Questions regarding gaming niche and traffic source from the beginners guide (8)
Questions regarding gaming niche and traffic source from the beginners guide
Hi,
I've started reading the beginners guide and some of the post in the forum. So far I find everything very informative but I've seen that the guide is from 2011 and I want to be sure about a few questions that I've in mind.
Several affiliates here vouch for the power of "focus", from Finch to stackman in this thread.
I want to focus on the gaming niche because I like it and, again, Finch says that is a good one (and I trust him as you can see LOL)
First of all I want to join a gaming-centered network (and just one to avoid thinning my earnings)
I've read that adsimilis have many gaming offers but it also seems that they only get affiliates with experience and that have referrals.
It will be nice to have one that is able to pay weekly (I know that there are some providing you reach some weekly "quota")
So that's my first question: do you know any network that is newbie friendly, with good payment terms and have several game offers to pick from? I know that here there is a "Motive Interactive" rep and I can guess that they're good but any feedback will be appreciated
The second question is about the traffic source. I know that I've to focus on one and the guide is about Facebook and Lead Impact. But again, from 2011 to 2013 it seems that Facebook is quite complicated to profit so it leaves me just with Lead Impact.
As Lead Impact seems to be geared more to zip offers I don't know if it will perform well with gaming offers (my common sense says "yes" but I want to be extra-sure, maybe there is just too much competition)
I've read about Mochi Media and other traffic sources focused on the gaming niche (like in this thread)
So the second question is: should I go with LI or with any other "gaming related" traffic source?
I think that's all for now. I really appreciate your support here guys!
Kind regards.
Gaming heavy networks? WolfStormMedia, Adsimilis maybe (not a huge amount), Motive, iQU, Ad4Game. WSM/Motive are probably your best bets initially for gaming and being newbie-friendly-ish. Good payment terms is not really that network specific but more revenue/volume related. Anyone will pay you weekly if you're pushing enough revenue, which can make starting out difficult (i.e. need decent budget to float for over a month unless you find a winner and get your AM on top of things).
iQU is great but their interface is more for pubs rather than affiliates. They are apparently moving media buyers and such to the Cake platform but I have yet to see the transition happen. Ad4Game has the largest list of good gaming offers I have seen but their interface sucks, have had little traction with sorting out tracking and AM support. A lot of their offers go up and down with the tides so would avoid there too when starting out. Note they don't allow FB marketplace ads and the AMs can't approve custom creatives.
W.R.T. traffic sources, you can certainly make PPV work with games. I haven't tried, but I know people do. I know Sam over at WSM has experience there so if you joined WSM you could hit him up for advice. Facebook certainly works with games but IMO it's not a great place to start with gaming anymore, very saturated and I've found ad performance/backend CVRs aren't what they used to be for many reasons.
As for other gaming traffic sources, there are tonnes. For gaming-centered sources something like http://www.game-advertising-online.com/ has a lot of decent inventory - although I tried to join and their form wouldn't work, emailed them and got no responses so I just ignored them as they had no phone number listed. I see their inventory in the wild though. Mochi Media seems to be pretty arcade/flash game based, not my style. Others I have tried and do not recommend are game-advertising, advertisegame, advertiseyourgame and epicgameads (all .coms). All seem archaic, minimal traffic (other than US...), crappy targeting/tracking so a waste of time IMO. Ad2games has a display network but I haven't got around to using it, I have little patience when an AM doesn't respond to emails asking for the ability to add funds to be unlocked.
If you're considering PPV a sensible traffic source to also play with is ZeroPark. Similar mechanics, newbie friendly and easy to work with. Plus, campaigns have potential to scale well between PPV/ZP since they both work by URL targeting essentially.
That's my $0.02
Zeno, your 2 cents is now my 4 cents
Thanks a lot Zeno!
I'll try to get in WSM and Motive then and maybe for traffic sources I will use LI and ZeroPark for the beginners 30 day challenge (or just LI if it's going well)
I don't see many people here in the gaming niche, is there anything wrong with it?
Regards
Nothing wrong with gaming, there will be a lot of people here who have pushed millions in revenue to gaming offers. It's one of the cleanest verticals to work in, the main downside being payouts are often lower if you compare to e.g. dating offers and bizopps. It can be a great place to start when learning the ropes of AM and traffic sources.
Mochimedia now has CPA terms also, so look into it 
I had my first true success doing gaming on LI/Trafficvance. Way back in the day when Evony was a big game offer, I was easily able to scale from $20/day to $700/day with very little effort. Trafficvance is still a great place to do gaming campaigns, and I am doing decent volume on there even to this day. Gaming does generally have lower payouts, but you can more than make up for it with volume. I like that game offers appeal to a broader audience than dating offers. (stay at home moms are a HUGE part of the casual gaming market).
Zeno is spot on in that it is a great way to learn the AM ropes. There aren't any sneaky tricks you really need to learn. Even direct linking some offers will yield big results if you target properly.
Thanks a lot to everyone! I'm really very much from your posts!
For now I've confirmed that I want to focus in the gaming niche: I find the vertical suits me as I've plenty of "gaming culture" and I won't mind to actually "test" the offers to write better ads and so on.
I've applied to WSM and Motive and I've also set up accounts in MochiMedia and Ad2games (these two were recommended by Finch in the Survival Marketing Guide I've purchased)
I'll try to to master Mochi Media first. I'll surely take a look to the CPA terms. If I get a good ROI I'll try to get a referrer to Traffic Vance.
Thanks again for all your support, it's really appreciated!
Kind regards
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