the group’s members, give some “friendly advice” in the form of a link to the promoted website
• post links under product or website reviews.

You can promote affiliate products or services through message boards, for example OLX, Avito or Prom. These are international platforms that allow you to post free ads.

An alternative way is posting ads in thematic forums. Create a thread or ask a question. Wait for a lively discussion to erupt and post a message like “Thanks for responding everyone. Managed to solved the problem with this.” *attach the link to the promoted product*

Email ads

You can operate through instant messengers, social networks or send ads by email. But you should already have a base. Sending spam in a social network may result in a ban. Therefore, it is important to carefully think over the offers, to disguise them as natural human communication.

What do we have in the end?

We believe that free traffic is an affiliate marketing utopia. Instead of money you invest titanic effort. If you’re short on cash, but have a lot of free time this is a great option for you. You’ll spend weeks, even months on end learning to communicate with your audience, to discern its mood and most importantly earning your startup capital for launching paid ad campaigns.

Free traffic is only suitable for long-term projects when it is possible to generate or order good content for copywriters. But it may take several months or years to get the website in the “Top 10” category.

Video About What Free Sources of Traffic Are

Paid traffic sources

If you need to quickly (within a few weeks or months) make a profit from promoting a product, then there’s only one way out – buying traffic. The essence of affiliate marketing comes down to buying and selling back traffic at a profit.

Usually affiliates buy visitors from ad networks. It is too time consuming to negotiate with site owners directly – you have to wait a long time for a response and often there isn’t even any contact info on the sites.

Advertising networks are independent platforms that bring together buyers and sellers of traffic. They allow you to launch an advertising campaign on dozens of sites at once. Usually, they have certain requirements for the quality of creatives. Some platforms only work with certain topics and niches.

There are dozens of channels, even experienced webmasters aren’t aware of them all. Though, they don’t need to. It is enough to understand which ones work for the chosen target audience and GEO. Experience shows that any, even seemingly unpromising offer, converts well if you choose the right audience and traffic source. Let’s get into them.

Search engine and contextual ads

Search engines, such as Google or Yandex, sell the top spots on a search page triggered by users searching keywords and show them above the rest of the search results, designating advertisements with the words “Advertising” or “Ad”. That’s called search engine ads. Its advantage is that you can instantly get into the TOP-results without spending months on promotion. The audience is already warmed up – users themselves are looking for a service for a specific request, they are interested in it.

Search traffic is of the highest quality, but also relatively expensive. Therefore, the budget of advertising campaigns must be planned carefully. Usually this tool is used to promote white-hat offers, where the payment for the targeted action is higher.

If you want specific search hits to lead to your ad, you’ll need to pay more than your competitors. If it’s pay-per-click then the conversion rate is taken into account (a $3 bid with a conversion rate of 20% beats a $4 bid with a conversion rate of 10%, since it’s $60 per 1000 views vs only $40).

Search engines have a similar offer for banners with contextual ads which are placed on different websites that sell traffic. Unlike regular banners, on which the ad does not change, here the system shows ads based on each user’s individual search history. If the visitor has previously compared the offers of banks, the contextual ad will advertise credit cards or loans.

Search engines act as platforms for buying search and contextual traffic. The most popular ones are:

Google Ads

A platform for placing search engine ads in Google. Google is the choice of billions of users around the world, more than 92% of Internet users choose this system to search for information and services on the Internet.

In most countries, Google is the undisputed leader, used by 90-97% of the population. It is second only to Yandex in Russia (45% vs 50%) and to Baidu in China (5% vs 93%).

General information:

• • traffic cost – the best value for your money;
  • purchase model – per clicks, per views;
  • you can target by region, city, a specific neighborhood or street;
  • setting up an ad campaign only takes a few clicks, just need to specify the keywords, choose a GEO (a country or a specific city, neighborhood), come up with a headline and a description and settle the payment details;
  • there is no entry threshold;

• advertising of websites that promote violence or sell illegal goods is prohibited, different GEOs may have restrictions in place for different verticals.

A Video About a Profitable Marketing Strategy in Google Ads

Yandex Advertising Network (YAN)

Yandex as a search engine is used by more than 50% of users in Russia, about 27% in Belarus, 20-30% of users in Central Asia, about 7% in Ukraine, 4% each in Georgia and Turkey. The total audience is about 100 million users. The website has a great influence on the promotion of goods in the CIS countries. A significant bonus – YAN actively promotes advertising on other sites, allows you to insert banners and advertising videos.

General information:

• cost: lower than that of Google, while also delivering high-quality traffic at a reasonable price;
• purchase model: per views, per clicks, per conversion;
• you can target by country or region;
• no specific starting budget needed, you can start with a couple of cents;
• GEO – the whole world, but it focuses on the CIS countries and Turkey;
• prohibited – propaganda of violence, drugs and porn materials;
• a weak point – a complex interface.

Yahoo Gemini

Yahoo is the third most popular search engine in the world. Although it takes up less than 2% of the market (compared to other search engine ad networks), the audience is still about 50 million people. The Yahoo Gemini ad network is heavily promoted as an alternative to Google Ads with a lower CPC.

Combines search engine, mobile and native advertising. Allows you to download and upload ready-made advertising campaigns from Google Ads. The number of views per day is up to 2 billion.

General information:

• traffic – low cost, proper semantic core usage, provides high-quality traffic;
• purchase model: per views, per clicks;
• GEO – the whole world, but it focuses on the USA, Canada, the EU and Africa;
• minimum budget – $5;
• user-friendly interface allows you to flexibly set up an advertising campaign;
• just like Google, does not allow certain topics to be advertised.

Bing Ads

Microsoft’s search engine. In popularity is second only to Google and takes about 3% of all search queries in the world. Bing’s audience is about 65-70 million. But almost half of the users are wealthy people over 40-45 years old who earn over $ 100,000 a year. The search engine is used almost all over the world.

But it is most popular in the USA, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Norway and Sweden, where it occupies 5-6% of the market. Moreover, the cost per click is lower here. But ad campaigns are limited to the above mentioned countries.

Bing Ads is a great tool to promote products in TIER1 countries.

General information:

• a lower cost-per-click when compared to Google with the same level of traffic quality;
• purchase model: per clicks, per views;
• includes a key selection tool, you can import ad campaigns from Google Ads;
• when setting up targeting, you can select the region and the time the ad will be displayed;
• GEO – only those countries where Bing is popular, only 12 languages available for targeting.

Video on How to Use Bing Ads in Affiliate Marketing

Baidu

A Chinese search engine, which is almost entirely used in China (Google was banned there for a long time) and processes about 70% of requests. In English-speaking countries, the system is viewed with a certain level of distrust. Besides China it’s used in some other Asian countries: Mongolia, Cambodia, Indonesia and Japan. Still, Baidu’s audience is several hundred million people.

General information:

• cost per click is relatively low, it all depends on the topic;
• advertisements in the brand-zone of search results;
• GEO – East, South-East Asia;
• minimum non-refundable deposit – 5600 RMB;
• complex registration procedure;
• advertising of gambling, adult topics and tobacco products is prohibited, materials that have not passed censorship may be rejected.

Social media

Social media is used by billions of people, with active users spending on average at least two hours a day on their favorite social network. People use social networks at home, at work, on the go via their phones. It is an endless gauntlet not only for free, but also for paid traffic.

Social media brings people together, helps sellers find their customers. Allows you to place paid ads with flexible targeting settings. You can target by sex, age, interests, hobbies. But most importantly, when entering such platforms, users are inclined to communicate, they easily perceive information. They are relaxed and respond well to advertisements for products that interest them.

Popular social networks include:

Facebook

The # 1 social network with over two billion active users (about 2.7 billion) and over 720 million daily visitors. The network is constantly growing, becoming the largest platform not only for communication, but also for advertising. A great feature the website offers affiliates and advertisers – a well-designed analytics system that allows you to flexibly configure your ad campaign.

General information:

• the price is determined via auction but overall is cheaper than in the case of Google;
• purchase model – per views, per clicks (clicks leading to the landing page);
• flexible targeting settings: sex, age, GEO, interests;
• restrictions depend on the GEO, TIER1 countries impose harsher requirements, rules’ violations may be followed by bans;
• GEO – the whole world;
• setup is relatively simple, but you need to create a page (group) for the company or product.

Video How to Attract Traffic Using Facebook Pages

Instagram

Originally a photo-sharing service, Instagram has grown to become the second most popular social network with over a billion users. It is actively used to promote brands and goods.

Instagram was bought by Facebook, so ad campaigns are launched through the latter. It is not necessary to create a separate account.General information:

• low cost per click;
• quick ad campaign launch, easy setup;
• minimum budget – 20 RUB;
• detailed statistics, flexible targeting: GEO, sex, age, interests;
• pay per clicks;
• GEO – the whole world;
• prohibited topics: medicine, tobacco, adult goods, “before” and “after” ads, other restrictions may be in place in specific regions.

Twitter

This is one of the first social networks, which, although inferior in terms of the number of users to Facebook, belongs to the most authoritative social media, beating both Instagram and even Youtube in terms of popularity. About 300-400 million active users all over the world.

What’s important is that wealthy people are more represented onTwitter: entrepreneurs, celebrities, IT specialists, politicians. Therefore, even in countries, for example of Eastern Europe, where only 1-3% of all social media users are on Twitter, the latter guards the path to a solvent audience and a high-capacity market.

General information:

• low ad cost;
• minor competition, high engagement and click-through rate;
• when developing ads, make sure to adapt them to the mobile format;
• GEO – the whole world;
• targeting: region, sex, age.

Vkontakte

Once the most popular social network in the CIS, with more than 150 million users, VKontakte is gradually losing ground, giving way to Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. But it is still the first in Russia with its population of 140 million, occupying about 25-30% of the market. About 15-20% in Belarus and about 15% in Kazakhstan.

Surprisingly, Vkontakte has been spreading its influence to India with almost 10% of India’s social media users (almost 40 million people) being registered in VK.

General information:

• the cost-per-click is relatively low, the price is determined the same way as in Facebook Ads;
• easy ad campaign setup;
• GEO – фFormally, the whole world, but basically it is a Russian-speaking audience, there are a lot of emigrant users from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Poland. Also a large (English speaking) audience in India;
• targeting: by GEO, age, sex, interests;
• Vkontakte is relatively loyal to advertising creatives, but it is possible for adult-themed and tobacco ads to be blocked and your account can be blocked if the materials would be considered extremist.

There are also other social media sites worth testing out. If you’re looking for a female audience, for example to promote Nutra products, take a look at Pinterest. The website allows you to create collections of images, share them. About 70-85% (depending on the country) of the subscribers are women.

Reddit is a social news site where every user can post their own news. Ranked 6th in the world in terms of attendance. Allows the promotion of Nutra, gambling, online games, Forex, etc.

Сlickunder, Pop-up, Popunder

PopUnder (Pop-up) is a pop-up advertisement that, when the page is opened, expands to full screen and covers the media content. If you click on it, even on the “X” button, a new site opens – the advertiser’s webpage.

ClickUnder works in a similar way, but without an intermediate banner – the first click anywhere automatically launches a separate page (sometimes in a new window) bringing the user to the advertiser’s website.

Many users really dislike ClickUnder and PopUnder ads. Still, this tool remains an effective way to promote new products. It doesn’t shy away from taboo topics, it works well when attracting traffic to gray-hat offers, for example, adult dating.

Popular ad networks:

PopAds

One of the most popular ad networks for pop-up banners.

General information:

• pay-per-click;
• you can flexibly set up an advertising campaign (GEO, display time, types of sites where the ads will be shown);
• almost any type of ad passes moderation, including adult and gambling-themed;
• GEO – any;
• minimum budget – $10.

PopCash

Another popular network with a user-friendly interface, fast moderation of ads (about an hour) and flexible targeting.

General information:

• cost-per-click;
• targeting can be set up by GEO or other categories;
• minimal budget – $5;
• GEO – any country or separate city.

Video on How to Setup Campaigns on Popcash

PopUnder

The service accepts payments through various payment systems, including WebMoney, Bitcoin and Apple Pay. In addition to the popunder, there is advertising via push notifications.

General information:

• cost-per-click;
• 15 different targeting settings;
• GEO – any;
• almost any topic is accepted.

Clickadu

A popular ad network with advanced targeting settings that operates all over the world. Popular among Russian-speaking webmasters, it offers good traffic from the CIS countries.

General information:

• cost-per-click;
• advanced targeting settings;
• GEO – any, including autonomous regions and territories with a disputable status;
• prices are determined by the SmartCPA algorithm;
• minimal budget – $100.

PPV traffic

PPV stands for Pay Per View. PPV traffic is similar to PopUp, but allows for more flexible targeting. Basically, this type of traffic comes only from users who have installed some kind of application, for example, an extension to the browser, which, in addition to a certain function (music search, free download from YouTube, product comparison), shows ads. By using this tool you can target not only by GEO or interests but also through a list of specifics URLs, which will show the ads. The CTR of such ads can go up to 70-80% with a cost per click of just a few cents.

Popular networks:

Propelmedia

The platform employs proven high-efficiency strategies. Allows you to get a good flow of visitors when faced with a small budget. Covers Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, Smart TVs.

General information:

• cost-per-view;
• GEO – any, but each country needs its own account;
• targeting by GEO, interests or visited websites;
• accepts almost all niches;
• minimum budget – $1000.

RTX Platform

A simple and convenient platform that allows you to flexibly configure your campaign. There are different channels for launching the campaign: InText, Pops, Display.

General information:

• multiple pricing models;
• flexible targeting settings;
• GEO – any, but the system is primarily focused on North America, the UK and Australia;
• minimum budget – $500.

Selfadvertiser

The site allows you to buy traffic for almost any GEO, offers two payment options: for views and clicks. There are no restrictions on the type of device.

General information:

• low cost;
• high-quality traffic for almost any GEO;
• payment model: CPV, CPC;
• more than 10 targeting settings;
• minimum budget – $100;
• almost all offers are accepted.

Teasers

Teaser ads are banners with shocking news and engaging (clickbait) headlines. For example, “I managed to raise 153,000 rubles in two days on this site” or “Lose 7 kg in a week, just add this product to your food”. Such advertising is found on entertainment sites and online cinemas.

Teaser advertising has a small CR, CTR, but it is one of the cheapest traffic sources that allows you to promote almost any topic. Great for launching gambling, dating, nutra campaigns or advertising financial offers. It is rarely used for traditional product affiliate programs.

But sometimes ad campaigns are launched to warm up the audience. A solid argument in favor of teasers – ads from teaser networks pop up on popular sites with a huge audience (from several hundred thousand to several million visitors), for example, adme.ru, fishki.net, ViralNova, Buzzfeed.

Teasers do not have strict requirements, but the content should be viral and catch the user’s attention with its novelty or by talking about something shocking.

Almost all teasers have the same targeting settings. The difference is most often in the GEO. If you want to promote your product on Russian-speaking sites, try these affiliate programs MarketGuide, Teasernet, Visitweb.

If your GEO is TIER1 countries then test out Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent. MGid works with sites both in Eastern Europe and the CIS in Western, Northern Europe and North America.

Push-notifications

Push-notifications are pop-up messages that a remote server sends to the Internet user even if the site to which the user has subscribed to is not open in the browser. They appear in the lower or upper corner of the window, depending on the settings, they can pop up on the desktop when the browser is minimized.

Push traffic appeared relatively recently, but members of the Leadbit partner network are already actively using it. Its main advantage is in that the users themselves agree to receive notifications, which means they are interested in them. At the same time, the cost of traffic is one of the lowest, for some topics 0.1 cents ($0.001).

Video How to Earn More With Push Notifications

Popular push grids:

Tacoloco

The tacolo.co website is a popular network created in the Czech Republic that generates over 400 million views per day. Operates both in TIER1 countries and in the Russian Internet sector. It offers low cost with high conversion rates. It accepts offers of almost any topic, including dating and adult dating.

tacolo.co registration pageGeneral information:

• cost-per-click from 0.1 cent;
• GEO – any;
• flexible targeting settings;
• includes a Russian layout;
• 24/7 tech support, launching an ad campaign takes only a couple of hours.

Adskeeper.com

A popular network for push traffic, generates up to 10 billion views per day, unites about 300 providers. Great for TIER1 countries, but the competition here is stiffer, the traffic more expensive, from 1-2 cents. The minimum bid is 0.3 cents ($0.003).

General information:

• high-quality traffic, only verified users;
• average price for push traffic, but low when compared to other sources;
• minimum deposit – $250;
• GEO – any, but best used in TIER1 countries.

Richpush.com

Another network with high-quality and inexpensive traffic for TIER1 countries. But in recent years, the website has been engaging more and more in the Russian Internet segment. Generates over 4 billion views per day. It unites 220 countries and has 450 million verified subscribers.

In comparison with the previous entry the competition is less stiff and the cost-per-click is lower.

General information:

• cost-per-click;
• the minimum bid is 0.3 cents (TIER1) or 0.2 cents (TIER2), for most topics the price averages around 0.4 cents;
• GEO – any, but the focus for now is on TIER1 countries: English-speaking countries, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, India, Poland;
• flexible targeting settings.

Have you already decided on the choice of a push traffic network? Read “Best push traffic sources“.

Native ads, ads in blogs

In the past, native advertising took the form of links (that lead to the advertiser’s website) that organically blended into the surrounding content. For example, a travel blog has several links to the site or profile of a hotel, air carrier, calling it inexpensive and convenient.

Such a traffic source was inconvenient for affiliate marketers until special services appeared that could camouflage ads into the surrounding text or news feed without breaking the format of the rest of the site’s content. The user (most of the time) couldn’t tell whether they were looking at an ad or not. It also solves the “banner blindness” issue.

Here are some of the popular grids in this sector:

Outbrain

The platform works with the top news and social media websites. Covers a large audience, provides high-quality traffic in the form of paying customers. Knows how to evaluate the effectiveness of content.

General information:

• flexible targeting settings (interests, GEO, age);
• includes a free trial period to test out your ads;
• great for affiliate programs that sell goods;
• minimal budget – from $10;
• GEO – any.

Tabola

A multi-purpose platform for buying traffic, includes teaser and native ads. Works only with white-hat offers. Provides good coverage, especially in TIER1 countries. Recently, the service has been increasingly working with Russian websites.

General information:

• cost-per-click;
• high quality traffic at a reasonable price;
• GEO – any, but the focus is on TIER1 countries, gradually including Russian websites;
• flexible targeting;
• minimum budget – $2000.

Revcontent

An American ad network that delivers good traffic from English-speaking countries. Carefully evaluates the advertisements, makes sure the topic is relevant, in order to organically fit them into the feed or surrounding text.

General information:

• there are several options for widgets, harmonious adaptation of ads to the content format;
• pay-per-click;
• GEO – mainly English-Speaking countries: USA, Canada, Australia, Great Britain. But promotion is also possible on Spanish-speaking sites for the US and Mexico

Messengers

Advertising in instant messengers is gradually replacing texts and email ads. Both affiliates and advertisers rarely focus on this type of ads, it’s nearly always an addition to aid the main ad campaign.

The most popular messengers:

WhatsApp

The most popular messenger in the world, in most countries bypasses Facebook messenger, gaining more than 2 billion users. Popular in Central Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, Latin America, India, Indonesia. Allows you to create communities and brand pages.

Viber

Viber has only about 300 million active users. But many Europeans use it along with WhatsApp. In Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia it even beats WhatsApp. In terms of features and interface is similar to WhatsApp.

Telegram

The messenger (created by the father of Vkontakte) has over 400 million users. Though it isn’t as popular as WhatsApp, many Eastern Europeans and Americans use it as a second messenger. Most popular in the Middle East.

In-app and mobile traffic

The mobile advertising market is growing the fastest; lately, both affiliates and corporate advertisers are increasingly fighting for influence over it. Usually shows up in mobile applications (useful tools, for example, for weight loss, games, restaurant comparison services, etc.) in the form of banners, pop-ups, push notifications. Suitable for advertising installs, Pay Per Call, dating and gambling offers. Unlike PCs, smartphones are rarely protected by ad blockers, which means more audience coverage. But the requirements for the quality of content are also higher.

Popular networks for buying mobile traffic:

Airpush

One of the largest networks for In-App traffic. Works with almost any vertical. Offers a wide range of targeting options.

General information:

• quick setup;
• GEO – any;
• flexible targeting settings;
• more expensive compared to other sources;
• minimum budget – $50.

Go2Mobi

A network with low cost traffic and good coverage. Accepts banners, videos, pop-ups, etc. Better for buying traffic for TIER1 countries.

General information:

• affordable price, pay-per-click;
• deep analytics, flexible targeting;
• GEO – any;
• accepts offers from almost all verticals.

Startapp

The site deals exclusively with mobile advertising, it is possible to place non-standard ads: virtual reality, interstitial ads, native video.

General information:

• a large audience – more than 1 billion devices;
• budget – from $50;
• average price per click;
• GEO – any;
• flexible targeting, minimum restrictions.

SMS ads

Text message ads are almost never used in affiliate marketing. Although this source of traffic is cheap and it allows you to establish a personal connection with the client, you need to have a contact base in order for it to work. Sometimes this tool is employed along with landing pages to give the client a little final nudge.

Email ads

Once upon a time, email ads were the most popular option for promoting various products. Nowadays, email is used mainly by companies to communicate directly with a client.

Niche traffic sources

Many verticals related to gray-hat topics, for example, adult, gambling, do not pass moderation on most advertising platforms. Somewhere this business works legally, but in other countries it is considered a criminal offence. Therefore, it is better to buy traffic for such offers on specialized sites that will not block your account. For instance:

• networks for buying Adult traffic: TrafficJunky, Exoclick. They have flexible settings, they allow you to find your target audience even in countries where other ad networks reject any attempts to advertise in the 18+ vertical;
• gambling: Venatusmedia.com, AdBoosters.com, Taboola.com. They specialize in the distribution of entertainment and gaming, casino. They allow you to place different variants of creatives (video, mobile, native, text ads). Different payment options are available: CPM, CPC, CPA, CPV. Flexible targeting: retargeting, by interest, context, demographics.

About affiliate programs with the best conversion read here.

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