If you’re going to succeed in your affiliate marketing business, then you need lots of traffic – quality traffic. Making money in this game is all about the numbers; the bigger your traffic the more the earning potential.
Think of it this way, you have 1,000,000 unique visitors to your affiliate website each month. With a CTR (Click through Rate) of 1%, that would amount to 10,000 clicks for any offers you’re promoting.
Which should give you some good earnings depending on what affiliate offers you’re on – CPM, CPL, or CPA? But if you had got much less traffic (say 50,000 unique monthly visitors) and a CTR of 5%, you are still short.
That’s the power of having lots of traffic to your website, though you still have to factor the quality of traffic, which brings us to how and from which places affiliate marketers should source their traffic from.
About Traffic Sources
As the name implies, traffic sources refer to those places where your traffic originates from. To better understand traffic sources, we will look at it from two different categories – organic and paid traffic sources.
Organic traffic sources are those platforms from which you earn traffic without having to pay for it. Also, referred to as natural traffic sources, organic traffic sources require skill and lots of patience to build.
Examples of organic traffic sources are search engines, social media networks, and guest blogging.
Paid traffic sources are those platforms from which you can access traffic in exchange for money. These traffic sources are mostly used by advertisers who need instant responses to their marketing campaigns.
Affiliates can also use these sources when they are just starting out or when there’s a need to give traction to a post or an offer.
Both traffic sources can work hand in hand to give you the best result for your affiliate campaigns, which brings us to the best-suited traffic sources for your affiliate marketing business.
Top Affiliate Marketing Traffic Sources
Here are the top traffic sources for your affiliate marketing business:
1 – Social Traffic
As with most traffic sources, you can gain organic traffic or opt for paid traffic. That’s the same with social traffic but our emphasis is on social ads (paid traffic).
The most common social media platforms from which traffic can be got are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. These platforms allow you to target your traffic based on interests, demographics, age, gender, and location.
Complete Guide to Getting More Traffic to Your Blog through Social Networks
Facebook gives you good value for your money when it comes to ad targeting and retargeting. You can target a highly specific crowd with your ad and achieve high-quality traffic to your site.
You can also obtain insights on how your campaigns perform and learn what you need to improve for better results.
These social media platforms have billions of users that give you a very wide reach. And they enable you to target a specific audience and even segment them based on certain criteria.
Facebook is one of the most powerful channels for running paid advertising. You do not need the extra knowledge of HTML or programming to place advertisements. With the efficient operation and analytics system, everything will be done for you.
Pros:
- It has three placement types
- There are seven different ad formats
- You are given $25 advertising credits
- New users are assisted by an ad manager
Cons:
- Once a policy is violated, it leads to getting automatically banned from the advertising space
- There are strict moderation checks
You do not need to create an account to target ads on Instagram, as every ad is run through the Facebook channel. All you need is an official business page and a Facebook account, and you’re good to go.
Materials such as adult products, tobacco, drugs, etc., are highly prohibited.
Pros:
- There are similar audiences
- You have an overall control of your stats
- Settings are simplified for the audience
- Launching is quick
Cons:
- Accounts are set up through Facebook
- Video and photo formats are substandard
Twitter is a platform with over 300 million users from around the world. It deals in famous microblogging services.
Pros:
- It is cost-effective
- The click-through rate is high
- Competition is extremely low
Cons:
- Landing pages are mobile-optimized
YouTube
YouTube is a video hosting platform with a broad coverage and insanely prominent advertising opportunities. You can place text ads, banners, and videos. YouTube is accessible in 60+ languages and 70+ countries.
Pros:
- There is low competition
- The traffic quality is extremely high
- It’s cost-effective
- There are five types of ads
Cons:
- Promoted offers attract special requirements
- A Google Adwords account is required
Pinterest is a social media network that permits its users to add photos and post them using the thematic collections on the web. It’s also an image hosting platform with the audience from India, Great Britain, and theUnited States, out of whom 85 percent are women.
Pros:
- You’re allowed to post active links
- Settings are simplified for all users
- The lifespan of advert pins is long
Cons:
- It takes a while to achieve success
- The graphics attract some in-house requirements
Reddit is a social news network where users are allowed to post links to any piece of content on the web. Records show that over 50% of its users are based in the United States. Fraudulent programs and hacking programs, fakes, and hazardous products are strictly prohibited. Only online games, drugs, financial offers, gambling, etc. can be sold.
Pros:
- The minimum budget is $5
- Targeting is done using devices
- Setting is made easy
Cons:
- The platform doesn’t carry out moderation over the weekends
Snapchat
Snapchat is a social network where users are young audiences of 18 to 24 years. It covers the European countries and the United States and currently has over 180 million users.
Pros:
- Setting is simplified
- Anyone can come up with creatives within the app
- It has an active audience of people
2 – Mobile Traffic
Mobile internet has long overtaken web browsers yet it keeps growing in leaps and bounds. In fact, more of your site’s visitors are very likely to be mobile device users, except for some particular industries.
And this rapid growth in mobile users has made mobile traffic the fastest growing traffic source right now. So, if you want the traffic source that will give you good value for your efforts, then let it be mobile traffic.
You can use any combo of a push notification, banner, displays, popunders, and redirects for your mobile campaigns. You also have some targeting options for mobile such as devices, Operating Systems, carriers, and location.
3 – Search Traffic
This is one of those traffic sources where organic and paid traffic is very visible. Take Google, for instance, you have the option of building organic traffic to your website or using Google AdWords to purchase traffic for your site.
You choose!
But before I proceed, let me clear the air on why Google is mainly our focus since we know that there are other search engines out there.
With over 3 billion daily search queries, Google remains the most visited website in the world. Accounting for more than 65% of the search market, you would want to focus your search efforts on Google.
And if you’re looking for the numbers, then you’ve got no other option than choosing Google first. That said, organic search traffic can be earned by the use of SEO techniques which will help you improve the search ranking of your site.
So, when users search for particular search terms that you rank for, Google will feature your website among the top-ranked ones.
Website visitors from organic search traffic tend to convert much better than those from paid search traffic. Also, they stay much longer with you and eventually become customers or brand evangelists.
Paid search is a much faster method for directing traffic from search engines to your affiliate website. Using Google AdWords, you can bid for and win search terms that your site will be advertised on.
There are different costs attached to different terms most often resulting from the bidding process. This kind of search traffic is not sustainable in the long-run because you have to keep paying if you want the traffic to keep coming.
4 – Push Notifications
Push notifications are ad formats used for sending instant notifications to web visitors. What started out as a means of sending instant messages to mobile users has now evolved into a marketing medium.
And the great thing about push notifications is that the CTR is much higher than most other ad formats, which is 30% on the average. Push notifications can be used to send messages, build email lists, engage web visitors, and capture leads.
Using this traffic building source, you can customize the ads titles, descriptions, logos, and images. And if you need to run A/B tests, you will find push notifications very effective for finding out winning ads.
You can also target your push notifications based on Geo, demographics, device type, browser type, IP addresses, and interests.
5 – Native Ads
Native ads are ad types that are designed to blend in with the look and feel of your website without being intrusive.
You know the feeling when you’re on a website that has great content but the ads on it won’t let you enjoy your stay. So, you end up leaving that site without being able to read through the pieces of content on it. That’s the kind of effect that intrusive ads have on visitors’ user experience.
Native Ads help to curb that and prevent any incidence of users leaving your website because your ads are intruding.
And guess what, Native Ads are expected to account for 74% of total ads revenue by 2021, because they have one of the highest retention rates in the advertising industry.
6. Adcash
Adcash is an Estonian site that specializes basically in mobile traffic.
Pros:
- There are similar alternatives (you can display adverts to users who have initially shown keen interest in posts similar to your offer)
- It offers three types of ad campaigns
Cons:
- The minimum budget for any independent job is $100
- It offers custom banner formats
- Requirements for ads materials are high
7. LeadBolt
LeadBolt is an advertising platform that focuses mainly on monetizing mobile sites, applications, and games.
Pros:
- It uses four ads formats
- Anyone can check for detailed analytics
Cons:
- The minimum budget is $100
8. Tapjoy
Tapjoy is a mobile ad network with a broad range of settings and functions. It currently has over 500 million active users.
Pros:
- Its budget settings are flexible
- It runs four types of adverts
- It has inbuilt technical support to motivate advertisers
- You can choose where to place an advert on the mobile device screen
9. Mobicow
Mobicow is a network that allows placing of ads on the full screen of a mobile device.
Pros:
- The minimum budget is $5
- All platforms are mobile
- Its targeting options are broad
Cons:
- You get AC approval in less than 24 hours
10. Startapp
Startapp is created for running ads on mobile apps. It’s an amazing source of mobile traffic. And its advertising formats are interactive ads, native videos, 360 degrees, cross-page, and virtual reality.
Pros:
- It uses a myriad of ad formats
- It covers more than one billion devices
- Anyone can check for analytics
- The minimum budget is $50
Cons:
- It only uses PayPal as its payment mode
11. Popads
Popads is a top-leading site among the popunder and clickunder advertising networks.
Pros:
- The minimum budget is $10
- It accepts all types of websites
- It has a responsive support team
- Its ad campaign settings are broad
Cons:
- The response speed/rate of the technical support team is low
12. PopCash
PopCash is a well-known advertising platform that offers swift launch. It has an easy-to-use interface that lets you understand everything whether you’re an English speaker or not. Manual moderation is done for all sites.
Pros:
- The minimum budget is $5
- It has broad settings for categories and countries
- Quick moderation of AC in less than one hour
Conclusion
Steady traffic sources are essential elements that determine the success of all affiliate marketers. With high traffic streaming to your website, you’re assured of higher potential income.
And we have addressed some traffic sources that you can look into, that’s if you haven’t used them in the past.
Are you thinking of starting an online business? Let me use this avenue to introduce one of the best online business communities to you. Read about Wealthy Affiliate University here and get back to me for the next line of action.