Affiliate marketing is promoting other people’s products for a small commission for each sale. Typically, this line of business involves 3 parties:
- Advertiser, who wants to sell a product (or service) en masse but has no time or resources for scaling up, so this person outsources the task
- Publisher, who owns a media channel with a wide reach and wants to profit on this channel by placing advertisements
- Affiliate marketer, who acts as a middleman and arranges a marketing campaign, showing the product ads on the media channel to some users
Previously, we elaborated on the strategy importance for affiliate marketers and advertisers. Now is the time to focus on the publishers, because media channel ownership requires careful management as well.
Where to Specialize and Who to Partner with
When starting as a publisher, it is best to try out every ad possible, so you can understand the pros and cons of each vertical and format firsthand. Once you get yourself familiar with the options — start specializing. When the ads share the same topic, they synergize. This kind of clustering adds additional value to the sum of its parts.
Whichever vertical you pick, you need to know how to address the pain points of the clientele and speak their language. Think one step ahead and prepare in advance for scaling up, so try to avoid tailoring your website around some very specific and local products. A vertical can also be a subject to seasonality, which can either boost or halt the profit flow. Some of the most profitable verticals nowadays are:
- eCommerce
- Finance
- Sweepstakes
- Utilities
- Antiviruses
- Nutra
- Dating
- Gaming
Besides being profitable and “evergreen”, consider highly-competitive verticals, where advertisers (affiliates) are many. This way, you will assure you have a pack of offers to choose from.
But quantity alone cannot tip the scales in your favor, you also need the offers of quality — you need a good affiliate program, or better a couple of. Obviously, read the reviews before working with any network. The word-of-mouth is a powerful tool to keep any company with established reputation at bay.
Affiliate marketing is a hard work, filled with competition and stress. Don’t expect high payouts for free, unless you are fine with shaving, a.k.a. the risk of getting not paid. Avoid Ponzi (pyramid) schemes where instead of actual product selling you are offered to bring in more people, who will sale then. Be also aware that in case of post-billing payment system, e.g., Facebook, it is possible to drive the traffic for free by opting-in for first and then blocking the credit card so no funds can be withdrawn.
RollerAds does nothing of this, and values long-term partnerships. So if you are picking a network to partner with, consider the following advantages:
- In-depth knowledge of Push, OnClick, and In-Page Push ad formats
- Global reach with more than 2 billion of impressions daily
- Wide range of targeting options
- CPC, CPM, and Smart pricing models
- Unique optimization algorithms
- Strong support team
- Huge variety of payment options
- Built-in creatives library and anti-fraud system
Just don’t generate any fraudulent or incentivized traffic — such practices hurt the whole industry (the fraudster included), so we take our time before approving anything.
How to Promote and Optimize
The age of “infobesity” we currently live in forces us to scan the page instead of reading. Which is why the text, and links specifically, on your website should follow the rule of 4S:
- Specific: be exact and precise for unparalleled clarity
- Sincere: be honest and sequential for greater predictability
- Substantial: be independent of the context for supreme scanning
- Succinct: be short enough to cover the points above for retaining the attention
On average, the human brain can retain up to 9 items at any given time. Throwing all the information at once, with no visual structure or even basic navigation, is the reason to bid farewell to the website. Use Itten’s color circle to figure out the matching colors for your website and ads. Should your website prove to be hardware-intensive, think about implementing lazy loading for better user experience.
When it comes to the product promotion, you need to focus on the user’s needs covered instead of product features. At the end of the day, the user wants to know how they are better off with the product.
Avoid using adverbs actively as a way of effective accentuating. They fail miserably at adding successfully anything new to the very text and eat away quickly the valuable space. Also, avoid general redirects like: click here, get started, or learn more. With the links like these, you will never meet your clientele expectations, because anything can be expected in this case. It does not imply you won’t make money, it means only you could have made more with improved user experience.
Tracking for Summarizing
Everything mentioned above makes no sense without tracking. Aggregating the data allows the predictions to be made, which is important for saving time and earning more. No tracking means inadequate campaign data, so optimizing becomes an issue. As an added bonus, trackers allow storing all your data on the campaigns in one place. At the end of the day, you are risking losing the competition without a tracker, due to scarce information.
Trackers are many, e.g., Voluum, RedTrack, AdsBridge. Sometimes, both you and the network run different trackers, which can lead to discrepancies. As a rule, the difference in stats is caused by improper setting up or some ad blockers messing up with the URL. In any way, remember that RollerAds are always here to help.
Conclusion
When building up a strategy, rake up initially every offer you can, so you get acquainted with each vertical. Only after learning the ropes can you set sail for specialization. This is not the journey to be made alone, so think about the networks to partner with: read the reviews, remember that free cheese is in a mousetrap only, and don’t fall victim to the Ponzi scam. A good network should have proper managerial support and assist both launching and scaling — something that RollerAds does on a daily basis already.
Nobody is interested in a product, people care only for fulfilling their needs — something that should be accentuated in the ads. Keep in mind that short-term memory is very limited, so deliver the ultimate user experience with exact messages and succinct visuals. Finally, track every campaign you make, because there is no other way for assessing the performance but watching the evolution of results. Write a letter if you need any help, RollerAds out.
