Paid traffic for affiliate marketing is one of the best and most popular methods of attracting customers to your site today. While organic traffic is significant, it is not the only way to attract visitors to your site. Relying solely on new visitors to your website can be a time-consuming process. Using paid traffic sources is another way to increase the influx of potential customers and help you grow your business.

It’s a method to market your affiliate site and attract potential customers who would not have come across your site otherwise. However, you must spend a certain amount of money to get a quick return, increased visibility, and more leads.

In this article, we’ll explain what paid traffic is for affiliates, why paid traffic sources can benefit your site, and introduce you to the best-paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing.

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Read More: 5 Best Free Traffic Sources for Affiliate Marketing 

What Is Paid Traffic for Affiliates?

Paid traffic is traffic obtained through direct marketing.  It’s more like a way to get real visitors to your site by advertising to your target audience. As opposed to organic traffic, which comes from search engine results and costs nothing, paid traffic means paid visits.  

On the surface, free traffic is the best choice because it is free, and everyone likes what they can get without paying anything. However, free traffic makes generating free traffic harder and slower than ever. Although paid traffic has a cost, it can increase the number of potential conversions, which can be especially helpful in attracting customers and building awareness of your brand.

 Using paid traffic allows you to target an audience that fits your niche and instantly increase visits to your affiliate site. There are several options for paid ads, and determining what works best for you will take some time and trial and error.

What Are the Benefits of Paid Traffic for Affiliate Marketing?

While SEO and content marketing are things you’ll need to prepare for to ensure sustainability and unstoppable income, there are many benefits to running a paid traffic campaign.

Here are some of the benefits of paid website traffic sources:

-Increases the number of visitors to your affiliate sites, which can help increase potential conversions if your site is new and needs immediate income.

– Allows you to immediately see how your audience will react to your content and adapt more quickly.

– Using paid web traffic allows you to target a specific group of users interested in your niche.

– It allows you to find profitable keywords and use them later for content marketing.

Let’s look at the best-paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing.

7 best paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing that you should consider

1. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay-per-click is a type of advertising in which your website is explicitly promoted on other websites.  However, unlike most other types of advertising, when you use PPC, you only pay when someone clicks on your website. PPC ads are widely used in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo Gemini, Baidu, etc., banner ads, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

These ads usually target specific keywords designed to attract site visitors to your offer. PPC ads often appear on search results pages (at the top and bottom of organic search results), directing users to relevant content based on their search terms.  Currently, Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) is the most popular PPC ad in the world. 

This PPC advertising can help you increase traffic from users searching for common keywords in your niche. If you want to experiment with PPC, Google Ads is an excellent place to start.  The price you pay per click is usually based on your bid for that particular ad. 

To decide which ads are shown for specific queries, Google Ads uses real-time bidding and offers the keywords to the highest bidder. Google prioritizes advertisers who are already paying a lot of money and have many quality landing pages with verified CTRs (click-through rates).  Google takes all of these things into account when generating quality-ranked ads. You receive different ads based on their ranking.

You can divide your campaigns into different categories, including:

– Location

– Product Type

– Keyword

The price of PPC ads depends mainly on your business model. To stay ahead of the competition, you should also take the time to conduct keyword research.  You’ll be able to find relevant keywords that are frequently searched but are not as competitive or expensive.

2. Advertising On Social Media

Social media can be a source of free traffic and a great source of paid traffic. Plus, with social media like Facebook and other social media platforms having billions of users, it’s easy to expand social media advertising! Social media advertising campaigns allow you to connect with your target audience on a large scale.

You can use social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to display your ads and benefit from more effective granular targeting, where you can define your audience to increase your chances of getting a conversion. Users are directed to your website or landing page when they click on your ads on these social platforms.

In short, social ads allow you to segment and target effectively to ensure that the exact type sees your ads of customers you want. Before you shell out money for targeted traffic, determine which networks your audience hangs out on before launching your campaign.

You can use video, photo, story, carousel, and collection ads.  The most important ones to consider when finding paid traffic are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat. 

Read more: How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 7 Steps?

Facebook Ads

Facebook is probably one of the most used networks as a source of paid traffic for affiliate marketing that is currently working.  According to a survey released in November 2021 by Statista, 21 percent of respondents said that Facebook was the social media platform with the highest return on investment (ROI) that year.

However, Facebook ad prices have increased over time as the number of advertisers on the platform has grown. Facebook has an excellent algorithm that is sure to show your campaign only to particular users. Facebook allows you to target your audience based on location, demographics, interests, behaviors, and engagement. 

And you can use any combination of these targeting methods. You can create static or dynamic campaigns, small or large campaigns, retargeting campaigns, and low or high-budget campaigns. So you can go deep into Facebook to advertise specifically to people who would be interested in what you are promoting.

But Facebook is strict with affiliates. Suppose you are advertising as an affiliate on Facebook. In that case, you must be very careful to provide good content and not put affiliate links directly on Facebook, or you will be banned.

A good strategy for Facebook ads is to create feature articles or content that people like to read and to engage with and run engagement ads on that page simultaneously as you try to run a conversion campaign. Doing so will increase your quality score at the same time, which will result in a lower cost per click.

Facebook provides a massive amount of data on your reports. Try to optimize your searches based on the data you get from Facebook Audience Insights. 

Twitter Ads

Twitter ads are an effective way to get traffic to your website and affiliate offers. If you’re successful on Twitter, the payoff is enormous. Four out of ten Twitter users carried out a purchase after having come across it on the social media platform. If you want to generate conversions and leads, paid ads on Twitter can be a good choice.

You can create a campaign based on the objective and type of promotion and then segment the audience based on geography, income, gender, phone carrier or interests, or even the keywords in their tweets. You can promote a single tweet, an entire account, or a new topic, and you can pay per click, impression, interest, follow, video view, lead, or app install. 

With the rising cost of advertising on Twitter, it’s essential to identify your goals before embarking on a paid campaign.  If your goal is to raise awareness, you can do so for free based on organic reach alone. Twitter’s CPC is relatively high, so think carefully about your goals when creating a campaign and make sure you use a good CTA.  

But perhaps the best thing about Twitter advertising is that you only pay when you reach your marketing goal.  So if you set your goal on website conversions, you only pay when people convert on your site.  You will avoid pouring money into your ads without seeing results.

LinkedIn Ads 

LinkedIn users are in business mode. For some marketers, this is a rich source of paid traffic, especially for high-value B2B services, recruiters, and higher education institutions. LinkedIn lets you, target professionals more precisely and effectively by contact or account, job title, demographics, location, or industry.

Various forms of ads, such as Display Ads, In-Feed Supported Messages, and InMail Ads, are ads delivered directly to your audience’s LinkedIn inboxes. The Matched Audiences feature allows you to retarget website users, business lists, and email lists by matching them to LinkedIn members. 

Linkedin ads are also costly and are more business related. Typically, advertisers on Linkedin pay an average price of $5.26 for every click. Nevertheless, for some businesses, using this ad network can be worthwhile.

TikTok Ads

TikTok is a great way to do affiliate marketing. It’s another traffic source that works well with a younger demographic, so if you have offers that cater to people in their 20s and 30s, then maybe that’s something you want to test out of TikTok ads.

Snapchat Ads

Snapchat ads are geared towards a younger demographic, so if you have a product that is geared towards a younger demographic, say between 18 and 30, it tends to work better. Snapchat is a little stricter when it comes to setting up these ads. So you must be careful how you phrase your ads; your videos must show excellent articulation so they don’t break the Snapchat ad rules.

3. Search Traffic

Search traffic is anything you search for on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and finding results from these different resources falls under search traffic. Google ads are the best sources of paid traffic to improve traffic to your website. 

Google is a dominant player, accounting for over 92% of all web searches. It shows that Google also offers you more chances to monetize the traffic in the search results. 

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Google Ads

Google Ads (previously known as AdWords) is one of the highest-paying ad networks that can offer you excellent exposure but at relatively high CPCs (cost per click). Many marketers use Google Ads for affiliate marketing.

With Google Ads, you can choose keywords that your buyers are likely to search for, then bid to have your ad appear as a sponsored ad at the top of the search results page. With Google Ads, this is targeted traffic if you set things up correctly.

The key to success with search ads is to target keywords with purchase intent or most likely to convert into leads and customers. Google Ads has more advanced features, such as dynamic search ads, which automatically customize your ads based on your website content.

With Google Ads dynamic search ads, you don’t have to worry about managing a keyword list, YouTube video ads, and universal app campaigns. Google Ads supports advanced audience targeting, changing bids based on devices, and retargeting users who have already visited your website. 

There is, of course, the Google Display Network (GDN), where you can promote display advertising. In Google Ads, the CPC depends on the keywords’ search volume and your website’s authority. 

Advantages:

– no minimum budget

– a wide range of parameters 

– a variety of ad formats

– fast results

Disadvantages

– CPC is high for search engine optimization

– extensive development of the semantic core is required.

Bing Ads

Bing is an ideal way to launch new paid traffic campaigns because it provides high-quality traffic at a lower cost than other paid traffic sources. Bing Ads allows you to get paid traffic much cheaper, and they are more lenient in their advertising rules, especially for affiliates. The average cost per click on Bing Ads can be up to 70% lower than AdWords.

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According to Statcounter, Bing’s market share is only 3.34%. But what Bing lacks in volume, it makes up for in performance.

Although smaller, Bing has three search engines, Bing, Yahoo, and AOL, which Microsoft owns. Therefore, your ad is seen on all three when you advertise on one of them.

Advantages:

– cheaper traffic than in GA

– own tool for keyword selection

– extended parameters

– possibility to import advertising campaigns from Google Adwords

– ad time is adjusted to the time zone of the selected country

Disadvantages:

Bing/Yahoo will get about one-tenth of the traffic compared to Google. 

– only 12 languages are available for targeting

– only 35 countries are available

Pinterest Ads

Pinterest is one of the best-paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing to improve your website traffic and boost sales.  Pinterest ads are more affordable than social media platforms due to less competition. Also, you can advertise on Pinterest for an extended period without spending much. 

You can use images and captions to make your ads more effective. The only problem is that they don’t have the massive numbers you see on Google and Facebook. But you can be very targeted with Pinterest ads. There are all sorts of niches on this platform, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Advantages:

– Affordable compared to other social media advertising platforms.

– Allows you to use images for your campaign

– Less competition

It- Easy to set up

Disadvantages:

– Targets a specific audience

– Time-consuming

 YouTube Ads

YouTube ads have, by far, started to grow. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and part of Google, so when you open a YouTube ad account, you do so through Google Ads. So when people search for something on the YouTube search engine, they will see your ad appear before the organic search results, which is very targeted traffic.

In addition, you can place your ad before or after, in the middle of other videos, or even in the sidebar, giving you plenty of targeting options. If you understand how to do this with YouTube, you can get good quality paid traffic for affiliate marketing.

4. Links and Banners

Links and banners are the most common types of online advertising and are ideal for reaching people on a large scale and raising awareness. Links and banners are a long-term marketing tool and a flexible and cost-effective source of paid traffic for your business.

Plain text links and image-based banners can direct interested people to your site. Customers will click on the banner ad when they are interested, and the link will take them to the website containing detailed product and service information or an affiliate link.  

You can purchase advertising space on sites such as the Google Display Network (GDN) to display messages, images, videos, etc., about products, services, etc.  Your ads usually appear as banners on websites that have partnered with Google Adsense or another ad network.

Naturally, the higher the quality of the domain, the more you pay. If you want to go beyond Google’s network, you can use digital media buying by contacting publishers directly and asking them for ad placements. It is essential to choose the location of your banners carefully, ensure the benefit to the user is clear, and use a solid call to action (CTA).

Here are some other benefits of banner ads:

-The advantage of this type of advertising is that it can be used almost anywhere: on blogs, social media, and emails.

-You can market them at an affordable price.

Unlike other forms of advertising, banners are cheap to create and share.

-They increase brand awareness: The visual nature of banners makes them particularly effective in capturing the reader’s attention and allows you to showcase brand awareness. 

-They are targeted: When you use banner ads on specific forums, you eliminate the uncertainty of trying to convince customers of your offers. You can also be sure that the customers who click on your ads are potential prospects.

5. Push Notification

Push notifications are a great source of paid traffic for affiliate marketers. Push notification is a form of notification displayed on the desktop and mobile website interface to remind readers of an event or a new website article they have saved. 

Push notifications are a good way for mobile users to quickly receive email notifications on their devices. Still, you can also get desktop ads that appear on people’s computer screens, and when they browse a website, a pop-up window suddenly appears in the bottom right corner.

With push notifications, you can increase your subscriber lists and get real users who have chosen to receive notices and visit your website, which also provides you with quality traffic, which helps you develop free traffic in the future.  Push ads are easy to set up and earn if you know where to place them.

You can customize these ads by adding titles, descriptions, logos, images, and emojis, which makes them perfect for testing your creations and getting users’ attention. You can target millions of global users in all GEOs, down to the city level, so you’ll always be able to find enough volume for your campaign.

Push ads can work in any vertical, but they tend to excel in sweepstakes, coupons and vouchers, mobile content, and financial offers. Push notifications are often presented across multiple channels, such as the web, Facebook, and Instagram.

6. Native Advertising 

Native ads are designed to resemble the feel and look of the specific context in which they are displayed. They are also less invasive; you may not even notice them. Since the primary concern of any publisher is to retain users, and since native ads blend in and are less likely to be hated and reviled by users, it’s only natural that this traffic source would prove itself in affiliate marketing.

Native ads are an excellent source of paid traffic and can have a much higher retention rate than banners. Native ads are essentially images with a title and description located at the bottom or side of every article you read on major news networks, where it says “you might also be interested in” or “you might also like these articles.”

And when you click on it, it takes you to another article designed by the advertiser that looks like an article. In other words, you make your ad, and your page looks like another article related to the topic you are advertising around. As long as you know how to target suitable locations and use beautiful images, it’s straightforward to get a sale with native ads.

With less conversion, it can be much cheaper than Google or Facebook. Native ad platforms are a bit more lenient on affiliates. Taboola, Diamond, and Outbrain are three ad platforms that help marketers create native ad campaigns.

The advantage of using native ads is that they can appear anywhere:

– In your social media feeds

– In your recommended content 

– In your search results

7. Contextual Advertising  

Contextual advertising works the same way as PPC campaigns, except you pay for your ad to appear only on relevant websites. The advantage of contextual ads is that they are less intrusive. In addition, the campaign manager is betting that you will be more likely to click on their ad because it is in the context of what you are reading.

Conclusion

There you have it, the seven best paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing that you can use to improve your website’s visibility. Hopefully, this article will be helpful to you and help you choose an appropriate way to boost your paid traffic sources based on your budget. 

Organic traffic is an excellent and essential way to grow your site. However, it should not be your only strategy.  Using paid traffic sources to advertise your site, you can generate rapid traffic growth and reach a specific audience based on your niche. 

Generally, a mix of paid and organic traffic is often the most effective way to generate business growth. Investing in those with the most significant business value to achieve your goals using paid traffic sources is critical. To get the best result, check your business needs, define your target audience,