A QUICK DEFINITION FIRST.
One of the most popular and most easy to use verticals (product categories) are SOI and DOI LEADGENs. To be fair, I shouldn’t even be calling this a vertical as it’s basically a “conversion point” or “collection method” that can be used in pretty much any vertical there is.
Whoever want’s to start buying traffic has to understand targeting. It’s one of the most important skills you need to master, but also one of the easiest to understand. Let’s not waste time here and move on with the topic, so what exactly does targeting mean? Simply put : it’s a way of picking just the traffic that we need. So instead of serving our ads to every single visitor of a site, we decide who we want to show them to.
KNOW YOUR COMPETITION!
Whatever business you are in, you should know as much about your competition as possible, I think there is no need to argue about this. You should know what your competitors sell, where they sell it, how they get customers etc … Online business is no different – whether you are running an e-shop, selling someone else’s products or simply promoting something as an affiliate, you should always know who you are competing with, in order to get as much visitors as possible to see your and not your competitors advertising campaigns.
SPLIT TESTING THE SAME PRODUCT, WHY WOULD I DO IT?
When I was starting in affiliate marketing, there was one thing I couldn’t understand, because it wasn’t making much sense. Every experienced affiliate told me, that whatever offer I’m about to promote, I should find it in more than one network and compare the performance in one network against the next one. So basically, they told me to send traffic to EXACTLY the same product, through 2 or 3 different affiliate networks.
Every affiliate marketer must know what landing pages are and why it’s crucial to use them. So let’s start with a short definition, what exactly is a landing page? It is actually a pre-sale page that you send visitors to, in order to convert them into a subscriber, paying customer or a member of something. Please note, when talking about landing pages in the affiliate marketing context, we don’t mean the actual registration, product or checkout page. Landing pages serve as an intermediary step between the banner and the actual product page. Their goal is to grab the interest of the user, highlight the pros of whatever you are selling and persuade the user that the time to buy is HERE and NOW!
SOME DEFINITIONS FIRST
Traffic Networks are given several names by affiliates, so let me list all that I have heard so far, whichever of them you see, it’s still the same thing : Traffic Source, Ad Network, Banner Network, Traffic Broker. All of these refer to the traditional setup where the network manages advertising placements/spots on the sites of their publishers.
Sometimes you will also see the term “Pop or Popunder Network”, this refers to Traffic Networks that focus exclusively on “Pop Up” or “Pop Under traffic”. Pops are those down-sized, or full size windows that open on top of the browser window or behind it.
To really understand what these networks do, we need to take a closer look at the affiliate industry. There are basically 2 main sides to the game, there are those who have the traffic or know where/how to buy it (let’s call the affiliates), and then there are those who want to sell something to these visitors (let’s call them advertisers).
NOTE : I originally wrote this article for the STM Forum, but since I need to cover this topic here on my blog too, I am re-posting it for everyone instead of writing it again from scratch, which would be a waste of my time. Enjoy 🙂
The affiliate business, just like any other business for that matter, uses it’s own vocabulary and every aspiring affiliate needs to learn at least the basic terms in order to crack the code. SO I decided to write a post about these terms and explain them in a detailed way. The list will be long so sit tight 🙂
One of the best things about online marketing is the ability to measure the effectiveness of your efforts. Unlike TV, newspaper or radio campaigns, you can literally track anything online – where the visitors came from, what they clicked on, what device they used to connect, what type of internet connection they used, what landing page or product converted them … you name it.
Do I have what it takes to succeed in affiliate marketing? That’s one of the questions I see people asking over and over. So, is there a specific set of skills that are required in order to make Traffic. it? The answer is not a clear YES or NO, unfortunately. In theory, literally ANYONE can make a living as an affiliate, but in reality, there are some skills and a certain mindset that will determine whether you will fail or succeed.