Learn How to Optimize your Affiliate Marketing Efforts Using Proxies

Affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding forms of marketing we have today. But, it can be challenging at times.

Using social media platforms and third-party sites to support your marketing efforts can often go in vain. The amount of competitors present on online platforms increases every year.

But, tools are available online to help you execute your marketing strategies. Among these tools are proxies.

For those unfamiliar with this tool, proxies present other IP addresses as yours. This technique allows them to conceal your real IP address online.

You should know how to boost your sales with affiliate marketing to earn good commissions.We’ll show you how to optimize your affiliate marketing strategies using proxies.

How a Proxy Works

Before we dive into how you can use a proxy, let’s first talk about how a proxy works. A proxy works as a gateway between the web and you.

Every computer has an IP address. So, this address is unique. It contains vital information related to your location and internet provider.

There are many types of proxy servers available for marketers to choose from online. The two main server types are data center proxies and residential proxies.

Residential proxies are the best option for affiliate marketers. This type of proxy server allows affiliate marketers to maintain their security online. It also allows marketers to stay off a website’s spam list.

It can be pretty confusing to choose a proxy server best suited to your needs if you haven’t used one before. Going through a list of free proxy servers online can help you here.

You can use these servers to maintain your anonymity online. A proxy will switch your IP address with another one to help you stay under the radar.You can then visit any website you want online with the help of an alternate address. So, a proxy server works as the middleman between you and the website you wish to visit.

The websites you visit will record details of your proxy server instead of your IP address. For instance, if you buy a Spanish proxy, websites will regard you as a user from Spain.

These sites cannot access your location, phone number, and other personal details.

Using such proxies helps because it allows you to access all kinds of websites. You can visit blocked sites, mailing sites, and so much more thanks to these proxies.

How Proxies Differ from VPNs

Proxies share common ground with Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). But, they’re not the same thing.You can use a proxy server to act as an intermediary between your internet connection and a website. It allows you to access sites using other IP addresses.

A VPN sends all your traffic through a secure passage. It helps you protect all the traffic your network receives.

A major difference between proxies and VPNs is that VPNs need you to go online while proxies don’t. Another major difference is that VPNs encrypt your data but proxies don’t. 

VPNs use end-to-end encryption to provide extra security to users.Many people are opting for good VPN services to safeguard their online information. These services prevent hackers from viewing sensitive data on public networks.

They protect your computer from scammers and online fraudsters. In doing so, they make it possible for you to visit unsafe websites.But, the extra security offered by VPNs comes at an extra price. Also, VPNs work slower than proxies.

Above, we discussed the basics of how a proxy works and why it’s helpful for marketers. Here's how you can use proxies to maximize conversion rates for affiliate marketing.

Use Them for Your Ad Campaign

Companies around the world spent almost $189 billion on digital ads in 2021. Reliable statistics show that affiliate marketing spending will cross $8 billion in 2024.

So, it makes sense that affiliate marketers are eager to yield returns on such a large investment.One way to do this is to put yourself in a customer’s shoes when they view your company’s ads. You can enact a customer’s movements after they see these ads online.

You can do this after receiving the latest promotional materials. The company you’re affiliated with will give you these materials.

First, you can click on the display ad you’ve posted online and see where it takes you. It should take you to the landing or product page of the company. You should then execute the target action and add an attempt to buy the product.

If your ads don’t redirect users as they should, you have a problem. But, you wouldn’t know you were facing a problem unless you executed these steps.

It’s not possible to execute these steps if you wish to discover how your ads are working across the world. If you’re promoting an international business, this is especially important.

A proxy is helpful because it allows you to understand how ads perform in different regions.For instance, you can’t follow through with a customer’s reactions in Spain if you’re currently in India. Using a proxy server from Spain will allow you to do the same.

If you’re an affiliate marketer, chances are, you have a large social media following. Putting yourself in a follower’s place when they see your ads is never a bad idea.It can help you understand where the ads are going wrong. You can then reach out to the company you’re promoting and alert them about the same.

Use Them to Maintain Security

One of the main reasons affiliate marketers use proxies is that these help them stay safe online. Security is a major concern for all kinds of marketing efforts online.

But, it’s especially for affiliate marketers with minimal experience. Studies show that the fashion industry uses affiliate marketing more than other industries.

The online fashion industry is worth billions of dollars. So, it’s no surprise that there are people out there eager to defraud genuine customers of their money.

Online affiliate marketers can use the likeness of influencers to gain followers. These marketers operate on social media channels like Instagram. They pose as trustworthy promoters of large and small brands alike.

Customers trusting them soon discover their time and money fall into the wrong hands. Often, companies choose to ignore these fraudulent affiliate marketers.

These companies generate enough revenue from affiliate marketing programs to deal with these fraudsters. But, the presence of these fraudsters can threaten the security of affiliate marketers.

Unethical affiliates attack your channels to dupe users into thinking they’re genuine. These users will then assume that your genuine channel is fake. A proxy server can help you prevent such attacks.

You can increase the security of your connection using these servers. You can also protect your computer from hackers with the help of residential proxies.If hackers attack your social media channels, they can access other information too. The absence of security could help them access your financial and personal data.

Proxies also keep you safe by maintaining your anonymity online. You can work with various commercial platforms online thanks to this anonymity.You can even surf the web and take part in email marketing with a proxy.

Use Them to Deal with Restrictions

Sometimes, websites prevent you from accessing them. They place restrictions in certain regions that block your access.

These restrictions can be inconvenient for an affiliate marketer. If you’re promoting an international brand, you need to access international websites.

Proxies can help you bypass these restrictions. You can use a proxy server from the country you wish to promote your ads online.

It doesn’t matter whether you violate these rules on purpose. All that matters is that the platform you choose will block your account.It’ll also prevent you from making another account because it recognizes your IP address.

A good way around this is to use a residential proxy to create another account. You could even create many accounts each time you get banned.As an affiliate marketer, you’ll likely have to work with special software. Every online company is unique and has unique promotional techniques.

These techniques include using special software to improve the buying experience for users. They also include software that makes affiliate marketing smoother.

It’s not always easy to access such software if you’re unfamiliar with them. But, accessing it is important to promote a company’s products online.In some cases, online restrictions prevent you from using this software. You can bypass these restrictions using proxies.

Beating Anti-Fraud Restrictions

Affiliate marketers use platforms like Facebook to promote brands. As an affiliate marketer, you may even be using Instagram.

These social media channels use Google Ads. But, you can use your social media pages to promote brands without using Google Ads too.

You would need to use different IP addresses to float display ads on different platforms. Having a unique IP address for each ad service is beneficial in many ways.

The main reason you should use more than one IP address is simple. You’ll get banned pretty soon if you use the same address across different platforms.

Google and social media channels fear the presence of fraudulent display ads. They wish to keep their platforms safe for users. You may be a genuine affiliate marketer. You may be looking to earn your commission promoting brands.

But, a social media channel or Google doesn’t know that. It will detect increased activity across many accounts from the same IP address. It then assumes this is an indicator of fraudulent activity and will ban your account. If you get banned, it can be difficult to get it back.

So, it’s better to be safe than sorry here and take steps before you get banned. You can use a proxy server to register more than one account on social media.

The same goes for registering on instant messaging apps. These channels won’t know that the registrations are coming from the same individual.

You could even use certain browsers to disguise your web activity. These browsers don’t access your settings. So, they have no reason to restrict your activity on social media channels.

But, there’s a catch here. These browsers don’t protect your network. No protection will leave you vulnerable to hackers online. The best residential proxies offer you security across all your accounts.

Use Them to Prevent Click Fraud

If you own an affiliate marketing site or social media channel, you need to be careful. You could become the target of click fraud.Click fraud is also known as PPC fraud online. Costs related to ad fraud may well reach $100 billion by 2023.

This fraud occurs when a fraudster clicks on your promotional link. They then defraud your affiliate partner. Often, these fraudsters are rivals of the company whose products you’re promoting. Sometimes, they are fraudsters looking to steal money from online businesses. 

It doesn’t matter which category a fraudster belongs to here. What matters is that their activities affect your affiliate partner. Your partner company will soon discover the source of click fraud.

After they trace the source to your affiliate links, you’ll be in trouble. No company relying on affiliate marketing would like an unsafe marketing medium.Companies can lose around 14% of their ad spend on click fraud online. Fraudsters can use fake credit cards and fill out online forms.

They use these skills to automate the online buying process. These fraudsters can transfer funds from companies using such automation.Lack of security measures for your affiliate links can lead to revenue loss for your partner.

Your affiliate marketing efforts should include securing your links to prevent click fraud. If you don’t do so, it could destroy your affiliate marketing campaign.

It could also affect the quality of traffic you receive on your site. The same goes for the traffic you attract on your social media channels.

You can separate good-quality traffic from fraudster-driven traffic using a premium proxy server. These servers can help you deal with fraudsters and bots. Detecting malicious activity here can allow you to alert your affiliate partner. You can then work out further steps to protect your affiliate links online.

Use Them to Prevent Cookie Stuffing

You’ll see a notification on your browser about cookie settings each time you visit a website. Websites ask you to accept cookies to craft a unique browsing experience.

For the most part, cookies are safe for websites and their visitors. But, malicious online activity with cookies isn’t uncommon.This kind of fraud is a type of affiliate fraud and is also called cookie dropping.

Some fraudsters misuse cookies to transfer funds to themselves. These fraudsters place dangerous cookies across various browsers.

Users fall straight into their trap when they accept malicious cookies from a site. Scammers can use cookies to track a visitor’s browser history if they visit a merchant site more than once.

Fraudsters steal money from merchant websites using these cookies.Often, they place these cookies using third-party chatbots. It’s difficult for website owners to detect such suspicious activity. They would only detect such activity if they were looking for it.

But, they lose money every year thanks to these illegitimate schemes. No company wants to pay affiliate commission based on fake sales.

It’s not easy to prevent or detect cookie stuffing. The difficulty involved in detecting cookie stuffing is thanks to the nature of the code.

Code is versatile and can go anywhere. Fraudsters abuse this feature of code. They use pop-ups and Javascript to defraud online companies. There are ways to deal with cookie stuffing, though. Screening can decrease your chances of facing cookie stuffing.

You can use trusted residential proxies to fight this malicious practice. These proxies help you identify affiliate fraud techniques like cookie stuffing.

Many proxy servers offer you analytical tools to identify fraudulent activity. You can use these tools to weed out genuine third parties from fraudsters.

Use Them for Affiliate Link Testing

There are several reasons why your affiliate links may need testing. First, your affiliate partner closes their affiliate marketing program.

In this case, those clicking on these links will reach a dead end. Next, your affiliate partner changes their affiliate program. In this case, your visitor will follow a broken link.

Whatever the reason, using dead or broken links isn’t good for you. The same goes for your affiliate partner.

Any visitor using a broken link will assume your marketing strategy is ineffective. And they’d be right. The last thing you should want is for customers to have a bad experience with your affiliate link. It’ll leave a bad impression on them.

In this way, it’ll affect your reputation and that of your affiliate partner. Your partner may then lose revenue. Their customer retention rates could drop too. You should test your links often to prevent this from happening. The testing process can be resource-intensive.

You’ll spend considerable time testing these links without automation. You could save this time by using proxies instead.

Proxies speed up link testing for affiliate marketers. These marketers can then spend their time promoting brands.

Their increased promotional efforts will boost your affiliate partner’s revenue over time. So, it’ll boost your commission in the process too.There are many ways to use proxies for affiliate link testing. We’ll discuss a few of these below.

Analyzing Site Performance

It’s important to analyze the performance of your affiliate marketing site. But, it’s not easy to analyze this performance with an anti-botting system in place.

Most good sites have this system to prevent fraudulent activity from bots. If you try accessing your site many times, your system will block you.

After all, it’s detecting visits from the same IP address over and over again. So, it’ll assume you’re a bot and not a genuine visitor.

You can’t analyze your website performance in this case. Sure, you could always disable your anti-botting system.

But, this would leave your site exposed to cybersecurity attacks. It would also put your site at the mercy of increased bot traffic.A safer alternative is using rotating proxies. You could use free or paid proxies from different regions.

You could then pose as a visitor to your site with these proxies. Visiting your site as a customer will help you analyze their web experience.

Analyzing their web experience will allow you to discover how a customer may respond to your ads. It’ll also help you understand what you can do to improve their experience.

Geographical Targeting

This targeting reaches customers in different regions to generate sales. Not every customer you reach out to will be from your home country.

But, you may not be able to access ad platforms in different countries with your local IP address. Remember, your IP address contains information about your geographical location.

Residential proxy servers can help you hide your true IP address. These servers will allow you to improve your targeting in different regions.

You can test how your affiliate links appeal to people in a certain area. You can analyze whether your content is in line with their culture, language, etc.

This localized testing will help you improve your geo-targeting. It’ll boost your revenue in the long run in this way.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a powerful strategy to gain traffic for your affiliate site. The same goes for your social media channels.It can drive leads to your affiliate partner’s site if you execute your strategy the right way. Part of executing your strategy the right way is securing your network.

There are few better ways to secure your network than using residential proxies. These proxies will help you strengthen your anti-fraud efforts.In doing so, they’ll help you maximize your affiliate marketing-based commissions. It can take months or years to convert your clicks into sales.

Losing your traffic to online fraudsters can be very difficult to recover from in the long run. Besides, if your viewers encounter broken links, it’ll affect your reputation.

It’ll also taint how visitors view your affiliate partner’s brand. Using proxies to secure your network can help you protect both.Besides, proxies aren’t very costly. So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a large or small affiliate marketer.

You can use them to maximize revenue for your affiliate partners. In the process, you’ll maximize your commission too.