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In this article, we'll share an unusual yet successful affiliate marketing case study that we received from one of our readers. He was able to generate $3 400 in revenue by simply promoting a gambling offer using YouTube Shorts.
He discusses and detailed breakdown of the campaign including the marketing approach, costs, and earnings, as well as provides insights and tips that can help you replicate this success to your own business.
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Now let's dive into this article...
Campaign summary
Niche: Gambling
Offer: Pin-up
GEO: Russia, Kazakhstan
Traffic source: YouTube Shorts
FTD: 226
Cost: $310
Revenue: $3 400
Expenses:
“I still don't understand how this idea came to my mind, but it gave a good ROI.”
Background
I have been working in affiliate marketing for over two years and began my journey by promoting offers in Tier-1 GEOs because promoting offers in the CIS region for a deposit of $15 didn't sound too great. Everything was fine until I started facing issues such as banned accounts on Facebook and Google Ads, which gradually diminished my interest in advertising. As a result, I took a break from affiliate marketing during the summer of 2022, which lasted until November.
During my time off, I stumbled upon a Russian comedy TV show called Ural Dumplings while browsing through YouTube Shorts. I noticed that whenever I scrolled, nearly one in ten videos featured clips from the show which had already accumulated close to a million views within a few days of being posted.
I realized it would be great if some of my affiliate links could be present in these videos. After researching which videos had the most views, I decided to flood YouTube with videos from the same comedy show, and added my links in the description and comment sections.
Getting Started
To kick off the project, I engaged in extensive negotiations with the affiliate manager regarding the usage of Youtube shorts to promote their gambling offers. Upon presenting my idea, the manager initially expressed hesitation, but eventually granted me permission to proceed.
I then went to a freelance website to find a freelancer who could help me create video clips taken from the TV show. As an added bonus, the manager provided me with a $20 deposit.
To facilitate the video promotion, I purchased several Google accounts and invested in an anti-detect browser for a month. I also procured a proxy and set up a cloaker before beginning to upload the videos, incorporating my affiliate links within the description and comment sections. Unfortunately, the first channel was blocked within a few hours due to an incorrect cloaker configuration.
After resolving the cloaker issue, I began uploading videos again. Within the first day of uploading, I received two conversions despite only having posted 8 videos at the time.
This is what the videos looked like:
Over the course of a month, I published a total of 209 videos across 12 channels, which received 6 363 893 views in total. On average, each account remained active for 12 days. The affiliate link I shared received a total of 10 721 clicks.
Statistics from the affiliate network:
Expenses
I spent approximately $310, which covered the payment to the freelancer, Google account fees (warmed up), a proxy, an activity-detection browser for a month, and a cloaker.
In terms of conversions, I received a total of $3 400, which is an outstanding outcome. The return on investment is so evident that I won't even bother calculating it.
Conclusion
After my "Ural dumplings" videos went viral and reached maximum views, the campaign eventually died out. This was because there were only a few videos of this type, the trend died down quickly as people had already seen them all.
Advertiser feedback about traffic:
“The quality of the traffic was not very good, the players hardly topped up their gambling balances. We will pay you, of course, since there is a payback for traffic, but then, please, please change the traffic source.”
For me it was a great, and most importantly, fun and rewarding experience. I managed to earn $3 000, but still, this was not a scalable campaign. I will try promoting such a campaign again but I’ll change to other videos. Maybe I'll try clips from some other series with another offer from another vertical.
