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?

Hey there!

Nice to see you in our Super Aff Community of the CPA world! Together, we’ll bring your income to the highest level possible! 

If you’re reading this, probably, you’re at the very beginning of affiliate marketing.

Although affiliate marketing is a challenging field, your experience, knowledge, and skills will enable you to reach the CPA heights in the future. 

Big journeys begin with small steps. Scroll down to find our articles and make your first step into affiliate marketing.

How it works

• What is affiliate marketing?
  
• What is COD? 
  
• How can an affiliate network be helpful, and what is it? 

Preparing for work

Choosing an offer

• AdCombo’s Telegram bot suggests the most fitting or top offers without contacting a manager
  
  
• How to choose the best offer for a beginner?
  
  
• What types of conversion do exist? What to keep in mind when looking for an offer? What traffic sources are suitable for various offers? 
  
  

Domain name & Web Hosting

• Comprehensive guide on domain names and web hosting servers
  
  
• What hosting server to choose for affiliate marketing?
  
  
• How to park my domain name in AdCombo? 
  
  

API

• What is it and where to find it?
  

Tracking

• What is affiliate tracking and how to set it up? 
  
  

• Tracking software programs and what they serve for
  

Antidetect browser

• Series of articles to learn what it is, what parameters it replaces and how Facebook identifies users
  
  

• How to choose the right antidetect browser?
  
  

Virtual cards

• Combo.Cards, in-house AdCombo’s virtual cards service to pay for ads
  

Promoting a campaign

• What type of content to create for a niche site and how to rank it?
  
  
• What are the essential elements of a good product review to get sales?
  
  
• How to draw attention with ads?
  
  
  
• Can I calculate the Forecasted Conversion Rate in my AdCombo Statistics?
  

Internal A/B tests

• AdCombo’s link rotator and how to use it for tests. Now, it’s available in the My Campaigns tab —> Create new campaign.

Traffic sources

• What is a blacklist/whitelist, and how can they save my money?
  
  
• How to choose a high-quality traffic source? Analyzing Different Traffic Sources
  

• Narrow targeting is better than a wider one?
  
  
  

Facebook

• How to unblock my account?
  
  
  
• What is Facebook Pixel and how to use it?
  
  Facebook Pixel has been turned into Meta Pixel (upd. instruction 1, upd. instruction 2). Its interface and the one of AdCombo have also changed since the publication date of the article. Nevertheless, the article will guide you through the general steps of understanding what the Pixel is and how to set it up, both on Facebook and in AdCombo.
  
• What are Automated FB rules, and how can they make your ad processes easy?

Instagram 

• How to promote Nutra offers on Instagram?

TikTok

• How to make a trending video ad on TikTok?
  

Google

• How to create an ad campaign using Google Adwords?
  
  
  
• How to rank a site in Google?
  

Native Ads

• Is native ads suitable for a beginner? What budget do I need?
  
  

• Anyhow, I want to learn more about it!
  

Pop-up ads

• What is an effective mobile pop-up ad?

FREE traffic

• Is it real to launch a campaign without any expenses?!
  

Tips & recommendations from experts

• How to cope with fear and launch an ad campaign?
  
  
• FB experts share their experience, thoughts, and pieces of advice
  
  
• TOP affiliate team reveals the secret of farming accounts on Facebook
  
  
  

Inspiration from the AdCombo Community

• Managers talk about their affiliates who participated in an AdCombo challenge
  
  
  
• Winners of AdCombo Challenges reveal what led them to victory
  
  
  

Questions about starting partnership with AdCombo

How to enter my AdCombo account?

When your account is approved by a manager, you can come into the AdCombo platform as a user. Don’t forget to confirm your e-mail after signing up, btw!

1. Go to https://my.adcombo.com/login 
2. Type in your E-mail and Password
3. Done! Now it’s time to enable Two-factor authentication:
   
   

Click on your nickname in the upper right Account Settings put a tick in the box Enabled in the Two-factor authentication block.

Then copy your security code to a Two-factor authentication app that you’ll use to log in. 

NB: Please note that now all users can access the AdCombo platform before their accounts are approved. The demo access enables new affiliates to look through the interface tabs, excluding an opportunity to promote affiliate links.

How can I contact my manager?

Contacts of your manager will appear next to AdCombo’s logo at the upper left. There, you can also create a ticket in the system if your manager is on vacation.

When I can receive my payment, and what is the minimal sum for withdrawal? 

We pay out TWICE a week: on Tuesdays and Fridays. You can withdraw min. $50.

How do I add data for a payment system and request a payout?

Сlick on your nickname in the upper right Payment settings. 

Then go to the tab “Payouts” after you have completed the settings. Here you can make a request (payments are made on request, not automatically). Withdraw funds through several services in one day, If needed.

Why do payouts on an offer get into hold? How long does it take?

What are payment options?

Can I receive payouts in cryptocurrency?

Click here to find the answers.

Need help, but your manager is out of reach?

1. Leave a ticket
2. Contact other managers via a Telegram bot
3. Ask AdCombo Community in a Telegram chat.
   
   
   

Do you feel that now you have a superpower for taking actions? Then rush to new achievements, and we’ll be somewhere around.

Don’t forget to follow us on our socials for more interesting and useful info: 

Telegram

Instagram

Facebook


Whole lotta luck and prooofit! 

In the first part of our interview, we talked about scaling up campaigns, optimal start in the niche, the ways of affiliate growth and the qualities that are crucial to success in the sphere.

In the second part, we’re going to talk about the process of effective testing and reading case studies to improve one’s current performance and grow. As well as what an affiliate must prepare for in order to achieve significant results without sacrificing emotional well-being.

Let’s go!

About affiliate path

We’ve worked with various verticals, including Nutra, and there is probably no vertical that we haven’t run. But finally, we settled on iGaming, because our Nutra income isn’t comparable to the tens of thousands of dollars that can be made on iGaming.

Four years ago we drove traffic through Google and did it when we had spare time, studying and testing the source gradually. Then we gave it up. Algorithms are constantly changing; even the interface has changed. If we want to create a campaign now, we need to spend time exploring the updated interface first.

Facebook (via PWA) is our main source of income. Most of our time is devoted to it, yet we’d like to try Google again. Thus, alongside our primary work, we’re refreshing our knowledge and re-learn how to work with it.

About the beginning of a newbie’s work

A beginner can start working solo with FB, though with a team it will, surely, be easier to start. It’s always easier to join a company with a ready-made business model, get some experience and expertise from the pros, and then launch your own project replicating the business model, but with a focus on your own needs. This can be applied to affiliate marketing, only with regard to the team.

Although working on a team is easier, as long as one has time, willingness, and budget, it’s possible to start alone, but in a harder and slower way.

There are a lot of automation tools now – various services that can make affiliate life easier: for example, Dolphin can replace 10 people on a team. But this increases costs (without considering the amount of work), which becomes the burden of just one person. Consequently, the profit on what is earned is reduced; i.e., the return on such work drops.

About scaling up

TikTok has similar algorithms to those of Facebook, so if you have an idea to try something out there, you should definitely give it a go.

Previously on Facebook, we could scale up by increasing the budget, but now the daily budget is limited to $50. In this case, scaling up is possible by increasing the number of accounts. We buy ready-to-use accounts. For example, a daily budget of $1000 requires 20 accounts.

About growth in the niche

The best way to develop is to run your own tests. You might come across an idea somewhere, or you might have your own idea; the best thing is to test it. Just hearing about the effectiveness of something from others is not sufficient. The best way is to try it out and see the effectiveness yourself. For that, you can create a table in Excel (or use another service. You can also use a tracker). Run a campaign based on this idea, put the results in, and then compare it with your other campaigns. If the statistics confirm that everything went well, you can mark the idea in the table and take it to work.

For example, you have an idea to put a badge in X place on a landing page. You do it and watch, whether it will be converting or not. Find out in what place the user stays more often, i.e.,whether the chosen place is suitable or not. Then you fill in the results in the table.

It’s also important to set clear goals. “I want to become a top affiliate” – isn’t concrete. But “improve my ROI” – is fine. In this case, you need to write down how this can be achieved. For example, you need to scale up your campaign first, and then design a step-by-step plan on how you are going to accomplish this.

3 major features of an affiliate

Hard-working attitude. It’s a must. I don’t regard us as tops. We have average results. But I can say that we reached them as we haven’t become so lazy. We’re constantly testing things, and if something does not work, it means that we haven’t studied the subject enough, or haven’t spent sufficient time on it.

Readiness to accept bad results. It’s vital to understand and accept the fact that something can go the way you won’t like. There are gray-hat ads, especially Nutra ones, that can bring you a good income today, but tomorrow you’ll get an unsatisfactory result; the day after tomorrow the result will be even worse. Next week, the performance will finally get better. The most important thing is not to break down during such changes.

Willingness to spend a lot of time. You will have to learn, study, and test a lot of things. All this requires time.

About starting affiliate marketing in solo

If you have the proper budget, time, and desire, you can get into affiliate marketing single-handedly. However, without the support of a team, it’s harder to do so. If difficulties arise, instead of asking a more experienced team leader for advice, one will have to search for information on the web alone and spend more time on this. To get started, a beginner will also have to find creative pairs and test them without the help of “seniors”. This means acting at random for the first time, based on little experience. Thus, the beginner must closely monitor the results. Something will definitely go wrong, and the account will get banned. The creative pair chosen by the beginner may not perform well or not give the desired results. Therefore, without guidance, there is a very high chance of choosing the wrong path and spending more time figuring out the causes and finding solutions.

When watching guides on YouTube, beginners will have a lot of questions. Then they ask for help on affiliate forums, but the “affiliate-language” answers are unclear to the beginner. That only intensifies the misunderstanding. So, if you’re a beginner, you’d better learn the fundamentals before asking questions or trying to do anything.

This is also valid for experimenting with either new verticals or approaches. Before asking for recommendations from colleagues, it is better to search the Internet for basic information yourself to understand what you will be told about.

About scaling up, growth, and a useful way of reading case studies

We test different creative pairs, see which one goes better, and then duplicate it without any changes and re-run it again.

To grow in the niche, firstly, you need to test a lot, and secondly, to ask more experienced affiliates for their opinions. If you have people around you who are more experts in something than you are, that’s awesome. They can not only be asked for advice, but also teach you something new, and that will help you move up to the next level.

We primarily focus on our own tests. If we like an idea, we make tests and put the results in an Excel table. Then we check which creative pairs were successful (mark them green), and which weren’t (mark them red). We proceed to work with the successful creative pairs, continuing to analyze how we can improve the results. If we find a solution, we run tests again, and then the process is repeated.

We don’t rely very much on case studies, because no one will talk about a scheme that brings good money. But affiliates do share some of their data, so we study various case studies anyway. Then we take them for our own revision. This happens as follows: after reading the case study, we analyze its weak points, the aspects that could be better, and find a way to reproduce the case study in a way that corrects its weaker figures.

For example, we like a case study’s targeting, and the ideas for creatives, but the ROI is low. Then we begin analyzing what exactly could be the problem for that and how we could fix it with this dataset.

Each time we read a case, we not only strategize to improve the weak performance of this case or similar campaigns, but also highlight what may work for us. After defining the strategy, we verify it with tests. We don’t copy the cases, but we take from them what we can adapt to our campaigns in order to move forward and discover new earning opportunities.

3 important qualities of an affiliate

Ability to work hard. You have to study the niche, quickly find solutions, and, of course, work a lot.

Resistance to failures. Today your creative pair can perform well, tomorrow your account will get banned or start bringing more expenses than income. It’s all common in affiliate marketing. You don’t have to quit everything at once. Even the creative pair doesn’t need to go through changes. Think about the problem and then analysis and tests will be able to not just return the previous result but make it much better.

I can say that we achieve results only because we accept difficulties and try to find ways to solve them: by our own analysis or by recommendations from seasoned colleagues.

Desire to learn new things and engage in analytics. Keep track of trends and changes in the niche. Constantly improve your creating pairs or fix issues with them or your account. Examine not only your campaigns, but also those of colleagues in the same way we analyze case studies.

Affiliates could write volumes of memoirs about their work with FB. And a few more volumes of thoughts in addition. A lotta thanks to all the interview participants! Wish you all great profits!

P.S.: have a story to tell or want to comment on things in the niche? Write to us! We’d love to share your story or opinion with the entire community. Together we’ll make it better and more helpful :))

Hey!

We’re always glad when you share your experience, affiliate stories, tips, or even opinions on the niche. Recently, we’ve asked a few Facebook experts some questions and are ready to engage you in those pleasant conversations!

How to scale up campaigns? How can newbies step into the niche in the most fitting way, and what will they encounter? How to improve your performance, and who can be a successful affiliate? Read the first part of our interview!

About newbie’s beginning, and a new team

I used to work within a team, but the results stopped pleasing me and I experienced burn-out, and I decided to leave. I regret it a little, but now I am building my own team of people who are already working in the niche or would like to start. I’ve already found several of my teammates, and now we are working together.

You can survive in affiliate marketing if you know what to do. If you’re part of a team, it’s much easier to do that. Teammates can give you advice and highlight your mistakes.

Also, it’s easier to work because the job is divided up among all the members.

For newbies, I would recommend looking for a team. If beginners get their account banned, they can look for a way to solve the problem for a very long time, while being on the team, they can ask a more experienced colleague and have a solution much quicker. What’s more, account farming is easier, and more accounts are available when one is with a team. It’s more convenient. Besides, more experienced affiliates can recommend tested services and working methods to reduce the risk of being banned to a minimum.

About work with Facebook

We usually take a few farmed accounts. Here are some stats based on one of our Nutra campaigns: 10 accounts, a $5-$10 daily budget for each, and 250 leads total.

Facebook is different for everyone: you can completely duplicate your colleague’s campaign step-by-step, but not get the same results. Somebody’s account will get banned at once and forever, someone else’s account will get unbanned after some time, and the third account may get approved, but won’t have the same success.

Risk payment is another problem that we also faced: one of us adds a card, everything is ok, the second one’s account gets banned immediately, and the third one’s account gets banned after a while.

About scaling up

I consider working with TikTok as a scale-up option. This is a relatively new and popular platform. You can not only use it for scaling up, but also to test out creatives for Facebook. If you run a creative there that gets 1% CTR, upload it to Facebook, where it will give a better result. This happens because TikTok’s algorithms are much simpler than those on Facebook, where the audience reach is wider. If you have two campaigns running in two sources at the same time, you may get rather good results.

I also create 5 ad sets with the same creatives and a range of TA, for example, women between the ages of 25 and 60. One ad set may drop out (get banned). And then I monitor the remaining 4 to find out which of them shows the best results, and which TA from the range performs best. When it’s done, I shut down all the other ad sets and double the most productive one without a change. Voila, the campaign is scaled up – you have two efficient and active ad sets that are expanding the reach of the most relevant audience.

If a campaign has a low CPL, it can be scaled up by changing the creatives. You always need to change the creatives when relaunching it.

About upgrading skills and quality-oriented work

I know that I could have achieved more if I had focused on quantity, but that is not my way, I always focus on quality. That may have contributed somehow to my burnout. I know a girl who takes 5-years-old creatives and throws them in massively. When you upload a great number of creatives, Facebook picks up some and approves them.

I have a different attitude: I don’t have many launches, but I’m very thorough in my approach to making creatives. I’ve mastered a video editing program to make creatives. I create before/after videos of varicose veins, in which they smoothly disappear in the next frame – an imitation of the effect of a product. By the way, before/after photos are prohibited by Facebook’s advertising policy, but it’s not obvious in the video. So, the video gets approved, and the effect it has is the same as by using the before/after photos.

When I was on the team, the courses were paid for me. But I believe, the most surefire way to improve skills is to test more to find out what works best for you. When you get the knack, it becomes clear what’s more effective – that’s what growth is about. Test any idea you have, maybe you’ll find your own successful formula. I prefer to minimize using services and do most of my work manually.

3 key characteristics of a good affiliate

Diligence. If we’re talking about working solo, there’s a lot to do to get started: create an account, farm it for a couple of weeks, or even better – a few accounts, as reserves; prepare creatives, set up a campaign…

Enthusiasm. You need to have a fire burning in your eyes, and a desire to continue on your affiliate path, no matter what.

Burn-out resistance. You shouldn’t get to the point where you can burn out. It’s exciting to see your first earnings, and growth in stats, but when you come to the downside, you need to handle your state promptly. I feel that quite well now.

About newbies starting affiliate marketing

I think to get started in affiliate marketing and go through the full affiliate process, the beginner has to spend $5000-$7000. To run ads, earn money, study media buying, and decide whether it’s the right choice or not.

For a beginner, for one person, working alone is very hard regarding budget, workload, expenses, technical issues, and skills. In that case, to survive in the niche, one needs a helping hand like either mentoring or a team. Otherwise, there is a chance to get stuck in affiliate forums with many help-me-help-me messages.

You can find a lot of information on the web about affiliate marketing, but it is not well-structured. So, new affiliates have two ways: the first is to search for information on their own and to study as many articles available in public as possible; the second is to try to join a team.

There are no middle affiliates: they can be newbies until they succeed in something, and then there is the most common option to strengthen the team with expertise – they join a team, an agency, or an affiliate network.

So joining a team is not just the most convenient way, but also quite fast. If there is no way to find a team, there is one more option available – to read affiliate articles, blogs, portals, forums, etc.

I recommend newbies pay attention not only to Facebook but to TikTok Ads as well. They can launch a campaign there via a link or livestreaming.

About casino livestreaming on TikTok

Everything that currently appears on TikTok already exists on YouTube. All new TikTok content is borrowed ideas from YouTube and that is rerun on TikTok. And TikTok streaming as a kind of popular source of casino monetization traffic was already a long time ago on YouTube.

To do that, you gotta be good at it. You have to be thoroughly immersed in the subject to be able to do it. How to stream, how to behave while streaming, what is allowed and what is not. And you have to keep in mind that casinos are forbidden on TikTok. So it’s a banned activity, with a lot of accounts, and a lot of subscribers too, since you need 1,000 subscribers to start a live stream.

Here is a bypass option: create an account, get some subscribers, then create a ticket saying that it is impossible to start a live and send the ticket to a moderator, without specifying the number of subscribers. The moderator gives access, and the live-streaming option becomes available without having 1000 subscribers. One live streaming isn’t much profitable. It’s better to put it in the flow. But this is still a rather unexplored subject.

3 key points of affiliate success

Networking. Access to crucial and needed info.

Curiosity. As long as you’re searching, you’re progressing. If you either have one creative pair or specialize in one thing only, you freeze, because the subject sooner or later passes away, and you’ll pass away with it as well.

Endurance. 90% of the time is made up of failures and difficulties; there is no stability in this business. If you can take it day by day, then you’ll be fine. Affiliate marketing always throws up new challenges: there were problems with the ban on advertising activity, they were dealt with. Then there were problems with accounts and a solution was found too. Once TikTok was new and untapped, and now affiliates run their campaigns there. If you have the willingness to accept new challenges without feeling exhausted, then you will succeed.

Find more interesting interviews in Part 2!

Hi there!

Running traffic to an offer without spending a cent is a sweet dream for every affiliate. AdCombo is here to make it a reality. Making money online without spending is real, and we’ll show you that!

We’ve overviewed free traffic sources and useful tools for them in our previous articles on how to launch an affiliate campaign without paying:

CPA campaign without investments
CPA campaign without investments 2.0.

Now, we want to add some more to build up a comprehensive guide on free traffic. 

How to find a free source

Remember that instead of requiring money, free sources require time and effort. Sometimes free sources are even harder to work at, compared to paid-ad platforms. Anyway, the main benefit of them is the opportunity to start affiliate marketing with no money.

But how to define the suitable source for your CPA campaign? What should an affiliate do after pre-marking a source for a free campaign run?

Well, we’re ready to talk about concrete examples of traffic sources that promote making money for free.

Full steam ahead!

TikTok

Source

Despite the fact that there is TikTok Ads Manager for placing and managing paid ads, there is also a free way to promote items. Yes, it may take more time to get results than targeting certain users and optimizing campaigns with the Ads Manager, anyway, it works and it’s free

You need to create a Pro account, and design it either as a user or as a product page (it’s better). This account type provides the opportunity to monitor the channel statistics, learn the preferences of the audience, as well as see the geography of followers, their gender, and activity peaks.

Only with this type of account, you can add a link to your profile. So after creating the account, place your affiliate link in BIO. Then you can start generating promotional TikToks.

For instance, by using Canva. There you can find photo and video filters, fonts and text effects, animated graphics, stock photos and videos, music, and ready-made templates for TikTok. To find them, search for “TikTok Videos”. Moreover, you can edit the same projects both in the desktop version and on your smartphone. 

Don’t forget to use hashtags below the video to let the audience find what it’s interested in.

TikTok doesn’t allow links on non-sponsored posts, so you need to make viewers click through the affiliate link put in BIO. 

Also, you can comment videos on the related topic to the vertical of your offer, and ask users to visit your profile for more info. Surely, your comments shouldn’t be like spam messages.

Note that storytelling and trending content work best on TikTok. 

Here are a few TikTokers that may give ideas on creating promotional videos on Dieting & Beauty:

@beautifuleatsandthings – body-positive dietitian that refuses to follow diet-culture tendencies. Andy breaks down diet myths, shares healthy recipes and nutrition hacks along with her own tips and recommendations.

@mygentleskin – skincare reviewer who lists do’s and don’ts for good-looking skin, overview various beauty items and gives useful beauty recommendations on personal care. 

SEO

Source

A fairly classic source that has long been used by affiliates. Basic code knowledge can help with it.

One needs to create a site (prelander/landing page) taking into account the rules of SEO optimization to get organic traffic. 

For instance, you can use a prelander designed on https://www.wix.com/  or https://tilda.cc/ with AdCombo landing page or create your own landing page there. You can even try to create the whole blog.

The main disadvantage is the long and slow rise of the site in the search engine results pages. Scaling-up is a hard thing for this source. An affiliate needs to constantly check the relevance of the website for certain search inquiries. Also, the site should contain articles with the needed keywords.

Here is a heap of helpful tools to optimize your site’s SEO:

• https://www.seoptimer.com/ – SEO Audit Tool that performs a detailed SEO Analysis across 100 website data points, and provide clear and actionable recommendations to rank better in Search Engine Results;
  
  

• https://soovle.com/ – find keywords and phrases related to your offer on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and Amazon;
  
  
• https://trends.google.com/ – discover what people are searching for on a matter across the globe;
  
  
• https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/ – despite being a paid tool, everyone is free to check out the fitting keywords of a certain inquiry;
  
  

• https://answerthepublic.com/ – is a unique long-tail keyword generator. The tool splits its suggestions into categories;
  
  

• https://keywordsheeter.com/ –  is the list generator of keyword suggestions and long-tail keyword suggestions;
  

• start typing your inquiry on Google and see the popular suggestions.
  

How to uplift site’s ranking

1. Keywords and phrases
   
   

Identify keywords and  keyword phrases for your website. How users  will search for your page. Let’s say, weight loss and  how to lose weight fast?

Repeat your keywords and keyword phrases several times throughout the page.

Use long-tail keywords (keyword phrases) to narrow the target audience and focus on a specific niche.

2. Formatting
   
   Don’t forget to use bold, italics, heading tags (especially an H1).
   
   

3. Content
   
   Website’s content rich with keywords and phrases can boost your search engine rankings. Articles or short posts should be engaging and informative. 
   
   

4. General metadata

A web page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata – information about the contents of the website’s page.

• Title metadata: the page’s title at the top of a browser window and the headline within search engine results. (1)(2)
  
  
• Description metadata is the textual description of what the page contains. It should encourage visitors to enter. Two full sentences are enough here. (3)
  
  
  

5. Alt tags

Add extra info to posted images and videos using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. 

6. External and internal links

A web page that provides the information on a topic from different angles is deemed valuable for visitors, which improves your search engine optimization.

Attract external and internal links to your previous posts within the text. Don’t ask a reader to “click here” because such phrases are useless in getting credibility of the website for the search engine ranking. Attach URLs to “Best Keto diet supplements”. Among links to sources or articles of your blog, leave affiliate links to make them seem appropriate to the website’s content.

Telegram

Telegram has more than 550 million monthly active users. This hybrid of a messenger and a social network also fits for running traffic from there freely.

Some use WhatsApp for that, but there are limits on the number of people in the chat – no more than 256 people. To create a messaging list, an affiliate either has to buy a database or collect contacts manually, which can take several years and will end up collecting only 10 people.

The channel should have regular content updates, so the subscribers won’t be bored and unsubscribe, and new users will be eager to subscribe.

Name the channel using the keywords regarding the offer’s vertical – health, beauty, weight loss, etc.  There will be a higher chance that the channel will be found by the people who are more engaged in a topic. Note that the tag search is a bit weak here. 
Anyway, having appropriate audience make you be able to promote an offer natively at no cost, to the rather warm audience.

Your posts should prompt readers to save and share them. If the readers are interested and want to tell somebody else about your channel – this will definitely increase your channel’s awareness. 

Have the channel stuffed with fine content and some subscribers? Look for relevant channels around the topic and arrange a cross promotion. Don’t aim at famous channels, while middles will fit.

Promotion on Telegram takes a long time for taking off, and you may even have to advertise the channel somewhere else to drive people to it. You can opt for our suggestions. Promote the channel by complementing advice on a Q&A site, or on Twitter, after explaining to the audience what it can find there. Sharing links on social media pages or social media communities are also appropriate options.

Try to sound natural. Leaving links to your TG channel won’t be effective if they are just thrown. Chat like a user that wants to chat. Share advice, tips, recommendation or whatever else to make your invitation to the channel looks like an add-on matching the message.

Add your channel to Telegram channels catalog. It’s free. Users of a certain country can find it by typing the channel’s keywords. Do that on https://tgstat.com/, but notice that, for now, it works only for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, India, China and Ethiopia.

Bots can also be created and set up to communicate with customers, answer questions about price, delivery terms, or the product’s features. 

• @BotFather — for creating new bot  and managing existing ones 
  
• @Manybot — for designing a tailor-made bot
  
• @TGStat_Bot — statistics of a channel and posts

Online selling sites

The placement on such sites is free, and the TA can find your ad by category or title, so try to reflect the gist of the offer’s ad in the title. It’s also possible that your ad may show up if a user is looking for an ad of a similar category.

Before entering a site, read the rules and policies of the marketplace carefully to protect your ad from being suspended.

We will take the selling site that is widespread  in the UK – Gumtree. The most crucial notice – the ads with adult products are prohibited there, so it isn’t the place for Adult campaigns.

Such sites are appropriate for white offers, but not limited by them. 

Links here are not free, but would-be customers can contact you via email.

Here are some ads promoting a product for losing weight:

Q&A sites

Question and answer sites may also be fine for advertising. Let’s utilize one of the popular sites of this kind.

Source 1, Source 2

You can try placing your links here, carefully, because an account can be shut down for too explicit affiliate links. 

Quora is for help, advice, and answers based on your own experience. The answer to a question should be made up of advice or recommendations, and only then it can be supplemented with a link that will be even more helpful in finding the answer to the user’s question. 

To start promoting an offer, you first need to fill out a profile. The more information, the better. A detailed profile adds credibility to the response. Then, you need to find the right topic, according to the vertical of the offer. And answer the question, sticking to what’s written above. 

Here’s an example of how two affiliates put their links in the answers:

You can also give answers (or even post questions) in Spaces on a topic. You can either create a new Space or find an existing one.  Space is a community dedicated to the discussion of members on a specific topic. 

The most basic principle of advertising in this source is to be a helpful user who gives an answer to a question or offers a solution, without the purpose of selling anything here and now. 

You need to be crafty to work with the platform. The output may be not immediate, but time and your native-like comments will bring the needed CR.

Twitter

Source

It  can be used as a platform to promote affiliate links too. However, to “sell” something, you first need to entice users with your tweets. They come to Twitter to share news, have fun and find interesting content, so ideally the promotional tweet should match such demands. 

To begin with, you need to create a profile. You can focus on the product you want to promote: choose a profile picture and header related to the vertical of your offer. You can also create an account of a real user. The choice is yours, tests and imagination can help out here.

But whichever option you choose, add an affiliate link to your profile’s page, so users can go to your affiliate page while they are looking through your profile page.

It is worth noting the appearance of the link that will be displayed in the tweets. Pay attention to the metadata of your page. Title and Description metadata should represent the content of the page along with the picture to additionally attract users. You also need to set a type of Twitter cards that will be featured in the preview of the link in a tweet.

Twitter has several card types:

• Summary Card: Title, description, and thumbnail.
  
• Summary Card with Large Image: Similar to the Summary Card, but with the emphasis on an image.
  
• App Card: direct download to a mobile app.
  
• Player Card: to display video/audio/media.
  
  

Let’s explore Twitter’s meta markup. By default, meta tags are classified by Open Graph protocol invented by Facebook to beautifully represent links in posts. Twitter has its own meta markup, but Open Graph meta tags also fit. Twitter also supports mixed meta tags classified by both Open Graph and Twitter. The difference is in the prefixes: Open Graph has the prefix og:, while Twitter’s is twitter:. Here are the protocols in comparison and requirements for the elements.

For example,

<meta name=”og:title” content=”Small Island Developing States Photo Submission” />
<meta name=”og:description” content=”View the album on Flickr.” />

can be replaced for:

<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Small Island Developing States Photo Submission” /><meta name=”twitter:description” content=”View the album on Flickr.” />

Also, og:title and og:description can be mixed with the meta tag twitter:card (see this below).

For editing the page’s metadata, use a free formatter – https://jsonformatter.org/

Let’s pick Summary Card with Large Image. Now you need to add the following meta tag to the header of the web page:

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary_large_image”>

After updating the data, you can check the preview of the page here. You can also check the video preview if you need to embed it. 

Let’s get back to the promotion of links. What are the other options besides placing the link in the profile section to advertise an offer?

• Twitter thread. In other words, microblogging, creating tweets and adding a link to them. You can also write short tweets without posting the link every time, but have it pinned at the top of your profile. 
  
  

Exploit tags to help users find your tweets. 

• Reply to someone’s tweet. Here, posting a link will be similar to posting on Quora. You can find someone who is concerned about a certain topic that correlates with the one of your offer, give advice, and add a link to the tweet to make it more effective;
  
  
  

• Viral tweets. You have to be pretty creative and clever up here. But most affiliates already are . Try using an existing trend to promote an offer, or even create your own. The most essential thing is that users should be enthralled to read such a tweet, or they will recognize immediately what it’s referring to.
  

Here is the article on 6 viral marketing campaigns for your insight.

Alas, the promotion of the offers here may not produce quick results and will require some effort, but there is a chance to catch the eyes of a fitting audience.

Closing

There you have it, another batch of sources where you can get free traffic for your affiliate pages. The sources that you can convert into marketplaces on exchanging labor for profit that is much more valuable because of hard accessibility. 

Try them, discover new strategies, and search for more sources with free traffic!

Combine them as you like to make more money online without investments! Promote your site via any of the mentioned sources, or recommend natively your Telegram channel on Twitter, a Q&A site or even TikTok.

Utilize sources from the previous 2 parts to make your own combinations.

The Net is rich with resources, and affiliates are treasure hunters exploring new territories, mapping paths and finding their treasures and goldmines.

And we’re around to point the way, if needed.

Good luck!

Any business implies a certain percentage of risk. It’s a well-known fact that can hardly be argued. Media buying, as a kind of business, involves some risk as well. Everyone dreams about being an entrepreneur with his own prospering business, still, there’re indeed not so many real entrepreneurs. The main reason for this is FEAR. 

Recall the moment when you were about to enter the affiliate marketing field. Do you agree that it wasn’t that easy to launch your first ad campaign without this anxious feeling? It’s very obvious why: ad campaigns that are launched for the first time have higher chances to fail.

Anyhow, there are those, who are not going to give it up and continue struggling for their first leads on to the end. They are the guys who follow the crucial CPA rule: Failures do not exist. The thing that is called ‘failure’ is nothing but an incomplete attempt. Bear this in mind

Today we’d like to draw the attention of those frustrated affiliates, who are waiting for a sign or crying out for help. Our guidelines will help them overcome their fears and start running ads. Cheer up, guys!

Here are the TOP newbies’ fears. There’s a little challenge for you: identify yourself. 

• The fear of the unknown. A newbie is worried about his chances for success or failure. He’s looking forward to having a long-term stable income with affiliate marketing, but he is afraid of going the wrong way;
  
  
• The fear of losing all his savings. Even if a fresh affiliate is ready to take the risk, he will be worried sick about possible financial loss. The situation gets worse when the affiliate lost significant funds while making his first steps in media buying; 
  
  
• The fear of difficulties. The brain of any person tends to escape complex actions in order to conserve body energy. An affiliate’s brain is no exception.
  Let’s say, a newbie had studied lots of case studies and rushed through a heap of articles on affiliate marketing. Then, he signed up for an affiliate network, chose an offer and a nice landing page for it, and then tried to park his domain but failed. The only rational solution here is either to read an FAQ of a website or reach out to the support. But instead of taking action, a newbie is more likely to give up the idea of getting involved in affiliate marketing as he has faced with the difficulties he is unable to overcome (in his view).
  
  

Apart from diverse types of fear, there exists a key, frequent, and fatal reason – LAZINESS (aka procrastination). Running ads implies hard and complex work that frightens lots of new affiliates. Let’s be honest, this thing can be more detrimental than any kind of fear. 

Anyway, all the above-mentioned obstacles vanish if a newbie is clearly aware of his further step-by-step plan of action. 

Today’s affiliate marketing isn’t limited by purchasing traffic and monetizing it.

It’s a complex process that requires taking multiple (and important) steps that precede an ad campaign launch. The fact of how well these steps are done determines the success of your campaign.  

Below you can find The Essential Steps Checklist that a newbie affiliate needs to complete to finally overcome laziness and fear, and launch his first ad campaign. 

NB: The steps concern running COD-offers with Facebook Ads. Some steps may differ according to a preferable source of traffic. 

1. Study the core concept of system management. Running ads is impossible without basic skills of domain registration, domain parking, and domain connection with a host server. Also, it’s useful to learn how to add landing pages/prelanders/websites and set up API integration (sorting your leads in a txt file). Also, you need to make sure that all your leads are being tracked correctly (both in your stats and in the one of an affiliate network). These are the initial basic skills you should get;
   
   
2. Learn HTML & CSS. This core skill will enable you to customize the content of a landing page to your liking: fix bugs, shorten texts, and change positions and colors of the contained elements. There’s a slew of sources that provide tutorials on the subject for free, btw;
   
   
3. Find a good tracker. We recommend paying your attention to Keitaro TDS as it is one of the cheapest trackers among the good ones. However, any tracker you like the most can be useful for you. Install the tracker on your server, configure cron jobs, make sure everything works well and your leads are displayed correctly in your stats. Creating a postback URL will be additional useful skill here; 
   
   
4. Search for the ban-free ways of promotion. At this stage, you’ll be able to understand how to promote products avoiding most bans. The strategy of doing it depends on what type of offer you’re going to work with.
   
   
5. Clone your website page. This will help you stay out of trouble. 
   
   
6. Pay your attention to some Internet services. Find info about what Virtual Private Network and anti-detect browsers are and how they’re used in affiliate marketing. Surely, using them is not a must but you should be aware of this side of affiliate marketing as well. A good marketer is he, who’s abreast of everything in the niche. 
   
   
7. Have a creative time! Now we’re skipping to the creative part of this manual. What should you do at this stage? Familiarize yourself with spy tools, try to develop a concept for your creative materials, and create your own masterpieces with Photoshop and/or Sony Vegas;
   
   
8. Go deeper into the Facebook Ads theory. You’re almost ready! Ping your AM to get the best creative pair (a landing page + a prelander), design banners, and make video ads after having completed all the steps above. Thereafter, read articles on how to farm accounts and ones about Facebook quality ranking and Business Manager Overview. You’ll have to deal with the payment system and find a trusted source of fresh IP addresses;
   
   
9. Read articles on Facebook Blueprint. To be exact, you need to read the following articles: Bid Strategies, About Ad Auctions, and Ad Auction, and Delivery Overview. You should know what is “cost cap”, and what is “bid cap”. Without achieving these goals there is no sense in launching an ad campaign. Then set a pixel and add the plugin “Pixel Helper” on to your browser, create an audience in “Audience Insights”, and upload your creative materials to “Designers Hub”. 
   
   

Congrats! Now you’re ready to run your first ad campaign! 

These points are just the tip of the affiliate iceberg. Today’s media buying requires lots of work to be done.

Watch out: your chances to run a successful campaign (on Facebook, as per the specific character of the article) get lower and lower with each step skipped.
On the way from one point to the other, you’ll be able to understand whether affiliate marketing is a suitable field for you or not. 

Anyhow, going from step 1 to step 9 will help you get rid of the fear of working with affiliate marketing. Don’t be afraid to start off with small steps. Soon you will get a fairly nice background and, when you face any difficulty or loss of money, you will be able to understand the root of an issue and be ready to bravely cope with it. 

AdCombo hopes that all affiliate newbies will get over their fears. Be consistent and diligent and you will succeed in gaining quite a good profit! Remember that we are always around to help you achieve this aim

We will be glad if you share some more useful tips that helped you got over your worries. Feel free to leave them in the comment section below the article.