Is Paid Advertising Worth It?
When you start an online business in affiliate marketing, like everyone you plan to invest your time, effort and some money to achieve your online financial goals as quick as possible.
Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion industry and there is a room for everyone. Everyone can take their piece of a pie and earn a solid income online.
But though it sounds simple and easy very often you can’t get results you expect from your affiliate marketing business.
You have two ways to grow your business and take it to a whole new level: SEO (free) traffic and paid traffic.
When it comes to free traffic, it’s pretty clear and simple while when it comes to a paid traffic, it raises more questions than answers.
That’s why I decided to write this post based on my 5-year experience in affiliate marketing to answer the question: Is paid advertising worth it?
Free Traffic
Of course, when you start your affiliate marketing business, your biggest challenge will be traffic, i.e. visitors. Without traffic your website will not survive.
It’s a lifeblood of your blog. Even if you have a ton of content and no one can see it, what is the use of it? And you don’t need just any traffic.
You need a massive traffic, probably at least 500 visits a day to get things going and start monetization of your affiliate blog.
With such a traffic you probably can earn something around $1.000-$3.000 per month. How can you achieve that? Let’s see how it works in practice.
SEO – Search engine optimization is the easiest and the hardest thing you can do for your affiliate blog.
Everyone wants free traffic but organic traffic requires a lot of effort and time and unfortunately, you can’t always get the results you expected.
If Google favors your website you will get a ton of traffic.
YouTube – YouTube is a second largest traffic source even for blogs. In fact, you can get way more traffic than from Google.
As a platform it works great in itself and it can also send a good amount of traffic to your affiliate blog. But unfortunately, it works in the same way like Google.
Though ranking videos is easier than ranking blog posts on Google, it’s still not easy to get traffic to your YouTube channel at all.
Social media – social networks like Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok or Facebook can send you a lot of traffic too.
These networks get more attention now because ranking videos and getting traffic becomes more difficult from YouTube.
That’s why more and more people turn to these social websites. But this doesn’t mean it is easy to do. You still need a lot of time and effort even for decent results.
Paid Traffic
Let’s now talk about paid traffic and how we can use it for our affiliate blogs. As I said, free traffic a is a great thing if it works for you.
You can achieve your goals quickly and start monetization of your affiliate blog.
If free traffic doesn’t work for you, you have to either make it work for you by changing your strategy, or quit your affiliate career or start investing money and buy traffic.
This strategy can be effective and turn your business into a profitable venture if you know what to do and how to do.
Otherwise it’s going to be your biggest failure and disappointment.
PPC (pay per click) – From my experience with PPC traffic I think it’s one of the best paid traffic methods you can use in your affiliate business.
It’s super targeted and you can get maximum conversions if you set up your paid campaigns properly.
But in order to be profitable you need to promote products that are expensive and high converting, i.e. in high demand.
If you promote cheap products, most likely you will be spending more than earning.
If you promote a product that has a low conversion rate you will be unprofitable because again you will be spending more than earning.
That’s why before spending money on PPC traffic make sure to promote the right product. Best PPC traffic from my experience is Google AdWords and Bing ads.
PPV – Pay per view traffic is considerably less converting than PPC traffic. But it’s way cheaper.
With PPV you can get way more traffic but conversions will be less too. It’s really difficult to get results with this type of traffic though it is possible.
In the past 5 years of experience in affiliate marketing I learned that very few affiliate marketers can actually get results with PPV traffic.
I tried it several times with no results which is why I can’t recommend it to anyone.
When it comes to PPC traffic, I tried it many times and had good results. I still use PPC traffic in my affiliate business.
Facebook – In my experience Facebook traffic is the worst traffic you can buy. I’ve never had good results with it.
It worked before and as I know from other affiliate marketers it’s no longer popular as it used to be in the past.
First of all, Facebook traffic is expensive and secondly most business no longer can advertise on Facebook. It’s very strict now.
Because Facebook wants to keep visitors on its website. If you advertise your business and drive people away from Facebook to your website, it’s not what Facebook wants.
Some super experienced marketers still get results with Facebook but even their success is not long-term. I personally can’t recommend Facebook ads in 2021.
Email marketing – Of course, email marketing is one of the best traffic methods you can bring to your business, BUT it’s not what you need from the very first day of your affiliate business.
It will cost you at least $25 per month which is pretty affordable for most people.
First of all, before starting an email marketing you need to build traffic to your website.
Once you start getting at least 200 visits a day you can start email marketing and collecting emails from your visitors.
Before that I think it doesn’t make much sense to do email marketing. Secondly, you need to set up a good email campaign that will convert your subscribers into buyers.
For this you need to have a good service or a product to promote.
In short, email marketing can turn your business into a highly profitable venture only if you know how to do it the right way.
Solo ad – I’ve never done solo ad but from what I’ve learned from other affiliate marketers, some of them are friends of mine, proves that solo ad is not worth your time, effort or your money.
Because solo ad means you will pay other affiliate marketers for the possibility to advertise your offer among their subscribers.
This strategy is very inefficient simply because it’s not your subscribers. You don’t know them or how responsive they are which is why this strategy is very ineffective.
I asked friends of mine, seasoned affiliate marketers to share their experience with solo ad and all of them told me about their negative results in all solo ad campaigns.
In fact, they never recommend it. I know very FEW people including Mark Ling from Affilorama who can successfully use this strategy.
Instagram – Since ranking videos on YouTube and getting views becomes harder and harder many people tend to switch to Instagram now.
But Instagram like Facebook wants to keep their readers on its website which means all your activity should be focused on the platform itself, not trying to drive people away from Instagram to your website.
If you follow this strategy you can build a solid audience on the platform and take advantage of it for your business through both free and paid campaigns.
But this will take a lot of time, effort and patience. It is now way more popular and effective than Facebook.
Cheap Bulk Traffic – You can buy cheap bulk traffic for $50 or even $25. For example, you can buy 10.000 views for $25 which sounds great and attractive but in fact it is useless.
This type of traffic is super untargeted and has an extremely low conversion rate.
I paid for such traffic several times and have never had any conversions. I don’t recommend this type of useless traffic. It’s a waste of time and money.
Is Paid Advertising Worth It?
Trying to answer the question: Is paid advertising worth it? My answer will be YES. But like always with some clarifications.
As I said, if you have a high converting product and the price is not cheap, you can make your paid campaigns profitable.
If you can earn at least between $25-$50 per sale it will be much easier to make your campaigns profitable. Otherwise you will be spending more than earning.
Paid advertising is a great method to grow your business quickly without waiting for Google rankings for months or even years.
But you have to be very careful because the method has a high risk of wasting money.
About the Author: Adam
My name is Adam. I'm the founder of Your Income Advisor. My goal is to help others succeed online, by exposing scams and reviewing top rated products. I can help you start your own business online 
