At ChameleonAds we work with around 12,500 affiliates. Lots of them are very succesfull with their campaigns but of course every affiliate from time to time runs into a campaign that just doesn’t seem to work for him or her. The main question we get in such a situation from our affiliate is then:

“Why is my campaign not converting?”

How can we answer this question and help the frustrated affiliate onto the path of generating conversions and hence profitability. How can we know why the exact same affiliate is (very) succesful on one campaign, but desastrously bad on another.

Here below I will lay out some of the potential reasons why a campaign is not converting for an affiliate, and what specific steps the affiliate can take to counter this. These problems & counter measures are in no way exhaustive, they are just my personal experience of working for +10 years in this industry managing hunderds of affiliates on various campaigns.

Here we go.

1. The link is not working

This means the URL does not redirect to the offer. This can be because of either the advertiser or network taking the link down. This results in no conversions being tracked at all. Not by the affiliate, network or advertiser. All the money down the drain if you keep on sending traffic. Big problem – Easy solution. Important is to detect this FAST.

Solution?
– Agree on a 48 hour notice period with your affiliate network before they cut your link
– Check with your network if they are automatically running all their links every 24 hours in order to detect broken links.
– Redirect broken link traffic to a proven back-up offer

2. Tracking is not working

First of all, never run any campaign without tracking. Its the same than driving a car blindfolded. I have never done this before, but I’m sure it won’t end well. You can’t measure or see anything, and you can’t optimize your campaigns towards profitability.

Also, never run any campaign without testing your tracking first. At ChameleonAds we support both C2S and S2S postback tracking and we are fully integrated with tracking solutions such as Voluum, Cake, Prosper202, Adsbridge and many more.

If there are no conversions, and the link is working (point 1), then ask the affiliate network how much conversions they are seeing on their end – or just login to the platform and check for yourself. If tracking is not working for some reason, stop all traffic immediately and fix it + test it extensively before going live again.

Solution?
Coordinate pixel setup with your dedicate account manager. Place a test conversion. Make sure it shows up in your interface. Only then you can take the offer live again.

3. The volume you are sending is (way) too low

Some affiliates tell me “I send 20 clicks and don’t see a conversion yet. This campaign is sh**”

Not true. To make some statistically relevant conclusions, you should send enough volume in order to determine whether the campaign is working for you or not.

Solution?
We recommend you to send at least 200 unique clicks to any offer before dedicing to cut it. Sometimes a bit of patience and persistence is all it takes in order to get the conversion in. Don’t give up too soon – you might be missing out on a big opportunity.

4. The traffic source is not the right one for the offer

Every offer will work well…on the right traffic source. But run a any given offer on a traffic source that is untargeted and not right for the offer, and it won’t work. In order to figure out what traffic source is right for your offer, you need to be willing to invest some money into doing A/B testing.

Don’t be afraid to spend your test budget in a responsible way and well-thought trough way. Don’t look at it as losing money, look at it as gathering data and learning what works vs. what doesn’t.

Solution?
– Spy on your competitors to see what they are doing. If they are running the offer for more than 2 days, it means its working. A good spy tool is Whatrunswhere.com
– Make a clear testing strategy (with a budget per traffic source) and with the ultimate goal to find the right traffic source for the 2-3 offers you want to test and focus on.

5. Keep on A/B testing

If you have done steps 1 to 4 and are finally seeing one, or hopefully a few more conversions, let it run for a few days to get some data in. Then its important you start optimizing your campaign in order to maxime your return on investment (ROI). You do this by A/B testing different banners or landing pages.

Solution?
Get different banner and lander sets from your account manager or build them yourself. Then test them out (at least 200 clicks per set) and see what the impact is on CTR, conversion rate and most importantly, your Margin!

I hope these tips help you to keep on investing in continiously testing and improving the performance of your campaigns. If you need any more information, or have some questions. Dont hesitate to send me an email and we’ll talk!

Sign up to www.chameleonads.eu as an Affiliate if you want to get full access to our +600 global desktop & mobile campaigns. We are very much looking forward to seeing your conversions 🙂