I'm still super excited and pumped about what I learned at Affiliate World Conference Bangkok. There is one thing I did notice though that affiliate was paying their drinks with, a bright green card called TransferWise.
Transferwise has made things much easier for affiliate networks to pay their international affiliates and spend it. The biggest issue with international bank transfer are fees or lost transfers between Paypal and Payoneer.
Transferwise fixes this issue. I myself have Transfrewise because I travel, the exchange and international fees I collect get pretty expensive. So I have all my payments sent to a virtual borderless bank - that is what Transferwise essentially is.
TransferWise is an online service for sending money across borders in the simplest of words.
TransferWise acts as a virtual bank by providing you with an actual account and routing numbers to a bank in a country you need a transfer too. For example, if I work with a Ukraine affiliate network - they have to send me a wire and the fees are pretty high for the transfer. Worst there is also a minimum wire amount to be sent.
Instead of paying the wire fee, I can generate a local virtual bank in Ukraine and get paid directly as if I had a bank in Ukraine. This avoids the fees and the minimum wire amount.
Once I determine that I am no longer receiving any more payments from Ukraine, I can just turn off the account and my virtual account information is destroyed. If I do need a bank again in Ukraine down the road, I can just easily create a new virtual borderless bank with new useable banking information.
As a traveling affiliate, this helps me a lot because now TransferWise provides a card that can be used as a regular MasterCard (though it does have some country limitations). It is currently only for personal accounts on TransferWise but it takes 30 seconds to transfer from business to personal easily.
I have seen a lot of affiliates at Affiliate World pay with this card or I saw a quick peek in their wallet when opened. You can't miss this card, it is bright green!
Easily put, exchange rates and transfers are a pain. Having to manage the cost of fees and when payments are received is an accounting nightmare.
TransferWise has all large 'banks' all over the world. Rather than an affiliate network exchanging their $1,000 USD payout when they send it to you in Japan, TransferWise just adds the networks payout $1,000 to their USD bank and pays you the equivalent amount of Japanese Yen out of their Japanese bank. This eliminates a lot of the legwork of the transaction, the costly intermediaries, allowing them to offer you the affiliate a much better exchange rate.
TransferWise, unlike many other methods for transferring money internationally, also has a fully transparent fee structure. You will know exactly how much you pay in fees every time you create a TransferWise transfer, it is displayed prior to the transfer and is guaranteed for 24 hours.
TransferWise currently supports sending money to 60 countries. They cover 1000+ routes (country combinations) across 49 currencies, and they are also one of the few companies offering the true mid-market rate.
So if you are an international affiliate or work with international affiliate networks, then this is a great option for you as it provides you a virtual bank in the country of your choice. It avoids all the fees, wire delays/fees, Paypal and Payoneer issues, that happens in between.
When I receive my payouts, they happen almost the next day they are initiated by the network. So once it is sent or released, I get it the next day and it can be used immediately. Even my Amazon FBA deposits now go to my TransferWise account.
Receiving affiliate payouts internationally can be deceptive because of the exchange rate and hidden fees but TransferWise wants to be very transparent and even their support is super helpful (within 24 hours, my experience) when you have questions or issues.
There are no points or reward systems like a real card, but the main purpose is to cut out the fees from international affiliate payouts. TransferWise is providing you a virtual bank account in the country of the affiliate network you work with, making receiving affiliate payouts easier.
I just got back to Vietnam from Affiliate World Asia: Bangkok and my Facebook flow are filled with thanks, gratitude, pictures, and just positive feedback about the show. Then I saw Lorenzo post an image of where the first BKK STM meetup was.
It just gave me flashbacks of when I went to STM Meetups in Amsterdam and in London! These meetups were already solid because we met STM members from the forum and other new affiliates as well, plus it was the only international meetup.
A new standard they sure did! It is interesting to see the growth and how Lorenzo, Jordan, and Besmir managed to continue growing their STM brand. So I decided to just message Lorenzo a single question...
Lorenzo's response...
Well, the first meetups we had were just drinks purely to network.
Then people started asking for content so we introduced speeches.
Then companies wanted to sponsor so we introduced sponsorships.
The tipping point was that STM London meetup when 600 people turned up.
it was an organic evolution
This is a very simple response but has a lot of lessons in it. First of all, STM was created purely on just trying to find affiliates in the space. When I first started, affiliate marketing was a word that no one knew. Very few even got into it and very few mentors actually did paid affiliate marketing. A lot were all organic SEO Amazon affiliates.
Even I had to organize my own affiliate meetups in NJ and at other conferences to meet like-minded marketers, I called it the IANteract Dinners. It is important to have meetups because it puts you in a circle of like-minded users instantly.
I even paid for my first IANteract Dinner just so I can get people together and pick their brains on online marketing. Lorenzo and his team have done the same, first he probably did what most people do is to hang out with like-minded peopl is to drink
In any case, Lorenzo wanted to be around people like him and so STM forum was created. It created an online community but I guess that wasn't enough and Lorenzo wanted to meet his fellow affiliates. STM Meetups were born into fruition for local hangouts and having a beer.
An archive I found around the internet...
This was just drinks and hanging out with affiliates. Lorenzo just wanted to be around affiliates. Some affiliates then started asking about doing content. Lorenzo listened and introduced speeches.
International STM Speech archives I found...
Eventually, these meetups and beer drinking became big enough that networks wanted to sponsor the meetup. It was the same action that happened when I did IANteract Dinners, networks wanted to sponsor these dinners that I was having privately with affiliates. Putting themselves out there to my audience.
When Lorenzo mentioned the tipping point was STM London with over 600 attendees, that is where he took it to next heights. If you have not been to the last STM London, it was a so crowded and packed! I remember standing outside watching the speakers through a window (joking, but I did stand outside the actual hall) because the venue they had was just not big enough.
Now STM Meetups have evolved into a beast of a conference show. They now have the event space which is always unique to where they have it. Superb speakers and of course all the sponsors that want your traffic.
Here are some stats for you in comparison...
Imagine the first picture with just 300 people in Bangkok to now over 3.7k in just 5 years! The crazy part is I felt STM Bangkok was like 10 years ago! Lorenzo and his team took what his members and affiliates are saying and expanded on it.
Lorenzo took a simple action from just having drinks in his home town to having international speech meetups to now a conference that you want to be at. Using his skills as an affiliate to a business that brings people together is why being an affiliate marketer is the best way to learn online marketing.
Getting feedback from us and then testing it out on scale! The STM team listens to its members. They even went ahead and test their conference layouts and floor perks. I remember talking to Jordan 2 years ago on how they test floor sizes to increase user interaction among each other! Now that is truly split testing!
I think what separates this conference from others is the affiliate lifestyle. Beer pong, clubbing, fun games on the show floor, and massages! It is literally Lorenzo scaled up as a conference and that is why this is the best show to be at. He didn't change himself to try to be a corporate style marketing conference, Affiliate World is Lorenzon with just more programmatic lights.
As his business is an extension of himself, his team, and his partners. They all blend perfectly to what the affiliate industry is about, having fun with people that are doing it alongside you.
Check out some photos I took while at Affiliate World Bangkok 2019
It will almost be the end of the year for 2019 and I am seeing that my Amazon FBA hustle is a decent revenue stream. I was kind of skeptic because I didn't want to move away from affiliate marketing but eCommerce is rising so I need to be part of it somehow.
So I just did my full analysis on my Amazon FBA business and while I didn't go as hard as I wanted I did decently. At the beginning of the year, I went hard because it was something new, I was excited, and I wanted to learn to see if this was a fad.
Turn out making my first $4,000 dollars in 4 months was doable. Currently, with Amazon, I am doing online arbitrage. Online arbitrage is where I buy products for cheap and then sell it on Amazon at a higher price tag. I think it is the easiest way to get into the reselling space. I currently average an ROI of 33%.
The biggest costs are the products but also amazon fees are hella high. As of right now, I have paid Amazon $7,326.03 in fees. This does not include the cost of the products just yet, but I want to point out that that is a lot of fees. When I was experimenting on eBay it was just $800 in fees from January to June. So there is a huge difference, but there is also a difference on how fast the inventory moves on Amazon vs eBay.
Amazon for me is the winner when it comes to reselling because the volume on there is huge. If I can compare it to my media to buy traffic, I probably might have spent more on ads for the year to make just 10% on a Shopify store. You are paying for those users that are already in a buy mode rather than buying a click and turning them into a buyer.
It is one of the easiest ways to make cash with just a very small initial investment. Third-party sellers are growing at a steady rate. There are a lot of small business owners that surpass $1,000,000 in sales.
Now, as any new experiment, there are people that will test it and then leave. This means that there are users that are signing up and testing out the Amazon FBA business model and then quit. The percent of users that stay on as a full-time third party seller is less than 3% I believe, I can't find the source currently on it.
Yes, there are changes that are happening to Amazon for third party sellers, but it is a love-hate relationship. There are also some people that are having issues with Amazon when they reach a certain volume too, but adapting to the business that you cant control is what you can only do.
Especially with all these gurus showing how you can make money from Amazon and pushing their course. It definitely is possible, but consistency is the most important part of any business.
So far my journey has been positive, I only did a low 5 figures on Amazon and the reason is that I slowed down when it came to my affiliate campaigns. I tend to continue on my campaigns but will have to extend a system to help with my Amazon side project.
Will I continue into 2020, most likely. I want to have several projects that help me grow and not be dependant on just one source - Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Amazon FBA, Info, etc. I will have to be better at creating a flow and a team to help create systematics in my current business but Amazon FBA will definitely be still one of the.
Push traffic is still a craze in 2019 and there is still a lot of inventory to buy on push. Recently I have been testing AdOperator's Push traffic and I have finally gotten it to a point where it is converting. Profitable not yet.
It was a long struggle to get to this point because I was being very cautious with the spend as I do with any traffic sources. I need to understand how traffic works. With AdOperator I have a huge list of IPs and subIDs that I have blacklisted.
The one issue I had with AdOperator is that each campaign is only allowed 1 image, whereas some other push networks allow 5-10 creatives per campaign. So this caused some testing issues because even though I might say 1 click per IP it doesn't mean the other campaigns will follow.
So if I create 5 campaigns there is a potential for an IP to see the same campaign 5 times but each creative once because I set 1 click per IP in each campaign.
In any case, here are some stats for you to look over. These are not the best stats when it comes to my other push case studies, but it just started making some conversions. You can see the numbers are pretty low for a sweepstake offer LP CTR.
The numbers above are from my Binom tracker and they are ehhh... So let's put it against the numbers from AdOperator and see what the costs are for the same dates. Below, you will see 3 campaigns, this specific one we are going to look at is the first row.
I started with 5 campaigns with 5 different creative images BUT the same icon, same text. I wanted to see the differences in ad CTR and I kept the performing ads.
The campaign spent a total of $45.81 and only made $7.20 - we are down 84% ish. I also increased the spend from .03 to .09 hoping to get better quality clicks which seemed to help at least is what I am thinking. I also did have an ever-growing Blacklist of IPs and subIDs that I load into AdOperator.
With push traffic, the quality of the subscriber dies when they receive way too many alerts. The cheaper clicks you spend can be a bottom tier user and are already exhausted. Increasing spend can be a way to help get better quality clicks.
While increasing spend, you should also blacklist all the IPs that it has been sending out notifications to. With AdOperator, they give you the ability to block SubID which is the specific widget/source/website that is sending the notification.
Finding IPs to block via your tracker, here is how I do it via Binom
AdOperator gives you the ability to block SubID which is the specific widget/source/website that is sending the notification. Similar to how native advertising works, you can block the widget ID that is not performing or the actual website hosting the widget.
If you are not tracking your tokens with a tracker, AdOperator gives you access to the subIDs which you can export and then upload it to their system to blacklist. You will need to pass your conversions to their platform though.
I have only blacklisted a few as conversions did come through, but I will blacklist the IP address, which is important. You should be blacklisting every day or at least after X impressions to the IP then blacklist it.
It is very important to blacklist as sources can be bad sources and IPs can be non-responsive. Avoid wasting time and money on non-important clicks, but it does take some time to get the data you need.
Being overseas for a while now, I can't view offers that are meant for the US or any other country that I am in. The reason is that advertisers do not want their offers to be seen in any other country besides what they are meant for. They will usually redirect traffic to a SmartLink system to monetize the unwanted traffic.
Now I can't just click on an affiliate offer here in Vietnam that is meant for the US or Europe. It will most likely redirect me. So how can I view and decide if the offer will be a decent offer to test and promote? How does it look on a mobile, tablet, etc.
Simple, I just use a VPN service provider and browse the internet or offer website via another country's IP.
A virtual private network (VPN) gives you online privacy and anonymity by creating a private network from a public internet connection. VPNs mask your internet protocol (IP) address so your online actions are virtually untraceable. Most important, VPN services establish secure and encrypted connections to provide greater privacy than even a secured Wi-Fi hotspot.
Norton Security
By simply masking your IP you get access to another IP address of another country. In my case, let say I am promoting a US offers, I would want my VPN to change its IP or location to North America. By switching my IP I then can now view the offers as if I was in the United States and determine if that is the offer I want to promote.
For example, if I am promoting Netflix UK, I may want to see the UK landing page so I can create my pre lander similar to theirs. If I click on it in Vietnam, I may see the Vietnamese versions and their text. With a VPN, I can change my 'location' to the UK and it will show me what I want to see, especially if I need to create my creatives in relation to their website.
Ivacy is a very versatile VPN. It works on your desktop, meaning it works on your whole computer. All of the data passing through will be as if you were in another country. It currently 1000+ servers and 100+ locations. This means that you can choose Singapore and not just Asia to switch your IP.
One best attraction of this VPN is that it has unlimited data transfer and unlimited server switching. This is one of the cheaper and more versatile VPNs I have used.
Opera is a free VPN that works to a point. It isn't the best out there just because it is an in-browser VPN. Meaning that it works within the browser and not outside. This might be good if you just want to see an offer and link. The other drawback here is you only get 2 locations - Europe, Americas, Asia.
So you can not specifically choose let's say Germany to view a Germany offer. So that is the only drawback with the Opera VPN when viewing affiliate offers from another country.
FastestVPN is a Cayman Island-based VPN that offers a lengthy list of appealing features for one of the lowest prices around.
The servers are available in 35 locations across 29 plus countries. There are custom apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS Roku and Kodi, Chrome and Firefox extensions, OpenVPN compatibility to enable installing it everywhere else, and support for connecting up to ten devices simultaneously, twice the industry average. Great for viewing affiliate offers on your mobile device.
FastestVPN isn't the fastest VPN I have seen, or the most powerful, but it does gt the job done.
VyprVPN is a very popular VPN, you have prob seen sponsored ads on Youtube, which is based in privacy-friendly Switzerland and comes from the same stable of companies as US ISP Texas.net, Data Foundry, and top Usenet provider Giganews.
The service has a decent-sized network with 700+ servers in more than 70 locations. These aren't solely focused on Europe and North America, either. VyprVPN has 14 locations in Asia, 5 in the Middle East, 7 in Central/South America, 2 in Africa. With these locations, you can view your affiliate offers in the most popular countries and Vypr covers them all.
VyprVPN isn't the cheapest, or the fastest, or the most powerful VPN. Vypr also has a detailed no-logging public audit which shows this is a VPN you can actually use to load affiliate offers on.
PureVPN has been providing VPN services since 2007, so it's not surprising that a lot of affiliates use this VPN to view international offers. PureVPN claims a lengthy list of features: 2,000+ self-managed servers across 140+ countries and 180+ locations, with apps for nearly everything, a wide choice of protocols, torrent support, DNS and IPv6 leak protection, a smart kill switch, split tunneling, five devices allowed and payment via Bitcoin if you need it.
You can use live chat on the website as well. I have read affiliates were able to contact a support agent within a couple of minutes. With so much more access to the globe, this is a popular VPN for international affiliates running international offers.
I have been getting some questions the past month about which forum to start in as I have written both about iAm Affiliate, AffLift and STM Forum. Both are solid, but which to start?
This is definitely a hard question because both have 2 different personalities. What I can tell you is that I personally am in both of these forums. I check them regularly and see what I can contribute.
But again, if you are a beginner where do you start for information? Let me create a comparison on these two forums and help you with that. What I will grade these forums on are the following:
I think these are the main 5 things I personally look for when it comes to a community forum. Yes, there are free ones out there but sometimes the quality isn't there. You want experienced users and ones that are actually failing at campaigns to write about their failures.
One of the most important skills that I had as a successful affiliate marketer is the ability to always be able to learn something new. The reason is that this industry shifts so much and you need to be on the cutting edge of information.
I talk about how to start in affiliate marketing in this video and I even state that I have had months where I do not make any cash flow. Since I can not learn everything, I do want to try to catch up on what the industry is doing and what is being changed.
Joining one of these affiliate forums will keep you up to date and learn what others are doing. More importantly, you will have the support of a community to keep you on your toes when times do get tough.
Let start...
If you’ve been involved with affiliate marketing for some time, you are likely familiar with iAmAttila’s free online blog geared towards informational posts around paid advertisement and making money online.
Stemming from the success of his blog, iAmAttila launched the online forum iAmAffiliate a few years ago and today it boasts well over 1000 active users. Just like Luke at Afflift, Attila is extremely participative in the community he has created. His insights are so sought after and respected because his actions have proven time and again that he is a genuine, high-quality resource in this industry.
The guy is always experimenting and literally teaches from experience, which is why he is usually one of my go-to resources for current industry tactics. Plus, he's upfront and has a very strong personality. Imagine the whole of the STM forum into a single person.. that describes Attila.
I would say the content is probably the most advanced of the three forums discussed here today, as the majority of the guides are provided by a seasoned affiliate marketer in Attila's blog. You have a front-row view of the techniques of one of the most reputable affiliates out there.
Perhaps the most valuable feature of this forum is the "Follow Along with Campaigns" section. If you’re a new affiliate marketer then this is a great resource for hands-on support in putting together campaigns. It’s also extremely beneficial to seasoned affiliates as it provides data on current trends in the space as community members are showing their actual results for everyone to learn from.
Aside from these real-time case studies to promote education, the forum also provides members with access to advanced step-by-step tutorials for all relevant traffic sources in the industry. The tutorials are quite in-depth, again making them not only a great resource for beginners but also marketers of any experience level who may have knowledge gaps or just need a refresher.
I can specifically point to is a thread dedicated to landing pages and offer spying where current converting offers are shown. Instead of having to purchase a spy tool like Anstrex, members can rely on the weekly data updates by Attila.
The majority of the strategies highlighted in the forum are gray hat style, high converting offers that take an aggressive approach to getting the job done. However, Attila is starting to get away from the cumbersomeness of black and gray styles and lean more into white-hat style campaigns going forward it appears.
There are substantially fewer members in this forum than either of the other two, creating a tight knit group of various personalities. The forum contains all types of marketers, from white hat to black hat and all the shades in between.
This dynamic creates a forum ripe for intense discussion with viewpoints of marketers from different facets of the space. Whereas other forums like AffLift are populated by mostly beginners seeking information, you can rest assured that an iAmAffiliate member already knows the intricacies of managing traffic sources.
I would be shocked if you found a member that didn’t at a minimum have an intermediate knowledge of affiliate marketing with experience in driving traffic through multiple channels.
Due to the smaller stature of the group, it is not as frequently participated in as the other two. From my experience, it may take a day or two for a post to be responded to, but Attila at the very minimum will respond in due time. For me, this is fine because instead of the unnecessary noise that can come with too many opinions, I know at least I am going to get a few high-quality ones.
The biggest asset of all is Attila’s community. Just like me, Attila creates communities in the industry from Facebook groups to Telegram Chats. This is a huge asset as it spreads out from his forum and you also get that personal touch from the forum.
Attila and I speak to each other on strategies in-depth and you can get the same style of conversation in the community. Heavily moderated to keep spam out but highly valuable to have an open discussion on how your campaign is doing or how to get ads approved on Facebook.
If 1 on 1 coaching doesn’t sound like enough support, what about access to ALL iAmAttila and iAmAffiliate ebooks? Here are just a few of the most recent titles...
Members are provided more than just the knowledge to carry out successful campaigns though. Access to the forum also supports members with special discounts on marketing tools and even allows members to start utilizing newly obtained knowledge quicker through fast-tracked approval to CPA networks.
With an iAm Affiliate membership, you can expect to partake in an open community of professional marketers eager to share experiences and techniques. This is an intense community dedicated to results as the majority of people are already well adept in their craft.
Attila really leads by excellent example, both setting a high bar in terms of marketing success as well as providing a very responsive helping hand whenever anyone in the community needs it. Aside from Attila, much of the group is more than willing to lend a helping hand or provide their opinions when called upon.
The forum really has that type of energy only found when you bring together the best minds for the same purpose, generating revenue. The confidence in this group is astounding and I often find myself keen for new challenges after interacting with the forum as everyone pushes one another towards greater heights.
Whereas STM and AffLift employ the assistance of numerous moderators to serve the community, Attila is heavily involved with the forum's oversight. The community is smaller and more intimate than the others, which allows iAmAttila to regularly be active in all forums and maintain group order effectively.
AffLift is created by Luke (I was gonna type from Peerfly) it just flows. Anyways Luke is an affiliate marketer and I have met him a long time back. He has done very well by setting up tools, platforms, and now an affiliate community forum.
This is a fairly new affiliate forum but it is also rapidly growing with its members and the reason is because of Luke. I personally feel Luke is so dedicated to his community that he answers every post that is answered by its members.
I even remember chatting with him at 3 am his time, 2 pm my time (currently in Vietnam) - now that's dedication. He definitely is putting in 110% into all his projects.
AffLift is a very straight forward affiliate forum community because it has the basics that you are looking for. Everything is organized in a way that it is easy to get too. There is not a lot of clutter, no ads, just content, and the community. One factor that I think separates this forum from STM is that I believe he has JV partners in his forum.
What I mean is that there are dedicated affiliate managers, ad managers, account managers, traffic managers (these are all the same) that contribute content and provide discounts to AffLifts members.
In STM, they are there as well but I don't see them contribute as much as they do in AffLift. I want to say that Luke has formed some form of agreement between the parties to make sure that they contribute to the community for the exchange of its members.
One thing that I really enjoy is reading Luke's own case studies he generates as he also does run traffic online still. One of his guides is meant for Pop and he does very well on pop traffic himself. Even with guides, he has a lot of articles for the most basics of affiliates or traffic person.
One piece of information that is rarely talked about in the performance space is SEO. It is hard to talk about SEO in my opinion because it is too time-consuming. Like I said this forum is all about affiliate marketing and SEO is and can be part of the process. Not everyone has cash on hand for ad spend, so you may want to start with SEO which AffLift has a dedicated section for.
There are a lot of experts in the forum, from many years back that I know of as well. One amazing factor is that Luke encourages posts by new members. This is pretty awesome in itself and the reason why I think he has specific partnerships with traffic networks.
With this encouragement, the members are more helpful towards each other and not as much as an 'ego' driven community. Luke has done a great job of making every feel and stays on the same playing field with its attitude and community contribution. The way that happens is having open communication and the members have access to a real-time live chat room.
This chat room is on the main forum page and allows quick answers to be answered by the AffLift peers and its members. Definitely a pretty cool add on to a traditional forum.
There is a lot of beginners in this forum, which isn't bad because you want to grow with your peers. The members here pushes each other, beginner or veteran. A very beginner-friendly forum with great information to get started in affiliate marketing even if you have no prior experience.
Besides just the community, Luke has made deals with the traffic sources for any new sign-ups he brings on board to AffLift and test traffic. He does this on purpose because he wants you to start and not just consume information. So outside the content, he made deals with traffic networks and even discounts on online tools.
One big addition that is free with the affiliate forum is a landing page builder that Luke includes free to its members. You do not even have to join, it is out there for you to use right now.
The other amazing part is also getting free landing pages from spy tools. There is a section in the forum that is dedicated to free landing page ideas, courtesy of Anstrex. This is a really good perk if you do not utilize a spy tool yourself or if it is too expensive for you to get.
This is one very friendly community and I think that is the best environment for newbies when they are starting out in affiliate marketing. Since Luke has done a great job of making this feel like his home (I never been to his house, waiting for an invite and some milk and cookies), the attitude of everyone is very non-argumentative. The millennial safe box I can maybe say just because no one criticizes each other and if they do it is very constructive with a very open mind on the campaigns.
Luke will be the first, most of the time, to answer the questions and if not his moderators will be the ones to make sure everyone feels welcome and has the right information to start in affiliate marketing.
There are several moderators in this community and they came with experience. The best part about these moderators is they keep the atmosphere in the forum to where Luke's living room is. There are no idiocracy comments made by moderators or mud-slinging going on. The moderators on AffLift has made it in affiliate marketing and are now contributing to everyone's goal of being a better affiliate.
I have been part of STM since its infancy. The original name, Stack That Money (STM), represented how young we were as affiliates. Stacking. I even wrote an updated review on this forum as it has changed over the years.
They even had STM Meetups which now has evolved into Affiliate World Conferences. Started by a team of 3 guys in the affiliate industry and now are literally buying out all the ad inventory out there currently. I think they are anyway.
There are TONs of content in this forum. From posts about traffic sources to the very popular follow along. Honestly, this is one heavy forum that delivers the content where it is visible with the shift of the industry. I say this because this forum is the longest standing forum in the affiliate performance space, a paid forum that has a ton of value in itself.
Every year, they come out with a "What is Working in Affiliate Marketing" - they survey top traffic sources, top affiliates, top networks on what they see is happening in the space. This is not only very valuable information but information that is created by the community and long-standing affiliates.
You can search for amazing case studies that were once working and try to take 1% of that strategy to make it work in today's advertising world. You can even find real-time case studies that members are trying and even experience affiliates are doing. The biggest difference in the case studies between AffLIft and STM is spending and angles.
While there is a Newbie zone in the forum, it does have courses for making your first dollar in affiliate marketing. This newbie zone is dedicated to beginners for sure, but it is surrounded but other advance posts that can deter you from actually focusing on your core affiliate business strategy, whereas AffLift is for the novice.
There is such a high quality of content in the forum it would take days to write about it. It is an encyclopedia of past and present information on affiliate marketing.
Here are some popular ones:
While AffLift provides credit to its new users, most of the members in STM are using their own money. So the content contribution I think is much of higher quality and intent to optimize. Some people just act differently when money is free versus their own.
The range of ideas and thought process that goes into some of the case studies are pure gold. Even if some strategies do not work anymore, as advertising changes almost every 3-6 months, there is still value in old content. It helps with your creative thinking and how to go about when stuck on an ad campaign.
The members here are a mix of Black Hat, Grey Hat, White Hat affiliates or media buyers. This is a great mix because of strategy and contributions in the forum. These are also many high-level affiliates and more determined to find loopholes in their ad buying process.
I feel the members within STM Forum are far more advanced just because STM was one of the very first few forums that were meant for the ad performance space. They have a ton of rockstar contributors from private label to agency owners to full-time media buyers.
These heavy-hitter content contributors are in STM because it has the community that is just like them, a drive to be the best.
A lot of the affiliates also moved from Black Hat World, WickedFire, Digital Point, Warrior Forum, and many more. The members that transformed the STM community are a mix because back in the day there was no official form of community in the space.
These members all merged and shared their insights bringing the attitude towards the forum. With such a huge amount of members and community portals on Facebook, I can just post a message who is in this country and there is usually someone I can meet on my nomad travels, this is the best part about their community.
STM does have a lot of its own tools or partners with which they provide discounts on. When the team of 3 partnered up they brought on a programmer who created his own set of tools for affiliate marketing and then merge it into STM. That is not part of the member's area anymore as the tools have become obsolete in this day and age of online marketing.
One tool is a spy tool called Adplexity which finds ads that are already being advertised on the internet. Again not free but they do offer discounts to their members. Other tools they provide with a huge discount (total of 1650+ in savings) are...
The biggest asset is the community, the members are active and the majority all started when STM Meetups was popular and then evolved into Affiliate World. They will also provide the replays to members for free. The best part is also providing a big discount to the conference for its members.
The attitude of the community is 'strong' I say that because sometimes if a simple question is asked, there may be some comments some users can get discouraged. I think it is also helpful because it forces you to do your own research and work before asking.
I myself get annoyed when some users ask me the most basics of questions. If you are determined yo will search Google, Youtube, and more importantly the STM forum. But you are conversing with pretty top-notch affiliates and determined people on the community. A lot of the affiliates are also digital nomads like myself, there are Facebook groups meant for foodies, travelers, and mini meetups across the world.
The moderators are awesome, very similar to AffLift, they want you to win but also want to make sure you are putting in work. The moderators will also not take any abuse in the forum when it does go too far.
Just like any forum community, the moderators are experienced and want to help users in the community. They have credentials that date them back at least 10 years and even recent ones that will contribute to case studies of their own and contribute to content outside STM.
These 2 forums I am part of and you can find me with the username IANternet in both. If I find a post that I can contribute then I go ahead and post. If I want advance strategies then I go into STM Forum.
So if you are just starting out, have no clue what affiliate marketing is or what media buying is then AffLift is for you. If you are already buying traffic and need help in scaling and trying to find a more intense strategy in your ads then STM Forum is for you. It is up to you on how you aggregate information and how you coupe with people online.
I am not leaning towards one or the other as both provide great valuable information depending on what you are looking for and how you want to organize the information you have gathered. I am active in both forums, find me and message me!
There are a lot of new push traffic networks popping up. In the ongoing to give you guys and gals the latest information on who to work with, I have been doing these traffic case studies and breaking how I run traffic on these push networks.
Today AdOperator is a native traffic network and they have push on their platform. This is the source I will be testing as I have been on a push exploration lately.
As usual, I go to Anstrex and try to see if they are listed as a traffic source. I try to always spy on ad campaigns to see what is working. Not all traffic is created equal.
Currently, AdOperator is not on Anstrex and so I will merge some of my other campaigns that have been working on other push networks and see if they are converting.
Let us create a campaign. It is pretty straight forward to create a campaign on AdOperator. You simply just...
That is it. Straight forward, the only issue I have is that you can not test multiple creative per campaign like other push networks. You have to create a new campaign for a new creation. One other issue is with the image. You can not auto resize the logo or body image. You have to resize them prior to uploading it to AdOperator.
Once that is done, you set your budget and then optimizations. You chose your country when to display, the frequency cap, etc.
I forgot to mention, AdOperator push traffic is all internal. This means they own their push data and have control of the quality. It is hard to find a source that owns its own push traffic.
You can actually see this in their rate card on the backend. The rate card within AdOperator shows you the impressions you are going to be potentially getting and shows the average CTR of at least 1%. This does get updated all the time as their database grows and more advertisers advertise.
You can see what the average CPC is going to be as well. This is all transparent to you on the backend, which is good to know how much traffic you can potentially get from a specific country.
One important factor with AdOperator is you should definitely create an IP list. The IP list is important because you can let AdOperator know if this is a blacklist or a whitelist.
Currently, I set it to a Blacklist, meaning to avoid these sets of IP addresses. I have a really good account manager and she helps me with the IP list as well as what I get from my tracker.
Currently on my first $100 - I have not converted as I have been filtering out a lot of IPs. This is why it is crucial to create an IP list of bad IPs so you do not advertise to those IPs every again, especially when you create new campaigns. Make sure you have a solid tracker that records everything.
I am constantly talking to my rep about the traffic and what needs to be done. I will continue to test AdOperator and see what I can do on it. I will probably discuss with my account manager to see what else they see that is working and I will try to replicate the campaign as well.
When I have more data points to discuss, I will create another post on what I have been doing and testing.
Besides having such an epic beard in this interview, MobIdea interviews me at Affiliate World Conference in Barcelona. In this mini-interview, I talk about how to get started in affiliate marketing as well as trying to find the best offers to promote.
I have transcribed this video for you, just in case you didn't bring your headphones on the train with you.
So, my name is Ian Fernando, I've been in the affiliate space for about 15 years. I basically started by accident, became an affiliate by accident and that's I think what makes me different from every affiliate here.
Like, every affiliate wants to be an entrepreneur, wants to be an online marketer, whereas I became an affiliate by mistake.
Basically learning how to resell on eBay and then couldn't deal with the customer support, and then I was like, "You know what? Let me Google how to make money online without customers," and that's how I found affiliate marketing and my biggest jump from affiliate market to be a full-time was one network actually helped me with one campaign which made me for a month $100 a day to almost $1000 a day, and that's what made me believe that - "Hey, this is… this could happen."
Making sure that you understand that you're going to lose, that's the most important thing. A lot of affiliates, they believe that "Hey, $1 goes out, I need to see at least $1.01 back," right?
But it doesn't work that way, you'll put in $1 and you'll never see that $1 ever again, right, you'll probably be down and dumped. So, what you need to understand is or a lot of newbies need to understand that losing is profitable because you're getting data and understanding how to react to that data, right, that's the most important part.
Well, you got to have a good head on your shoulders, you got to be very, very positive on looking at your campaign. Because what you need to learn about the industry that the industry is like this, right, it's never like this what everybody assumes, right?
So, there are days, there are months where I don't make money, right, and you have to live with that and understand that there… that this business shift… it can shift tomorrow and you won't be making money tomorrow.
But having that mindset of understanding that, “Okay, I will be profitable tomorrow, let me just swallow my pride, swallow my ego and just run through it.”
To figure out if a campaign is bad or not is… it's all mathematical all right.
So, you have to figure out, "Okay, if I'm getting the payout of $1, right, and I'm going to spend at least $10 and didn't make 50% of it back, then I think I would kill that campaign," it's just basics… basics of math. But if you get enough information that you can tweak it like, "Hey, you know what? If I… I figured out everybody that clicked on we're all females then put another $10 for this $1 CPA and it converts over," then, yeah, continue with that campaign.
So, it really, really depends on your spend and your adjustment of the campaign and the data you received.
What I tell a lot of people when I started affiliate marketing is that it just starts something that they're passionate about, right.
There are 2 types of affiliates when they first begin, it's passion and money, right? It's easier to start a campaign that you're passionate about because then you have this whole creative feel that you understand that niche more so than if you started in a niche that you don't understand, right?
This way, you can quickly start a campaign with something that's fashionable like gardening or growing tomatoes, versus dating, alright?
You probably never had a date in a long time so you're not an expert at dating, but you're so passionate about growing your indoor garden tomatoes that you can think creatively about how and why people don't click on your ads.
So, my biggest focus now is a lot of doing Amazon FBA and then creating a lot of content style affiliate websites. So, that's where I'm more so about now.
So, the most important part of education in this industry is the fact of having proper mentors and men… and your tight circle to support you, right?
The education is great, but if you're not doing it and if you're not understanding why you failed and you don't have a support group to tell you, "Hey, there are these top 5 reasons why this campaign failed and why you probably lost money," and to push you to even do anymore.
So, like we're here at Affiliate World and everybody here is supporting everybody and that's I think the best part of the marketing side and the education part is good, it’s just you need that support group also, which needs to come with education.
... Thanks MobIdea for the Interview!
After doing 2 posts on ZeroPark Push advertising platform, I got my full take on it. I am going to break it down to you on why so far out of the other case studies I have done that is a very good platform to advertise on.
From the beginning, I was pretty much profitable. How? I found some offers on Anstrex and filtered them out by ZeroPark. I basically duplicated an offer and its lander put it up on ZeroPark and then waited.
The best part is that the traffic converted on the offer and it also didn't that is because I ran RON. I wanted to start filtering out the sources out there and see what was available especially for very low-cost CPC.
Luckily I have an optimization tool, that helps me with my basic optimization needs. BUT before we get to any of that here are the steps you need first to set up your first campaign on ZeroPark:
Campaign setup is pretty easy, you simply pick if you want to do domain, pop, or push. In this case, I did Push as I am currently into the push advertising space. It is very cheap and I think a well-established set of users.
Next, you will choose RON, which I tend to start out with as it gives me a huge inventory and all I have to do is start closing outsources and targets as I optimize daily. Even ZeroPark themselves says to start broadly as it gives you the best potential to find your audience.
After that is all done, you then want to create your campaign which is pretty straight forward, if you need a more in-depth guide on managing and setting up you can read ZeroPark guide here.
The only thing you need to do after everything is set up is to ping your ad manager and ask them to approve your creatives/ads. Once that is done, just wait for the data to come in.
I have spent just over 1k to test Zeropark's ad platform and I think it has done very well with the offers I found.
One thing I must say is that turning off sources and targets is definitely an everyday task. This is almost like an everyday thing.
Traffic easily comes in once you start the campaign and it has been approved. So you should either have a tool that helps or you are watching the campaign every hour.
The most important part is to pause underperforming targets and sources. Once you have a solid set of targets, create a whitelist campaign.
As you can see below, I turn off specific targets and sources base on some algorithm I internally have. They're also basic optimization rules to set as well, like base on spending turn off if no conversion.
ZeroPark does have its own optimization section within the campaign to use if you do not have your own tool.
You will probably ask why there are no conversions. I am not a fan of passing the information back to the ad network. Like I stated prior, ZeroPark does have its own internal optimization backend to help turn off traffic, but I rather have that on my end.
Call me old school, nervous, whatever. I just like data to be by itself and traffic to be it's own. If you get what I mean.
Create that White List - Once you have a set of good targets or sources, you can actually replicate that campaign and then set up a whitelist campaign by loading th sources into the new campaign. This way you already have a sure-fire idea that this set of targets and sources are solid prospects.
Day Parting kinda Possible - is a bit difficult because the notification was sent at 8am, but the impressions when they saw it might be 11am, the click might happen at 11am or maybe 2pm. So it does become hard to adjust.
You do know when you received your click but not when the impression was served. So it can be an issue because technically some people will just look at a notification and ignore it till later. I mean I do it all the time.
Creative, Creatives, Creatives - One big thing I think is to generate several creatives as well, ZeroPark allows you 10 creatives per campaign and it is very easy to add them in. This allows you to see which ad creative is performing towards your RON audience and then turn off that is not performing.
With a new clean interface also recently launched, I think ZeroPark has done very well over the past years and is continually growing to make buying traffic easier and transparent to their buyers.
Their team has been super helpful and a very well documented FAQ section as well as making the platform very easy to use. In the end their traffic very solid in my opinion as it does come in fast and you have to keep on your toes on the optimization part.
As more people go online to find what they need, this is the perfect time to start setting up your own Amazon FBA shop and making some serious money.
So, let's jump in! Today, I'll about my experience with these two chrome extensions, how it's revolutionized how I handle product arbitrage for my Amazon FBA, and what I recommend for those of you just starting. I'll also show you how to read and find the right products you need to sell using these two excellent chrome extensions: Buy Bot Pro and Helium 10.
Entering Q4, I wanted to check in on how the past three quarters have been for me doing product arbitrage via Amazon FBA. Since I'm still new to reselling on Amazon FBA, I wrote and did a video on starting online arbitrage from anywhere in the world.
I believe purchasing and using Buy Bot Pro is a great decision that you won't regret your Amazon FBA store.
Why? Simply because it helps let you know what you need to buy or not in real-time. Check out the video above for yourself; it explains things in more detail.
My reason for using Buy Bot Pro wasn't just because of the fantastic stats they boast about, but it is a perfect fit for my online store. With the help of Helium 10, I can easily find the right "supply and demand" scenario to make the best decision.
As you can watch the video (sorry, I was under the weather while doing this), I go through several stats and numbers to decide. The most important is reading the Helium 10 version Keepa graph (Just FYI, Helium 10 is complimentary, while Keepa is now a paid subscription).
Let's check things out and dive into the Keepa graph.
To begin, Helium 10 is just so much nicer. It was an automatic yes with a cleaner, more intuitive interface to read historical data. As you might have guessed, this part is a big deal for potential visitors to convert if they see what they like. With a clean and straightforward interface, I can target potential buyers better, which leads to more conversions.
In the video above, I found that the average looks oddly skewed, with the numbers showing an average of $41.16.The highest product bought was priced at $61.95 that I had listed; the reason was I had no inventory for this item. As it turned out, some sellers who did have this product could hike their price, and people were still buying.
Shortly after this, brick-and-mortar retail shops and online stores received more inventory for this item to resell, leading to a price war in the marketplace. This stock change explains the difference in price on the graph from $61 to $29.
Without doing additional research and selling this product at $37, I would've lost a lot of money here. But this is where Buy Bot Pro comes in to save the day.
By being prompt and giving me up-to-date data on products that I need, this chrome extension makes decisions in no time at all. Armed with the relevant information, I could save so much time scrolling on my own through thousands of products, costing me hours of precious time.
The highlighted part above is the import factor in Buy Bot Pro. It shows the average base on days, which means that you're able to see into the future. Regarding the timelines, what it's priced at now and the price might be later. Basically, giving you superpowers in your decision-making process.
For example, just because an item sells for $37 does not mean it will always sell at that price. With the help of Buy Bot Pro, you know that you are covered and still profitable at the same time.
It takes all the data points visible to you and analyzes them to see if the product is profitable. This decision-making is all done in less than 7 seconds; that's incredible! That is the beauty of Buy Bot Pro; it does all the calculations and lets you know if it is worth your time to purchase.
I always recommend ultimately doing your due diligence and research. Personally, for me, though, it was worth using it. I highly recommend Buy Bot Pro. These chrome extensions have saved me hours of sifting through products, the pains of decision-making, and best of all, their increased conversions, making me more money.
Affiliates all over the world have been known to take advantage of the profitability of sweepstakes for a while. Competition in the field has made it difficult to make money as an affiliate marketer.
However, I have gathered some personal experience tips on how to run a successful sweepstakes campaign.
Sweepstakes are being used by both newbies and veteran specialists. They are beneficial to both groups, and everyone will be able to get offers that work for them. As long as you make a profit when you’re good, of course. I also think it is the easiest of the offers to make profitable.
Affiliates definitely agree that sweepstakes vertical is an easy way of profiting.
Now, there are funnels that don’t require much effort; just fil the fields, leave and Email, and get conversions. However, things aren’t always that simple
There are 4 types of offers:
I will show you some offers from Anstrex Push Spy Tool. It is one of the best ad spy tools I definitely recommend.
SOI and DOI offers will definitely seem simple to get conversions. Advertisers in developed countries just pay for clients’ private data, and that’s it. However, profits with these in developing countries aren’t so high.
Despite GEO, these offers have the lowest vertical payouts. The simpler the action, the lower the payout on its conversion. It is all about the volume and the price of the clicks, you will see affiliates promote traffic via Pop and Push.
These submit offers can range from single field to full fields. Meaning a single email is needed for a conversion or a combination of email, name and phone number.
CC Submit Sweeps are popular everywhere, but getting conversions are complicated. The funnel is also more difficult here; apart from questionnaires, the consumer will need credit card data, where the end-user gets charged.
You could get up to $40 on these offers, especially in tier 1 countries (USA, UK, Australia), despite the high traffic competition.
CC-submit is relatively new in tier 2 and 3 countries. Users here know little about these offers, so you will need to inform someone about the vertical and how profit is made. Also, highlight the safety of the lottery.
IVR offers are quite rare, but they still get conversions nonetheless. Here, your success depends on talk time. You need to maintain discussions for about 3 minutes to convert, and most people find this a bit long. Some of these IVRs are also based on set hours.
All in all, the harder you work in these offers determines the connection quality in different GEOs. You need to ensure that telephone networks perform well, the presence of 24/7 support, the answer waiting time, the connection quality.
Pin Submit is also rather important to sweepstakes vertical. They have funnels with prize lotteries and can be attributed to mobile subscription spheres.
How to promote sweepstakes: The secrets of converting creatives
Every campaign requires hard work on choosing and testing creative variants. However, launching on any traffic source means that you can add up to 10 creatives in a campaign and doing proper split testing.
Spy tools aren’t bad, but you need a great approach. If you want to make a new creative, some ad networks can do that free of charge. Just ask your account manager for the details.
Also, take every fresh perspective you find and rework it. Make some changes, and ensure that your creative looks different. Here are some quick samples from Anstrex spy tool for Push.
Utilizing congratulation winner thought in the ad copy helps with these ads. Allowing the user to think they have gotten something for free or have 'won' something.
Push traffic sources actually do their part to stop methods that have been established for sweepstakes promos. Also, the use of celebrities and shocking headlines is forbidden as well. I personally have been able to make this work without celebrities.
It is important that you translate your landing page into those of the countries you’re targeting. These help conversion, of course. It is pointless to promote something in English to a Portuguese speaking country.
Also, remember that not all European countries are fluent in English. In France, for instance, using English isn’t recommended.
It is even worse in countries with state languages. Switzerland citizens speak German, French, and Italian as well. So, entering this market using English might not be so profitable.
Some affiliates also recommend using a pre-lander. However, I have run sweeps without a lander but I definitely recommend to use a pre lander when it comes to sweeps.
However, note that pre-landing pages are important in tier 2 and 3 countries. In tier 1 countries, these pages can help as well, especially with convincing users of profitability.
With Anstrex it will show you the popular landing pages that are being used, here are some from Anstrex.
You will also need to build a great relationship with your manager. Going over the details of your campaign before launching will save you time and money as well, so make sure to pay attention to metrics such as sources, targeting, an offer and its competitiveness, the number of new subscribers, and more.
Your affiliate manager will help you with what you need to gt setup especially with trying to find the right offers that everyone is running on their network. You also want to try to get some targeting but Anstrex can also give you that information.
Aleksis Zorba: ... Legendary Ian Fernando.
Ian Fernando: Thank you.
Aleksis Zorba: Thank you very much for coming.
Ian Fernando: No, I appreciate it.
Aleksis Zorba: Welcome to our Barcelona studio in here. I would like to start by asking you a bit about the beginning of your career, what's it called career an affiliate marketing. What did you do before you started, and how have you actually got involved?
Ian Fernando: Yes, sure. I think it's one of my favorite stories, and a lot of people actually enjoy it just because it goes from an actual person having a regular job, but for me, I actually had to work three jobs. So I was a customer service representative that night, as a call center. Human resource managers during the day, and then I was also a waiter on the weekends.
Aleksis Zorba: Do you have any time to like sleep?
Ian Fernando: Yes, exactly. So by the time one job finishes, I only have one and a half hour from my human resource job in the day, because it went from like 7:00 to 4:00, and then the next job at the call center started 6:00. So I had traveled from one to another, they're basically both ups and downs. But anyways I was doing that, and now I think to myself you know what I need to figure out how to get rid of at least two jobs, where I have one job.
Aleksis Zorba: Was it not possible to make a living just having one job? Like, let's clarify it, where was it?
Ian Fernando: Yes, so in New Jersey.
Aleksis Zorba: New Jersey.
Ian Fernando: Yes, right. At that time, my parents kicked me out of the house because I didn't want to finish college. And they paid for my first semester in college in Pennsylvania, and since I had a horrible GPA, I was under like suspension or warning for the next semester, so I paid the next semester of that. And then since I got a horrible GPA, they wouldn't accept me back into college.
And then I went to a community college for about two and a half years, and then I got kicked out for fighting. So to myself like nah man, I can't figure out how to be a student or a proper learner, and then I just told my parents I don't want to go back to school. And then that's when they decide hey this is my house, you go to school, or you don't, or you leave, and then I just decided to leave. And then at that point, I was obviously working these three jobs, just to pay for my rent and just to eat for the rest time.
Aleksis Zorba: How old were you by then?
Ian Fernando: I want to say 20-21 years old, because I went to college almost a year after, so yes, 20-21. And then I actually got a good job of getting rid of two and using advantage which is where I became a telecom analyst. And then from there, I actually climbed the ranks of this company from the call center position and basically got to a telecom analyst position.
And that's kind of where I learned all my data hacks and learned about Excel and all that. But at that point, I was like trying to figure out okay if I'm making these figures a year, am I able to do some marketing online to basically place this income? I basically started online by googling how to make money online.
Aleksis Zorba: Why did you want to go online?
Ian Fernando: At that point, the only reason I want to go online is that again the three jobs I had, I didn't figure out any other way to make money on them. So should I get another fourth job? The fourth job, I was like no I don't even have time to sleep. So I just basically googled how to make money online.
But when I did that, I couldn't even afford Wi-Fi or internet in my apartment at that time, so actually stole a Wi-Fi repeater from my store, put on the edge of my apartment and took somebody else's open Wi-Fi or hack or whatever and that's how I was able to get access to the Internet for a small period of time. And then I just turned up Google, and I figured about eBay, and I learned about reselling.
And from reselling, I was like oh man this is great. I'm making a good amount of money. And then I think I was working two jobs at that point, and then I was like how can I get rid of the other job and grow my eBay business. The problem I had is that I couldn't take care of my customers, and the email templates and customer requests to properly service them.
Aleksis Zorba: Was it because you didn't like it?
Ian Fernando: No, it was just the job, right? I couldn't spend the time. So at that point, I googled how to make money online without customers.
Aleksis Zorba: And CPA marketing just showed up?
Ian Fernando: Correct. CPA marketing showed up, and that's when I signed up with one affiliate network. Azul ads, I'm not sure if you know them.
Aleksis Zorba: They're no longer around.
Ian Fernando: Correct, they're no longer around. But they're the one that basically helped me to be; I think they're the first stepping stone for me to become where I am today.
Aleksis Zorba: How long did it take you to reach first 1000 today?
Ian Fernando: Oh, my affiliate management is such a good job, like within 25 days like literally the first month.
Aleksis Zorba: Really? In 45 days?
Ian Fernando: Yes, or less than.
Aleksis Zorba: Right. And what kind of offer is?
Ian Fernando: At that time, it was a long-form tax offer. So it was like four pages, and I think like 13 questions or whatever. And I forgot what the payout was, but it did very well at that time.
Aleksis Zorba: Yes. What was your first traffic source?
Ian Fernando: Google AdWords, because she definitely helped me how to push this offer on Google AdWords.
Aleksis Zorba: So that was sizing today, and some days I'd believe for some ups and downs it usually goes. And to my understanding, that was also completely Whitehead?
Ian Fernando: Correct. But this is also a seasonal offer, so it's only lasted, when is tax season in the U.S March, April.
Aleksis Zorba: You can use March or April.
Ian Fernando: Yes. So three month, two months of earnings that's where I made my I guess big jump.
Aleksis Zorba: So that's how you actually have been introduced to marketing, you never got back to corporate job ever since?
Ian Fernando: No, I haven't been back.
Aleksis Zorba: Right. Tell me then what you do now, and what makes you most of your money?
Ian Fernando: So, right now, I still do affiliate marketing, I still buy traffic.
Aleksis Zorba: You still run campaigns yourself.
Ian Fernando: Yes.
Aleksis Zorba: It's rare nowadays.
Ian Fernando: Yes, for sure. I mean it's obviously not the amount of figures that I've had in the past, but it gets me going. There's a lot of concentration where I'm doing now Amazon FBA, and I just started this year, and I'm already at 4 figure month revenue, and my goal now is to hit the five figures, which I should be able to get there within the next 30, 45 days alright. So affiliate marketing, my blog, and Amazon basically the three things I'm concentrating on.
Aleksis Zorba: And as for Amazon, you started just like this year, right?
Ian Fernando: Yes. February this year I started, and then very much April I hit oh May was the month where I hit about four thousand revenue, so I was actually pretty excited about that one.
Aleksis Zorba: It's called Amazon FBA for those who are not familiar guys, FBA stands for fulfillment by Amazon. And as far as I understand, this model they take care of everything like fulfillment, shipping, customer care all you need to do is like...
Ian Fernando: Ship the product to them.
Aleksis Zorba: Right, and find the right product.
Ian Fernando: Correct, yes. But I'm actually doing grant arbitrage; I'm not doing like a white-label or anything like that. So brand arbitrage is basically saying, I mean it's all the word for it like retail arbitrage.
Aleksis Zorba: Yes, or product arbitrage.
Ian Fernando: Yes, product arbitrage. What you're basically doing is finding this shirt on clearance or whatever for five dollars, and you're selling at the market value for $25.
Aleksis Zorba: How do you do that?
Ian Fernando: I mean there are a lot of stories, especially to the retailer you got to physically go to the store and shop. Or there's online arbitrage where you can just buy the products, and wholesale online or buy clearance items online also.
Aleksis Zorba: So you basically try to find low priced items and the try to sell them.
Ian Fernando: Correct, yes. So the FBA model is a little bit more expensive, just because you're paying for a monthly fee to Amazon, and you're paying I guess the service fees four times as well.
Aleksis Zorba: For each delivery?
Ian Fernando: Yes, correct. So something like this shirt that cost me $5 will probably technically cost me $15, because of the service fees at Amazon puts on, taxes per states wherever it's being delivered.
The monthly fee, and then I'm only making what $10 margin or a $5 margin. But it's worth it for me, because if I did FBM, Amazon FBM which is fulfilled by merchant’s right I have to ship it, I have to take care of the customer.
Aleksis Zorba: Which would be probably even more expensive for you?
Ian Fernando: Correct, it might be yes.
Aleksis Zorba: And time-consuming.
Ian Fernando: Correct, the time value and convenience, correct.
Aleksis Zorba: Cool, that's pretty interesting. How similar is that to traffic arbitrage?
Ian Fernando: The thing is if I started doing Amazon PPC for my arbitrage projects, or buying traffic through Facebook to the product arbitrage that I have, then it works in that way. But there's really no similarity unless it's like buying something for cheap, getting a conversion for a higher price that's pretty much the same model.
Aleksis Zorba: How do you attract traffic, is just run inside Amazon's store?
Ian Fernando: Oh no, they have reported, so I log into reporting almost once a week, and then I use data studio, Google Data studio to filter out what I need to see properly. But Amazon gives you all that information; it's just not like a proper reporting thing because there's just, I don't think they'd concentrate on that at all.
Aleksis Zorba: How does Amazon rank products?
Ian Fernando: Oh, I mean it varies from product title, the popularity of the item. Some items are seasonal like I remember buying like 100 items of this fleece when they're in clearance, and luckily I was able to sell at least a good 80% of it just before March by starting with inventory stuck in there now, all right. But it really varies, I think.
Aleksis Zorba: And how do you increase sales, like if you see that something is selling very well, how do you make it even bigger?
Ian Fernando: Yes. So Amazon will actually tell you this product is doing very well, they recommend a certain amount of items to buyers of that product. So Amazon will give you hey, this is actually on fire on your store, you should buy more of these items. But the problem is certain store doesn't have 80 items; you have to source from multiple areas. And one person might have it for five dollars; another person might have it for seven, so you have to figure out that math. So the issue I'm having now is just the scalability factor, which I'm trying to figure it out.
Aleksis Zorba: And how do you find the right product? How do you test in another way?
Ian Fernando: Yes, that's a very time-consuming thing. So I do have a VA, all he does is looks at websites all day.
Aleksis Zorba: Virtual assistant, right?
Ian Fernando: Virtual assistant, yes. And there's a scoreboard that I use or a Google sheet that I use on how to score a product. So what he does it's he'll find something on like Newegg.com, search the title in Amazon and then I have a tool that I have like Helium 10 or Bibot Pro, and then it tells me the actual ranking of the product.
Aleksis Zorba: How likely that it will be ranked?
Ian Fernando: If it's ranked in the millions it'll be hard to sell, but I only pick a specific rank that I use, and that's the only time where he'll recommend me that product. If he recommends me that product, then I'll go ahead and buy as much as I can and store.
Aleksis Zorba: And just started actually testing it, you first have to invest by certain amounts of items, ship them to Amazon, and that's how you start testing.
Ian Fernando: So I basically buy just like five items to see if it will move, and if Amazon decides to tell me or recommend to me hey, you should buy 25 of these, then that's when I'll go ahead and buy more.
Aleksis Zorba: What niches are kind of most attractive in your experience?
Ian Fernando: Why not I do a lot of like clothing and toys. Some electronic, like some of the third party brand products in electronics, those are basically the three areas I've been on or that I've been selling.
Aleksis Zorba: What wouldn't you recommend to go to for what niche? I think the more competitive they are, the harder they become.
Ian Fernando: Yes, I mean, I don't even know just because I haven't touched every niche, right? So I've only focused on like toys, electronics, clothes, books. What I probably can recommend is not to buy everything that's discounted, and because what's happening is what I see happening is that people that are learning in Amazon, they're doing the same things as what I'm doing, but they're also buying everything at discounted.
So what you think started discounting on Amazon, you'll have another eighty people doing the same thing, and you're competing against them. And by the time you ship it and they ship it, you're again competing at pricing wars. So if you lower your price, you lower your price.
She’ll lower her price, and now you're like oh you're not making enough profit anymore. Because what you thought you're going to sell for $25, you're now sign it for like $7 because the person in the group of people of stores just wants to make a dollar, or move that inventory, so you go through this price war challenge.
Aleksis Zorba: Alright. How much capital do you think one should need to try to enter this model?
Ian Fernando: It literally only take, let's see it's $50 a month for Amazon, and then to buy the inventory I think you only need like less than $500 all right if you can buy things discounted.
Aleksis Zorba: Any other expenses?
Ian Fernando: The other expenses is Amazon; you don't do any Merch because Amazon takes care of it.
Aleksis Zorba: You don't need any creators [Inaudible]
Ian Fernando: Nothing, yes. Since this item is already listed, all I got to do is just ship it to them. So whoever listed this item for before me, have control of that listing. So all I have to do is just send the inventory. So it just takes like probably 300 dollars of your money, finds products, time, and that's really it.
Aleksis Zorba: Are you already profitable, or break-even?
Ian Fernando: Yes, I'm already profitable; I was already profitable. Oh, in the beginning, I wasn't profitable, because I purposely wanted to lose money just so I could learn the process.
Aleksis Zorba: Interesting.
Ian Fernando: I'm more of a guy that when I heard about it in AWA Bangkok, or affiliate world Asia, Bangkok two years ago or last year. I was interested, so I was like let me try it. I literally went spend my time on YouTube for almost a week or two weeks, and then I was like you know what I'm going to do this, let me try it.
And then all I did was source things around the house, went to stores, buy stuff, and I already knew in my head I was going to lose money, but I just wanted to feel out the process of how to do it within Amazon, what do I click, is there anything else I have to learn.
Aleksis Zorba: To get your hands dirty.
Ian Fernando: Yes, exactly. I'm more of a person that let me fall in the mud; let me clean myself later before I can jump over the mud.
Aleksis Zorba: Alright and how long did it take you to just get things going?
Ian Fernando: Really within the same week, a week. So after two weeks of watching videos, a week of probable sourcing and another week of figuring out Amazon, and then I was like oh I finally got my first check which is two weeks later from the first initial buy, I thought to myself this is easy then.
Aleksis Zorba: Is that like your conscious decision to make this transition to more kind of e-commerce from CPA marketing?
Ian Fernando: Yes, correct. So this is the reason why I started Amazon because traffic sources come and go, offers are up and down. The stability of traffic and conversions are just like never consistent. So at least I feel like with Amazon and everybody moving to eCommerce, that I can utilize Amazon's huge volume of buyers, and just send a mandatory and hopefully I go in that direction. But I think I'll still be an affiliate, because every time I do something I always move back to being an affiliate, I always fall back to become an affiliate for some reason, so we'll see.
Aleksis Zorba: Do you consider yourself an affiliate or an entrepreneur?
Ian Fernando: What I think is I'm just an online marketer. What I thought before was that I was an entrepreneur, but then when I sold my company, and made projects, and made things like software's I didn't see myself as an entrepreneur, because I realized that all I'm doing is just trying to make money. I'm not trying to change your experience, his experience, the world.
Aleksis Zorba: That's why you started to write your blog?
Ian Fernando: Well I wrote on my blog when I first started just to keep tabs on myself, and I'm focusing on my blog now just so I can rebuild up my brand in the marketing space. Even though I've been in it for so long, but the blog makes money in itself.
Aleksis Zorba: Do you write it for money, or not only or not at all?
Ian Fernando: I don't write for money on it, it's more like experiences. If somebody wants to do a post on it, yes I mean I'll ask for a fee for sure. But there's no money-focused driven model behind my blog at all. And it's the reason why I don't think I am an entrepreneur because I'm really not changing the world.
Aleksis Zorba: Do you want to? That is an important question.
Ian Fernando: I'm going through this weird phase in my life now, where I'm like do I want to be a mind-boggling changer of the world, or do I want people to remember me twenty years from now, and I'm like it's okay I guess, but I'm not sure, all right.
So before I was definitely all about it, where I want to build a school in the Philippines, and now I'm just such in a minimalistic mind why I said that. It doesn't really affect me if I do or do not, so it's kind of a battle that I'm currently having.
Aleksis Zorba: Was reading a page about you in Facebook, like about you section.
Ian Fernando: Was it good?
Aleksis Zorba: Yes, I enjoyed that. And you were talking about your calling, whether affiliate marketing is your calling or not, something like that I what I wanted to ask you. What is your calling now?
Ian Fernando: Man, it goes back to the other question like I don't know right. I'm trying to figure out what is my end goal, will I be a traveler for the rest of my life and just bounce around, or will actually have a home to stay, and just actually work on the business. Will I create a software company as I've done in the past? I don't know; I just let the world take me where it needs to take me.
Aleksis Zorba: So you're in this phase of figuring out?
Ian Fernando: Yes, I'm in this phase of figuring it out, yes. Because being in the game for so long, you kind of realize that it's not about the money anymore. I was explaining to somebody at AWA and a rooftop party. And this guy was like I can't wait to be like you, I want to make my first M.
And I'm like no you don't want to make your first million, it's pointless to make your first million, I mean he asked me why and I was like well I'm more of a lifestyle affiliate, I just want to make money just to live a life that I want. I'm not all about the cash flow life style anymore.
Aleksis Zorba: Are you a big spender?
Ian Fernando: I used to be. I used to have like four cars, crazy-ass watches.
Aleksis Zorba: Four cars?
Ian Fernando: Yes and I mean, and then now I travel with just a carry-on. And I feel free, I feel not so heavy, and that's kind of like living in the life that I think I want to go towards, in which I think I'm doing.
Aleksis Zorba: Now you have been in the business for more than 12 years, 15 years, I mean if you are still here, it clearly indicates that you like it. What do you like the most about online marketing, affiliate marketing?
Ian Fernando: I actually like the fact that it gets me the time.
Aleksis Zorba: Time to live?
Ian Fernando: Yes, just time. Time to just travel, or time to just pick up and go to the beach I mean it gives me the freedom. I mean if I had a nine-to-five, would I be happy if I'm doing affiliate marketing nine-to-five? I'm not sure because I have a certain routine that I do during my day.
I can't sit in front of my computer for nine hours a day, and an hour lunch break. So even though I'm an affiliate, would I be happy with a nine-to-five as an affiliate? Probably not. I'm happy doing what I'm doing, X amount of money or X amount of time on a campaign, that's what gives me the convenience and time which I appreciate a lot.
Aleksis Zorba: If you had to learn affiliate marketing from scratch, how would you act nowadays in 2019, where do you go?
Ian Fernando: Difficult question I think to ask because I'm the type of person that likes to trip and fall and figure out why I tripped and fall. And when I first started, there were no affiliate markers or mentors that are affiliate marketers.
So it's kind of hard because I can only talk based on my experience, right. I would watch YouTube a lot, and then do it yourself right. Understand that you'll lose a hundred dollars, and realize that you're losing a hundred dollars; you're not going to be profitable from those hundred dollars.
Aleksis Zorba: Do you believe it is useful to watch people talking about affiliate marketing?
Ian Fernando: Yes, I agree I totally 100% agree because I learn a lot from YouTube, all right. But the thing is you also have to find out okay is this person authentic enough, that whatever they're talking is real.
I also speak Russian... Watch in Russian.
