Earning success in affiliate marketing does not have to be a tricky process. Grabbing the attention of an audience can be easily done and that too at free of cost, if you can be a little patient.
Most of us are aware of blogging and the various site builders that are free of cost. What many of us do not know is the wide array of free resources that can be used to attain more and more traffic to affiliate marketing platforms.
When the traffic increases, you can start promoting a wide variety of products and services that are associated with your forte. You must market these items differently based on the sources used for generating traffic.
It is important to understand the basics of affiliate marketing platforms before you begin to promote products and services to your customer. This will help you to improve conversions through marketing campaigns. But, before we get into the traffic sources for affiliate platforms in detail, let us first understand what a Traffic Source is all about.
What is a Traffic Source?
It mainly depends on whether you are a Media Buyer or a Webmaster.
In case you are a webmaster, a traffic source is explained as the platform through which users have found your site. Each visit or session to your site has a specific origin that can be tracked.
What if you are a Media Buyer?
A traffic source is a platform or a place from where you can buy traffic. By understanding what different website traffic sources are and which source will yield maximum profit, you will be able to create and adjust your SMO, SEM, and SEO along with your monetization strategy.
Things to Consider Before Choosing Affiliate Marketing Platforms as Traffic Source
ü The price of the Traffic Source-Each traffic source comes with a specific price, based on the kind of traffic it has, the total number of GEO’s that can be monetized, and the quality of traffic.
Some of the web traffic sources can boast about having traffic that can be converted whereas others do not follow this tactic. Because of the tough competition, some websites may be expensive at a specific moment, whereas others are affordable.
ü The total amount of traffic available- When you are choosing affiliate marketing platforms, make sure you check the total amount of traffic. The capability of marketing sources to offer campaigns that can let you generate a huge amount of money is not the same.
There are a few ad networks in which you will be fortunate enough to play with Tier 3 GEOs with huge volume and less costs.
On other networks you can earn some money with the costliest GEOs as the quality of traffic is associated with the price you pay for visits. The traffic amount differs from one ad network to another and from one vertical to another.
Be careful!
There are a lot of networks that may have too much traffic available. Even so, the quality of the said traffic may be less. Depending on the offer which you are promoting, you should decide where to purchase traffic from and what are the volumes of your interest.
ü The overall quality of traffic source- There are majorly two things that can affect the quality of a traffic source. First, though the traffic is not bot traffic- few networks have some awful traffic quality. Second, there is a whole lot of bot traffic.
ü Audience or niche- Niche is important because by concentrating on a niche and learning about it- you can know a specific marketing vertical thoroughly. This lets you know everything about the types of offers you are eligible for.
Now that you are aware of the things that should be considered while choosing a traffic source, let us get into the top traffic sources available for affiliate marketing platforms.
As you may know, there are lots of traffic sources out there. That is why it is important to know each of them in detail.
1. Paid online advertising- It is one of the common affiliate marketing platforms. Advertising is the most important thing when it comes to lead generation.
No matter whether you choose a paid search, remarketing, display marketing, or social media campaigns, it is a tried and tested process to drive traffic to the affiliate links.
One of the benefits of using paid lead generation methods is that individuals who click on your links are generally high in the buying cycle and thus ready to buy.
However, you must balance the cost of your ads with the commission you get per sale. If every ad conversion costs nearly $50 and the commission per sale is $40, it is not worth practicing this type of lead generation.
2. Push Notifications- This is a new one among various affiliate marketing platforms. It is an ad format that has been making its presence felt for advertisers.
They were earlier started as a means for mobile users to receive instant email notifications on the device, but since then they have evolved into a strong ad format that is hard for affiliates to avoid.
Usually, they have a high CTR compared to other formats, with rates reaching around 30% for certain verticals. This means that you can notice great results while using CPM or CPC cost models while purchasing push traffic.
Push ads are not the next popular thing, they are already popular and with more and more networks adding them to the available format, the effect of push ads is only set to rise.
Just like an ad format they have many things in common with native ads. The opt-in rates reveal the same story with an industry average of about 20%, making them the right format for growing the list of subscribers.
3. Guest posts- Guest posts are one of the important affiliate marketing platforms. Cooperating with various content creators in your niche is one of the best ways to attract visitors to your site. All of us know that affiliate marketing platforms are all about choosing the right audience.
Guest posting is not just free, it is a win-win option for both you as well as the person with whom you are collaborating. It grows your reach to a huge audience while offering another blogger quality content.
If you want to do guest blogging, here are a few tips to get started:
ü Research blogs within your forte or similar niches that post high-quality content
ü Email them or use their contact form to find if they publish guest posts
ü Once they send their reply, send them your blog
ü Once they approve, submit your blog.
You may notice that as soon as you start making new connections in your niche, exchanging guest posts will seem to be a natural process. As always, you should focus on networking and make new connections to boost these opportunities.
4. Pinterest- Another one on the list of different affiliate marketing platforms is Pinterest. You must have heard people saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” In this case, that could not be more perfect.
Pinterest is a popular image-sharing website that categorizes interesting images into various categories. Pinterest is the 3rd largest social media network in the U.S. It is equally popular as a search engine.
Some of the popular categories found on Pinterest include home décor, health, beauty, fitness, gardening, and travel. The best thing about this social network is that you can upload an image with a URL.
This means, whenever somebody clicks on a specific image, they will be redirected to the specific attached site. If you are using attractive images and your blog comes under the Pinterest category, then it is a great means to reach a huge audience.
Conclusion
You do not need a huge budget to attain traffic as an affiliate marketer. While there are places where your money is well spent, grabbing the attention of your audience does not have to be included in that. If you follow these traffic sources and put in the effort and time, your traffic will start to rise.
Next time when you want to look for traffic sources, choose any one among these affiliate marketing platforms.