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

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Offers

Affiliate Marketing Offers – What can you actually promote as an affiliate marketer?

The million dollar question : I want to become an affiliate marketer, but what product should I start with?

TIP: Affiliates are not using the term products or services, we call it the “OFFERS”, so let me use that term from now on.

Affiliates are promoting all kinds of offers, the range is so big, that it’s quite easy to get lost in the process of choosing some to promote. Even the small affiliate networks have hundreds of offers, the big ones boost a collection of several thousands of them. So how do you actually pick one, when there are so many?

You don’t just browse the huge lists and pick stuff randomly, you need to make a few decisions before you even look at the lists of offers – this will limit the amount of matching offers and the process of choosing an offer will become easier.

I will get to particular offer types and categories in a short while, but first we need to sort out one thing. We can divide affiliate offers based on some basic criteria and form some kind of groups, that we will focus on.

1. VERTICAL

Vertical defines the main offer category, something like a large group of niches that have something in common. Let’s say App Installs – this is a large Vertical that groups many categories of mobile apps – games, utilities, antivirus …

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What is DATING and how to promote dating offers – with expert advice from Cpamatica.com

There are verticals that come and go, some are seasonal and only popular during certain periods of the year, some become saturated and impossible to make profits with after a while … and then there are some, that are always working to some extent, no matter what – Let’s call them the evergreens 🙂

Dating is one of such evergreen verticals, it has it’s ups and downs, but it keeps on converting year after year. I’m not gonna lie to you, even this vertical is harder to make money with than it was couple years ago … but it’s not because people are not interesting into dating anymore, it’s because of the competition.

Since Dating is actually one of my favorite verticals, I decided to write a full article about it. I will tell you what kind of dating offers there are, how it all works, what are the payout options you can work with, how dating sites make money, how to promote these offers …

To make it more interesting, I invited an affiliate network that specializes in dating, “Cpamatica.com”, to provide us with some insights from a networks side too. I sent them quite a few questions, so we get a better understanding of the vertical, how much big affiliates are making, what type of offers makes the most $$$ for them, what GEOs are hot at the moment … all the information I like to get from affiliate networks.

I always love to get info directly from the “horses mouth” so to speak,

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

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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NEW Series : Introducing Affiliate Networks – Addiliate.Com

Affiliate Networks are one of the “key components” of the affiliate industry puzzle. Having good relationships with a few of them is absolutely crucial. Sure, you can focus on working directly with the advertisers, but at some point you will need to work with affiliate networks too, whether you like it or not. To read more on this topic, check my article about Affiliate Networks.

WHAT DO I WANT TO ACHIEVE HERE?

Many new affiliates are facing problems when trying to join their first few networks, their applications get rejected pretty often. On top of that, as a new affiliate, you never know who you can trust and what network is known for pulling stunts on their affiliates.

That’s why I decided to start something like a series, let’s call it “Introducing Affiliate Networks”. The purpose of this series is not to introduce just my favorite networks, or those that I currently work with. What I want to achieve here, is to give some exposure to affiliate networks, that are known for being solid and are generally considered honest operations, by the affiliate crowd.

So even thou I cannot make any guarantees, since that is not possible, I will not list any network that is known for fucking their affiliates over. And trust me, all the bad news find their way to “my ears”, one way or another 🙂 It’s in nobody’s interest to work with inexperienced networks that can bite the dust within a few months either, so I will put more emphasis

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Do you have to target each GEO (Country) separately or can you mix them?

This is a very classic question, asked by almost every affiliate who starts with paid traffic campaigns.

Usually it goes like this : “Hey Mr.Matuloo, I started this campaign for Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, using a kickass PIN Submit offer that my Affiliate Manager recommended to me … and I’m loosing heavily on it, why is that?

Well, cause you’re a LAZY ASS, that’s why. There is only one reason for mixing several GEOs in one campaign – LAZYNESS – I know it’s faster to create such campaigns and it looks tempting to have one mega campaign that targets 500 Million people. But that’s not the way it works, unless you’re in the game to loose money.

BUT WHY WOULD I SPLIT THE GEOS, IT’S ALL LATIN AMERICA!!!

Oh my, there are so many reasons for this, so let me list & explain the most important ones :

1. Language – Properly translated creatives and landing pages pretty much ALWAYS work better. In some GEOs, you can do well with English langu

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How to get better payouts from your affiliate network?

Affiliate Marketing is a very competitive business, some niches are so crowded that it’s impossible to make any profit without some kind of competitive advantage. But don’t worry, sky isn’t falling and as always, there are several ways of winning the battle with your competitors.

The advantage that can set you apart from your competitors can be a range of things, some obvious, some less so …

– Experience / Knowledge – this alone can make you the winner at times, for example when working in a niche that you are pro at. It might require special language that you know and the competitors don’t. There might be some crucial parts that only pros understand etc …

– Cheaper traffic – maybe you know a traffic source that is not so popular, but their traffic is good. Maybe you can come up with banners that have super high CTR, which translates to cheap traffic…

– Quality Creatives – related to the above point, but it can also mean you can make killer Landing Pages that will convert like a charm.

… there are many more I could mention, but I want to aim your attention at one more factor that can help you a TON : Better Payouts.

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

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

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SOI AND DOI LEADGEN OFFERS – DETAILED EXPLANATION

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.

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Why you must split test the same offer/product via multiple affiliate networks?

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.

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