To request a payment, increase from the advertiser, you must offer something of value in return, it is not just asking for an increase. Remember that this is a business where we all contribute a part to make a profit.

Although by requesting a bump you are looking to ensure your profits. It is important to consider that the advertiser must also be able to earn money with your traffic (since increasing your payment means that the advertiser will earn less with the sale). And if we talk about increasing daily leads with a higher payment, that implies a greater risk for the advertiser because they will pay more for more clients. 

For this reason, your traffic must be high quality. 

In the Bump request you basically explain to the advertiser why it is better for them to pay you more for a greater number of your Leads. The goal is for to win.

If you are promoting COD offers on AdCombo, you should know that.

An order is generated when a person knows the product, knows the price,

You want to buy and register in the offer landing page so that the call center can call you and

complete the sale. That’s a LEAD.

Reasons to request a Bump:

• Increase in traffic.
  
  
• New offer: The advertiser is launching a new offer and needs Leads. As it is a new offer, it is logically not among the best sellers, but the advertiser is willing to pay more for the leads.
  
  
• TOP offer: an offer is at the top of sales and the advertiser wants to increase traffic. You can also request a bump and send more traffic, only the bump will not be very high since they are only increasing the traffic.
  
  
• You can ask your manager to look for offers where the advertiser needs traffic and can give a better payment.
  
  

How many daily leads can you achieve?

It means how many people who want to buy register for the call per day with your campaigns.

How much can I ask for a raise?

We do not know the advertiser’s total costs to put the product on the market, nor is it our business to know. BUT we do know that if the offer pays, for example, $10 in commission, asking for a bump of 9 and bringing the payment to $19 would be somewhat difficult for the advertiser to approve since we would be talking about an increase of almost 100%.

Practical steps:

Before requesting the bump for your offer, check your statistics to see how many daily orders you have with this offer (Leads):

1. Statistics: Select Offer ID,
2. Time: 30 days,
3. You divide the total amount of orders by 30 = Your current daily Leads
4. Traffic quality (% Approval Rate)
5. If your %AR is, for example, 5%, it is considered low quality traffic because you have many rejected orders (Reject, Trash).
6. A  %AR floor of at least 25% is acceptable.

• Daily leads do not mean the number of orders completed in sales.
• Daily leads mean number of total orders per day. (We hope many end up in sales).
  
  

Example:

Let’s say you are promoting an offer.

You have about 10 leads a day and you want a bump of $2 the offer pays $15 but you want about $17. 

• You indicate to the advertiser that your traffic is paid (not organic), this means that your traffic is scalable.
  
  
• Then you indicate the name of your traffic source.
  
  
• With Bump you could increase from 10 to 50 leads daily.
  
  
• Then your manager will review the % AR you have with the offer and make the request to the advertiser.
  
  

If the advertiser approves the bump, your commission payment will increase to what was agreed upon and we will wait for you to do your part by increasing your traffic, that is, being able to send the expected leads. The increase is expected to take approx. 1 week.

Got questions about the AdCombo interface? Let’s try to answer them in the 4th part of our interface video guides!

This time we’re discussing an important tab for every affiliate – Statistics, and the way the data from Orders, another tab of the interface, will help to evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen ad strategy. Also, we’re explaining how to park your own domain in AdCombo and why you should do it before launching a campaign.

Check more video guides on our YouTube channel.

We’ve already explored API, postback, pixel, tracking link and more in them, drop by!

We are launching a short series of articles about landing pages. We’ll start with the theory, and in the following parts, we’ll do a practical analysis of AdCombo landing pages. Don’t forget to like it if you are interested in this topic! 

The first part will help you to structure the landing page blocks, prevent possible mistakes, give you some ideas for A/B-test, and tell you about decision-making mechanisms. 

Let’s start!

We’re going to talk about landing pages! Their major purpose is to drive Internet users down the marketing funnel and motivate them to leave their contacts in the form. This is how the sales magic works: an average viewer turns into a really valuable lead. 

For your convenience, this article is divided into three levels. 

Junior level. Here we’ll cover the essential base. It’s suitable for those who have just opened the door to the niche and are still learning the main things. 

Middle level. Here we’ll share helpful tips for those who already have experience in launching ad campaigns but still need to learn some key points. 

Pro level. If you are an experienced affiliate, you have seen everything, and nothing surprises you – go to the end of the article! There you will find the info beyond affiliate marketing and learn facts about the psychology of perception and how to influence decision-making on a subconscious level.

Table of contents

• Basic level 
• Middle level
• Pro level 

Basic level   

Let’s start from the beginning. What exactly is a landing page? What is it for, and why is it so important?

A landing page is a website consisting of a single page. It is easy to create. And it perfectly manages its main function – to lead people to the target action. Most often, it is to purchase a product by filling out a form. 

In fact, the types of target actions can be different. It depends on the selected offer. For example, leave contacts in the form, download an app, sign up on the website, etc. 

Whatever your goal is, the landing page should grab attention and encourage a person to take action. 

What is the key indicator of a landing page to track? 

The conversion rate is considered to be the most important indicator.

The calculation formula is simple:

How to determine a good CR? 

According to WordStream’s source, the average conversion rate of landing pages is around 2.35%. A quarter of the top LP had it at 5.31% or higher. And the highest-ranked one-page websites (the best 10%) had an average CR of 11.45% or higher

Perfection is hard to achieve, but you can strive for it! What to do about it? 

1. Design a clear structure

The first screen should be clear to the customer. Check if the product name is easy to read. Product photos should be of high quality. You can add a brief description of the offer and a CTA button. This button takes our visitor straight to the form-filling block. If the potential buyer belongs to a hot audience, he/she doesn’t need an additional product description. He or she already knows the pros and cons and came in to buy right away. The best thing you can do is to ease the customers’ path on the way to check out. 

Next, place a block with a description of the product’s benefits. Try to specify here a unique selling proposition (USP) of the product. Well-designed USP will be a nice addition, but remember that the main thing is ease of use. When the text is placed on a beautiful picture but is impossible to read, no one needs it. Buyers refuse the purchase when it is hard for them. A minimalistic and clear UI is better!

Then add a trust indicators section. It often includes customers’ feedback. It will help make a quicker decision. Also, you can add a block about safe and environmentally friendly manufacturing and product quality certificates. Especially in Tier 1 countries people care about the quality and safety of goods. 

At the end, place an order form. 

Tip: Make as few blocks to fill as possible. And add hints for the users, making the ordering process simple. 

Mark mandatory fields with asterisks, and make masks that will tell people how to correctly enter a phone number or email. If possible, make buttons or drop-down lists instead of manually filling fields. 

Tip: ask someone you know (better not related to marketing) to fill out the form and see how quickly they can do it. What problems did they have filling it out? What questions they had, and what wasn’t obvious? Find some difficulties? Fix it asap!    

2. Know your TA 

To sell someone a product you should understand people’s needs and desires. These are the basics, without which it is impossible to close the sale. 

What to write in the product’s USP? Should there be a section on eco-friendly production? Does the description text need a bigger font size (relevant for seniors)? Is it worth placing NSFW adult pictures right on the first screen? Can this picture of a person in a white coat be used? 

Analyzing the target audience, its age, gender, cultural characteristics, devices, and time of purchasing will help to close most of these questions.   

We hope these tips will help you to create a well-structured LP. Let’s move further to the middle level. 

Middle level 

For those who have already made more than one landing page, we will provide statistics and tips to improve landing pages’ CR. 

What to do if traffic seems to be from a quality source, but, for some reason, there are no orders, and all leads end up in the thrash statistics column? 

Do you need to change the offer? GEO? Complain to the affiliate manager about the advertiser, who does not give payment for seemingly “quality traffic”? Run to another CPA network with thoughts: “Now everything will go as it should”?  

Or maybe you should study and improve your landing page?

When did the user leave the page? Maybe he didn’t understand where to click? Or entered the wrong number but the form accepted it? 

Haven’t thought about it yet? 

In this case, it is better to take a deep breath and calm yourself. Then start to check the efficiency of your LP. 

The most common way to check the correctness of the improvements is split testing or A/B testing (they are the same things).

To implement it, you need to go through several steps: 

• Define the purpose of testing; 

• Formulate a hypothesis; 

• Important: it is better to test one thing at a time. It is useless to put several hypotheses into one test and then try to find out what exactly led to the better results;

• Specify the desired values; 

• Run the test;

• Analyze the results.     

But this can be completely useless and costly if you act blindly. What to rely on when looking for ways to improve? Of course, on analyzing statistics. Each step in testing should be based on specific figures. 

What to check in the statistics? 

• Number of visits 

• Number of conversions

• Average time spent on the website

• Page load speed 

• Users devices

• Bounce rate

• Heatmaps 

• Webvisor 

All these tools will help you to analyze when the user leaves the page and does not reach the target action.

Of the non-obvious but significant mistakes can be found: 

• Non-obvious CTA button: small/ unclear text/ unnoticeable color/ blends into the background/ not clickable;

• Many customers use mobile devices, but the landing page is not adapted for them. The user finds it difficult to navigate and refuses to order. Maybe he can’t hit the button because the clickable area is too small;

• Long loading time. The size of pictures/ gifs/ videos and animations should match the internet speed in different regions. It is better to compress all files to the smallest possible size without loss of quality;

• Problems with form filling. There are no hints, masks, or mandatory fields/ it is impossible to fill out the form using a phone/ it is too much to write in fields/ the buyer can write down an incorrect phone number, but the form will accept this answer anyway, etc.

What services can help you collect statistics: 

For example, Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica, Hotjar, Roistat, and others. 

You can always share helpful services in the comments! 

And what website builder can be used to create LP? 

There are so many services. Here are some of the most popular ones: 

Tilda, Wix, uKIT 

We will also be glad if you share useful services in the comments! 

And we move on to the next section…

Pro level

At this level, we want to go a step higher and talk not about landing pages themselves, their structure, and statistics. 

It’s time to talk about equally significant related topics.

Psychology of color

You’ve probably noticed that different colors can subconsciously evoke various feelings and emotions. 

Here are some examples of the connections between colors and the feelings they can evoke.

As you can see, colors that are close to each other can have similar influences. To choose the right palette for your ad creative or landing page, you need to first determine what emotions you want to evoke in your audience. Then choose the right color, its brightness, and saturation. 

But don’t forget that color perception is a very individual process. The same color can evoke various emotions and impressions in different people. You shouldn’t expect the same reaction from all people from your target audience. But it is interesting to experiment with this topic. You can conduct a split test and write the results in the comments! 

In addition, there is also a cultural aspect to the perception of color:

Finally, you can study the scheme of famous global brands’ logos to make sure that the color tool may be really helpful. 

The psychology of decision making 

Now let’s talk about how you can influence the buyer’s decision-making without being pushy.

The essence of this approach is not to force a product through changing the buyer’s way of thinking. But customize your content to fit the buyer’s habitual way of thinking. Remember: using psychology to manipulate customers is unacceptable! 

Next, you’ll find a short list of 4 lifehacks, let’s go! 

1. Tendency to constancy and consistency

Sales funnels are built on this mechanism. Each successive suggestion to a customer takes your interaction a step closer. People tend to keep their actions consistent. If potential customers have already started interacting with you, they are more likely to move on to the next step. Unless they became negative experiences of the interaction. 

2. Tendency to establish points of reference – anchors 

Humans tend to use the first piece of info as a reference point for subsequent decisions. 

For example, when a customer sees that an item is now discounted, they:

• First, he may think that it is a great offer;
• Second, the cost and value of that good is higher. 

The chances of how well this technique will work depend on a deep understanding of your target audience. What is the chance of such a user’s way of thinking? 

If this is a working technique for your TA, you can offer the customer several options of product courses with different costs. Make sure to show how much money he/she will save depending on his or her choice. 

But you should be careful with the enormous number of options, and that’s why… 

3. The paradox of choice 

If you give a customer too many choices, likely they won’t buy anything. There’s a parable about a Buridan’s ass (donkey) who couldn’t make a choice between two equally attractive haystacks. In the end, he starved to death, having never decided to choose one. 

On the topic of landing pages, the page should have one clear call to action on the CTA buttons. If your goal is to close a sale – a button leads to the order form and does not dissipate the buyer’s attention. 

4. Social proof 

In new circumstances or when solving new tasks, people tend to follow other people and repeat their experiences. 

In our case, this means that you need to take care of placing a section with testimonials. It will be better if besides the text you add photos of people. It generates more trust. And try to update the testimonials block. 

If it is not possible to write reviews of several people, you can add a block with the total number of buyers. For example: “Our product has already been bought more than 1000 times!” This option will work as social proof too. 

We hope you found this article helpful and your new lending pages will bring you a great ROI! 

If you have any tips, suggestions, and recommendations, we look forward to hearing them in the comments!

When a customer comes to an AdCombo landing and fills in the order form indicating their name and phone number, an order is generated in the system, and we’ll initially see its Hold status in the statistics.

When the call center agent calls the customer, and they confirm the order (confirm that they want to buy the product), then the order gets verified. It appears in the system (Statistics) as Sale.

Approval rate – how to calculate it?

The approval rate % of an offer is the number of confirmed orders over the total number of orders that the offer receives in a given period of time.

 Approval Rate % = (Sales/Total Orders)*100

If an offer has an approval rate of 40%, it means that out of 100 people who filled in the order form on the landing page, 40 people confirmed the purchase during the call. Later, in the statistics, the affiliate will see the payouts for those 40 orders in the balance section.

You can use our Telegram bot to check out the AR % of a COD offer:

Why the AR % data is important to know?

When the Approval rate on the offer is about 15%, this means that 85% of the orders got the statuses Rejected or Trash. Then you should buy cheap ads to ensure the profitability of your campaigns. Organic traffic is also a fine option for this type of offers.

Low AR (but there is a solution!)

Note that there are offers with low approval rate that still receive monthly sales, since affiliates drive cheap yet quality traffic to them. So, you can also set up a profitable campaign even for an offer with a low AR if you get low-cost traffic (and personally have a high AR on the offer). It usually happens to Adult offers, for example.

High AR

If the approval rate of the offer is 35% or higher, it means that the offer is well- approved, and many customers confirm their purchases during the call.

How are affiliates paid for sales? 

Let’s say you launch a campaign on Facebook. The offer has an approval rate of 40%, then you have 1000 visits on your landing page. About 100 people out of 1000 complete the form for the call center, they want to buy the product and the price seems good to them. Before they will be called, we still have no orders in Rejected or Trash columns. Our 100 orders are in Hold, so orders that are in Hold = our Total Orders for now.

In the statistics, you see 100 in Hold (and in the Balance tab as well). Then the call center agents will call those 100 customers (usually during 1 day). If 40 out of 100 customers confirm the orders ( i.e. want products to be sent to their home addresses to pay for them on delivery – COD model), the rest 60 orders will be moved to the Rejected or Trash columns. Later, the call center will pass the info to AdCombo that those 60 records are confirmed, and you will see them in the statistics as Sales (40 Sales for COD offers).  

The payouts for them will be displayed in the Balance section next to your manager’s picture in your account.

When you ask for the payment from those sales, we’ll check how many of those 40 people have received the purchase via delivery to the address (this data isn’t seen by affiliates, only by the managers). If none of 40 people accepted the purchases on delivery (pay for them), then the traffic is considered fraudulent, and the affiliate doesn’t get the payout. If most of 40 or all finally buy the products, then we can pay the sum under the Available title.

To resume

1000 people visited the landing page

100 people filled in the form for the call center (The sum that will be paid for sales is in Hold)

40 people confirm the orders during the call (Payouts are added to the Balance as Available)

Delivery

Case A: 38 people bought the product (the affiliate is paid for 40 Sales)

Case B: 0 people bought the product (fraudulent traffic, the affiliate isn’t paid for the orders).

Calculating campaign’s performance

To optimize your ROI, pay attention to the cost of each lead out of those 40 you pay to the traffic source. 

Here are two helpful formulas:

X (Cost of traffic to get Y customers) / Y (the Number of customers) = Cost of 1 customer.

$ (Payout for the offer) – (Cost of 1 customer) = Profit.

Example:

You paid FB $300 for 1 campaign for 1 week 

1000 customers visited your landing page

100 customers filled in the order form (Hold in Balance and Statistics)

40 customers out of 100 confirmed the delivery during the call

(Out of payouts for 100 orders in Hold, only payouts for 40 orders became Available).

Available Balance =  $ (Payout for offer) x orders [40] = $12 x 40 = $480

Out of 40 customers, 38 people paid for the product on delivery, the rest 2 changed their minds when the order was delivered.

AdCombo paid for 40 sales. 

Available Balance = $480.

Campaign’s performance:  $480 (Income) – $300 (Spend) = $180 (Profit) you are earning $180!

Hopefully now you have a better understanding of these important metrics, and they will help you make big money with AdCombo (and calculate it right)! 

This spring, we released a lot of helpful and exciting content! To avoid losing yourself in the info flood, we’ve gathered everything in one place and sorted it, so you can quickly find what you need the most! 

Well, just choose the right category for you: 

For Beginners

1. https://blog.adcombo.com/the-third-video-tutorial-on-adcombo-interface-is-available/ 

Tutorial video on the AdCombo interface. We’ve shown you how to set up the postback, pixel, and the API. In the post, you’ll also find a link to the previous video, where you’ll learn how to set up a campaign in AdCombo and create a tracking link step by step.

2. https://blog.adcombo.com/the-beginners-journey-how-a-pr-manager-started-affiliate-marketing-part-5-campaign-launch/ 

The 5th part of the unique project of our PR manager Victoria, a.k.a. PR-fire Vi! 

Victoria explained how to choose the best creatives, add an offer and campaign to the tracking software as well as how to check whether the postback link works the right way. 

We highly recommend reading this article to everyone who is making the first steps in affiliate marketing! 

For those who are already in the niche

1. https://blog.adcombo.com/reducing-trash-orders-in-latin-america-with-the-hints-by-advertiser/ 

Our trusted advertiser shared some helpful info on how to reduce the number of trash orders in Peru and how to avoid them! We advise reading it to anyone working with Peru and LATAM.

2. https://www.instagram.com/p/CpkoCM4MCHj/ 

This post is about a new TikTok tool – Keyword Insights (like a spy tool but totally FREE!). The service will help you find ads on TikTok by keywords (phrases are sourced from voice-over audio, text overlays, and caption/description texts of ads). Working with TikTok and never tried it? It’s the time! 

For inspiration

https://blog.adcombo.com/interviews-with-adcombos-top-affiliates-emotions-stories-and-bright-impressions-from-the-great-adventure-grand-finale/ 

After the Grand Finale of The Great Adventure Challenge, we interviewed Top-5 and Top-50 participants. They told us about their hard path to their goals and the moments when they understood it was not gone through in vain! 

Want to recharge your motivation like in a sports drama movie? You’d better read our article via the link. Believe us, the suspense is the same!

Maximum benefits – minimal time spent! 

The list of useful reels on our Instagram:

How to increase revenue: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpnHRLipYgE

How to choose a reliable affiliate network: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cpxdo2cp0rV

Chat GPT-4: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cq5sY2ssMAu

How to choose a traffic source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrBVcB0p-55

A little talk about a budget: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Crdmq5TN5Po

Guide on nutra offers: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrycwfPJMWo

Top-3 hot affiliate niches for all times: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsRHYTCszzJ

Choose the content that fits you the most, and don’t forget to like it! 
And if you have any questions or suggestions, welcome to the comments!

Hey!

Guess 3 super important words for newbies that confuse them yet are crucial for any campaign?

1…2…3… 

Postback, the API, and Pixel. Do you know what they are? Started working with AdCombo but have no idea how to set them up in AdCombo?

No worries! The third part of AdCombo interface video guides will introduce you to these key terms and show how to launch a campaign with AdCombo.

In the previous part, we discussed the stages of creating a campaign and setting up a tracking link. 

Watch the new video, get the basics, and remember that learning never exhausts the mind © yet fills up the wallet! 

Video 3. How to start working with AdCombo: Discovering Postback, Pixel & the API

Hey there!

Well, we’re getting to the most awaited part of my adventurous affiliate journey – the campaign launch! 

Frankly, the campaign was launched some time ago, but I wanted to describe the whole process as fully as possible from the very beginning. So I needed time for transforming all my helpful notes and tips into post-notes for you.

Right after launching, I rolled my eyes back in, breathed out, and shared my first impressions here (everything written is the naked whole truth!).

First, I say that I’ve actively collaborated with my managers, both at AdCombo and RichAds, the source of traffic I used to promote the offer. Not all newbies do that, but in this post I’ve explained why it’s more effective to follow the way. There, I also talked about the creatives I would like to choose for the offer, and the landing page I already had. I didn’t change my intentions and stuck to what I planned in the post. 

So, in the previous part, I detailed how to handle the technical side of the campaign (the recommendations don’t cover all aspects, just the basics). Now past that important stage, I’ll share the next ones of creating and launching my first-ever campaign (I can still feel my palms getting all sweaty after saying that, haha).

Well, let’s get down to it.

Making creatives 

Let me quickly remind you I was running the Adult Nutra offer [34731] Sex UP – AR in Argentina with a $11 payout on RichAds’s push ads. At the stage of choosing an offer, my manager Valeria from RichAds and I decided to use only the landing page. Then I selected it in the ready-made creative block on the offer’s page in AdCombo – [89254] Sex Up – BlueLand – AR. The tracking software I chose was Keitaro. 

Next, I had to come up with creatives (banners) that would attract users to my landing page in push notifications.

I liked the landing page as it wasn’t too explicit. However, it made the right impression through a combination of product information and feature images. With the landing page, you can choose either a mainstream approach – erotic yet restrained creatives that have a better chance of passing moderation in some traffic sources – or an adult approach. I think you don’t need to guess what the adult approach is – it’s about the creatives that may look like an adult film shot

Such creatives can be banned in some sources, or precisely, they won’t even pass moderation.

RichAds suggests emphasizing the result of using the product, regardless of the chosen approach for the creatives. For example, an affiliate can depict a satisfied man, or not only a man… well, we can remove the man from the picture leaving just his “part” to enhance CR. There’s nothing special here . Adult landing pages mustn’t be overloaded with information. Give a brief description of the product’s advantages, depict the results, and prove them with a block of reviews. 

My landing page fits these recommendations.

I would like to negotiate and confirm the approach to the creatives (banners) with the manager Valeria.

We decided initially to look at the popular creatives in the spy tool AdHeart (you can use it for free but with some restrictions). 

This one was among the popular (= converting) creatives at the time.

Push notifications usually include little text, so you need to quickly catch the eye of the target audience with keywords and short phrases that address both the pain and offer a solution to the problem. 

Everything is succinct in this creative: a result that evokes the problem (+4cm, super erection), a solution to the problem (new remedy), and the promise of a benefit (50% off – discount). By the way, I’ve heard that in Latin America, the discount mention brings a good CR. Where don’t they like discounts, though?

The idea is clear. However, I wanted to put some “beauty” in my creatives, so I took the image from the landing page and made the first creative-banner with it.

Picking images from landing/pre-landing pages is okay, just like matching the information on the landing page with the information in the ad. It’s not just an option but a must. For example, if your landing page states the “+5cm in a week” result, stating “+16cm in two days” in the push notification won’t be nice.

We’ll return to the text of the notifications later. Until then, let’s go on with the approach. Yes, I realized that looking at my initial creative, any experienced affiliate who worked with adult offers would burst out laughing “You’d better add more butterflies and violets, why not?!”. But I really had the idea of starting with something erotic and trying a mainstream approach with an adult flavor. Wait, it wouldn’t be long before my plan lost its erotic hint and took on the more familiar appearance of an effective adult campaign; and a video that people don’t reveal somewhere they want to remain decent human beings (surely outwardly).

Before going the depraved way of making creatives, I clarified whether it was possible to try mixing approaches within one campaign.

Valeria admitted that option but advised creating different campaigns in that case, i.e. copying the original campaign, but with creatives of the other type. Thus, I would have two campaigns with the same settings, but different approaches – one with adult and the other with mainstream one. That led to an A/B test. With its help, affiliates can see which approach has the best CR (although there’s no doubt about it).

The same goes for testing the efficiency of promotion with only a landing page or pre-landing + landing page. I’ve heard different suggestions. Valeria recommended me to focus on using the landing page only, and then test the other variant.

I abandoned the idea of using a couple since I decided to make the creative more explicit instead. I sent it to her as an example of my idea.

Valeria said that the creative was more likely to be classified as adult content that would push us to the adult approach. 

But RichAds’s moderation classed the creative as mainstream and advised us to use it with a pre-landing page to make more traffic sources available. 

We had already made the choice to start with the landing page only, so we shifted to the adult approach. Valeria supported it by saying that the adult approach would have higher performance with my offer. However, I will add one semi-mainstream creative.

Done and done. Let’s begin the creative process

To find references for the search of creatives, I considered the ads from AdHeart, banners from both the case studies I found myself and from the ones our affiliates sent to us. Also, I looked through ready-made landing and pre-landing pages for the offer in AdCombo.

I started with a simple Internet surfing. The savvier or advanced affiliates usually spend hours watching captivating videos and screening the most fitting moments (I know it, as I was an accidental viewer of our media buying team’s work once).

As my eyes were searching, I realized how few really interesting shots and perspectives I could find. After a few dozen minutes, I turned into a picky casting manager in the adult film industry. I got annoyed by the bored or sleepy facial expressions of p*rn actors, that didn’t show passion, and the actors were generally lame. Some images were of poor quality/with lack of illumination or awkward poses where couples were literally sleeping rather than enthusiastically “sleeping together.” 

I didn’t get any good shots of the actors alone, either. I was wondering what was the fastest way to find a creative: the ordinary search, or waiting until someone threw a di*k pic on Tinder, for example… No, no. Kept searching.

After a while, I continued my search by using various keywords related to the vertical of my offer: passionate sex, surprise by the size and even group sex (isn’t it possible with the super potency?). And it worked. By the way, when I came across faces (I got happy) I tried to choose the ones that looked local. That was the tip I discovered in a Dating case study that our partner sent us a long time ago. Showing the back bottom part is also a tip from the case. So, my landing page is well-designed. 

Having found all the pictures I needed, I photoshopped them (enhancing contrast, brightness). Then I followed up with texts for each, considering the images and the content of my landing page. By that moment, I had reviewed so much stuff that my mind was automatically searching for it in real life too (it wasn’t a pleasant feeling that seemed like deformation caused by many-year hard work in the niche, whoa!). Distraction was very welcome. 

Valeria recommended starting with 5 creatives. I need two sizes of each creative – preview and full (open) versions.

After a short time, my masterpieces were ready for a powerful user conversion:

№1

№2

№3

№4

№5

I didn’t use emojis in the texts. An A/B test can be made for this point. Remember that tests are the engine of progress in affiliate marketing?
I took the digits and periods from the landing page. In the creative above, I wrote about the natural composition, which was also specified as an advantage of the product on the landing page. And here I didn’t have to lie. Marketing experts have already proved that such statement increases credibility of the product. 

Creating a campaign in the tracking software 

Before launching a campaign, I needed to connect the affiliate network, the tracker, and the traffic source.

In the previous post, I explained how they interact with each other through postback links. 

In the same post, I showed how to tie the affiliate network (AdCombo) and the tracker (Keitaro) through the postback link.

Adding the offer

I preferred the simple way of driving traffic – via an affiliate link, not via API. This is an easy option for beginners, but not for those who are going to work with Facebook, for example. I didn’t work with it, so I freely copied the link on the offer’s page. That meant I used AdCombo’s server and domain, as well as ready-made creative from the page of the offer. It’s an easy-breezy thing for beginners: Came. Saw. And Started

It’s a little more difficult with Facebook, since affiliates had better use their own servers, that won’t be shared with anyone else, along with a new domain name to avoid bans. All in all, learning to work with the API is extremely useful for all affiliates, so if you want or need to, I recommend reading our article about API.

Now, I’ll guide you through the launching process from the very beginning.

I went to the offer’s page, picked a landing page. The link was updated, and I copied it:

In Keitaro, clicked on the Offers tab and create a new offer

Pasted the copied link from Network

Prev

1of1

Next

Done, the offer was created. I worked only with the link, with Network’s landing page through the affiliate link (redirection). I didn’t download the landing page and upload it to the tracker.

Adding offer to the campaign

Now the created offer (the original link from Network) must be attached to the campaign in the tracker – exactly to the domain name and server where the tracker is located. Then I’ll link the AdCombo’s domain/server to the domain/server where the tracker is located. The user will click on a new link containing the tracker’s domain (I’m about to create it).The conversion will be recorded at the tracker’s server (as Click ID data), and the user will then be redirected to the AdCombo side, to the landing page. The Click ID will then arrive at AdCombo, and the status on it will be sent to the tracker from Network via the Postback URL.

Clicked on Campaigns and created a new one

Add the created offer with the original link from Network o the flow

And copied the new link to the offer 

I could make sure that the link was active. I copied the link into the address bar and came to the landing page. A click appeared in the tracking software

Prev

1of1

Next

Adding a source

There is one last setting item left in the tracker – to add a traffic source.

The Sources tab. Created a new source there

Selected RichAds-Push among source templates.

Getting back to the campaign’s settings. Clicked on Source and added RichAds-Push

In Parameters there is a list of macros that are transmitted from Source.

I went to the next section – Integration and copied the link, that I then added to the campaign in the traffic source. It contained all the campaign’s data I mentioned above + macros that would be passed to the tracking software from the source.

Prev

1of1

Next

Finished! The settings in the tracker were complete. I needed to make sure that the postback URLs were working correctly, and the data would be delivered without errors.

Testing of Postback URLs

AdCombo + Keitaro

In my previous post, I set up a postback connection between the affiliate network and tracker (filled in the fields), so I went back to the same tab in AdCombo – Postbacks, to test the postback link. It’s real easy and quick.

Moving to the Testing section and selected my offer

Macros that had already been added to the link were marked in green. If you want to add and test additional ones, do it here. 

I sent a request and go to the Postback logs section to check whether the log appeared on the list

Success! I also checked the log list in the tracker and verified that the link worked. 

Prev

1of1

Next

RichAds + Keitaro

So, then I ensured that the postback between the tracker, and the traffic source also worked. 

I copied the link from the Integration section of the Campaigns tab in the tracker

And went to RichAds testing section of the Tracking tab to paste the link there

Prev

1of1

Next

Then I followed the link, placed an order (filled in the order form). Went back and clicked Refresh. If the test was successful, 1 conversion appeared.

Done! Got ready to start a campaign.

The order was quickly labeled as Trash (I filled in the form carelessly and also signed it Test). It was the right time for the launch!

Launching the campaign with RichAds

Let’s start with the most important issue – financial. I deposited $500 into my account and… said the promo code ADCOMBO to my manager and got a 10% (= $50) bonus as a true AdCombo affiliate (then it was even more pleasant to be an affiliate). 

However, the payment system had a nasty surprise for me. I warn you in advance: if possible, don’t use your payment card to make a deposit as the fee is a little bitey. It was $15.66 (3.13%) for me. Thanks to the bonus, I didn’t feel those unexpected expenses. 

Valeria suggested refilling the balance through Capitalist (no fee), Payoneer (a lower fee of 2%) or a crypto wallet. 

My start ad budget was $534.34

Got to creating a Push campaign.

My manager Valeria recommended targeting mobile devices (along with tablets) as mobile traffic would have more changes to bring a higher CR for my adult nutra offer.

CPA goal (the maximum limit of the price for a lead) is set based on the formula 50-80% of the payout. For setting CPC (bid), an affiliate must contact manager for the relevant bid regarding the campaign’s target. The system’s recommended bid is rough, since target settings don’t affect it.

My goal was to create a “draft” campaign: launch it and pause it at once, so that my manager could complete the rest of the campaign settings.

I prepared my campaign part.

Used temporarily the recommended CPC

That’s it. I created the campaign and paused it so that my manager could check everything and make the necessary adjustments.

Prev

1of1

Next

Valeria approved my part and set the latest relevant CPC, added white sublists (list of sources that are likely to bring conversions with the offers like mine (adult nutra) and automated rules. 
Automated rules form a blacklist, a list of sources that don’t provide satisfactory results.

Done! A thrilling moment. I was ready to go! It was just about evening, which meant the beginning of the day in Argentina.

Prev

1of2

Next

I submitted the campaign for moderation. If the moderation team has any issues with the campaign, it rejects the campaign, though with an explanation. Affiliates can contact their managers then, to find out the reasons and fix the troublesome element of the campaign to get it finally approved.

Hooray! Now I’m in! Rushing to celebrate it  toward adult & affiliate adventure!

My creatives could win real-time bidding ad auction with CPC value (bid) and % of CR. The higher the better.

My total spends including the ones from the previous posts are $541.08.

I received the first clicks! During a few days, I had to keep a watchful eye on my campaign. 

Shortly after the launch, we saw optimization variants.

You cannot be sure of anything without your own tests, even if someone else got a good result. To find out whether a pre-landing page could help increase the campaign’s CR or not, we were going to put it to the test.

A plan for further steps came up. In addition, the campaign got a little more challenging almost the next day. But nothing scares affiliates. They will solve any problems they may have…right?


I’ll tell you about all this and the results of the campaign in the next part, don’t miss it!


I wish you successful campaigns and a smooth moderation process until then!

Artificial intelligence is an incredible breakthrough in the development of technologies. You can come across many reviews and helpful AI tools lists for any need on various forums, blogs, and socials, including ours. 

In this article, we want to take a closer look at artificial intelligence. What is AI? How does it learn? How is AI different from a neural network? Where to search for AI services? And finally –  how is it useful for affiliate marketing?

Let’s overview it step by step.

Google Trends statistics

Why is it impossible to ignore the topic of artificial intelligence? Since it’s so relevant at present and the statistic speaks for itself:

According to Google Trends, the number of “artificial intelligence” queries has increased by a quarter in a year and continues to rise. 

Of course, your query also has been counted by the all-seeing Google. 

Сan you explain the difference between a neural network and artificial intelligence? And what is AI in general? 

– Hmmm… are they programs that generate texts, codes, and pics? 

– Well, not really. 

How is AI different from neural networks?

Artificial Intelligence (in the broad sense) is a part of computer science that deals with solving intelligent problems. In the narrow sense, it’s a technology that allows a system to perform creative tasks that require thinking. Only a human could do that before.

Neural networks are one of the ways to implement AI. They simulate analytical actions, i.e. work and learn on the principle of the human brain.  

It’s also worth mentioning a few other crucial terms.

Machine learning is one of the methods of artificial intelligence. Machine learns certain algorithms for specific tasks. In other words, it processes the input data quickly. 

Deep learning is a method of machine learning. It uses neural networks to learn and simulate decision-making, just like humans study! At this level, programming is no longer needed. The system learns itself and gradually improves the results. 

Examples: 

Machine learning made it possible to create feeds with individual recommendations in social networks based on purchases and searches. Someone is offered weight loss products, and someone is offered rejuvenation products. 

And neural networks can define which products collect positive feedback or negative ones. Deep learning with neural networks can extract important characteristics from responses and analyze the emotional depth of answers.

To avoid possible confusion, here is a schema of the relationship between all the terms:

How do neural networks learn?

Let’s talk more about the learning process of neural networks. It’s so fascinating! 

The term “neural network” completely resembles its biological counterpart –  the human brain’s neural network, as it mimics the brain’s functioning and learning process.

Similarly to humans, a computer neural network consists of neurons – special computing units. All neurons are structured and collected in layers. When data is input into the neural network, it gradually passes through all of them. Each neuron is responsible for its specific parameter. And remarkably these parameters can change, depending on the obtained results, in order to gradually minimize the percentage of errors relative to the reference. The ability to gradually improve outcomes forms the learning process.

The fact that the basis of neural network learning consists of mistakes is incredible! Humans go the same way.

Here is a clear infographic of how a neural network learns:

But there is a feature. To achieve fine outcomes and reduce errors as much as possible, neural networks require a much larger number of training patterns than other types of machine learning. You may need millions of examples that consider a variety of parameters. Only in this way, a neural network can learn and produce quality results. 

Let’s move on from theory to practice.

Where to search AI services for work? 

We could make an extensive list of AI services, there are many available options now. Moreover, your tasks can be very different. So, we’ll give you a hint about where to look for AI tools. And then, depending on your needs, preferable ratings, and prices, you decide on what suits you the best. 

Here are a few directories for exploring:

• FUTUREPEDIA – https://www.futurepedia.io/ – 925 AI services in 49 categories. Updated daily;

• AI TOOLS DIRECTORY – https://aitoolsdirectory.com/ – search by category. You can easily understand whether it’s a paid service or a free one; 

• AI TOOLS – https://www.aitools.directory/ – directory of the best AI services. You can find tools for a wide range of tasks from removing background noise during a meeting to writing web copy based on a selected tone.

If three options aren’t enough for you, try to search for the “ai tools directory” to find more AI tools directories. 

And in case you found something very cool – please share the link in the comments! 

How are AI services useful for affiliates?

There is no need to explain that time is the most valuable resource. Optimization of all work processes is what both beginners and experienced affiliates strive for. 

Services with AI can do a lot! 

They can write marketing texts and generate text prompt-based pictures, even if the request is completely unrealistic. 

They can even create pics of non-existent (new) faces and people! 

AI services will help you write code in any programming language, even if you’ve never learned it. 

They’ll enhance a poor-quality photo, generate a video based on text prompt, and enhance the sound of your voice as if it was recorded on a microphone. 

There are a countless number of services for all needs. We recommend testing at least one! 

Speaking about tests. We are making an article with a practical experiment. It aims at finding out how AI services performed when being used in real ad campaigns. 

If you already have such an experience, feel free to tell us about it in the comments! 

Сan’t spend your budget on such tests? Stay tuned! We’ll write about the results very soon! 

Wish you the wise use of your time and budget! 

See you soon

Hey there!

Are you still a superhero newbie in the AdCombo CPA Universe? Then our next video is for you! We’ve published the second video tutorial in a series of videos guiding new affiliates on how to navigate in AdCombo platform and launch a campaign.

In the previous video, we talked about basic settings, the offer list and overviewed the interface.

Today, you’ll be going through the stages of creating a campaign and setting up a tracking URL.

Enjoy the video and learn to earn! 

Video 2. How to start working with AdCombo: Creating a campaign & Tracking link.

Hi there, super affs!

That’s PR-fire Vi again. Let’s give my affiliate experiment a follow-up! In today’s post, I’m gonna tell you about the offer, creatives, and traffic source I’ve chosen for my first ad campaign.

Also, I’ll share some tips on selecting a proper vertical/offer/creative material/traffic source for beginners that I’ve found out while looking for the best choice that will work for me. Some observations were pulled  from my experience in the niche. 

Choosing a traffic source

I’m going to start affiliate marketing with RichAds, our longtime partner, with whom I had my first marketing collaboration a couple of years ago. Since then, we’ve been united by our activities together: webinars, articles, mentions, expert opinions and ideas. Moreover, this summer we’ve met and had a lot of fun at AW Europe Barcelona! And now there is a new venture on the way: with their active support and training, I’ll start working with push advertising. I’m sure it’ll be fascinating!

Tip: A source of traffic should be selected depending on the kind of offer you are going to promote. If your choice is Adult, then you have to forget about many native advertising networks; and it’ll take you a lot of effort to pass moderation on social medias (creativity parade usually begins here). As an alternative, you can opt for networks that focus on adult traffic.

Beauty, weight loss, and anti-aging products sell nicely in sources where you can visually show the effects of their use, such as TikTok. There, you can advertise products for free, but longer, or you can pay for the ad and get results faster. Native advertising and organic traffic are also suitable for such products. Note, in this case you’ll have to work carefully on the content and text of the ad. As for organic traffic, there is a need to thoroughly select keywords, as well as get rid of irrelevant ones. However, you can try to do this without spending money.
But it’s likely that you’ll have to use paid services to search for keywords (for greater efficiency). Native advertising is a costly source.

So, newbies can try push advertising or advertising in social networks (it’ll be your first strength test), anyway, I recommend:

• Studying the allowed products and the ad platform’s policies;
  
  
• Making white/black lists to create your own recipe for effective combinations of vertical/offer + advertising platform + advertising format (if several);
  
  

• Communicating with managers of both affiliate network and advertising network (if any). They are interested in helping you, and also have experience and statistics, which will help you make the right choice.
  

Choosing a vertical

It’s better for a beginner to get in contact with their managers, so that actions can be more structured. You can search for information yourself, collect opinions, but still discuss them with your manager before doing something. 

* Beware, a lyrical aside is coming. * If you do not know how to swim, but want to learn, you go to the pool. Probably the one with an instructor. But when you get there, you start splashing around in the water, because you’ve read something about swimming, but it still doesn’t work. The surprised instructor is standing next to you offering help, but instead, you completely ignore him/her, harming your progress. There is a more productive option: you can tell him/her about your desired plan and then together build a strategy for your learn-how-to-swim goal. The instructor won’t only show you how to stay afloat, but also keep you from drowning if something goes wrong. 

The principle of the manager’s work is exactly the same: both the instructor and the manager want to bring you to your goal. Everyone benefits from it. 

A simple thought that is often lost in minds. 

But that’s exactly what I followed. To find out what vertical would work for me, I requested the top verticals from my manager Valeria at RichAds, who was helping me learn the basics of promoting a push campaign. At the same time, I asked her to share the most popular GEOs in RichAds. Yes, it’s possible to try something non-trivial, but for a newbie it’s better to start with something simple, complicating goals step by step.

Among the options offered, I liked Adult Nutra. They recently dropped restrictions on all Adult, so there is another opportunity to get adult traffic. 

The only thing left was to select a GEO: Nepal, Pakistan, Romania, or Argentina.

Selecting an offer 

In order to decide on the GEO and the offer, I turned to the managers of AdCombo. We found a suitable offer in Argentina  – [34731] Sex UP – AR, pills for potency. 

That’s how I found my first offer, using recommendations from two managers.

But before we move on to the next stage, I want to draw your attention to the mistakes that beginners make when picking out an offer. 

Here, I can’t avoid mentioning the most important mistake new affiliates make at the beginning – expectations. There’s no offer that can bring profit without effort by the affiliate. Every campaign needs to be handled. And yes, if the affiliate doesn’t get a money pool, like the one Scrooge McDuck has, after launching a campaign, that’s OKAY. There’s no sense in expecting that as soon as you launch a campaign, even for a cool offer, a wave of money will flood your account balance; and by the evening there will be so much money there that someone on Forbes’ list will get nervous. Affiliate marketing requires consistent steps, patience, and continuous learning. Even top guys have to learn something, because the affiliate marketing niche is very dynamic, so what can I say about newbies?

What offer isn’t suitable for a beginner

• Affiliates shouldn’t pick an offer, focusing only on a high payout. Such offers most likely require either a great experience or a budget. But even if a beginner has money, it’s better to spend it sensibly, step by step. However, you must shell out money for tests of sources, creatives and offers, but within limits. Yes, you have to set them, though;
  
  
• Coming almost as an extension: you don’t have to pick offers for Tier-1 countries. If only you have a huge budget to waste and won’t regret about it;
  
  
  
• Affiliate needs to find a balance between the demand for the offer and its over saturation with traffic. A manager can help to find it. I don’t suggest that a newbie chooses a specific sub-vertical, as the offer may not be noticed. You shouldn’t take a very popular offer with enormous competition, either, since a beginner is unlikely to be able to compete equally;
  
  
  
• A little more about competition. It is not advised to select an offer by high EPC – Earnings Per Click, i.e. the average earnings per click from all sources of all affiliates working with the offer (the indicator can be found in the Offer list in affiliate network). Therefore, the higher it is, the higher is the chance that the offer is oversaturated with traffic and the newbie will face serious competition.
  

Deciding upon a creative

Now all that’s left is to get the creatives (so far, the landing and pre-landing page) and the first stage of preparation is over. 

The easiest way is to use the affiliate network’s ready-made landing/pre-landing pages. If you want a more complicated way – you can pick the ready-made page and modify it a little.

I decided to start by taking the ready-made AdCombo’s materials and chose what I liked. My goal was to find seductiveness and marketing value in the creative material. It should evoke the right mood and desire with its content, but also be informative. The user, moving to the order form, should understand why they need the product, and why exactly that one. 

I preferred the landing page – [89254] Sex Up – BlueLand – AR and took it.

Then I wrote to Valeria (the RichAds manager) and asked her to check the page for violations of RichAds advertising policy. Yeah! It passed the check. 

We decided to use it alone. Although Valeria also suggested that we could test two options: pre-landing + landing pages and solely landing page to compare results afterwards. 

Tip: This is a good option to determine your converting strategy. Tests are always a good idea. To get accurate data, you can also do A/B testing with different landing and pre-landing pages, banners and find the best pair(s) for yourself. This works for those who want to be a little independent in the beginning (although even the creative materials fro tests can be chosen together with the manager).                

An easier way is to ask the manager for the best creative pairs (either landing + pre-landing pages or a landing page only). But keep in mind that more than one affiliates will use such creative materials. In general, this is true for ready-made creatives for the offers too. But I wouldn’t dare to make changes to the landing page now.

By the way, what to do if you don’t like anything from the suggested creative materials of the affiliate network, and you don’t have your own ideas either…

How to get a creative?

• You can look up the idea and structure in the creatives offered by the affiliate network, but make your own original version (or amend one of the affiliate network);
  
  

AdCombo has a built-in translation service that adapts text for creatives into any language. The text is translated by native speakers, not a machine. At a discount. So there shouldn’t be any linguistic barriers or awkwardness;

• Use a spy tool to do the same thing, but to look up other affiliates. There you can also find examples of banners for advertisements;
  
  
  

Here are some free spy services:

1. Affbank’s spy tool
   
   
2. Meta Ad Library (you can also see the campaigns that were approved).
   
   

• Ask your manager for assistance.
  
  

Tip: When designing or refining your creative, studying the preferences of GEO residents is useful. It helps either emphasize the landing page or design the pre-landing page in the style of popular sites. For example, it’s better to pick photos of GEO residents or other nationalities that are often used in images in that GEO, if there are such.

It’ll also be possible to find out whether it’s necessary to highlight a natural composition or discounts. There may be an interest in the natural composition among Saudi Arabians, who use halal cosmetics, or Indonesians, who prefer traditional medicine and value natural ingredients.

That’s all I can share at this point of my preparation. Do you have any ideas or recommendations to add to my notes? I’d be happy to read them in the comments! 

In my next post, I’ll talk about setting up and launching a campaign. See you around!

What was your first affiliate experience like? What did you learn from it?