Day 16: Common Offer Types for Pop Traffic (16)
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ACTION & EXPLANATION & READING
In this lesson, I would like you to a)pick an offer vertical, and b)applyto more affiliate networks if necessary.
I'm combining ACTION and EXPLANATION and READING in this lesson for the sake of convenience and continuity. Breaking down each of the 2 or 3 sections further into the different verticals would make things more confusing. Please don't just pick out the ACTION parts and ignore the EXPLANATION bits - everything I'm explaining are only basics that you need to know.
Let's proceed!
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PREPARATION
Below, I'll list some of the most popular verticals that are suitable for pop traffic.
IMPORTANT: Please read through ALL the sections on the different verticals, even if you're not planning on running certain ones! In some of the sections, there's valuable information that's relevant for multiple verticals.
If you have a subscription to Adplexity Mobile, feel free to browse alongside me. If you don't, I would highly recommend subscribing to it right now - it will help you to identify the best landers, to save you massive amounts of time in browsing websites to trigger pop ads to download them manually (and when you do that, there'd be no indication of how well they'll work - whereas Adplexity will show you landers that have received the most traffic over at least a few days, which is an indication that it may be a good performer).
Below are some threads that contain discounts on Adplexity. Note: There are multiple Adplexity products - Adplexity Mobile is the one we want! (Unless you're wanting to run adult offers - in which case you may want to get Adplexity Adult instead.)
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...or-STM-Members
To see what verticals are popular on pop: I go to Adplexity, set the date filter to "last 7 days" or "last 30 days", "Days running" filter to 7 to infinity, choose "Popup" for Ad Type, in "Tracking Tool" filter click on "Choose More" > click on "Select all" > uncheck "None", and select "Received Most Traffic" in the right-hand dropdown.
By selecting all trackers, I can exclude most of the entries that are not run by affiliates, because most affiliates are using one of the trackers listed. An example of campaigns that are not run by affiliates, are the "Branding Campaigns" described by Adplexity in their tutorial here:
https://mobile.adplexity.com/tutorial
Then I'd start from the top of the search results and work my way down, to see what types of landers I see. Here are some of the most popular verticals right now:
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SWEEPSTAKES
Also referred to as "sweeps", these offers will ask the visitor for their contact information and even their credit card information, in order to be entered into a sweepstakes to win a prize. Typical prizes include:
-Gadgets like iPhone/iPad, Samsung phone/tablet, Fitbit, Playstation, laptop, etc.
-Gifts cards and vouchers for restaurants, supermarkets, and online/offline department and brand name stores. (Examples: Amazon, Visa, Walmart, Tesco, Target, etc.)
Here are examples of what some of the offers look like:
And here are examples of what some of the landing pages look like:
So what we do is send visitors to a landing page, where we ask them to take some type of action to participate in a sweepstakes to win a specific prize - answer survey questions, spin a wheel, pick a prize, whatever - and afterwards we send them to an offer where they can register for the prize draw. And when they do, we've made a conversion.
Obviously, the landing page will need to reflect the same prize and same language as the offer(s) you're wanting to promote.
Sweeps is a very good vertical for newbies to start with. There are lots of good offers available for running, lots of good landers available for ripping, and you don't need to struggle too much between making landers really aggressive (i.e. scammy/misleading) in order to make them convert, and getting them approved by traffic sources.
Lander Compliance
Next, I want to talk a bit about lander compliance. But first, a couple of disclaimers:
Disclaimer 1: Everything I'll be telling you about traffic network and affiliate network TOS, and their tolerance of aggressive landers and cloaking practices, will be based on a mix of personal experience and info I get from talking to people. You are strongly encouraged to consult with your AMs on affiliate networks, and to contact the support team of every traffic network you're planning to run traffic from, to find out what they will or will not tolerate. Rules are changing constantly, so what I'm about to tell you may not be 100% accurate by the time you read this!
Disclaimer 2: I neither encourage nor discourage you from running aggressive landers, breaking TOSs of affiliate networks and/or traffic networks, or engaging in cloaking. I'm a teacher - I tell things as I know them. You are free to make your own decisions - just know that you'd be doing so at your own risk, and neither myself nor STM will be held responsible for any losses you may sustain by breaking any rules, intentional or not.)
Now that we got that out of the way - let's move on...
For sweeps offers specifically, there are 3 main tactics affiliates are using to create what is called an "aggressive" lander - a lander aimed to maximize conversion rates by lying to the visitor.
1)Adapting the look-and-feel of an authority website, like Amazon or Facebook or a mobile carrier etc., and even going as far as using their trademarked logos.
2)Using ad copy that says "You've won an iPhone!" when the offer merely invites visitors to register for participation in a sweepstakes. Or "You can test our iPhone and keep it for free afterwards."
3)Telling visitors that a parcel - with the prize in it - is waiting for them at the courier / post office, and that they need to pay a sort of fee in order to have it delivered. This angle is particularly popular with CC submit (credit card submit) sweeps offers, where the conversion happens when a visitor submits their credit card details.
The less-aggressive ones would copy the look-and-feel of the site - color scheme etc., without using the respective trademarked logos. Copy-wise, compliant landers would use words like "You stand to win an iPhone!" or "You can win an iPhone!" instead of "You've won an iPhone!"
Compliant landers will typically not convert as well as aggressive ones, but there are advantages as well. Mrbraun's thread on the topic is a must-read:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...on-pop-traffic
And based on my personal experience, a minor change in wording - such as saying "You can win" instead of "You've won" - may not make a big difference in conversion rates. I'll leave this for you to experiment with.
So should you run more-aggressive landers or less-aggressive landers? There are 2 main considerations: What the traffic network will allow, and what the affiliate network and offer owner (aka "Advertiser") will allow.
1)Affiliate Networks & Advertisers: Some sweeps offers don't allow aggressive landers - your AM would be able to tell you which ones do and which ones don't.
If the affiliate network catches you running non-compliant landers, they will likely just give you a warning, or if you're lucky, may even turn a blind eye for as long as you're generating profits for both parties. Or they may kick you from the offer. (Of course there's also a chance you can get your affiliate account terminated, and even all your unpaid commissions forfeited - but it seldom comes to that unless you keep breaking the rules and fail to generate profits.)
But if the advertiser catches you, you're toast.
Ultimately, the advertiser is the one that will be paying the affiliate network - which will in turn be paying us - for all the conversions. When an advertiser catches us running non-compliant, and refuses to pay the affiliate network for our leads, then the affiliate network would have no reason to continue working with us (at least for that particular offer).
The affiliate network may still pay us for all the leads to date, and just ask us to stop sending traffic to the offer; or they may refuse to pay for leads we've generated for that offer since day one; or they may pay for a portion of the leads. It would be up to them to decide - when we get caught breaking the rules, there's not much we can do but accept whatever verdict is handed down.
Also, some offers will require that we submit landing pages to the AM (who may also need to pass them onto the advertiser) for approval. Some will just ask for one lander. Others will ask for ALL landers to be submitted. (Of course, whether or not you actually end up running the same lander you submitted and got approval for, would be another story - what I said about getting caught above applies here too.)
However, there ARE sweeps offers where the advertiser wouldn't mind us promoting using aggressive landers. If that's the way you want to go, ask your AMs for offers that accept aggressive landers. But even in those cases, you'd still need to get them approved at the traffic networks - let's talk about them next.
2)Traffic Networks: Some traffic networks will reject the more-aggressive landers, especially ones with trademarked logos on them. I haven't run sweeps in a long time, so can't really tell you what each traffic network will or will not accept.
If a traffic source sees a lander they deem too aggressive, they will likely reject the campaign - you will see a notification of some sort when you log into the traffic source, and an email may be sent to your inbox to notify you.
If you continue to submit non-compliant landers time after time after time after time (especially if you keep resubmitting the same one) - they may ban your account. But it usually takes doing this quite a few times before it would come to drastic measures like this. Usually you'd just get the campaign rejected - in which case you can just exclude the lander in your tracker's campaign settings, or swap it for a compliant lander, and resubmit the campaign for another review and it should get approved.
Here's the thing: Different traffic networks have different levels of tolerance regarding what landers they'll accept or not. And even each reviewer on a traffic network may have different standards. The trick is to get something that is borderline-acceptable approved.
So this is what you can try: Submit landers with various degrees of aggressiveness, to see how far you can go and still get approved. (Proceed at your own risk!)
So, back to the question: Should you run aggressive or not? Only you can decide, but here would be my suggestions:
-As for look-and-feel such as using the same color-schemes, that's not nearly as serious as using logos. You can test this type of landers to see whether a traffic source will approve it.
-As for misleading ad copy such as "You've won!", some traffic networks will allow it and some won't, so you'd need to test - but only as long as your AM tells you that it's OK to do so.
Most of what I said about lander compliance will apply to other verticals as well.
Asking AM for Sweeps OffersIf you choose sweeps as your first vertical: Ask your AMs on all aff networks you have accounts for, for recommendations of sweeps offers now. Ask for sweeps offers that fit the following criteria:
1)Have good track record - already converted reasonably-well for a few other affiliates. (You can test new offers later on. But in the beginning, you NEED offers that will give you enough conversions to split-test landers - more on that in a future lesson.)
2)In tier 3/4 geos (so avoid the heaviest competition; also, tier 3/4 geos will require less testing of offers and landers, and less cutting of placements, to make a campaign profitable).
3)Any sweepstakes prizes - as long as you can find landing pages on Adplexity for them. While chatting with your AM (or afterwards), you can quickly check Adplexity by searching for the sweepstakes prize as a keyword, like this:
Note: There's no need to download the landers now - I'll provide more instructions on that in the next lesson.
If you see at least 5 different-looking landing pages for a prize (that look significantly different from each other), then it would be easy to run the offers featuring that prize, because all you'd have to do is download/rip those landers and use them. If a particular prize doesn't have enough landing pages on Adplexity, then you would need to download landers for other prizes, and switch out the prize - which would be additional work for a newbie to have to worry about.
(If/once you have more coding experience, feel free to adapt landing pages that feature other prizes, for the prize of the offer(s) you're wanting to promote. Another more-advanced tactic that can be effective, is to adapt landing pages from other verticals, for the vertical you're promoting.)
4)Ask for leadgen sweeps, not credit card submit sweeps. Specifically, ask for SOI leadgen sweeps offers.
SOI (single opt-in) leadgen means the visitor only needs to enter their info on the offer page for you to get the conversion. DOI (double opt-in) leadgen is a bit more complicated - after the visitor enters their info, they would need to confirm in some way - by clicking on a link in an email, or by entering a code into a data field on the offer site. Credit card submit offers require visitors to submit their credit card details (duh!) which is the most-complicated of the 3 types of conversion flows mentioned.
So, SOI is the easiest, DOI is more-complicated, and CC submit is more-complicated still.
The general trend is this: The less complicated the conversion flow, the higher the conversion rate (because the less work the visitor has to do), but the lower the payout.
As a newbie, you need to run offers that have low payouts and high conversion rates, in order to collect lots of conversions for you to practice campaign optimization with (more on this later). This is why SOI leadgen offers would be ideal. Caurmen explains the advantages of smaller-payout offers here:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...e-often-better
Stick to SOI Leadgen Sweeps in the beginning - it's just easier.
5)The more offers your AMs can recommend, that fit that above criteria, the better. And remember to ask them about lander requirements for each offer!
Once you have a list of recommended offers from all your AMs, pick one or more geos that speak the same language, and a specific prize (e.g. iphone X offers for Thailand; or 2 geos in Latin America that both speak Latin Spanish) for which you have 2 offers or more.
Remember that you need to prepare a set of landers for each prize+language you choose, so to maximize the number of offers you can test with a single set of landers, try to choose a prize+language combination for which you have the most offers. If you have offers of the same prize in different geos that have the same written language, you can prepare one set of landers to run multiple geos. (You should still set up one campaign per geo though.)
Try to avoid including geos that have more than one major written language. As I'll explain in a future lesson, you can prepare landers in multiple languages for those geos, then set up tracker rules to detect the visitor's browser language and send them to landers in the corresponding language. But for starters let's take that complicity out of the equation.
I've created a sweepstakes guide around a year ago - most of the material should still be applicable today. If you're interested in running sweeps offers, that guide will massively shorten your learning curve. You can find it here:
https://stmforum.com/forum/forumdisp...weepstakes-101
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(TO BE CONTINUED BELOW...)
Amy
continued....
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Hi Vortex,
Really enjoying the follow along!
But there doesn't seem to be any offers that fit the above criteria across the four networks I've joined; Mobipium,
Could you recommend any other newbie friendly networks that I can apply to?
Thanks
Which criteria are you using? SOI sweeps are widely available. I just checked on Zeydoo and there several in TH / MY for example.
I was just about to ask this question as well. Having trouble getting sweepstakes offer requests accepted from Zeydoo, Adcombo, and
It seems to be a common theme I can't get around for these sweepstakes offers. It was a smooth process when requesting to get access to the direct linking offers. But, each affiliate network I try for sweepstakes gives me the same answer and I don't want to fabricate fake numbers to get approved. Wondering which network is beginner-friendly for these types of offers.
Originally Posted by jeremie
Thanks jeremie
Originally Posted by louist
Also check for pin submit or IVR sweeps, these flows work pretty good in lower tier geos and are probably easier to get accepted.
Originally Posted by louist
Also check for pin submit or IVR sweeps, these flows work pretty good in lower tier geos and are probably easier to get accepted.
Originally Posted by courto
Sweepstakes is definitely NOT the only vertical that works with pop traffic! Basically any offer that 1)has broad appeal (i.e. has a chance of converting with just anyone), and 2)has simple conversion flow that doesn't require a LOT of effort from the user, should convert for pop.
Examples: Antivirus/cleaners, VPN, app installs, mobile content (e.g. video and gaming subscriptions)...
For starters, ask your affiliate manager for offers that fit these criteria:
1)Convert on pop traffic. Preferably doesn't need pre-landers (or what we refer to simply as "landers" or landing pages). If landers are required please download from Adplexity and fix them up.
2)Low-payout offers, <$2, or better <$1. If <$0.50 even better.
3)Not from the most competitive geos: US, CA, UK, AU, ZA. Tier 3/4 geos preferred.
Thanks for asking questions! And please feel free to ask some more!
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
Originally Posted by vortex
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
Originally Posted by vortex
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
That's great news Amy, thanks for the reply!
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
That's great news Amy, thanks for the reply!
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
That's great news Amy, thanks for the reply!
I've just subscribed to AdplexityMobile and learned as much of the basics from Codecademy as my head could take, so I'll dive right in with landers now.
Speak soon.
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