10 ways to spot a crappy offer before you blow your budget.

[moneyman]

Finding a good offer that convert's is sometimes like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Once you find that needle in the haystack it's almost like mining and you come across a good amount of gold. It's almost like hitting the jackpot.

There are many ways you can help increase your chances of finding that jackpot, bad offers are a dime a dozen out there, but there's also a lot of good offers as well.


Here are some signs to watch before promoting an offer and spending your hard earned money on something that is pretty much garbage.

1. Landing Page Response - This one is the most obvious one, but you would be surprised at how many people skip this. Make sure you test the page by going to it with a desktop and a mobile device from the country is it meant to be promoted on. If it loads like it is on dialup internet then you know it's no good. It's going to waste your clicks, but more importantly your time and money.
2. Funnel - Just use your own judgement for this. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and pretend that you are signing up or buying the product. Is it a difficult process to go through? Do they make it easy for the customer to sign up or buy the product?
3. GOOGLE IT - Yes that's right google the product. Is there a lot of bad reviews of the product or company for this offer? Usually when this is the case the advertiser is not making much money on the backside and therefore the conversions rates seem to go down so they can compensate for the profits. This is called throttling or shaving leads, in my opinion if the company is doing that, it's definitely not long-term and not worth promoting.
4. 404 - When you visit the page it just doesn't work. I know this sounds stupid but you would be surprised at how many affiliates just plop an offer in and never check anything only to find out later that the offer was not working or the website was down due to technical difficulties.
5. Test the offer - Go through and sign up yourself to actually see if you receive the conversion. If it's a credit card submit, ask your affiliate manager to do it for you or just do it yourself and cancel. If the conversion doesn't come through they are shaving or the pixel is just not setup right.
6. Design - The design of the website is just horrible, it looks like a 5 year old with a crayon designed it. You obviously know this is an offer not to promote or an advertiser that knows what they are doing, either way it will probably never convert.
7. Super High Payouts - Some payouts are high and actually convert very well, but if you see an e-mail submit for example paying $10 per lead then something is wrong. They are either shaving 90% of it, or there's something else going on you may not know of.
8. Unrealistic payouts - If you see an offer for example like a sale offer only paying $10 you will never make any money this way. One it's hard to get it to convert to begin with and 2 you are just not getting a fair or good payout for an offer that makes a lot of money for them. This could be due to the network is lower on the totem pole and they are rebrokering the offer 5 or 6 times, in those cases look for it elsewhere and get the best payout possible.
9. Cap Issues - Always ask the network or advertiser if there is a cap on the offer and if there is, then is there some just allocated for you. I've seen this happen a lot of the times in the industry were I go to promote an offer and someone else on the network has capped it out and it doesn't convert for me.
10. Saturation - I usually try to stay away from products or offers that are over saturated. You are seeing them on Facebook, google all over the place maybe even billboards were you live. Your better to stay away from these because if the offer has been run and run over again, likely it's not converting as well when it first started.
11. Errors - You see writing errors on the page itself, who in their right mind that is a customer that is going to sign up for something with errors all over the page??!!? Next lol...
12. Responsive Website - Is the website desktop and mobile responsive? Basically when you view it on desktop does it look good as well when you view on mobile does it look good as well? This is important based on the type of traffic you are sending whether it is mobile or desktop, always make sure that offer is compatible with the traffic you are sending.
13. Wrong Language - The language on the page doesn't match the geographics for the offer your promoting.
14. CTA - Click to action, when you go to the page do you see were the sign up button is? If not chances are that your customers will not too.

Most of these things are common sense but a lot of affiliates skip them. Make this your checklist before you promote any offer in the industry and after a while it will become second nature. This way you can cut the amount of your offers in half and as well your time and money!

 

[scuba72262]

Great advice. Thanks for giving us new guys some good info.