Top Tips From Affiliate Industry Pros
We have some exclusive comments for Adcash readers from super affiliates, speakers, premium forums and tracking platforms including STM Forum, OfferVault, iAmAttila, Servando Silva, Mobidea Academy, Redtrack, Dijs University and Voluum. Let’s hear what the industry pros say about the current situation and their top tips for you.

Amy Cheung, Senior Moderator at STM Forum
“The bad: consumers are still spending money, just not as willing to in uncertain times. The good: there are fewer advertisers bidding on traffic right now so traffic is cheaper. If your campaigns are negatively affected, try to scale back ad spend. Focus on showing proven creatives to proven audiences, and dedicate a part of the ad spend towards testing new creatives to show to these proven audiences in order to decrease CPA. If the type of product/service you’re currently promoting isn’t the type to thrive in times like this, look for products/services to promote that ARE.
If you own a product or service that can be of value to people during this difficult time, consider offering a steep discount. The gesture of goodwill will not only earn trust and gratitude from consumers (potentially earning you customers for life), but you’d feel good knowing you’ve done the right thing. At the end of the day, it’s not riches/poverty that will follow you into the afterlife – it’s how you’ve conducted yourself as a human being, especially during times of trial.”

Josh Sebo, COO at OfferVault
“Considering this has never happened before, I think the only thing we can do as an industry is to be flexible and quickly follow the changing trends as they develop. As I’m sure everyone is noticing, things are constantly changing by the day. The more flexible & open-minded you/your business can become, the more likely you’ll come out of this thing on top. I think working remotely was already quickly on its way to becoming the new norm. Once this settles down, I’m curious to see how many companies in our industry just stick with it and get rid of the office space altogether. Stay safe everyone! :-)”

Artur Kaczmarcyk, Head of Partnerships at Voluum
“The key advice – stay calm and stay home. You can actually do something by doing nothing. Since you’re at home you have tons of time to dive into an affiliate abyss. Wondering what works? Look around you and see what you are trying to get/try soon. I will tell you what I’m looking at and you better put up some campaigns around that as I’m sure I’m not the only one.
- Financial markets. Crazy drops and sudden spikes almost every day. This creates opportunities a lot of people will be tempted to seize. Especially with more time to choose and observe your positions. Go for Forex/Crypto/Finance offers.
- Gaming. With a lot of spare time and having most of Netflix content consumed people will tap into other activities. What kills time better than your favorite addictive game you remember? Even the toughest opponents of wasting time on games will now end up playing and most likely spending some money on it. Help them satisfy their hunger with some nice gaming offers.
- App installs. Done with trading and having a break from playing you will get your phone and check what’s going on. Thoughts about doing something for the body as well might come back and there are plenty of fitness apps out there. Crazy addictive games, relaxing and unwinding apps, e-learning stuff. So many opportunities here!
As you can see it’s not really a Plan B – same thing some of you are or were doing, just with a different angle. I would advise focusing on 100% online industries. CODs, eCommerce might be affected because of various restrictions across different countries. At the same time, there might be some nice and abandoned niches to jump in.
Anyway, the situation is very dynamic but the affiliate industry should be fine. We’re adapting fast and operating remotely since always.
Let’s just hope this thing will disappear as quickly as it unfolded. Stay home and stay safe folks!
P.S. I also heard that since people stay at home all adult stuff is working great now. I don’t know why… 😉“

Servando Silva, Performance Marketing Expert and founder of ServandoSilva.com
“Here are my top tips for media buyers. Focus on verticals that are evergreen. Keep in mind people are going to be in their houses and practising social distance. Gambling, Dating, Streaming and other verticals still work. If you’re selling stuff (eCommerce), try to focus on things that people need more than things that people don’t ever really need but are cool/nice to have. You will see more online traffic than ever. Adult websites will have more traffic, entertainment websites as well, so your CPMs might be cheaper or maybe not, but there will also be more volume available on some websites. News websites will also have more traffic than normal, which is great for native ads. Keep your cash flow in check as always check the quality of your conversions to avoid not being paid at some point.”

João Aguiar, Head of Marketing at Mobidea
“Firstly, affiliate marketeers doing physical product campaigns like COD in the most affected countries, I believe you should consider pausing your campaigns ASAP (if you didn’t do it yet). The risk of not converting due to delays with the deliveries, shutdown call centers, etc, it’s too high. However, I believe that there’s a great opportunity for non-physical products or services. Let me list a few verticals I’m expecting good results in the short term sweepstakes, food, adult, apps, health.
Plan your next business strategies wisely because there are no expectations of stabilization in the next 6 months. So, think that as an opportunity, take the time to read some useful content, listen to podcasts – fuel up yourself with valuable information. As a final note, as always, stay at home and be safe!”

Dasha Nazarova, Marketing & Partnership Manager at RedTrack.io
“It’s hard to deny that the coronavirus outbreak has shattered, to a greater or a lesser extent, every industry and business. While offline businesses were affected first, now we evidence certain influence on the online sphere and advertising as well. My guess is that the absolute effect of the pandemic on our industry would become clear in about 3 months.
From the standpoint of our product, we haven’t noticed any drastic changes. Our support team still has a steady daily flow of tickets and messages 🙂 The traffic volume might have dropped a bit, but it’s wrong to link it to coronavirus only, as there are plenty of other factors that might influence on that.
For affiliates, plan B is to embrace new verticals, and from my standpoint only ‘whitehat’ offers and tactics would work now. For business, it’s harder. probably, they should concentrate more on building online connections and communities. and work harder on the advertiser – publisher relations
As to my personal observation, the cancellation of all the biggest affiliate marketing conferences would have a huge impact on networks, especially small ones, as these events are a big part of their business development strategies. As to affiliates and media buyers, the coronavirus outbreak will force them to shift attention to certain verticals. As I see it, app installs (games mostly), education offers, and maybe insurance offers should be on the rise now. In the end, I would say that the influence of the virus on the business would largely depend on our ability to respond timely to the changes. On the part of all our RedTrack team, we wish everyone health and safety.”

iAmAttila – Old School Affiliate Marketer / Blogger / Owner of iAmAffiliate premium forum
“Corona pandemic is a global situation we’ve never experienced before; it’s worse than the 2008 recession as it came very fast and no one expected it. Affiliates used to promote products that solve a WANT have to quickly pivot to offer solving more immediate needs. Lots of businesses are negatively affected by this, many people have lost and will lose their jobs. Agencies having their clients cancel their ad contracts, huge drops in CPM prices everywhere. There is however opportunity – internet marketers are in a favourable position as they all have the skills needed to make it through this. They are already working from home, or ‘remotely’ and just have to brush up on new skills and explore new verticals.”

Colin Dijs, Super Affiliate & Founder of Dijs University
“During this pandemic crisis, the consumers are panicking, which is very much noticeable in online behaviour. People are working from home, in quarantine or complete lockdown. More users are on the internet right now than probably ever! CPM’s are relatively low compared to before, it’s not weird to see a 10-30% drop in CPM prices compared to a month ago. However, user behaviour patterns are also very different.
While people are at home, they have nothing to do so they go on the internet. They might click your ads but it’s unlikely they will convert in this current period of unrest. Don’t believe me? I put it to the test!
I send over 5000 clicks using a Native DSP to a Crypto offer in Italy. Normally the CPA per lead is $27 and lead to FTD is 10% conversion rate. Those 5000 clicks normally cost me about $900 from my optimised, proven and quality placements. Right now they cost me $278 and got only one lead and no FTD.
People are curious, they are at home all day with nothing better to do than “explore” the internet. One big factor you need to take into consideration during this pandemic that as long as there is chaos people will solely focus on necessities. This doesn’t mean you can’t make sales in other verticals, because you can. However, the average rule to apply for your business in this time is: focus on promoting necessity products until the chaos settles. Once it does, health and fitness industry will be booming. Get your keto trials ready! ;)”
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2 comments
BestCustomWriting on Apr 27, 2021 at 1:57 pm
Thank you for this post! I guess affiliate marketing became much more important during the pandemic.
Geoff Kukard on May 12, 2021 at 8:40 pm
Hey (Elsa?), thanks for the comment. Feels it's opened the door for more people to look at digital differently?
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