The Nails and Fails of Crypto Affiliate Marketing in 2018

The Crypto Hype Train of 2017 made a lot of people rich but left even more people poor and looking for a tax attorney. You’ve heard the story. But what nobody’s told you is that the Crypto Industry is still a goldmine for hard-working marketers willing to dig for their gold, not just scratch the surface for pick-ups.

So in this article, we’ll try and do our best to share what’s changed in the crypto world for the past year, and point out the best ways to earn them big crypto moneys as an affiliate marketer in 2018.

1. WHAT DOESN’T WORK IN CRYPTO ANYMORE

So you’re here to learn how to turn a quick coin doing good stuff in the crypto market, not read an obituary for verticals that are going down in flames. We get it. But before you galavant into the crypto affiliate marketing world of 2018, it’s good to know about the things you should totally steer clear of. Some things are so dead and gone that no matter how much ass you kick with your ingenious ads, there’s just no getting them back to life.

1.1 CLOUD MINING

Hate to break it to you (we really do), but this particular party is over. It was a blast, but you’re late for it. The very thing that started the entire crypto affiliate marketing industry in the first place just doesn’t work anymore.

WHY IT WORKED BACK THEN

Despite the huge number of people willing to trade their money for crypto-currency, just buying bitcoin like a pack of cereal has always been a tough task to accomplish. But what you could buy with your credit card were the so-called ‘cloud mining contracts’ — your own rent-a-mining-farm hosted in the cloud. With the hype going on and the rates going up, it was a profitable trade-off for people on both ends of the deal.

For affiliate marketers, driving hordes of paying customers to cloud mining projects was a cakewalk, as long as the price of bitcoin was still breaking the atmosphere. They sold tons of cloud mining deals throughout the entire fall and spent the next winter bragging about their success cases.

WHY IT WON’T WORK ANYMORE

The bitcoin price went down, while the complexity of mining shot up. With the hype gone, the general audience is not chasing bitcoins anymore, making the cloud mining services hard to sell for regular money. This makes the whole thing hardly worth the risk and effort, so the supply of cloud mining is shrinking as much as the demand for it. We’ll just let the numbers do all the talking — while still on the roll, cloud mining projects would be as generous as to pay a whole 20% revenue share to affiliates. Now the average reward is just 8%. Things are not looking good for those guys.

But hey, if you’re a dreamer (or just psychic) — just wait for the bitcoin price to start climbing steep slopes again — cloud mining offers will pop up in hundreds when that happens, and you’d be wise to take them.

1.2 EDUCATION AND INFO-BOTS

Knowledge is power, especially if you can cash out on it real fast. Back when they hype train was still on track, everybody was raping Google for ‘bitcoin mining 101’. And hundreds of crypto-senpai’s answered the call with their learning materials, webinars, books — you name it.

When the hype train came crashing, this left a lot of people disappointed with the idea of ‘making money online — ez & fast’ as well as the teachings of their former mentors. The interest for crypto went down and brought the ‘Education’ industry with it.

Sorry, but there’s just nothing for a marketer to do here till the next hype. If it ever comes, that is.

1.3 ICOS AT REVENUE SHARE

The best offer you could get from an ICO last summer was a 5% revenue share. And that was considered generous. To be fair, the whole crypto ads market was not exactly brimming with overpriced offers, averaging at some $1–2 CPM. But as the very first crypto projects proved they could bring good ROI to investors and easy money to its founders, the number of such projects began to increase, finally igniting the fire of rivalry and increased demand for time in the spotlight.

Last fall, blockchain startups were the new black gold, spawning hundreds of ICOs and generating inadequate competition for investors. And this leads to increased demand and prices for marketing services. Come winter, there were just too many projects in the wild, the first big scam dramas broke out, and the market began its emergency cooldown, slashing the total number of ICOs with no mercy.

As a result, it would take a crypto project at least 7 direct interactions with a potential investor to convince them to participate. And as you can tell, this calls for a more complex marketing effort.

Sadly, early ICOs had this nasty habit of pinning all the risks on affiliate marketers. It took them time to learn that converting a potential investor is their job, not yours. And throughout that time a lot of leads missed their marks because of that, making this niche a lot less profitable for marketers.

1.4 BITCOIN CODE

Wow, this should’ve been easy, but we don’t even know where to start. I guess the best way to tell what’s wrong with ‘Bitcoin CODE’ is to Google it up. Every review looks like a murder scene.

Short story — it was bitcoin trading system with a very aggressive marketing strategy and a… very specific intention behind its design. We’re a family-friendly blog (at least we’re trying!), but if you’re interested to know all the gory details of the Bitcoin CODE story, the crypto community has plenty of those to offer. But seriously, it’s just not worth your time.

2. WHAT’S CRYPTO-HOT NOW (BUT THIS MIGHT CHANGE…)

2.1 GAMBLING ACCEPTING BITCOINS

Just a year ago, crypto gambling was a rather secluded and shady place. But as technologies advanced, helping more people learn how to use bitcoin, casinos accepting crypto-currency become the new big hit. After all, gambling on the Internet whilst sitting on your couch sure beats traveling to an Indian Territory or sailing to neutral water.

The best news for marketers? It is possible to drive traffic to crypto gambling projects from countries that have banned conventional casinos and gambling due to regional laws.

2.2 EXCHANGES

Last year’s most luxurious success tales from ICOs look like a dirt poor peasant’s memoirs compared to the stories of just how much money’s been made by exchange companies. Not only can they boast gigantic turnover volumes, they made — wait for it — from $200 grand to a whole million USD per each token listed on the exchange. In other news — they are super rich. And evidently, those guys can never get enough, as they’re still willing to pay handsome money for new active traders. There are 2 self-excluding models in this niche:

• Revenue share. Long-term money that pays off after months of investment.
• Lead Generation. Short-term profit. You get it.

The truth is stuck somewhere in-between. Exchange companies will always try to force the revenue share model on you, and as an affiliate marketer, you will always prefer being paid per lead. But let’s just leave the troubles of connecting both parties somewhere in the middle to Affiliate Networks. It’s their job, after all.

2.3 ICO’S THAT MADE IT (CPL)

Crowd Sale the way you knew it a year ago is now dead and in the ground. Many ICO’s are still struggling to accept that, with most of them drawing caps with token swop (2 sad ICOs exchanging their sad tokens in a feeble attempt to make it look like there’s actually some demand going around going on).

But despite this sad and awful lot, there are still decent projects more than worth some rich guy’s investment. They have a viable product and some money raised from the funds, and they should be able to prove that. If they do, they eventually come to realize that a marketer’s job is ensuring brand awareness. A marketer is only responsible for generating the initial interest, closing the deal and converting a lead into a customer is ultimately the ICO’s task. Bottom line: when choosing an ICO to promote, give your preference to projects who know how to convert leads into paying customers and know it’s their responsibility, not yours.

Here’s a ‘but’ — there aren’t that many projects like that. And trying to slip poor quality traffic won’t work with those vigilant guys, in fact — they’re so allergic to bad quality, their offers are always private, forcing you to talk to some Network’s manager before you can actually start working with them.

3. POTENTIAL TRAFFIC GOLDMINES

3.1 MOBILE APPS & TRAFFIC

The Crypto world is still a desktop one — the Mobilegeddon never made it to these parts of the Internet. Although many have tried pouring loads of mobile traffic here last winter, it didn’t work as well as it could’ve… or should’ve. After all, the industry is not that mobile friendly yet, and we can see why — it’s just hard to imagine someone buying a token with their cell, while completing their morning job on a treadmill.

Despite numerous attempts made in 2017 to pour loads of mobile traffic over the crypto island, most of them failed. You can tell why people wanted mobile to get in — it’s a lot more available and thus cheaper than — but the thing crypto enthusiasts have for anonymity caused a lot of trouble. Yes, anonymity was the biggest speed bump, it made the whole process of attributing leads to marketers a real bitch. Imagine a person seeing an online ad on their mobile device, but buying a token from their desktop computer using a VPN and a separate email account. As a marketer, you can pretty much see the problem there. Hell, we bet you can see a problem even if you’re a detective.

And yet — there’s an evident trend that things may change real soon — I mean, look at this trend: just a year ago, there was but a dozen crypto wallet apps in App Store and Google Play (just getting them there was a bitch). And now they’re numbered in hundreds and seem to be… multiplying.

While the mobile crypto market is still lagging behind its bigger, meaner desktop sibling, it’s still a pretty solid piece of the market. Every advertiser needs new mobile users today — and this means they need you.

3.2 POST-ICO’S

Although the lion’s share of all the funds raised by ICO’s got wasted on sports cars and private jet flights, this world can still boast a few projects that survived to conquer some B2C industry with their innovations. These guys will sooner or later ship a game-changing project and are currently collecting a solid user base to secure a spectacular launch.

As the most ingenious fellows managed to buy Ether for $200, converted some of it to FIAT money for $1000 a piece — it’s a solid fact they have more than enough money to pay for good marketing, and they’re more than willing to spend it.

3.3 GAMBLING BUILT ON BLOCKCHAIN

So, imagine a casino built using a technology that literally restricts that casino from cheating its customers. Hilarious, right? But that’s a blockchain gambling project for you.

THE GOOD PART

• Blockchain-based casinos are virtually invulnerable to any cheating attempts on both parts of the gamble (the casino’s and, sadly, yours too), blockchain-based gambling institutions. You just roll the dice and pray to RNGesus — nothing but sheer luck will affect your chances of getting rich or poor.
• Blockchain-casinos have it a lot easier with the law than their old-school counterparts. For instance, licensing a crypto slot machine isn’t that expensive or problematic, so long as you don’t gamble with ‘real money’. This makes blockchain gambling projects a lot easier for owners to launch, hence a lot more accessible to the general audience who like to gamble.

THE BAD PART

• Randomly generated numbers kinda kill all the magic and superstition you can expect from conventional casinos. And people like magic (think Harry Potter for one). Weird or not, the absence of magic is a huge turn-off for lots of gamblers.
• While blockchain is a lot more popular than a year ago, it’s still a new thing. So the market for blockchain-casinos is still limited to people who have adopted the technology and are willing to deal in crypto-currency.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU

It’s only a matter of time before this part of market reaches the critical mass of both blockchain-casinos and blockchain-gamblers. And when that happens, blockchain-casinos will begin competing with conventional casinos, with the latter seriously sucking it up.

Think this — in the long run, a blockchain casino has a noticeable edge over its competition: it’s a lot cheaper to start and maintain, it does not have as many legal issues dragging it down and it’s fraud-proof by design. Which do you think people will eventually prefer? You bet it!

3.4 GAMES

Yes, really. There are games out there using the blockchain technology and utilizing cryptocurrencies. The most popular example is — without a doubt — the Crypto Kitties project.

Despite being weird AF, Crypto Kitties had such a blast in the crypto market, they instantly spawned hundreds of… copy-cats worldwide (no pun intended). But most importantly — they showed the immense potential the Gaming genre has in an industry that was otherwise considered a ‘serious business’ — you know, with crypto technologies and stuff.

To cut a long and really amusing story short and boring — the Gaming share of the crypto market is still small (money-wise), but has loads of potential. And don’t let the looks fool you — thanks to the Crypto Kitties experience, most Gaming projects in crypto have all the skills, experience and conviction to score big time.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

Even when you know which turns are definitely wrong to take in Crypto Affiliate Marketing of 2018, choosing between the right ones is still a tough call. So what’s your take on this subject?

Have you tried buying traffic for your blockchain startup from advertising networks, or perhaps you’re among the lucky few who hit the jackpot promoting crypto? We’re anxious to hear your stories! Please don’t hesitate to share them with us here in the comment section or via social nets like Twitter, Facebook or Telegram.

This article was originally published in RunCPA blog.