When you work on your own, you probably hate two things: wasting time and burning money. No wonder many affiliate advertisers, especially new in the business, desperately want to figure out how to make profits from day one.
What on Earth can I do to pay less for traffic and make more money from my affiliate marketing campaigns? I bet you ask yourself that question many times. Well, you don’t need to search for an answer anymore.
Read on and learn both how to pay less for traffic and how to make money with these five quick tips!
How do affiliate marketers get traffic?
That’s an evergreen question on our FAQs list, covered some time ago brilliantly by Neill Burton, Head of Account Management in Zeropark.
“My general advice is to start big, pausing either keywords or sources that do not work to cut off big sections of unprofitable traffic. Once you’re happy with the keywords or sources left, you should then start optimizing on the target level.”
What Neill provides here is one of the golden rules for less experienced advertisers to follow. It’s an optimal scenario. But is it the only one? No chance!
Buying The Right Kind Of Traffic For Your Affiliate Campaigns
For many reasons, you may want to pay less for traffic. You don’t have a high budget? Or just wanna discover if affiliate marketing is a job for you without spending too much of your savings? Testing that new niche and checking if your audience is interested at all?
Fair enough.
You may start slow and optimize your efforts. But it’s not so easy. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you have to know the industry first. You need to conduct many tests, learn how campaigns work, and pick up what converts best for you to scale it up.
It all costs. That’s why Neill’s advice is to start broad and then optimize.
Keep in mind that the lower your bid is, the lower quality traffic you buy. What does it mean? Simply put, traffic quality matters. That’s why the higher you bid the higher chances to gain conversions and audience engagement. That’s why it costs more.
It doesn’t mean that cheaper traffic doesn’t convert well. On the contrary, it’s a great way of buying lots of traffic at much smaller prices. This allows you to test your campaigns thoroughly, and then, once a perfect campaign setup is identified, bid higher to pay top quality traffic for your ads.
How much traffic do you need for affiliate marketing?
As you can see, buying the right kind of traffic, cheaper for testing or top-quality once scaling, is the best way to become the king of affiliate marketing. It’s not about the amount, it’s about buying the right kind. That’s why advertisers should always try to understand the consumers’ needs at a given moment and investing money wisely. But don’t worry. We’ve got five proven tips for you if you want to pay reasonable money for good quality inventory, too!
Ready? Here we go!
Campaign tracking for optimized performance
To get the whole picture of your performance, track your campaigns first.
We recommend using Voluum as it is fully integrated with Zeropark. Thanks to that you can do almost everything in one dashboard, which basically means no flicking between screens and quick bid changes on the fly. Especially, with the latest Automizer features allowing you to manage your campaigns in an automated, both cost- and time-efficient way.
Check out the benefits of the latest Zeropark x Voluum integration here!
Tracking is on, it’s time to take advantage of Zeropark’s targeting features and gather data about your performance. Analyze your day-parting, OS version or carrier settings and start managing your campaigns.
Setting the right bids with Zeropark Traffic Calculator
Talking about saving money, you need to know what saving money in the affiliate marketing business really is. Before you start any campaign you need to know how much you should agree to pay for traffic.
What’s more, it’s wise to know if the rate you offer is under or below the market price. How can you predict that one when you’re new in the industry and don’t own a crystal ball? Try Zeropark’s traffic calculator.
It provides you with real bids, Zeropark volumes, and much more important information. And it’s free of charge. Go to Zeropark’s Traffic Calculator and check it out right now! Do you wonder why it’s so important? Setting bids below average rates, that is the average cost per click or cost per view (CPC and CPV rates) equals a waste of money and buying the worst available traffic. You don’t wanna do that. As simple as that.
Talking to account managers and industry experts
It’s a short and simple piece of advice. If you have an assigned account manager in Zeropark, talk to them. They’re here for you with insights concerning top verticals, recommendations, and average bids. Read more about their role!
If you’re only beginning and you don’t have a rep assigned to your account, just shoot an email to [email protected] and our Customer Success team will surely hook you up with some valuable intel.
Choosing traffic that converts
With the data you’ve already gathered, it’s time to set up a new campaign. At the very beginning, we suggest Run of Network campaigns (RON means buying all the inventory from your chosen country that is available at the price you set).
After a few days (again, use it to get to know the business), switch to Target/Source campaigns. Once you have identified the top-performing targets or sources it’s obvious you should pay only for those that convert best.
Rule-Based Optimization
If you track your efforts there’s one more significant feature that may make your affiliate marketer’s life easier. It’s called Rule-Based Optimization (RBO).
RBO enables your campaigns to self-optimize effectively, according to the rules you set. Zeropark’s algorithm checks if the optimization rules have been met and then adjusts the campaign accordingly. Adjusting means bidding up, bidding down, or pausing targets/sources.
This ensures that your campaigns run well and you spend your money only on the traffic that converts. Want to Learn How To Automatically Scale Your Zeropark Campaigns? Check out our case study explaining how Ruled-Based Optimization works.
Is affiliate marketing still profitable?
Well, of course, it is! All you need to do is follow these simple tips below and make sure you spend your money wisely and don’t over-pay where it’s not necessary.
- Paying less for traffic doesn’t mean setting lower bids.
- To optimize marketing efforts you should track what placements drive traffic to your ads.
- Set the right bid and find out Zeropark volumes with a traffic calculator.
- Test and observe your performance, pay only for traffic that converts.
- Adjust your landing page to match your customers’ needs.
- Self-optimize your campaigns with RBO magic tricks.
Ready to Pay Less for Traffic?
Sign up to Zeropark Now!
