Is this kind of approach still working well in 17?
A great case study: how to earn real money on sweepstakes offers. AdCombo's experience.
- Thread starter Anastasia AdCombo
- Start date
You never know what scheme and when is going to perform well. We have seen many cases when dead schemes suddenly begin to bring you a lot of profit again, even if it was dead for years, for example.
Right now, we ourselves do not implement this approach, so I cannot tell you for sure.
Anyway, the initial budget, in this case, is not that big, so you can test it a little, and if it is still good you can scale it.
That's cool! Good luck to youI have registered at Adcombo. Waiting for approval
Hi, thanks for your feedback.
Though, I think some points should be highlighted.
First, this traffic source consists not only of bots, but also some leftovers of smb's qualitative traffic. If it was crammed only with bots, it was impossible to get any revenue at all. But the main advantage of it that it is very very very cheap. So, you can make test campaigns over and over again without considerable spending, but gaining a lot of valuable experience and a lot of data to analyse.
Though, I think some points should be highlighted.
First, this traffic source consists not only of bots, but also some leftovers of smb's qualitative traffic. If it was crammed only with bots, it was impossible to get any revenue at all. But the main advantage of it that it is very very very cheap. So, you can make test campaigns over and over again without considerable spending, but gaining a lot of valuable experience and a lot of data to analyse.
Nobody will send you good spots, cause people spent their funds to find these spots.
And our thread does not say that email traffic in the network is good. Redirect clicks were profitable when I tested them years ago. These days the traffic is getting worse, but some good spots still exist.
At last, 3k of clicks is a very small amount to make a decision. In some geos 1k of clicks cost $1.00 or so.
Hi dear, Is this case study still working or no?I’d like to warn you from the very beginning that here is MUCH information for you to read. In this manual I try to disclose as much inside facts as possible – all nuances I have encountered myself when I was elaborating this case and mastering it on my colleagues-affiliates.
Well, folks. The given so-called case represents extended manual on how to send traffic. You’ll need a little bit of patience, endurance, cool-headedness, extra time and only 25$ of investment.
From the very beginning I want to lay the cards on the table: this method has already been tested with the help of dozens of affiliates. Half of them are working in the black, setting up the experiments and seeking for the ways how to improve the whole scheme. The other half of affiliates is only mastering their skills and gaining their experience with the help of the scheme, though they admit that it is truly useful.
A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE SCHEME:
Working with tangible goods requires marketing competence and knowing of the target audience. This is quite difficult for any newbie as well as working in other competitive niches.
Here are offers with simple conversion: Wap.Click, Installs, E-mail, Zip Submits. This Category of offers doesn’t require customer to buy smth or pay for smth. Conversion is extremely simple, thus an affiliate doesn’t have to poses strong background in the field.
Today we are going to discuss E-mail/Zip Submits offers. In this case conversion point is when a client puts an e-mail address or a ZIP-code into the input field at a landing page. And that’s it! Conversion is taken into account – an affiliate gets his commission fee. To this category of offers belong: sweepstakes, surveys, giveaways, coupons, gift cards and SOI (single opt-in).
You are not going to manage to cheat freely working with such kind of offers. An advertiser has a certain base for every group of offers. Doubles of e-mail addresses and scam-addresses are just drop out. The following conversions are not taken into account as well: data-centers’ IP-addresses (an advertiser has his own black-lists), proxy servers, conversions from other countries and etc.
Lead cost of such an offer is rarely exceeds 2$, as for Eastern Europe it doesn’t even exceed 1$. Sending good targeted traffic to such offers is profitless. A different story is sending cheap traffic of ad platforms. So we are going to monetize our E-mail/ZIP Submits with the help of cheap redirect-traffic (also: domain-traffic or error-traffic).
What is redirect-traffic and how to monetize it?
Redirect traffic is a mix of bots, back-traffic, leftovers from smb’s qualitative traffic, domain parking traffic, error 404 pages traffic, and a lot of other garbage traffic which is very widespread on the Internet. And here in this manual we will have to deal with it somehow.
This type of traffic has 2 unquestionable advantages:
- It is extremely cheap (cheaper that adult-traffic);
- It is mixed with adult-traffic less than any other type of traffic.
Here is manifest truth once again: All. Each and all big ad platforms sell adult-traffic of widely known web-sites misrepresenting it as traffic of high quality. Even a monkey understands that porn converts only porn. Nevertheless, most of us buy traffic from teaser networks (being very happy about it).
Redirect-traffic is a huge trash can. But if an affiliate learns how to get qualitative traffic and leads in such kind of ad platforms, he will be able to work with any kind of traffic with any ad platform. So do not turn your nose up at it and go for it with me. We are going to work with redirect.com. Unlike other similar platforms, redirect.com always separates adult-traffic, has huge amount of traffic from all over the world, doesn’t irritate affiliates with all those confirmations and verifications, payment process is adequate, and the most important is that minimum investment is only 25$, not 200$ as it is in, for example, ZeroPark (they turn their back on such paupers).
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE OFFERS:
You’d better start with those offers which presuppose all kinds of freeloads: sweepstakes, surveys, gift cards and etc. In most affiliate networks there are categories: sweepstakes and gift cards.
For publicity purposes I’d like to add that AdCombo has more than 30 offers with gift cards and sweepstakes for different geo, besides the payment rates are considerably higher than even in American reseller aggregators. That’s the beauty of AdCombo – there is no rebrokering. Moreover, apart from common USA/Canada/Australia/Great Britain, AdCombo has offers for other European countries, especially for Scandinavia – these regions beat all records of conversion rate and advertisers are not so self-indulged.
OFFER WORKS THE FOLLOWING WAY: Advertiser is gathering the list (base) of subscribers. For each E-mail delivered + a little bit of information (gender, age, affluence) he pays 1-2$. As a rule, an advertiser himself has no connection with the prize ruffled. For example, a sweepstake Amazon gift card hasn’t anything to do with Amazon itself. Landing pages are created on the basis of special LP-platforms. As soon as an advertiser gathers long list of subscribers, he closes the offer or continues to collect only new subscribers in the list (the latter decreases conversion drastically).
There are no tricks how to choose an offer – they are the same in general. The difference is that one advertiser can accept all the leads generated by an affiliate, the other one can accept only part of them (in case of doubles or conversions generated from non-trusted IP-ranges). You’d better specify it while speaking with your affiliate manager which sweepstakes offer brings more conversions than others. My advice is to send traffic to sweepstakes not only from English-speaking regions but from the other ones too.
REGISTRATION IN THE PLATFORM:
As it was stated above you’d better start your experience with the traffic with redirect.com. This network offers the most loyal and simple terms of how to involve an advertiser in the process of traffic buying. Despite the fact that interface and tech support are in English, they are rather tolerant of those who speak English not so good, they do not ignore such affiliates.
Right after the registration you’d better write to a tech support manager and ask to switch off the moderations for your campaigns. If we speak about mature users the moderation is automatically switched off eventually. But you’d better write to them at once and explain that you are rather an experienced media buyer and you are not going to ask a lot of silly questions. I wrote like this:
After this ticket they switched off the moderation of the campaign.
You can refill the balance via PayPal. You do not need to have money at you PayPal account – any VISA card will be accepted. The refilling takes 2 minutes. The minimum refilling is 25$. You have to agree that for a newbie it is not so frightful to spend 25$ to test new traffic source.
GETTING AN OFFER PREPARED FOR SENDING THE TRAFFIC TO:
Theoretically it is better to have a landing page to send traffic to. I personally advise you to send traffic to redirect-offers and the so-called smartlinks, since they adapt themselves to different geos, browsers, user’s browser languages and shows sweepstakes which belong to the user’s country. Such offers exist in e.g. International Redirect in Diablo Media affiliate network. But you will go mad while registering there (too much bureaucracy). If there is no offer with a smart-link do not be upset. The same thing is with landing pages. If there is one - that's ok. If there is none - no worries at all.
Redirect.com can transmit parameters #SOURCE# and #SUBSOURCE# - it is essential for you to add them as subaccounts to the link. It is crucially important to gather all the information related to all traffic sources. Although, being ahead of time, I can say that we are going to buy traffic only according to white-lists.
Creating a campaign:
The type of campaign should remain as Direct Redirect. Native Ads and Newsletter traffic test showed that as a matter of fact we still get redirect traffic, but via other bids under the pretense of premium traffic. We don’t want new formats. We want a good old-fashioned redirect.
As for the traffic type – you need Standard. High Volume RON traffic – is the so-called Run of Network traffic (those clicks which the network does not manage to sell out at a certain bid (rate) of each spot since the traffic flow is moving in real time). In other words, imagine the situation: there are clicks at a certain moment, but there is no buyer to buy them – all these clicks go to a RON flow where the cost is low but you can’t choose spots. Buying RON traffic is senseless and unprofitable. Although, you never know what may turn up.
GEO targeting is simple. You choose those countries which an offer accepts. As a rule, Sweepstakes offers accept extremely narrow geo – 1-3 countries.
Redirect.com browsers have very awkward platform targeting settings. Among all the traffic that exists on the Internet I recommend you to by the following positions: Chrome Windows, Android, and Android Phone. Of course, with such kind of limiting approach certain part of probable profit is lost. But numerous tests, trials and errors proved that traffic from these positions brings better conversion than any other.
Besides, I strongly advise you to separate traffic from Android-gadgets and Chrome Windows to different ad campaigns. From one and the same spot Android-traffic and Windows-traffic show widely different data. And as the moderation was switched off you can create unlimited quantity of campaigns in order to “sharpen” the traffic flows.
The next adjustment is Schedule:
As for the timing – you need Everyday (since you will have to stop all the campaigns all the time – this parameter is not so important). As for the Hours – you need Selected Hours regime. Time zone in the network is defined as EST Timezone – Eastern Standard Time. For example, the timing difference with Moscow is 8 hours. It is very important. No matter in what country you are, you always need to take into account the timing difference (the time zone of offer’s GEO and the time zone of the platform) since traffic bought not in the right time brings less profit than you need.
For example, I need to buy traffic according to states’ geography: California (US_CA) 6 pm – 11 pm local time. There is time zone – 8 UTC in California whereas the time zone of the ad platform is – 5 UTC. So the time difference is minus 3 hours. So you need to correct the time in the platform to plus 3 hours. It means that when it is 9 pm in New-York – it is 9 – 3 = 6 pm in California. So you need to put the timer on 9 pm – 2 am and you hit the target.
By the way, interesting observation:
In California, most of the people use only Apple production. Windows and Android gadgets are considered to be a sort of mauvais ton, it is a real reason to make fun of a person. It was surprising to know that IOS and MacOS traffic is much cheaper than Android traffic.
The next step is Capping:
Do exactly the same as it is in the picture. As soon as the campaign gets 400 unique clicks – you need to stop the flow of traffic, wait for the upcoming leads, take a short break and start the optimization.
IMPORTANT: most advertisers verify leads in a “manual” way – they check leads for the adequacy of the added information and then some of the leads are sifted. It also happens that information about the order appears in the ad platform’s system only in 24 hours after the real time of completing a form. If there are no conversions during the day – do not be upset. It’s quite possible that leads will come later. That’s why you need to take a break all the time during the “sessions” of traffic sending.
Bids
The next stage is the most crucial one. Here we should set bids and spots traffic is sent to. The correctness of this adjustment influences whether we get very good traffic or a bad one (including bots and etc.). Also, the right setting of bids for clicks allows determining the flow’s intensity and advertisement expenses.
I strongly recommend buying traffic ONLY according to White-lists and not testing many spots at the same time but buying traffic only from certain spots.
Once a week redirect.com sends letters of advice concerning the most popular traffic sources. Here is what a letter looks like:
It is worth mentioning that the given information is rather true: the given sources do have really good traffic. Everybody buys from them, consequently, competition and costs are extremely high, but the traffic really brings leads.
To begin with, you have to create ONE campaign for ONE traffic source. Besides, as it was stated before, traffic from one source should be divided into independent flows according to the type of gadgets and geo.
For example, while buying traffic from spot 5408 (I strongly recommend it) from the USA, the Netherlands, and Turkey, I create several campaigns for it:
5408 – TR – Chrome Windows
5408 – US – Chrome Windows
5408 – NL – Chrome Windows
5408 – TR – Android, Android Phone
5408 – US – Android, Android Phone
5408 – NL – Android, Android Phone
Every traffic flow is marked with a Sub-ID in order to determine among the spots the effective ones. What is more, I can easily set different price bids for every sort of geo and platform (to divide the price for Android and Windows clicks that I purchase). This is a critically important thing to pay attention to since most of the newbie marketers mix their traffic into a single stream. Such an activity usually results in considerable overpayment for the traffic purchased. Please, don't skip this recommendation and be patient while creating as many campaigns as it is needed for the reasonable tests to be made. This will either save your time and money, in the end.
Another positive thing about such an activity is safety. If an advertiser (or a network) is not satisfied with conversions, you can easily detect other spots which bring leads of a low quality and switch them off without stopping the whole traffic flow. If a network refuses to pay out for some reasons, it will be easier to assert your right to get other payments related to other Sources and Sub-IDs with the help of providing a proof: your traffic flow is divided and not all the leads come from one and the same spot.
Here is what interface of Source Targeting settings looks like:
First of all, you should remove spot “All Sources” with the help of button “REM”. After that, we write in a search field source’s ID and push “Add”. You should set maximum allowed price for 1k of traffic. There is an Estimator in the system – it is a tool which evaluates approximately how much traffic with a certain bid redirect.com gets. Do not believe it. Estimator tells lies and always overvalues the price. One condition you should observe – a minimum bid. If the bid in Max Bid corresponds with the minimum in Bid Range, traffic will come.
«Hourly Breakdown» alarm button allows estimating the approximate time in which traffic brings good conversion. During certain hours maximum spot’s bid is much higher – so you’d better buy traffic during this time.
It is also important to understand that traffic bought during a non-competitive time (when the bid is lower) can generate leads too; and in the end, ROI will be greater on such timing due to the traffic cost. The effectiveness can be found only by constant experiments. Anyway, for newbies I recommend buying traffic only during a competitive time.
As exemplified in spot 5408 you can see that traffic’s value depends on the time of day. From 11 am to 5 pm according to EST. This spot generates good traffic not only across the USA but across all Western Europe. When it is 11 am according to EST – there is nearly evening in Western Europe. There, people сome home from work and start surfing the Internet. That’s why during these hours there is a battle for traffic.
Soon after all the adjustments were made, you can start sending the traffic.
HOW TO EXPAND:
Scaling is tricky. The scheme: “I have already sent 10k clicks of traffic and have got 200 leads, so I need to send 1mln and get 20k of conversions” doesn’t work. Every spot has its own potential and limit, and even if you try to exceed it, it won’t work.
Truth be told, redirect.com is a clever platform. If there are too many affiliates stick to one spot, the platform will start adding bots to the spot.
I recommend using another method. Instead of extensive approach related to increase in volumes, you’d better concentrate on mastering each and every spot. With every new session you’d better cut off the regions with low rates of conversion and keep traffic from only certain cities. When your campaign gives you good profit permanently, you can try to start working with other spots, geo, gadgets, and timers. Luckily, there are many ways for experiments – great quantity of different combinations.
Why do we share this scheme if it is so useful and profitable? It’s simple. Most of you after reading this manual will consider it interesting and potentially productive, but 90% of you are NOT going to do anything with it. That’s the reason for a failure of many internet marketers.
If you want to gain real experience in traffic buying, take this manual, read it very carefully and then try, try, and try again.
Good luck!
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