I'm working in online advertising since 1998 and finally decided to start my own blog.

December 2016

Got a great performing banner? Duplicate it! Let me tell you how.

Posted By 14 Comments December 21, 2016

Hello guys, this is yet another article that was inspired by questions posted on the STM Forum. Coming up with topics to write about on my own, is a surprisingly hard task. So instead of trying to guess what you might be interested in, I thought it would make sense to just write about what people ask for. And since I spend a ton of time over at STM, many of the question will be sourced from there 🙂

So let’s go back to the million dollar question :

GOT A GREAT PERFORMING BANNER? HOW TO MAKE MORE LIKE THAT?

We all know this situation, some banners simply work better than the rest. Doesn’t matter whether you made that banner, ripped it somewhere or your AM gave it to you (some really do this) … as soon as you got a banner like this, you SHOULD IMMEDIATELY duplicate it and make more variations from it.

Affiliate Marketing is a competitive industry, any advantage that you can get is like blessing, but you need to act fast. Having variations of well performing banners at your hands, ready to replace the old ones anytime you need that … this can be your competitive advantage and your ticket to Profitopolis!

Continue Reading

Damn Fallback redirects can get you banned from traffic sources, fight them!

Posted By 5 Comments December 16, 2016

There are many things in affiliate marketing that are getting on my nerves, the so called FALLBACK redirects are one of them. The sad fact is, pretty much all affiliate networks keep on using them, even thou they can get us (affiliates) banned from traffic sources and they (affiliate networks) know this very well.

I keep seeing this topic pop up on the STM Forum all the time over and over again : new affiliates are wondering, why they can’t see the offers they promote, when clicking on the link themselves. Or why they got a campaign rejected by a traffic source, even thou they picked a totally white-hat offer that’s not breaking any rules.

I’ll tell you why, it’s the fucking fallback redirects that’s causing this. You don’t have to ask for them to be activated, they are ON by default … in order to make you more money as the networks claim, when in reality the extra revenue is pretty much non existent in

Continue Reading

Buying traffic? You definitely need a set of proven banners, landing pages and traffic sources.

Posted By 2 Comments December 12, 2016

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest moving and ever changing businesses that you can get into. What works today, might be dead by tomorrow. An offer that you were killing it with just last week, could be paused today. Your well oiled campaigns can die anytime, from a number of reasons …

So how does one fight this? What can you do, in order to be able to restart as fast as possible, in case something goes south? I’m using a simple trick for a long time already, it’s all about one thing : You need a set of BENCHMARK creatives along with a pre-tested traffic source(s) that you know EVERYTHING about!

Note: in case you are new here, you might want to read my definitions of affiliate marketing terms and abbreviations!

SOME THEORY FIRST.

When starting a new campaign from scratch, you always need to go through certain routine.

Pick some offers, prepare banners, prepare Landing Pages, pick a traffic source and launch … wait for data,

Continue Reading

How to start in Affiliate Marketing with Paid Traffic?

Posted By 10 Comments December 08, 2016

I still remember my very first day of working with paid traffic. I wanted to start a campaign as soon as possible, but eventually I got lost in the process. There was simply too much of it : offers, trackers, networks, landing pages … I didn’t know where to start.

It took me some time to get it all sorted out and I eventually got it all right. But truth to be told – I’d gladly take advice from someone more experienced at that time. I could have saved me a few weeks for sure, not talking about the $$$ I wasted.

So in an attempt to save some of yours, both time and money, let me put together a basic war plan for you. I’m not gonna lay out some super detailed dummy proof step by step guide for you here… you still need to put the work and thought in, otherwise you wouldn’t realize the value of your progress 🙂 But it will definitely help you to start faster and avoid some of the most stupid

Continue Reading

What are Carrier billing / PIN submit offers and how to promote them.

Posted By 11 Comments December 06, 2016

There are 2 main offer types (or verticals) that are recommended to newbie affiliate marketers, one of them is SWEEPS and the other one are PIN submits. I already wrote an article about Sweeps here, so let me take a look at PINs now.

PIN submit offers are also called “Carrier Billing” or “Mobile Content” offers, the most accurate name for the would actually be Carrie Billing offers, since that’s their core principle – users get billed for something (some content) by their mobile carrier (operator). The charge will either appear on their invoice or it will be deducted from their prepaid credit.

You can see quite a wide range of products that utilize carrier billing, for example antivirus, wallpapers, ringtones, videos, games, astrology, lotteries adult photos and videos … I would say antivirus, wallpapers and adult content are the most popular ones right

Continue Reading

How much should you bid for traffic? HIGH or LOW? What’s the difference?

Posted By 2 Comments December 02, 2016

Pretty much all traffic networks are using the auction model, when selling their traffic. Of course, you can also make FLAT deals with them, especially when going for BIG volume, but that’s not an option for new affiliates at all.

On top of that, with offers going down anytime, caps getting filled at random times of the day and a lot of other factors you cannot influence … I’m not such a big fan of Flat deals anymore, because you can’t stop them at will. These days, I buy bulk of my traffic via bidding auctions.

HOW TO APPROACH BIDDING?

There is a ton of different ways you can approach bidding, everyone will develop their own strategy at some point. Some people love to mess with bids all the time, some set a low one and wait for the outcome, some love to sit in the middle, some at the top … but I don’t want to write a summary of all the possible bidding models here.

Continue Reading