What Is The Best Traffic Source?

Being an Internet Marketing coach and mentor, I get a lot of questions, but this is likely the most common.

What is the best traffic source for my campaign?

It’s asked by every affiliate, media buyer, agency, beginner, etc.

Back in 2009 when diet re-bill offers were the “easy way” to millions for many affiliates just starting, there were a couple sources that were easy matches for offers that could lead to almost instant $1,000+ profit days. 

Much because of the economic collapse in 2008, many big media companies lost substantial campaigns and were willing to sell much of their inventory for pennies on the dollar.

Around this same time, credit card trial offers really started to take off, as they became a perfect solution for all the un-monetized traffic.

Large websites and publishers didn’t particularly like seeing all the “belly fat” and diet ads on their properties, but it was a heck of a lot better than PSAs that didn’t pay a thing.

I know this first hand, because I was one of those large publishers! 

When the clock struck midnight in 2009, I knew I was going to have to get creative to sell a lot of my ad inventory.

I had massive years in 2007 and 2008 – but 2009 was a challenge from day one.

Because of all of this, many affiliate networks were able to point affiliates to traffic source A, give them offer B, and it was almost instant profit.  There may have been an optimization or two, but there wasn’t much too it.

Unfortunately this was short lived.  Many advertisers became greedy and went super-aggressive to increase their bottom line.

Bidding wars begun amongst many and eventually the bottom started to fall out in 2010 once Visa and Mastercard started to change their terms and conditions to these type of merchants.

Over the last six years, we’ve seen an economic rebound along with much stricter advertising guidelines for affiliate marketers and advertisers.

All of this said, the question still remains, what traffic source is the best?

Common-sense tells us – go where the traffic is! 

Google and Facebook are the largest content providers in the world (even though they actually don’t produce the content) and are where advertisers can gain the most exposure. 

This makes them the best!

Unfortunately for affiliate marketers and media buyers – they’re also the most regulated! 

2016 is much different than 2010.

The entire advertising ecosystem has evolved where no longer can a media buyer with a simple bridge page gain substantial traffic.

Sure, some may get by for a while with a simple lander, but long-term advertisers know they have to build out funnels that not only comply with guidelines but add value to their platform.

Advertising never has been cool.

People like to buy, but they don’t like to be advertised too.  They like to make their own decisions.

Therefore as a marketer, you have to get creative with your campaigns, where you can not only add value to the advertising platforms, but can also comply with their regulations all while bringing visitors through your funnel to become successful conversions.

So if you want to advertise on the best platforms, you have to be the best!

For a long time now, I’ve preached about the importance of building long-term assets, and websites that are substantial for the future, but now we’re seeing it first hand.

Affiliates that want to take the simple “bridge page” route without a long-term asset are left to “second tier” advertising sources such as pop, redirect, and adult. 

While these sources can still be very lucrative, they’re very competitive.

Since it doesn’t take much thought to put together a simple bridge page in five minutes, launch your campaign, and start traffic – many that take this route creating a vicious bidding war that leads to landing page stealing and a bunch of other issues for those just getting started.

My advice? Go long-term from the beginning!  

If you’re just getting started as an affiliate marketer or media buyer, don’t go in with the mindset that it’s going to be as easy as building a simple bridge page and running some traffic to it.

Think about creative ways you can create a long-term funnel by creating a complete website that not only adds value but gains user interest so it can also spread virally.

Think qualify first, monetization second. 

Since Google and Facebook are the highest volume and highest quality advertising sources, most everyone else follows suit.

If you build your campaigns around these two, then it’s likely others will also accept you as an advertiser and you’ll be able to scale well into the future. 

Affiliate marketing, media buying, and high volume advertising has never been a bigger opportunity than it is now, but it’s not something that just happens overnight.

In our Private Mastermind that’s launching next month, I plan on helping those identify creative ways to get their businesses started where they’ll be able to capture traffic on all sources and develop long term assets and properties that add value and provide a massive reach.