Over the weekend, I met up with a few guys from my marketing and hustle group here in São Paulo. We started at a wine event and, as usually happens, ended up at an after-hours bar where the conversations got a little more interesting as the night went on.
One of the guys is in the early stages of starting a new business, and from everything he was telling us, he's actually making great progress. But as we started talking through it, almost every part of the conversation came back to another question: What if this happens? What if I do this? Will this become a problem later? What about this scenario?
It turned into one of those productive arguments between entrepreneurs where nobody is really wrong, but everyone has a completely different way of looking at the same situation. Eventually I just told him, "Man, you think way too much. Just go do it. Make the mistake."
And that conversation got me thinking about the difference between overthinkers and doers.
I have always found there are generally two types of entrepreneurs when it comes to making decisions. There are the people who want to think through every possible scenario before they make a move, and then there are the people who would rather make the move and figure out the problems as they come. I have definitely spent more of my career in the second group.
There is obviously value in both. The overthinker can usually see problems coming that the doer completely ignores, while the doer has the advantage of actually getting something into the market instead of spending months trying to predict what the market is going to do. The problem is that neither approach works perfectly on its own.
I've always liked the mentality of just doing something and apologizing later if you have to. You see this mentality with a lot of entrepreneurs, and even watching shows like Shark Tank, you can see how often somebody simply started without having every part of the business figured out. They got customers, created a problem for themselves, figured out that problem, and then moved to the next one.
The older I get, though, the more I realize there is a difference between moving fast and moving blindly.
An overthinker wants to know what can go wrong before it happens. They want to talk to somebody who has already done it, research the business model, understand the legal problems, understand the operational problems, calculate the downside and probably create several different scenarios for what happens if things don't go according to plan.
There is nothing wrong with that. Actually, I probably should have done more of it throughout my entrepreneurial career.
The problem starts when all of that research delays the actual decision. There will always be another person you can ask, another article you can read, another lawyer you can talk to and another possible problem you can imagine. Eventually you can spend so much time trying to avoid mistakes that you never put yourself in a position to make progress either.
The doer looks at the same situation differently. Instead of asking what happens if everything goes wrong, the mentality is usually that we'll deal with it if it happens. That approach has created some headaches for me over the years, but it has also allowed me to move into businesses and opportunities much faster than if I had waited until I understood everything.
One of the best examples was when we decided to get into the Nutra business.
I came into Nutra from the affiliate marketing side, so naturally my understanding of the business was heavily focused on traffic and customer acquisition. My world was running media through Facebook, Google and whatever other traffic source we could make work. I understood offers, funnels, landing pages, conversion rates, media buying and scaling campaigns.
When you are an affiliate, your main responsibility is usually getting the customer to convert. Somebody else has already manufactured the product, negotiated the fulfillment, stocked the warehouse and figured out how many bottles need to be sitting somewhere waiting to ship.
Then we became the advertiser and suddenly all of those things became our problem.
We launched, traffic started coming in and customers started buying. From the marketing side, that was exactly what we wanted. The part we didn't think through enough was what happens after you become successful at acquiring those customers.
We needed inventory. We literally ran out! Traffic was rushing in!
Not just inventory today, but inventory weeks and months from now. We had to understand when another order needed to be placed, how much product we needed, how long manufacturing would take and what happened if our campaigns suddenly produced more customers than we expected.
These sound like obvious questions now. They weren't obvious to me when most of my experience was based around sending traffic to somebody else's offer.
We essentially created the demand first and then learned how to manage the operational side while the business was already moving. It created stress and problems that probably could have been avoided if we had sat down beforehand and really mapped out everything that could happen after the sale.
An overthinker would probably look at that situation and say we should have figured all of that out before we ever bought the first click. They wouldn't necessarily be wrong.
At the same time, I also wonder how long we could have spent preparing for a business we didn't even know would work yet. We could have spent months studying inventory management, talking to manufacturers, modeling sales volumes and trying to predict every possible situation. Eventually somebody still has to turn the traffic on and find out if anyone actually wants the product.
We chose to find out first and solve the problems as they arrived.
That experience cost us some headaches, but I also never forgot the lesson. If I get involved with another physical product business, one of the first things I am going to think about is inventory and what happens operationally when the marketing actually works. Nobody needs to teach me that lesson anymore because I already went through it.
Another example happened as we started expanding businesses and creating LLCs and different corporate structures. This was an area where I didn't have much expertise, so I did what most entrepreneurs would probably do and hired a lawyer.
My thinking was that this is exactly why you hire professionals. I know marketing and business, the lawyer knows corporate structures, so let the lawyer handle the legal side while I continue focusing on growing the company.
That works until you realize that hiring an expert doesn't mean you should completely remove yourself from understanding what that expert is doing.
Looking back, I should have spent more time understanding why something should be an LLC, why something might be structured another way, when a C-Corp makes sense, how ownership should be divided and what happens to these structures as companies and partnerships change.
I didn't need to become a corporate attorney, but I needed enough knowledge to ask better questions.
Instead, I depended heavily on somebody else knowing what was best for us. Later on, we had to deal with headaches around structures that I probably would have looked at differently had I understood more when everything was originally being created.
That was another expensive way of learning something.
Would I do it the same way today? No. Today I would still hire the lawyer, but I would understand just enough about the subject to challenge things, ask what happens in different scenarios and probably get another opinion when something didn't make sense.
But I only think that way now because I already made the mistake.
There is a saying that you should learn from people who have already made the mistakes. I believe in that heavily. If somebody has already lost money, wasted years or created a massive headache doing something and they are willing to explain it to you, it would be pretty stupid not to listen.
A mentor can save you from a lot of unnecessary mistakes.
What I don't believe is that a mentor can save you from making mistakes altogether.
There are things people have told me throughout my career that I understood logically at the time but didn't fully understand until I experienced the situation myself. Once it happens to you, the advice suddenly has context. You understand why that person was warning you and why they were so specific about it.
That is one of the weird parts about experience. Sometimes somebody can give you the correct answer before you are ready to understand why it is the correct answer.
You still need mentors. You still need smart people around you and you should absolutely ask people who are ahead of you what they think. But there eventually comes a point where you have enough information and continuing to ask questions is really just another way of delaying the decision.
At some point you have to make the move.
Something else I've noticed as I've gotten more experienced is that experience itself can start turning you into an overthinker.
When you are starting out, you don't know enough to understand everything that can go wrong. There is actually a little bit of an advantage to that. You are naive enough to try things that somebody with twenty reasons not to do it might avoid.
After you've been through enough businesses, partnerships, campaigns and mistakes, you start seeing problems everywhere. You remember the campaign that blew up, the partner situation that became complicated, the legal headache, the cash-flow problem or the operational issue nobody predicted.
Experience gives you pattern recognition, which is incredibly valuable. But experience can also make you hesitant if you allow every previous mistake to become a reason not to take the next risk.
I don't want that.
The lesson I took away from the nutra supplment business isn't that I should spend six months building the perfect operation model before launching another product. The lesson is that if I launch another product, inventory needs to be part of the conversation from the beginning.
The lesson from the LLC situation isn't that I need to research corporate law for three months before starting another company. It is that I need to understand what is being created well enough to ask intelligent questions and not blindly depend on somebody else simply because they have a professional title.
Those mistakes didn't teach me to move slower. They taught me what I need to pay attention to while I am moving.
I think that is probably where the real balance between overthinkers and doers exists.
You should foreshadow problems. You should ask what could go wrong. You should listen to mentors, lawyers, partners and people who have already been where you are trying to go. There is no reason to intentionally repeat somebody else's expensive mistake when they are standing right in front of you explaining exactly what happened.
But you also have to accept that you are never going to predict everything.
Some problems only appear after customers arrive, the actual data. Some questions only make sense after money starts moving. Some weaknesses in a partnership don't become obvious until there is pressure. Some operational problems aren't really problems until the business reaches a certain size.
You cannot research your way out of every mistake in entrepreneurship.
What you can do is make better mistakes.
You can use the experience of other people to avoid the obvious ones, use your own previous experience to recognize patterns earlier and then still be willing to move before everything is perfectly figured out.
I would rather have to solve a problem created because something I launched is working than spend forever preparing for a problem in a business I never launched.
There will always be something that needs to be fixed.
The inventory will run low. The corporate structure might need to change. The campaign will break. The employee you thought was perfect might not work out. The strategy that made complete sense on paper might completely fail once real people interact with it.
That is part of doing business.
Overthinkers are good at asking, "What if this happens?"
Doers tend to say, "If it happens, we'll figure it out."
I think after enough years doing this, I've landed somewhere in the middle. I want to ask more of the "what if" questions than I did when I was younger, but I never want those questions to prevent me from doing.
Learn from the people who screwed up before you. Ask them why. Take their advice seriously and try not to step on the exact same landmines.
Then make the decision and move.
You are going to make mistakes anyway. Just make sure you learn enough from them that you don't have to pay for the same lesson twice.
I've been in affiliate marketing for over 20 years now, and these days a big part of what I do is help companies grow faster by working with their teams to build automation that removes bottlenecks. That's really what AI is great at right now: repetitive tasks that need clean, exact execution without a middle man constantly watching over them.
I'm writing this because I think the virtual assistant world is about to get hit hard, and being Filipino myself, that hits close to home. So much of the Philippines' economy runs on VA work. But I don't think the answer is to pretend this isn't happening.
The answer is understanding how to use AI to extend what your assistant can do, before the work extends past them entirely.
In affiliate marketing, one of the biggest sources of human error has always been process. Not a lack of skill, just the natural way humans handle repetition: attention drifts, steps get skipped, someone's having an off day. Automation rules built by AI don't have that problem. Once they're set up, they follow the process exactly, every time.
There's no error, just a learning curve while you figure out how to use the tool. And once that curve is over, the repetitive task the VA used to own is basically obsolete. That's the uncomfortable part: obsolete for the task usually means obsolete for the person doing it.
Three examples from my own work:
Affiliate network signups and follow-ups. A lot of networks now have API and MCP access, which means AI can actually interact with these systems directly instead of a person copy-pasting between tabs. That access lets the automation think through its own next steps instead of waiting on a human to tell it what to do next.
There's usually still a bit of human involvement, someone reviewing an email response or approving something that needs a judgment call, but that's maybe 10% of the work now. The other 90% runs on its own, and the human just clicks a button or two to keep the flow moving.
Creative approvals. I built this out for a network, and it's honestly one of my favorite examples because of how direct it makes the relationship between advertiser and publisher. There's a learning curve on both sides while people adjust, publishers submitting creatives, advertisers leaving notes on what's approved and what's not, but the best part is what happens after that curve.
Instead of someone building out internal approval guidelines by hand, the AI compounds the advertiser's feedback over time and writes its own guidelines from it. Then it uses those guidelines to check every new creative that comes in from the publisher. No internal team second-guessing whether something passes. No back-and-forth waiting on a person to make the call. The system already knows the standard because it built the standard.
Creative creation. This one goes a step further than approvals, because it's not just checking work, it's making it. If you already have a proven video creative flow, one that you know converts, you can give AI the steps to follow: the angles to test, the hooks, the pacing, the format.
From there it can generate images and video following that exact flow, step by step, and just keep producing variations. Compare that to how it usually goes with a human video editor or graphic designer.
They look at their own work and say "this doesn't look the way I want it," and that's not a flaw in them, that's just how creative people work, they second-guess, they chase a feeling. AI doesn't have that problem. It removes the emotion from the process entirely. It just follows the proven flow and outputs the next version.
Those three are just what I've built directly, but I'm seeing the same pattern everywhere in this space:
There are a lot of ways automation is quietly taking over work that used to belong to virtual assistants, in the Philippines and everywhere else this industry operates. And I won't pretend it isn't sad to watch smaller countries end up on the losing side of this shift. But adoption is what makes us strong, not resistance to it.
Learning has to be ongoing in this space. Affiliate marketing changes fast, and if you're not adapting to the tools shaping it, you're not just behind, you're behind by years before you even notice it happened. The task is going to become obsolete either way. The question is whether the person doing it becomes obsolete along with it, or becomes the one who knows how to run the automation instead.
Networking doesn't stop mattering once you've "made it," and it doesn't start mattering only once you have. I learned that lesson at my first-ever affiliate show, Affiliate Summit in Vegas, back when I was making an unstable $4k a month.
I remember standing in rooms full of people who were clearly doing better than me, some of them by a lot, and instead of hanging back, I went and talked to them anyway. My bank account at the time didn't stop me from walking up to the ballers in the room. That's the whole point of networking: you don't wait until you're at someone's level to start the conversation. You start the conversation because you want to get there.
Twenty-plus years later, I don't hit the circuit like I used to. But a bunch of people reached out about the shows happening this July, and I decided to just book the flights and show face at three of them: Affiliate World Europe (AWE) in Budapest, Affiliate Sauna - a wellness mastermind in Finland, and Affiliate Takeover (ATO) in Barcelona.
I could have had most of these conversations over Telegram. I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't, because a chat window and a table at 1am are not the same thing. In text, you get someone's edited version of themselves — the pitch, the highlight reel, the careful phrasing. In person, you get the pauses, the "off the record" version of the story, the way someone's face changes when you ask the follow-up question they weren't expecting. Trust in this industry gets built in rooms, not group chats. You can close a deal over text, but the relationship that makes the next five deals possible gets built sitting across from someone.
Messaging gives you a fixed personality and a fixed mood, whatever version of themselves someone decided to type out that day. In person, you get the real range: how they carry themselves, how they dress when nobody told them to dress a certain way, what their face does when they're actually amused versus when they're being polite.
Add a few drinks to the mix and the polish comes off entirely, that's when the real opinions and the real secrets start coming out, and that's genuinely what relationships in this business get built on. I've said before that it's never the professional version of someone I'm actually evaluating. It's who they are once the professional atmosphere is over.
What's happening at the bar later. Which dinner spot they pick, and who they pick to bring with them. Those things tell me far more about a person than anything they'd ever say on stage or in a pitch deck, and that's the read I actually use to figure out how to work with someone.
It had been a while since I'd been to an AWE event, and going back mostly confirmed what I've said in past posts: the quality of the crowd has been slipping, with gambling and black-hat operators increasingly crowding out the kind of people I actually want to talk to. That said, the trip wasn't wasted. I was there with the Avanto team, and it was good to finally put faces to names.
As usual, the after-events are where the real connections got made. I ran into old friends at the side events I never would have caught otherwise. And there's something I genuinely appreciate every time I do one of these: people I've met, and plenty I've never met in person, telling me I've helped them over the years.
One guy told me straight up that he should have listened to me back when I said what I said, but he needed to go through it himself to actually learn the lesson. Called himself a rough learner. Small moments of appreciation like that are a real part of why I keep coming back to these things. I haven't posted on this blog in a long time, and hearing that stuff still means something to me.
Ducking into the smaller bars and clubs around Budapest ended up being one of the best parts of the trip too — talking about anything but business, looking back on what's happened, and figuring out what's next. Budapest is also just a genuinely great city to be doing that in.
This one was billed as a wellness mastermind, but it played out more like a retreat with close friends. There was time to talk shop, but the real value was in the saunas and the boat trip — a small enough group that you could actually go deep with people on how to keep growing together, instead of the usual mastermind format of structured pitches and note-taking.
The trees got me, though. I'm not a nature person, never have been, and something about being surrounded by that much forest for that long left me feeling almost lightheaded, in a good way. Turns out there's a real explanation for that. Trees release compounds called phytoncides, and forests carry higher concentrations of negative ions than cities do — both have been linked in research to lower cortisol and a calmer nervous system.
On top of that, when you're not used to that much green, quiet, and unfiltered sensory input, your brain treats it almost like a novelty, similar to how a city person gets a little disoriented, in a good way, the first time they see a truly dark sky full of stars. For someone who's spent two decades staring at dashboards and hotel conference rooms, standing in actual wilderness apparently short-circuits something. I'll take it.
One of the best topics of the private event was with Ian B from Avanto Media, who drew a comparison between Finland's Winter War against the Soviets in 1939 and how we operate in affiliate marketing. Massively outnumbered, the Finns won by knowing their own terrain better than the invading force ever could — dense forest, frozen lakes, and winters the Soviets weren't built for.
Small, mobile units broke larger columns into isolated pockets and hit them before melting back into the trees, instead of ever trying to fight head-on in a battle they couldn't win on numbers alone. Ian's point was that this is basically the job in affiliate marketing too.
You're rarely the biggest player on the field — networks, platforms, and bigger-budget competitors will always outspend you. You don't win by trying to out-muscle anyone. You win by knowing your terrain (your niche, your traffic, your audience) better than anyone else does, staying mobile enough to move before the ground shifts under you, and never taking your eye off what the competition is doing.
Adapt to the terrain you're actually standing on, and keep watching the tree line.
ATO was solid. The show floor itself was slower than usual, but the side events and the networking around them were high quality. I want to give a real thank you to Alex for having me at his pre-ATO gathering, Circle — we got into a great conversation there, and it's clear he's just as passionate about this industry as I am. He's exactly the kind of person you want steering this conference into its next chapter.
Funny enough, I ran into some of the same people from Budapest in Barcelona too — the industry really is a small, repeating cast of characters. But the vibe at ATO was different. The crowd here skewed more white-hat and grey-hat, less aggressive, and the conversations felt longer-term and more strategic than the quick-money energy you get at some other shows. I've been through the quick-money phase already.
At this point I just want to build.
I wish the show had been more crowded — my guess is the World Cup pulled some of the usual July conference traffic away this year. But in terms of lead quality, ATO beat AWE by a wide margin. I saw more of my actual long-term friends at ATO than I did at AWE, which tells me something: even some of the old-school crowd is drifting toward a cleaner, more sustainable style of advertising. Not all the way there yet, but the direction is noticeable.
Networking is still the thing that moves the needle, no matter what level you're at, and showing face still beats a Telegram thread every time. Between Budapest, Finland, and Barcelona, I got what I came for. But I'm conferenced out for now — I'll see everyone again next year.
For most of my career, I labeled myself the same way most people in my world did — an affiliate marketer.
It was the simplest way to explain what I did. I bought traffic, built landing pages, ran funnels, tested offers, optimized performance. Anyone in digital marketing understood it instantly, and anyone outside of it didn’t need more detail than that.
But recently, I had a realization that reframed how I see myself — and honestly, how I see the last decade of my career.
I’m not just a marketer.
I’m a builder.
And affiliate marketing was never the destination. It was the training ground that shaped how my mind works.
When people look at affiliate marketing from the outside, they see arbitrage. They see spreadsheets, payouts, traffic costs, and margins.
What they don’t see is how creative it actually is when you’re deep in it.
Some of my favorite moments in this industry had nothing to do with scaling budgets. They came from staring at a blank landing page and imagining what could exist there.
What headline would stop someone mid-scroll?
What story angle would make an offer feel personal instead of transactional?
What layout would guide attention without the user realizing it?
I was constantly blending numbers with imagination.
On one screen I had performance dashboards — CTR, CVR, EPC, CPA — all the metrics that dictated whether something lived or died.
On the other screen, I had design mockups, copy drafts, advertorial concepts, psychological hooks.
Affiliate marketing forced me to operate in two worlds at once. Analytical and creative. Structured and experimental.
And over time, I realized I enjoyed the creation part more than anything else.
Building the page. Structuring the funnel. Designing the flow. Testing variations.
Every campaign felt like building a miniature product from scratch.
I just didn’t call it that back then.
Looking back, the signs that I was a builder showed up early.
I didn’t like relying fully on third-party platforms, so I gravitated toward building my own tracking setups and tools.
I didn’t want generic landing pages, so I designed custom flows tailored to each audience and traffic source.
I didn’t just want to run ads — I wanted to understand the infrastructure behind why campaigns worked or failed.
Funnels became systems. Traffic became inputs. Revenue became outputs.
That cause-and-effect loop fascinated me.
If I changed this headline, what happened to engagement?
If I adjusted page speed, what happened to conversion rate?
If I reordered the story flow, what happened to scroll depth?
I was engineering outcomes using creativity and data.
Affiliate marketing trained me to think in frameworks — not just tactics.
And that mindset naturally evolved into wanting to build bigger things.
The real shift happened when AI became more accessible.
Not in the “write me an ad” sense — that part felt surface-level.
What clicked for me was what AI made possible from a systems perspective.
Instead of just optimizing campaigns, I could build platforms that optimized themselves.
Instead of testing copy manually, I could architect engines that tested writing frameworks automatically.
That’s when projects like OpenAssist, InboxEngine, and CrispyIQ stopped feeling like experiments and started feeling like extensions of how my brain already worked.
OpenAssist wasn’t about spinning up agents faster — it was about removing infrastructure friction that slowed builders down.
InboxEngine wasn’t about email automation — it was about building a testing engine for monetization logic.
CrispyIQ wasn’t just image generation — it was about analyzing performance signals and feeding them back into creative production.
Each product started the same way my early landing pages did:
An idea that didn’t exist yet.
A problem that felt inefficient.
A system that could be architected better.
The scale changed, but the mindset didn’t.
That’s when the realization hit me fully — I’ve always enjoyed building things from scratch and turning them into reality.
Affiliate marketing just happened to be the first canvas I painted on.
There’s also an emotional layer to this realization.
For years, I wore the affiliate marketer label proudly. It gave me freedom, mobility, income, and opportunity.
But labels can also limit how you see yourself.
When you operate under one identity long enough, you don’t always notice how much you’ve evolved beyond it.
As I started building SaaS platforms, agent frameworks, dashboards, and automation systems, I felt a different type of fulfillment.
Campaign wins were exciting — but building infrastructure that enabled wins felt deeper.
It was less transactional and more architectural.
I wasn’t just asking, “How do I make this funnel convert?”
I was asking, “How do I build systems that make conversion easier everywhere?”
That shift changed how I approached my work entirely.
One thing that stayed constant through all of this was creativity.
Affiliate marketing trained me to express creativity within constraints — ad sizes, page load times, compliance rules, audience targeting.
Now, software and AI expanded those constraints.
Instead of imagining a landing page, I’m imagining platforms.
Instead of testing ad angles, I’m testing product workflows.
Instead of designing funnels, I’m designing ecosystems.
But the core driver is the same — the joy of taking something abstract in my mind and making it tangible.
I still get the same satisfaction watching a tool go live as I used to watching a campaign scale.
Creation is the through-line.
What excites me most right now isn’t just growth — it’s alignment.
I finally feel like I’m operating in the lane that matches how my brain is wired.
I enjoy building from zero.
I enjoy architecting systems.
I enjoy solving inefficiencies with structure.
Affiliate marketing gave me the sandbox to develop those instincts.
AI and SaaS give me the construction site to apply them at scale.
And as I look toward the rest of 2026, I feel more energized than I have in years — not because of any single project, but because I understand the role I naturally play in everything I touch.
I’m a builder.
Not defined by campaigns or channels, but by the act of creating things that didn’t exist before.
Turning imagination into infrastructure.
Turning ideas into systems.
And turning systems into reality.
When I first started running OpenClaw in a serious operational way, it became obvious pretty quickly that the technology itself wasn’t the limiting factor. The agent was powerful enough to function as a real second brain — something that could reason through problems, spawn subagents, run research, write code, and support business workflows without constant prompting.
But the experience around it felt unfinished.
There was a massive gap between what OpenClaw could do and how people were actually deploying and managing it. You either ran it locally, which introduced security concerns and token exposure risks, or you went down the VPS route, which required far more infrastructure knowledge than most founders or operators want to deal with.
I didn’t see that as a flaw in OpenClaw itself. I saw it as a missing layer — the operational UI and deployment experience that would make agents usable at scale.
That realization is what led me to build OpenAssist.
Not as a replacement for OpenClaw, but as the interface and infrastructure layer that sits on top of it.
The first problem I kept running into was installation — specifically secure installation.
Getting OpenClaw running locally is fine for testing, but the moment you want persistent agents handling real work, you need infrastructure. That means provisioning servers, configuring environments, securing access, installing dependencies, and wiring gateways correctly.
For technical users, it’s time-consuming.
For non-technical users, it’s a blocker.
And the security side isn’t trivial either. When agents are connected to multiple APIs and models, token handling becomes critical. Misconfigured environments can surface credentials through logs or sessions without users even realizing it.
OpenAssist removes that entire burden.
Instead of walking users through infrastructure setup, the platform provisions a hardened environment on their own VPS, installs OpenClaw, configures security layers, and initializes the workspace automatically.
From the user’s perspective, the process is reduced to choosing server strength and deploying.
Within five to seven minutes, they’re live with a secure agent environment that’s ready to operate.
Another friction point I noticed early was the time it took to make agents actually useful after installation.
Even once OpenClaw was running, users still had to install skills, configure workflows, and structure their agent’s capabilities manually. That setup time added unnecessary delay between deployment and productivity.
So OpenAssist ships with commonly used skills already installed — the same foundational capabilities most operators end up configuring anyway.
This includes operational tooling that supports:
The idea wasn’t to overwhelm users with features, but to ensure that when their agent comes online, it’s already capable of handling meaningful work.
Early OpenClaw users — myself included — relied heavily on chat apps like Telegram to interact with agents.
And while chat works for issuing commands, it falls apart when you start managing ongoing operations. You can’t see what’s queued, what’s running, or what subagents are doing in the background. You’re interacting with outputs, not workflows.
As more people started building agents publicly, the term “Mission Control” began circulating — a centralized interface where you could monitor and direct agent activity.
Here is a popular one by Bhanu Teja P which was spreading around X.
Some tools attempted to fill that gap, but most felt disconnected from the agents themselves. They were dashboards layered on top, not operational environments built into the system.
So I built Mission Control directly into OpenAssist.
The Mission Control layer inside OpenAssist isn’t just visual — it’s functional.
At the center of it is an integrated Kanban system designed for agent workflows. Instead of humans manually creating tasks, agents can generate them automatically as they execute work.
Research assignments, coding tasks, marketing analysis, and automation workflows can all appear as trackable items within the board.
As tasks progress, they move through operational stages, giving you visibility into agent activity without needing to interrogate outputs or logs.
This creates a clearer operational picture that includes:
Underneath the interface is its own MCP layer, allowing agents to update tasks and report progress as they operate. That means the system isn’t just observing work — it’s being updated by the agents themselves in real time.
One of OpenClaw’s biggest advantages is its ability to spawn specialized subagents. In theory, you can have different agents handling research, coding, analytics, or writing simultaneously.
In practice, most users never configure them properly.
Setting up subagents requires architectural planning — model routing, session spawning, workspace isolation — and that complexity discourages adoption.
Because OpenAssist was built around my own operational stack, I prestructured a subagent framework aligned with common business workflows.
Users launching through OpenAssist gain access to modular agents that can handle marketing analysis, research, performance reviews, and operational automation from day one. These agents can be toggled on or off depending on user needs, making orchestration accessible without forcing complexity.
Security remained central throughout the build process.
OpenAssist preserves OpenClaw’s native security advantages while adding hardened deployment layers around infrastructure and configuration.
Tokens aren’t exposed through UI logs, gateways are preconfigured securely, and environments are provisioned in ways that reduce credential risk compared to local or loosely configured deployments.
Users maintain full control over their infrastructure while benefiting from managed security practices.
The overarching philosophy behind OpenAssist is reducing the time between deciding to run an agent and actually operating one.
Deploying an AI operator shouldn’t require days of installation, configuration, and troubleshooting. It should feel as seamless as launching any modern SaaS platform.
With infrastructure provisioning, Mission Control integration, preinstalled skills, and subagent frameworks built in, users can move from concept to live environment in minutes.
They still retain full access to OpenClaw’s configuration and extensibility — but now they operate through a structured interface designed for visibility, security, and scale.
When you’re running traffic on platforms like Meta or native networks, you almost never send users straight to an offer. You send them to a landing page. And more often than not, the landing pages that perform best aren’t traditional squeeze pages or hard sales pages — they’re listicles.
Listicle-style pages work because they feel familiar. They look like content, not ads. Users scroll, skim headlines, read sections, and mentally rank options instead of feeling pushed toward a single action. That’s why you’ll see formats like “Top 5,” “Best Options,” or “Experts Reveal” dominating these traffic sources.
But there’s a problem.
Because listicles aren’t centered around one clear CTA, monetizing them efficiently is harder than it looks. You’re not optimizing for a single button click — you’re trying to guide attention across multiple sections, multiple offers, and multiple decision points on the same page. Most people just guess, tweak headlines manually, or rely on gut instinct.
I’ve been there. And that gap is exactly why I built a small internal tool to solve this problem properly.
That tool became LeadPathWayz – Listicle Optimizer.
It’s a mini software designed specifically for people running listicle-style landing pages who want more clarity, better structure, and higher conversions — without turning content into spammy ads.
This app is currently in beta. It’s open to testing, with limited invite-only access, and a small paid tier to cover basic API usage and hosting costs. It’s not meant to be bloated. It’s meant to solve one very specific problem really well.
In the sections below, I’ll break down the core problems with listicle monetization — and how each part of the app is designed to fix them.
The most important part of any listicle landing page isn’t the headline or even the offer.
It’s the sections.
Most people treat sections as filler. They slap together a few headers, paste in offer links, and hope users magically know what to click. That works sometimes, but it’s not scalable, and it’s definitely not optimized.
Listicles come in different flavors.
Some are true article-style pieces — “Top 15 Gifts for New Year’s” or “Best Tools for Busy Founders.”
Others are closer to click arbitrage — clean layouts, minimal fluff, and offers listed clearly on a mostly blank page.
I’ve done both. And honestly, click arbitrage is a form of listicle. The structure is the same. The only difference is how much narrative you wrap around it.
That’s why LeadPathWayz starts with sections, not offers.
Inside the app, every listicle is broken down into named sections. Each section has a clear topic — something like Debt Solutions, Credit Repair, or Financial Relief Options.
This does two things:
You’re no longer just listing offers. You’re grouping them by why someone would care.
There’s a simple default landing page generator built into the backend, but the real power is that every section is templated.
You can define:
Whether you want a long-form editorial feel or a clean arbitrage layout, you’re not rebuilding pages every time. You’re reusing structure that already works.
Here’s where the app removes the busywork.
Each section lets you scan an offer URL. Once scanned, the system:
No copy-pasting. No Frankensteining text from different sources.
Most people either skip images or use generic stock photos that don’t match the content at all.
LeadPathWayz goes one step further.
After the content is generated, the app analyzes what it just wrote and creates a topic-relevant image for that section. The image isn’t random — it’s based on the actual message, angle, and intent of the section.
This matters more than people think.
Images control scroll behavior. They reinforce trust. And they visually separate sections so users don’t feel like they’re reading one long wall of text.
Instead of guessing how a listicle should be structured, you’re building it the same way users experience it — one focused section at a time.
Another part of listicles that almost everyone underestimates is offer rotation.
Each section might be focused on one topic, but you rarely want to rely on a single offer. Markets change. Payouts change. What converts today might stall next week. The usual solution is to bolt on a tracker, manually rotate links, or overthink rules that never get revisited.
That works — but it’s clunky.
And more importantly, it pulls you out of thinking about content and into managing plumbing.
Each section can have multiple offers attached to it. The system treats this like a traditional tracker under the hood, complete with click tracking and postback support, so conversions are attributed correctly to the exact offer that fired.
But instead of stopping there, the optimizer layer kicks in.
As clicks and conversions come in, the app automatically adjusts the order of offers inside each section.
The goal isn’t to blindly push one winner forever. The goal is to continuously try to surface the highest-converting offer for that section, while still learning from the rest of the pool.
This is where listicles get powerful.
You’re not choosing winners manually. The system is watching behavior and adapting placement based on real data, not assumptions.
Listicles aren’t one-action pages. Users scroll. They compare. They click different sections at different depths.
By letting the app think in terms of section-level performance, you’re optimizing where decisions actually happen — not just globally across the page.
That’s the core strength of the Listicle Optimizer.
It doesn’t just rotate offers.
It tries to get you the best possible conversion outcome per section, in real time.
The one function I genuinely love in this system is how sections themselves are ranked and reordered in real time.
Every section you add to a page isn’t static. It’s alive.
That means the section that starts at position #1 could end up at position #7 later — not because of a guess, but because of actual behavior: impressions, clicks, and conversions.
Each section knows:
This was a huge pain point for me before.
I used to wait 24 hours, pull stats, manually reorder sections, then repeat the process. It worked, but it was slow, reactive, and honestly unnecessary.
On every unique impression, the system slightly reshuffles offers and sections to test which positioning has the best chance of converting. Over time, patterns emerge — and the optimizer leans into what works.
This all happens without impacting load speed. No heavy scripts. No client-side lag.
Because the system uses a postback setup, it knows exactly which section category drove a conversion — not just which offer.
That matters.
Instead of optimizing blindly at the page level, the app can:
You’re no longer optimizing once per day.
You’re optimizing every time someone sees the page.
This is the kind of thing you don’t notice immediately — but over thousands of impressions, it compounds fast.
I didn’t build LeadPathWayz – Listicle Optimizer to be another “all-in-one” platform or a flashy marketing tool.
I built it because listicles work — but optimizing them properly has always been way more manual than it should be.
This system focuses on those fundamentals and automates the parts that used to require spreadsheets, daily reordering, and constant second-guessing. It’s opinionated, lightweight, and designed around how listicle pages actually convert in the real world.
Right now, the app is in beta.
Access is limited and mostly invite-only, and there is a small paid tier simply to cover API usage and hosting costs while it’s being tested. This phase is about feedback, edge cases, and stress-testing the logic — not scale.
If you run listicle-style pages, click arbitrage, native traffic, or anything where multiple sections and offers compete for attention, this is exactly the type of workflow I’m looking to test with.
If you want early access, feature input, and direct visibility into how this evolves, join the private Slack channel below and request an invite to the beta.
Looking forward to your feedback, access is limited for the next 30 days.
Not the “read books and feel productive” type of learning — but the kind where you build, break things, fix them, and slowly realize you’re getting better at something you didn’t even plan to master.
This year, I spent a lot of time getting deep into vibe coding and creating system processes with AI. Not just playing with tools, but actually building things that work. Internal platforms. Custom systems. Software that supports traffic sources I already use instead of forcing new workflows just because a tool exists.
That part has been huge.
I’ve helped companies build internal platforms that optimize how they operate, track, and think. At the same time, I’ve been building my own systems for my own use cases. That’s important to me — because I don’t really believe in building software purely based on what I think other people want.
I build what I need first.
In 2026, I’ll slowly release the products I’ve been working on. Not big launches. Not hype cycles. Just build, release, feedback, and improve.
That’s the only way I know how to do it properly.
I don’t know what others will need until they actually use it. So I’d rather ship something useful, see how it’s used in the real world, and then refine it. Slow releases beat perfect plans.
One big lesson this year was learning how to work with teams that are more systematic and more micro than I am.
I naturally operate in 'fluid flow mode'.
I see the big picture, connect ideas fast, and move quickly. Others are far more structured — gritty with details, edge cases, documentation, and step-by-step execution. I’m systematic to a point, but I’m not obsessed with every tiny detail.
And that’s okay — as long as you recognize it.
This year taught me that the real progress happens when flow thinkers and system thinkers work together properly. Not fighting styles, but letting each person do what they’re best at.
That’s something I’m getting better at.
One recurring conversation I had this year was about entrepreneurship.
A lot of people take the word by definition, not by action.
Someone takes a loan, starts a business, and suddenly they’re labeled an entrepreneur — even if they’re stuck working inside it, paying debt, and unable to step away.
That’s not entrepreneurship to me.
If you can’t remove yourself from the system, you don’t own a business — it owns you. Too many people are essentially beggars with better branding, chasing the title instead of the ability to earn freely. Remember the goal is to exit, if you can't exit without you in the picture then are you an entrepreneur?
Hustler mentality. Which is not bad, but a hustler is very different from an entrepreneur. Yes, an entrepreneur hustles but creates mechanisms to step away. The ability to clone one self into multiple people and SOPs.
I never wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I was given the title after the fact.
I focused on earning, building systems, and creating leverage. The label came later. And I think that difference matters more than people realize.
Watch me and Mark Joyner discuss what Entrepreneurship is >>
At the core of everything, I’m a builder.
I like creating. I like turning ideas into something real. And vibe coding made that faster and more fun than it’s ever been.
Being able to go from idea to a working product in 1–2 days still feels unreal sometimes. Tools like Lovable, Claude Code, Gemini, and others removed a lot of friction that used to slow things down.
Even hiring a developer for 5k a month is not needed, well they are needed after the fact for security but initially no.
Right now, I honestly think Gemini is going to win a big part of the AI race. They have insane resources and no debt. That matters long-term. The integration they have with their products is what will make Google Gemini win.
I still use OpenAI, just not as much as before. In my experience, OpenAI is still far better at analytics and structured reasoning. Gemini feels stronger for scale and infrastructure, especially with their api.
Each has its place — and knowing when to use what is becoming its own skill.
2025 also came with some friction — especially around business taxes.
That’s on me.
It’s frustrating to work hard, build things, and then watch a big chunk disappear. But that’s life. And avoiding it doesn’t make it better.
I need to be more strategic financially. That means talking to more lawyers, more accountants, and actually planning instead of reacting. Taxes aren’t optional — but bad planning is.
That’s a skill I’m actively improving.
Trading this year was bumpy.
I tend to let things sit and not pay enough attention, which works sometimes and hurts other times. I know I need to spend more time on charts instead of assuming long-term patience fixes everything.
Bitcoin has been a bummer this year too. A lot of people are down — financially and mentally.
I’ve talked to past affiliates who are now looking for work again or jumping back into affiliate marketing because markets feel unstable. That alone says a lot about cycles, leverage, and dependency.
That topic deserves its own post.
I traveled to a few more places in Brazil this year, but not enough.
That’s something I want to change.
In 2026, I want to explore at least one new place per quarter. Brazil has so much to offer — different vibes, different energy, different pace.
I love it here. The people, the interactions, the randomness. Read why I stopped being a digital nomad >>
I spent New Year’s in Porto Alegre. It was fun, but also a slower city. That experience alone reminded me how important planning is — not just for work, but for life.
The affiliate marketing world recently witnessed a new player on the conference scene: Affiliate Takeover. Held from July 9th to 11th in beautiful Barcelona, this inaugural event promised something different, and it certainly delivered a unique experience.
Like many others, I was curious about this new venture, by Alex Micol, and it seemed a lot of my friends in the industry felt the same, messaging me to see if I was attending.
So I went. This shared curiosity led to a pleasant surprise, as I encountered many familiar faces throughout the event.
Unlike some broader conferences, Affiliate Takeover notably focused on whitehat eCommerce and lead generation strategies, attracting a specific segment of the industry.
My first impression upon arriving at Affiliate Takeover was, "Wow, this is small!" With around 1,000 registered attendees, it was by far the most intimate conference I've attended in this industry. Compared to the sprawling halls and bustling crowds of other major shows, Affiliate Takeover felt more like a backyard meetup than a large-scale exhibition.
This initial thought of "super small, very different" quickly evolved into a profound appreciation as the days unfolded.
The event's schedule featured back-to-back sessions, which meant the show floor was never overwhelmingly crowded. While this might seem like a drawback, it actually created a fantastic environment for exhibitors.
Instead of fighting for attention, booths had ample time for meaningful conversations with potential partners, a stark contrast to the often frantic pace of larger conferences.
What truly set Affiliate Takeover apart was the unparalleled networking opportunity its size afforded. That initial feeling of it being "super small" transformed into the realization that this was its greatest strength.
The intimate setting made it incredibly easy to connect with industry friends and forge stronger relationships. I found myself having deeper, more substantial conversations, which is often difficult in the high-energy, fast-paced environment of bigger events.
Everyone is always trying to get your attention at a busier, larger conference.
It felt like a perfect blend of a meetup and a conference, reminiscent of the old STM meetups where the focus was squarely on sessions and genuine networking, with booths serving as supportive elements rather than the main attraction. Many people I knew were there, driven by the same curiosity that brought me, and it was great to see so many familiar faces.
The conference was held at Fira Barcelona, the same location where Affiliate World Europe has taken place in the past.
While Spain is undoubtedly a beautiful backdrop for any event, the Fira Barcelona venue felt quite vast for an event of this scale. I personally felt a more compact setting, perhaps a hotel event space, might have created an even tighter, more cohesive atmosphere given the smaller attendance.
Interestingly, the event also had a distinct "mini Affiliate World" feel, almost like a meticulously crafted, scaled-down replica. From the moment you stepped through the entrance, the layout of the registration area, the design of the banners, and even the standardized booth setups mirrored the larger Affiliate World conferences.
It was almost a carbon copy, shrunk down in scale. It is like they hired the team behind Affiliate World.
This immediate sense of familiarity, combined with the unique intimacy of a smaller crowd, made for an intriguing and somewhat surreal experience. It was like seeing a beloved blockbuster movie adapted into a charming, independent film.
For me, the most important aspect was undoubtedly the networking. I had the chance to deepen existing friendships and engage in truly meaningful discussions. A particular highlight was showcasing my "Incomplete Guide to Affiliate Marketing." I was thrilled that Avanto Media sponsored my book, distributing copies to new affiliates, and it was incredibly rewarding to have people come up and ask me to sign them.
Affiliate Takeover's debut was a refreshing change of pace. While small in scale, its focus on quality interactions and a more relaxed environment made it a highly effective networking event. The emphasis on white hat eCommerce and lead generation strategies also carved out a clear niche, attracting attendees and exhibitors genuinely interested in sustainable, ethical growth.
It proved that sometimes, less is indeed more, especially when it comes to fostering genuine connections and focused learning in the affiliate marketing industry. I'm certainly curious to see how this new conference evolves in the years to come and whether its unique approach to traffic and monetization will continue to shape the industry landscape.
Being in this space for so long, I have a very open mind on where this goes.
For years, affiliate marketing meant running someone else’s offer. You’d grab a link from a network, throw traffic at a lander you didn’t control, and hope it converted well enough to stay profitable.
But the second that offer paused, payouts dropped, or someone upstream changed the flow, you were back to square one—rotating new links, rebuilding campaigns, and re-testing everything.
It was exhausting. And it was fragile.
Now, that model’s cracking open—thanks in large part to AI development agents like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit. These tools are making it easier than ever for affiliates to build branded lead generation sites, connect directly with buyers, and launch their own offers—often in under 15 minutes.
This isn’t a small shift. It’s a complete repositioning of how control, data, and profit work in the affiliate space.
Working with affiliate networks still has its advantages, especially for those newer to the space or looking for predictable revenue. Networks often provide guaranteed payouts, meaning affiliates don’t have to chase down invoices or worry if a buyer decides to ghost.
They also absorb much of the risk—if a lead doesn’t convert or a vendor flakes, the network usually eats the loss, not the affiliate. Plus, most networks offer dedicated account managers who can provide support, access to exclusive offers, and insights that can help optimize performance without needing to build everything from scratch.
Affiliate networks serve a purpose, but they come with their own set of limitations:
I’ve been through both phases: running third-party offers and launching my own. I started with a custom sweepstakes path and now operate lead gen funnels for debt relief and personal loans.
When you own the offer, everything changes. You can:
You're no longer capped by what a network gives you. You're building something with long-term leverage.
You’re also optimizing the entire flow, not just trying to “make it work.” Need faster load times? Use lighter scripts. Want to test five CTAs? Go ahead. Every improvement increases your own margins.
What used to take weeks of development and back-and-forth with a dev team can now be done in minutes with AI.
Platforms like Lovable or Replit let you spin up lead funnels, create responsive forms, and push data to CRMs or vendors without writing much—if any—code. You can use natural language prompts to build forms, connect APIs, generate thank-you pages, and A/B test variations.
These tools handle everything from basic layout design to backend workflows. That means more affiliates can step into offer ownership without needing a full tech stack.
Of course, AI isn’t perfect. You might still hit a few snags if your logic is complex or if you’re integrating with a unique buyer system. But in most cases, you can launch and iterate 10x faster than hiring a dev from scratch.
With your own offer, you’re not limited to just one buyer or monetization path.
You can collect first-party data and feed it into email or SMS sequences. You can resell leads to multiple buyers. You can build a waitlist or upsell another product. You're no longer boxed into a single CPA payout—you control how you monetize the audience you're paying to acquire.
Better yet, once your offer is dialed in, you can onboard affiliates and become the network. That means you scale beyond your own media spend and tap into other people’s traffic.
While the upside is massive, it’s not without friction:
There are still challenges. When sending leads to multiple buyers, each one will likely want something different—custom questions, unique consent language, specific validation rules, or TCPA-specific compliance elements.
Managing this across vendors used to be a painful manual process. But AI agents can now dynamically create or modify forms, reroute lead logic based on ZIP codes, and help customize flows per partner.
If something breaks or becomes too niche, that’s when a developer is still useful. But you're no longer dependent on a dev for every single change.
Running your own offer means you're responsible for everything—compliance, deliverability, uptime, optimization. You're also testing constantly. Headlines, hero images, button placements—small changes can make or break performance.
But that work pays off.
You're not getting paid once per lead and then losing the trail. You're building a system. One you can test, scale, improve, and own.
The highs are better because you keep more of the profit. The lows are yours too—but they come with the freedom to fix the problems directly, instead of waiting on a network to do it for you.
AI development agents aren’t just tools—they’re removing excuses.
You don’t need a five-person dev team to launch a lead gen offer. You don’t need to stay stuck rotating through network landers with no data access. You don’t even need to know how to code to build something profitable.
If you’ve got a vertical you believe in, traffic to send, and vendors who want data—owning your offer puts you in the best position to grow, optimize, and eventually scale beyond your own media buying.
If you've spent any time on YouTube lately, you've probably seen videos promising that you can build a million-dollar app with "no-code AI" in just a few clicks. The appeal is obvious: a quick path to wealth without the hassle of learning to code, hiring developers, or dealing with app infrastructure. But here’s the hard truth—these claims are misleading, and in some cases, outright lies.
While AI has transformed app development by streamlining tasks, automating processes, and assisting in code generation, it is far from a one-click solution. AI is a tool, not a magic wand, and turning an idea into a functional, scalable, and secure app still requires expertise, refinement, and ongoing maintenance. Let’s break down the reality behind these misleading promises and what it actually takes to build a profitable app.
Many YouTubers push the narrative that AI tools like ChatGPT, Bubble, or Claude will allow anyone to create fully functional, money-making apps instantly. The problem? AI-generated apps often need significant refinement before they’re ready for real-world use. While AI can generate code, it doesn’t always get things right. You still need:
Now I am not saying you can literally start and have a functioning app and start selling it, I think there is a more to it, sure, I can cut down my cost a lot because of the speed of how production can be done, but it also needs some oversight.
Building an AI-generated app doesn’t stop once the initial code is written. Every successful app requires ongoing development and maintenance. YouTubers fail to mention that app success is not just about launching—it’s about continuously improving.
Behind every successful AI-assisted app, there are developers and engineers refining AI-generated code, security experts implementing encryption, firewalls, and compliance measures, and UI/UX designers ensuring the app is functional and user-friendly.
Customer support teams are necessary for troubleshooting issues, while marketing teams promote the app to attract users. AI can reduce some of the manual labor involved in these areas, but it can’t replace the need for human oversight.
Many YouTubers create content designed to go viral, often prioritizing engagement over truth. The promise of effortless money grabs attention, but the reality is much different.
Most AI-generated apps are buggy and unreliable without human intervention. AI is not a substitute for understanding business, marketing, and product development. No-code tools have limitations, requiring custom development for serious apps. Sustaining an app business requires long-term work, not just launching an MVP.
Sustaining an app business requires long-term work, not just launching an MVP. I know they are buggy because I built some apps with basic knowledge, but over time I have been better at my prompting. My past code probably has unused code that makes it bulky or worse; they are functioning with each other, but 80% of that code isn't needed.
I would not say this no-code app is misleading a dream, but it is a stepping stone to create sellable assets later on.
Instead of chasing the dream of an instant million-dollar app, consider how AI can be used as a tool to assist in real development. Here’s a more realistic approach:
Use AI for ideation and prototyping. AI can generate app ideas, UI layouts, and even prototype code, but it still needs refinement. AI can also be incorporated for automation, handling repetitive tasks such as customer support (chatbots) or data analysis.
However, hiring developers remains essential for critical enhancements, as even no-code apps often require custom API integrations, security patches, and performance optimizations. You do not need an army of developers or hire an agency, you just need 1 or 2 to oversight your code and help with better prompting.
Planning for maintenance and scaling is another crucial step. Apps need long-term updates, security improvements, and bug fixes—something AI won’t handle on its own. Finally, focus on marketing and monetization. Even the best app will fail without a strategy for attracting and retaining users.
If you’re serious about building an app, use AI to assist in the process—but recognize that success still requires effort, expertise, and a long-term strategy. Learn proper prompting and even ask ChatGPT how to prompt properly and build out diagrams to feed to these no code AI platforms.
I would not say this no-code app is misleading a dream, but it is a stepping stone to create sellable assets later on. Over the past months, I have learned to enjoy coding again, but from a problem-solving perspective.
My prompting improved because I do not want to waste credits, and I have also gained a better understanding of some architectural aspects of how a SaaS should be built. This opened my mind up to better creativity and understanding how to prompt better for these platforms.
The second iteration of ColombiaCon proved once again why intimate masterminds remain a cornerstone for media buyers seeking fresh perspectives and strong professional connections.
Organized by Samar and David, this year’s event welcomed a new wave of talent to Medellín, creating ample opportunities for networking and learning from an even more diverse group of affiliate marketers.
Read about Version 1 of ColombiaCon here >
Samar and David’s choice of venue could not have been more fitting. Situated high on the hills of Las Palmas, overlooking Medellín, the sprawling mansion offered sweeping views of the city, a pristine pool, a private chef, and an unforgettable fire-breathing bartender. The space itself felt designed to spark creativity—a critical component for media buyers who thrive on pushing boundaries and innovating strategies.
Despite being the second time around for some of us, the novelty was far from lost. New faces brought fresh conversations, leading to an environment where everyone felt encouraged to share their insights and explore new collaborations.
The cozy, exclusive setting fostered the perfect balance of comfort and productivity that large-scale conferences often struggle to achieve.
One of the standout moments was Samar’s deep dive into AI-driven creative automation. While I’ve dabbled in automation and AI for streamlining campaign management, Samar’s session revealed an entirely different level of sophistication.
It’s not every day you see someone effectively generate 4.5 million creatives. His approach to AI—using data to quickly iterate, test, and scale—underscored the fact that campaign success hinges as much on operational excellence as it does on creative spark.
Other participants also shared their insights into campaign strategy and creative development. From exploring innovative angles on paid traffic to investing your affiliate profits, there was no shortage of practical knowledge or real-life case studies. These sessions consistently reminded everyone that affiliate marketing thrives in an atmosphere of collaboration rather than competition.
Even in a mastermind setting, the demands of running campaigns never truly pause. During the first half of the event, I encountered a snag in one of my campaigns.
In true media buyer fashion, I had to step away briefly, fetch my laptop, and ensure all was well before returning to the event. Fortunately, Samar understood the urgency—such is the nature of performance marketing, where issues can arise at a moment’s notice.
Still, it was worth the hassle. After resolving my campaign concerns, I could fully immerse myself in everything ColombiaCon had to offer.
Reflecting on past experiences—like my early days at affiliate summits—I can confidently say that peer-to-peer masterminds offer a special kind of value. Unlike large conferences, which can sometimes feel formal or overwhelming, these smaller gatherings allow you to engage directly and meaningfully with other professionals.
It goes beyond exchanging business cards; you get a genuine sense of each other’s strategies, pain points, and creative processes.
Such face-to-face interaction can be infinitely more illuminating than a string of Skype or Slack messages. You can pick up on nuances, gauge interest in new ideas, and build rapport that often leads to valuable long-term partnerships. For those looking to build or scale in the affiliate marketing industry, intimate masterminds can serve as a springboard to success.
One of the most striking revelations from ColombiaCon 2.0 was the caliber of campaigns many affiliates are running. While it’s easy to assume everyone follows the same playbook—especially if your experience has been confined to one type of ad platform—events like these showcase just how varied strategies can be. Some affiliates excel on Facebook, some run high-volume native ad campaigns, and others expand across multiple platforms with staggering efficiency.
To add a local touch to our learning experience, Samar organized a coffee-picking excursion on the second day. Witnessing firsthand the hard labor that goes into Colombia’s world-renowned coffee not only added to the cultural immersion but also offered a fresh metaphor for the affiliate marketing hustle. Just as coffee can be brewed in countless ways—each yielding a distinct flavor—there are infinite angles to approach a campaign.
The farmer’s dedication and attention to detail reflected the same diligence required to refine creatives, optimize funnels, and experiment with new strategies until something truly exceptional emerges.
Leaving the coffee farm, I was reminded of my early days, working multiple jobs just to stay afloat. The contrast between that life and the often fast-paced, high-reward environment of affiliate marketing was not lost on me. It serves as a testament to the power of diligence, resilience, and a willingness to keep learning—qualities that every attendee at ColombiaCon 2.0 seemed to embody.
In closing, massive kudos go to Samar and David for orchestrating such a worthwhile event. ColombiaCon 2.0 was an undeniable success—a blend of networking, cutting-edge discussions, cultural exploration, and the kind of camaraderie that pushes media buyers to greater heights. If you ever have the chance to attend a mastermind like this, seize it.
The insights gained and connections forged will inevitably pay dividends in your affiliate marketing journey. ColombiaCon 3.0?!
Now don't be asking me where the females are; we are in Colombia....
The journey to Affiliate World in Bangkok began with a necessary pause to adjust to the grueling time difference. After a 14-hour flight from São Paulo, Brazil, I made my way to Dubai, where I took two nights to unwind. The luxury and tranquility of the city were just what I needed to recharge. Dubai’s serene vibe allowed me to recover and reset before continuing my travels.
From Dubai, I traveled to Manila, Philippines, to further adjust to the time zone shift and reconnect with old friends. Manila turned out to be an unexpected bonus—many affiliates from Affiliate World also stopped by the city, making it the perfect opportunity to meet up with familiar faces and expand my network. It was a much-needed mix of business and relaxation, and I was able to catch up with both past friends and new connections.
Five days in Manila were enough to get my body on track, and I finally made my way to Bangkok. The city welcomed me with its usual chaos, but this time, it was heightened by the excitement of Affiliate World. The first night already felt like the start of something big.
The first couple of days before the official event kicked off were all about settling in and reconnecting with friends from the affiliate industry. I arrived in Bangkok a few days early to explore the city and catch up with past affiliates, and it turned into a whirlwind of connections. I met up with two friends who invited their friends, who in turn invited even more people. The energy was contagious, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by a vibrant group of industry professionals.
We spent the evening drinking, networking, and exchanging stories—some old friends, others new faces. This was the beauty of the affiliate world: it thrives on these personal connections that start small and grow exponentially. It was a perfect way to ease into the Affiliate World vibe, where the real fun begins through the relationships you build.
Day 0 of the official Affiliate World event arrived, and it started with an incredibly meaningful experience. I attended the Affiliate Business Club event and I took the stage at his event and decided to talk about something not about money. This wasn’t just another networking session—it was a chance to discuss something that’s been close to my heart: mental health within the affiliate space. I spoke openly about depression and how it affects so many in the industry, particularly with the immense pressure and stress.
Unfortunately, I’ve lost several friends to suicide, which has deeply impacted me. Instead of the usual talk about money and strategies, I focused on the importance of health—mental, emotional, and physical—as the foundation of success. I shared my own journey of overcoming depression, emphasizing how prioritizing health is just as crucial, if not more so, than focusing on profits.
The feedback I received after the talk was overwhelming. Many attendees expressed how refreshing and needed this perspective was. It was clear that people in the affiliate world often neglect their well-being in the pursuit of financial gain. I spoke about how health and money should go hand in hand, as good health is the ultimate strategy for success, both in business and in life. This talk wasn’t just about business tactics; it was about taking care of yourself so you can thrive in all areas of life.
BTW My hair is a trip...
Day 1 of Affiliate World was packed with networking, dinners, and meetups—truly a highlight of the trip. Bangkok is home to some of the most beautiful restaurants and bars, perfect for enjoying the evening while maintaining the right balance between entertainment and business conversation.
The atmosphere was lively but not overwhelming, allowing for meaningful discussions without the noise of a full-on party. I was lucky to have Mobidea invite me to one of their events, and it turned into a great night of connecting with both old and new contacts in a relaxed, yet productive environment.
This was also a unique opportunity to push my brand further. After over 15 years in the online world, I’m proud of what I’ve built and the connections I’ve made. Unfortunately, my books (Incomplete Guide to Affiliate Marketing) didn’t arrive in time for the conference—they would have shown up two days after the event.
However, Affiliate World graciously allowed me to host a meet and greet in place of the book launch, which turned out to be a fantastic way to connect with people, share my journey, and discuss my work. I’m incredibly grateful to both Affiliate World for making this happen and to everyone who came by to learn more about my brand. Even without my books in hand, it was a great reminder of how far I’ve come in this industry and the amazing people I’ve had the privilege to meet along the way.
This year’s Affiliate World conference felt different. The energy was still high, but there was a noticeable shift in the types of offers and players in the space. A lot of blackhat tactics were on display, alongside a heavy presence of gambling, crypto, forex, and FTD (First Time Deposit) offers being aggressively pushed. It felt like a more transactional environment, with less focus on long-term, sustainable strategies and more emphasis on quick, high-risk wins.
One moment that stuck out to me was a guy who spent the entire day hanging around the entrances, speaking to everyone who came in. Later, he casually mentioned that he was into crypto offers. It was almost as if he was spamming people in real life—just talking to anyone, hoping to hook them with his pitch.
The whole vibe felt a bit off, especially with some of the offers being pushed. There were a lot of blank sweeps with no real value or empathy for the people on the other side of those offers. It felt like there was no consideration for the quality or ethics of the offer being promoted.
Despite the overwhelming presence of these questionable offers, I was fortunate to meet a lot of legitimate affiliates. I connected with some who had been in the space for years and others who were newer to the game.
Even more rewarding was meeting new affiliates who shared how I had inspired them. Just by talking to them at the meetups, they felt motivated to push their businesses forward in a more ethical and sustainable way. It was a reminder that, even amidst the noise, the right connections can make all the difference.
It was great seeing familiar faces from STM and reconnecting with so many people I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years. But what really stood out this time was meeting new faces in the industry—fresh perspectives and enthusiasm that reminded me how dynamic and evolving affiliate marketing truly is.
And on a personal note, it was refreshing to see so many loyal husbands and boyfriends in the space, a nice change from the typical “I’m so glad to be away from my wife” conversations you often hear at these events. It’s always good to see the more grounded side of the industry!
The affiliate space is constantly changing. What was working last year may not be as effective today, and this conference truly reflected that shift. From the increasing presence of high-risk offers to the blending of gambling and crypto, it’s clear that the industry is in a state of flux. But despite these changes, one thing remains constant: the power of human connection.
Networking 26 hours away from home, face-to-face, is a world apart from chatting over Skype or sending messages in a Telegram group. There’s a depth to these in-person conversations that can’t be replicated online. The energy, the body language, the immediate feedback—it’s all part of building real, lasting relationships. And in the affiliate world, those relationships are invaluable.
Whether you’re meeting new people or catching up with old friends, these face-to-face interactions create opportunities and foster trust in ways that virtual meetings simply can’t match. For me, that’s what makes these events so special—beyond the offers and business deals, it’s the connections and the real conversations that keep this industry moving forward.
