When it comes to investing your money, there’s plenty of information and clever affiliate marketing hacks to bring you on board as part of the industry, without going bankrupt sooner than an RTB auction takes place. The most common questions are: How much does domain redirect traffic cost? How much should I bid? When do I increase my bids? How to estimate the right bid to start with? How much should I bid to scale up?
If you want to learn the answers to these questions and how not to waste your money in places that are not worth it — just google it. Alternatively, keep on reading this blog. Here’s a comprehensive insight into estimating your advertising budget for zero-click traffic.
Domain redirect traffic and the Cost-Per-View model
In calculating how much domain redirect traffic actually costs, we need to start with the basics. The first thing to know is the cost model of given traffic. Generally, domain redirect traffic works on CPV or CMP cost model.
This is due to the traffic’s nature — whenever a user types in a misspelled URL in the address bar of a browser, a redirection is triggered. As the website loads, a real-time bidding (RTB) auction among the advertisers begins and a user gets redirected to the highest bidder’s advertised website. Hence, only an actual impression of the page counts as conversion.
The CPV model is generally encountered with more complex campaign types, which involve a user’s precise action, like triggering redirects. Alternatively, views can be calculated on a CPM basis, which equals CPV times 1000. It’s important to remember the distinction between CPV and CPM, as the two cost models are in fact the same, yet their pricing varies significantly. The CPV rates are usually small fractions of a dollar, as opposed to CPM flat rates calculated for a thousand views.
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CPV (Cost-Per-View) is a cost model where an advertiser pays for a single ad impression. You can run CPV campaigns for Pop and Domain traffic. CPM (Cost-Per-Mille) is a cost model where you pay a flat rate for 1000 views. Mille is the Latin word for 1000. |
Pros and cons of Cost-Per-View
To give you the full picture of CPV and help you understand why this cost model is generally available with zero-click traffic, let’s have a look at some of its pros and cons:
ADVANTAGES:
- Small fractions of a dollar to begin with (budget-friendly).
- CPV cost model is quickly actionable.
- CPV based offers enable high volumes of traffic.
- Real-Time-Bidding ensures the highest offered CPV wins.
- Price Tiers and Traffic Calculators help estimate average bid cost.
- CPV enables precise budget capping, especially with zero-click traffic.
- Proven results if combined with rule-based optimization.
DISADVANTAGES:
- CPV for domain redirect may seem a bit more expensive than with other types of traffic, eg. Pop.
- Your budget can burn quickly if the bid is not optimized properly.
- Due to high volumes of traffic, the best optimization practices need testing, thus additional money input.
Weighing up two sides of the coin, one could easily infer that the ‘bad’ sides … are not bad at all. In fact, they are a consequence of what makes the domain redirect traffic and CPV model duet so appealing. To recall a few reasons — domain redirect is immediate, cheap and targetable. Despite average bid prices, watching out for budget burning and optimization initially coming across as growing pains, a clever affiliate would always test things first before jumping the gun and pausing a well profitable campaign half-cocked.
What does the price of domain ads depend on?
The quality, volume and price of traffic are dependant on many variables, such as GEOs, Traffic Inventory Types or Device Type. Thus, ad exchanges offer various Bid Tiers to choose from. In this way, affiliates can adjust the cost of traffic to their current needs – testing, optimizing or scaling. How are you supposed to know what bid to go for with your zero-click campaign?
An answer to that question is a Traffic Calculator. This handy tool allows you to check traffic volume and average bid prices, so you can make the best decision for your affiliate marketing campaigns. Calculations are based on variables such as device, OS, GEO, inventory type, carrier, keyword or source.
Traffic Calculators enable narrowing down the results and filtering the exact data you need. Regarding domain redirect, traffic volume is expressed by the number of available impressions paired with an average bid expressed in USD.
How much to bid on domain redirect traffic?
With the help of a traffic calculator, we can run an estimate on how much traffic can $200 get us with domain redirect. Let’s take the example of:
- Three GEOs, each coming from a different tier – the US, Norway and India.
- Mobile or Desktop Device Type.
- Adult or Non-Adult Inventory.
What we get as a result is proof that the cheaper the traffic, the bigger the volume. Additionally, we learn that Adult inventory is the cheaper one across all three GEOs. Whereas for Desktop, Adult is the more expensive inventory.
So, to break down the numbers, $200 investment gets us approximately:
- 30k visits for Domain, US, Mobile, Adult.
- 10k visits for Domain, US, Mobile, Non-Adult.
- 25k visits for Domain, NO, Desktop, Adult
- 11k visits for Domain, NO, Desktop, Non-Adult
- 290k visits for Domain, India, Mobile, Adult
- 50k visits for Domain, India, Desktop, Non-Adult
The same calculation can be done for any other variation of GEOs, Device Types and Inventories or repeated for Keywords and Sources. Sum everything up to see how bids vary depending on given categories and find out what works best for you.
Cost vs. Vertical in zero-click traffic campaigns
Verticals do not give you set bid price ranges. Still, estimating the most successful verticals from the time range you wish to account for may give you a hint as to where and when to invest your money and how to optimize your campaign.
Looking at our data, downloads, subscriptions, e-commerce, surveys and sweeps seem to be the most profitable verticals. This information, along with the practice of researching the hottest verticals on the market, gives every clever affiliate a chance for investing in sure-fire solutions. Search industry forums, ask your representative at the traffic source or read affiliate blogs to find out. Staying up to date is crucial here.
Bid up… and then bid up some more
The bid smart, bid big strategy is an essential clue for running profitable zero-click campaigns, especially with domain redirect traffic. The ideal case scenario for a domain redirect campaign would be to:
- Figure out the right bids and verticals for your offers.
- Bid.
- Run tests and select the best-performing targeting practices and set-ups.
- Bid up.
- Optimize your domain redirect campaign.
- Bid up more.
- Scale the ROI in your zero-click campaign.
Since we’ve just covered the first step earlier in this article, talked through the best targeting and optimization practices for domain redirect traffic in our previous blog post, now it’s time to talk money since no campaign can be successful without investment.
Fear not – invest in your domain redirect campaign
Investment is necessary – do not be afraid of spending money, yet remember to bid smart. Letting your budget burn through without bringing any data or ROI is not a dream case scenario, though it also teaches you a lesson or two. If you think domain redirect traffic is a bit more expensive than e.g. Pop Traffic, remember there’s one universal rule to be applied – quality costs money. If you want to scale up your zero-click campaign you have to invest, just do it smartly.
Read The Ultimate Guide To Domain Redirect Advertising Here!
Scale up your affiliate campaigns
RTB happens in a split second and so can burning through your budget. Lowering bids may prevent you from receiving traffic or expose you to poor quality only. Checking the minimal and average amounts, and then raising or capping the bid respectively, allows you to target and control your investment.
If that’s too much of a hassle for you, or you clearly are a clever affiliate, automated campaign optimization is a simple yet well-proven solution. It’s offered by most ad networks to help your campaigns effectively self-optimize according to the rules you set. This means bidding up, bidding down, or pausing targets whenever the system recognizes the need for taking action. If optimization conditions are not met, then the adjustments are not performed. Rule-based optimization feature ensures your zero-click campaigns run smoothly and your money is spent only on the traffic which converts, preventing budget burning.
Do not forget landing pages
Landing pages are the key element of every domain redirect traffic campaign. They are the exact place where you actually make your money as an affiliate – a meeting point of a user and an offer. Landing pages can be direct or indirect offer pages — meaning users are provided with offer links or already an offer placed on a given page (a lander). How do you get landing pages and how much do they cost?
There are two ways of securing landers. You can create them yourself or have someone make them for you. Either way, it’s about saving or spending money. Mind that if you’re inexperienced in web-development, creating poor quality lander pages yourself may actually cost you more than buying them — be it using templates, buying ready-made ones or having an expert custom them specially for you. Yet, it all depends on the kind of campaign you’re running and verticals you’re targeting.
If you think you’re capable of creating landers yourself, or maybe you don’t need sophisticated designs, or you’re currently in two minds as to which option to go for, let’s have a look at the cost structure.
Developing your own landing page takes time, the average estimation is 8-16h. Are you ready to dedicate the time? Conversely, you need to calculate that per hourly rate of a professional developer, which altogether can come up to a few hundred dollars. Unless all you need is a simple landing page to host a few links — that, of course, is up to you.
There are also platforms offering numerous templates to choose from. These can significantly speed up the process and lower the costs at the same time. The average cost per template varies from $2 to $50. Also, web builders usually offer free trials, yet as with every subscription business — there comes a time to pay in order to use. Again, depending on the platform, prices range from a few to a couple of hundred dollars monthly. Thus, remember to research and test before deciding which option works best for the type of zero-click campaign you’re planning to run.
Domain Redirect Traffic Costs – FAQ
Estimating your domain redirect advertising budget is paramount. Fear not — you’re not the only person trying to figure it out. Many affiliates have been wondering whether there’s one generally applicable, cost-saving, profit-making, drinks included golden mean to do that right… well, almost. Here are the three most pressing questions regarding your campaign budget.
What’s the minimum it takes to just try out domain ads and see if it works for my offer?
The first question can be answered very easily – the minimum it takes is the minimum top-up a given ad exchange accepts. Let’s say you can start your journey with Zeropark with a $200 deposit – that’s your minimum then.
What’s the minimum/optimum budget to run profitable parked domain ad campaigns?
As for the minimum/optimum or minimum optimum budget for low to mid-level zero-click campaigns — $500 to $1000 should be reasonable to give it a go. This should suffice to start, run first tests and learn a couple of lessons. If you don’t want to burn this money too quickly, remember about rule-based-optimization or manual budget capping.
How much does domain redirect traffic cost?
It costs exactly how much you want to invest in it. To start, it’s good to have at least $500. $1000 should be enough to get past the testing phase and start scaling. We recommend using traffic calculator tools to estimate how much a certain campaign setup will cost you. Quality comes for a price. Yet, a bit of research combined with tried and tested solutions can make any redirect ad campaign be the right fit for your affiliate efforts.
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Kinga Gawron
