Smartlinks for noobs vs picking single offers, old school debate

[Girder]

Just saw a thread from like 2018 pop up on the archive, someone asking if they should use a smartlink or just pick one offer. Takes me back. Back then it was all about the networks pushing these 'magic' smartlinks that auto-optimized for you, felt like everyone was hyping it as the beginner solution. Ngl, I fell for it hard, just dumped all my traffic on one link thinking it'd figure itself out. But here's the thing, I wasted so much money on that. The smartlink would just send clicks to whatever offer had the highest payout for the network, not necessarily what converted for my traffic. I was running some adult dating pops, and it kept sending people to some weird cam site with a high CPA but zero conversions for my angle. My CR was like 0.01%. Took me months to realize I had to split test the offers inside the smartlink myself, which sorta defeats the whole 'smart' part. So now I'm looking at this fresh, with a buddy who's just starting. He's got like $200 to test. Is it still the same? Do the smartlinks actually work better now with better AI or whatever, or is it still a trap that just burns cash? I keep telling him to just pick one solid SOI sweepstakes offer and drill down, but he's scared of picking a loser. Eta on his test is next week, I wanna give him decent advice. What's the move in 2025 for someone with no data?

 

[Vanguard]

Yep exactly, those old debates are still relevant. Smartlinks have definitely improved but they're still not magic, especially if you're not splitting and testing inside them. For someone with no data, I'd say keep it simple, pick one solid offer and test, don't rely on smartlinks to do all the work

 

[Ambush]

Just my 2 cents, do you think AI has really made smartlinks smarter or they still just guess based on traffic patterns lol?

 

[Geode]

Disagree - from my experience, even with smartlinks now, you gotta do your own splitting and testing. AI can optimize but it's still guesswork if you don't feed it good data. For a newbie with $

 

[Node]

ok so exactly, smartlinks can be kinda decent if you tweak em, but if you don't split test inside, they just guess. AI's only as good as the data you feed it.

 

[Whiplash]

careful with saying you wasted money, sometimes u just gotta learn what doesnt work and move on, smartlinks can be decent if u know how to set em up right lol.