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Affiliate marketing is a business. Teams, who focus on running traffic, quit the media space very soon. They concentrate on profit and internal processes. That is exactly what happened with the Arbo Team. Our guys checked out the whole Internet inside and out and revealed that the last public performance from team owner Oleg is going back to 21.04.2021 at ZM Conf. 

It was hard, but finally, we got a fascinating interview with Arbo Team so we can figure out the secrets of stable profit in media buying and more.

Oleg, hello! Tell us, please, why did you leave the media field? Don’t you regret it? 

No, we don’t. In my opinion, media exposure is overrated in our niche. Happiness loves silence. It takes precious time, which can be used for more useful things. It makes sense if someone wants to  become famous and then sell info courses and such stuff. 

We have more time for optimizing our team processes, after quitting the public field. And we’re devoting all the spare time we have to work. We allocate our resources precisely per each member of our team, develop them and drive them to great results. Let me say more, I know a significant number of teams who are in agreement with us on media issues and make much more profit on affiliate marketing than those who are constantly exposed in public.

For 8 years in CPA marketing, you probably have tried other traffic sources. Have you found a reliable source to replace Facebook?

Yes, we’re constantly looking for new sources. Always testing different platforms: TikTok, native advertising, etc. But Facebook remains for us the main traffic source. So, anyway, we work with the same resources as the rest of the market. 

Speaking about the traffic volumes, how much traffic do you get from Facebook?

About 70-80%, depending on FB turbulence.

Facebook is quite turbulent. How do you cope with such periods to keep a steady traffic flow?

During the hardest period of bans, we succeed in obtaining the cheapest leads. We don’t panic, we don’t give up, and we aren’t throwing all our forces at other sources, as many affiliates do. Instead, we consistently analyze the causes of this  Facebook behavior and quietly look for solutions. Facebook ads auction in such moments is not overheated because turbulence concerns all users of FB. So, the CPM is getting cheaper, which causes cheaper leads. 

We have a farmer in our team with experience as a QA engineer. He permanently reviews every FB button. It helps to find new bugs and tricks quickly and adapt the account farming strategy to the new reality.

Is he really researching every FB page and clicking on every button?

Yes, he has a lot of experience in app and website testing, and now his skills are useful in affiliate marketing.

As you’ve mentioned, this person is responsible for the ad account farming. So, do you use only FB accounts that were farmed by your team?

Yes, mostly we are working with our accounts, purchased ones we use rarely.

Can you please tell us a little bit about Arbo Team’s farming strategy?

Yeah, we can tell you about some features, as they are very difficult to replicate (laugh), but according to our statistics, they have been working well for several years. 

We hire people from all over the world. Firstly, we give them a routine job like creating Facebook profiles and doing some activities (we also call it social account farming) like regular users. If the person is reliable, we allocate a budget to purchase phones for creating new accounts. They register accounts from their brand new phones in local IP-addresses, do social activities as regular Facebook users, and then transfer these accounts to our farming department. They do the additional farming: collect cookies from other sites (login via Facebook account), etc.

So, the main thing for these hired guys is to get a real profile on a real device without using antidetect browsers and other software?

Right. And the minimal social action for the initial profile farming.

Is this the main source of the FB accounts or is there any other?

Yeah, do not forget about accounts renting. We have the landing pages for our rent accounts. From these pages customers are redirected to WhatsApp. Thereafter, the operator connects to the dialog via CRM, explains the terms, and pays the client if he agrees to the conditions. Then we do additional accounts farming and add automatically registered accounts into the BMs. Accounts generated in this way spend between $3,000 to $15,000.

By the way, we also track all user transitions on the sales funnel and thus understand which approaches work better, which operator is more effective, and other parameters. The work here is the same as with any offer in an affiliate network.

But it will certainly cost a lot to keep operators, workers abroad and buying phones, what affects the final ROI? 

Sure. We have a referral system on the accounts rental: bring a friend and get a % from his/her income. Some guys brought 20-30 friends. This is expensive because we are renting accounts from Tier-1 and Tier-2 countries. For example, we spent about $160,000 on the referral program in the past six months. But all of these costs are paying off by huge ad accounts lifetime.

In general, we don’t spare money to ensure the quality of accounts and their large lifetime. We’ve made our e-com project and spent about $5000 per 1 Business Manager. Occasionally, we’re getting even  a small income, but ROI is far away from affiliate marketing’s ROI. So, we are definitely qualified to advise those who are reading this article: first of all, please, take care of the quality of your accounts.

Let’s get back to the turbulent FB times. The high-demand period is quite soon: Black Friday and Christmas sale. The auction will be overheated with big brands. How do you manage it?

Yes, yearly we’re facing a seasonal auction surge. In a long time of work, we learned to lead the customer correctly through the funnel and reach the sale. Now we apply these skills, especially during the high-demand period. 

To make the client buy the offer, we are collecting as much information as possible, including his/her emails. Also, we subscribe him or her to our push notifications. All the information is concentrated in our self-written CRM and we can track every user at each stage of the funnel. As a result, we can notice the vulnerabilities of the funnel in time and modify it. This kind of extra monetization works best for us now.

I’ve heard a lot about your technical excellence. Now, surely you have some self-written apps or programs for other needs?

For a long time in the niche, we wrote our cloaking service and antidetect browser. Today, we hardly use third-party solutions and consumables at all. No one goes into the FB interface except the QA and farming team.

Haven’t you written your own AI service for creative materials yet?

No 🙂 The easiest thing about affiliate marketing is the creative pairs. Nutra approaches are mostly the same. Go to ADheart, find some creative materials, take them, make little changes and start to advertise. That’s it.

What’s the hardest part about affiliate marketing right now?

The hardest part is getting rid of the routine because the team can’t effectively work, and team members can’t generate new creative approaches. Therefore, we continue to develop technical solutions that replace the routine for team members as much as possible.

At the beginning of this article, we mentioned that teams with a business approach to affiliate marketing are leaving the media field. But it’s just our subjective vision, whether it works or not is up to you. 

But the Arbo Team year after year is on TOP of AdCombo challenges and takes the biggest prizes. Well, let’s wish the boys luck in The Great AdVenture!