If you ever thought that running VPN offers on Tier-1 (US) and iOS requires superb proficiency, then leave all doubts behind. It only takes some well-done reseach, a reliable CPA network, and the right ad format to harness even a highly-competitive campaign. From the affiliate case study, you’ll learn how to launch a VPN offer with a CPI flow on one of the most profitable ad formats — Social Bar push ads.
Our partner is a true guru of affiliate marketing, and he shares all insights for free. Use them now to set up your winning campaign.
As this case study is provided by one of our partners, we keep the spelling untouched. We try to maintain a unified structure for all case studies, so we sometimes make a few changes in the sequence of paragraphs. The author's opinion does not necessarily reflect our views.
Core data for the affiliate case study of running a VPN offer
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Traffic type: SocialBar CPC by Adsterra.com
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CPA Network: Adsterra CPA Network
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Offer: All traffic VPN
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Time period: April 27 – May 03
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GEO: US
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Spent: $290.90
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Income: $1195.10
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Profit: $904.20
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ROI: ~310%
Hey, everyone!
We continue to experiment with earning on the simplest flow — CPI conversions. In today’s case we again drive traffic on the U.S., but this time the whole ordeal is about one of the popular VPN services.
Let’s roll!
Choosing a GEO and an offer
In my previous cases, I already mentioned that I sometimes use the info about offers from the newsletters of CPA Networks. This offer was taken from Adsterra’s newsletter, and you can also find it in the general list of offers.
This offer, as I said above, goes with the CPI flow. Great option if you want to make a quick profit, or just starting your journey in affiliate marketing. I advise beginners to start with this simple flow, so as not to complicate life for themselves (and maybe even others around them) 🙂
- Conversion type: CPI
- Vertical: VPN
- Device format: Mobile
- OS type: IOS
- Restrictions: no bot, no fraud
- Payment for each instal — $1.7
To all new partners initial test limit is 100 conversions. After quality check (2 weeks) limits can be exceeded.
Screenshot of the final landing:
Strategy
Same thing as always: start by finding out everything about your offer in a conversation with your support manager. Support often gives valuable advice and tells you exactly how to work with this or that offer to achieve better results.
Let’s get to work with CPC model. During preliminary tests, the $0.018 bid came out to be pretty good. Another reassurance came from the fact that the similar VPN offer in the U.S. gave a nice amount of traffic. Besides, Adsterra has a special estimator that shows how many clicks the campaign can and will receive.
Therefore, let’s take this bid as it is.
Watch your CTR: if you find clickable and converting creatives, then you can safely lower the price. But at the beginning of the test, I advise you to set the bid a bit higher and add at least three different creatives to check what goes better. Then you can optimize your campaign with new creatives, wiggle the bid a little, etc.
Creatives
Creatives in the form of system messages work very well in all the previous cases. According to the preliminary tests, everything remains exactly the same. System messages still have an unbelievable CR, so I recommend you to use exactly them.
Another fun fact: when making creatives, you can choose different templates for how exactly it will look like. For the second time in a row, it turns out that the top conversions are achieved by the template called “Windows style (compact)”. I advise you not to think too much and just take it. But remember that other templates are also great to convert, so do not forget about them.
Here are my examples of creatives that are based on personal ideas:
It is best to use PNG images, they usually have higher quality. Do not mind the black background of the PNG pictures, the user will see it as it should be.
This offer has no prelend, so we have to add something appropriate, which will not scare the user and increase the likelihood of conversion. Like this:
Optimization
I suggest you don’t set too narrow campaign targeting. This is risky because you might miss out on a large chunk of traffic. For example, if you remove the English language targeting — the amount of traffic increases, so if the terms of the offer does not target something specific — refrain from putting anything unnecessary.
The same thing applies to the browsers. Test the impact of different browsers on your campaigns with small budgets. Sometimes it happens that we don’t pay attention to some Android browser, and it ends up with a whole lot of targeted traffic and conversions. But it can also be the other way around. So keep your pre-tests in mind.
Post optimization
So, overall: targeting mobile; iOS 11.0 and above; $0.018 bid
Screenshot of the final settings:
Results
Screenshot from Adsterra:
Total spent at Adsterra for all days: 290.9$.
Income: $1195.1.
Profit $904.2.
ROI 310%
Summary
I think it came out great. I didn’t really follow the campaign and optimized it to a minimum, just updated the blacklists. If you raise the rate per click, you can get more out of it. But I think the result is not bad as it is.
This offer is also safe to take and start, I hope it will bring me more money.
See you later, thanks for reading!
Ok, that was a remarkable affiliate case study of running a VPN offer. Have you managed to find out why our partner chose this offer? What tactics he uses? What does he recommend for creatives’ design? If not, it is better to read the case study through again 🙂
Want to take a try with a Phone Cleaner offer (iOS) or another VPN app? Or, maybe, you prefer running mobile carrier Popunder campaigns? Adsterra partners break down affiliate marketing tricks regularly. Stay up to date with our case studies!
