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How do you find the right offer so you don’t compete with the big dogs? (19)

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I found this quote from IAmAtilla and now I'm worried about jumping into generic offers given to me by an AM. "small affs will discover the best of these offers after we done volume and it appears on the top revenue report of CPA networks like ClickDealer, but chances are by then its too late.” Is the goal starting out to run these offers to smaller geo’s that they wouldn’t go after?


I found some great advice from Vortex but would love for someone to expand on it.
"Use spy tools to get an idea on what's running well on your traffic type and geo. If for example for pop traffic, you're checking Adplexity Mobile and see that for GeoX, sweeps offers are being run with a lot of traffic volume and in an increasing ad trend, then that would be an indication that sweeps offers are doing well on GeoX, and that there are good sweeps offers available right now. Look up which offers people are running the most traffic volume to, and look for an increasing ad trend. Include these offers when starting your camp."


I've tried doing this but i have no idea how to really tell how an offer and or vertical is doing. How do you know when an offer is too saturated? I wouldn’t want to go after something where i’m going against a big team like IAmAtilla who’s getting a better deal from the AM. Any information on good offers to run as a newbie would be appreciated. Especially in terms of verticals and taking offers from AM.


Would you recommend running smart link’s to test carriers, countries, verticals, and to pinpoint a working segment try to push a direct offer to it? I’m not sure how these work but they seem like a good opportunity to test offers quickly and compete.

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Sweeps will never die or saturate. Although some geo's and some periods and some products you see a peak of competition and traffic certainly.
Go for sweeps, master the geo you are most familiar with and start with a traffic source which attracts you most.

In general you only "know" what will work by doing, testing and experiencing. Learn years after years and you will create that feeling in a while.
And maybe 1% has that gift already ofcourse, lucky them ;-)

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+1 for the above!

In addition to that: most offers you'll test suck. It's just the reality of how AM works. So don't be dispirited if you have to test a lot of offers before you find one that really does well and you can make bank on.

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Exactly. And in addition to that, master a geo + traffic source first. Finding the right audience for the right price is the most difficult part in AM.
Finding good offers might take some time, but won't be a big problem in general....

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The only way to find new offers is to test new offers . Where by "test new offers" I mean new arrivals on your networks.

If your are getting your "new" offers from the Top Offers List or Spytools, it means you are not the only one running them, so chances that big affiliates are in is pretty high.

That said, I think it is impossible to avoid competition for more than 1-2 days for a very simple reason: Once your account manager notices that the new offer you are testing works, he will probably reach out and let all the big affiliates know about it (unless you have a deal to keep it private).

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^^ This is it ^^

AMs want to get as many conversions as possible, that's how they earn more money, so there have intentions to keep good performing offers a secret. Situation is different in case of capped offers with sensitive advertisers, in such cases, they will simply allocate the cap to proven affiliates in order to stay out of trouble.

So, I wouldn't worry about the competition all that much, it's not like a few big affiliates OWN the entire internet and all surfers see their campaigns ONLY. Even the biggest affiliate only controls a tiny fraction of the market.

Obviously, the earlier you jump on an offer, the higher chance of making it work you have ... that's true, but the saturation doesn't kick in that quickly. On top of that, usually it's an entire vertical that get's saturated, not a particular offer, cause all it takes for the offer to appear new again, is to change it's lander.

There are exceptions : I've seen an offer getting saturated too, Battery Saver and Speed Booster apps from Baidu - these literally went down and down in CVR, but EVERYONE was promoting them, so after 500 millions of installs, there was nobody left to market it to But this is not something that can happen with a sweep offer.

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Thanks for the help guys! I will definitely jump in and not worry about saturation.

When you say Master the Geo you are most comfortable with does that mean I should do the USA? I was planning on running App install sweeps to Asia-Pacific region but cant read the ads on Adplexity enough to trace the offer back to an Affiliate network.


Also, would you recommend Smartlinks to test offers quickly?

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Personally I am not a fan of smartlinks, so I can't really advice you on that.
Regarding geo; if you are based in USA I would say yes. Although beginning in a Tier 1 country isn't really the best way to start. But USA is quite big and there are enough opportunities to avoid heavy competition. Example;

Let's say you live in Florida, grab a sweep of the biggest supermarket chain in Florida. Create a lander with some dull survey questions, add some local stuff to the lander to make it look familiar to Florida. Target Florida only and adjust your ad text to something like: "WANTED: Women (35+) Who Live In Florida And Fancy A Free Shopping Spree!" etc etc

This way you avoid heavy competition I think. Ofcourse 1001 angles are possible.

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This is extremely helpful! I had always heard to target 2 & 3 tier countries but feel a lot better about your approach. How exactly do sweeps work in terms of offer you run? I'm assuming the biggest supermarket wouldn't be running an offer. So do you find a generic CPA offer and then come up with an angle to drive sign ups?

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Check this: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...S-Sweeps-on-FB
They don't actually run themselves, lead gen companies use A-brand vouchers to give away if people join the competition.
Rules in USA regarding brands and words as "free" are kinda strict tho'.

Please don't focus on USA only by the way, check around on the forum where others start their "follow alongs". You might see a trend in there too regarding certain geo's.

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Thanks for the link! A couple quick questions. Do all networks have to lead gen offers? And would you recommend Pops for them? I know you recommend FB in the link but i'd like to stay away from gray hat for my first campaign.


I will definitely not focus only on the USA. I'm just looking to get my feet wet for my first campaign. I've been reading as many follow along as i can over the last couple of week. They are extremely helpful but tend to focus on the traffic side of the process and not so much on the offer. Also most seem to be Anti Virus or Adult.

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Most networks do have leadgen offers yeah. I never done pops so I can't recommend anything on that. But I guess other can ;-).

If your approach is not agressive and you use good links sweeps are quite oke to run on FB, although I understand if you don't have other accounts and you just starting you try to avoid any dodgy stuff. I must say I even use sweeps to warm up accounts, instead of buying likes for some fanpage.

If the ads are harmless + have good comments + have low budget there is not a reason for FB to check what's going on. Good luck mate!

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I'd not recommend pops for lead gen offers, generally. Lead gen does well with high-intent traffic and very specific targeting - neither of which tend to be primary features of pop ads, the single highest-interruption form of ads out there.

That's not to say it's impossible to get them working, but it'll be tricky.

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Very true, the lack of targeting and pre-selling very often results in poor lead quality ... so if you chose to promote leadgen offers on pops, chose something with as BROAD appeal as possible.

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I'm planning on doing some very generic. Is display the way to go if you want to get high intent very specific targeting?

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Yup, display gives you one more shot at targeting, which is the banners themselves. Some networks also offer category targeting, or reveal the names of placements/apps which gives you another chance at picking related pubs to buy ad space on ... while POP networks are usually "blind'.

Even better is to use sources like facebook, or adwords search, where you can target extremely accurate ... which means higher costs and more strict rules.

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Gold tip - this is one of the best ways to avoid the heavy competition.

The big dogs will not bother to target niche markets using niche angles - so this is where the smaller affiliates can swoop in and take a piece of the pie - by being willing to hustle harder.

The same can be applied to lots of traffic types and situations - for instance:

-For display traffic: Target publisher sites and apps that are closely related, then promote related offers.

-For ecommerce+FB: Target smaller demographics / target audience using niche angles - which the big brands and stores won't bother to do.

-For adult: Promoting generic dating or adult dating offers, but customizing banners and landers to every niche: BBW, ebony, and a million more adult niches.

Lots of great tips in this thread! Thanks to all.

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Are there any case studies for Display like the one you did for Pop Campaigns? I tried reading the top search results for "mobile display" but haven't quite grasped it.

Thanks again for all the feedback its helped me out tons.

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There are!

Here's caurmen's mobile cookbook:

https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...obile-Cookbook

Here's my generic banner + gaming offers approach (can be used for 1/2-click offers in general):

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post299115

Here's a method for quickly testing international offers:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...isplay-Traffic

Hope that helps! Glad our advice is helping - and thanks for being a part of the community!



Amy

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