Affiliate traffic is worth $20 billion, and this figure is expected to rise to $40 billion by 2031. Businesses want to reach more people, increase sales and drive leads without having to hire a marketing company.

That’s where you come in.

If you master traffic sources for affiliate marketing, you can turn this venture into a viable business that generates thousands of dollars a month.

We’re going to explain:

  • How to get traffic for affiliate marketing
  • Multiple paid and free options for driving people to your offers

Anyone who can generate affiliate traffic can turn these leads into money. We’ll explain everything below.

What Is a Traffic Source and Why Does It Matter?

CPA traffic sources – or any type of offer – fall into one of two categories:

  • Free
  • Paid

Your goal as an affiliate marketer is to send leads to offers. You might be paid per sign-up, order, lead or other methods, but there’s always one constant: traffic.

Without being able to send someone to your latest CPA dating or any offer you’re promoting, it will never translate into earnings.

With this in mind, let’s go into the two forms of traffic:

Free vs. Paid

Your traffic will be one of the following:

Free affiliate traffic

As you may have guessed, you never pay for this traffic. You already have an audience that comes to one of your online assets and values the content you produce.

Free may seem like the best traffic sources for affiliate marketing, but they come at a cost of:

  • Time
  • Luck
  • Algorithms

For example, say you’re leveraging TikTok for free traffic for affiliate marketing and your views go from 100,000 per video to 1,000. You’re now receiving 1% of the potential leads you would have otherwise.

Paid affiliate traffic

Conversely, you can pay for leads, too. Paid traffic for affiliate marketing is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you have a reliable stream of traffic, but you also need to reinvest your earnings or capital into sustaining these leads.

You can pay for traffic in a few ways:

  • Facebook ads
  • PPC advertising
  • Newsletter sponsorships
  • Etc.

We’ll discuss multiple free and paid traffic sources for affiliate marketing in the coming sections.

Free Affiliate Traffic Sources

All marketers should have as many ways as possible to drive leads to offers. 

Why use just one method of free traffic for affiliate marketing when you can use them all?

Below are great options for CPA traffic sources, but they really work with any offer you try to promote.

Social Media

Affiliate traffic from TikTok, Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube or any other network falls under the umbrella of social media traffic. You can:

  • Add a link to your bio for an offer
  • Promote a product in your post 
  • Etc.

Build an audience that trusts you and then use this trust to send people to offers. But when you follow this method, be sure to vet each offer so that you never lose the trust of your followers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is one of the long-term CPA marketing traffic sources that we recommend everyone use. You create a blog or website, create content and then optimize it for Google, Bing and even ChatGPT.

You’ll add articles and posts as part of your CPA affiliate marketing, and then drive people to offers with:

  • Links
  • Reviews
  • Ad placements

Email Marketing

Your “list” is one of the best affiliate traffic sources. Period. ROI for email is $44 for every $1 spent, and this involves:

  • Creating an offer to encourage people to sign up for your newsletter
  • Building a valuable newsletter with information people won’t find anywhere else

If you’re a fitness coach, you may offer unique tips to your readers. On occasion, you may recommend a new fitness program that offers you a commission when people buy it.

Email is one of the highest converting traffic sources for affiliate marketing, but it takes time to build up.

If you need affiliate traffic now and cannot wait to build a list, the paid options are a good choice.

Video Marketing

Creators have a lot of affiliate traffic sources at their disposal, but few are as powerful as video. You can create:

  • Unboxing videos
  • Reviews on YouTube
  • Reels and TikTok
  • Etc.

If you have your own channel or following already, use video to turn your audience into money.

Guest Posting

One way to get free traffic for affiliate marketing is to create content for other sites or blogs. These are known as guest posts. They expand your reach and help you build trust. 

Paid Affiliate Traffic Sources

Organic channels are some of the best traffic sources for affiliate marketing. But they can be slow to deliver results.

Paid CPA traffic sources send traffic to your offers immediately, but you need a budget to see results.

Here are some of the top paid traffic sources.

PPC Advertising Platforms (Google Ads and Bing Ads)

PPC is paid traffic for affiliate marketing. These are search ads displayed on Google or Bing. Because they appear before the organic results, they catch the attention of users and encourage clicks. 

Search ads are among the best CPA marketing traffic sources because you can send targeted traffic to your offers.

Display Advertising

Display ads are considered one of the top customer acquisition channels and traffic sources for affiliate marketing. They use videos, images or other rich media to grab the person’s attention and drive action.

These ads are displayed on specific websites and not in the search results. That gives you the freedom to focus on categories that are relevant to the products you promote. For example, you might promote sweepstakes CPA offers on gaming sites.

Native Advertising

One of the more overlooked affiliate marketing traffic sources is native ads. These are advertisements that are designed to match the content on the platform (e.g., paid video content on YouTube). It’s an engaging and unintrusive way to connect with your audience.

Native ads have:

  • High engagement
  • Higher click-through rates
  • Better ROIs

What does this mean for affiliates? Higher conversion rates.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is among the leading affiliate traffic sources. The platform has over 3 billion users worldwide, so it makes sense to leverage their advertising platform to reach your audience. Just be mindful of what type of campaign you launch. App Promotions tend to be more expensive than Traffic campaigns.

Pinterest Ads

Promoted Pins (a.k.a. Pinterest ads) can be one of the best traffic sources for affiliate marketing. Why? Because users spend twice as much time shopping as non-users. 

Pinterest also has one of the lowest CPAs in social advertising. A wide range of ad formats is available to reach your target market.

Choosing Smart, Scaling Fast.

There are so many affiliate marketing traffic sources out there, but not all of them are created equal. Organic strategies can be just as effective as paid traffic for affiliate marketing. The key is to choose the right channels and send the right messages. The sources in this guide are some of the most effective for affiliates of all levels.