Home > Affiliate Marketing Forum >

---

4-figure Daily Profits With White Hat Viral Content Monetization (46)

---

We’re living in a time of transition. With Facebook and Google making it harder to run blackhat campaigns a lot of affiliates are pushed to whitehat verticals if they want to be able to spend 4-5 figures daily budgets.

But the problem we saw while testing new whitehat opportunities, especially in Ecom, was the amount of overhead and new tasks it involved.

Our first successful Ecom campaign sold nearly 8k units of a product. This “success”, came with tons of issues related to customer support, logistics, and product quality improvement.

In the end, we saw a return of less than 25% for our money invested and something didn’t quite add up. We doubled or tripled our work, but we cut our ROIs short on the same proportion. We also increased our risk significantly (PayPal issues anyone?).

I know, it takes time to build an asset, a brand, backend sales and a quality product positioning yourself in the market and who knows, maybe one day we will do it if we find something that sums a decent return. For the time being, we decided to focus on finding verticals and campaigns that bring us an optimal return for our money and, at the same time, don’t increase the issues we have to deal with.

I’m optimistic that there are still good opportunities in the space, allowing us to make money leveraging our affiliate skills and putting them to work for abnormal returns.

One of these opportunities was brought to us by SHINEz. It is based on content monetization, where you work with several viral sites that have galleries and other engaging content as landing pages where different display banners are shown. The traffic arrives at the landing page and you get paid either per click or per impressions generated in your site.

We used to run this sort of campaigns some years ago with Facebook traffic and Google Adsense, but we left it aside as we didn’t feel comfortable relying on just one source of monetization. There had been several cases published in the media about Google not paying 6-figure amounts to Adsense partners that had a good reputation and nice sites and layouts so we didn’t want to end up like one of those guys.

So when SHINEz brought this business model to us again we had some experience and we knew what we were looking for and things we wanted to avoid.

The good stuff about viral content monetization we knew:

• Worldwide scaling potential
• Can be run as a whitehat monetization vertical
• No hassle related to products, fulfillment or infrastructure.

How it works

The site is a fundamental part of the strategy. In the past, we used very simple quick sites, with a lot of filler content that in some cases was spinned. Now, if you want to get good revenues for your traffic the site plays an important role. It has to be approved by the demand partners that will pay your revenues so it must be and look legit.

The advertisers will bid on the placements from your site and the money you will get will depend on the quality of your traffic and also on how engaging the content is.

The layout is also very important, as you want to get as many pageviews from every user as possible, so the typical working layout is galleries which require the user to browse through the pages.

Working with SHINEz we didn’t have to worry about this part as they provided the working layout, sites, and content. A nice working site content looks like this:



You have access to stats of the revenue per user that a certain site and article are generating, so you can choose the content you promote based on data.

Once the content is chosen, you have to set up Facebook campaigns.



Facebook campaigns will be set to optimize for Conversions. The real-time bidding system of SHINEz will send the data of the value of each visitor to the Facebook pixel, so you will have lots of nice data for auto-optimization, allowing you to focus on split testing the best campaigns and letting Facebook find the higher value users and those that engage the most with the content.



The monetization panel of pulls the data from your Facebook account and displays all performance metrics so you can decide what to cut and what to scale.



Pros and Cons

SHINEz brought important things to the table that made us reconsider and enter again in this vertical:

• They did not rely just on one Google income stream but are pretty diversified on several demand partners
• Their monetization model focuses on getting paid by impressions
• The platform and sites use a header bidding system, which grabs the visitor information and retrieves the price or bid that a pool of demand networks are ready to pay for this visitor.
• This platform allows each impression to be sold to the highest bidder, boosting the EPC we get for our traffic
• They take care of the content research and creation making sure we have great stuff available to promote, which generates the most page views and impressions
• Facebook took a hit on viral content, specially clickbait articles, few companies were able to adapt their content and keep being profitable while complying with Facebook’s rules. SHINEz is one of them.

Also, I have to mention that we care about the people we start working with, for us, it’s not only about the numbers. From the beginning, we felt very comfortable with the communication and clarity of all the risks and opportunities. What was said was done by them and they always gave more than expected so far, which is something we really appreciate.

After our test we began with a very successful first month, making over $40k in revenues.

We had some issues in between, related to Facebook policy changes, campaigns disapproved and some poor landing page experience issues.

SHINEz put a lot of effort into getting feedback about the issues and were able to fix the most important ones. We’ve recently run campaigns again at a bigger scale and we get much less disapprovals and no poor landing page experience anymore.

They also upgraded their platform making it easy to access any metric.

This allows us to focus our efforts in the media buying part as it’s really the key to getting a good ROI out of your ad spend, especially on scale.

Although you can also use also Native, Snapchat.. we found Facebook to be a great traffic source for a few reasons:

• You can still pull visits for a cheap cost per click, as long as you do a good job with the creative and the placements
• The Facebook pixel optimization really helps to pull the most engaged audience without a lot of manual targeting work
• There is a lot of volume for scaling once you hit a working creative combo
• Facebook is still the best traffic quality out there and this vertical is something that can be considered whitehat, something they allow to be promoted as long as you don’t use clickbait headlines or aggressive pictures

Your main focus is to get a high CTR, low CPC ad creatives in order to get a decent ROI campaign which you can scale.

You get access to their panel where you can monitor all your campaigns performance, with really useful breakdowns for optimization, although it does not update on real-time yet (it has a delay of 3h which puts you in some stress when scaling to five-figure daily budgets).

On the Cons side:

• Payment cycles are slow compared with high volume affiliate campaigns (Net30) so you will need cash flow to scale
• It is very demanding on the media buying side, both for finding successful compliant creatives for the articles and on the scaling side, so it’s not suitable for people with little experience or used to work with fat margins without worrying much on losing part of it during the scale
• There are good cycles of high EPC on demand and low CPC on media buying that you have to leverage and follow the data very closely, with the risk of going through low EPC cycles where it can be really hard to make good profits

---

Finding a good balance of click-bait, valuable content (high quality score) and not getting banned for being too agressive is very hard these days. But this case shows it's ofcourse still possible to monetize content sites via FB.
Thanks!

---

Absolute Ripper case study man!

I really agree with this, do you guys find a relation to very high CTR's banning faster? I feel like it flags attention for manual review when its out of their average metrics by a long way

---

Thanks man! About the very high CTR's I agree there is a correlation and it seems to move the ad into a queue for manual moderation, even when the ad gets approved and starts spending it might get dissapproved after a while because of this if they find it doesn't comply with their policies. On a positive note we don't need to push so much super aggressive and high CTR creatives nowadays, neither strong click bait is needed anymore as you can get a decent ROI without doing that and it will ensure your ad don't get rejected by Facebook.

Of course you can still try to push for 25%+ CTR ads, but in something which is whitehat with a monetization platform good enough to bring you high EPCs, why risk your ads and account for a short term super high ROI.

The fact that Facebook's CPMs are getting higher and higher sometimes pushes us to be more aggressive on the creative and get a higher CTR, cheaper click, but always if you can work on having a better EPC the relationship with FB will be smoother.

---

So this service for ad arbitrage is kinda like what GiddyUp does for ecomm... you could make your own, but running through them removes a large part of the upfront workload. These kinds of arb sites are all over the place on native and I'd guess on FB too. Altho I wasn't aware of services that you could run arbitrage on their behalf without building your own site, your own ad stack, etc etc... pretty cool!

---

Been huge in past in viral game. Was top earning daily publisher on mylikes.com in past . Can you introduce me to them ? Would love to get my hands into this

Sent from my SM-G950F using STM Forums mobile app

---

Sure man, send me a PM with your Skype and I’ll intro you.


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

---

Now THAT's a cool way of making moolah!

Thanks for posting this @Todor!


Amy

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app

---

Does they have also other languages available like, dutch?

---

They have lots of translations of the content, Spanish, German... not sure about Dutch specifically.

---

Thanks. You said that the payments are slow. How long do you have to wait for payments?

---

They are Net30, so once the month closes you have to wait 30 days to get the payment for the revenues of that month.

---

I would also love to get my hands into this. Can you help?

---

I signed up via their website. Currently waiting to get contacted by them. I will keep you guys updated.

Maybe it will be easier if you introduce me. Please let me know what's possible.

---

Hey

I would love an introduction as well please. Used to do a lot of arb back in the days. Thanks

Sent from my HTC U11 using STM Forums mobile app

---

Hope you don't mind me asking, but what's your relationship with SHINEz? I.e. are you in any way involved in their project, do you benefit from referrals or, more in general, is there any disclaimer we should be aware of?

---

Don’t mind at all. My company is using SHINEz platform to monetize our Facebook traffic as it’s described in the post. We have used other monetization solutions as well.

I’m not otherwise involved and I don’t benefit from referrals, there is no affiliate link in the post. You are advised to gather your own data and test for yourself their platform or any other content monetization platform you find useful for your business, like you would do with any offer or network.


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

---

Nice share Todor, also nice to see you back on the forums!

Have you tried also other traffic sources or you do purely only FB?

(I have seen lately similar stuff also promoted on Twitter)

---

Thanks Erik! We also have tested Native and it can work as well, but require a good amount of optimization. Twitter haven't tried, from some tests we did in the past the cost per click was a bit high for arbitrage, but maybe things are changing as EPCs rise as well.

---

Hi Todor, I sent a PM. I am also interested to introduce with them. Thanks!

---

I am currently running giddyup with fb, anyone know what is the best practice to make the landing page format? Because we don’t own the product.

I am doing like a review site and mention the product

---

What's the margin you get for your specific CTR on Facebook?

---

I'd rather not disclose my margins, see the columns I've blurred in the screenshot. They are good enough for a whitehat business that doesn't require the ecom hassle and expenses.

---

No problem man, still thanks a lot for sharing this platform.

---

Awesome post, Todor. Thanks for sharing. I used to run ad arbitrage combo of FB and Adsense until FB changed their policies. This is really interesting especially since you were able to run a profitable campaign on your first month.

---

@Todor. When running FB ads to a SHINEz article:
1. What would you recommend for traffic: desktop traffic or mobile?
2. Do you run them separately or at the same time?
3. Was there a difference in ROI when sending traffic via desktop vs mobile?

---

I have a viral content site too : list25.com
We split up 60-40 with our partners. We get RPMs $3.5 - $4.2.

---

Hey men nice post, and thanks for sharing.

---

Woah I don't know too many people doing content arbitrage well.
So I guess Shinez is a platform that provides working layout, sites and content.
Does it also monetizes your traffic?
I know Google Adex and other ad-exchanges/DSPs are pretty restrictive on websites they include into their platform, so if Shinez already partnered with these guys this is an amazing product.

Also is it available to become a partner with Shinez? And how is the payment, is it like an affiliate network where you get paid weekly/monthly?

---

Try to hit up @kinan here on the forum, he should be able to help you out

---

Just PMed him

---

thanks for sharing, Todor!

---

I pmed you


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

---

Have you ever though of further monetizing your site with notifications/pop ups/sticky bars/etc.? We have clients that are notating the different offers that show up in their ad blocks, finding similar affiliate offers, and then using them as notification pop ups. They are seeing success with people clicking on those links and purchasing the affiliate offers. With Widgetly, you can easily manage and split test multiple offers. Could be worth testing on your landing pages and throughout your site(s).

---

I'm a bit lost.

Do you promote other website's articles and they track who brought them the traffic or do you need your own website and they throw at you all the content for you to promote?

What's the difference between this and creating/copying your own viral articles and create banner ads with your own affiliate links?

I usually get pretty low CPC with Facebook Ads so this is interesting to me.

---

SHINez provides the viral sites with the viral articles. They would then provide you with your own set of tracking links, which you'll then send traffic to.

Low CPC is crucial - basically you need to test a ton of creatives to achieve that. So if you're good at getting low CPCs, you'd have an advantage.



Amy

---

hey todor i liked your post but i did not get what you mean with SHINEz is it a platform like adsense. if it is yes i would like to try it i am tired of being banned and my ads being limited on adsense

---

We have an AWA speech replay from Kinan (shinez) here on the forum, check it out to learn more about their platform and what it is about :

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...tent-Hen-Kinan

---

hey i did not find the video

---

It's at the bottom of this thread: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...tent-Hen-Kinan

---

The Video is not laying at the shared link...

---

Are you guys still active? I applied got a mail about approval, replied what the mail asked but didn’t receive any details since then

---

@Todor

thank you for the case study. I have been running a test campaign on Shinez before I discovered your thread.

I had a promsing start with my first campaign and good CTR of 20+% but after a few days my Facebook ad account surely got deactivated for Policy 28. Circumventing Systems
I have used only non-click-baity headlines according to the Shinez guidelines and omitted every "bad" word that Facebook frowns upon.

Maybe it was because it was on a new BM or the domain is already flagged. I am currently verifying the business to appeal the decision, but that takes a lot of time with Facebook. I wish other traffic sources could be used with Shinez.

Do you still run content arbitrage with Shinez? Any updates on different traffic sources that can be used?

@vgmaniaz

You should get an response via email or maybe you want to contact Leon from Shinez on Skype: live:s.opinion01

---

Facebook bans accounts left and right and it's VERY often an automatic decisions that can be reverted after an appeal. Definitely submit the appeal and don't give up after the first denial

---

Hi!


Is it still working well Shinez @Todor?


Thanks and good day!

---

Here is a more recent case study using shinez as the monetization platform: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...ofit-in-9-days

---

Home > Affiliate Marketing Forum >