How to profit from pops using SmartLinks

Popunder traffic is one of the biggest traffic sources in terms of traffic volumes worldwide, and one of the cheapest by bids! No matter the size of your budget, you can surely afford to purchase pop traffic. This is also the reason why many beginner affiliates lean exactly towards it. 

Although you can easily get pop traffic, that doesn’t mean profiting from it is a breeze. You need to have a deeper understanding of your target audience and offer if you want to succeed. But what if you have no idea what offer to run and where? What if you have not yet mastered a specific niche? The best thing to do then would be to turn to SmartLinks.

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

What are SmartLinks?

Smartlinks are affiliate links that are not attached to a specific offer. The moment a user gets shown the ad, the algorithm behind it determines to best possible offer to present. It is based on the click information, which includes geos, device, browser, language, OS, carrier, connection type and other parameters. Taking all that data into account, the Smartlink figures the offer, the user is more likely to respond to.

The Smartlinks might present any offer within the set parameters and a single campaign. Thus, for example, users from the USA and Indonesia could be shown different ads, even if redirected by the same link. The specifics of what data is being gathered, taken into account, along with offer pool, are configured by the CPA network that provides the Smartlink.

There’re many affiliate networks with Smartlink offers, for example, Mobipium, iMonetizeIt, Traffic Company, and many others.

The benefits of SmartLinks

Here we will show some advantages of working with SmartLinks. Remember that only practice will truly show if advertising SmartLinks works out for you!

• Great for beginners
  Smartlinks are perfect for newbies. After launching them, you do not need to start a/b tests. The AI ​​algorithm does everything for you, choosing the best offers for each user. Moreover, the analysis process does not stop while the campaign is running.
• Handles targeting complications
  Smartlink campaigns are great for traffic that is more difficult to segment due to limited targeting options. Push ads, pops traffic – all these ad formats work well with SmartLink technology.
• Cost effective
  Smartlinks on push notifications or pops do not require large budgets. One thing: they will not bring big earnings either. But it’s a great option to learn affiliate marketing.

4 tips on running SmartLink campaigns with pop ads

If you want to succeed in promoting SmartLinks using popunders, here are some tips that can get you going.

1. Test campaigns

Don’t expect to earn from your Smartlinks campaign at the onset. In the beginning, you will spend some money just to gather data, which is what you will analyze and base your further optimization on. However, make sure you set up your campaigns correctly to not lose a lot of money without getting any traffic and useful information in return.

For example, when setting up pop ads, make sure to limit the visit frequency. Instead of choosing the default, choose to show an ad to the same user once every 24 hours (at least).

Also, set the budget spend model to “ASAP” instead of “Even”. The ASAP traffic spending will allow to show the ad as soon as such an opportunity occurs, rather than stretching the budget throughout the day. Thus, it will be visible what publishers and sources bring the most conversions, so you get better results.

2. Widen the targeting

Some people make the mistake with launching Smartlinks by narrowing targeting down too quickly, for example, by choosing a specific category onset or running traffic from just on country. Smartlinks might seem like they only find the right offer for the user, but what if this niche isn’t working right now (some categories have “seasons”)? What if the network doesn’t have any good offers for your country of choice?

Instead of narrowing the targeting straight away, it’s better to take some time running the campaign wide, so that you can gather enough data and see what works the best. You should not wait too long to optimize, though! Sometimes it takes just a day to have enough data.

Below we shared a strategy on setting up targeting for Smartlink promoting campaigns!

Step 1. Create one campaign with rotating smartlinks

Each SmartLink can focus on a category or can come from a different network. When creating campaigns in your ad network, make sure to create one campaign per country. This can help you optimize easily later on. Furthermore, you can be assured that all countries you are trying to promote receive enough traffic. 

You can use this naming convention to prevent confusion:
Campaign Name – Country Code
Example: Gambling Monetizer – UK

After the initial run, choose the best performing SmartLink. You can also deactivate poor performing countries (ie. have no conversions; have a few conversions but with ultra-low payouts, etc.), as well as underperforming sources (such as websites, publishers, targets, etc.).

Step 2. Send traffic to the best-performing Smartlink

By now you should be driving traffic to just the best performing Smartlinks in the previous step. A few countries will likely show some promise at this point, so start running separate campaigns for each country.

When creating new campaigns for the best-performing geos, make sure to blacklist sources that you have already paused from previous campaigns. You don’t want to waste your budget on sources that have already been proven to be non-converting or too expensive. Trust the process.

Continue optimizing your campaigns by removing non-performing sources and countries. Again, if you find a country that outperforms others by a huge margin, create a new campaign for it. Repeat this process until you find the best combination of Smartlink, country, and sources that drive you revenue.

3. Check for traffic quality

In general, the higher the cost per view, the higher the quality. If your ad network allows you to choose the traffic quality, choose the best one, as low-quality sources might be cheaper at first, but are going to cost you in the long run.

For example, at RichAds ad network sources are divided into four groups: Premium, Standard, Remnant, and New. Premium is the recommended group to start with, as it features all the highest quality traffic sources that show good performance regardless of a niche. All the rest are good to scale.

4. Find out the best converting offer and run it separately

While SmartLinks are smart enough to send your traffic to the top-performing offer, it doesn’t mean you should stop analyzing your campaigns yourself! Smartlinks are a great way to find a good offer to promote that can help you earn more money out of this business. In short, it’s a good stepping stone. Check your CPA network and see if any of the conversions come from a single offer among the featured in the Smartlink. If there is one like that, create a new campaign for this offer and drive traffic to it from countries you have evaluated in Tip #1. 

On the occasion when your network doesn’t show individual offers, ask your account manager for assistance. If the traffic quality is good, they would be more than happy to receive more traffic pinpointed to the best converting offer in your campaign. Additionally, if you already know the offer, you can create a landing page to warm your viewers up. This is proven to help increase the conversion rate.

Conclusion

Smartlinks are a great way of entering affiliate marketing, as they determine the best offer for the audience by themselves, leaving affiliates with pure advertising process. Meanwhile, popunders provide the opportunity to gather a huge volume of traffic and evaluate the results at the widest scale. This duo is becoming one of the most effective strategies to advertise, while having time to estimate risks and adjust the promotion flow.

We at RichAds see the bright future for Smartlinks, and have prepared everything to run them on popunder traffic. Our platform allows to start an ad campaign with all the auto-optimization features on over 220+ geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1! Launch profitable ad campaigns with Smartlinks at RichAds!

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.