The whispers are loud: "Leads are expensive, affiliate marketing is dead for small budgets." This is a narrative that sends chills to the bones of new marketers, particularly those with limited capital. But don’t fear, because within this article lies the key to finding a truth hidden in plain sight: profitable affiliate campaigns are achievable, even with a budget of just $500.
While verticals like betting and crypto may demand huge initial investments, the market has other verticals that present the same profits, but at a fraction of the cost.
This article is your roadmap to understanding how to run budget-friendly campaigns, what essential tools you need, and real-world examples of affiliates crushing it with limited resources.
Free traffic: This option is suitable for affiliates who already have established platforms like websites, social media groups, or forums where they can naturally share links. However, passively relying on free traffic is becoming increasingly difficult. The owner must maintain a steady flow of fresh audiences by providing valuable content and avoiding excessive promotions, especially in grayhat niches. Otherwise, audiences can get bombarded and lose interest.
Organic traffic: Organic traffic involves building a genuine presence on social networks and forums to attract visitors through valuable content and engagement. While it requires time and effort to build a thriving community, it can be a more sustainable source of traffic in the long run. Think of it as a long-term investment that can pay off significantly once established.
Paid traffic: If you're working with a tight budget, paid traffic is the ideal choice for you. With $500, you can run quick tests using low-cost advertising formats, to understand your audience's preferences, assess the offer's credibility, and decide if it's worth further investment. This helps you test the waters without wasting money and gain valuable insights for your future campaigns.
In the following sections, we'll explore budget-friendly paid traffic options that can turn your $500 into a profit-generating machine.
Don't go for the "spray and pray" method on big platforms like Facebook and Google Ads. It gets expensive fast. Advertising networks are better because they give you quality traffic, automate things easily, and optimize your ad budget based on your goals for the best return on investment.
We wouldn't suggest putting your whole $500 budget into those uncontrollable big tech channels. They care more about making money from your spending than making sure your affiliate campaign succeeds. So, if you're new to advertising, you're more likely to waste money there.
Instead, we recommend using fully managed affiliate networks made just for affiliates. This way, your limited advertising money goes into things that directly make your campaigns more profitable.
MyBid, for example, is a specialized fully managed advertising network that assists customers in offer selection, campaign setup/tracking, creative optimization, and scaling throughout, starting from just $500 budgets upwards. Their hands-on guidance steers beginner affiliates properly to get positive results.
Creating 5-7 effective ads without any design background can be quite challenging, and at the same time, spending 20% of our budget on untested ad creatives seems risky.
Considering our limited $500 budget, it makes sense to choose cost-effective ad formats like push, In-Page Push, or pop ads. The advantage of push creatives is that they only need a basic 720x480 image, a small 192x192 app icon, and minimal text which are simple to create, even for non-designers.
You can easily find hundreds of successful template examples to model across various geos and industries in major app stores. Moreover, several Telegram bots now provide done-for-you push ad processing within minutes at a low cost. Most importantly, push traffic itself on advertising platforms like MyBid starts incredibly cheap, for instance, at just $0.000169 CPC in top-tier countries like the USA and Canada, where buyer demand peaks.
This important comparison allows you to incorporate successful strategies from the beginning and gives you an accurate sense of the potential before you invest your budget. Keep in mind that opting for new, less-known offers is risky, especially with a limited budget of only $500.
When presented with "exclusive" offers that you haven't seen before, have your account manager assess its performance history first. Rely on their expertise to guide you towards consistently profitable options that have a track record of converting with supporting statistics.
With just $500 to spend, ensuring maximum relevance per user maximizes the value of every click and conversion.
It's important to keep a close eye on these payment cycles, especially before you start running a campaign. If you run a campaign promoting a profitable offer, but the next payout is weeks away, there may not be enough capital to scale it up further.
Some advocate choosing software with built-in anti-fraud protection to automatically redirect bots away from your ads, preventing wasted spending. However, advertising networks like MyBid have built-in systems that protect you from low-quality and fraudulent traffic directly, eliminating the need for external tracking tools.
MyBid gets all its traffic directly from hundreds of sites it owns and operates. That means they can filter quality and intent right at the source, giving you premium visitors as standard. Any outside sites get checked continuously via advanced internal anti-fraud systems. In the rare cases that any bot traffic gets through, MyBid compensates the advertiser fully down to the last cent spent. You receive premium traffic quality as standard without paying anything extra.
The target audience was male users from Japan using mobile devices. The affiliate discovered that adult websites generated good conversion rates, and he consistently whitelisted them.
For creatives, the affiliate selected a photo of a charming girl, accompanied by text in both Japanese and English. The Japanese message translated to: “Hi, I'm free tonight.”
Over 7 days, the campaign generated 156 registrations. The total campaign costs amounted to $520, generating an income of $884. After deducting the costs, the net profit stood at $364, resulting in a return on investment of 70%.
A screenshot of the statistics is provided for reference:
Initially, the affiliate started with a slightly higher-than-average cost per click of $0.0021. After noticing rising prices at the RTB auction, the cost per click was increased to $0.0025 after 4 days.
The desktop push notification was crafted in two languages: Hindi and English.
However, the pre-landing page was only in English.
As the campaign progressed, the affiliate set a daily spending limit of $7 and limited ad displays to once per day per user. Shifting focus toward higher-quality traffic, the spending limit was later increased to $48.
After running the campaign for nearly a month, the return on investment (ROI) reached an impressive 127%, resulting in a total income of $1225. All of this success was achieved with a total cost of $538.
If you're new to advertising or semi-experienced, using fully managed ad networks such as MyBid can be helpful. They provide hands-on support to help set up your campaigns in a way that helps you understand things better. Many successful campaigns have shown that, with the right approach, even small budgets can result in huge profits in this profitable industry.
While verticals like betting and crypto may demand huge initial investments, the market has other verticals that present the same profits, but at a fraction of the cost.
This article is your roadmap to understanding how to run budget-friendly campaigns, what essential tools you need, and real-world examples of affiliates crushing it with limited resources.
Types of traffic
The first decision an affiliate must make to avoid wasting money is choosing the type of traffic. Each type requires its own approach, time, and budget. Typically, traffic is divided into three categories: free, organic, and paid.Free traffic: This option is suitable for affiliates who already have established platforms like websites, social media groups, or forums where they can naturally share links. However, passively relying on free traffic is becoming increasingly difficult. The owner must maintain a steady flow of fresh audiences by providing valuable content and avoiding excessive promotions, especially in grayhat niches. Otherwise, audiences can get bombarded and lose interest.
Organic traffic: Organic traffic involves building a genuine presence on social networks and forums to attract visitors through valuable content and engagement. While it requires time and effort to build a thriving community, it can be a more sustainable source of traffic in the long run. Think of it as a long-term investment that can pay off significantly once established.
Paid traffic: If you're working with a tight budget, paid traffic is the ideal choice for you. With $500, you can run quick tests using low-cost advertising formats, to understand your audience's preferences, assess the offer's credibility, and decide if it's worth further investment. This helps you test the waters without wasting money and gain valuable insights for your future campaigns.
In the following sections, we'll explore budget-friendly paid traffic options that can turn your $500 into a profit-generating machine.
Traffic source
With many options like social media ads, display banners, push notifications and more, it can get confusing to select the best traffic source when starting out. But based on extensive in-house media buying experience, we recommend affiliate-focused advertising networks if your budget is tight.Don't go for the "spray and pray" method on big platforms like Facebook and Google Ads. It gets expensive fast. Advertising networks are better because they give you quality traffic, automate things easily, and optimize your ad budget based on your goals for the best return on investment.
We wouldn't suggest putting your whole $500 budget into those uncontrollable big tech channels. They care more about making money from your spending than making sure your affiliate campaign succeeds. So, if you're new to advertising, you're more likely to waste money there.
Instead, we recommend using fully managed affiliate networks made just for affiliates. This way, your limited advertising money goes into things that directly make your campaigns more profitable.
MyBid, for example, is a specialized fully managed advertising network that assists customers in offer selection, campaign setup/tracking, creative optimization, and scaling throughout, starting from just $500 budgets upwards. Their hands-on guidance steers beginner affiliates properly to get positive results.
Advertising format
Using teasers, banners, and in-app ads can be effective, but they might not be the best choice for a small budget of $500. Additionally, most advertisers don't provide ready-made ads, so you'd have to spend extra money to create new ones. Making custom video ads can cost around $20 each, and even basic banners can still be expensive, ranging from $10 to $15. This can take up a significant portion of the initial budget, especially if we want to test out different versions.Creating 5-7 effective ads without any design background can be quite challenging, and at the same time, spending 20% of our budget on untested ad creatives seems risky.
Considering our limited $500 budget, it makes sense to choose cost-effective ad formats like push, In-Page Push, or pop ads. The advantage of push creatives is that they only need a basic 720x480 image, a small 192x192 app icon, and minimal text which are simple to create, even for non-designers.
You can easily find hundreds of successful template examples to model across various geos and industries in major app stores. Moreover, several Telegram bots now provide done-for-you push ad processing within minutes at a low cost. Most importantly, push traffic itself on advertising platforms like MyBid starts incredibly cheap, for instance, at just $0.000169 CPC in top-tier countries like the USA and Canada, where buyer demand peaks.
Vertical
If we take the push or In-Page Push format as one of the cheapest, then the offer should be chosen from the following verticals:- Dating: The LGBTQ+ scene in the United States has been experiencing significant growth as acceptance continues to spread. While mainstream straight dating offers typically pay $0.30–$4 for a new sign-up, those focused on the gay community have substantially higher conversion rates, often exceeding $3 per new user. The advantage here is that the cost per click remains constant, allowing for increased profits without additional expenses.
- Adult: Since push notifications are not moderated, affiliates can use thought-provoking ad creatives more freely to engage audiences. Using eye-catching visuals, such as screenshots from adult videos with a play button on top, can lead to a 25% reduction in design costs right from the start.
- Nutra: Despite the improvement in living standards, declining life expectancies have led people to prioritize maximizing experiences now rather than later. This has resulted in a growing demand for products such as weight loss pills, supplements for sexual health and vitality, joint support products, and more.
- Gambling: According to experts, online gambling is expected to grow into a market worth over $103 billion globally in the next 5 years. This growth is anticipated as regulations become more relaxed, and new operators heavily use affiliates to attract customers. Although big teams dominate the industry, smaller individual marketers can still successfully reach and make profits from these high-spending audiences.
- Utilities: For Android users, antivirus programs, device cleaners, and performance accelerators strongly appeal to those struggling with aging, glitchy devices that lose speed and battery life over time.
Offer
Selecting the best offers is key to running a successful campaign, yet many affiliates in 2023 still pick offers without analyzing data. To avoid mistakes, keep these three tips in mind:- Analyze the offer statistics
This important comparison allows you to incorporate successful strategies from the beginning and gives you an accurate sense of the potential before you invest your budget. Keep in mind that opting for new, less-known offers is risky, especially with a limited budget of only $500.
When presented with "exclusive" offers that you haven't seen before, have your account manager assess its performance history first. Rely on their expertise to guide you towards consistently profitable options that have a track record of converting with supporting statistics.
- Select Smartlink offers
With just $500 to spend, ensuring maximum relevance per user maximizes the value of every click and conversion.
- Check payment cycles
It's important to keep a close eye on these payment cycles, especially before you start running a campaign. If you run a campaign promoting a profitable offer, but the next payout is weeks away, there may not be enough capital to scale it up further.
Tools
We recommend push notifications because, unlike other ad formats, they don't require extensive technical setup and expenses for things like accounts, proxies, etc. All you need is a tracker, which can be easily found and set up within an hour. Simply search for popular tracking services on Google, pick one with a free trial, and quickly start gathering data on leads from your campaign links.Some advocate choosing software with built-in anti-fraud protection to automatically redirect bots away from your ads, preventing wasted spending. However, advertising networks like MyBid have built-in systems that protect you from low-quality and fraudulent traffic directly, eliminating the need for external tracking tools.
MyBid gets all its traffic directly from hundreds of sites it owns and operates. That means they can filter quality and intent right at the source, giving you premium visitors as standard. Any outside sites get checked continuously via advanced internal anti-fraud systems. In the rare cases that any bot traffic gets through, MyBid compensates the advertiser fully down to the last cent spent. You receive premium traffic quality as standard without paying anything extra.
Ad Creatives
If you're on a tight budget, there are several ways to obtain ad creatives for your campaigns. Affiliates typically acquire them through the following methods:- Copy from other affiliates: Some just grab ads that others are using. It's quick, but these ads might not be the best quality. Keep in mind, if there are issues with the ads, your stuff might not get noticed much.
- Do it themselves: Others try making their own ads. If you're not great with tools like Photoshop or don't have much time, the ads might not be good. Even small mistakes, like picking the wrong color, could mean fewer people clicking on your ads.
- Buying from designers: The best option for many is to buy ads from designers. The costs for the ad creatives vary based on niches. Here are the costs:
- Dating and nutra: $50–$75 for a landing page, and $10–$15 for a photo ad.
- Gambling: $100–$120 for a landing page and $20–$30 for a photo ad. Designers know ads in this niche can make a lot of money, so finding cheaper ones is tough.
- Adult and utilities: $20–$35 for a landing page, and $5–$10 for a photo ad.
Case Study 1: Making $364 profit in 7 days by promoting a dating offer in Japan using In-Page Push traffic
In this case study, the affiliate opted for In-Page Push as the chosen advertising method, primarily because the click zone is highlighted with a frame. The affiliate believed that this detail would reduce accidental clicks and attract the most targeted traffic.The target audience was male users from Japan using mobile devices. The affiliate discovered that adult websites generated good conversion rates, and he consistently whitelisted them.
For creatives, the affiliate selected a photo of a charming girl, accompanied by text in both Japanese and English. The Japanese message translated to: “Hi, I'm free tonight.”
Over 7 days, the campaign generated 156 registrations. The total campaign costs amounted to $520, generating an income of $884. After deducting the costs, the net profit stood at $364, resulting in a return on investment of 70%.
A screenshot of the statistics is provided for reference:
Case Study 2: Making $687 in 23 days by promoting a gambling offer using push notifications
In this case study, the affiliate promoted a popular JVSpin online casino offer in India, featuring a variety of online casino games.
Initially, the affiliate started with a slightly higher-than-average cost per click of $0.0021. After noticing rising prices at the RTB auction, the cost per click was increased to $0.0025 after 4 days.
The desktop push notification was crafted in two languages: Hindi and English.
However, the pre-landing page was only in English.
As the campaign progressed, the affiliate set a daily spending limit of $7 and limited ad displays to once per day per user. Shifting focus toward higher-quality traffic, the spending limit was later increased to $48.
After running the campaign for nearly a month, the return on investment (ROI) reached an impressive 127%, resulting in a total income of $1225. All of this success was achieved with a total cost of $538.
Conclusion
If you're working with a tight budget of around $500, the key to a successful advertising campaign lies in careful planning, thorough testing, and seeking expert advice. To maximize profitability, it's crucial to choose the right traffic source, offer type, and engaging creatives based on data-driven insights, as this can significantly boost your returns.If you're new to advertising or semi-experienced, using fully managed ad networks such as MyBid can be helpful. They provide hands-on support to help set up your campaigns in a way that helps you understand things better. Many successful campaigns have shown that, with the right approach, even small budgets can result in huge profits in this profitable industry.
