Tier 1, 2, or 3: how to choose a geo and calculate the budget for launch?

If you’re new to this, this information will definitely come in handy. And if you’re a buyer in a team where your main task is just to launch campaigns, don’t switch off either, it will be interesting. We will analyze all the main stages and cost items that an arbitrageur will have to face: from buying tools to the advertising budget. Plus, we will show real examples of calculations for working with different geos: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3.

The main expenses of an arbitrager for a test draw

The budget depends on the geo and traffic source. For example, let’s take the most popular option – Facebook. As for T1 countries, this is a real “red light” for beginners. It is better not to go there! The budget will not be enough, and the competition will sweep you away before you even have time to launch.

At the same time, there is good news – most of the costs can be reduced. Since the article is designed for beginners who want to know “how much is the minimum?”, we will focus on the minimum costs and show you where you can save money or even get services, tools, or resources for free.

Cost groups:

1. Services and tools for work.
2. Advertising/traffic budget.
3. Consumables (yes, even here there are costs).
   
4. Additional costs.

Let’s consider each category in detail. Oh yeah, and don’t forget about the UBT (conditionally free traffic). It is a top player in gambling. Sending traffic to offers through streams on Kick, YouTube, or TikTok, or spamming with videos with winnings, TikTok memes, shorts, and reels can be very profitable if done regularly and systematically.

What does an arbitrager need to work?

Let’s analyze what services, tools, and materials are necessary for an average arbitrageur.

• Tracker
  This is the main tool for tracking conversions and analyzing advertising campaigns. Without it, you are like without hands. For example, Voluum (price starts at $99/month), or more budget-friendly options: Keitaro or Bemob (about $49/month).
• Proxy
  Needed to work with advertising platforms and hide the real location of accounts. A good proxy with dynamic rotation will cost $10-50/month.
• Anti-detection browser
  You can’t do without it if you work with several accounts at the same time. For example, Dolphin (from $6 to $299/month) or AdsPower (prices start from $5.4/month).
• Hosting and domains
  We set a minimum of $30 for hosting and another $1-10 for each domain. If you take 5 domains for $5, it’s quite affordable.
• Tacks
  They cost an average of $25 each, plus additional costs for each installation – about $0.2 per install.
• Accounts
  Autoregistrations can be found for $0.8, and pharma accounts for about $4. These prices exist, even if someone says they don’t. As for the agency accounts, they are for pros who pour volumes in a day that are larger than a beginner can do in a month.
• Creatives
  Prices depend on the type. A static banner or image will cost $10, and you will have to pay $30 for dynamics (video).
• Payment systems
  The card costs about $5 to issue, and the transaction fee is about 4%. There are options with a more expensive commission (for example, $15 for issuance and another 10% of the costs), but usually everything is standard.

And let’s not forget: you will spend a lot of time figuring out how everything works, what to insert and where to get it from. And now you’re ready to run ads!

Budget dependence on Tier

We started from the basic principle: to test the offer, we take the payout amount and multiply it by 10. Or by 5 if you decide to take two offers. Accordingly:

• Tier 1 (USA, Canada, Australia): there is serious competition here, the cost per click (CPC) starts from $1 to $5. The minimum budget is $1,500. This is the bare minimum, the chances of catching something are similar to luck in a casino.
  
• Tier 2 (middle-income countries): minimum budget – $500.
• Tier 3 (low-income countries): minimum budget – $100-200.

For convenience, we will focus on $500. This is a more or less adequate amount to work with both T2 and T3.

Calculating the costs

There will be costs, but not for everything:

• Antique: free. We take a test tariff for 10 profiles (almost all browsers now give it forever).
• Proxy: One server for $35 is enough, which can be configured to change IP by click or link. This will help to avoid hacking accounts.
  
• Accounts: Taking into account blocks and bans, an average autoreg will cost $30. We link one pharma with a business manager to five autoresponders. As a result, we need 16 autoresponders + 3 pharmacies with BM. The total cost is $25.
  
• Payment cards: 5-10 accounts need one card. We recommend taking three cards for the reserve. The issue price is $15, the commission is $20. The total cost is $35.

How to spend the budget

The money is ready, it’s time to decide how to spend it.

• Creatives: $500 of the budget can be scattered over 2-5 creatives. You don’t have to buy them: you can find them for free in special services or Telegram channels. It’s fast, interesting, and doesn’t cost anything. And if you don’t want to bother, use the free Facebook ad library.
  
• Tracker: is not required, but desirable. It allows you to see how your ads are being served, especially if your affiliate’s dashboard is lagging or updating slowly. The tracker is worth the money – the cost is $49.
• Apps: In a $500 budget, you can include 2 PWA applications for $25 each, which is $50. If you pay for app installs and come up with a price of $5 per install, you will get 100 downloads for $20 (the price of 1 install is $0.2). This is also worth considering.

Everything is ready: the cards are linked, the budgets are set, and you can start working.

General calculation of the test run

Of course, there are always nuances here: we did not take into account the $10 fee for the transfer via TRC20 to the account of the payment system. However, you can ignore the payment itself if you have bank accounts (for example, as we used to work with Wise, PrivatBank, or Kiwi).

Domains and hosting are often required to work with applications. This costs quite a bit, and we mentioned it at the beginning of the article. We did not include these costs in the table, because most services provide a small amount of resources with the application.

TOTAL: $689, of which $500 is allocated to the advertising budget.

This is quite a big amount. But it is important to understand that this is the average monthly salary of an ordinary resident of the CIS countries, which is already a significant investment. If you have $500-1,000 to test a new direction, you can try it. But you should realize that without experience, in 70% of cases this money will be spent on “training,” meaning that you cannot count on profit. If you manage to at least break even, it is already good, and if there is a small plus, it is just great.

If you already have experience, this amount will be enough to understand how good the offer is and what approaches work. However, there are other options: preliminary analysis of the offer, product testing (a huge number of games, the work of payment systems) – this should definitely not be neglected.

Investments are justified by the high potential of iGaming offers, but success directly depends on the level of preparation, analysis, and optimization of campaigns. Beginners should start with simple geo-targeting and minimal budgets, gradually increasing the scale.