How to properly introduce to affiliates? (13)
Hey everyone, our company recently released a cool new Mac antivirus/ disk cleaning application. I has great conversion rate (actually better than expected), users seem to love it. Now the plan is to attract great affiliates to this app. Could someone with experience share what would be the best practice for doing this? At the moment the app is released through RevenueWire (don't know if we made a right decision in choosing the affiliate network - maybe someone could comment on this too). We are actively working on landing pages and other creatives that the future affiliates could use - should we wait for the creatives to be completed before announcing/promoting our app for affiliates or people working in security niche tend to use their own creatives/landing pages. The last question that is bothering me is how to attract the right white hat affiliates and stay away from the shady ones that use fake flash player update and "your computer is infected" pop-ups to push antivirus software?
Affiliates like to use all kinds of tricks for sure, if you want to work with just the white hat ones it will be a bit more complicated.
Talk with the affiliate network you started with and ask them for premium affiliates only, most of the AMs know who they are working with, so it is possible to select just the more reliable ones.
Look for more affiliate networks too, there is no reason to be with just one, unless they can deliver all the volume you want. Since you want to focus on HQ affiliates, it's not a good idea to be on EVERY network either ... look for the more established ones and keep you offer semi-exclusive.
Require pre-approved LP use, it's nothing unusual in some verticals... this will certainly decrease the use of in-compliant creatives and you will be partially covered at the same time.
Thanks matuloo, great advice on working with pre-approved LP. I have already reached out to our AM and it seems that we are attracting some great affiliates who work on content marketing, now I am looking to reach out to people who are working with paid traffic. I was thinking of marketing our "Partners" page on adwords and facebook - do you think it's worth doing?
Also maybe there's some directory or other place where affiliates working with paid traffic are searching for products to promote?
I highly recommend against getting too adventurous with this. Antivirus and affiliates usually mix in one way, and that's super aggressive tactics.
It's EXTREMELY rare to find someone you can trust and follows up on the agreement to promote it with pre-approved creatives only. The incentives are just not aligned. Just have a look on AdPlexity and you see what I mean.
Have you tried to run paid traffic to this offer in-house to see how it performs? You need to have your numbers spot on before you even think of approaching affiliates and even after, I don't see how you can get past the compliance challenges when you open it up to everyone.
Originally Posted by tomasm
BTW : affiliates working with paid traffic are usually working with any major affiliate network, it's not like there are networks for only organic traffic or paid traffic affiliates, its always a mix.
You can seek out affiliate networks that have promoted similar products in the past - such as MacKeeper which I've promoted successfully myself. Affiliates that have promoted Mackeeper etc. already know where the best Mac traffic is - which traffic networks/sources - plus already have whitelists of the best publishers. So by working with those aff networks you can reach those same affiliates.
When I went to Adplexity desktop and typed in "mackeeper" I found results showing for the following aff networks:
You can also go to offer aggregator websites such as odigger.com and offervault as mentioned by matuloo, and do a search for "mackeeper" to see which affiliate networks had that offer available.
Best of luck!
Disclaimer: As Manu has said above, there's no way to guard against affiliates promoting your offer using super-aggressive/misleading tactics. Cloaking is the norm in this industry especially when it comes to running the antivirus/cleaner type products.
Disclaimer 2: STM does not endorse any aff networks - please work with them at your own discretion.
Amy
These are some great advice - thanks a lot. I will check the list provided by vortex on the affiliate networks. So basically the idea is to put you offer on several affiliate networks and then work with the affiliate manager to attract the right affilaites. odigger and offervault just seem like a mess to me but might give them a shot. At the moment promoting the app in-house with some better than ever expected numbers (conversions are >5%, of course that's on a highly targeted traffic). Will see how it goes. Thanks for the answers.
OK, we will start focusing on in-house media buying more. As for affiliates - I see there's a "product owners" section in this forum - maybe it's a good idea to list our offer there? (with some text that we are looking for white hat affiliates?) Alternatively seems like Amy has done some antivirus marketing in the past, can I send a pm with the offer?
PS. there are a lot of knowledgeable affiliates in this forum - maybe someone could help us with affiliate recruiting (not for free of course)?
Originally Posted by tomasm
You can certainly list your offer, but I'm afraid you'll just be recruiting the same affiliates you'd be attracting by going through affiliate networks - i.e. the risk of them running blackhat would still be high.
Regarding PM'ing: No need, as my focus is no longer on that vertical (and thank for asking before PM'ing, as sending unsolicited PMs is against forum rules).
I think your best bet would be to talk to several large and reputable affiliate networks, make it clear that you ONLY ABSOLUTELY want 100% whitehat promotion, pick 1-2 networks to work with, then ask them to only open up your offer to a few super-affiliates. That way, there's a lot more control and accountability on how you want the offer to be promoted. And because of the relative lack of competition (assuming you have a high-quality legit product), running whitehat would still allow the affiliates to turn a good profit. I know that's the approach some legit brand-name antivirus products have chosen to take (or their owners rather).
Best of luck!
Amy
I hope you had a nice holiday. Seems like a plan - will start working with our affiliate manager more closely. We are now starting to work on in-house media buying. I understand that you are no longer promoting antivirus products but maybe you could shed some light on where should we start? PS just finished reading the "Whats-working-in-2018-final.pdf" - great resource if anyone missed it. It seems that Facebook, Native and Google are our best bets in 2018 Will surely set up an adwords account, not sure if it's worth promoting a Mac antivirus through Facebook and native. I would really appreciate if you shared some info on Mac antivirus app promo techniques.
Originally Posted by tomasm
Will surely set up an adwords account, not sure if it's worth promoting a Mac antivirus through Facebook and native. I would really appreciate if you shared some info on Mac antivirus app promo techniques.
In terms of recommendations on how to promote your product...
First of all I would suggest to explore non-adult traffic first. Adult traffic can work for antivirus offers, but usually you'd need to use scare tactics to jolt visitors out of their xxx mentality - which is something you're not wanting to do.
Next - in terms of traffic types and sources...basically you can run antivirus anywhere that ALLOWS this type of product to be promoted (because targeted audience is not required, as everyone needs antivirus), AND allows you to target Macs.
Pop is a suitable traffic type for antivirus offers for sure. And it's relatively cheap.
Banner/display traffic can also work. I found this somewhat outdated mindmap (link below) but some of the ad networks listed are still in operation - check out the "Display / Media Buys" sources. Again - before depositing money into any traffic source, make sure it allows you to target Mac Desktops, and that they allow the promotion of antivirus offers (if unsure, email them to ask, and be sure to emphasize that you're the owner of a legit/quality product if that's indeed the case).
https://www.mindmeister.com/10242382...s?fullscreen=1
Native sources - I remember at least some of the sources do allow targeting Macs, but you can make sure. The relatively high traffic costs may eat into your margins though, depending on your product pricing and conversion rates.
Google - I've never used google for promoting antivirus, but AFAIK, the promotion of whitehat antivirus products is allowed. Google search I don't think allows targeting by device, but if I remember correctly, GDN (google display network) DOES. So that's something you can test.
Facebook - I've also never used FB to promote antivirus, so don't know whether it's permitted or not - although I can't seem to find anything in their advertising TOS that explicitly forbids it (as long as it doesn't contain spyware/malware).
Cost of traffic may be a problem here as well.
If you're wanting to give FB a test, try to use a disposable ad account just in case you get banned.
To target MacOS do this:
That's all I could think of for now - hope that helps! And all the best!
Amy
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