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

March 2017

BlackLists or WhiteLists? What should you focus on when buying traffic?

Posted By 6 Comments March 29, 2017

Every traffic network out there has both good and bad publishers in their portfolio. Publishers are guys/companies who run sites or apps, that they sell ad spots on. That’s how we, the affiliates, can buy traffic from them. The problem is, not every publisher is a honest person, some are flat out assholes who code BOTs and sell them to us, scamming us for money and wasting our time.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on the traffic networks to solve the problem completely, because even in case of BOT traffic, they still make their commission. That’s why many networks turn a blind eye to this problem …

On top of that, some cheaters are pretty good coders, so detecting advanced BOTs is not so easy. So even the honest networks have a problem catching all the crap. One way or another, pretty much any traffic source at least offers the option to pause/block specific placements that are not performing for us and/or use Blacklists or Whitelists. A placement can be a site, app or a specific ad spot, depending on the network and traffic type.

But there can be many reasons for blocking a placement, not just BOT traffic … just as there are many reasons for targeting particular placements only. In this article, I will explain what White and Black lists are, why and how to use them, whether one is better than the other and why that is the case…

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Why NEWBIES shouldn’t start in the most competitive TIER-1 GEOs?

Posted By 7 Comments March 23, 2017

You hear it left and right … do not start in TIER-1 GEO’s straight away, learn the basics in developing countries first. But why is that? Or is it true at all? I will summarize the reasons in this article and try to explain why it is so and whether it’s a rule to follow in 100% of cases.

Note: This is a repost from the STM Forum, where I posted the article originally, in November last year. I decided to repost my own articles from STM from time to time, so guys who don’t have membership over there, can benefit from it too.

LET’S DEFINE WHAT TIERS MEAN FIRST.

When talking about GEOs, we often use the so called “TIERS” to define what countries we actually have in mind. 3 tiers are used most of the time : Tier 1 are considered the most competitive, Tier 3 are the least competitive ones.

There is no definitive list of countries per Tier or a fixed set of rules that would define them unfortunately. On top of that, several industries or agencies have their own rules for this. So we gotta come up with our own definition, in relation to internet marketing and affiliate offers.

Basically, the longer it is possible to monetize a certain GEO with online offers, the higher Tier such country belongs to, in terms of affiliate marketing. This is closely tied to the available payment options and the wealth of particular countries.

HOW MANY TIERS DO WE HAVE?

Not so long ago, the only way to pay for something on the internet, was to use a Credit Card. As you can guess, only a limited amount of GEOs were developed enough for this : USA, Canada, founding EU members, The Nordics, Australia, Switzerland … the most developed Asian countries like Japan etc … These were the original TIER 1 Geos.

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Introduction to the NUTRA Vertical with expert advice from Adcombo.Com

Posted By 2 Comments March 17, 2017

Welcome to part #2 of my Affiliate Networks series. The first one was a rather general Interview, but based on the feedback I got from you guys, it was received pretty well.

Today, I decided to take it one step further and include more specific tips and actionable advice on a specific Vertical, to make it more interesting and worthwhile for you guys. That’s why I reached out to a more Niche/Vertical focused network called Adcombo.Com. These guys put a lot of focus on one vertical : NUTRA offers. They are also active in Bizzop, Sweepstakes and Pin Submits, but I picked them for their Nutra dedication, so that’s will be the focus of this article.

Nutra has been killing it lately, I know several affiliates who are making $X.XXX per day profits by pushing Nutra offers. It may not be the easiest vertical of them all, but those who have what it takes to master it, can reach awesome numbers.

There was one thing that was holding many affiliates back from trying it : small selection of GEOs that there were offers available for. The main reason was the Credit Card payment model, that works well in the western world, but not so much anywhere else.

But this has changed lately, thanks to the COD (Cash On Delivery) payment method that is extremely popular across the globe right now. I mean, COD was around for like forever, but from some reason, affiliate networks started to use it heavily just lately. Due to this, I’ve seen NUTRA offers popping up left and right, for GEOs that were previously unusable : think of Eastern Europe, Latam or even Asia with huge markets like India.

This opens a huge opportunity for anyone who’s willing to work with these GEOs!

This was also the reason why I picked Adcombo.Com as a consultant for this article – I’m pretty sure they have the biggest selection of offers in these emerging GEOs.

Meet Holly Naz from Adcombo.Com 🙂

As I mentioned already, I invited an affiliate expert and manager from Adcombo to help me with this topic.

Her name is Holly Naz and she will be answering some of my questions – I will always quote her answers, so they are easy to identify in the text.

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Affiliates are taking over MOSCOW – Event hosted by the STM Forum and Leadbit.

Posted By No Comments March 14, 2017

Affiliate events and conferences became very popular lately, since they offer an excellent opportunity to meet fellow marketers, find out what the latest trends are … or just get wasted with other affiliates, the call is yours 🙂

US, Western Europe or Asia usually host the main events, but this time, the fun is coming to “Eastern Europe”!

For the first time in history, Moscow will host a large affiliate conference and the organizers made sure it’s gonna be a blast. Speeches, ton’s of networking options, drinks, food and an exceptional party to make it a complete package … it will all be there.

The event will take place on the 30th of March, so mark your calendars and plan the flights, it’s only two weeks away!

How do I know it’s gonna rock? Cause it’s hosted by the STM Forum folks, do I have to say more? 🙂 STM Forum has been recognized as the premier resource for the Affiliate Marketers for quite some time already, you’d have a hard time finding a better one. And I’m not saying that because I a moderator over there! 🙂

Did you know STM is also behind the two most popular Affiliate Conference of the world : Affiliate World Europe (AWE) and Asia (AWA)? This alone should be a guarantee that the Moscow even will be awesome too.

AWA and AWE are huge multiple-day events, but not everyone has to like that. And that’s why you should attend the Moscow event in case you’re one of those who don’t like crowded places. It’s gonna be smaller and 1 day only.

And the best part : Entrance is FREE for all quality affiliates. Thanks to Leadbit.Com, who is the main sponsor and organizer of the event, the entrance is free. Leadbit will even give a way a Porsche Cayenne to one of their affiliates at the conference and you can still take part in the contest, check this for details : http://porsche.leadbit.com/

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How to improve the CVR (Conversion) and CTR (Click Through) of your Landing Pages?

Posted By One Comment March 06, 2017

Landing pages are like salespeople, they have dramatic effect on the conversion rates of our campaigns. We all know that a good Landing Page (LP) can mean the difference between a profitable and a losing campaign. In case you’re not familiar with the Landing Page concept, please read my older article that deals with Landing Pages and explains why you have to use them : http://www.matuloo.com/landing-pages-what-they-are-and-why-use-them/

There are two main performance factors, that determine the quality of a Landing Page. One is the CTR (Click Through Rate) and the other one is the CVR (Conversion Rate). In order to profit, we need to reach good numbers for both of them.

This might sound as an easy task, but it’s not 🙂 The fact is, these two usually work AGAINST each other. The higher the CTR, the lower the CVR. And vice versa, LPs with high CVR usually have low CTR. I will get back to why this is the case a bit later on.

Some affiliates would argue that all that matters is a high Conversion Rate, which is true to some extent … but if you have a Landing Page with very low CTR, the high conversion rate will not save you.

Let’s take a look at an example.

The CTR % tells us how many visitors of the LP actually clicked on something on it, usually some Call To Action (CTA) button. CVR means how many of those who clicked on something, and got to the offer, actually converted into a subscriber, member or made a purchase.

LP1 : 20% CTR and 10% CVR

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