Traffic Affiliate Offers: What They Are & How to Choose

Published: 13.05.2025

How to Choose the Best Offer

To begin with, an offer is a proposal from an advertiser. It means the promotion of a physical product, service, game registration, in short, anything for which the advertiser is willing to pay a fee to the webmaster.

Depending on the terms and specifics of the product, each advertising offer has its own payment system and implies a certain conversion rate. The more difficult the offer is to promote, the higher the reward for the arbitrageur. Accordingly, the profit on an easy-to-promote product is lower. Here are some affiliate marketing tips that can help you to get maximum results and choose the best offers on market.

Offer verticals

The first thing you need to decide is the vertical you plan to promote. Imagine the number and variety of products that advertisers offer to promote — from clothing to taxi delivery to casino games, which is why similar products/services are divided into separate verticals in traffic arbitrage. A vertical is not only a certain category of goods, it also defines methods and ways of arbitrage, traffic sources to work with, as well as advertising approaches in creatives to promote a certain product. However, you need to understand that even within the same vertical, products can convert well on different traffic sources.

Even experienced arbitrageurs often work with 1-3 verticals. Therefore, our advice is to focus on one, the one you like the most, because interest and some knowledge of the offer product will be an advantage when planning an advertising campaign.

Types of offer verticals

Of course, there are many more, and the process of forming verticals is still ongoing, so we are only listing a few of the most popular ones:

• E-commerce — physical goods sold in online stores and on websites;
• Nutra — health and beauty products: Dietary supplements, non-branded cosmetics, and any non-drug supplements;
• Gambling — slots, online casinos, etc;
• Dating — the vertical is divided into two niches: Mainstream dating (dating services) and Adult (dating services for adults, with an extension); 
• Finance — banking services and affiliate offers of microcredit organizations;
• Games (mobile, computer);
• Utilities — a variety of useful Android/iOS applications that help optimize the operation of your device;
• Travel — booking tickets, hotels, etc;
• Binary options and Forex.

Offer Components

1. Object of promotion (product, service).
2. The specified user action for which the payment is charged (filling out a form/questionnaire, subscribing, installing a mobile application).
3. Payout: there are many options for paying out profitable affiliate offers. However, it is important for webmasters to know how much money they need to spend on testing in order to understand whether it is worth investing in the promotion of a particular offer. Cheap offers are cheaper to test. Therefore, it is better for beginners to start with tests on cheaper offers and only later transfer their working schemes to more expensive ones.
4. Advertiser requirements and payment terms. You always need to agree with the advertiser, as they say, on the shore: what creos can be used, whether there are restrictions on traffic sources, what audience to target (age, gender, GEO), and by what methods.

Key Considerations for Offer Selection

First of all, you need to decide on an affiliate program. A thorough research of the ratings and reputation of the affiliate program according to the reviews of fellow webmasters will help you to avoid problems or cheating in the future.

You can find reliable affiliate programs and more affiliate marketing tips on our website.

Offer Selection Factors

1. Topic: it is always better to focus on the one that is closer and more understandable to you;
2. Relevance: trendiness and seasonality lead to a higher conversion rate and traffic;
3. Traffic source: usually determined even before the search for an offer, at least for beginners it is better to gain experience in linking to certain advertising channels;
4. GEO;
5. Type of lead and reward;
6. Quality of landing pages.

Choosing the Right Vertical

In fact, there are no easy offers, each one requires preliminary testing. It is better to choose a topic (vertical) from the point of view of the buyer, i.e. imagine if you would like to buy this particular product or play this game, get a specific subscription or skill offered by this training — this greatly increases the chances of a webmaster to make an advertising campaign motivating and attractive to potential customers.

Seasonality, Relevance & Competition

The seasonality of the product/service should be correlated with the source of traffic.

For example, it is important to set up targeted advertising on social media shortly before seasonal sales. If you start PPC in advance, you can get a lot of views and very few conversions, because there is no urgent need for the product.

However, if you offer a significant discount on the product, it can be successfully sold even despite the off-season.

The situation is quite different in contextual advertising. Here, you can run ads for seasonal products throughout the year, but the traffic will be much lower than during the selling season. As for conversions in contextual advertising, you need to test it and find the best offers.

Relevance is a key indicator in arbitrage. You need to understand what is in demand among users and when.

Both indicators can be tracked in Google Trends. Here, by the way, you can see not only hot trends but also the history of the query you need.

Competition — it is extremely rare for a high-demand offer to be presented in only one CPA network; you can find out which other affiliates have a similar offer using the CPA Daily service. If an CPA offers are offered by only a couple of CPAs, it can be considered “fresh”. If it is present in many affiliate programs, you should understand that the competition will be significant.

It is important to monitor how many ads are displayed by the search engine for the key query, what promotions and discounts other potential competitors offer for the offer.

Traffic Sources

The “offer + target audience acquisition source” bundle usually has two problems:

1) the moderation of the advertising network does not allow advertising this offer;

2) the advertiser does not allow using some channels to reach the audience.

The first problem can be solved by replacing the traffic source or choosing another offer and using different lead generation strategies. As an example, slimming products advertising is prohibited in contextual and targeted advertising, but is allowed in teaser networks. Of course, there are also offers that do not promote any “white” channels with strict moderation, and you need experience and certain skills to cope with this problem.

As for the other problem, it's better not to risk wasting your budget and strictly follow the advertiser's wishes and restrictions, considering traffic source optimization.

Offer GEO

This indicator can also be specified by the advertiser in the offer. In any case, you need to adjust the traffic source for the GEO. For example, if the product of the offer is advertised in a certain city or region, you should look for leads on local public sites rather than attracting them from thematic ones, as in this case you can get a large number of leads but low conversion. You should also keep in mind that when promoting a local offer in the burgeoning community, it is important to use the local language, as English alone will not be enough.

Lead Type & Payout

In general, it is better for beginners to send offers with a confirmed application for a product or service with registration/subscription, as this is the fastest way to get leads.

For example, the client needs to leave their number on the website so that the manager can contact them and confirm the order. This way, it takes only a few days from clicking on an ad to performing the targeted action, and the webmaster gets a lead. In most cases, even if the customer refuses to buy the product, the arbitrageur is not charged.

So, before you start working, you need to find out what you will be paid for and how much. The target action (lead) can be:

– payment for goods or ordering a service;

– confirmation of a product/service order;

– active player or registration in the game;

– registration on the website or subscription to the newsletter;

– loan disbursement, etc.

Landing Page Quality

Only testing can give you an idea of whether the landing page will be profitable, but when creating it, try to look through the eyes of a potential buyer and evaluate:

1) the quality of the visuals;

2) convenient functionality;

3) the application form.

Several lemmings work better at once, as it is easier to conduct A/B testing and find out which one converts better. By the way, some affiliate programs allow arbitrageurs to download a landing page and install it on their own domain and hosting, which makes it much easier to track conversions. If you set up goals in Google analytics, you can see whether the affiliate is crediting you with all the leads and, in general, any discrepancies in the statistics.

Most Profitable Offers

In affiliate programs (AP), you can find products on any topic, all of which are structured according to certain criteria for the convenience of webmasters. Most of the products with an affordable average check are designed for the general public. Advertising is aimed at encouraging customers to make an impulsive purchase, as expensive goods are usually bought after much deliberation and may even be postponed until better times.

Therefore, the task of the AP is to accumulate offers with goods that are easy to buy, given their price. In this case, the bet is on the WOW effect, which is perfectly worked out by advertising.

Products that solve specific pressing problems are best perceived by the audience. For example, products that allow you to solve the issue immediately, rather than going to the pharmacy or doctor's office.

It is on offers of the Nutra, Gambling, and Crypto verticals that the largest volumes and the largest payouts are made, and they can always be seen in the top positions of PPC ratings.

Nevertheless, AFFWORD does not recommend beginners to take on Nutra or similar top offers right away. The fact is that most of the products are considered “gray”, which means that they are censored by advertising networks to some extent. 

The only way to circumvent the limitations of traffic sources is to learn how to work with cloaking, and this requires experience.

It is better to start with Skin Care products — this niche is only slightly inferior to health and beauty in terms of volume in many affiliate programs, but it does not violate the rules of advertising networks. Moreover, the beauty industry is constantly evolving, so there are more and more new products, which only adds to its financial attractiveness.

It is better to choose the offer with the highest payout per confirmed application, as it is more difficult and expensive to attract traffic. The rate is determined by the analytical department of the affiliate, focusing on relevant market indicators.

Step-by-Step Offer Selection Process

We've divided the process into four steps and will try to highlight the main pitfalls, so here goes:

Step 1: Types of traffic

Among the most common ones, we will mention the following:

– contextual advertising;

– traffic from social networks, YouTube channels;

– own websites;

– newsletters

– spam;

– traffic;

– motivated traffic;

– soft traffic.

Be sure to find out what limitations a particular traffic source has before you start.

Step 2: Offer metrics

The most commonly used are the following:

– EPC — average earnings per 100 clicks to the landing page;

– CR — the percentage of conversions from clicks;

– Confirmation rate — the average percentage of confirmed leads from all webmasters;

– average order processing time – the time during which the advertiser checks your leads and traffic. It is also called “hold”;

– average payment period – the time during which the advertiser pays for your leads;

– PostClick Cookie – the time during which a user is considered “yours” after clicking on your link.

Step 3: Advertising materials

Usually these are:

– banner,

– landing page,

– deep link,

– form generators,

– video.

Depending on the specifics of a particular offer, there may be other advertising materials.

As a rule, most PPC programs already contain both advertising materials and the percentage of their conversion, sometimes even the average revenue per click. You can view this information in the material itself and choose the most profitable and converting banner.

If you have decided to cast on a fairly popular offer, which means it is highly competitive, then it is better to choose a new creative. If you use the old one, which has probably already bored users, you can get much fewer leads than planned.

You can also choose a ready-made landing page or create a new, unique one. The main condition is that it should be of high quality and convenient.

Some offers, for example, in pharmacology, involve the use of prelanding — an additional page on the way between the creative and the landing page. It's used to keep the user's attention, gradually persuading them to buy the product. The pad is usually stylized as a website of an industry expert or a popular channel or blog in a given topic. This technique is designed for an older audience, which is more likely to follow the opinion of media personalities and trust their authority.

For beginners, manipulations with padding are a bit complicated, so it is better to start with simpler offers.

Step 4: Demand for the ad offer

It is mandatory to monitor the demand for goods outside the affiliate program, which will help you avoid squeezed offers. We are talking about products that were trending for a certain period of time, and later their popularity among users has come to naught.

This is a fairly common phenomenon when certain products soar to the peak of popularity and demand, and if a webmaster has managed to jump into this window of opportunity, he or she is likely to make good money. However, the peculiarity of trending products is their fleeting popularity. Remember the hype around the Pokemon Go game? And now remember the last time you heard about it?

There are analytical tools to help webmasters find trending offers, such as Google Trends, which we mentioned above.

Conclusion

So, to summarize: carefully study the terms and conditions of the offer, especially in the part that deals with restrictions and prohibitions of the PP and advertisers. AFFWORD warns beginners against choosing complicated offers that require shadow schemes such as padding and cloaking to promote them. It is also better not to take on those offers that none of your more experienced colleagues have worked with before.Remember, the brave go first, and the smart go second. Similarly, you shouldn't fold your wings if your first experience is unsuccessful, and you don't have an arbiter who won't pay for the science out of his own pocket. Just be careful and learn not only from your mistakes, but also take into account the mistakes of others. Those tips will help you to understand how to choose an affiliate offer which is best for you.

Last edit: 13.05.2025