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In the first part of our interview, we talked about scaling up campaigns, optimal start in the niche, the ways of affiliate growth and the qualities that are crucial to success in the sphere.

In the second part, we’re going to talk about the process of effective testing and reading case studies to improve one’s current performance and grow. As well as what an affiliate must prepare for in order to achieve significant results without sacrificing emotional well-being.

Let’s go!

About affiliate path

We’ve worked with various verticals, including Nutra, and there is probably no vertical that we haven’t run. But finally, we settled on iGaming, because our Nutra income isn’t comparable to the tens of thousands of dollars that can be made on iGaming.

Four years ago we drove traffic through Google and did it when we had spare time, studying and testing the source gradually. Then we gave it up. Algorithms are constantly changing; even the interface has changed. If we want to create a campaign now, we need to spend time exploring the updated interface first.

Facebook (via PWA) is our main source of income. Most of our time is devoted to it, yet we’d like to try Google again. Thus, alongside our primary work, we’re refreshing our knowledge and re-learn how to work with it.

About the beginning of a newbie’s work

A beginner can start working solo with FB, though with a team it will, surely, be easier to start. It’s always easier to join a company with a ready-made business model, get some experience and expertise from the pros, and then launch your own project replicating the business model, but with a focus on your own needs. This can be applied to affiliate marketing, only with regard to the team.

Although working on a team is easier, as long as one has time, willingness, and budget, it’s possible to start alone, but in a harder and slower way.

There are a lot of automation tools now – various services that can make affiliate life easier: for example, Dolphin can replace 10 people on a team. But this increases costs (without considering the amount of work), which becomes the burden of just one person. Consequently, the profit on what is earned is reduced; i.e., the return on such work drops.

About scaling up

TikTok has similar algorithms to those of Facebook, so if you have an idea to try something out there, you should definitely give it a go.

Previously on Facebook, we could scale up by increasing the budget, but now the daily budget is limited to $50. In this case, scaling up is possible by increasing the number of accounts. We buy ready-to-use accounts. For example, a daily budget of $1000 requires 20 accounts.

About growth in the niche

The best way to develop is to run your own tests. You might come across an idea somewhere, or you might have your own idea; the best thing is to test it. Just hearing about the effectiveness of something from others is not sufficient. The best way is to try it out and see the effectiveness yourself. For that, you can create a table in Excel (or use another service. You can also use a tracker). Run a campaign based on this idea, put the results in, and then compare it with your other campaigns. If the statistics confirm that everything went well, you can mark the idea in the table and take it to work.

For example, you have an idea to put a badge in X place on a landing page. You do it and watch, whether it will be converting or not. Find out in what place the user stays more often, i.e.,whether the chosen place is suitable or not. Then you fill in the results in the table.

It’s also important to set clear goals. “I want to become a top affiliate” – isn’t concrete. But “improve my ROI” – is fine. In this case, you need to write down how this can be achieved. For example, you need to scale up your campaign first, and then design a step-by-step plan on how you are going to accomplish this.

3 major features of an affiliate

Hard-working attitude. It’s a must. I don’t regard us as tops. We have average results. But I can say that we reached them as we haven’t become so lazy. We’re constantly testing things, and if something does not work, it means that we haven’t studied the subject enough, or haven’t spent sufficient time on it.

Readiness to accept bad results. It’s vital to understand and accept the fact that something can go the way you won’t like. There are gray-hat ads, especially Nutra ones, that can bring you a good income today, but tomorrow you’ll get an unsatisfactory result; the day after tomorrow the result will be even worse. Next week, the performance will finally get better. The most important thing is not to break down during such changes.

Willingness to spend a lot of time. You will have to learn, study, and test a lot of things. All this requires time.

About starting affiliate marketing in solo

If you have the proper budget, time, and desire, you can get into affiliate marketing single-handedly. However, without the support of a team, it’s harder to do so. If difficulties arise, instead of asking a more experienced team leader for advice, one will have to search for information on the web alone and spend more time on this. To get started, a beginner will also have to find creative pairs and test them without the help of “seniors”. This means acting at random for the first time, based on little experience. Thus, the beginner must closely monitor the results. Something will definitely go wrong, and the account will get banned. The creative pair chosen by the beginner may not perform well or not give the desired results. Therefore, without guidance, there is a very high chance of choosing the wrong path and spending more time figuring out the causes and finding solutions.

When watching guides on YouTube, beginners will have a lot of questions. Then they ask for help on affiliate forums, but the “affiliate-language” answers are unclear to the beginner. That only intensifies the misunderstanding. So, if you’re a beginner, you’d better learn the fundamentals before asking questions or trying to do anything.

This is also valid for experimenting with either new verticals or approaches. Before asking for recommendations from colleagues, it is better to search the Internet for basic information yourself to understand what you will be told about.

About scaling up, growth, and a useful way of reading case studies

We test different creative pairs, see which one goes better, and then duplicate it without any changes and re-run it again.

To grow in the niche, firstly, you need to test a lot, and secondly, to ask more experienced affiliates for their opinions. If you have people around you who are more experts in something than you are, that’s awesome. They can not only be asked for advice, but also teach you something new, and that will help you move up to the next level.

We primarily focus on our own tests. If we like an idea, we make tests and put the results in an Excel table. Then we check which creative pairs were successful (mark them green), and which weren’t (mark them red). We proceed to work with the successful creative pairs, continuing to analyze how we can improve the results. If we find a solution, we run tests again, and then the process is repeated.

We don’t rely very much on case studies, because no one will talk about a scheme that brings good money. But affiliates do share some of their data, so we study various case studies anyway. Then we take them for our own revision. This happens as follows: after reading the case study, we analyze its weak points, the aspects that could be better, and find a way to reproduce the case study in a way that corrects its weaker figures.

For example, we like a case study’s targeting, and the ideas for creatives, but the ROI is low. Then we begin analyzing what exactly could be the problem for that and how we could fix it with this dataset.

Each time we read a case, we not only strategize to improve the weak performance of this case or similar campaigns, but also highlight what may work for us. After defining the strategy, we verify it with tests. We don’t copy the cases, but we take from them what we can adapt to our campaigns in order to move forward and discover new earning opportunities.

3 important qualities of an affiliate

Ability to work hard. You have to study the niche, quickly find solutions, and, of course, work a lot.

Resistance to failures. Today your creative pair can perform well, tomorrow your account will get banned or start bringing more expenses than income. It’s all common in affiliate marketing. You don’t have to quit everything at once. Even the creative pair doesn’t need to go through changes. Think about the problem and then analysis and tests will be able to not just return the previous result but make it much better.

I can say that we achieve results only because we accept difficulties and try to find ways to solve them: by our own analysis or by recommendations from seasoned colleagues.

Desire to learn new things and engage in analytics. Keep track of trends and changes in the niche. Constantly improve your creating pairs or fix issues with them or your account. Examine not only your campaigns, but also those of colleagues in the same way we analyze case studies.

Affiliates could write volumes of memoirs about their work with FB. And a few more volumes of thoughts in addition. A lotta thanks to all the interview participants! Wish you all great profits!

P.S.: have a story to tell or want to comment on things in the niche? Write to us! We’d love to share your story or opinion with the entire community. Together we’ll make it better and more helpful :))