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What is the best traffic source for … ANY VERTICAL? (17)

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If I had to pick just one question that I get asked a lot, this one would be a good candidate : “What is the best traffic source for vertical X?” ... X can be anything for that matter. The short and most accurate answer to this is “None, there is nothing like the best source.” But the topic is more complicated so let me explain it more.

To be fair, some sources are better than others, but a lot of the difference is related to the targeting options that a source offers. Take Google Search for example – that's hands down the best traffic you can buy. Combine it with their keyword targeting system… this combination is impossible to beat. But the same goes for the prices, they have the highest rates around. Next is Facebook, awesome source again with unparalleled targeting options… but target very precisely and you will end up paying insane rates. On the other hand, there are sources like ZeroPark – these have tons of traffic available almost for free, but the quality is so low and the targeting options are nowhere close to those of Facebook.

There are TWO mains things that all traffic sources have in common.

1. First one is the auction business model. In other words, the traffic is sold for as much as someone is able to make back from it. Of course this statement is sometimes not true, or let's say not 100% accurate, because there are Brand advertisers who don't care about returns, there are people who need to test something quickly and don't care about short term loss and there are newbies who simply need to run their first campaigns somewhere and accept the initial loss. But if you look at the bigger picture, the long running campaigns are there because they are making money for someone.

2. The second thing is the nature of all large traffic sources, they don't sell traffic of “one kind”, it's always a mix. Google is an universal search engine, people search for everything there. Facebook is a general social network, grouping people of ALL interests. Any niche site that sells traffic to Google Adsense becomes part of a mega mix in form of Google Display Network. DSPs like go2mobi group access to multiple ad exchanges, covering 1000's of sites and apps of ALL interests. Exoclick gives you access to all kinds of adult sites, some vanilla stuff but also sites dedicated to fetishes you wish you didn't know existed …

And what does this mean for the affiliate community? Basically, anything can work on any source, but some things are working better than others RIGHT NOW. Since it's an auction, the market has already set the prices with this in mind, so it's not viable to run SOME offers presently as the HOT ones are dominating.

Let me give you an example. Sweeps on POPs are hot right now, so all POP traffic sources are dominated by sweep offers and the traffic prices reflect it. This does not mean that POP traffic cannot work for e-commerce offers for example, but RIGHT NOW it's priced too high for these kind of offers to work on a large scale and general targeting. BUT find the right audience for it, (and here we are coming to point 2.) identify the matching placements and even these offers can work with that source. Every source has SOME traffic that can convert any offer, find it and you will profit.

I mentioned this already at the beginning, but let me repeat it again - one of the few factors that can really determine whether a source is MORE suitable for certain offer is the level of targeting you require, if you need to target just women between the age 30-35 … well I guess only Facebook can offer this level of targeting. On the other hand, the price will be way higher than on sources where its not possible to target this way … the invisible hand of the market takes care of it.

So next time you think about what source would be suitable for the offer you want to promote, stop thinking on a “source level” and think on a “placement & targeting level”. Sources sell a mix, you gotta pick the cherries from it yourself. There is nothing like the BEST source, only MORE suitable ones because of targeting, but at the end of the day - it's all about how well you can make use of what they sell.

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Great post!

In particular, it's really important to identify that most large traffic sources aren't just a single thing. From Google on down, they've got great traffic and crap, traffic that will work and traffic that won't, all mixed together.

Our job as affiliates is to sift through all that!

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Thanks for this great write up. I guess the sweet spot is where you find a combination "offer + traffic source + targeting + landing page" that converts just good enough that allows you to scale things up at a happy ROI that compliments your cash flow strength at that time.

I am really familiar with the Google and Facebook traffic (agency, in-house background) and want to push clean offers.

I am not afraid of spending money to get data but only want to push legit offers and not shaddy re-bills (I did push biz opp re-bills back in 2009 and did $700 profit/day just on Yahoo alone. Battling with my core values and principles was no fun and having realized part of me kept on pushing those offers was due to a scarcity mindset, I got out of the CPA world and focused on sharping my skills and experiences from being in an agency, to in-house to consulting...)

But I love paid traffic and CPA has always intrigued me.

What are the legit offers that are running well these days?

Thanks

Dylan

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I would suggest to take a look at e-commerce. So stuff like teespring and Shopify... There is nothing wrong with clean lead-gen offers too - solar, some finances, insurance ... there is a lot of legit offers out there, just keep in mind that the traffic prices are set by those who are pushing grey-zone stuff as that converts better.

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Thanks!

When you say Shopify, do you mean building an e-commerce store?

What are some examples of grey-zone stuffs that are driving up the traffic cost?

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Yes, Shopify is a platform to build eshops on, with products of your choice. It's the choice of many whitehat affiliates lately.

Grey-zone? Pretty much any questionable offers you see - dating with bots instead of human users, sweeps with no prizes awarded, antivirus with no functionality ... tons of them out there

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What is special about Shopify vs WP+Woo?

Looks like I'll be a good boy and bypass the grey-zone.

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Im not an expert in this field so you need to do your own research, one of the biggest differences is that Shopify is a hosted solution while woo commerce runs on WP and you gotta host it on your own.
Here is a pretty good comparison if you wanna have a quick read : http://ecommerce-platforms.com/compa...rce-comparison

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Yea, I am familiar with both platforms.. I was just curious why AM are specifically using Shopify. I guess it is due to its faster setup for testing purposes? Anyhow, thanks for the reply.

The serious question is is there anyone doing big numbers on non grey-area offers?

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Fast and hassle free setup, SUPPORT and the absence of hosting issues ... there are more obviously

Of course people make big numbers with legit offers, but of course its way easier to get profitable with grey offers than with white and majority of lone-wolf affiliates go for the grey zone.

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Can I trouble you to guide me with a bit more specifics on the legit offers and the networks to reach out to?

I know you mentioned Solar, Insurance and Finance. Could you be a bit more specific on those? Like what kind of insurance and finance?

I also see pay per call coming up a lot. Could you comment on that a bit?

Rather than testing random offers, I figure to I could cut off 90% of the non-converting offers with your guide

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I'm sorry, but this is not something I can do for you, offers come and go and nobody will really give you the offers they are making money with Offervault.com can be of great help when finding offers and related networks, make sure to check it out. The AMs in networks can also help a ton to pick the good performing offers or at least tell you which ones to avoid due to poor performance.

Paypercall is pretty popular these days, but a lot of it is shady stuff again - tech support for example. I don't have much experience with it tho.

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Thanks Matuloo. Fair enough answer

Hard to imagine Pay Per Call going into the shady area!

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Pay Per Call exploded in the last few years - super aggressive landers (BSOD, browser/computer freeze, sound, etc), so CTR was through the roof - then the person calls the number, it goes to an Indian call center, and the rep does anything from claim to be Microsoft, RD their way into controlling the computer and demanding ransom, or merely push a junk tech service for way way too much money.

99% of the time it's a major scam. Needless to say, the US gov cracked down hard on anyone running the offers.

Google "tech support scam" and you'll see what I mean.

That said, there are still legit TS offers, just very few and far in between. I think F5's running one.

But don't expect to make a killing. You'll be up against affiliates in untouchable geos, running super aggressive landers, cloaked.

Meanwhile you're stuck running tame landers and can't even run on most traffic sources as nobody wants to touch TS with a 10 foot long stick.

If you want to succeed you'll need account farms, cloaking, and a set of morals very different than what you're working with

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Hello Matuloo.. Can you make a Shopify store solely based off of affiliate links? For example, amazon affiliates is a great program. They allow you to just copy the product image, so it makes the Shopify store look more clean. Is that fine ? Or do we need to go to a place like ali-baba and build a product from scratch in order to market on shopify?

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They key with ecom stores is to have a high margin, that's why ali became such a popular choice - you can buy stuff there for a buck and sell it for 5... if you consider the % share you'd get from amazon... you have a zero chance to compete with ali based setups. The only way for this to work is to build organic traffic.

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Thank you

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