How to test an offer

Every offer must be tested — this is crucial for an affiliate marketer. Only through testing can you avoid large monetary losses and understand whether it is worth working with the selected offer or not.
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A common mistake new advertisers make is expecting an offer to launch successfully right away. Experienced media buyers understand that, in order to have a successful launch, you must invest the time and money required to run tests first. The benefits of this work become clear once your ads are displayed and start generating data.
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When taking your first steps in affiliate marketing, before launching your ad campaign, be sure to follow our tips on testing offers. They will help you save money in the long run and choose an offer that is profitable.
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If you are a beginner, we advise you to register with several affiliate programs. You can ask the managers which offers media buyers are currently running (some affiliate programs publish weekly TOP offer statistics).
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You can also analyze the promotional materials the service provides. For instance, you can explore which topics are trending and most popular right now, then choose the offer that best suits your needs.
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Once you have decided on an offer, you need to choose a landing page and a pre-landing page. A pre-landing page (also called a transit page) is a web page designed to prepare and convince the visitor to move on to the landing page that follows.
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How to choose a pre-landing and a landing page:
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The target audience is a key factor in testing an offer. The necessary steps are:
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For example, if you are advertising crayons, you need to understand that parents with small children attending kindergarten are your target audience.
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Where can you get keywords? You can find them through Google Keyword Planner and similar services. These tools help you select and choose the right keywords for your campaign.
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From the list of categories, select those most relevant to the topic of your offer. Knowing your target audience will help you determine their interests and needs. For example, if you choose to advertise crayons, it is logical to select categories such as Family and Education, Kids in School, Art in School, etc. During testing, by analyzing the statistics for each category, you will start to understand which of the selected categories bring the highest conversion rate and which should be disabled.
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Choosing a platform is straightforward, but it is crucial to read the full description of your offer carefully. For example, if your offer does not allow mobile traffic, you must disable that option and work only with desktop traffic, and vice versa.
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We have covered most of the settings, so now we can move on to setting bids. When working with the CPA (cost per action) model, it is best to set at least 50% of the payout as the bid; the bid by category is the average between the specified minimum and maximum (ask your support manager for more details). Bids for keywords are usually 20–30% higher than bids by category (to attract topical traffic).
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No matter how carefully you set up an advertising campaign, if the target audience does not like the ads, the CTR will be low.
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When creating an ad, in order to drive traffic effectively, your ad must be as relevant as possible to your pre-landing and landing pages. Otherwise, the visitor will be disappointed and will not take any action, resulting in no conversions.
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Here are some effective formulas for creating ad text:
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Let us address a common question: how many ads do you actually need to create for testing? The number of materials depends on the budget you are willing to spend on testing. If you are a beginner with a budget of 1,000–2,000 rubles, we recommend creating 3–4 ads, but make them very catchy and as relevant as possible to your target traffic.
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When you have a smaller budget, it is better not to use too many ads — using fewer creatives helps avoid competition between your own creatives.
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It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how much you need to spend on testing in order to begin profiting. It depends on a number of important factors, such as the topic of your offer, the settings of your advertising campaign, and so on.
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You can use the following formula: 1 material = about 70% of the payout per lead. For example, if the payout for the offer is 600 rubles, plan to spend 400–450 rubles on one ad. Therefore, if you create 3 ads, the test will cost 1,200–1,350 rubles.
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Your campaign has been launched, and now it is time to analyze the results and start optimizing. The first thing to do is to look at the statistics for each material. Remove ineffective ads (those with very few clicks and no conversions), follow the example of successful ads to create new ones, upload them, and launch your campaign again. In addition, check which categories convert well and which do not. Do the same when working with other ad-targeting parameters, such as keyword targeting.
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In the beginning, these settings, tests, and optimizations may seem difficult to grasp. However, keep in mind that all top affiliate marketers have followed these steps. If you regret every minute and ruble spent on tests and become discouraged easily, your chances of succeeding in the advertising business are low.
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Actively work with statistics, learn to analyze them, try different experiments, and study the practices of successful affiliate marketers. If your CTR (click-through rate) is low, make the ad image more eye-catching and the texts more compelling. And if a particular offer does not work the way you wanted, you can always succeed with another offer, using the experience you have gained.
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Create Ad Campaign (New UI)
​ Creative Requirements — Useful Guide
​ Increase traffic
​ I created a campaign. Why are there no views?
​ Advertising formats
​ Audiences (New UI)
​ General Statistics (New UI)
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