AdCombo launches its own native advertising network – AdCombo Native (and gives bonuses! See details below).

Daily updated list of verified sources, top up directly from the AdCombo cabinet, traffic on demand, ranking creatives for more traffic, as well as detailed statistics, clear interface and only quality traffic that will reduce your testing costs!

All AdCombo affiliates will have the opportunity to get the most out of native advertising – because we have not only tested all the sources, but also selected the best ones, so all you have to do is create campaigns, launch them and enjoy the profits!

We know how much routine is involved in being an affiliate and how many things you have to control on a daily basis to get into the black or maintain a stable volume! That’s why we try to make the affiliate part easier, so that you can focus on the things that really matter.

For example, we recently updated our Telegram bot and a few months ago we started working with a partner virtual card service – Combo.Cards. Next up is our own convenient native advertising platform, AdCombo Native.

Why AdCombo Native?

1. Traffic sold on a CPM model. A professional tool for media buyers that provides motivation to increase volume
   
2. Daily automatically updated lists of verified and converting sources (whitelists) in addition to your own whitelists that you can create in the system. The team selects and tests the list of sources for specific GEOs and flags the best ones in the system.
   
   Также, по запросу, предоставляем качественный трафик для адалтных кампаний;
   
3. Ranking of high volume creatives. Users are shown the moderators’ rating for each creative with erotic or obscene content. Based on the rating, you can adjust creatives and get more traffic in the future.
   
4. You can top up your account from $10 using various payment methods, including Vaer or cryptocurrency from $1000.
   
   It is also possible to add funds directly from your AdCombo account without any commission. Just a few clicks;
   
5. Quickly add traffic for practically any GEO;
   
6. Prompt moderation, 24/7 support and a personal manager.

Is native ads a lucrative type of traffic?

Naturally, it goes particularly well with Nutra Offers.

Also:

• Native advertising ‘gently’ promotes the product and is able to overcome users’ banner blindness and annoyance with, for example, social media ads;
• Users are 18% more likely to purchase a product after interacting with native ads;
• Lookalike audiences for native ads increase conversion rates by three times, while reducing the cost per conversion by at least 35%.

Let’s take a quick tour of the Grid interface and create our first campaign.

One important point: only users registered with AdCombo can access the AdCombo personal account. It is with the account details that you can access the AdCombo Native personal cabinet, through the site or from the link.

New Campaign

The section includes several blocks for step-by-step campaign creation. Let’s start with the main one.

Targeting

Enter the name of the campaign and immediately select the type of traffic you need for the promo offer.

Next, you need to select the GEO in which the offer will run.

Select the language and devices we are going to target.

To make targeting more precise, you can also select your operating system, browser, and even IP range.

Schedule

Here you select the campaign start time as well as the end time.

White & Black lists

System white lists

Proper targeting is the key to campaign effectiveness. To set up the right targeting, you can use the system’s proven whitelists for a specific vertical or GEO (the lists are constantly updated).

You can also put a limit on targeting by creating a blacklist, or your own whitelist.

Bids and Limits

Now it’s time for the most important part of creating a campaign – setting the spending limit for the campaign.

Here you need to specify the total budget for the campaign, the spending limit per day and the approximate number of ad impressions per day. You will also need to set the cost per thousand impressions of the campaign ad.

Once you have filled in all the fields in the blocks, click the Confirm button and send the campaign to convert the local CA.

To top up your personal account, go to the:

Funds

There are two ways to top up your account:

1. Fill in the form to top up your personal account. The amount can be selected from those suggested above or entered freely. After confirming the request, the user will be redirected to the page for entering the payment details;
2. Enter the amount to be deducted from the personal account balance in AdCombo.

New creative

Creatives are at the heart of every campaign. To create them on the AdCombo Native platform, go to the right tab and proceed to the first step.

Creative Info

Select the campaign to which you want to add the creative. Then enter the link it will lead to. Right in this field you can add sabaccounts to the link.

Load creative

Next you will need to create the text for the creative and upload the image of the creative itself.

Budget

Set budget limits for a particular creative: the total amount you are willing to spend on its promotion, the limit per day and the approximate number of impressions per day.

Enable or disable automatic launch after moderation and decide what to do next: add another creative, copy the current one (for example, to make a small change and A/B test), or finish filling out the form and save the settings.

Statistics

After launching a campaign, you can use this tab to view detailed information about the campaign or creatives and analyse the effectiveness of the settings.

Campaigns or creatives can be filtered by status and additional criteria can be set for analysis.

If you are running campaigns in different countries, you can view statistics for specific GEOs.

Easily view campaign or creative data for a defined time period.

Bonuses

And now we come to the best part – the bonuses! Affiliates who decide to test the new platform will receive several bonuses at once!

For the first $500 spend, we will add $100 bonus to your account.

Not enough? We’ve got more!

Get $50 Bonus for every $1000 you spend.

*Funds cannot be withdrawn or cashed out, only spent on advertising on the platform.

The bonus is available as part of a limited time promotion. It starts from the moment the announcement is published and is valid until the end date of the promotion. The exact end date of the promotion will be announced 10 days in advance.

Stay tuned! In the meantime, there’s still time to make the most of your campaign.

In the meantime, we wish you strong profits from native traffic and maximum profits with AdCombo Native!

Affiliate from Bolivia got $2500 in her first campaign without asking for special conditions! She also gained a ROI of 51%!

Don’t you believe us? Well, you can check it out it for yourself:

We would like to present to you the first case study we received from the Bolivian affiliate!

Note: If you know Spanish, you can also watch a live case study review here

We are sure that her first-person written experience will be very interesting and useful for you: even if you are a beginner or a real CPA professional.

Introduction

Offer: 33796 Matcha Suri – MX
GEO: Mexico
Period: 03/14/2023 to 08/16/2023
Landing: [93217] Matcha Suri – Leaves (one screen) – MX
Traffic Source: Facebook Ads
Revenue: $ 7367.50
Spending: $ 4,864.87
Profit: $2,502.63
ROI: 51,4%

Preparation

I selected this offer and traffic source because of a video I saw on Adcombo’s YouTube channel.
I used the landing page [93217] Matcha Suri – Leaves (one screen) – MX because I found it eye-catching and easy for my audience to understand it.

Realization

I tested 5 creatives at the start to see which one works best, taking into account Facebook’s advertising policies to avoid being banned. 

In the end, the one that worked best and brought the most potential customers was:

The other 4 creatives were:

More ads used in the campaign:

Technical details

• In order to find the potential clients I set up a Pixel to obtain the results that are shown in Mexico.

• I downloaded the landing from AdCombo, pasted the Facebook pixel and then uploaded the landing to my hosting with our custom domain.
  
• I rotated the creatives in different campaigns.

• Age: 25 to 55 without interest to test Facebook’s artificial intelligence.
  

Facebook campaign

Real numbers!!!

Conclusions

The campaign became a real success: since the very first day we got profit that was equal or higher than the determined budget of $30 per day.

7367.5  (Revenues)

–

4864.87 (Spendings)

—————————-

Profit: $2,502.63

At present I do not promote this offer but it still has a great potential.

I hope that my case study will inspire others to launch their marketing campaigns with AdCombo.

Best wishes!!!

Working on your own can never be easy. So, when you do CPA-marketing alone and make profit it is really a great achievement!  When you manage to accomplish all of this on the first try – it is a serious bid for victory!

AdCombo thanks its solo-affiliate from Bolivia for her detailed story and courage to make experiments and fruitful cooperation with us. We wish her a big profit and more CPA wins!
AdCombo Team

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.

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!

The most important indicator of effective cooperation for an advertiser is the number of buyouts among confirmed orders of an affiliate.

Buyout, or a completed sale, is when the customer pays for the product on delivery.

Although on the COD model affiliates are paid after the lead confirms the order by phone, the percentage of buyouts from these orders shows how effective the cooperation is.

So what can affect the buyout rate? Right targeting!

Sometimes finding the right targets is like walking around a playfield with dynamites and chests of gold.

But what if we tell you we have a map with all the chests marked?

We’ve requested information from some of our leading advertisers and created a map with the best buyout zones to target.

For now, it’s available only for some offers in LATAM. 

Usage instructions and the map are ready for you on the page https://promo.adcombo.com/map/ 

Get the doubled advantages from one campaign!

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!

Want to be a profit-catcher, but some of your orders keep flying to the Trash statistics column?

To reduce such unpleasant situations, we’re sharing the post that has been co-created with our trusted advertiser in Latin America.

Taking Peru as an example, he explains the structure of the country’s administrative units that will help you fine-tune your targeting, along with one of the main problems of Trash orders: wrong numbers. Spoiler: He also advises on how to avoid this.

The content will be especially useful for those who create landing pages on their own and drive traffic to offers in Peru yet get confused by the targeting. It also will be surely useful for those who are in search of a new converting GEO for Nutra.

Enjoy the post and hold a Peruvian profit-bird tighter! 

Did you like the content with recommendations by the advertiser? Give us your likes, so we’d keep on with such posts

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

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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

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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.

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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. 

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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

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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.

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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.

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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!

Hi there again!

Since my recent post, I’ve had a few affiliate discoveries that I’ll be sharing in notes-posts. Yeah, like a curious young naturalist, I wasn’t just curious about setting up my campaign but was also careful to notice important and useful things. 

Now tell me, did you read “naturalist” as “NUTRALIST”? Alright, I’ll come with a confession first – that’s how I mistakenly spelled the word the first time, until I noticed its odd look. Yes, as it often happens, I got affiliate fever even before the campaign was launched, and I started to see many things a little differently. The new experience affected me faster than I thought it would. I described it in more detail here & here. 

Usually, the “fever” becomes more intense and turns into an affiliate disease after a while. For example, when you mentally place a porn shot or a photo of a slim girl in your creative, or estimate any amount of money in equivalent sales got on an offer.

But when you wake up at night thinking that you have forgotten to set a daily spend limit or to check a risky campaign, you sweat and shudder a little, then it’s an affiliate disease. So far I can’t say whether it mainly happens to newbies or to more experienced affiliates as well. Here is my experience: I looked through statistics and found +2 sales, and my account’s balance was higher. Felt happy. I thought “oh, they’re previous holds, great!”. But after a couple of moments, I realized that it was a dream. Got upset. I guess it’s still a fever yet

– Wait, sales, holds…you haven’t even started yet! 

Not really. Once you start affiliate marketing, the niche pulls you in like a vortex. I was able to build a campaign and I started it even quicker than I thought, I could barely take notes! And now when I have taken a break, it’s time to begin talking about my daring AdVenture (even though it’s not over).

Well, last time I decided upon the offer, traffic source, and landing page. 

But it got * spoiler * a little more interesting (and a little more difficult) after that. Today I’ll share the important part of the launch for newbies – the technical part (I call it so). Do not panic, there won’t be any digging in the HTML code, and we won’t cover the API either – only the basics.

A movie starts with a script, while an affiliate dramatic thriller (I consider affiliate marketing to belong to this genre) starts with a hand tremor setting up a tracking tool, postback, buying a domain, and finding a server…. Basically, with everything that will ensure you’re in control of your campaign. And with what will give you peace of mind that the leads won’t make a “wrong turn” on the way to the affiliate network and change your affiliate movie genre to horror. 

I’ll begin with the main thing. With tracking. This is the software that collects and processes data on the advertising campaign for further analysis and optimization. I’ll explain more about it later.

Getting a tracking tool

– Is this necessary?

Highly recommended. This is an important analytical tool that helps you optimize your campaign, conclude on A/B test results, and conveniently monitor multiple campaigns/offers, creatives, and sources within one application.

The tracker has a lot of different settings to tailor it to your needs. It has good traffic-splitting functionality and detailed reports. I was also happy about its low price. I’ve heard about it a lot. I also know that many of our partners were using it. So I had thought about it at first, but decided to analyze the market anyway. Finally, I opted for it. They say if one works with gray offers and small volumes, then Keitaro would be an excellent choice.

– How to choose a tracking software?

With your heart and slightly with your mind And surely by looking into your wallet. All trackers are alike and perform similar tasks. When choosing, you can either focus on the prices and the availability of certain types of reports, or some kind of special functionality for your vertical, such as clo@king. Most tracking software offers a free trial period, so you can make sure that it is convenient and suitable to use. Something like that. Oh, wait a second, though. There is one more thing to consider – the type of the tracking tool.

Keitaro is a self-hosted tracking software, it’s installed on the user’s server. This means that the user (me and you) must buy server space / a server to host the tracking software. Yep, I went the hard way. I like adventures.

Let’s go into more detail.

There are self-hosted tracking software or server-based trackers installed on your private/purchased server, and there is a cloud tracking software that stores data on cloud servers. This type doesn’t require any extra actions from the user. The server can be leased from the tracking software company. The tracking software application is already running on a server – everything is handled for you.

You buy only a software application with the server-based tracking software, whereas you buy the software application + a server with a cloud tracker.

Server-based trackers allow only the user to access the data. Employees of the tracking software company don’t have any data access. Thus, the user has to monitor the server and optimize it, if necessary. 

For cloud trackers, the company’s team maintains the server. The user’s data can then be accessed by employees in this way.

As for security, I should mention that by choosing a virtual server for the server-based tracker, we are approaching a cloud solution, which means that we aren’t alone in having access to the data. Well, come on, who cares about valuable information (besides affiliates themselves) about the number of conversions coming from the creative that depicts something other than Pinocchio’s nose, something that got enlarged without lying.

So the data security issue can be crossed out, but how to figure out what type of tracking software is the best choice?

Cloud trackers can process a huge amount of information and expand resources (for an extra charge) at any time, quickly and easily. Cloud hosting is distributed across multiple servers in different locations around the globe, so that the country of the offer doesn’t really matter, as from any point the data will be processed rapidly. And, if a server fails, it will quickly redirect the request to a working one. Data backup is provided. But usually, cloud tracking software is more expensive than server-based trackers. If you have a large volume of traffic / many GEOs to test (which is common among beginners), and you don’t want to economize, then opt for cloud-tracking software.

Server-based tracking software requires additional time to learn the installation process and to complete the installation on the server, which you need to choose and pay for additionally. Increasing capacity involves changing the plan, which will take some time. The server must be located closer to the country of the offer to ensure fast data processing. If the server fails, you’ll need to wait for its recovery, so that the landing page / site’ll be back to its operational state. In case an affiliate works with one GEO and needs to save money, the server-based tracking software will be a good solution.

It seems like cloud tracker is better, but I won’t say so. One can select the best variant based on one’s goals and preferences.

– How does the tracking software work, by the way?

The tracker, or more accurately, its virtual server, is an intermediate element between the source of traffic and the affiliate network:

(affiliate network) – (tracker) – (traffic source) 

To start promoting an offer, you need to copy the affiliate link in the affiliate network and then add it to the tracker, where it’ll get a new appearance. The URL of the server where the tracking software application is hosted will be implemented into it. The new link is placed in a traffic source:

(tracking link from affiliate network) —> (tracker) —> (tracking link from affiliate network) + (URL of the server with tracker) —> (traffic source)

After clicking on the link, the user passes through the server with the tracker, which records data according to the macros (parameters), and is redirected to the URL of the affiliate link (where the landing page is located).

(users) —>  (URL of the server with tracker) —> (tracking link from affiliate network)

 

The engine of the tracker is the postback URL, which “ties in” the tracker with an affiliate network and a traffic source. With this link, the tracker displays conversions from the traffic source, as well as their statuses from the affiliate network.

Let’s go into more detail. Postback is a HTTPS request (my case) to a server via postback URL, which is entered in the settings of the tracking software.

The Postback URL within the tracker includes parameters (macros) for recording and sending data from the traffic source to the tracker and from the tracker to the affiliate network. And back respectively. Thus, we set up two postbacks (trsffic source + tracker and tracker + affiliate network). All the statistics that we see in the tracking software and the network, is formed from the information received through the parameters of postback request. 

The key parameter of the postback URL is Click ID. It’s made up of random letters and numbers generated by the traffic source. This is a record of the user (click) that visits the landing page. Click ID is sent from the traffic source to the affiliate network via the tracker. If the user is converted, the conversion will be assigned to this Click ID. Then, it’ll come back via postback request from the network to the tracker with an updated status – sale, hold or trash (we’ll talk about this later). The conversion will also appear in the traffic source.

(affiliate network) <—> (postback URL1 ) + (tracker) + (postback URL 2) <—> (traffic source) 

I’ll tell you about setting up this wonderful link later. 

Meanwhile, I signed up for Keitaro and got a trial period.

Choosing a server

First, you find out what requirements the tracker has for the server. Keitaro has the following requirements:

OS: CentOS 8 or 9 Stream

KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) – software for virtualization on Linux

Minimal available memory: 2GB RAM.

Keitaro simplifies the job for its clients. In the tracker, you can select the necessary settings that will be used to match the desired server provider. However, there are only a few of them, and none of them attracted me. I’ll buy a server in DigitalOcean. It was recommended to me, and after checking the price and characteristics of its servers, I deemed it suitable.

So, the basic rule of buying a server – to buy it as close as possible to the country in which the offer will be promoted. 

My country is Argentina. Let’s go.

I’m not going to buy a physical server. I need a virtual server/virtual machine (VPS – virtual private server) – this is a small part of one physical server that operates like the PC, being a software computer. The physical server can have many virtual servers (machines). RAM and other resources of one physical server are allotted between all the machines.

My tracking software application will be hosted on one of such leased virtual servers.

I bought a server in San Francisco, near Argentina.

I got ready for further setup, but… after searching for Keitaro in the Marketplace, I found its preset settings. That’s what I’m going to choose.

I pick the minimal RAM and resources, it’s enough for a beginner.

Next, it is advisable to create SSH (Secure Shell) – a key for a secure connection to the server. This is a special code that allows the remote computer to identify the user.

A secure connection is better than an unsecured one. Well, then let’s get the key.

Actually, it is a pair of keys – a private key and a public one. The private one is kept by the user and the public one is recorded in the authorized_keys file of the server.

Here (Windows) and here (MacOS / Linux) you can find detailed instructions on how to generate them.

The private key needs to be saved to my computer in a secret place, but not the way students usually hide their adult videos. Easily. The file requires an additional password for secure access to the private key at the local computer level. 

I don’t need the extras, so I click on the button to create a virtual machine. Here is my first purchase, $12.

Voila, the virtual server with the tracker installed is ready, and the IP is available! I happily click the Start button.

I logged into the tracker. That’s not the end of the line yet. I entered the tracker via *IP*/admin, an unsecured HTTP connection. The reason is that I have a server, without a name – a domain name. So, the next steps are to make the connection to the server secure (HTTPS) –  1) buy and point the domain to an IP address of the server; 2) get an SSL certificate for the domain name.

I’ll give you details below.

Choosing a domain name

Domain name is a text key, the address that will provide access (direct) to the server with the tracking software application / website. The domain name for the server with the tracker must be used only for purposes of tracking. 

The primary reasons to buy a domain name:

• Secure https connection is enabled. In this way, the site (to which the domain name leads) will no longer seem suspicious and unreliable. Affiliate links will be generated with a mention of the domain name for the tracker. Operating via https means a reduced risk of blocking by users’ browsers and traffic loss;
  
  
  
• The possibility to drive traffic to a good-looking address (link) without a tracker identifier. For instance, if you work with your own landing page or host one of the affiliate networks (downloaded from the network and published to your server under your domain name). P.S.: I won’t do so. The first reason seems motivational to me.

Choose any domain name registrar and buy the cheapest variant available. You can do it for $2. That’s what I did. Another purchase for me.

Btw, if you are advised to buy an SSL certificate right on the website of the domain name registrar, hold on your click on the “Buy” button. If the domain will be used for a tracking software application (as in my case), the tracker will issue the certificate for free (!) after connecting the server to the domain.

Pointing domain name to a server 

I go to the site where I bought the domain. I need the DNS tab. DNS (Domain Name System) is a domain name system. It is a database of domain names and IPs. One of its functions is to link domain names to the IP addresses of servers. For more info about DNS, you can check out an interesting article by my colleague. I highly recommend that you read it if you are interested in learning more about the domain name hierarchy, choosing a hosting company, and creating a reliable domain name.

Domain registration companies usually have free DNS servers. I’ll pick them. Now I need to include the IP address of my server in A record of DNS server (host records). I add @ to the subdomain field (reminds you of e-mail?) and then put the IP address in the other field.

I go to the tracker and click on the last tab at the top “Domains”,

And enter the domain name I bought:

Almost done, but we aren’t at the end point yet.

I need to wait (affiliates have much patience) until the DNS servers are updated, which can take up to 24 hours. But 10-20 minutes are always enough. And they were enough for me. 

Got it! The domain name has been bound to the server where the tracker is hosted. The SSL certificate is now created, along with the HTTPS protocol. So, the connection with the server is secure.

By the way, the tracker can now be accessed through the domain name: *domain name*/admin.

Postback setup

I reached the important stage. I told you about the postback at the beginning of this post. 

Thanks to the postback URL, I (and all the affiliates around the world) can receive statuses from the affiliate network, as well as information on clicks and leads from the traffic source. That info facilitates understanding the audience, its preferences, and ways to optimize the campaign. 

I’ll share with you the instructions on setting up the postback URL.

It won’t take more than 5 minutes to set it up, time me.

Keitaro has a ready-made template for AdCombo, simply select the network on the list of templates in the Affiliate Networks tab:

Here’s the link! Now I go to the Postbacks tab of my AdCombo account. 

I paste the link in three fields to monitor the status of leads, holds, and order cancellations (rejects).

Leads are users who filled out an order form and left the phone number for the call center agents.

Holds are the same as above, but later the leads did not pick up the phone and confirm the order.

Canceled orders (rejects) – leads who canceled the order over the phone.

The last two definitions haven’t caused a tingle anywhere?

Then tick the checkbox to use these postback settings for all campaigns in the future (most likely I won’t need to generate a different postback link for the offer). 

I save it. 

A little later, when I create a campaign, it’ll be necessary to check whether the postback link transmits data from the affiliate network to the tracking software application, in other words, to check whether the link works properly. 

In the meantime, I’ll write down the cost of Keitaro’s monthly plan – $27.08.

Total costs:

1. Virtual server for a month – $12

2. Domain name – $2

3. Tracking software for a month – $27.08

Total: $41.08

Yet the biggest expenses lie ahead. When I’ll be buying ads in a traffic source. That’s classic.

My notes for the tech stage are nearing the end. I go on writing with one hand while waving the other at the screen. Soon, I’ll tell you about my selection of creatives, campaign creation, and its launch on the push ads of RichAds. As always, you’ll be supplied with useful deets.

Wish you an easy campaign launch and a lotta payouts!

Wanted to try AI services, but decided not to risk your budget? We did it for you! 

One media buyer agreed to take part in an experiment and launch a real ad campaigns using the pics and texts generated by neural networks. 

He shared all the results in detail. In the end, he finally answered the question – is it possible to run profitable ad campaigns using artificial intelligence? (spoiler: the result may seem surprising).

We’re also going to tell you about all the pitfalls and features of AI services in this article.

Well, let’s pass the word to our affiliate!

Campaign’s info: 

Period: 1 week

Offer: 34461 Duston Gel – CO

GEO: Colombia

Vertical: Health

Traffic source: push ads.

Let’s briefly overview some fitting neural networks, and then select the best neural network to work with.

Step one: Choosing the neural network. A brief overview with pros and cons

To begin with, I want to note that I’ve picked the services from this post’s list. 

Writing AI services

RYTR

https://rytr.me/ – Good neural network for text creation. It will help you write text for a specific task. It understands many languages, considers the tone of voice, and uses a large number of templates. 

Expectedly, some bugs and repetitions may occur. Thus, you have to manually remove weirdly constructed sentences.

Pros:

• Quick sign-up via Google accounts
• Simple and clear interface
• Understands multiple languages
• Good customization for specific purposes
• Choice of TOV and level of AI creativity
• Unlimited characters with a paid subscription
• Limitations are easily circumvented with creating multiple google accounts.
  
  

Cons:

• The free version provides you with 10K characters per month. The paid version costs $290 per year
• The limit is restored only after one month
• The same sentences often appear again 
• Text suggestions may be sometimes a bit cliche and straightforward (Especially if you’re limited by a certain number of lines).
  
  

Jasper

https://www.jasper.ai/ – Another good neural network for writing texts. Thanks to GPT-3, it generates content in multiple ways and can be used for different purposes and at any scale. 

It understands up to 30 languages. There are a large number of templates and a built-in system to detect plagiarism in the text. I found more disadvantages in its trial version, as the creators have eliminated many features.

Pros:

• Up to 30 languages
• Good customization for specific purposes
• Flexible-price policy.
  
  

Cons:

• You need to add your credit card to get started
• Free trial for 5 days (instead of previous 7), then $590 per year
• Disappeared Starter Pack. Now, only Boss Mode is available, which costs $5 9for 50K / month
• No option for choosing unlimited characters.
  
  

ChatGPT

https://chat.openai.com/ is the leader among all neural networks at the moment. It has managed to gain a huge audience in a short period of time. The most curious thing about it is the versatility and flexibility of the system. They allow you to perform a wide range of actions in a few seconds. There is no trivial “request-response” interaction. The neural network can answer questions itself, give a summary of information, and even write code.

Pros:

• Flexibility
• API 
• Answers to any questions
• Chatting and answering difficult questions.
  
  

Cons:

• The phone number (is required to sign up) has become more difficult to pick, as ChatGPT has created a database of suspicious numbers.
• Instant access for premium users only, the rest are placed on the waiting list.
  
  

Out of all the given neural networks, I deemed RYTR the most convenient and suitable due to the features available.  It’s simple, handy, and laconic. 

However, there are some disadvantages. You have to work with the limitation of 30-65 characters, which affects the network’s performance. The generated texts for ad campaigns seemed too directly. Especially in Spanish, since most of Spanish words are quite long. So, I had to stay within the limit by reducing the number of words. 

The neural network is fine for generation of long texts. Anyway, one still needs to check the text and edit it.

AI services for generating pictures

DALL-E 2

https://labs.openai.com/ is a neural network by the creators of ChatGPT, which create pics in different styles according to requests (prompts).

Dall-E 2 is an “almost free” neural network. You get 50 credits after the sign-up. Then, you’ll be given 15 credits every month. Running out of credits? Buy one for $15 = 115 credits (the minimum plan).

Pros:

• A shared account with ChatGPT.
• It generates images in a variety of styles.
  

Cons:

• Generates only 1024×1024 pictures 
• Images of faces and portraits are quite blurry
• One must be aware of special queries (prompts) for a particular style.
  
  

Midjourney

https://www.midjourney.com/home/ can transform the text into incredible images even for ordinary prompts. With this neural network, you can create high-quality and detailed pics! 

Nevertheless, difficulties arise at the very beginning. To use this neural network, you need a Discord account. It was quite difficult to understand the interface. Many users just send their pictures to a public chat with the caption “make me cool”. Of course, that doesn’t work this way. 

The Midjourney discord server has a set of rules, and there are rooms for newcomers with 25 queries. Each generation is 1 query. There are also forbidden words like “sex,” “blood,” etc. If you want to generate a picture with a “blood pressure” prompt, you will get a warning message.

The neural network can generate images of various styles. The basic plan starts at $8 per month for 200 pictures. Or $24 for 15 hours of generation and $48 for 30 hours.

Pros:

• Lots of styles available
• 2 work modes: Imagine & Blend.
  
  

Cons:

• It’s hard to understand the interface for the first time.
• You need to know what prompts to enter for a particular style
• Short-period trial 
• Images are too dark sometimes
• Typical neural network errors. Extra hand, a face without eyes, etc.
• Your query will be visible in the main chat. To hide them, you must either make your own discord server or pay for a professional plan.
  
  

For images, I chose Midjourney. It has a good number of generations and also has a Blend mode. By the way, follow the rules of the neural network while selecting one of the generated images to avoid a ban. 

So, we will work with RYTR (text) + Midjourney (picture).

Step two: Creating text with RYTR

RYTR is pretty good, but it is hard to create a short ad text of up to 65 characters. I had to use all 10K characters for one account (the limit) and then create another one to select more unique (not duplicated) texts.

It’s worth noting that there were some very strange texts, such as: 

“¡Consigue el dolor ahora mismo! La pomada ayudará!” (Get the pain right now! The ointment will help)

“¡Las articulaciones no son necesarias!” (Joints are not needed!)

“¡Calma el dolor articular! Pruebe el porro de [Nombre de la empresa]” (Soothes joint pain! Try a “joint” of [Company name])

A funny feature of it: for ad texts, RYTR sometimes adds text with a non-existent discount and a promo code (JOINT20), as well as puts tags into the text, that are actually useful. 

RYTR can generate images. They’re plain compared to MidJorney, but unusual. There are no image settings, you get just an output.

Moving to practice.

The text test aimed at running ad campaigns with the same image, but with different generated texts. 

I encountered an interesting feature. Words in Spanish are long, consisting of many characters. Hence, the character limit was met by reducing the number of words in the sentence, so the texts were extremely straight.

Yet despite the problem, some headings produced good results, especially this one – “¡Alivia tus dolores articulares!” (Reduce your joint pain!).

Examples of texts: 

Top creative’s performance: CR 0.22%.

Better than the top creative

Same or slightly worse than the top creative

The worst results compared to the top creative

Usa esto para darle salud a tus articulaciones

      (Use this to make your joints healthy)

$3.6, CTR 0.01%, CR 0.00%

Articulaciones sanas en 7 días

      (Healthy joints in 7 days!)

     ¡Siente la alegría del movimiento! 

      (Feel the joy of movement!)

$4.1, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.00%

¿Dolor articular?

       (Pain in the joints?)

      NO TIENES QUE SUFRIR POR EL DOLOR ARTICULAR

       (STOP ENDURING THE PAIN IN YOUR JOINTS)

$3.9, CTR 0.03%, CR 0.00%

¿Padeces de dolor articular?

      (Do you suffer from joint pain?)

      ¡Alivia el dolor articular ahora!

     (Take off the pain in your joints now!)

$3.8, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.00%

El alivio está a un clic de distancia

      (Relief is waiting for you in a single click)

     Consigue ya nuestra Crema para Articulaciones

      (Get our cream for joints right now!)

$3.5, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.06%

¿Molestan las articulaciones?

      (Are your joints bothering you?)

      ¡Cura tus articulaciones correctamente!

       (Treat your joints properly!)

$5.2, CTR 0.03%, CR 0.06%

  Esta crema para eliminar el dolor de cuello en 10 min

       (This cream will eliminate neck pain in 10 minutes)

$5.6, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.06%

¿Te duelen las articulaciones?

       (Do your joints hurt?)

      ¡Calma tu dolor con ungüento ahora!

      (Soothe your pain with ointment now!)

$7.8, CTR 0.05%, CR 0.13%

¡Alivia tus dolores articulares! 

      (Ease the pain in your joints!)

     Use nuestra crema para articulaciones hoy

     (Use our cream for joints today).

$8.2, CTR 0.05%, CR 0.18%

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Step three: Creating pictures with Midjourney

Midjourney is very colorful. When visit the server, every time you can be inspired by the images it generates! 

However, 1 click costs 1 credit, so you can’t experiment for long.

After comparing it to our top creative, we create a query for the neural network. I suggest you peek at other people’s queries to see what prompts they used.

The picture is generated quite quickly. However, you should pay special attention to forming the query. Otherwise, the AI will just combine the words and produce an unwanted result.

For example, the query: “Man’s joint x-ray next to a spoon with ointment” caused the following unexpected results: 

The generated pictures also have problems with eyes, fingers, joints, and limbs. The “Uncanny valley” effect of these pics is frightening.

The problem was that I requested a picture “in the daytime”, but the neural network ignored that, as you will see later. The images are a little dark.

Here are the pictures used in ad campaigns:

Summing up: Unfortunately, this test proved that the neural network was unable to surpass the performance of our top creative. The conversion price of all the generated images is much higher. Most likely, the reason is the cartoonishness and unrealistic nature of the generated images, as well as the lack of clear focus on the problem of would-be customers.

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Final Stage: Results of tests

Ad campaigns with the texts generated by AI were almost profitable! Bad traffic sources spoiled the campaign’s performance. Source with quality traffic for the campaign could bring me money!

Ad campaigns with the pics generated by AI wasted my ad budget.

Conclusion

In my opinion, neural networks aren’t a ready-made solution for various tasks.

It’s better to use them more wisely, for example as a tool for discovering new approaches and ideas. Neural networks are still imperfect and require time for the selection and manual editing of created content.

By working with neural networks, you can break the vicious cycle of repeating template ideas and provide a creative twist to mundane creative selection!

Artificial intelligence is still far from fully taking over the creative tasks of affiliates. But we are closer to it than ever! 

We thank our affiliate who agreed to take part in the experiment! 

We wish you all profit! 

Have you ever tried to introduce AI in your work routine? What were the results? Please share them with us in the comments!