Adcash Questions and Answers from our Webinar

[Luke]

Last week, I participated in Adconf by Adcash (@Adcash) and unfortunately we ran out of time at the end and weren't able to get through all the questions submitted for the Q&A.

My friends at Adcash sent me the list of questions and I can see why we didn't get through them all. There were quite a few!

As I said during the webinar, I am happy to answer them though

So, if you missed the webinar, you can watch the replay in this thread:

Adconf: How to make affiliate marketing work for you in 2021 (with Luke Kling, Adcash & RedTrack))

Adconf: How to make affiliate marketing work for you in 2021 Digital Advertising Conference Series by Adcash Hi, affiliates! We are very excited to share that we're hosting yet another Adconf that focuses on affiliate marketing with @Luke and @RedTrack.io. The conference will discuss all that...

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And, here are my answers to the rest of the questions submitted

Push or Pop for 2021? why? What do you think will be the top verticals for push, native and pop in 2021? What do you think will be the top traffic sources in 2021?

As I mentioned during the webinar, I am not certain of the future for push. It seems Google is cracking down hard on it which makes me a bit concerned. Also, the data Maxime from Adcash shows during the webinar makes me think push might be in trouble.

That being said, push is still a viable ad format and I recommend it.

Pops I feel MUCH better about. The ad format has been around for ages and there's still plenty of potential. That's one of the reasons I used pops in our Beginners Course here on affLIFT (which I plan do to a nice update to in 2021). I'm also planning a second course that uses pops. So yes, I still think pops have a lot of potential in 2021 and it will definitely be one of my main ad formats (as it was this year).

Also, really like native for 2021

Is Facebook still top dog?

Facebook is a fantastic traffic source, but the strictness we've been seeing from them this year in the affiliate space causes me concern about the future of affiliate campaigns on their platform. Similar to my position on Google. It's a great traffic source, but not so much for most affiliate campaigns and verticals that affiliates are running today.

As I said during the webinar, I still use Facebook (and Google) to promote my own products. However, as a traffic source for affiliate campaigns, I think you are better off looking into other sources.

Given the saturation of most e evergreen niches as of 2020, how should a beginner start affiliate marketing in 2021?

My personal recommendation right now for beginners starting in 2021 will be carrier billing offers. These offers perform VERY well in many GEOs, have good conversion rates, and are very newbie friendly. We will absolutely be talking A LOT about carrier billing campaigns on affLIFT next year.

What to test first at the beginning of campaign and what to measure first for performance marketing CPS?

CPS is a bit different than traditional CPL / CPA campaigns that we run and discuss on affLIFT. However, I do run CPS and the very first thing I test for is device type. Is this offer/LP going to convert better on desktop or mobile? The reason I figure out that first is it makes it cheaper testing OS/browser because you're cutting the amount of those basically in half. You can always come back and test mobile if the campaign performs better with desktop first, but I would focus on one or the other to start.

Luke how do we make profits out of a low paying offers, this is for carrier billing direct link?

I love direct linking carrier billing offers. It is my favorite right now. Making profits from low payouts is easiest with pop traffic. I've had success with it with push too though so don't count that out.

One thing I like about carrier billing is you get to remove a lot of the variables. You're focused on one type of device with one particular connection in most cases (carrier). So, a lot of the optimization is on the source level.

PropellerAds is my favorite source right now for this type of campaign.

The BEST way to start making profits right away is to test their CPA Goal 2.0 algo. Run a CPA Goal campaign, find what is converting, and then scale that on both PropellerAds and other traffic sources.

What is the next untapped blue ocean advertising platform for affiliate marketing?

This was my favorite question asked and I gave this person a free LIFETIME membership to affLIFT for asking it. This is my biggest question as well. What is the next big thing? We had a short, but very lucrative wave with push notifications. The wave isn't dead yet, but as we already discussed, we're not sure when it's going to crash down.

So, what will be the next push notifications?

I am not sure yet, but I want us affLIFT to be the first to know and us all to be the first ones riding that wave.

Please elaborate the future of Amazon Affiliate marketing.

Amazon pays me in gift cards every single month for my affiliate marketing I do with them. It's a pretty sweet deal. I promote some merchandise on the various social media accounts I have and they send me a gift card. Pretty much all of my Amazon affiliate marketing is automated through FPTraffic so it requires very little work.

Outside of that though, I am not really certain what's going to happen with Amazon for affiliates. They keep cutting commission and making their affiliate program less appealing. There's still plenty of opportunity because of the mass volume of things purchased on Amazon and of course getting commission on the cart is nice.
But, I wouldn't mind if they increased their commission again sometime soon. Either way, I look forward to them sending more gift cards I can spend on Amazon

Which affiliate marketplace offers the most profitable products (e.g., Clickbank, Maxweb, etc.)?

I worked for an affiliate network for 10 years straight and I can tell you the networks #1 goal is to add the most profitable products to their platform/marketplace. The only way they're going to make money is if you send them traffic and it converts.

So, I would be less concerned about which is the most profitable and more concerned about why. What types of offers are performing best for affiliates right now. Most networks are going to have those products. I mentioned I love carrier billing offers right now. Pretty much every single network is adding tons of carrier billing offers. Why? Because they're converting!

We have a great list of affiliate networks you should be working with. We also have a ton of great networks active in this community. Talk to them. Talk to the other affiliates. You'll learn a lot more that way than me telling you I prefer one network over the other

How to switch ad platforms easily without wasting time and start making sales right off the bat?

If you're using a good tracking tool (Voluum, BeMob, RedTrack, AdsBridge, etc) then switching ad platforms is really easy. You simply setup the new ad platform in your tracker and copy your previous campaign over to the new ad platform.

Making sales right off the bat? Well, that's the hard part. Depends on your campaign. My recommendation would be to post this question more specifically here on affLIFT with where you're currently running and where you want to run so the community can advise you

What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of Push traffic going forward? Can you sustainably scale it to four/ five figures per month?

As I mentioned, I am uncertain of the future of push (as is everyone else I know that is keeping an eye on things). However, I would say 4-5 figures is still possible per month. I did not hit 5 figures/month with push recently, but I've had plenty of 4 figure campaigns.

With new subscriber supply decreasing due to Chrome updates, I believe that is going to get harder and harder though. Demand has stayed the same which means prices are going to continue to increase. The supply networks are going to get access to will be higher quality sites due to the browser changes which means it will get even more expensive.

This is part 1 of the questions and answers. I have a few more to answer and I will below soon!

Make sure to check out my first impression thread of Adcash as well if you are considering working with them

First Impression of Adcash

Check out my first impression of Adcash as a new advertiser. Spoiler alert: Adcash seems like a great traffic source!

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[Luke]

What are the best solutions to get rid of clickloss? What is the recommended CPA goal pricing ? 80% is good?

It is impossible to get rid of clickloss complete, but you want to decrease it as much as possible. Nick has a great guide for clickloss here:

The Ultimate Guide to Clickloss

Confused about clickloss? Check out our ultimate guide to clickloss to learn what it is and how to prevent it.

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For CPA Goal, I typically start at around 70% and then slowly increase if necessary.

What affiliate network or technology does the best job of measuring the incrementally of the affiliate channel? Big clients worry that they're paying affiliates on last-click attribution when other parts of the marketing investment (prior touchpoints) would have delivered that conversion anyway

This isn't really a tech issue. It's a mindset issue. I understand issues with attribution and concerns about wasting money, but the big picture most companies need to look at is the bottom line. Has your revenue increased since implementing the affiliate channel? Does the investment in the channel appear to be ROI positive?

I'll give an example from another channel. So many companies get upset about brand bidding on Google. They do not want to have to bid on their brand keyword. Those are conversions they should get anyway! I agree, but you don't if your competitors start bidding on it and stealing that business from you. I would rather pay Google for my brand keyword and see a 500% ROI than potentially lose business from my competitors bidding that spot.

Could I get the conversion anyway? Probably. But I want as much of ALL the business available as possible

Pay your affiliates. Pay Google. Pay whoever you have to if it's driving good business. The affiliate model will bring you more business at a lower cost if you implement the program properly. Whether you can track it perfectly or not.

I notice the automatic optimization it's on the traffic source example zeropark and also on tracking side... In both you can add rules... Where is the best place to do this? Or it should be done in booth?? If not push, another source of traffic not saturated... good for nubs??

With Zeropark, I use their RBO rules instead of my own optimizer. It just depends on the platform. You can use both if both are available, but for the most part, one will be fine.

I recommend PPV for newbies.

What are your thoughts on native advertising for 2021? Taboola and Outbrain have been less strict than Google and Facebook as to what you can run. Advertisers and affiliates got away with some things which would never happen with FB or Google. Do you think Taboola will also start cracking down on affiliates in order to protect the quality of their mainly premium pubblishers?

Yeah, it seems we're already seeing some of the biggest native ad networks getting more strict. However, it's still a very affiliate friendly channel/ad format. I think native has a ton of potential for 2021.

How do you see changes to using browser extensions working with affiliate marketers in 2021

Browser extensions have been getting hit by changes for years and they're still all over. I don't think they'll be impacted by any big change in 2021. Performance will be similar to 2020.

One uncommon feature for running push camp today?

CPA Goal pricing by PropellerAds is interesting. I like CPA pricing going to push.

When running CPA campaigns, it all boils down to eCPM in the end. If you’re not getting enough traffic with your CPA, what do you do? Any simple steps to take first of all?

Increase your CPA or switch to a different bid format. Or, test new offers

Can you please give some examples of spy tools concretely

My favorite spy tools are Anstrex and AdPlexity. AdPlexity for ppv and Anstrex for push/native.

 

[addy112]

Thanks for these answers @Luke, they are very helpful. What I can't understand is why no one is talking about in-page push ads, they are quite new and yet they are not found as the option for 2021. If you can't say for sure about normal push ads what will happen in 2021, what do you think about in-page push ads in 2021? Have you tried this form of advertising and what is your experience so far?

 

[Luke]

If you can't say for sure about normal push ads what will happen in 2021, what do you think about in-page push ads in 2021? Have you tried this form of advertising and what is your experience so far?

In-page push isn't going anywhere. It'll be around forever now. The only downside to it right now is volume, but that seems to be increasing every month as the major networks get more and more publishers to put it on their sites.

So, I'm optimistic about in-page

 

[szajka]

Waiting for second part

 

[Luke]

Waiting for second part

I had a draft and lost it so I've got to redo the second part. Might work on that in a few minutes though since everything else I've worked on today has been a big fail lol.

 

[szajka]

Better do it tomorrow

 

[Luke]

Better do it tomorrow
View attachment 15475

 

[Luke]

Part 2 updated above

Adcash Questions and Answers from our Webinar

Last week, I participated in Adconf by Adcash (@Adcash) and unfortunately we ran out of time at the end and weren't able to get through all the questions submitted for the Q&A. My friends at Adcash sent me the list of questions and I can see why we didn't get through them all. There were quite...

afflift.com