Do More Affiliates Buy Traffic Or Build Traffic?
 

Do most affiliates these days buy traffic from places like Exoclick, Juicy Ads and Traffic Junky (among many others) and then send that traffic directly to paysites or hosted banners/tours? Or do most affiliates still build their own traffic like blogs, free sites and tubes to promote paysites by placing banners, ads, clips,etc?

Just wondering if affiliates find it more profitable to just buy/send traffic to existing paysite tours or if they find building their own traffic/sites brings in more revenue for them.

Thanks!

Modern day affiliates buy traffic. Thanks to the rise of self serve ad platforms, it is easier than ever to get your hands on unlimited amounts of traffic for testing, scaling, optimizing your products. Conferences like Affiliate Summit and Ad-Tech show you just how big the affiliate business is these days. In Vegas there will be over 4000 people at Affiliate Summit, more than half of them will be direct affiliates.

I'm sure a lot of them work on generating their own traffic as well, it would be foolish not to but the real power is in being good at media buys. Just have to look at the Crak Revenue guys, they built their business model on it and are the best in adult at what they do.

Thanks for this! What worries me is the learning curve (i.e., spending thousands+) to figure out the knack of making profitable media buys. Also, I am sure that most direct affiliates are pushing cams and dating and not paysites?

Most of them Yes. They buy Dating and Cam traffic to push. Hit me up if interested in buying traffic. Our sales agents will get you the best possible deals for your budget. See Cig.

Isn't there 1000$ min deposit ?

Other than for cams, I believe affiliates build traffic sites and, if they buy traffic, they send it to the intermediary site they built, not direct to a pay site.

I do both.. I'm a newbie when comparing with the big dogs here, but I get decent traffic from my blogs and websites. I write my own content, and have some big social media accounts. That helps a lot. But I also buy content. This year I chose to rotate most of my earnings. I made some bucks then invested in traffic and kept growing. Got some programs that bring me a decent amount of money. Next year I'll do the same with some new programs. Maybe one day I can say that I own a program myself. That is the goal. Seems like I'm gonna make it. :upsidedow

I have to say that I'm great at buying traffic and filtering that crap.
I spend a lot of time filtering the bad sources from the good ones. But when that's done... This: :pimp

build traffic is better it could save your $ in the long run..

Congrats man!! Let me know some of your tricks and tips. LOL :)

Keep going you WILL "make it". Owning your own Program is non-stop fun times. :D

:thumbsup:thumbsup

I've found it impossible to build decent amounts of organic adult traffic in 2014. The big tubes have most of it, so it's a lot easier to just acquire it there.

I really love non-stop fun times. :winkwink:

Maybe you and I can talk sometime in the future. I got a lot of respect for you and you seem to be a honest guy that could give me some tips. Hell, maybe you can learn me something and I can do some things for you. Where all in this game together.

Sorry for my bad English, but blame that on the Dutch educational system. :1orglaugh

More build

The biggest buy (or email)

Other than email, media buyers are buy far the biggest affiliates these days. I know more than a few that are doing 100+ joins a day. What thier ROI is, that's a different story

Well hey man I will be in Amsterdam for the Cannabis Cup so email me and if you're around let's meetup for a smoke and a drink! :)

porn nerd cash AT gmail


Well that's my goal so we should talk, too. LOL I think once you find the right profit margin and can scale it up (rinse/repeat) then it becomes a pure numbers game.

Most buy, some build though.

The top promoted products on ad networks are 1. Dating 2. Penis growth and 3. Cams. However, you look at companies like Crak Revenue, Mindgeek, BangBros, Paperstreetcash and a few others, they are buying for their paysites and killing it still. I know a lot of you won't believe me but it's the truth. These guys adapted their products, built new landing pages and put effort into their creatives, they achieve a much higher CTR than your dating/cams guys which helps them compete.

Paysites still convert, you just have to know the traffic you are buying and cater your product to them in a way that they whip out the credit cards. Niche content, keyword targeting, geo targeting are all great ways of fine tuning your traffic, from there you can gather data then optimize further, target to certain times of the day when you make the sales, cut out the rest of the day and don't waste your budget.

Like I said initially, self serving ad platforms make all of this possible, the options that we develop are all done to help our clients be as successful as possible.

We deal with a good deal of affiliates. so i am going with buying with a side of building

great thread guys. just what i needed.

curious guys… we sell dating info products for men… is there anyone else doing this on these traffic networks? I'd love to test them out and see how it goes.

some affiliates do but they must have a solid bankroll.

So which ad networks can you buy ads based on tags/keywords?

Thanks for this great info!

Question: what kind of budget/learning curve does it take to fine tune these parameters? 1K? 5K? Because it seems to me you can spend (not 'waste') a lot of $$$ trying to figure out these aspects (time of day, country, keywords, etc).

check out this list here:
CPA/Traffic Brokers - SignBucksDaily
i'm sure you will find some brokers/ad networks that will be good for you.

How long is a piece of string? :winkwink

I like to run a test at 50-100x CPA.

Ah thank you. Yes, the string can be endless LOL.

In the past I would let an ad buy run for a couple hundred dollars to fully test out the source but this was 3 years ago now. Also, I am doing paysites so the conversions/ROI has to come into play.

Not a good biz strategy to drop 1K on ad buys to get 3 signups. :D

Like Rob says, there are a lot of variables that come into play when factoring in how it's going, as long as you learn from your mistakes, I believe that the loss of $ was worth it, you are smarter for the next time you try it.

If you already generate sales then you already have data to pull from. Do you make most of your sales at night, on specific days, at specific hours? Where's the pattern, when you find it, start there in a self serving platform. It's easier to expand your settings than it is to narrow them down, you could already be in a hole for $1,000 by the time you narrow it down as opposed to be maybe being 50% down on a $200 spend by starting out slowly.

You already have your keyword data because you built your paysites around a niche and an idea. You know your market because your past sales tells you where the majority of your sales came from, is it USA, UK, CA? You can find out and use that. Many people don't believe they should buy traffic, it seems daunting at first but just in this thread you can see some people understand a bit better how it works. So long as you have data to lean on, it is half the battle, the rest is all in your creatives, landing pages, content, how you show it and to who you show it.

But it's equally not a good biz strategy to abandon a traffic source because you spent too little. If your average earnings per member is $50, spending $2-300 really hasn't touched the surface of testing and tweaking. Have you even received 24 hours of traffic at that point?

In a lot of cases, the issues on that buy is not the traffic source but rather your banners and landers.

In theory, LOL

Any media buyer will tell you, you'll start a campaign and be doing well. Then you scale it up (same placement, same freq cap, same price / bid) and for some resin the ROI just doesn't hold. It makes no sense and can be maddening !!!!

Thanks for the great tips in here! Beginning next year I wil be doing some media buys so will put all this to an actual live test.

It's funny because I think I am better at analyzing data now than I was 2-3 years ago when I did my last signifcant media buys. I do get consistent sales and will only plan media buys for those 5-6 paysite 'whales' that already do gangbuster biz. Proven winners, as it were. Then I would like to expand into some of the other 'guppie' paysites and see if we can grow them puppies. I mean, guppies.

Will be hitting you up first week of Dec. Thanks for your posts!

most of my affiliates that I manage buy traffic, a few generate their own.

I wonder how much affiliates SPEND on these traffic buys tho?

$1000 a week?
$1000 a month?

So many ad network reps posted there, biased talk? :)

You are aiming quite low :2 cents:

I bought traffic years ago for cams and I can say that all bought traffic for cams sucks ! Now I build my own traffic and I am happy with my sales !

1000$ a day?But yes,unless you willing to spend big bucks,you cant except much results.

For big time affiliates yes, add zeros. LOL But for smaller, single-person operations it can't be that large.

Only ballers can drop 25k in hopes of seeing 30K in return.

How many sales does your network get per day ?

How many of them are inhouse and how many are affiliates?

20% is a good margin.

Depends on the day. :)

But it's about 60% non-affiliates to 40% affiliates (off the top of my head).


That's what scares me. LOL Maybe it's more like spending 25K to get 27K in return. :(

Yes 20% is an excellent profit margin.

Most of the top companies in many different industries are delighted if they can generate a 20% profit margin.

Average Profit Margins Of Five Main Industrial Sectors, 2013

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...rofits_624.gif

Spending 25K to earn 27K isn't scary at all.
In fact, it's a great reason to spend 30K next time.
Scary is spending 500 to earn 30 :2 cents:

It's about scale and ambition in the end. No one starts out spending $25k to make $30k, you ramp up to that and by then you have learned so much that it is less scary to do and more about where you can take it to. 20% average return is pretty solid, you then live for those days where you do 50%, 75% profit and take all the information out of it you can to try and make those days happen more consistently to raise your profit margin to 30%. It's a numbers game.

Would you be happy with a 20% annual return on your stock portfolio? I sure would.

This is more risky than stock portfolio and thus the profit needs to be greater.

Very true. I suppose I should have said it's scary to spend 25K and NOT make even 27K back. Or, as you point out, spend 25K to make back....17K. LOL


Yes I would be happy with a 20% return on stocks BUT advertising is not "investing" (per se). Or, if it is, it's short-term and more like day trading. LOL

But I hear what you are saying. What is an appropriate "starting budget" to test so as to gather enough data to scale (profitably)?

:winkwink: :winkwink:

CPA = Click Per Action?
So if it costs $0.20 to get a click multiply that by 50 or 100?
Intradesting.
Thanks!!

:)

CPA = Cost per Action. The $ it costs you to get a user in the door whether it be as a member, a lead, a trial etc etc. Basically, the margin you are comfortable with spending to acquire 1 new member. Lets say in your case you make an average $50 from each user who signs up to your site, you won't get very much data by spending $75 on traffic. Realistically, $1,000 is a good amount of money to spend on self serving networks to get a feel for the traffic and if it will work out for you long term.

But smart is to spend 500, earn 125 this month, 120 the next 100 the month after 85 the month after 60 the month after and 55 the month after that and so on. ( just numbers to make a point )

One mistake people make is NOT using the revshare option. This of course is for tested sources of traffic. And dont go 100% on rev. Start off with 10% of the sales in rev then make it 20 then 30 and up to about 55%.

If your promoting cams the rev option can make a KILLING for you.

Ah ok I get it now. LOL It's funny because $1000 is what I thought would be a good test amount to try differant traffic sources. But to spend $1000 for EACH traffic source....that may be an issue.


Revshare is what I am going for but with paysites. Maybe we should try cams. LOL