Attila: Hey, Ian, how's it going, buddy?

Ian: How are you doing?

Attila: I'm good. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much for doing this quick bite-sized interview. We really appreciate your time. I know you're a super busy guy and everything, so it's an honor to have such an OG in the space on the show.

Ian: Thank you, bro. Thank you for having me for sure.

Attila: So what we want to do is we have a couple of questions and after we finish the questions, we have a fun game in the end, the rules with the game are simple. You're going to have to name 20 different cryptos because the person that can name the most cryptos in 20 seconds will be entered to win some kind of special prize that we're going to announce later. So anyways, so ready to start.

Ian: Okay. Hopefully it's Bitcoin.

Attila: Yeah, that'd be the best, right?

Ian: Yeah. That's good.

Attila: Alright. So the first question is why do you think lead gen is the future of performance marketing?

Ian: Well I think everybody needs leads. Even when I first started online my first success was from lead gen. Agencies need leads, car dealership needs leads. We're going from now local businesses, physical business to online. Roof gutter, people need leads. Everybody just needs more data, more information. And as you know, Facebook has all the data and businesses need data. So they need leads for customers and to run their businesses, especially offline business specifically.

Attila: Absolutely true. I mean, I certainly agree. And we agree that lead gen is the future just because it's something that is always going to be around. I mean, I believe that it's the most evergreen vertical there is because businesses, they all want to make money. So that's true. You're right. Absolutely. Now there's something crazy going on. And this brings my second question. CPA rates are going through the roof, so it's more important than ever to have a high payout offer, which Geos, which countries do you feel have the highest potential for profit?

Ian:  I think like Southeast Asia since I've been living there and I block traffic there, I think they have the highest CPAs and payouts there just because it's just upcoming. And now, since I've also lived in Columbia and in Latin America, I feel like there are offers here that are also surpassing in CPAs as well. Plus the fact that the traffic is cheap in these countries makes it even much more possible for your cost. So I think for me, it was always Southeast Asia. And now since I've been traveling Latin America, I feel like they do also have the high CP offers, just because you can compete with low CPCs here.

Attila: I personally agree and I think that tier one Geos are not the best opportunity for affiliates. What do you think about that?

Ian: Yeah, I agree. But at the end of the day, if you can find a cheapest traffic and your EPCs are decent, it's okay. But tier one, like Google and Facebook for sure. But you have traffic sources like native that are just upcoming out and just get much, much more popular.

Attila: Absolutely. Now there's something really crazy going on and it's about Facebook ads. There has been a lot of Exodus of people, advertisers, marketers, leaving Facebook and Facebook noticed because when you log into business manager, they have a notice that says something like, sorry, we know we screwed up, we're working hard to fix this because of the iOS 14 update. Like, I don't know if that's an excuse or what, but what do you think is going to be the best traffic source for affiliate marketers in the future in 2022?

Ian: What I'm seeing right now is I think we're going back to when I first started in affiliate marketing where you buy media at a CPC level. And I think like I just mentioned in the last question is native ad is getting much, much more popular because it is super simple. All you're doing is filtering things out, just like how you did with Google back in the day and how you did with Facebook back in the day with CPCs and categorized and all that stuff. 

So native, I feel like it's been popular, but I think it's getting much, much more popular as well and upcoming months and probably even years, because it's just super simple, all you're doing is paying for CPCs and only numbers you care about are CPC, EPCs at the end of the day. Even me, I started getting programmatic just because I just got to buy banner from a bunch of DSPs, all that stuff. It's just at a CPC level. But I think native or any type of CPC platform is beneficial nowadays.

Attila: I agree, native is so good. And if we use a spy tool, like adplexity spy tool, we see a whole lot of affiliate offers, especially crypto. I'm seeing a lot of crypto and native. And I was wondering which ones are your favorite native traffic sources for crypto and affiliate offers?

Ian: For me, it's probably mostly like [05:34 inaudibe], tabula. Mercon definitely has more volume, but a lot of more crappier widget. Tabula definitely has direct access to MSN as well too. So I think those are pretty good, but obviously there are other smaller third party native platform like run native, astero. You can always run on those, but if you want volume and quality, I feel like tabula for me is the best then maybe [06:00 inaudible] then rev content and then everybody else.

Attila: Right. I mean, I actually think the same and I believe that you have the order right, like it seems like [06:11 inaudible] and tabula are the top and then followed by rev content and then MGID and all the other.

Ian: MGID is really good for international, like international MGID is really good. I think.

Attila: Yeah. Like these four is all the affiliate needs. Like there are some other ones like adnow I believe that's also a native platform.

Ian: Yeah, there's adnow, there's rawnative. There's content ads.

Attila: Oh yeah content.ad, that used to be really good in the past, but it seems like it changed. What do you think?

Ian: Yeah, so they had good contextual ads back in the day. Now the native ads. I don't know. They're okay. I mean, they need to update their interface first of all. I don't like their backend interface. And the quality widgets, I think it is where they're being displayed is an issue on their network. I think they're competing with the boom [07:05 inaudible]. Well, I think Content ads are just the arbitrage websites, but we'll see in quality over time.

Attila: Right. So another thing is, affiliates are probably dying to get a really killer tip from such a legendary, super affiliate like yourself. What's one tip that you have for affiliate marketers that would really help them make more money with their campaigns.

Ian: I think synchronizing websites and content on affiliate sites. I've been recently getting to more like affiliate minded websites. And this way I can create related posts on those pages. And the best part is you can add aggressive pages on these related posts and put like, oh, Trump XX did this with this new [07:58 inaudible] card or whatever, and then tag it in your WordPress and then have it pop up on a second or third engagement. 

And then that would be your aggressive seller, which then avoids most of your issues with your ad approvals. So this way, when people are engaging and see it, and you just have a tag on it to show the second or third engagement pages, then you have your aggressive page, for selling of any [08:27 inaudible] offer.

Attila: Holy cow, dude. That's like cloaking version 2.0. You're cloaking based on engagement. Nice. I'm very sure that affiliates are going to love that one, because that's a really golden tip. So thank you so much for sharing that one. Now for the final question or the final discussion. We're running a really fun competition here at Byte size. And what we're doing is we're asking all of our guests to say  as many cryptos in 20 seconds as they can. So if you're ready, I'm going to open the timer. You have 20 seconds to say as many as you can. Let me just open the stopwatch real quick.

Ian: You got Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cast, Dogecoin, Shiba, Monera, Stellar, ADA, Cardano, hubcoin. What else? EOS, Stellar, Zcash, Monera, litecoin.

Attila: Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Time's up?

Ian: I think I said double time. I think.

Attila:  We're going to count it. And then we're going to put you up on the scoreboard.

Ian: There's a scoreboard?

Attila: Of course. I mean, this is serious. You're going to need something nice or whoever manages to say the most cryptos. Ian, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. We know that you're busy. You have a lot of campaigns to attend to and all the ladies in Columbia. 

Ian: I'm actually in Brazil right now. 

Attila: What? I thought you were in Colombia. That's why the internet quality is so bad.

Ian: I was there just last month and then now my visa ran so now I'm in Brazil.

Attila: So, oh, I see. So you moved on from the Columbian ladies to the Brazilian lady?

Ian: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Attila: Yeah. That's the affiliate life. That's the affiliate life, living it since, when did you start?

Ian: Oh man like 2000 something, like almost 16 years ago. 

Attila: Yeah. You're a real OG. So thanks so much again for taking this time and we really appreciate it and hope you win.

Ian: Yeah, thank you for having me. Hopefully the information that I gave was useful for you guys and yeah, anytime.

Attila: Have a nice day.