Optimization Guide
The following guide picks up where the Quick Start Guide left off. If you haven't read it, we strongly recommend stopping here and going through the previous guide. This guide covers the following topics:
- Gathering data, sample size, statistical significance
- Matching offer restrictions with available traffic source targeting options
- Performance metrics
- Cutting bad segments of traffic
- Offer and lander A/B testing
- Rule-based paths
We won't provide answers to every question you may have, but we will give you tools that will allow you to make independent and informed decisions.
Vocabulary
The affiliate marketing industry is not a standardized one. That means that there are no universally accepted definitions of terms used in the industry. To avoid confusion and make sure that we are all on the same page, here are some definitions of terms used in Voluum:
Visit
A visit is when a visitor clicks the campaign URL under an advertisement.
Click
A click occurs when a click URL, hidden under a CTA button on a landing page, is activated. This implicates that clicks are tracked only when you use landing pages in your campaign funnel. The Quick Start guide describes a funnel with no landing pages added, so if you have followed it and have set your campaign funnel accordingly, your number of clicks will always be 0.
Conversion
A conversion is any event that is deemed desirable by an offer owner. This includes purchases, sign-ups, app installs and more. Registering a conversion-type event and reporting it to Voluum occurs on affiliate network's side.
Parameter
Parameters are used to pass various kinds of information between servers. They consist of a:
- Parameter name
- Token
An example of a parameter is country={country} included in a campaign URL. When a campaign URL is clicked, the {country} token is replaced with a concrete value, so the clicked campaign URL will have for example country=germany included.
Lander / Landing Page
Affiliate marketers use terms 'lander' and 'landing page' interchangeably. In Voluum, a landing page is your actual web page that visitor goes to prior to reaching an offer. And a lander is a corresponding Voluum element used to direct visitors to those landing pages. In short, if you want to use landing pages in your campaign funnel, you have to add a lander element in Voluum
Custom Domain
Each Voluum account comes with a dedicated domain. It is assigned uniquely to you and has a randomly generated name That makes you solely responsible to maintain a good reputation of this domain. If for example, Google flags your dedicated domain as suspicious for any reason, you will lose the ability to track data. To protect your dedicated domain and to have a more personalized name, consider using a custom domain.
Best Practices
Before you dig into optimization techniques, consider implementing the following best practices that will make your work easier.
Setting yourself some goals helps to organize your work and improves your decisionmaking process Goals related to your maximum daily spend and the maximal number of hours you dedicate to learn this new craft.
Financial goals:
Set yourself some performance goals. It all depends on many factors, but as a rule of thumb, you should not spend on traffic sent to one offer more than two times its payout value without any revenue. If this happens, try to introduce some changes. So, if a payout value is $2, for example, change traffic targeting options in the traffic source platform when you exceed $4 in costs.
Bigger is not always better, usually it is better to have smaller budgets, but spent over a few days rather than all at once.
Time goals:
Similarly to financial goals, you should stick to the amount of time you have decided to dedicate to affiliate marketing. You can spare two hours a day only due to other obligations? No problem, make these two hours count. No one is born an affiliate marketer, usually success in this field is directly correlated with the time dedicated to master it.
Focus on one GEO
Do not try everything at once. It is better to master one vertical and one GEO than to hop from one country to another and not learn anything. Once you have selected your vertical and country, test various offers and try to learn. Each audience reacts differently and knowledge gathered in certain conditions may not be easily transferable to other conditions. If you can't find good offers in the selected GEO, try a different one.
Keep everything segregated
Keep everything clear and nicely segregated. When scaling up, you may quickly drown in growing numbers of campaigns and offers. To avoid that:
- Use meaningful names for your campaigns and offers, avoid generic ones.
- Add notes in Voluum to each campaign to know what it is about and what your goal is.
- Create separate campaigns for different offer and lander types.
- Use Workspaces to segregate your content into working areas based on verticals, campaign flow types or other criteria.
Compare different traffic sources
Use at least two different traffic sources on your offers and landers, differences may be significant.
Compare the same offer in different affiliate network
Sometimes you may find your offer in different affiliate networks with different payout values. If they are otherwise similar (they have the same flow and a conversion cap) compare them against each other: affiliate network that provides an offer with a higher payout may scrub some of your conversions and the overall performance may be lower. Additionally, affiliate network's systems, including servers and payment method may differ, which can also affect the conversion rate.
Test offers on different types of traffic
If you have an offer that works on both WiFi and carrier traffic with the same conversion flow, test it on WiFi traffic as it is cheaper. If the conversion flow differs depending on traffic type, test it on traffic with an easier flow.
Start with low paying offers
Start with low paying offers, below $3 or even $1 for a conversion. The rationale behind this logic is that you do not have to target your audience so specifically. Low paying offers work on bigger parts of the population, so it is easier to get a conversion and a statistically significant portion of data to learn.
Be compliant with the affiliate network's requirements
Remember that each offer comes with a set of rules that you have to be compliant with. Do not send adult traffic to offers that do not allow this or you will get banned. Be distrustful of Smartlinks. Smartlink are automatic offer selectors supplied by affiliate networks. They may work well, but in some cases, they might select an offer that your traffic is not compliant with and it may get you banned.
Have an attractive offer
If your offers do not look even remotely attractive to you, they won't be attractive to your visitors. Make sure that you have something appealing.
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