Whats Working in 2019 PDF

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WHAT’S WORKING IN AFFILIATE MARKETING 2019
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The insights provided by each individual affiliate or company

representative are their respective opinions. The reader is solely
responsible for deciding whether or not to act on the advice
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Table Of Contents
Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Introduction & Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Before Reading This Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Bird’s Eye View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Intel From Spy Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Adplexity, Alex Om, CMO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Analyzed.ai, ‘desteny’ on STM, Owner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Idvert.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Insights from Affiliates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Jason Akatiff (‘Smaxor’ on STM), Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

John Alanis (‘johna5150’ on STM), Email Marketer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Besmir Bregasi (‘bbrock32’ on STM), STM Co-Founder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Taiwo Balogun (‘cashmoneyaffiliate’ on STM), Affiliate and Blogger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Maor Benaim (‘maorbn’ on STM), Super-Affiliate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Dmitry Braun (‘mrbraun’ on STM), Affiliate, STM Moderator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
JEd Cabanero (‘jennatalia’ on STM), Affiliate turned Entrepreneur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Matej Cechvala (‘matuloo’ on STM), STM Moderator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Amy Cheung (‘vortex’ on STM), STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Emanuel Cinca (‘manu_adefy’ on STM), Founder of Adefy.com and WTAff.co. . . . . . . . 46
John Crestani (‘johnaff’ on STM), Affiliate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Brent Dunn, Affiliate and SEO Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Ian Fernando (‘ianternet’ on STM), Online Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Erik Gyepes (‘erikgyepes’ on STM), Affiliate, STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
IAmAttila (‘iamattila’ on STM), Super Affiliate & Serial Entrepeneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Paul Jey (‘synapse’ on STM), Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Tim Konijn (‘stickupkid’ on STM), Affiliate, STM Moderator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Angus Kong (‘anguschkong’ on STM), Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Danilo Lee, Founder of InjuryCaseWorth.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Josh Mayne (‘maynzie’ on STM), High Hopes Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Mitesh Muley (‘miteshmuley’ on STM), Affiliate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Kulwant Nagi (‘kulwantnagi’ on STM), Blogger and Affiliate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Charles Ngo (‘dr_ngo’ on STM), Super-Affiliate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Andrew Payne (‘Mr Payne’ on STM), Affiliate and Agency Owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Sebastian R (‘twinaxe’ on STM), Long-Time Affiliate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
‘RubyTunes’ (on STM), STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Kelly Sheffield (‘thedudeabides’ on STM), Affiliate and STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Servando Silva (‘servandosilva’ on STM), Affiliate and Blogger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Christina Szekeres (‘imqueen’ on STM), Affiliate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Yi Hao Ten (‘adsflo’ on STM), Internet Marketer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Insights From Ecommerce Experts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Dee Deng, CEO of Right Hook Digital. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Timotej Gracner (‘wakeboarder’ on STM), Founder of Adnalytics.io . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Zack Franklin (‘Zack’ on STM), CEO of AMZKungfu Inc., STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
IAmAttila (‘iamattila’ on STM), Super Affiliate & Serial Entrepeneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Angus Kong (‘anguschkong’ on STM), Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Depesh Mandalia (‘Depesh Mandalia’ on STM), Ecom Veteran. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Dim Niko (‘dimniko’ on STM), Director of DimNiko.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
‘Pekadis’ (on STM), Ecom Expert, STM Moderator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Ace Reddy, Ecommerce Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Jenia “Jay” Yakovlev (‘JayLev’ on STM), Entrepreneur & Digital Marketing Expert . . . . . . 119
Insights From SEO Experts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Brent Dunn, Affiliate and SEO Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Greg Morrison (‘GregMorrison’ on STM), SEO Expert and Coach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Matthew Woodward, SEO Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Insights From Traffic Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Adcash, Antoine Padavani, Head of Demand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Adskeeper, Sergii Chalap, Native Advertising Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Exoclick, Evan Zirdelis, Sales and Ad Operations Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
EZMob, Shai Weinreb, Head of Push Marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Megapush, Sergey Konrad, Marketing Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Plugrush, Jørgen Bogetveit, CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
PopCash, Radu Burcheci, CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Revcontent, Sharon Lyon, VP of Sales and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

RichPush, Igor Pavlov, Head of Marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Toro Advertising, Beatriz González, Business Developer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Traffic Factory, Deborah Ferren, Project Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Traffic Junky, Steve F., Marketing Coordinator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Traffic Stars, Peter Rabenseifner, CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Zeropark, Neill David Burton, Head of Account Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Insights from Affiliate Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Adcombo, Constantine Gor, CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Addiliate, Christoph Brughmans, Co-Founder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Affiliaxe, Oran Furman, Senior Affiliate Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Aragon Advertising, Brian Schwartz, Director of Network Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Brokerbabe & Glize, Stefan Muelbaur, Co-Founder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Clickdealer, Henry Whitfield, Global Head of Supply. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Jumbleberry, Fred Jean-Bart, Affiliate Manager Team Lead. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Leadbit, Egor Bruskin, Founder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Magic Hygeia, Kay Chiu, PM Director & Operation Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Maxbounty, Brody Curtis, Senior Affiliate Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Monetizer.com and Advertizer.com, Vincent Shilberg, MD Germany. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Mundo Media, Mike Semira, VP Supply Sales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Topoffers, Evgeny Fedorchenko, COO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Yeahmobi, Katherine Su, Director of Aggregated Traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
The Game-Over Zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
The Zone of Decliners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
The Zone of Returners. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
The Safe Harbor Zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
The Growth Zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Trends in 2019. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
And That’s a Wrap!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Next Step. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Affiliate Marketing Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Introduction & Dedication
Every year for the several years before year 2018, STM Forum
Administrator Hugh Hancock, known on the forums as “caurmen”, would
put together a “What’s Working in 2019” post. And it would always receive
lots of “Thanks” from members.
He was the ideal person to write such a post, as he not only had extensive
experience in affiliate marketing, but also spoke with many people in the
industry on a regular basis - online as well as at conferences and local
meetups - which had kept him up-to-date on the current pulse of the
affiliate marketing industry.
Unfortunately for both STM and the rest of the world, our beloved Hugh
passed away suddenly in February last year - as he was about to attend
an STM meetup in London.
So, with Hugh gone, we decided to take up the task of writing the “What’s
Working” content last year (2018) – in his honor.
Moreover, instead of just making a post in the forum, we made it bigger

and better:
We interviewed the top experts in the affiliate marketing industry to

ask them “what’s working in affiliate marketing this year?”
We compiled all the feedback to produce a PDF report with over 130
pages.
We distributed the report free-of-charge to everyone.
The report received close to 10k downloads in 6 months!
Due to the massive popularity, we’ve decided to publish another report

for this year (2019).
And, in this year’s report, we’ve added sections for feedback from
Ecommerce Experts and SEO Experts. Many affiliates have expanded
their businesses from just running paid traffic to traditional CPA offers to
include these areas, so we’ve expanded our report to suit your needs.
We at STM would like to dedicate this report to Hugh Hancock. If you did
not have the good fortune of having met or known him, you can find out
more about Hugh in the following tributes:
In Memory of Caurmen - Tribute by Lorenzo (MrGreen), STM Co-Founder

Machinima founder and VR developer Hugh Hancock has passed away
In Memoriam: Hugh Hancock
On Hugh
We know Hugh would be proud and appreciative of everyone that has

contributed to the making of this report.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has

submitted insightful answers to our interview questions. So many
individuals have taken valuable time out of their extremely-busy
schedules to contribute to this project, when they could be spending that
time to add more zeroes to their businesses. Words cannot convey our
appreciation for your support.
Last but certainly not least, we would like to sincerely thank YOU – our
dear reader - as your taking the time to read and benefit from this report
is what will give it life and value.
Enjoy the rest of this report!
With Much Appreciation,
Amy and Matej,

Senior STM Moderators
(P.S. As thanks for showing interest in this report,
here is a coupon code for 20% off 1st month’s subscription
to our forum: STMWW2019.)
Before Reading This Report
We know you must be eager to get started, but we need to quickly cover 2
things that will help you to better understand the report.
#1)Main Sections
This report is organized into 6 main sections:
a)Intel from Spy Tools

b)Insights From Top Affiliates
c)Insights From Ecommerce Experts
d)Insights From SEO Experts
e)Insights From Traffic Networks
f)Insights From Affiliate Networks
In each section, replies are ordered by the starting alphabet of either the
individual’s last name (or forum username if their full name is not made
available), or the name of the affiliate/traffic network they represent.
#2)Long vs. Short Questions
We sent out a different set of questions to each group of experts. Because

the questions are long, we will not be including them with each set of
answers.
Instead, we will be replacing each long question with a much shorter form of
the question. For example, this long question:
“ 1. Please briefly introduce yourself: Where are you from, how long have you
been in affiliate marketing, which offer vertical(s) and traffic type(s) do you
mainly focus on?”
Will be replaced by just:

“1. Self-intro”
For your reference, below are the questions that were sent to the contributing
parties, and the corresponding shortened versions.
Questions for Top Affiliates:
1. Please briefly introduce yourself: Where are you from, how long have you
been in affiliate marketing, which offer vertical(s) and traffic type(s) do you
mainly focus on? (Short: Self-intro)
2. When you compare your campaigns in 2019 to those you run in 2018, do you
see any major differences? Did you have to change focus to different traffic
type(s) or vertical(s)? (Short: Changes in traffic types / verticals from last
year?)
3. Black Hat vs. White Hat as promotion strategy – which would you
recommend and why? (Short: Blackhat vs. Whitehat?)
4. Please predict for 2019: Which offer verticals are thriving or dying? Which
traffic types are thriving or dying? (Short: Which traffic types / verticals are
thriving/dying?)
5. If you were just starting in 2019, but had all the knowledge you do now, which
traffic source/type and vertical/offer-type would you focus on? (Please name
one of each.) (Short: Which traffic source/type and vertical if starting this
year?)
Questions for Ecommerce Experts:
1)Please briefly introduce yourself: Where are you from and how long have
you been doing ecommerce? (Short: Self-intro)
2)What tips do you have on how to choose a niche, and also specific
products? (Short: How to choose niche + products?)
3)What tips do you have on how to acquire customers? i.e. What are the most
effective advertising channels, and how to run ads (targeting, creatives,
etc.)? (Short: How to acquire customers?)
4)What tips do you have on how to maximize the life-time value of each
customer? (Short: How to maximize LTV?)
5)What are some of the main factors you feel are responsible for your success
in ecom? (Short: Factors for your success?)
6)What is the best practical advice you would give to ecom newbies? (Short:
Advice for newbies?)
Questions for SEO Experts:
1)Please briefly introduce yourself: Where are you from and how long have
you been doing SEO? (Short: Self-intro)
2)In your opinion, has ranking sites on Google gotten harder or easier in recent
months? What has changed? (Short: Easier/harder to rank in Google?)
3)How to choose good niches to build SEO sites for? (Short: How to choose
niches?)
4)Some of your best tips for on-page SEO? (Short: On-page SEO tips?)
5)Please share some of the most effective backlink strategies? (Short: Best
backlink strategies?)
6)How to avoid being penalized by Google? (Short: How to avoid Google

penalties?)
Questions for Traffic Sources:
1. Please tell us how long you have been in the business of selling traffic and
what traffic type you focus on? (Short: Self-intro)
2. On your network, do you see certain ad formats with expanding/shrinking

volumes? Would you say CPM/CPC prices are going up/down or remaining
stable in general? (Short: Expanding/shrinking ad formats? Traffic prices
going up/down?)
3. In 2018, Google announced stricter rules known as the “better ads initiative”.
Did this affect your network? (For example, some networks have tightened
their advertising rules.) How do you think this has affected the affiliate
marketing space in general? (Short: Did Google’s better ads initiative affect
you?)
4. In terms of offers and verticals, did you see any significant changes during
the past few months? What are the most-promoted offer types on your
network so far in 2019? (Short: Changes in verticals? Most-promoted
verticals?)
5. Push notification traffic seems to be next big thing. Do you offer this format
and what’s your take on it? Will it last for a while or do you expect it to get
regulated in some way, due to excessive messaging abuse? (Short: Views on
push traffic?)
6. For 2019, do you foresee any ground-breaking changes in the traffic

business or are you expecting a year of “same old”? Any tips for the readers
in terms of what they should focus on in 2019 to grow their affiliate marketing
profits? (Short: Changes for current year? Tips?)
Questions for Affiliate Networks:
1. Please very briefly introduce your network: What are your main offer verticals
and how long have you been in business? (Short: Self-intro?)
2. In the 2018 report, most participants confirmed that the death of mobile
subscription offers was imminent. Based on your network’s stats for carrier-
billing offers, has this prediction come true? (Short: Are carrier-billing offers
dead?)
3. What offer verticals do you see performing the best with mobile traffic?
Do these verticals perform differently for 3G vs. Wifi, or similar? (Short: Best
verticals for mobile? Performance on 3G vs. Wifi?)
4. Are there verticals you feel are on their way out (e.g. carrier billing offers
in 2018)? Are there ones you feel are gaining traction? (Short: Rising and
declining verticals?)
5. Are there any verticals or offer types that have been stable and lucrative,
that you predict will remain so into the future? (Short: Stable and lucrative
verticals?)
6. And Black Hat vs. White Hat as promotion strategy – which would you
recommend and why? (Short: Blackhat vs. whitehat?)
Questions for Spy Tool Owners:
Because each spy tool is different, no specific questions were sent, except
“we’re creating a report on What’s Working in 2018 - please contribute any intel
that you feel would benefit our readers - offer verticals, geos, angles, etc.”
Bird’s Eye View
In the remainder of the report, you will see detailed comments from the
best individuals in the industry.
However, we thought it would help to provide an overview first, in graphical

form, on what - according to parties we’ve interviewed - are the best

traffic types and verticals.
Every positive comment we see in their replies, directed at a specific traffic

type or vertical, is recorded as one vote towards that traffic type or vertical.
The graphs below are a summary of categories that received the most
votes.
(Disclaimer: What qualifies as a “positive comment” is subject to our

personal interpretation. Thus, the graphs below are only approximations/
estimates, and should be treated as such.)
Note 1: Input from traffic networks is excluded to keep this graph as

unbiased as possible.
Note 2: Feedback from SEO experts is not considered as votes for SEO traffic.
Note 1: Input from affiliate networks is excluded to keep this graph as

unbiased as possible.
Note 2: Feedback from Ecom Experts is not considered as votes for the
ecommerce vertical.
Note 3: “Dating” includes mainstream and adult dating. “Finance” includes

debt and insurance, “Men” includes male enhancement, erectile dysfunction
and muscle. “Gambling” includes casino and sports betting.
Intel From Spy Tools
Adplexity, Alex Om, CMO
Websites:
Adplexity Native, Adplexity Mobile, Adplexity Desktop, Adplexity Adult
Ad formats
Native Ads and Push Notifications ads are set to dominate in the coming
year.
Native
Native advertising has been effective for affiliate marketers in the past,
and will remain an important asset in 2019. We should expect some
improvements on the tech side, and better opportunities for ad targeting.
Native ads let you access your target audience on numerous websites
and ‘find’ the users that can’t be reached via Facebook or other means of
advertising. But at the same time, moderation will become tougher. Only
high-quality, unique content for specific audiences will bring in results.
Push
Push notification proved itself to be a straightforward format, suitable

for new affiliates with low budgets. Despite the drop in traffic quality and
increase in price, push notification will still remain one of the top formats
in 2019. It’s especially effective for those who have collected their own
databases and aim to deliver the most relevant content and offers to their
specific audience. It is a really good trending format, but huge competition
and possible regulation will come to limit its effectiveness in the near future.
But again, now is the best time for push ads. You’re better off jumping on
the train now, rather than risking missing out.
Facebook
Facebook is growing.
Mobile Video Ads are performing well here, as more and more people
choose to watch videos rather than read something. Facebook
promoted the video format in all their placements in 2018, and will
enforce it in 2019. So we can expect to see even more high-quality
content this year.
Influencer Marketing
The rise of influencer marketing has been tremendous. These people are
not celebrities. They are real people endorsing products and services
based on their own real experiences. Interest in influencer marketing
has grown considerably over the past few years.
Pop and Display
These remain popular, especially on mobile. It’s easy and fairly cheap
to join. If you hustle, you can be making xx-xxx/day in profits within a few
weeks or months. But it’s quite saturated nowadays, campaigns don’t
stay profitable very long, and there’s more and more bot traffic.
Offer Verticals
Evergreen verticals like dating, gambling, sweepstakes, nutra and

finance are still going to be around. But affiliates will have to be more
creative in building their funnels. Just make sure you stand out from the
crowd.
Another trend is the growth of the ecommerce space. More and more
affiliates are engaging in dropshipping, or running COD offers.
Analyzed.ai, ‘desteny’ on STM, Owner
Websites: Analyzed.ai
Whitehat and eCommerce

There is an increasing number of ecommerce and whitehat offers that we

see on Facebook. Most of the ads that have been successful and visibly
scaled on Facebook, focused on either a product listicle or contained a very
distinguishable product. We see less simple ecommerce products that
are available on AliExpress and more of unique products available through
exclusive whitehat affiliate networks. Most of such ads are run in Q4 of the
year and there are definitely less ecommerce offers being run in January-
June.
Blackhat – Diet and Skin
The biggest visible shift was Facebook‘s algorithms being able to detect
blackhat ads easier. We see that successful blackhat ads are now less
distinguishable from whitehat diet and skin ads. The words used are no
longer as aggressive and affiliates focus more on image quality to achieve
higher CTR rather than ad text. Going forward, blackhat ads will be less
and less aggressive given Facebook‘s ability to improve its AI for blackhat
detection.
Keto diet products have been popular in the US and Europe and affiliates
who are able to jump on general diet and food choice trends have been
very successful.
Blackhat - Financial
Perhaps the largest blackhat vertical are financial and crypto-currency

offers. We see these being run across the globe from small Eastern
European countries to United States.
There were expectations that crypto offers would perish along with the fall
of the cryptocurrency market-cap, however, this did not hold true. It seems
that many affiliates are still having successful campaigns with financial
offers, however, the landing pages used are now more sophisticated and
angles used are unique. Technical setups are also far more advanced and
we no longer see any amateur cloaking methods used which used to work in
the past.
Idvert.com
Websites: Idvert.com
Black Hat
Geo Distribution: Extending from tier1 countries to South-east Asian

countries and to the rest of the world.
Sales Mode: Compared to the traditional free-trial sales mode, now

straight-sale is getting more popular.
White Hat
GEO distribution: COD and shopify beginning to extend from South-east

Asian countries to tier1 countries. European countries such as IT, DE, etc. are
also beginning to adopt the COD shopping mode.
Sales Mode: Shopify and COD sales used to be made via dropshipping, but
nowadays the influencers/KOL approach is being adopted more to generate
sales.
Insights from Affiliates
Jason Akatiff (‘Smaxor’ on STM), Entrepreneur
Website: JasonAkatiff.com
1)Self-intro
Jason Akatiff, San Diego, California. I started in Affiliate Marketing in 2003. I

run traffic to around 100 verticals and used all the main traffic sources. Over
the years I’ve driven traffic with Facebook, Google, Display, DSP, Native, Pops
and the list goes on.
2)Changes in traffic types / verticals from last year?
In the last year or so we’ve been focused heavily on Facebook ads. So far
for the first of 2019 it’s been a rocky road on the Ecommerce side for FB ads.
However all our financial newsletter stuff is doing quite well on Facebook.
Snapchat people keep talking about, but the audience is just small in
comparison to Google or Facebook. I think Google will be a lot of the focus
this year as Facebook continues to have rapid increases in prices and
conversion unpredictability due to all their data issues.
3)Blackhat vs. Whitehat?
I’d always recommend as close to white as possible, as channels are getting

better and better with AI every year. Is it still possible to beat the system? Of
course. But that cat and mouse game is going to continue to get harder. And
when you are successful at it, it will need to be massively profitable. Which
unfortunately, a lot of times, means stealing from people. Not creating value.
4)Which traffic types / verticals are thriving/dying?
All the talk of the town has been CBD. As legalization continues to press
forward I think we’re going to see lots of opportunity in this space. Hopefully
the rest of the traffic channels will open up like Snapchat just did. Ecommerce
will always be strong.
There’s a slow progression from offline to online and we still have a LONG
way to go. Did you know only 10% of retail transactions happen online?
5)Which traffic source/type and vertical if starting this year?
I would probably focus on Native and Google. Facebook has been really
unstable as a channel. We’re not seeing account issues so far in 2019 as we

have in other years. However the profitability of campaigns has been much
less stable. We’ll see swings of 100-200% in conversion rates and click costs
day over day.
John Alanis (‘johna5150’ on STM), Email Marketer
Link: John Alanis’ Resource Page
1)Self-intro
John Alanis, from Austin, Texas. Been in direct marketing since 1996, internet
marketing since 2000 (when GoTo.com invented ppc and Google “stole” it).
I used to focus on dating, but now focus on what is more accurately called
the “horny guy” business, since there is an enormous amount of horny guy
traffic out there and always will be. This is best described as “casual dating”
and not “adult.” I’m a list builder (email and now push) so I focus on all types
of traffic that can be funneled to an opt in page to generate an email list I
can market to over and over - banner, push, email, tab, text link, etc.
As expected, push has dropped off a bit (as happens with all “new media”)
but is still a very viable way to both buy traffic, and for building a list of push
notification subscribers to market to. I would say it’s pretty close to what it
will be over the long term, although google can always fart and make it go
away. It’s an add-on to an affiliate marketing business, not something to
base a business on.
I personally always go white hat because it allows me to form long term

relationships with offer owners, traffic sources, etc. Those who go black hat
spend their time staying one step ahead of “the law” and see huge dips and
spikes in their business. Yes, some are very good at it, love the game and
can make it work, but I have always personally preferred running clean and
it has served me well when I’ve had a problem or an issue that invariably
crops up in affiliate marketing.
The “horny guy” business has been around since long before the invention
of the internet (I hear a guy named Hugh Hefner made a fortune from it),
and will continue to be around. Email will be steady as ever (opt in email,
spamming is harder than ever I think, but I don’t fool around with that, so
others will have to weigh in), and I believe push will continue to diminish but
be a viable add on to partially offset traffic cost (like, say, happened with
Adsense circa 2006 or so) and banners will continue to be solid, especially
on mobile.

I’d keep doing what I’m doing now, the “horny guy” business, building lists
and selling the original click over and over, instead of just once.
So, a few things that were reinforced in 2019 that have been true ever since
Corey Rudl came out with cartips.com and marketingtips.com and told
everyone that Mailloop really, really, really was a good piece of software and
worked (Corey was a great guy, a true pioneer, and someone I considered a
friend, but Mailloop was a turd and did NOT work).
In order to make real money in affiliate marketing, you have to come out
from behind the computer and meet the people you do business with in
person. You have to go to the events, talk to vendors, keep your ear to the
ground, form relationships, understand everyone is out to get your money,
and keep your finger on the pulse of this business - the rate of change is
faster than ever. Forming relationships in person will bring you a measure of
stability in business, and allow you to identify opportunity before others do.
Buy a few drinks, pick up a few dinner tabs, talk with a lot of people, identify
the real players and the bullshit artists, and form lasting relationships with
those few who know what the hell they are doing.
Always test small, then slowly expand, letting the media prove itself, letting
the offer owners get comfortable with you and the traffic. Understand that
traffic sources will always die, offers will always pause, and others will seek
to rip your banners and landers (but never your relationship with your email
list - that’s work.)
Think in terms of “bridging the gap.” I.e. if you have an offer that is
converting but at a loss, think of all the things you can do to offset traffic
cost - selling banners and exit traffic on your landing page, selling CPC text
links, email blasts to your list, etc. Use every part of the pig, all you need is
one part of your campaign to be profitable while the rest offset traffic cost
and you can do very well.
Also, especially for you younger people (I am 48), familiarize yourself with the
magic of compound interest. A business is something to get money out of,
not put money into, and if you can get a lot of money out of your business into
secure investments (I happen to like the Motley Fool mutual funds), you can
be set for life. There’s an old saying that rich people buy assets, poor people
buy liabilities, and that’s true. A big Cock-Knocker watch to show off to others
who are showing off is a liability, as is “bottle service” where you pay $800
for a bottle of nasty-ass Jim Beam White Label to drink on the other side of a
velvet rope (google “compound interest calculator” and see how that $800
can grow over time). Don’t get me wrong, I am all for having a good time, and
I detest cheap people, but if you don’t get money out of your business and into
investments where it can safely grow, you will soon find yourself without any
when your business takes a dip (and all businesses do).
So, as always in the affiliate marketing business circa 2019, everything has
changed and everything has stayed the same.
Besmir Bregasi (‘bbrock32’ on STM),
STM Co-Founder
Website: STMForum.com (Use coupon code STMWW2019 for 20% off 1st month)
1)Self-intro
My name is Besmir and I’ve been in affiliate marketing for over 10 years now.
I’m one of the founders of STM / iStack and a few other companies in the
adtech space.
Being in the space for such a long time allowed me to run pretty much every
hot trend through the years. I’ve run everything from diet on Adwords (2009-
2010), PPV, casual dating on adult, mobile pin submits everywhere to a myriad
of offers lately on native ads. These days I try to keep a more diversified
portfolio than just affiliate campaigns. So it’s like 50% on building tech
companies and 50% still running traffic to fund my other ventures.
Compared to last year, looks like mobile pin submits and pops are still on the
decline.
Native ads have matured and it’s a great traffic type to run affiliate offers.
Most of the networks are affiliate friendly and the volume is huge.
Finally, I see a surge in push notification traffic. You can still run pretty much
anything there and you could also start building your own push list.
It’s definitely the easiest way for someone looking to get started in AM.
I would say whitehat. These days, I would like to build a business out of the
things I spend my time on. And we know that’s impossible to do with blackhat.
Plus, I think cloaking and black hat isn’t as easy as people think. So if you are
going to put some serious effort into it, why not put it into something that has
value and can make an exit later on.
Pops is dying and adult is stagnant.
On the rise I still see Natives, FB and push notification traffic.

As for verticals, I see pin submits slowly dying too.
There is a rise in lead-gen offers (finance , life insurance etc) , info products
and physical ecom products.
On a limited budget and low risk, I would go for push notifications.
If I had a bigger budget and wanted to scale, Native Ads.
Finally FB is always a good option anytime because of their huge reach and
mature platform.

Taiwo Balogun (‘cashmoneyaffiliate’ on STM),
Affiliate and Blogger
Website: CashMoneyAffiliate.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Taiwo Balogun, and I’m based in the UK but spend most of my
time travelling. I’ve been an affiliate marketer for over five years now and
also run an affiliate marketing blog cashmoneyaffiliate.com. My favourite
vertical at the moment are Sweepstakes, and the main traffic sources I use
are Facebook, Google Ads and Push Traffic.
It’s only mid-February, but the biggest change I’ve noticed so far this year is
how it’s becoming far harder to use Facebook as a traffic source, which has
meant I’ve started to use Google Ads and Push Traffic more.
Blackhat all the way. From my experience, the ROI on a whitehat campaign is
nowhere near as high as what you can achieve running a blackhat campaign.
Running a whitehat campaign doesn’t guarantee your ad accounts on
Google and Facebook won’t get banned either, so the way I see it is that you
may as well get the highest ROI you can from these traffic sources. Not to
mention that most of the best performing offers on the majority of affiliate
networks will inherently be seen as grey/blackhat by most traffic sources,
regardless of how whitehat your creative angle is.
Well when it comes to traffic sources this year will definitely be the year of
Push Traffic. It’s like how pop traffic was 3/4 years ago - you can literally run
whatever you want without having to cloak, and the ROI affiliates are seeing
is amazing. The top offer verticals, in my opinion, will be obviously dating and
sweepstakes as these are evergreen, and crypto currency trading offers will
be huge.
If I was starting out, I would begin with push traffic using sweepstakes SOI
(Single Opt-In) offers. Push traffic is so cheap at the moment you can make
money even with the low payout offers, and the volume is there to scale.
Maor Benaim (‘maorbn’ on STM), Super-Affiliate
Links: Maor’s Youtube Channel, Maor’s Facebook Page
1)Self-intro
My name is Maor and people call me “The Wolf” or “Wolfie”. I was born in Israel
and I’m in digital marketing for 10 years now. I own an agency, an offline
business, a network with a couple of our own offers and I’m also an affiliate. I
run only with partners I trust and I don’t have any employees, when I scale my
business – I scale partnerships.
We are focused on Crypto, Loans, Ecom and just about any CPL or CPA offers
that would convert well, and we use our privately owned technologies like our
SMS platform and our arbitrage monetization tools to run traffic. We’re also a
lot into Google, Facebook and Native traffic – as I’ve spoken about on-stage at
the affiliate world conferences.
2018 was the year of Ecom and lead gen for us. We tested a lot of stuff and
found that it was a bit harder than earlier years - the platforms were less co-
operative with us and Q4 had a lot of platform glitches. Now, in 2019, we do feel
a big decline in drop-shipping. It has definitely become harder, but fortunately
for us we got in at the right time and we sort-of created a brand. So now
when I open up new stores – I only buy stores that are currently running with
some unique angle and have at least couple hundreds of people entering it
organically .
2019 is bringing new stuff for us like amazing new partnerships with people who
want us to monetize their data and rev-share on their ecom / lead gen data,
and also it might just be the year of snapchat. We definitely changed a lot of
our focus in the way of working, but that’s not something that’s special to 2019
– that’s just something I think that has to be done all the time in this industry.
Just like I recommend a/b testing all the time (and I even said on stage that if
you are not running 2 variations of your landing pages at all time you
shouldn’t at least a period of your life, just because of the knowledge you
are going to get by really understanding how the system works and how
the platform thinks. BH is not for everyone, but it takes a lot less knowledge
in actual media buying, where WH campaigns demand a lot of knowledge
and experience, there’s not that much ROI margin to make mistakes, and
that’s why a lot of BH affiliates are trying and failing at WH, they find out
that in order to succeed in WH campaigns you have to learn all the time,
and make that big shift inside your head with a lot of parameters that the
business includes. At the end of the day – BH affiliates are a little bit jealous
of WH affiliates and vice-versa. It has always been like that where the other
person’s work seems like “the thing” you should be doing – when in real life
they’re both super hard and people tend not to speak much of their failures
and hard times so it would always sound better than it really is.
I’m going to combine BH and WH together and say that (not in that specific
order) the stronger verticals in 2019 might be Crypto and Cannabis (Forex),
CBD, Casinos, Sweepstakes. I know Nutra would come down by a lot and I
know the loan space has gone down and might go up again on Q3-4. On
the platforms side I would say SMS would stay strong for people with short
codes and good data. Push traffic is going to be bigger and smarter, and
Snapchat is going to be bigger - much bigger. I do believe that traffic is
going to be taken from facebook towards those platforms, just because I
keep hearing from people how unstable this platform has been to them,
even when just running WH campaigns.
I always feel like we’re starting from 0 because in this industry you have to
cash out really fast all the time. Nothing lasts for long - there would always
be a new regulation, a new policy or just a change in placements, strategy
or the platforms that would make your currently profitable campaign to
go away. So the question is not “IF I was starting at 2019” because we’re
always making changes. What I would say to someone who’s starting for
real in 2019 is to learn to distinguish between FAKE and REAL “gurus”, I hate
the word “guru” but people use it so I’m going to use it here too. The way to
distinguish between the two is to understand that fake gurus are making a
living only from “teaching” others, that’s their focus and main business, they
would sell you on dreams of passive income and unreal things like learning
how to make tons of money real fast.
REAL gurus teach for fun, networking and the ego boost they get. They
usually won’t sell a course to the masses and it’s not their main focus. They
would tell you that most people aren’t going to make it in this industry and
most people aren’t going to make a lot of crazy money, that’s just the way
it is – and it’s not just because of the industry – it’s also because that’s how
people are. I think it’s super important to make that clear because a lot of
people started thinking that everyone that teaches is fake, and that’s a big
block they put in front of them that doesn’t allow them to develop and learn
and that could be a really quick way down, remember – you don’t know
what you don’t know, till you know it. All of us have big blind-spots.
Dmitry Braun (‘mrbraun’ on STM),
Affiliate, STM Moderator
Link: Dmitry’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
I’m from Kaliningrad, Russia. Working in affiliate marketing since 13 years old.
Now I’m 21. I tried many different things. SEO, native, display, free traffic. But
now my main traffic types are pop and push. I mostly run pins, sweepstakes,
dating and nutra offers.
I see that people are becoming smarter, so I need to work on creatives more
and check all details. The same goes for landing pages. I have to renew
them and think outside the box. You can no longer just grab landing pages
from spy tools, ask your AM for top offers and run. You need to apply more
“magic” now.
I would definitely recommend WH, because it’s much more stable. Of

course, you won’t get as much ROI as you would with BH. But I think you will
agree with me that it’s better to get +80% ROI for the next 10 months than
+400% for only 2 weeks. I don’t like to cloak and deceive. It’s very stressful
you know! I prefer to sleep peacefully.
Unfortunately, I’m no longer making the high levels of profits with pop
compared to in the past. Therefore, I started working with other traffic types
like Push and Display. Push is definitely GOLD in 2019. And I would bet on it. If
we talk about verticals, pins are still working, but not like in 2016-2017. So now
I’m trying to expand into more verticals.
I would try push traffic with pin-submit offers (antivirus or sweeps), and also
nutra. It’s the fastest way for now to achieve big and fast profits.
JEd Cabanero (‘jennatalia’ on STM),
Affiliate turned Entrepreneur
Website: JEdCabanero.com
1)Self-intro
I’m JEd, rather entertainingly known as ‘jennatalia’ on STM (say it out loud).
My background has largely been banking and finance on the securities side.
Up until I entered affiliate marketing, I was responsible for building out trading
algorithms and further automating analysis to make my teams faster and
more efficient. I’ve been in AM since 2014 - although I’ve experimented in the
industry since 2008.
I still run traffic to my core 6-D verticals: Debt, diet, dating, dollars, dick-
size, and downloads. The proportions have changed from last year, but the
verticals still work. I also still focus on buying from the Alexa 1M websites.
However, the ad units and formats I’ve been buying have shifted. I’ve been
steadily increasing my presence in the push, native, and video spaces.
By far the biggest difference is the number of campaigns that are kept in
flight. Thanks to all the automatons that were developed, one media buyer
is easily 10x more efficient and effective today versus a year ago. Our focus
has always been looking for ways to more granularly calculate the value of
ever shrinking traffic segments in an effort to fine tune and customize the
marketing experience of an individual user. This analysis is done with a scale
that a more traditional tracker, or a person armed with Excel and pivot tables
simply cannot match.
There has been a shift in our traffic mix away from Facebook and more
toward native, push, and video largely due to the predictability of Facebook’s
algorithm changes amidst their attempts to appease aspiring regulators.
The reality is that content matters more and more. As marketers, we buy
and sell an increasingly valuable commodity - people’s attention. Our value-
add comes from enhancing and redirecting that attention to generate a
conversion.
We’ve also migrated our tracking platform in-house using Google Cloud
Platform, which in a way has brought tracking technologies full circle. From
self-hosted, to SaaS, and now back to self-hosted. The flexibility this has
afforded us allows for ever more granular audience segments for our traffic
and some additional insights about individual publishers on a platform.

Both have their merits. But there’s one distinct advantage to white hat
strategies - they can produce assets which can be sold.
I’ve noticed lately a lot of newer aspiring affiliates high on time and low on
cash drawn in by the massive ROIs that black hat techniques bring in. But
oftentimes, the cost of maintaining the black hat infrastructure eats away at
the additional profit. That isn’t to say it can’t be done. I know personally more
than a handful of people who built entire businesses around this concept.
That being said, I’m of the opinion affiliate marketing is becoming less of
a solo career option and more of a source of seed funding for something
which grows much faster with ever higher margins. I can no longer name
genuinely top affiliates whose income exclusively rotates around running
offers. They now maintain a portfolio of businesses and cashflow streams,
and understandably so. Rip and run affiliates very quickly saturate something
that’s working. That isn’t to say affiliate marketing is dead. Quite the opposite.
Affiliate marketing is changing faster than ever, and strategies from a year or
two ago are no longer nearly as effective.
TL;DR: Black Hat - Quick Money, White Hat - Big Money.
The more seasoned affiliates may reminisce about the days of acai berry, the
app-promotion heyday, or the early days of dropshipping. But considering
the speed with which information travels through the affiliate world, and how
that speed is only increasing, I fully expect ‘working’ offers to have shorter
lifespans.
Crypto offers have been on the decline thanks to various traffic sources
preventing their promotion coupled with the current price of various
mainstream crypto currencies. One thing I’ve noticed in my operation is that
dating offers have undergone a shift. We promote a product highlighting
Tinder hacks, and that has suddenly eclipsed more traditional Match.com or
Eharmony.com style dating offers.
One thing which has surprised me the most so far this year is the rise in
HELOCs - Home Equity Line Of Credit - products. They often come with fat
commissions and finding qualified leads is especially easy. We’ve also been
paying far more attention to recurring payment offers. SaaS platforms have
been increasingly lucrative.
There have been mounting attacks on pop traffic as of late. New versions
of Google Chrome are putting in defenses to prevent unwanted popups.
Firefox, Edge, Safari, and others are likely to follow suit. While there are still
opportunities to profit, it is not a traffic source I’d recommend to someone
starting out.
There’s a growing trend in push traffic lately. By the time you see it on
various mainstream affiliate blogs, there’s a good chance the big money
is moving into the space. Email marketing it seems is seeing a resurgence.
We have subscriptions to thousands of lists just to see the kind of copy that
people are using.
Something we’ve been increasingly doing is serving our own native ads into
300x250 ad units, repurposing our publisher partners’ inventory in a way
which is much more valuable.
Knowing what I know now, I’d focus on the newest traffic sources available.
In early 2019, it’s push. The advantage of push traffic is fewer established
best practices. That means more undiscovered nuggets to dig up and
monetize before the rest of the affiliates arrive.
I’d also focus a bit more on underserved offers. The kind that have fewer
landing pages worth ripping. That often presents the best opportunity for
growth. Examples include healthcare, services, lead gen, etc. Having read
and implemented Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale gives a much
greater advantage to building out marketing flows that are hard to discover,
and even harder to rip.
Matej Cechvala (‘matuloo’ on STM),
STM Moderator
Website: Matuloo.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Matej, but I’m using the nickname Matuloo in the online world, so
that’s what most people know me by. I come from Slovakia, a small country in
the middle of Europe. I’m 41 years old already, and Affiliate Marketing is what
I’ve been doing for my entire professional life. I’ve never had a “regular” job
since I started to build websites while I was still going to university and thanks
to that, I was actually able to pay the tuition with the money I made online.
Eventually, I did finish Uni, and I got a degree in business administration, but
the corporate world never pulled me in, since affiliate marketing was working
well for me and I didn’t want to let the freedom go. On top of that, the salaries
in my country at that time were quite low, so I was basically making multiples
of the national average online with very little work. I was young and I felt like a
king.
If I had to set a start date in my AM career, it would go back to 1998, when I

created my first account with an affiliate network. Which means I’m doing
this for like 21 years… time flies fast. As most people did back then, I started
with building simple websites that were designed to “trade” traffic with others.
Then I moved into SEO, when Yahoo and Altavista were the key players on the
market. I had my share of fun with Google too, made a low of $$$ with review
sites.
But since all the easy things come to an end, so did the rankings of my SEO
websites. Google’s Pandas and Penguins messed with my organic traffic too
much, so I decided to get into paid traffic, around 2013. And that’s what I’m
doing to this day. I run affiliate campaigns, using different traffic sources that
sell various types of traffic. In the meantime, I also run a blog at matuloo.com
and I’m one of the senior moderators at the STM Forum, which is the only forum
I post to and help other affiliates on.
I had to make one change yes. While at the beginning of 2018, I was still able
to run some carrier billing offers, I had to step away from those completely
later on. My adult traffic campaigns remained pretty stable, dating still
works pretty well, so not much changes there.
And like pretty much everyone in the business, I started to buy push traffic
too. Both of my main verticals, which are dating and sweeps, work well with
push traffic, so those are what I’ve been promoting on push traffic. And if
nothing changes, I will continue doing so throughout 2019.
I’ve always been a whitehat affiliate. I hate to play hide & seek, so pure
blackhat is nothing for me, I’m afraid. But we have to set one thing straight
here, the standards are not the same everywhere. For example the stuff I
run on push traffic, these networks are ok with it, but if I tried to take one of
those campaigns to Facebook, they’d ban my ass in a heartbeat.
What I’m always trying to do, is to play by the rules of a particular affiliate
network or traffic source. In case their rules are more lenient, I will push the
envelope a bit more. If they are strict, I will adapt and in case it’s not working
out, there are many others to move to.
As for verticals, the trends are quite clear - most of the popular ones are
rather stable and not showing signs of a strong dying trend. There are
some on the way out, such as Nutra trials, Crypto offers and the already
mentioned Carrier Billing offers. But then again, they still do work for some
people. So nope, don’t expect any major vertical to die this year completely.
Leadgen is showing quite a strong comeback, I see a lot of future for this
business model. Also ecommerce, that’s an ever growing area. CC sweeps
are getting very popular too - any of these should be a good choice for this
year.
When talking about traffic types, we can’t forget about Push. That really
exploded in 2018 and continues to grow like crazy. Push traffic works very
well for many, the rules are not too strict, so it’s the perfect playground for new
affiliates. There is a problem though, some people are literally spamming the
users with tons of messages, so I’m afraid we will see some kind of a regulation
in 2019.
Another segment that keeps growing is native ad formats. There is a lot of

future for these too. The ad CTRs are better than with traditional banners and
these formats are less intrusive, so Google doesn’t try to regulate them with
some “better ads initiative”… at least not yet.
Then there are the social media platforms, many of them are growing rapidly…
Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest …lots of opportunities there.
On the less positive side of things, Pops is losing volume slowly, not as fast as
was expected but it’s happening. I also see less volume in traditional display
banners, especially when talking about desktop traffic - only a fraction of the
past volumes are available.
This is an easy one, Push + Sweeps. That’s the easiest combo for anyone to
start with.
In case we’re talking about some plan for the long run, I would focus on
building some community, growing the audience and trying to sell to it over
and over. An engaged email lists sounds like a good idea, for example.
Amy Cheung (‘vortex’ on STM), STM Moderator
Link: Amy’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
I’m Amy from Toronto Canada. I’ve been doing online marketing since 2006,
mainly doing SEO and Adwords. Joined STM in 2014, signed up for the pilot
6-Week Affiliate Mastery Challenge (6WAMC) course offered by STM and run
by the great Zeno (David Savory). Shortly thereafter I was invited to join the
forum moderator team, which I happily accepted as I had always enjoyed
teaching beginners, and it’s a post I’ve held to this day.
In terms of paid traffic, I’ve run mainly pop up until last year. Pop was still
profitable, but with the increased competition and volatility, increasingly-
stringent requirements on landing pages and offers at traffic networks, a
decrease in good offers (which resulted from stricter regulations everywhere),
I knew my efforts would be better-rewarded if invested elsewhere.
Nowadays, when I’m not replying to posts on STM or working on other STM-
related projects, I’m learning energy healing (will explain the relevance later)
and doing ecommerce and SEO (more on both later).
Answered above for the most part.
I haven’t run blackhat very heavily, but know people that have/are - so know
enough to weigh in on the topic.
What I say below will mainly apply to Facebook and Google, although it’s also
possible to run blackhat on other traffic types such as pop and native (mainly
through cloaking, and/or running on multiple accounts to multiply traffic and
revenue).
Black Hat - Pros: You can make crazy amounts of money in a relatively short
short time IF you TRULY know what you’re doing. 5 to 6-figures/day in profits is
not uncommon.
Black Hat - Cons: The barrier to entry is high and getting higher. Trying to
make back your investment before each account gets banned is getting
increasingly difficult. You need a reliable accounts provider (or have the
know-how to farm them yourself), a skillful warm-up procedure, genuine-
looking safe sites, an effective cloaker (commercially-available or custom-
built), etc. And it’s not like you can figure it out once and profit forever.
Rules are always changing, and FB and Google are getting more skilled
at catching and banning accounts. So something that worked yesterday
would stop working today, and you’d be scrambling to find a new way to
make things work again. It helps to know other blackhatters so you can join
forces and compare notes to keep up with the changes, but that kind of
network doesn’t happen overnight.
Having to manage so many accounts, safe sites etc. will require having a
team if you’re wanting to achieve any scale.
You’ll also need more cashflow to start, because it will take time to figure
out how to run blackhat in the first place, and then with each change in
algorithm you’ll need to figure things out all over again. There are also more
expenses from cloakers, accounts, employees, safe sites etc. that come with
running blackhat.
Running blackhat is also quite stressful. When you get up in the morning
to check stats, you never know what to expect. There’s nothing worse than
finally finding something that works, only to have it stop working after a
week - and knowing you’d still have to continue to pay your employees and
fund accounts etc. until you find a new way to beat the system again.
White Hat - Pros: Risks of accounts being banned are minimal (although
still possible!) You can build a long-term business and asset that you can
potentially sell later on. For example you can build a brand - e.g. physical
products or by packaging yourself as an expert in your field. You can build a
faithful following or customer base that you can sell to repeatedly once you
build a good reputation. You can sleep better at night too.
White Hat - Cons: Competition is greater in general, because most

advertisers are running whitehat. Harder to find products/offers/services
that convert better than the typical blackhat offers (diet, skin, etc.). Takes
more creativity to find angles that can convert well (whereas with blackhat,
you can use aggressive landers). ROIs are usually lower (since you can’t use
aggressive landers to promote shady offers).
In the end: If you’re a newbie, I really wouldn’t recommend blackhat - the

barrier to entry is so high now that it would take quite some time and money
to get things rolling. If you’re a pro, then what I’ve said above would be
common knowledge to you anyway.
Shady/scammy CPA offers are on the decline in general. This is a natural

result of the stricter regulations everywhere as I’ve mentioned above, which
makes it harder to promote such offers unless you’re cloaking. Examples
include crypto and nutra trials.
On the other hand, whitehat verticals are becoming more popular, as it’s
easier to get campaigns approved when running them. Affiliate networks are
adapting to this need. Ecom CPA affiliate offers is a good example.
Push traffic is thriving, no doubt about that. I’ve been encouraging everyone
to get in on it because many people have already seen success, including
newbies. Testing offers and landers on the cheaper pop traffic first, then
taking the best offers and landers to push and testing ads there, would be
recommended.
Having said that, I’m not optimistic about the future of push. Audiences are
not targeted, which means people are being spammed with offers that have
little relevance. It’s just a matter of time before everyone gets fed up, and
giants like Google will take measures to protect their users. One update in
Chrome and it will be game-over.
Pop is still the easiest type of traffic to get your feet wet if you’re completely
new to paid traffic - it will allow you to learn the basics for cheap. Basically
just rip landers from a spy tool, grab offers from an affiliate manager, and
go from there. It’s not difficult for newbies to make 2-figures/day or low
3-figures/day in profits within the first few months, but trying to grow beyond
that would be more difficult. With google bans and chrome updates, plus
increasing competition, pop can only become more difficult from here. But
I still recommend for newbies to start here, run a few pop campaigns, learn
tracking and affiliate networks and how to test offers and landing pages and
how to analyze stats and optimize campaigns, make all the newbie mistakes
for cheap, and THEN expand to other traffic types such as push or native.
Native traffic continues to be lucrative, and even newbies can succeed in

a relatively short time - however, a considerably larger budget is needed
compared to pop or push, because the traffic is not cheap so typically only
offers with good margins can do well, and those typically have high payouts,
which means more money needs to be invested into cutting unprofitable

widgets.
Facebook continues to be a promising source of good traffic in spite of all the

algo changes. Running 100% whitehat helps. Having a brand helps. Giving
Facebook what it wants by catering to good user experience helps a ton. I’ll
continue to run Facebook traffic in the near future.
Adwords can bring huge ROI that would be difficult to achieve with Facebook,
due to the laser targeting. I’m planning to spend a lot more time and budget
on adwords this year.
A virtually untapped traffic source, which at least a couple of affiliates I know

are having huge success with, is Pinterest. This is something I’ll definitely start
exploring this year.
Lastly: I’ve been spending time to brush-up my SEO knowledge. Paid traffic
is fantastic in that it can bring instant profits, but SEO can bring in traffic for a
lot longer than any paid traffic campaign. It would be good to include both in
one’s portfolio.
Although this question is hypothetical, I can just talk about what I’m actually
doing right now, because I’m going through this transition.
Some tips I can give on Ecommerce:
1. Dropshipping still works if you’re smart. As an initial test, set up a shopify

site and import from Aliexpress via Oberlo (the “traditional” method), then run
traffic on Facebook. For products that look promising, build a separate site/
funnel for each individual product (using Clickfunnels/Funnelbuildr etc.), with
up-sells / down-sells / cross-sells, and optimize that funnel using split-tests.
You can even create a brand name to make the product sound more “catchy”
to potentially increase sales -although the customer won’t find any references
to that name when they receive the product.
It’s actually still possible to keep doing shopify+aliexpress. You’d just need to
test more products. Another thing you can do is test shopify apps that are
designed to increase conversion rates - make sure you test one at a time to
see how each one is impacting on your bottom line (especially the paid apps
- you need to know they’re pulling their weight). I’m surprised people don’t
discuss apps more. For starters, optimize the checkout process - shopify’s
default checkout is just horrible.
2. Source from the manufacturer to increase profit margin. If the above test
shows good results for a product, you can look into sourcing it directly from
the manufacturer (alibaba would be a good start, but for innovative products
it would be best to attend trade shows), getting a fulfillment centre in the local
country to receive, store, and dispatch the goods for you, and a courier service
to deliver the goods to customers. Obviously it would be easier to do for the
country you reside in, so that you can physically go to the fulfillment centre to
resolve any issues, but you can also hire someone locally to take care of things
for you.
This is all I’ll say about ecommerce for now, as I’m not an expert yet by any
means. I may have more to contribute in next year’s report.
Next, I want to talk briefly about my new project which I’m passionate about.
I’ve had natural healing abilities since I was quite young, but have only
recently decided to develop and harness them. So I’ve been taking courses
and getting certified in multiple energy healing modalities. And I’ve also
started to offer healing sessions to friends and family. Results have been very
encouraging.
As was mentioned, I’ve been brushing up on my SEO knowledge. I’m getting

ready to launch a site on energy healing. There are lots of niche products
available, that are relevant to energy healing as well as the more-general
new age niche, that have affiliate programs I can promote. (Coincidentally -
one of the niches Brent Dunn recommends when answering questions for this
report is - you’ve guessed it - ENERGY HEALING! I got shivers down my spine
when I read that. Talk about receiving a sign from the Universe!) So I can push
affiliate products to make commissions. I’ll be testing adsense as well. And
even before keywords start ranking and free traffic starts flowing, I can try
experimenting with traffic from Facebook and Adwords.
I’m also planning on collecting emails using a free ebook I can whip up in a
day, and pushing affiliate products in the backend.
Building out an FB page would be a must. And I’ll start collecting a list of
FB messenger subscribers, which will be another channel for promoting

affiliate products.
(By the way: Building a list in general is a very good way to monetize traffic,
no matter if you’re doing SEO or driving paid traffic. That way you have
traffic that you own.)
I will only be promoting products I KNOW will enrich people’s lives – this will
be the primary consideration, with profits being secondary. And of course, if
I ever want to pursue energy healing as a career, all these assets will be put
to use to promote my services.
(I may even start a follow-along thread on the STM forum to report on this
project. It will probably end up being the longest-running follow-along ever.
Please stay tuned if you’re interested.)
I would encourage anyone who’s reading this, to ask themselves the

question “what am I TRULY passionate in?” Instead of just chasing the
money, you could be doing what you love at the same time. Sure, a niche
site won’t make you 5-figures overnight, but it can be so much more fun,
and you can potentially develop it into a passive income stream that you
can sell later.
Plus, revenues from SEO sites can help to pay the bills in between profitable
paid traffic campaigns. All in all just a good asset to include in your online
marketing portfolio.
Emanuel Cinca (‘manu_adefy’ on STM),
Founder of Adefy.com and WTAff.co
Links: adefy.com, wtaff.co
1)Self-intro
My name is Manu, I’ve been in the industry for about 4 years now. Over
the years, I’ve changed my main focus several times, starting with mobile
display, then pops, then Facebook.
Currently, I’m only focusing on organic growth strategies and influencer

marketing for WHAT THE AFF, a daily email with the latest on all things digital
marketing, including plenty of affiliate-relevant topics.
In general, I’d suggest everyone focus on one vertical and gather an email
list, push subscribers and perhaps even messenger subscribers for it.
Whether it’s nutra, dating, insurance, solar, etc. It’s very difficult to go big
without somehow owning the traffic, without making more on the backend.
Yes, we ran AdWords and some Facebook in early 2018 but then saw very
quickly that those are not the most suitable for this project, so we had to go
outside of the typical affiliate media buying space.
We also don’t run typical affiliate campaigns so of course strategies had to

be different. We’ve seen the power of having a community of people who
actually want to hear from you. That’s why the tip above of creating an
owned list is what I’d suggest.
We’re doing it with affiliates and digital marketers as the audience, but it
can certainly be done in one way or another in the most popular niches that
exist in affiliate marketing.
White hat all the way. It’s more and more difficult to do black hat, you
cannot create a business around it. The risk/reward seems to be heavily
changing towards long-term white hat business.
Well, even though verticals will be thriving, it doesn’t mean they are not
changing. I’ve been paying very close attention to everything that’s
happening in the space - it’s the nature of running a daily email with the
latest industry news. So I have quite a few thoughts on this. Will take it step
by step for each major vertical that I see as still thriving.
Nutra - people will always want to look, feel and perform better so this
industry won’t go away. It has changed significantly. Trials are taking
hit after hit. No more auto-billing after trials for physical products, more
chargebacks, issues with merchant accounts, etc.
That said, cash-on-delivery and straight sales are definitely in a good spot
to keep the vertical going. Maybe you have to adjust geos you are targeting
as well, depending on what you were doing before. I see this as one of the
better ones in 2019.
Leadgen - similar story, always needed. Solar, insurance, surveys, etc. The
big thing here though is a bigger focus on quality. That means no more
misleading ads, targeting an older demographic, using the right brand and
angles.
E-commerce - probably the one that continues to grow the most. Not
talking about cheap dropshipping though. That’s almost certainly not going
to work. Too many restrictions in place, too much competition, too much
cheap stuff out there that had the customers fed up.
Instead, actual affiliate marketing e-commerce where you get paid per sale
or rev-share from real brands that have unique products will be something
happening more and more.
I’ve already said having your own list of subscribers is very useful. For
e-commerce, people have found another way to increase the average
value of a visitor - listicles. They are not new but they have proven to be
exceptional for e-commerce.
Basically, you write a longer post recommending more than one product,
and end up converting visitors more often, and for a higher payout on
average. You can google “listicles” if you’re looking into this vertical.
For traffic sources, Facebook will stay strong but I think newcomers like
Pinterest, Reddit and Quora have some potential and special use-cases in the
above-mentioned verticals.
Google, especially with Shopping Ads and YouTube are also something with
big reach and potential.
Push notifications are also certainly hot now but whoever gets into them
should keep in mind that restrictions from Google are on the way so don’t plan
on them to stay the same for more than like 6-12 months. That’s just my advice.
Well, it depends on the financial situation as well.
Let’s say you don’t have much money and need a couple of thousands per
month to get you stable. In that case, I’d go with push notifications as the
traffic type but I wouldn’t restrict the vertical. Test everything.
If you have a safety net and want to go for something big and more future-
proof, then I’d certainly go with building lists and communities.
In that case, the traffic source would definitely be Facebook as the main
one. Should work with just about any vertical. However, I would also choose
a specific vertical - that’s a big difference from the above. There’s a bigger
focus on quality here, so you need to actually understand the vertical and
what the people want.
So I’d go for a niche I’m passionate about. WHAT THE AFF actually was created
following this train of thought. So I chose marketing as the vertical.
But if you are passionate about fashion, cooking, fitness, gadgets, solar,
insurance etc., there’s something you can do in any of those verticals. It really
depends on what you already know and what you want to learn about. That’s
why marketing was the answer for me.

John Crestani (‘johnaff’ on STM), Affiliate
Link: John’s Youtube Channel
1)Self-intro
My name is John Crestani, I’ve been fulltime affiliate marketing since 2012, the
vertical I mainly focus on now is bizopp, and youtube ads. In the past though I
was a major affiliate in the investment, skincare, and diet niches, and have run
strong in google search, facebook, and native.
The major differences between 2018 and 2019 that I see is that the youtube ad
space is more competitive, and you need to do a better job of pre-framing
the sale, rather than just going for the click. The main change I focused on this
year was putting emphasis on growing my products affiliate base, since I am a
product owner, and the bizopp space is very fragmented.
Blackhat. Ad networks are so finicky with all ads nowadays it seems, that I
believe it just makes sense as a hedge to use blackhat strategies if possible,
even if you’re promoting whitehat offers like I do. The affiliates that I see doing
7 or 8 figures in volume consistently always are using some mix of cloaking,
farming, etc.
I believe investment and bizopp is going to be strong again this year, although
the bizopp offers available on CPA networks have been pretty stagnant
though I seek to change that. The verticals that I don’t believe will do as well
are survival type offers, since I see the economy being so strong. For traffic
sources, I think SMS spam will increase, and I believe google will suffer since
they aren’t doing anything interesting and they also just made it harder to use
custom audiences.
I would recommend either bizopp or any nutra niche (except weight loss
or testo) on facebook traffic using a long survey-type funnel, and a video
article (I call them varticles) in the facebook ad. Those video article videos
that you see on the Dodo or goalcast work spectacularly, and frankly I’m
surprised I don’t see more affiliates using them.
Brent Dunn, Affiliate and SEO Expert
Website: PPCMode.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Brent Dunn. Some of you may know me from my blog PPCMode.com.
I’ve been in the internet marketing scene since 2004. Since then I’ve worked
in several large lead generation companies, affiliate networks, etc. Since 2015
affiliate marketing has been my primary income.
This year I’m much more focused on an omni-channel approach. In 2018 I

focused on mainly 3-4 sources when I would scale things out. 2019 I plan to
harness retargeting a lot more across all platforms.
White hat is personally where all my efforts go. Black hat can make money
extremely fast, but it can die just as quick. I’ve been much more focused on
building out my own properties and brands which will continue in 2019.
I think 2019 will be the rise and fall of push ads. They are doing great right now,
but it’s one of those things that Google can easily destroy with one TOS change.
They are a lot more vulnerable than something like pops because Google has
full control through their Chrome browser.
Honestly, there isn’t one vertical that fits everyone. If I was starting over, I would
make a list of topics I have an interest in or know a lot about, then see what kind
of offers are in that vertical. With the goal of building a longer term property
that will continuously grow over time. Nothing is worse than being new, getting
your first profitable campaign, then having it paused a week later.
In terms of traffic sources, I would recommend push ads as the quality is
pretty decent and campaigns are easy to get approved. I would use push
traffic a bit differently than most however... I would use the traffic to jump
start growing my own blog/site & email list. Making sure to also place
pixels on both my landing page and “thank you page” to begin growing my
audiences on all the major traffic sources: Google Ads, Facebook, Snapchat,
Quora, etc. Which could then be harnessed later with both retargeting and
look-alike audiences.
Ian Fernando (‘ianternet’ on STM),
Online Entrepreneur
Website: IanFernando.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Ian Fernando, I have done affiliate online marketing for over 15
years. I have sent leads to sub prime offers, nutra is my biggest as well as
dating, basic lead gen offers like email submits, even doing some CPS as well. I
am pretty much a versatile aff.
I enjoy testing and ‘data dive’ multiple sources of traffic from Native to Push.
Some of the biggest concentration of traffic has been in Google Display and
Facebook Ads.
Yes, quality of traffic has changed over time, especially new sources that I find
and then get exploited. CPC increase due to the popularity of the platform
like Google and Facebook. Angles are getting recycled way too many times
because of the saturation of the offers and the verticals.
I did have to change focus and verticals. I moved from the popular nutra
and tested other popular verticals as well. While others went and took their
marketing to eCom, I took it to eCom as well but as an affiliate and even
utilizing Amazon FBA and eBay, learning the physical product side of things a
bit.
Luckily I can adjust and that is what this industry does. It makes you adjust to
the situation. It allows you to make sure that you can adopt to the changing
times when CPC changes and traffic sources change. Affiliate marketing is
just a marketing skill which can be transferred from one to another.

Both are good, but a sustainable way is to take BH cash and turn to using your
skill set to transform into a WH business. The game with BH is time consuming
and a lot of maintenance. BH is rewarding because you can generate a lot in
a short time but also lose a lot in a short time. With WH it is slow growth but it
is over a long time with less headaches on maintenance. In the end I would
choose WH.
I think I said nutra will die for affiliates on the CPA side of things. BUT a lot of
people are still doing it. I do not think any vertical is in danger of dying, it is the
vision of the advertiser and the network they partner with. Some advertisers
want to do a branded business while others just want to be a fly by night one.
The 3 evergreens will still be there, but I think more WH campaigns with
branded products will prosper more with the OG affiliates and established
affiliates.
Traffic sources that are rising is push, but I also think it will die in 2019 as well.
There are a lot of networks that are building their own and even affiliates
building their own internal push opt-ins. The networks that are growing their
push via their internal sites will have the better quality. The ones that only
want to show off billions of impressions will decline because of low quality.
I do think the CPA style will die though but not the performance of this
industry. I have noticed that new affiliates (Gen Z) are more about creating
value. They have a conscience when it comes to promoting, not that us older
affiliates didn’t. The fact that we are in a world of infinite information has
affected how we promote. The quick money is dying.
I would still pick google or facebook but with the intention of creating a list in
any vertical. This allows you to own the leads and market to them when CPCs
are too high and you want to pause your paid advertising. This will allow me
to be somewhat sustainable when times are slow or when CPCs spike. I can
utilize the list to continuously promote other offers.
Even if let’s say Facebook disappears or the government takes over their data
business, you’d have an asset of leads to continuously promote offers to.
If I honestly had to choose one, then it would be facebook and nutra.
Erik Gyepes (‘erikgyepes’ on STM), Affiliate,
STM Moderator
Website: ErikGyepes.com
1)Self-intro
Hey! I’m Erik, from Slovakia, living in Thailand with my wife and 2 dogs. I’m a
solo affiliate marketer and in the business for 5+ years. I also moderate STM
and blog at https://erikgyepes.com.
I like to stir things up from time to time. Last year my focus was mainly on
adult nutra vertical and adult display traffic sources.
This year I rather focus on mainstream verticals like sweepstakes. And when
it comes to traffic sources I mainly work with push traffic now.
I see differences, mainly because I switched verticals and traffic source

type as I mentioned above. However, I don’t think there are any major
differences. All of the same evergreen verticals are still doing well and the
traffic sources as well.
What changes is rather new ad formats being introduced at traffic sources,

which is a welcoming fact as it gives us more options to advertise.
I “grew up” on rather grey to black hat-ish strategies and mindset in this
industry, so dark side is naturally closer to me for this reason.
I like to play, explore, and experiment, and black hat gives me 100% freedom
in this.
I do prefer white hat though in other areas like building a personal brand
and blog.
There are always 2 sides to everything.
I don’t really see any verticals dying to be honest. It’s rather the flows that
change. Let’s look at sweepstakes for example: Some of them used to use
pin submit flows, these days they rather use credit card submits. Another
example may be nutra trials switching to straight sales and so on.
It’s now much harder to make pops work. They work well with aggressive,
easy to convert flows, like 1-click mobile subscriptions or app installs, but
much harder with more complicated flows. Still doable, just harder.
Push traffic is thriving this year, but it also may be the first traffic format to
die sometime soon. It’s the easiest to shut down by Google. Ride the wave
while it lasts though.
I would probably still choose the same. I still enjoy to work with alternative
traffic sources. They are friendly, you can talk to them, easily get a rep and
meet them at shows. Not like Facebook or Google where it’s all about AI and
policies and in the end it lacks the human touch.
As far as there will be these “indie” traffic sources with innovative ad formats
like push, native and who knows what else in the future, I will be for sure one
of those to work with them.

IAmAttila (‘iamattila’ on STM), Super Affiliate &
Serial Entrepeneur
Website: IAmAttila.com
1)Self-intro
Hello, I am Attila, I’ve been a full time affiliate marketer since 2007. I’ve
developed the entrepreneurial spirit early on, growing up in Canada and
watching my parents own various businesses. This somehow led me to affiliate
marketing early on when I was 14 years old (back in 1997) but I had no clue I was
doing affiliate marketing by sending people to an online casino and getting
paid for banner clicks.
It wasn’t until 2008 that I returned full time to affiliate marketing after multiple-
failed all-night dance parties with over 5000 people each in Serbia; that
basically stripped me of all my savings I had thanks to parties I organized in
Canada. It was either move back to Canada, or figure something out quick I
can do from home while living abroad there.
My then gf, now wife Dora suggested I look into what my buddy from Canada,
Konrad (Mechbunny) was doing online since he moved to Poland, and owned a
BMW and a big house. This was how I found adult affiliate marketing. I started
building blogs, SEO-ing them and getting paid $30-50 per sale for every paid
membership site or webcam site I referred people to. When Google came out
with Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, essentially killing the SEO of what it used to
be, I switched to paid traffic.
I was first a member of a forum called IMGRIND. I was attracted to it by their

mobile manifesto and later joined my favorite forum where I met a lot of great
affiliates and had my first 7 figure profit campaign thanks to the awesome
affiliates I met and started networking with on STM. I’ve done various verticals
over the past 6 years I’ve been a paid media buying affiliate. Adult dating,
mobile pin submits, app installs, nutra trials, nutra cod…these days I am
focused on more long term stuff, white hat lead generation, branded ecom,
and building companies that provide value and generate a recurring client
base. My favorite traffic sources continue to be Facebook and Google, but we
dabbled a lot in the past 12 months on PUSH milking it while it lasts!
Yes, big differences in terms of what we are allowed to promote on Facebook

and Google. As time passes, their AI and detection algo gets better and better.
They can read what’s inside pictures, they can identify pictures and see what’s
in the picture, they also scan the entire length of videos. They know when you
upload an ad, what is the intent behind it with pretty good accuracy. This is
why the easy days of cloaking are over. It was possible to spend multiple six
figures on an ad account in the past. Nowadays, we’re lucky if we can get
$3000-$7000 spend out of it before they ban it. I’ve been shifting for years
slowly to truly white hat or at least front-end white. Having to battle a storm,
and know you are trying to swim uphill and can’t focus on what you should
focus on – marketing - makes things super hard. I’d much rather invest time
and energy and make less ROI than try and battle google and FB head on.
I recommend both, because if you don’t run on Google and Facebook you
can do really well with Blackhat. There’s nothing sweet like blackhat ROI. I
personally run BH on other sources, take the sweet ROI, reinvest it into
white hat projects both offline and online. To give you an idea what kind of
businesses: One of them is BannersLanders.com, a company I started years
ago to help affiliate marketers get their landing pages, banners, wordpress
sites done very fast and for cheap. I created this ‘whitehat’ recurring business
because I had trouble finding good freelancers on Upwork - when I posted a
job, I’d get flooded by applicants who didn’t even read the job description, and
even when I wrote to a few that looked promising, hired them – later I’d find out
they didn’t have the skills and didn’t do what I envisioned. Instead they threw
something together that was total garbage so I wasted both time and money.
Didn’t want this to keep happening, so B&L was created to solve the problem
for me and all my affiliate friends.
PUSH traffic type is doing crazy well in 2019 but it is going to die soon once
Chrome comes out with an update banning it due to so much spam ads. So
MILK IT while you can!
Trials as we know it are dying. Mastercard laws, credit card regulations make it
very difficult to get MIDs; so while there was an abundance of trial offers years
ago, nowadays it’s hard to find ones with cap. They are far and few between.
If I was starting out right now, and knew what I know, I’d get AdPlexity Native
and take a look what kinds of offers are being run, and find actual offers
running right now.
Next I’d find the CPA Networks that carry these offers, I’d ask on STM first since
that’s the easiest - something like “anyone know which network has offer-
name-goes-here?”
Then I’d download the LPs others are using on the traffic source (let’s say
revcontent), and then I’d make my own variants of the angles.
Next I’d reach out again to the trusty rolodex known as STM and ask “Yo,
anyone got a contact at revcontent?”
I’d get intro’ed, and then I’d have a chat with their rep, and ask them, “what
placements work best for this type of offer? Can you give me a list to start off
with rather than doing RON (Run of network)?”
If there were 10 placements they’d recommended, I’d do offer payout 3x-5x

for each placement and collect data and see how we do – testing 2 landing
pages, and 5-10 creatives in the process.
So since I had all the knowledge, I’d spy to learn what vertical to focus on that
works well on the traffic source – and I’d pick native because they aren’t so
nuts when it comes to policy like google and facebook are.
Paul Jey (‘synapse’ on STM), Entrepreneur
Website: SynapseMediaOnline.com
1)Self-intro
Paul Jey from British Columbia, Canada. I have been in affiliate marketing for
5+ years, in digital marketing for 7+ years. Started out as a cab driver then
learned SEO, started building apps, found my way on STM and the rest is history!
Mainly focus on lead gen and e-com affiliate offers.
We focus mainly on Facebook and in 2019 compliance has gotten a lot harder.
Anything even remotely aggressive Facebook is quick to shut down. Haven’t
changed focus on offer types but we have definitely refined our creatives to
adapt to Facebook’s ever-changing policy lines. In 2019 I think to be a good
facebook marketer you need to be a policy expert. There is still a lot of room
where you can be aggressive enough to get decent ROI without crossing the
line and getting accounts banned. That small middle-ground is where great
campaigns live.
Hmm my predictions for 2019. Affiliate e-commerce offers are going to

continue to trend upwards as FB cracks down on more aggressive style offers.
I think FB and GDN are still great sources. As for dying sources, I wouldn’t be
surprised if Chrome does some sort of update to whack push traffic like they
did with pop traffic. Chrome is all about user experience and it’s countdown till
these types of inventory get scrutinized.
Facebook running Affiliate E-Commerce Offers. These offers are harder to

initially get going and the ROI is far from juicy but they are more stable and
predictable. If you can find one or two offers to scale hard in this category you
are laughing. Even if you can run 3-4 offers at moderate scale you can build a
nice portfolio of campaigns this way. PS. Some of the networks will protect
your landing page and creatives for you. So if you come up with something
110% unique you can have them shutdown other pubs stealing your stuff. This
is great because you can keep campaigns running longer without copy cats
driving your ROI into the ground.
Tim Konijn (‘stickupkid’ on STM), Affiliate,
STM Moderator
Website: stickupkid’s STM profile
1)Self-intro
Hi there, I am Tim from Alkmaar (small town near Amsterdam). Been in the
affiliate game for 10 years or so! My main focus is Facebook Advertising,
but got some decent knowledge about e-mail marketing, SEO and online
marketing in general of course.
From the beginning I focused on mobile content / mobile click flows / IVR
and lead gen sweeps. The only differences I experienced over both short
and long term is that I have to jump from geo to geo, from brand to brand.
Along the way I changed good working angles slightly and tested some new
ones of course. But overall the game didn’t change much.
White hat approach + black hat offers = my winning formula. I don’t

promote aggressively and try to give my ads/accounts a good reputation.
This is best for the long term strategy I think.
None are dying (unless a platform/service/product goes bankrupt of

course), but some are getting harder (due to regulations, more competition,
less good converting offers etc. etc). But if things are getting harder, only
the winners will continue to find the sweet spot to make it work. And those
winners will walk away with the trophy. If you leave a vertical or traffic
source and try to focus on another one, you are already behind and you
have to be really good to fight the established competitors. Stick to your
guns is my advice. Go back to the drawing board and use your current skill
set and open your eyes to new ways!
SEO (content) + casino offers. In the long run this would be the most
profitable combination I think.
Angus Kong (‘anguschkong’ on STM), Entrepreneur
1)Self-intro
This is Angus Kong from Hong Kong. I have been in this industry since 2014. I
mainly focus on Facebook traffic for ecom, nutra, casino and lead gen. We
spend 8 figures monthly on Facebook ads.
Facebook is more regulated in 2019 than 2018. A lot of new guidelines that
affect the business. I can name a few here:
1. $450 spending limit for new account

2. Straight banning of body improvement ads
3. Faster banning of accounts if you are violating the policy
Facebook/IG is still the biggest traffic source and also the most scalable one.
We still focus on FB traffic. There are always changes in the industry. Every
change could be an opportunity. Just be the first marketer to crack the code,
be the best marketer to kill the market.
I recommend whitehat. It is more sustainable and you can actually scale up

by building up your team. Blackhat is all about accounts and the blackhat
game can be over anytime if Facebook wants to stop it.
I predict that the guru vertical will be thriving. FX, stock, crypto, real estate
investment guru....and Facebook is still the best traffic source.
Facebook and ecom.
However, I recommend people focus on their sales funnel and try to squeeze
every cent from the traffic. Maximize AOV and run follow up email campaigns.
If you make a 1% improvement on every single element you can control, you
can make decent money even if the CPM increases by 100%.
Danilo Lee, Founder of InjuryCaseWorth.com
Website: InjuryCaseWorth.com
1)Self-intro
Danilo Lee, 33, currently living in Santa Monica CA and started affiliate
marketing back in 2007. Primarily focused on search and display at the
moment on legal and finance verticals.
Compliance and regulations have been harder recently. Haven’t changed

focus on traffic sources or verticals. But have invested a lot of time into
creatives, funnels.
White hat - consistency and lower margins but you can sleep well at night
not worrying about accounts getting shut down.
Main prediction: build own landers on host & post and focus on back end
monetization.
I foresee an economy crisis around the corner so mass appeal offers such
as debt will thrive.
Traffic Source: GDN as it’s harder to crack the code.
Offers: Mass appeal lead gen, debt.
Josh Mayne (‘maynzie’ on STM), High Hopes Media
Website: Josh’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
What up Stackers! My name is Josh, but to most simply Maynzie. Born and
raised from Melbourne, Australia – yes one of the more rare breeds in affiliate
marketing but probably mostly because of the horrendous timezone.
I first got involved in this space during high school in 2009 after a chance
article my dad recommended I read in a newspaper about people flipping
domains, which soon lead a crooked path of google searches to becoming an
early member of STM, and then the first meet of STM members in Melbourne
sparked a fire that could not be put out.
Over the years have tried nearly every single source there is, although in the
last 12 months Facebook has been the dominant traffic solution and mainly
focused in the COD health and beauty space and lead generation.
I had absence from the industry through 2013/2015, so coming back in 2016 I still
felt I had quite a good grasp on campaigns that worked. However, the last 6-12
months I’ve really noticed a lot changing, and the guys I’ve known in my career
from the start seem to feel it too, a definite need to shake things up in order to
remain profitable.
2019 has been a massive difference in approach for my partner and me. It
is the year of diversification and away from tunnel vision. What started late
2018 has been a great decision as we’ve moved away from just depending on
Facebook alone and started branching into alternative avenues like pop/push,
and also beginning to take on JV projects with new e-com startups.
The awareness of affiliate style campaigns is only growing from Facebook’s

perspective, and as they introduce more things like poor ad experience or very
fast detecting/banning of accounts, we as affiliates have one solution - evolve.
Diversification into those different sources (pop/push) would normally lower

overall quality for advertisers but we’ve been able to offset by keeping our
quality traffic live from Facebook and began to reinvent some funnels to
try and drive up the quality. The monthly revenue is much more consistent
than whether or not Mr. Zuckerberg is cranky. In some cases the changes to
the funnels have lowered ROI of course, but remaining on the offers is much
more important. I forgot how nice it felt to wake up and not worry about a
sea of red flagged accounts, and having campaigns to optimize like the old
days.
Mimicking campaigns from spytools like the old days is really phasing out,
you do have to actually ‘think’ these days. ROI is not as easy to uncover,
BUT that does not mean it’s not there! We’ve hit some of the highest ROI’s
I’ve seen in the last couple months, and a close buddy of mine has stupid
margins on their ecom products yet they’re much more unique (think STM
user Wakeboarder’s thread on the hog hunting product).
No question about it - White hat! I feel the entry level for BH is getting more
and more difficult and it is just inevitable it will be a hardcore grind with
huge resistance, unless you’re built for systematic approaches, a decent
cashflow and dealing with rollercoaster emotions. If you do still want to go
this route I would focus on WH front ends and maybe tweaking later stages
of the funnel with BH tactics to bring up the revenue side. Also keeping
content fresh, always changing up angles as far away from the normal you
see on the spytools - because chances are by the time you see something
in spy tools it’s dead already!
Focus on building and bettering yourself in terms of skill sets and focus on
your strengths, there is always an edge you can develop. I get a chance to
speak to a lot of people and watch many careers over the years, and the
theme of the majority is the same – a lot of regret for not having started
building some sort of asset sooner.
Regarding traffic sources: Facebook/Google – continue to grow. Native

continues to grow. Push continues to grow, not sure about pops maybe
some issues if more updates from browsers. Definitely will see increase in
Snapchat and Pinterest, can already see it happening now.
Regarding offers: Health and beauty continue to grow, although trials may
cop more problems with the Mastercard updates. COD is only on the way
up as more countries adopt the style - so much potential throughout Asia
and developing countries. If you find a good offer – it just lifts off like a
rocket! Dating offers to make a big comeback in 2019 with snapchat and
push growing. Pin submits on the decline. More people pushing into e-com
and branding their own offers.
Additional thoughts: A continued rise for agency startups for those willing to
take their incredible skill sets and grow other people’s business. The majority
of these people with amazing products out there have ZERO clue about
online marketing.
Facebook to continue putting pressure on poor ad experience and what

they deem okay for their policies – even faster detecting of angles.
Aggressive BH angles (celebrity) to begin copping heat in the media in some
form, I feel like we’re just waiting for the day more affiliates will end up in
some trouble as its absolutely everywhere these days… FTC knock knock…

The holy trinity of Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram. Anything in the health/

beauty space focused on either COD or straight sale but own white label
or production with a quality product. I really want to emphasize the need
to control the brand/asset. The bigger picture over short term relief, but of
course easier said than done once cashflow is established.
A focus on passionate projects. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the
lacking fulfillment discussion in affiliate marketing.
If starting from scratch there is plenty of easy opportunity in push/pop still

although from recent experience I’ll give one tip: Do not overlook high-
payout offers!
Mitesh Muley (‘miteshmuley’ on STM), Affiliate
Link: Mitesh’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
I am Mitesh from India (Pune). I am in this industry for almost 13+ years. I
had taken a break for a few years and explored SEO/SMM and tried my hand
again at AM around 6-7 years back. I am running whitehat offers: Nutra,
Crypto, Sweeps. Mostly I focus only on Facebook and Google.
2018 was one of the tough times for me on facebook because of the
cambridge analytica scandal. 2019 looks way better compared to 2018 for
the campaigns. I have started exploring more whitehat offers apart from
the BH ones I was already running.
My major profits come from BH, but going forward WH is the way to go. I
would recommend people to run more WH offers in legit manner, but if you
are looking to make some quick money then BH will help you get some cash
flow.
I think Trial offers might take a hit this year because of mastercard new
updates. I still see a lot of potential for Nutra. I personally feel that doing
COD offers in tier 3 countries is going to be BIG. I think PUSH ads is going to
be the next go to traffic source for some leadgen offers.
If I had to start all over again I would do the following:

Whitehat - ecomm offers in tier 3 countries on Facebook
Blackhat - crypto offers in Tier 1/2 countries on Facebook
Kulwant Nagi (‘kulwantnagi’ on STM), Blogger
and Affiliate
Website: BloggingCage.com
1)Self-intro
Hello Affiliates!! I am Kulwant Nagi from India, doing affiliate marketing since
2012. It all started with SEO when we used to write articles, do the SEO and rank
them in Google.
Soon I found that it was not a stable business as Google could kick me out any
time and my earnings would go to ZERO the next day. So I started looking for
more options.
For the last 2 years, we’ve been mainly focusing in the Nutra vertical and traffic
from Google Ads and Facebook.
Back in 2018, I made pretty decent money by promoting Nutra offers. Selling
trials were so easy back then.
As there are many credit card regulations going on in 2019, selling rebills is
becoming a little bit difficult.
2019 is all about Push Notification.
We are trying to encash this new traffic source before Google makes any
changes in the Chrome browser.
We have started looking for legit eCommerce offers, software etc., which is still
an untapped market.
The ultimate goal is to make money online, doesn’t matter whether it’s from
Nutra, Casino, Crypto or any other products. So we are making a shift from
Nutra offers now.
I always prefer to go white hat because you can run your campaigns over long
periods. Managing ad accounts is a big headache so we always try to run our
campaigns white hat only.
We create a small website around 10-12 pages around the product and send
traffic to our main page.
As we are selling the products with paid ads + content marketing, it’s always
easy to bring them back to the website by showing them retargeted ads.
We have shifted completely from the CPA offers to legit affiliate products as
I’ve said in the previous reply.
2019 will be all about Push Notifications.
I am seeing rebill offers dying and eCommerce picking up in the market again.
I would focus more on Google Ads. Nothing can beat Google Ads.
My strategy would be to create awesome content around the product, find
buyer keywords and run Google ads to bring quality traffic.
We have made a lot of money in the Nutra niche, but if I was starting from the
scratch, I would never pick this niche as most of the products are not beneficial
for the end user.
The verticals I would pick are:
1. Software
2. eCommerce products
3. Travel
Travel is such an amazing niche to pick as you can create awesome content
around this niche and get people to buy your services.
Charles Ngo (‘dr_ngo’ on STM), Super-Affiliate
Website: CharlesNgo.com
1)Self-intro
Hey, I’m Charles Ngo. I’ve been in the affiliate marketing space since 2008.
I split my time between building the CharlesNgo.com brand, and running

white hat offers on Facebook.
I’m more focused on building funnels now compared to the typical one and
done affiliate mode.
CPC’s are only going to keep increasing in the upcoming years and affiliates
need to figure out how to increase their profit margins to compensate.
I think building out funnels to promote multiple offers is the most

straightforward way.
Affiliate marketing has been really lucrative the past decade due to market
inefficiencies.
A lot of traffic sources have beefed up their compliance teams and software
- that has caused blackhat marketing to become increasingly difficult and
cost inefficient.
There are always going to be a small group of guys who will make bank with
blackhat.
But if you’re starting out, it’s just more profitable to focus all that time and
energy towards white hat.
At the end of the day, all roads lead to Facebook.
There are tons of traffic sources out there, it’s just a headache dealing with
the low quality and lack of targeting options.
Figure out what Facebook wants, find a way to make it profitable, and pray
your account remains in good standing.
Facebook.
Education lead gen.
Funnels.
Andrew Payne (‘Mr Payne’ on STM), Affiliate
and Agency Owner
Website: AffiliateSuccess.com
1)Self-intro
The STM community knows me as Mr Payne. I have been a digital marketer

since 2007 with some experience in the affiliate side early on in those years
but only returned to the affiliate industry 2.5 years ago.
I work with most of the traffic types but my focus has primarily been with
pop and push traffic. Working in many verticals including lead gen, dating,
nutra, streaming/media, sweeps, etc. No real limits on verticals.
Well, we are only one month into 2019 so the timespan is only a short period
but I did start to see some changes in my particular methods starting in the
last part of 2018. For many, last year in 2018 was a rough year but for a small
group of affiliates it was some of the biggest years.
Over the last several months there has been an increase of fraudulent
traffic and bots on push traffic. That plus almost every ad network is using
some questionable tactics to resell or arbitrage this type of traffic now.
I will say as trends become popular and traffic compliance changes, these
have big influence in the affiliate industry. You have to adapt and I would
venture to say that things are evolving every 6’ish months, it’s important to
stay on your toes.
I’ve not entirely changed focus but I have made diversifying a higher priority
in order to stay competitive and keep my business growing.
I think a better approach to this question is to adapt this according to the

type of traffic you are running. In general, blackhat is getting quite difficult
on some sources but yet with fairly lenient terms on other sources.
There is no right or wrong answer but I suggest you err on the side of caution
if you go the blackhat route.
In the end, blackhat equals strong potential profits but also high risk in many
cases. While, whitehat requires more upfront effort to see results but you
can build a more sustainable business over the long run (and have less
stress).
Nutra is doing really well right now, bigger than previous years even. I see
more thriving verticals than I do dying verticals.
Partly because of the growth of push traffic, it really opens the door with
a fresh way to promote lots of offer types because of the added way to
qualify the subscribers. Offers that were previously best suited for facebook,
adwords and native can now be extended to push traffic which has less
compliance headaches. And if done right, the performance is good.
Let me break it down into two forms, based on what I know AND based on a
big or small budget to work with...
Big Budgets - I think in the long run, Facebook and Native offer the best
growth potential due to the targeting abilities and the level of scale you can
achieve.
Small Budgets - I think a great place to get started is Push. It has sort of
replaced pops, it’s easy to set up campaigns and test things quickly with lots
of offer selection.
For offer type or vertical, I think the lead gen space is gaining strength in
general. As I mentioned, nutra is super hot right now, international credit
card trials are returning, sweepstakes and dating is also working well for
some although it did very well last year.
Sebastian R (‘twinaxe’ on STM), Long-Time Affiliate
Website: LoneWolfAffiliate.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Sebastian, I am 38 years old and from Germany.
I’ve been doing affiliate marketing since 2015, ran several different traffic types
and different offer verticals.
For several years my main traffic was from torrents, made huge money there
with Usenet subscriptions but also with adult communities, dating and stuff.
Then for many years my main traffic was from PPV (Adware), there I made
my money from traditional affiliate programs like clothing online shops, telco,
electronics online shops and so on.
Still have some campaigns running there basically on autopilot, but

unfortunately PPV is not that big anymore to keep as main source.
Nowadays most of my traffic is from Pops promoting leadgens, some higher

paying CPA offers, installs and some mobile content.
I also tested several other traffic in the past, in 2009-2010 for example I made
real good money from FB until they started to ban my accounts each day.
Then I stopped running FB because it got too annoying for me.

I also had some great classified campaigns running with a very good angle
resulting in 80%-90% CR on the offers.
Additionally I also tested some other traffic types but with no big success.
Sure there are some differences but no major ones for me.
Also, for me, these differences did not result from big changes in the networks
or offers. It’s just that I’ve been running the same stuff for quite a long time,
and at the moment I’m enjoying testing some new things.
My main traffic is still Pops, and the verticals I’ve been running are still doing
well so I keep my campaigns running, and I guess I could just continue with
that for some time.
But recently I had some good new ideas that I want to test so that’s
probably the biggest difference for me between 2018 and 2019.
Also it’s fun to do something new and see success there as well.
Apart from that, I have some campaigns running on autopilot for several
years already and they will probably continue running through 2019 as well.
Nice question, I would say it depends on what you run and where you run it.
But in general, in my opinion, everyone should start or even has to start with
whitehat.
In the end you need to know how to run campaigns whitehat to do blackhat
anyway.
Whitehat is basically just learning how to set up, run and track campaigns
on the specific source or specific verticals.
To run blackhat you need to know much more because there you need to
know basically everything you need to run whitehat, plus you have to be
smart enough to trick the traffic source.
To be successful in whitehat it’s mostly enough to just be persistent and

learn the basics. To run blackhat successfully (without getting caught) you
need to be much smarter so it’s not for everyone.
There are some things that can only be run blackhat, but a big
misunderstanding from many beginners is that you have to cloak or run
blackhat to be successful.
And this is simply not true, you still can run so much stuff completely
whitehat and be successful.
For verticals there will be the evergreens like Nutra, Dating, Gambling etc. that
will just stay solid like they’ve been for ages already.
The biggest changes probably will be in mobile offers.

Carrier billing got harder although PIN submits are still doing well.
But there are markets in Asia or LATAM for example that were strong with DCB,
that are too huge to let go just because carrier regulations got harder.
I imagine that we’ll see new conversion flows or offer types coming up for
these big markets.
I don’t think that advertisers will give up on hundreds of millions of mobile

users just because of some regulations.
Many setbacks create new possibilities.
Also there are new markets coming up - maybe we’ll see more action in Africa
for example.
I am confident that e-commerce will become bigger. It’s been steadily

growing for years and will probably continue to do so.
About traffic types, I think the most or biggest changes we will see will be with
Push traffic.
Many people were worried about the crackdown on Pops with the new Chrome
updates but then nothing happened.
I can imagine that the crackdown on Push will come this year and will have
much bigger impact than the recent Chrome updates had for Pops.
Everyone is jumping on Push now so the traffic type gets raped left and
right, and probably will be much more spammy than Pops soon (maybe it is
already).
Competition gets bigger and harder from day to day, traffic prices are
increasing a lot, many new push networks are popping up, and existing
networks are adding push to their inventory.
There are spammy and zero-value websites whose only purpose is to collect
push subscribers.
The way the platforms and people run push is just asking for trouble and
stricter regulations.
It can’t be stopped completely because many reputable websites are also

using Push notifications, but I don’t think it will continue running like now
forever.
Probably many people will wonder how fast something they run can be
killed and then it’s the good old “adapt or die”.
But of course these are only my personal predictions - who knows what will
really happen.
The same as what I’m running now.
If I was just starting now with the same knowledge I have now, I would be
in pretty much the same situation, so I would be running the same stuff I’m
running now anyway.
‘RubyTunes’ (on STM), STM Moderator
Link: RubyTune’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
Hey there! I’m originally from NZ, but based in Europe. I’ve been in the affiliate
marketing space for over 5 years now and ridden many waves, from the old
POF days, to pop, Facebook, native ads, and a whole lot of others in between.
These days the focus for us is on ecommerce & Facebook.
Not much has changed for us in terms of different traffic types or verticals as
we’ve been working on a longer term ecommerce project. Although we have
found media buying on Facebook to have become even trickier to crack for
ecommerce compared to past years. We’ve tried to focus more on building
assets (e.g. email lists) to make every dollar spent more of an investment.
White hat all day. Sure there’s money to be made in black hat, but do you want
to ride that roller coaster to make a quick buck, or build a business that you
can enjoy and continue to work on and improve? I know which I prefer!
Ecommerce is always going to be around - new businesses were being

created and built well before the internet. But I believe you need to have more
of an edge and be smarter about it, as the days of drop-shipping trash on
Facebook are fast fading away. I’ve also been hearing a lot about push being
the next biggest thing for 2019.
Personally for me it would still be ecommerce (preferably my own product) on

Facebook. Not because it’s the easiest or quickest thing out there, but because
of the potential to build a long term quality business if you put in the effort and
you’re passionate about it.
Kelly Sheffield (‘thedudeabides’ on STM),
Affiliate and STM Moderator
Link: Kelly’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
Hey there, my name is Kelly Sheffield, and I’ve been in this industry for about 7
years now. I’ve lived in San Diego for 3 years now and love it here.
For the last few years my focus has been entirely on native ads, running mostly
nutra and VSL campaigns.
Yes I’ve found it’s gotten harder to find “quick wins” on native, at least on
Revcontent where I feel like the traffic quality has decreased over this last
year.
I’ve changed my focus to running more universally whitehat campaigns

that can run on higher quality and volume sources like Outbrain, Taboola, &
Facebook with ecom offers and leadgen.
If you want to be in this industry for the long term, whitehat seems like the
more sustainable option, plus in general it forces you to become a better
marketer and develop a more well-rounded skill set.
Beyond that, I think more affiliate media buyers should take a serious look at
creating their own lead capture funnels, making money on both the front-end
and back-end channels. There seems to be huge opportunity there, in large
part due to those who are great at emailing tend to suck at media buying and
vice-versa.
Nutra continues to hit crazy numbers, but ecom and whitehat seem to be
hitting even bigger numbers with greater consistency and less headache
overall.
Push traffic seems to be making waves at the moment, but who knows what
Google and other browser vendors have in store for it.
If I were starting all over, I would gear my approach around building lead
capture funnels for whitehat products and leadgen offers on the big
sources (Google, Facebook, Native).
Either by taking regular campaigns I already have working or see others

making work, and then capturing the email before sending them to an offer,
with the carrot being a survey/quiz or a free resource in exchange for their
info.
For starters, I would try and get my opt-in rate as close to the initial landing
page CTR as possible, although realistically that might be ~20-30% less CTR
than regular click-through LP with no targeting changes. If you can achieve
that then you’re paying effectively the same cost per click to an offer as
before, but now you also have the chance to follow up and generate money
from those who didn’t convert right away. From there I would split test the
initial email, autoresponder sequence, before getting more complicated
adding in other channels like push and messenger.
Once things were dialed in and I really knew my numbers, I would start
looking towards SEO and acquiring websites in that vertical to drive organic
traffic to those funnels and build up a brand/authority site of sorts. Whether
you continue to sell others products or create your own is up to you. The
end goal being to exit that business for a solid multiple, rinse, and repeat.
I’m glossing over a ton of info here, but I think that’s a solid framework to
approach things from.
Servando Silva (‘servandosilva’ on STM),
Affiliate and Blogger
Link: ServandoSilva.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Servando and I live in Mexico.
I’ve been in the affiliate marketing industry for 7 years and mostly focused on
paid traffic for the last 5 years.
We’ve run a ton of offers and verticals. We got started with mobile pops and
redirects back in 2013-2014 and dominated them for several years. Most of
our winning verticals were sweepstakes, AV, apps and toolbars.
In the last couple years we moved to bigger traffic sources (white hat) and
mostly focused on Facebook for some of our own products and lately we’ve
been working with Native and Push notifications as well.
Yes, there are some key differences but it’s mostly due to us learning different
traffic sources. In 2018 we ran a lot on Facebook until one of our own info
products died off after 10-11 months. Then the trend of push notifications
started and we’ve been running a ton of those lately along with Native ads.
As for verticals we’re still running the same ones we used to run back in
2017 with pops/redirects with push traffic. For FB and Native we’re pushing
different verticals which are more white hat (mostly lead generation and
some eComm) but not because other verticals stopped working. It’s just due
to the nature of the traffic that we need to run different stuff there.
I’m a white hat man at heart. I prefer running businesses in the long term
keeping everybody happy instead of trying to hide everything from everyone.
Cloaking to avoid competition is one thing, but when cloaking needs to be
done just so you can still run or get paid that’s too much for me.
It’s one of the reasons we switched to FB and tested a lot of products until
we found a winner and scaled it to 7 figures in 2017-2018. We also focus a
lot on lead generation and email marketing, always providing value to our
subscribers while promoting with content marketing.
As to what to focus or what would I recommend, I guess everybody has

a different hat (whether it’s gray, black or totally white) and I’m OK with it.
Honestly you can make money with all of them if you know how to dominate it.
If you’re a newbie I’d recommend sticking to gray/white but other than that it’s
up to you. Who am I to judge?
Offers and verticals... hmmm. Alright.
I’ve seen a lot of crypto, finance, gambling offers thriving since last year, while
other verticals like nutra or sweeps when using some conversion methods (not
all of them) are harder to promote. Think CC submits or trials.
Also I noticed how many networks entered the eComm space yet most of
them failed to capitalize on it, except a few who have more experience or
focus on white hat traffic.
eComm as a whole has been getting more difficult every year no matter if you
run direct or via a network. This is specifically talking about drop-shipping. I
have no idea what’s going on out of that space.
As for traffic sources, from what I’ve seen and many friends share the same
idea as me, pops are still very hard to work with and Google keeps adding new
updates to kill them every year. Pops are not dead, but there’s less volume if
you check the networks stats and compare them to 2015-2016 and it’s difficult
to find proper offers to monetize the traffic (and have the lead quality match
for the advertiser).
Push notifications are rising fast, and volumes are growing bigger and bigger,
but at the same time I think the faster you grow, the faster you could fall. After
all, those ads are very intrusive and spammy so all it takes is a few updates to
kill a lot of the performance. It has happened before.
Every day more and more users are being added to the push databases,
however I’m sure every day a ton of them also unsubscribe, or at least they
learn how to ignore all the SPAM they’re receiving. This is different to other
sources where organic traffic makes a huge chunk of the volume and you’re
not hitting the same users every day multiple times with the same ads.
We’ll see what happens in 2019.

It would depend on the budget.
If you’re just getting your wet feet and have a small budget I’d start with push
notifications or even redirects.
As for verticals, the same ones that have always worked there like
sweepstakes, dating, apps/toolbars are a good choice with lower payouts.
If you have a bigger budget or just want to go the white hat route I’d focus on
social media, like Facebook or Snapchat and dominate it. As for verticals I’d
say anything that’s based on lead generation, unless you want to focus on
eCommerce.
Some examples of lead gen offers could be finance, solar, loans or even
building your own list and monetizing it with several offers in the back end,
although that requires to develop skills in email marketing and can be
daunting at first.

Christina Szekeres (‘imqueen’ on STM),
Affiliate
Links: IMQueen Consulting, Christina’s FB Page
1)Self-intro
I am Christina, also known as IMQueen. I was born and raised in Hungary,

currently living in Newport Beach, California. I have been an affiliate marketer
for more than a decade, started at the age of 14, grew up with affiliate
marketing. This year I am mostly focusing on lead gen campaigns and ecom
offers. As always I’ve been sticking to Facebook as my #1 traffic source.
Yes, 2019 has brought major changes for me, started focusing on legit 100%
whitehat ecom offers. Still running as an affiliate as running your own ecom
empire takes a lot of time and attention, and running as an affiliate is always
more convenient, less headache, no need to worry about inventory, fulfillment
nor customer support. I like to focus on running traffic – that’s one thing I’m
truly an expert in. This way I still get to live the dream and have lots of free
time.
Blackhat will ALWAYS do great, there’s no doubt about that. The question
is, are you mentally prepared for a roller-coaster ride? Blackhat is a little
bumpier than Whitehat. You will always make higher ROI with it. However,
whitehat allows you to run more stable. Whitehat is harder in terms of
complying with the rules and limitations on what you can put in your ads
or on your landers. I think it’s a matter of preference, you can thrive in both
whether it’s blackhat/white, it’s just a matter of focus, knowing the right
information and consistently applying what you know.
Regarding offer verticals, COD, leadgen and eCom are hot right now. When
it comes to traffic sources, Facebook is always hot. A new hot trend is
Snapchat!
I’d either start running debt relief on Snapchat or eCom on Facebook. Don’t
divide your focus by too many traffic sources or too many verticals, pick one
or two and master them.

Yi Hao Ten (‘adsflo’ on STM), Internet Marketer
Link: Ten’s STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
I’m Ten, from Malaysia. I have been in the game since 2014, close to about 5
years now. Right now my focus is on Dropshipping using Facebook as my
traffic source.
Comparing both years, dropshipping is slightly harder to make bank now, with
the rising CPM costs on FB, and the market being overly saturated. I think that
this answer would apply for any other affiliates in other verticals as well, as
change is always constant in our industry.
However, that’s not to say that dropshipping is not viable anymore. We see
more creativity in the space, as well as a shift of focus to building edges in
this vertical, such as putting in more efforts in cultivating good customer
services (Page scores), a larger emphasis on brand building, and optimizing
the customers’ buying experience for a higher ROI, right from the moment they
land on our landing pages.
Both work, and both have no shortage of success stories. Even for Ecommerce,
strategies that us affiliates think are White Hat – they may still be considered
as aggressive in Facebook’s terms, and will still get us banned. At the end of
the day everyone has their own boundaries to draw – take your pick.
None. As always, there will be affiliates making certain verticals and certain
traffic sources work. As an example, Dating – everyone assumed it was going
to die off after Facebook banned dating offers, but look how stable it is right
now.
I do think this year will be quite crucial for survival for a lot of affiliates. The
affiliate marketing landscape is always changing, and only the fittest will be
able to adapt and survive. Focus is key – Be the master of a traffic source or
vertical, and build an impenetrable moat around you.
I’m predicting that Dropshipping will definitely still thrive for 2019. That goes
also for Nutra, White Hat Leadgen and Ecom offers, and Casino. Also Push
traffic and Snapchat would be something worth checking out as well.
I still would be doing dropshipping with Facebook. Ecom remains the lowest
entry barrier for anyone to get into Internet Marketing. However, if dealing
with angry customers and tons of fulfilment chores is not your thing, an
alternative would be to run White Hat Ecom offers with networks – you
handle the traffic, they handle everything else.
Insights From Ecommerce Experts
Dee Deng, CEO of Right Hook Digital

Website: RightHookDigital.com
1)Self-intro
I am the co-founder & CEO of Right Hook Digital, an eComm growth agency
that builds & scales brands to multi-7 figures and beyond. I also serve as an
advisor to agency owners & tech & eComm founders - helping guide them
through their journeys towards greatness.
2)How to choose niche + products?
Choosing a niche really comes down to homework (research) and knowing

what you’re passionate about. Naturally, the more you are passionate about a
niche or product - the more likely you are to be invested in your business and
see it through the tough times. In terms of research - I tend to look at whether
a niche is a quick trend or one that can provide longevity. High AOV? Great!
High margins? Even better. Look at the numbers and see if it backs out after
accounting for your ad spend.
3)How to acquire customers?
Get into their heads to understand what excites them & what they desire! This
will provide you with the ammo you need to produce creative that’s on-point
and angles that slay all day. And don’t simply rely on paid acquisition either -
build brand equity and community - this is IP that your competition can’t easily
swipe or steal.
4)How to maximize LTV?
Maximizing LTV is all about continuing the conversation with your customer-
base - whether it’s via email, messenger, SMS, your content channels…
whatever it may be! Give them a reason to come back, delight them time
and time again and segment your customers properly to contextualize the
message. There are so many awesome tools to do all that cool stuff. This
doesn’t only pertain to marketing though- innovate on products too so that
your customers have new shit to get excited about.
5)Factors for your success?
Always maintaining a growth mindset - everything can be improved.

Focusing on the customer and their experience - I love studying Zappos

because they really set the bar on how eComm brands should be treating their
customers - which informs not just the level of customer service, but also the
entire business model and how to support an amazing level of service while
driving profitability.
6)Advice for newbies?
Just because a “guru” says that something works, doesn’t mean that it will
work for you. I know so many people that hang on every single word that their
chosen guru spouts - fuck that! Apply your critical thinking and make sure that
the advice applies to your situation! Just because Arnie did 10 reps of 1,000,000
lb squats in his prime doesn’t mean that I should be doing EXACTLY the same -
I’ll probably break my back instead of get ripped AF. It’s all about context, no?
Timotej Gracner (‘wakeboarder’ on STM),
Founder of Adnalytics.io
Website: Adnalytics.io
1)Self-intro
I’m the founder of Adnalytics, a SaaS software and the first marketing
intelligence tool for Pinterest ads.
After my last ecommerce follow along on the STM forum, I scaled a family-
owned hunting brand, The Wild Boar Liquidator, and generated 6-figures using
Facebook and Google advertising in just a couple of months.
I believe there are two main factors that can drastically increase chances to
select the right niche as a newbie.
1. Passion
Are buyers really passionate and can talk about it for days? If so, that’s a good
sign and a first checkmark.
2. Research
Facebook Audience Insight is a great way to start doing research. You can
easily find blogs, forums, and online magazines related to your niche and do
more in-depth research.
Regarding the product research, I’m starting on Amazon Category best-sellers

landing page. It’s free and it gives me ideas about what’s working in particular
sub-category.
Attending trade fair shows is even better for sourcing, but it’s time-consuming,
expensive and It’s not newbie-friendly.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer for this one. It’s important that you don’t
assume. You need to do your own research, run some traffic, test it and
analyze the results.
For general stores, Facebook and Google are the best places to start with.
When you are selling to niche-focused segment it’s worth trying popular online
magazines and blogs and run advertorials with them. They have very targeted
traffic, authority and with the right approach, it can be super-powerful.
The easiest way to do this is to increase AOV. Using cross-sells and upsells
nowadays is a must. For Shopify and Woocomerce there are extensions
available and you don’t need any coding skills.
But the biggest impact on LTV will have your post-purchase actions. You need
to keep them happy after they place an order. Fast delivery, good customer
support, great product, just to name a few.
If you take care of this, the customers will come back and buy again. This is
the best way to maximize LTV.
Well, when you have a great product to promote, it’s easier to find success.
Like with sweepstake offers, if the offer is bad you can’t make it profitable. Fact.
Besides that, I believe persistence and consistency are the most important
factors.
But from a more technical point of view, an analytic-mindset gives me the

ability to see where I’m leaving money on the table and where I need to put my
focus on.
First, focus on the product!
Finding the right product first is more important than adding that scarcity app
on the product page. You can have the best web-shop design and scarcity
technique, but if you don’t have the right product you cannot scale.
And the second-best advice is to join STM Forum and start a follow along!
Zack Franklin (‘Zack’ on STM), CEO of
AMZKungfu Inc., STM Moderator
Link: AMZKungfu.com
1)Self-intro
I’m Zack Franklin, an American expat living in Shenzhen, China – the global
hub for ecommerce and the “factory of the world”. I’ve been in Affiliate
Marketing and Ecommerce since 2014. I currently focus on Amazon, and I’ve
generated more than $10 million in Amazon revenues over the last year.
When it comes to Ecommerce, this is THE question. For me, I like to pick niches
that are easy to create communities and content for, have recurring revenue
potential, and a range of price levels. I don’t like to pick small niches. If you’re
having trouble thinking of ecommerce niches, use Amazon’s category and
subcategory lists – these are gold. I also like to go on platforms like Aliexpress
or Amazon and type in random words like “blue” “outdoor” “accessory” with
filters to just show me thousands of random products. It’s a different way to
start brainstorming and I’ve found some incredible products that way.
Even with increased competition, Amazon Ads are my first choice for traffic
and orders. Click fraud is almost non-existent, purchase intent is high, and
Amazon is releasing new features almost weekly, including offsite retargeting
and placement adjustments. Google Shopping and “BOFU” Search Ads are
probably the next thing I usually set up, followed by Facebook Groups. I’ve
recently started working on “PBNs” of Facebook Groups – they all feed into
each other and tackle different benefits/angles. For example if I’m selling
phone cables – I make groups for tech news, apple fans, android fans,
etc. and then soft sell daily. At a certain level, Facebook is just going to
recommend your group and you get great organic traffic.
If you want to maximize LTV, you either need to sell a consumable product
that requires repeat purchases, upsell like crazy, or keep coming up with brand
new offers to sell them. Mix ecommerce and info products. Pick a physical
product that can act as a tripwire offer and upsell informational products. If
they’re buying Garcinia Cambogia, why not sell them a fitness info course, a
diet ebook, etc. Pick products that have an aspiration or an end goal. You’re
not just selling a knife, you’re helping them become an amazing cook. Then
you can easily create more and more offers.
Shenzhen is the absolute heart of the ecommerce world. I wouldn’t be as

successful if I lived anywhere else in the world. The entire city seems to be
doing ecommerce and there are events and meetups every single day. Living
here has accelerated my ecommerce journey a thousand times over.
Don’t learn with your own money! If I was brand new at affiliate marketing,
I would get a job at an Affiliate network for a year as an affiliate manager
or an internal media buyer and get paid to learn. Surround yourself in the
industry, go to affiliate world conferences, and have people in your city you
can talk with about marketing. All internet business is about people and your
relationships are your best competitive advantage in this industry.

IAmAttila (‘iamattila’ on STM), Super Affiliate &
Serial Entrepeneur
Website:
1)Self-intro
I first started ecom in 2015, used to run NCAA bracelets drop-shipped from
China then. Then sold yoga stuff after that in a niche store. In both instances
I stopped doing it because BlackHat sucked me back in with their BIG ROI, and
focused on marketing only – no need for customer service, logistics, or other
nightmares that come with ecom.
I re-started ecom in 2018 after being introduced to the concept of CPA ecom,
where all I do is focus on marketing and they do the rest. No dealing with
angry customers who didn’t receive their order the next day. (Yes, American
customers are spoiled thanks to Jeff Bezos and his PRIME).
When picking products, I look for a product that has broad interest, but good
and interesting. Solves-a-problem product. Sadly, the reality of things is that
people always want something that isn’t truly possible like FREE TV from a little
plastic knob you plug into the power outlet and miraculously get 100s of HD
premium channels for free. It sounds plausible because it sounds cool. It is
also broad-interest where everyone wants it. I mean who wouldn’t want free
TV?
There are also many other interesting offers like that all around, like Trakr for
instance. You attach it to stuff and you can find on a gps map where you
left it. Again broad interest because everyone loses their keys, but what they
don’t say is since it’s bluetooth it only works in a 5-10meter (15-50 feet) radius.
Plausible but by no means a good product that will get 5 star reviews.
If you want to build a brand, you gotta follow product due diligence that I
learned from an amazon course I purchased. You need to find products that
are actually good, and have raving good reviews, make your own brand,
improve it, then sell it with your marketing magic. This is what my friend Tim
Tetra did with kwik charger. Their charger truly works. People love it so much
they give great reviews, and this in turn produces more customers because
word of mouth advertising is best. I am now into branded ecom, and building
good products that I sell on Amazon and also push via Paid Ads.
First use Facebook to build awareness / get initial sales, then use Google
search to target branded terms to get the ‘2nd thought’ shoppers and
everyone else that heard from word of mouth.
Here’s a way that works to get the best results for your Facebook ads: Run PPE,
determine which Ad is the best. Next run WC > Optimize for add to cart. When
you hit 100 add to carts, edit adset switch to Purchase.
Also if you run video ads, generate a lookalike based on 95% or more viewed
video. Then create a CBA campaign, with 10-20 adsets and test various
lookalikes from 1-10% in the CBA. Every LLA should have 50$ budget. So if you
have 10 adsets, then your daily budget for the CBA camp should be $500.
We use this above method with great success running CPA ecom offers.
If you are running CPA ecom offers, you cannot do anything. If you run your
own shopify store, the best way to maximize the LTV of each customer is not
to sell crap first and foremost, secondly try and have the item shipped from
as close a location to the customer as possible to get it to them fast. Nothing,
I repeat nothing makes a customer as happy as getting the product they
ordered FAST, and that it’s a good product. If you score here, they will come
back to shop more and more and will respond to your emails where you offer
monthly deals, special holiday deals, etc., much better than if they had waited
3 weeks for an item, and it turned out to be low quality crap that didn’t even do
what was advertised.
I am successful in ecom thanks to my ability to test like a maniac. I love

testing - that’s probably my favorite thing about paid affiliate marketing. I am
always thinking what kinds of funky lookalikes can I make, what kinds of cool
interests would work to target, what kind of ads to write that will resonate with
the audience and produce great engagement? These sorts of things is what I
do and enjoy the most, and is why I am successful.
Do not rip and run other people’s ads you see on Facebook. Facebook knows
who made the ad, and they enjoy ‘owners’ benefit. Meaning if you rip and
run it, you won’t get the same kind of quality reach that they did. Make your
own shit - it costs like $100-150 to get a good video made – don’t be a cheap
ass. Also when looking at products, ask yourself, would you use this product
or recommend it to grandma? What problem would it solve? If it’s a stupid
product that just looks cool, you will have less chance of selling it since people
won’t know what the benefit is. But if it’s a product that solves a problem,
let’s say someone’s paranoid about using q tips in their ears, and they are
concerned about having dirty ears, you can sell them those cool twisting
ear gadgets – everyone will get what it does. But if you try and sell them
something that isn’t obvious and you have to educate people so they get what
it is/does, you will already have less of a chance of selling it and making a
profit.
Angus Kong (‘anguschkong’ on STM), Entrepreneur
1)Self-intro
This is Angus Kong from Hong Kong. I have been in this industry since 2014.
I mainly focus on Facebook traffic for ecom, nutra, casino and lead gen. We
spend 8 figures monthly on Facebook ads.
Two methods:
1. Choose the biggest niche like health and beauty to enjoy the scalability.
2. Choose the small niches to enjoy higher ROI and less competition.
For newbies, go for smaller niches first. Treat it as a newbie playground to gain
all the techniques. After you are more comfortable with your ads copy, video,
funnel, cs, logistics....you should challenge the big niches for a HOME RUN.
Facebook/IG is always good for ecom. I heard people doing great in Native
and Pinterest as well.
For targeting it really depends on the type of products. We usually go broad

for general products.
Don’t ignore emails and FB messenger.

They can further squeeze 10%-40% of extra revenue.
1. We have a strong private checkout funnel which is 100% better than shopify.
2. We have strong cashflow.
3. Good customer service: We have 400 staff for customer service.
4. Low product cost. As a Hong Kong resident, I can always go to China to

bargain the best prices.

1. Join Ecommerce Mastery Live
2. Join Tan Brothers’ mastermind and their facebook group
Depesh Mandalia (‘Depesh Mandalia’ on STM),
Ecom Veteran
Website: DepeshMandalia.com
1)Self-intro
Hey this is Depesh Mandalia, I’ve generated 7-figures for affiliate offers in
Ecom and over $100M driving direct to Ecom sales for branded and print
on demand stores. I’ve successfully invested 7-figure budgets into TV, paid
search and affiliate marketing campaigns, but since 2012 I’ve switched focus
more heavily onto Facebook ads with now well over $30M in ad spend for
clients and owned accounts. I’m delighted to contribute and be part of the
STM family.
There are a few options when choosing your niche and below I’ll share some
ideas to get you thinking:
1. YOUR PASSION. Go with something you can get passionate behind.

For example one of my stores was footwear and in particular I created
something which would stand out from the crowd. I like this kind of
footwear. So with that set I would research Aliexpress for footwear for men
and women that was different, to create quite a unique look and feel and
stand out, whilst selling stuff I’d like to buy too.
2. THEIR PASSION. You may not have pets but you’ll probably know the
pets niche is super passionate. Did you know many spend more on their
dog’s healthcare than their own? Dog + Healthcare = $$$. So you may find
products that help keep a dog strong, supple, happy etc because a caring
dog owner will treat their dog as a member of their family, not a pet. It’s a
niche that keeps giving if you can find products to match.
3. TRENDS. Research on Google Trends for product based keywords and

use sites, Facebook groups, your own personal networks, even magazines,
newspapers and TV shows to find upcoming product ideas. When it comes
to selling Ecom products you either create the curve, join after stores have
already made 6 or 7 figures or you miss the curve. For the majority starting
out, you want to find products that are already selling rather than create
the new product curve because starting out, you’re already trying to learn
so much. Once you’ve mastered traffic, conversion, sales funnel, research,
logistics etc. then absolutely start shifting.
4. PROBLEM/SOLUTION. Everywhere you look there’s a problem that needs

solving. My kids close doors loudly in my house for example which, when you
have young kids waking up at 6am on the weekends (and waking up LATE on
weekdays!) as a parent you want them to keep the noise down so you can
maximize sleep. Problem: Doors closing shut really loud. Solution: Soft, sticky
gel pieces that buffer the noise. Now you can sell a SOLUTION. What many
fail to do is find a need or purpose for something, so with the same item, one
seller might say that these soft gel pieces are great to buffer things around
the home, which is nice for a DIY enthusiast. But if a parent saw an ad with a
funny video showing how you could gain extra hours sleep with kids making
less noise closing doors - BOOM! And what’s better is for example in Facebook
it’s far easier to find parents than DIY enthusiasts.
Acquiring customer is more than thinking about a single channel - it’s

figuring out where you customers are and how cost effectively you can
reach them. Facebook ads is an amazing platform because the sheer reach
blasts everything else into insignificance. In fact the nearest competitive
advertising channel is TV in terms of reach and impact when you think how
you can literally dump products and services in front of someone that isn’t
in buying mode. However not everyone needs to start with Facebook. In
fact I remember speaking to the founder of the Shore Project, a watch brand
exclusively scaling through Instagram and Influencer Marketing, at how he
didn’t even care about Facebook at the time. Sure he probably left money on
the table but they had so much success on Instagram at the time he went all
in. Others have started making serious money with Snapchat - sure it may
not have the volume of Facebook but it’s also way more untapped which
allows for first mover’s advantage.
Now in terms of audience targeting and creative I always start with my

avatars - splitting their functional and emotion needs against my product or
service to build a picture to how we’ll evoke emotion into the sale. Just like
selling those gel pieces to parents to solve a real problem will make it easier
to find the audience and build creatives. Building and continuing reviewing
your avatars will ensure your campaigns focus on your target customer, their
needs, desires and outcomes.
When building out a Facebook ads account I used my 4 Funnel System which
is split by new customers (COLD - prospects, WARM - engagers, HOT - site

visitors) and existing customers. As far as building life-time value goes, it
starts with the type of ads I’m running at the top of my funnel (COLD). Here’s
an analogy for you: The reason why so many fail at Ecom is because they’re
trying to jump in bed with their ‘prospect’ on the first date; a one-night stand.
This is great, if your goal is the one off ‘interaction’. However, it’s unlikely the
best way to build a long term relationship with that person. The same works
in business. If your ads are focused on discounts, limited stock, buy now etc.
etc. and you’re desperate for that sale at all costs, then chances are your
customer lifetime value will suffer. If however you build the avatar from the
top of funnel and build rapport through your funnel to conversion you’ll give
them a reason to buy again with you. Then running offers to them will flow
much easier, whether you’re doing this immediately after purchase in the
checkout, or via email, messenger or ads post purchase. Also think about
whether there is a natural pattern for repurchase - I ran a post purchase
campaign for a candle selling website, and we simply retargeted everyone
30-180 days after their last purchase with the latest releases (created
monthly), knowing that on average (via customer research) the candles
lasted 30-60 days. The results were 40X Return on Ad Spend - that’s $40 back
for every $1 spent on existing customers!
The single biggest factor in my success in Ecom is putting myself in the

shoes of the customer and building the bridge between the products and
what problem I’m solving, or what new opportunity I’m creating. Everything
else is strategy and tactics but this is the underlying factor. In fact, I call it
Brand-driven, Performance Marketing. It’s the new frontier for how the usually
analytical performance marketer needs to take a leaf out of the brand
marketer’s playbook, to focus more on the consumer experience in building
fast growth engines that performance marketers are so good at.
The advice I give to all Ecom newbies is this: Choose between learning
media buying or learning ecom store management. Doing both together is
extremely hard. I love that affiliate networks cater better for Ecom affiliates
by building product offers with high scale and opening it up for media buyers.
It means media buyers learn how to market for Ecom without worrying about
the store management, product fulfillment, customer services and more.
Dim Niko (‘dimniko’ on STM), Director of
DimNiko.com
Website: DimNiko.com, Dim’s FB Page
1)Self-intro
Hey guys! I’m Dim Niko. I’ve been in the ecom game for a couple of years
now, building both my own brands, and brands for my clients at our agency,
EPOCH. I recently stepped down from my position as CMO at Ape Athletics
(an online fitness apparel company), and have now shifted my focus into
scaling our new hair extension brand. Amongst all this, I love speaking about
the ground-breaking strategies we use to scale our own and our client’s
companies at major industry events like Affiliate World, iStack Training’s FB &
Ecom Mastery Live, Digital Marketer’s Australia (Home soil!), and a bunch more.
This year, we’re also running our own first event, an eCommerce Mastermind
in South Africa, bringing some of the greatest marketers from around the
world to speak, which will be an absolute blast!
For me, ecommerce has become about building a massive brand – an asset
that holds its own inherent value, with brand equity, inventory, marketing
assets, etc. It’s no longer a game of dropshipping hype products to make
quick, unsustainable cash, so I may not be the best person to talk to about
finding a “winning product”.
However, if you do want to build a brand and real business, there are a couple
of characteristics, or ‘boxes’ I like to check when delving into new products
and markets.
These include:
1. Market behaviour: I like to work in markets where buyers are often fanatic.
That way we can sell without having to use the old school tactics like fake
urgency or sell based on hype. One such industry is the beauty industry.
Many females spend like crazy in this space, and to sweeten it further, many
beauty products are perishable (i.e. makeup), so people need to buy again
and again, maximizing the LTV and supporting a profitable back end.
2. Market scale: I like to work in huge markets. These often come with
competition, which should not be a deterrent, but rather an indication of
market potential and that there is, in fact, money to be made. Again, the
beauty industry is a good example of this, along with fitness. If you can fight
the competition and come out on top, these markets are bottomless money
pits.
3. The final, and arguably the most important characteristic, is that we look
for products that solve a clearly defined problem. These products, when
compared to discretionary products like clothing, are far easier to sell with
paid traffic, particularly when implementing interruption platforms such as
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest (as opposed to intent based
platforms like Google Search).
When it comes to acquiring customers, the number one piece of advice would
be to acquire at break even. If you are making your first sale and are profiting
from it, you are not marketing at maximum potential.
Instead, the profit should be made on the backend, from the second purchase
onwards. This is done with mediums such as email marketing, paid retargeting
for cross sells, etc.
By doing this, you’re able to invest a lot more into the top of funnel, and in
scale. This is the fastest way to grow to true scale, and is the mindset you
have to shift to if you want to grow to $1m/month.
Practical advice I would give, however, is to before looking to the ‘hottest’

channel to acquire customers right now, rather understand the fundamentals
of marketing and buyer behaviour, so that your marketing withstands the
platform changes, increasing advertising costs, and any other changes that
occur in the extremely dynamic platform that is marketing.
But because I know you guys are just itching for the ‘answer’ when it comes
to new platforms and where to look – I think Snapchat and Pinterest will be
big ones for ecom in 2019. Particularly Snapchat as the platform continues to
mature.
There are two sides to this question, the latter being often overlooked.
Firstly, there are plenty of technical tools and strategies you can use to
increase LTV. I’m going to skim over this, because in the concept of scale and
building huge companies, it’s the basics, and you can Google it. It includes
things such as email marketing, cross-selling with retargeting, messenger,

etc.
The more important part is the community, brand, and product. There is
no element more valuable than having an incredible product, and building
community around it.
More so than these technical strategies, the number one thing that will keep
people coming back is having a truly great product, that has customers
coming back for more with an insatiable thirst.
Brand can be built in a number of ways, and with a number of tools – and
it’s a discussion that I could write a thesis on. However, one strategy to
implement today would be incentivized user generated content.
Use “Yotpo” to collect customer reviews. Incentivize the collection process by
offering a free goodie or cheap product to anyone who posts a video review
and tags your brand. This will achieve a number of outcomes:
1. You will have user generated content to use in your ads (a truckload of it).
2. You will have a ripple effect amongst social media. Every customer you
acquire will post in order to receive their goodie, and your reach will be
extended exponentially – for every customer you acquire with Facebook,
you could make 2-3 extra organic sales from their post – essentially tripling
your ROAS.
3. You are building community on social media.
4. You will have a truckload of testimonials for your sales page which will also
increase conversion rate and ROAS.
Other things you can do to build brand is use PR to be featured in major

media publications, utilize facebook groups and communities, and constantly
post on socials and email your list to foster your existing customer base, so
when you have future product launches or offers, you have a raving customer
base that will re-order, increasing their customer LTV and skyrocketing your
profits as you circumvent acquisition costs while making these sales.
I think the primary factor I would attribute my success to is seeking out

and spending time with people who have already far exceeded the level of
success I hope to achieve.
Simply being around these people, and often not even really talking about
the specific marketing tactics and strategies we’re using, has caused a huge
shift in mindset for me. It is through these relationships that I have learned
most of the highest level marketing strategies (stuff you can’t find in courses),
but more importantly, have grown to aspire to achieve greatness, and view
building huge businesses in much the same way I looked at making 100k/year
back when I first started. Now I dream of building a $100m ecom brand, and
have the network and support base to do exactly that.
To best illustrate my point here, I’ll use the analogy of video games.
Business, and specifically ecommerce, is the complete reverse of playing

video games. When gaming, in the beginning it is very easy to level up and
score points, and as you progress, it becomes harder and harder, until you
finally challenge the boss – which is the most difficult part of the game.
Business is a reversal of this. If you are reading this, congratulations – you’ve

already overcome the greatest challenge of getting started. In the beginning,
wins are scarce, and ecommerce is extremely difficult to succeed in. It’s hard
to create a converting store that’s profitable, but once you’ve achieved this,
it gets easier and easier. So stick it out, because it only gets easier to make
more money as you progress as a marketer.
In terms of technical advice, I’d recommend you get very clear on your LTV
numbers, and push your marketing as far as possible, to the point that you’re
just breaking even on the customer acquisition, so that you’re acquiring
customers and growing as quickly as possible.
Subsequent to this, do not underestimate the value of brand. Not only does
branding turn an ecom store into a valuable asset that can be acquired, but it
also increases returns and overall ad performance (if done right), allowing you
to grow faster.
If you guys want to connect, I’d love for you all to reach out and have a chat
– message me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dimitri.nikolakakis.
Can’t wait to catch up and hear your stories!
‘Pekadis’ (on STM), Ecom Expert, STM Moderator
Link: Pekadis’ STM Profile Page
1)Self-intro
[Pekadis prefers to remain anonymous.]
I’d go for a niche where there’s competition. Not the cut-throat kind, but
enough competition to indicate a significant market.
It’s so much easier to find a winning proposition in an existing market, than

to develop a market yourself.
Do the research before you start, so you know where the pain points are,
who the competition is and where they position themselves.
Then, focus on products that generate the main sales volume.
For those products, the ideal ones are:
- the ones that can have your own brand

- are easy to ship
- have a decent amount of profit and percentage of profit
- are easy to use (do not require a lot of instructions)
- do not generate tons of returns
- come in one or a few versions only
- can be sourced reliably
Every channel can work. But you have to find out which channels work for
your business and your customers. Just because something works for the
competition, or a completely unrelated business, doesn’t mean it will for you.
So test. Then scale what works and drop what doesn’t work.
A non-paid way to get customers is word of mouth. And the best way to
generate word-of-mouth sales is to deliver on your promises.
Of course, you can implement funnels. And you should.
But again, keep your customers happy and your name top of mind are the
best investments.
It’s hard to track the results, so I only have anecdotal evidence to support
this statement.
I focus on the customer in the sense that by their buying decision, they tell
you what works and what doesn’t. So if they decided to buy X instead of Y
(which might be a product I prefer), we focus on X.
In that sense, we are constantly testing and at the same time changing the
business and how we work. That’s not to say we forget the basics and start
doing something new, but we do evolve.
I always say that if we are still doing the same thing next year as we’re doing
this year, I have failed. The same goes for personal development.
Do your research, but once that’s done, focus on execution. Get the domain,
set up the site, set up campaigns, get feedback.
You’ll only learn from real-world feedback. Which is whether you make the
sale or not.
So focus on getting sales, so you know what works.
And don’t limit yourself to Facebook. Try organic, Youtube, Adwords,

Instagram, every channel. Try Amazon, Ebay or any other platform you might
have in your country. Try every place sales can be had.
And don’t forget about different geographical markets either. Especially

when you are in a relatively small country or niche, going international can
seriously increase business volume.
Ace Reddy, Ecommerce Expert
Website: EliteEcomMastermind.com
1)Self-intro
I’m an Ecom expert. My team and I have been making a killing selling T-shirts
and other simple products. I have over 3000 students in over 119 countries, and
have helped over 100 people to build their businesses online.
Tips on Choosing the Perfect Niche:
-Pick a niche you’re passionate about.
Don’t pick the “Golf” niche if you’re really not a Golfer.
When you pick a niche you’re passionate about - you are going to know how
people in that niche think, their slang, etc. and that’s going to help you really
zero-in on the market.
-Don’t pick a super narrow or broad niche.
You don’t want to pick a niche like “Vegans living in Nevada”.
That’s too narrow and you’re going to run out of new product ideas very soon!
Instead you can pick a medium-sized niche like - “Health and Nutrition” instead
of “Vegans living in Nevada”.
If a slightly narrow niche has a pretty large cult following - you can pick it!
(Example: Vegans.)
But in most cases - I recommend somewhere in the middle.
-Here’s a list of a few niches:
Guns, Family, Travel, Gaming, Fitness, Nutrition and Health, Cute Stuff,
Entrepreneurial, Animals, Fantasy and Mythology, Occupations, Special Skills,
Food, Literature.
-Stick with a niche once you choose it. One of the biggest problems I find
newbies making is moving from niche to niche very quickly. It’s similar to how
people in the CPA industry would move from vertical to vertical.
Remember that the grass is never greener on the other side, its green where
you water it - the rest is just an illusion.
Pick a niche and crush it! Don’t move from niche to niche constantly.
-Research Your Audience. Knowing your audience is a very important part of

the business. There’s this concept I termed the “Magic Eye”.
The Magic Eye is this fingertip feel you have - where you know what product
would convert and what wouldn’t for your audience.
You can only get to that level if you’re an absolute master at reading your
audience.
Know the hidden slang people use, what they like and what they resent, etc. so
your message can also be consistent!
You can research your audience by joining forums related to your niche and
reading through the threads.
How to Find Winning Dropshipping Products:
-Products that solve a problem.

-Products that attract a passionate audience.
-Products that are not available everywhere = people shouldn’t have the
ability to walk down the street and buy whatever you’re selling.
-Something that has viral + buying effect = a product needs to be good
enough to go viral and good enough to be bought and used.
Some tshirts with super funny memes won’t convert but will go viral.
It’s a delicate balance.
-Something that is usable. You don’t want to promote non-practical products,
you want to promote products that people can actually use!
-Something that is unique. A unique product will convert as long as it meets
the other criteria too.
You don’t want to promote a blue tshirt like this one:
Anyone can get that from the street corner.
Instead, you want to be promoting products like this (we did close to $146k in
sales with this one):
Me personally - I love facebook ads!
Influencers, Google shopping etc. are good platforms to run ads on, but the
majority of our money comes from facebook ads!
I can’t go into specifics because Facebook changes every day, but here are a
few tips:
-Never touch a working adset! If you have an adset with a strong ROAS, don’t
go in and try to change the budget, creatives, etc. Let it run as-is!
If you want to edit something, duplicate the campaign and make changes to
that.
-Test as many products, angles and creatives as you can!
Many people try to master the art of Facebook ads before they’ve even run a
single ad.
You can go through as many courses as you want but the best way to learn is
through experience.
Get into the trenches and start experimenting with things!
That’s the easiest and the best way to learn and master Facebook ads!
-Always start the ads during the timeframe of 12-3am, that’s when FB really
tries to plan out the next day!
-Be as data-centric as possible!

One of the biggest blunders I see people making in this industry is getting
sucked in by their emotions.
They have this strong feeling that their design/product converts and they
ignore the numbers!
Do not do this – it’s dangerous to your business.

Trust numbers, not emotions.
-And also - track every number!
-Strategic upsells.
When we were selling the mug, we tried a few different upsells.

The one product and page that converted the best was this:
So the upsell angle we used for this was:
“You bought “X” product so we’ll ship you “Y” too for just $30 more!”
-Threshold shipping / conditional shipping.
Offer free-shipping if your customers spend $75 or more and actually give
them a reason to buy more products from your store!
That’s going to bump up your AOV.
-Use funnels to scale your winning products!

When you have a winning product, use funnels to scale!
Funnels generally bump up your conversion rate and increase your AOV!
You can use Clickfunnels, funnelbuildr, etc. to build funnels and scale your
products!
Just being super persistent honestly!
Testing a lot of stuff, lot of methods, watching a lot of courses and

implementing, etc.
I would say that the one most important thing really is the way you think and
look at things!
If you have the ability to think creatively, come up with great ways to solve
your problems, and test a ton of things - you’ll be able to crush it too!
At the end of the day, you are going to face disappointments….
You are going to have ads that don’t convert very well…
But - you got to keep waking up the next day and trying something else out!
And this would be my answer to question #6 too.
[As above.]
Jenia “Jay” Yakovlev (‘JayLev’ on STM),
Entrepreneur & Digital Marketing Expert
Website: JayLev.digital
1)Self-intro
I started my “internet money making” journey in 2016 when I left my 9-5 job to
immerse myself in ecommerce. After failing forward for a while I managed
to lift 4 stores that were doing amazing. Consequently I started helping
people who were struggling with their stores across the major ecommerce
communities at that time, and as a big surprise to me I managed to help
dozens of people generate their first revenue goals in their stores and having
long term success smashing the 6 and 7 digit barriers. The positive responses
from the ecommerce community pushed me further to make a thorough
course on how to have a successful ecommerce store which helped even
more people reach their revenue targets in their stores.
During that time a connection was created with Affiliate World Conferences
which eventually gave me the opportunity to go on stage at AWA17 to give
a speech about how to lift a profitable store. During that time I opened my
own digital marketing agency and I started taking clients across the globe,
ranging from restaurants to large corporations.
As of 2019 I have a successful digital marketing agency in 2 different

languages, a partnered digital marketing agency geared towards German
speakers, a co-owned affiliate network, a call center and countless short
term projects. Currently my team and I handle a large variety of advertising
channels, advertising both “white-hat” and “black-hat” offers. It’s a big honor
for me to have a chance to share my knowledge and experience with the STM
community as I hope to help as many people as I can.
Before actively advertising a new project or a new niche I have to consider

2 things: First thing - how saturated the niche is with competition, and the
second thing - how much ROAS I can squeeze out of that product/niche.
Competition is a healthy thing, however if the whole “offer” is already flooding
the desired audience through other affiliates, breaking through the saturation
barrier for a beginner will be an issue.
Advertising is like bidding in an auction, if there are too many “high bidders”
participating in the auction, chances for low acquisition prices shouldn’t be
expected.
As for the ROAS measurement, take your time to find an offer or a niche where
you can get the most out of your ad spend & other expenses. If you are a
“lone ranger” and the only expense you have is ad spend then low-paying
offers can be ok for you, but if you have a team, apps and other stuff you are
spending your money on to make your campaigns perfect, then having low
return on your efforts is out of the question.
Promoting a trending ecommerce product is an example of a low paying

product/offer. For example, there is this amazing drone offer where the price
tag on it is $45 and you get a 30% affiliate commission - which means that
if you sell one you get $15. Out of those $15 you have to pay for ads, apps,
team, etc., so the profit that makes it to your pocket is pretty small for such
an amount of effort & headache. It will be hard to get a good ROAS in this
example because if it is a trendy drone that everyone is selling - then you
have a ton of competition, and all of that for a few dollars as profit.
If it’s done properly on a large scale you can make a lot of money.
The offers you should look for are those with the highest return possible on
your spending & effort. As an example, you can take on a real-estate project
where you generate leads that would be interested in buying a property,
and per each sale you get, let’s say even 0.5% of the property’s price. In
other words you can generate leads & of course you have to make sure they
convert later on to give a hefty commission on the property’s sale - on a
$100,000 property you can get anywhere between $500 - $1,500 commission.
This way you have more room for improving and scaling.
Oh boy what a subject... I cannot just touch on some topics as there’s a whole
science behind a well-oiled client acquisition system.
To even start running any ads you MUST read the following books:
-Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

-Cashvertising by Drew Eric Whitman.
My suggestion - don’t even bother running any ads on any platform before
you read those 2 books.
Let’s say you didn’t read the books I suggested - if I could give you some words
of advice on how to acquire clients/leads in any niche, I would suggest the
following:
1. Don’t be yet another copy paste affiliate.
There is this obsolete & completely broken saying that goes around our
industry - “oh just take what works, take that landing page that works, that ad
copy/design, and copy paste and run traffic and sure as magic it will convert
just like it’s converting for that guy, and it will make you rich as well.” This is
just the biggest bowl of nonsense that anyone can give you.
Why? Very simple - let’s say that there is this amazing landing page + set of
ads that are converting for the original creator, and they spent huge amounts
of money advertising it to a particular audience that might be interested.
Let’s say 5 “wise guys” just copy paste/swagger jack everything and they too
promote it to the same interested audience that the original creator targeted.
Now instead of 1 guy enjoying the whole “pie”, 6 people have to share the
same pie resulting in less money for everyone. After a while 6 “crazy” scaled
campaigns from different people targeting the same audience saturate that
audience very quickly (remember the previous point?)
Now that the targeted audience either accepted the offer or declined it and
pretty sure they are sick and tired of seeing the same ads and the same
landing page already for the hundredth time, then you copy paste the whole
funnel and try promoting it to that audience....what would happen? Ad spend
down the drain!
I’m not saying the whole offer is getting saturated, I’m saying what the end
customer sees is getting saturated with time, so bringing a new landing page,
ad copy and design might result for you in higher ROAS and subsequently ROI.
Of course take your inspiration from what works! Don’t re-invent the wheel, but
don’t disgustingly copy paste everything “as-is”.
2. Don’t use cheap & free creatives for your advertising.
I can’t believe I have to actually touch on this point as it seems as logical as

science. However to this day I witness advertisers and affiliates using cheap
creatives for their ads (which eventually convert half-$##).
As a minimum - familiarize yourself with Canva as you can create converting

creatives there (better-converting than some free low-res pictures roaming
on Google). Better yet - invest in a designer that will make the creatives
professionally which will result in higher conversion rates.
Don’t say - oh, I will just start with these crappy images and once I make
money I will invest in a good design - this approach is broken and will only
result in the opposite. You should invest upfront in stunning creatives to make
better returns on your ads once you launch them.
3. Ad copy = conversion rate. Period.
If you are using Facebook to promote your offers (no matter blackhat/
whitehat), don’t go too low on the copy! There are some platforms that
don’t offer an option for too much copy, or for any copy at all, however on
a platform like Facebook you have to put copy in your ad. Don’t make it
ridiculously short because you heard the 10% rule or the 20% secret or whatever
other B.S. & vague opinion you’ve heard about copy.
The cold prospect that is facing your ad has to make the most vital decision -
clicking the link and proceeding down your funnel, or not. If logically they don’t
understand what you’re advertising, then it will be hard to make them click
your link and go further down your funnel.
A catchy slogan alone won’t convince them, nor anything too vague and
general with no call to action. One of the worst examples I can give you is this:
Let’s just say you chose a forex offer and your ad consists of one sentence
asking “do you want to make money?” with a link and a creative attached.
Even if the ad viewer wanted to make more money, they wouldn’t understand
what they need to do next, why they should even click on that shady link, or
what would happen after they clicked that link.
Do you see the pattern of the un-answered questions in a short copy that
makes no sense? Even if it makes perfect sense to you, it’s not guaranteed
that your audience will see that as well. Don’t make the copy too long and
boring but don’t skimp on words that are necessary to explain why they
need to click on your link.
If we can use the previous example (the forex offer), instead of asking “Do
you want to make money?” you can write something like: “Do you want to
make money trading Forex? Our highly-advanced robot generated over

$XXXX using Forex platforms over a period of XX weeks! Sign up now and
start using our robot.” Do you see the difference?
Now here’s a special bonus for you because you read up to this point.
Here is my copy formula that I use to drive 3 times the standard conversion
rate in any industry/offer I promote, and it can be applied to anything:
Ad copy, flyer copy, landing page copy, whatever copy...as long as you’re
looking to convert.
The formula is very basic. You have to address the following in the specific
order:
1. Call your audience out. You can call it the headline. This is the first
sentence you should write. Address your audience as if they were
sitting in a bar and they were about to leave and you have to shout this
headline to intrigue them enough to stop them. (Examples to follow
below.)
2. Define their problem / desire better than they could. This creates a sense
of rapport and shows your “expertise” in what they desire / have pain
about. It basically answers the question that will pop in their mind, such
as “who the hell is this, why should I even keep reading and do they really
know what I need?”
3. Explain how your offer can be the easy and attainable solution to their
problem / desire. The tricky part is to make your offer sound like it’s the
perfect remedy and they can use it without too much headache, time
spent, and any other factors that they can get lazy about and decline
your offer.
4. Proof that what you are offering might work for them. Specify how many
people are already using your offer to see results, how many years the
offer has existed, how many experts were involved in making this offer,
any testimonials you can get from past consumers, etc.
5. A call to action. Some advertisers & affiliates think that it’s pretty logical
to write copy without a clear call to action, as they think that the people
who read it “are smart enough to click”, but they are NOT! You must specify
exactly what you want from the prospect as a “closing section” to your ad
copy, without a wishy-washy all-over-the-place call to action, for example
“sign up now and you may be able to get one of the 100 spots we offer for
free for a limited time to a specific amount of people.” An example of a
clear call to action: “Click on the link below to sign up!” See the difference?
Let’s use our “Forex offer” example to illustrate all the points above.
1. Are you tired of not earning enough? // Do you want to discover the
possibility of earning more money through Forex trading? // Are you
sick and tired of your 9-5 routine? Forex trading may be the key to your
liberation.
2. Finding the right investment opportunity may be a tricky task nowadays,
as there are so many different methods and opinions to choose from. //
The majority of the population nowadays is stuck in the never ending 9-5
loop with no clear path to financial freedom. // Finding the right investment
opportunity to get you out of the 9-5 loop seems like an impossible task for
someone who’s not familiar with the financial markets.
3. Our Forex robot was designed specifically for those individuals who don’t
want to get the headache and waste their time on reading and learning the
financial markets, our robot can generate Forex income on autopilot. // To
be successful (and profitable) in Forex trading you must study the markets
and monitor the fluctuations constantly, worry not as our sophisticated
Forex robot will do all that hard work for you while maintaining a positive
ROI on most of your trades without your involvement!
4. Our robot has already generated well over $XXXXXX in the past XXX days/
months/years. // Our robot has generated outstanding results for more
than XXX people in the past XXX years/months/weeks/days!! // It took us XX
professionals to put this robot together, resulting in XXX whopping hours
invested.
5. Do you want to get out of the 9-5 loop? Sign up now to receive immediate
access to our robot! // Sign up now and receive immediate access to our
Forex robot! // Don’t waste your time, sign up now and start using our robot!
The “//” is there to divide between the options you can choose for each step.
As you can notice, this copy is not too long and boring and it does cover some
of the logical hesitations about clicking the link that the cold prospect may
have. For landing pages you can use each point as a standalone paragraph
with a headline for each point. This formula works like magic for me and
others who use it.
Here’s another bonus for you (thank you for reading this far):
Here are some “conversion” triggers that your prospect would probably ask
themselves while considering your offer:
1. Are there real people who truly care about me behind this offer? Is the
offer too cold and discorded for people? Does someone really care about
my problem/desire? (And any other questions regarding the “real people”
behind your offer.)
2. Is there any authority behind the advertised offer? Is it well known?
Established and regulated by large corporate entities? Is it publicly viral
that other people may recognize it? Is there a possibility that someone I
know has seen this offer? (And any other question that may arise about the
authenticity of your offer.)
3. Do they (the people behind the offer) really know my problem/desire?
Can they relate to me? Can they define my situation better than I can?
(Questions on whether you are an expert in their problem and whether they
could rely on you to solve it.)
4. Do I have to take action now? What will happen if I close the offer mid-way?
Are there any limited spots or is the offer time-limited? (Here comes the
scarcity. Don’t overkill the offer with scarcity everywhere, but you have to
show that someone else more appreciative of the offer can take their spot if
they don’t act quickly.)
5. Will I see the desired end result by taking the offer? Will it last or will I have to
find another solution later? What are the exact benefits of participating in
the offer? (Basically the question is whether the offer will solve their entire
issue, or will they have to keep looking for another solution afterwards.)
On the landing page you should cover as many of these points as possible, but
don’t overdo it in short ad-copy - 1-2 conversion triggers would be more than
enough. Trying to cram everything into a short copy may yield bad results!
Combine the 5 point sequence with the 5 conversion triggers and see the
wonders it will do for your conversion rates.
As a summary - you have to make the copy clear and attractive enough that
a 6 year old and a 99 year old person will understand clearly what is required
from them. Don’t overcomplicate the logic, don’t tangle the point just to shove
another “scarcity” trigger. What seems completely logical and clear to you, your
audience may not understand.
4. Targeting IS important. Audience size DOES matter.
When it comes to targeting, on any platform (except from some broad-

targeting native/display platforms), its super important to understand a few
things before actually conducting your keywords/interests research.
For newbies, targeting is the act of choosing your desired audience on the
advertising platform that will most likely convert for your offer (or convert
better compared to without targeting). With the right choices in your targeting
you may reach the ideal consumers for your offer which may result in
higherconversion rates, rather than if you would just throw your ads on a broad
audience.
For non-newbies, you can just advertise broadly with no specific targeting to
get the first conversions you need for your campaigns to pick up the pace, then
later on the conversion pixel will do all the hard work and bring you people who
will convert. However, I would still recommend using detailed targeting in the
beginning (prior to generating audiences from your website’s traffic) as the
data will contain higher quality conversions than just broad targeting.
With that said, there are some key factors you have to consider when
conducting the initial targeting research.
Age:
My suggestion would be to target 24~60 year olds as most likely they have
money in their pockets to spend on your offer and have more serious
intentions, compared to 18 year olds. Don’t think to yourself “oh but an 18 year
old can afford it as well!” or “I saw many 18 year olds acquire/sign up for similar
things”, the question here is whether your targeted audience as a whole has
the money and is serious about their intentions to buy, which you’d rarely see in
people under the age of 21 (on the internet), as most kids are there to engage &
ask a ton of questions, just to later on decline the offer.
You don’t want to spend your advertising budget showing your ads to tire-
kickers, even if there is a slight chance that one of them may buy something.
You want an audience that takes your offer seriously, has the money to acquire
it and won’t waste your time.
Keywords/interests research:
When you are conducting your targeting research, make sure to focus on
interests/keywords that are specifically about your ideal audience and not just
related to it. To explain this point let’s take for example the golf niche and let’s
just say you want to promote e-commerce products to golfers. If you just put
“golf” or “tiger woods” in your targeting then you will probably hit A LOT of people
who are not even half passionate about golf. How’s that? Very simple. Tiger
Woods (same for Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson) is a famous figure that a lot of
people have an interest in, not necessarily just golfers. So by just targeting Tiger
Woods you might hit a lot of people who will decline your offer.
The remedy for that is asking yourself “what are the keywords/interests only die
hard golfers would be interested in?” and do the research accordingly. What
are the gatherings only golfers go to? What are the magazines that only golfers
would read? What are the brands that only golfers are using? Etc.
Instead of targeting “golf” or “Tiger Woods” - interests that may bring you people
who are slightly interested in golf, try targeting GolfWRX.com (a big, golfers-
only magazine) as only golfers will like/follow it, as it will be hard reaching in this
interest someone who is not passionate about golf. Get the point?
To summarize - target the most passionate interests that move your desired
audience and target only those. Thinking “oh but someone may go for my offer
from a broad audience” is not entirely wrong, but if you want to spare your
advertising money while gathering the highest quality data you possibly can,
make the effort and go that extra mile in finding the most passionate keywords/
interests for your audience, so that you can convert them with less convincing
than with a broad audience.
Audience size:
Having a passionate, targeted audience is crucial for the initial (and
continuous) success of your campaigns. However, an audience that is too small
may kill your campaigns. You have to understand that eventually the platform
that you use to advertise your campaigns (if it’s not broken and obsolete) will
use its A.I. to find people that are most likely to convert for your offer, and will
scan the whole targeted audience for that specific segment. If your audience
is too small, it will be hard for the A.I. to roam freely and bring those conversions
you need, which subsequently can result in a ridiculously high cost per
conversion. Often times if the audience size is too small the ads won’t run as the
platform will give up on the audience size.
If you have a small audience and the ads are performing well, you have little
room for scaling, as you can saturate your audience with the offer way before
you have gathered enough data to create lookalike audiences effective
enough to convert. Let’s say you have 85,000 people in your audience and you
have gathered only 80 conversions from that audience, and now campaign
performance is declining. 80 conversions may not be enough to create a
strong enough audience to rely your further operation on. (Of course you can
launch more ads, but why suffer all the headache in the first place?).
Jay’s Rules of Thumb:

-An audience with 100K people and below - tricky.
-An audience with 100K-500K people - enough to start in hopes of getting
enough conversions for LAA.
-An audience with 500K people and above (up to tens of millions, depends on
what I promote) - perfect for everything.
Summary on targeting tips:

Aim for 24+ years of age, choose the most passionate interests/keywords that
only die-hard fans of your niche would follow, and don’t go below 100K people in
your targeted audience size.
5. Every penny you spend on advertising starts with multivariate testing. No

excuses.
Every campaign MUST start with multivariate (or at least A/B) testing. NEVER
launch only one ad which contains one creative + copy on one audience, ever.
Why? How do you know that your choice is the best-converting one? Always
check multiple combinations between as many variables as possible. As a
bare minimum if you are just beginning, perform A/B testing on 2 creatives
against 2 copies on one audience for a full 48 hours.
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this so far, for your effort, I want
to give you my “bare-minimum” testing method that has never failed me. In
this example I will use Facebook as our advertising platform. I will detail it in a
sequence that if you follow, your scaled campaigns will perform like conversion
beasts.
For this test we need 3 different copies (touching the same subject), 3 different
creatives (again, touching the same subject), 1 targeted audience (as I detailed
above), $10 per variation per 1 day of testing, and we will conduct the tests over
a period of 3 days. The main objective of the test is to determine which 30% of
the bunch of ads performs the best, to pause the remaining 70% and scale the
winners.
During this test we are looking for ads that bring you the most conversions
(opt-ins/purchases/add-to-carts/ etc..), the highest click-through-rate and
the cheapest cost-per-click (high CTR and low CPC go hand in hand, but
sometimes when you have ads with almost similar metrics, you have to check
both to make better decisions on which ads to pause).
Copy:
When I prepare the 3 copies for the first multivariate test, I always try to hit the
targeted audience with 3 different approaches that talk about the same topic.
Let me explain further.
Copy 1 - Bad Emotional Copy
The first copy I write is what I call “bad emotional copy”, which is designed
to stir the targeted audience’s emotions by focusing on their pain, or lack of
desired outcome. Basically I detail what bothers them in a visceral way (of
course without offending anyone) so they will be emotionally moved to take
action to remove that pain (or lack of what they desire).
Let’s go back to our Forex offer example to show you what I mean:
“Are you sick and tired of the never-ending 9-5 loop? Sign up for our Forex
robot and start creating the financial freedom you desire.”
(I know that the length of this copy contradicts what I wrote above, it’s for the
purpose of giving you an example.)
As you can see, I talk about the pain of being locked in a “day-job-of-doom”
with no freedom as the remedy that I suggest to them is the Forex offer I
promote.
Copy 2 - Good Emotional Copy
The second copy I write is “good emotional copy” which is designed to excite
the audience to make them feel how amazing it would be if they took the offer,
without pointing out the lack that they feel currently. Some people plainly hate
bad emotional copies and won’t click. They don’t experience a deep feeling
of pain or lack of some desired outcome, but rather just want to expand their
potential. By invoking negative emotions with “bad emotional copy”, you can
lose a lot of these potential clients.
Example: “Would you like to expand your financial capabilities? Our Forex robot
can maximize the results of your investing portfolio to reach its peak potential.
Sign up now.”
Copy 3 - Neutral Copy (or what I call - “statistical” copy)
The third copy I come up with is emotionally-neutral copy. This type of copy
has to speak about facts, statistics, public opinions, articles, etc., to be as
emotionally detached as possible so the cold prospect won’t feel either bad or
good emotions.
For example: “Did you know that according to [some magazine], each year XX%
of Forex traders are becoming financially free?. Sign up now to our Forex robot
and you may be included in those statistics as well.”
Now that you see the 3 different copies that can attract different types of
people to your offer, let’s cover the creatives part really quick.
Creatives:
To conduct the test I use 3 square images (1080*1080 pixels). I use square
images the size of an Instagram post rather than rectangular images to cover
as much visible “real estate” on the mobile screen for the cold prospect to
view.
Image 1 - Bad Emotional Image
As discussed in the copy section above, the first image should stir some
negative emotion. Use a real life picture (not animation/3d) with a slogan
that describes the lack/pain. The visuals of the creatives must match the bad
feeling vibes of the slogan.
Tip: It might seem strange to attach a good emotional copy to a bad

emotional image. However, sometimes strange variations between a “good
emotional copy” and a “bad emotional creative” can bring the highest
conversion rate. Go figure (this is why this test is conducted!).
Using the forex example from before: You can place a stock photo of a guy
clutching his head while sitting in his office with a slogan that says “had enough
of the 9-5?”
Image 2 - Good Emotional Image

As the title says, in this image we want to stir some warm feelings in the viewer.
Use a real life picture here as well (not animation/3d) with a positive slogan.
For example you can place a stock photo of a cheerful businessman in a suit
with a slogan that says “Unlock your financial potential” (again, using the forex
example before).
Image 3 - Cartoon/3D Image with a neutral approach
Strange enough, cartoonish creatives convert like crazy, however they are
not always appropriate. In the 3rd creative selection we want to test if the
cartoonish/3d image will fit the desired audience with the copies written above.
This image has to be emotionally neutral, and have no slogans but instead a
“dry” call to action.
For example you can use a cartoonish image of Forex charts or an analyst that
scans the charts with a written call to action on the top or bottom of the image
that says “Sign up now”.
Now that we have 3 different copies and 3 different creatives promoting the
same agenda, we can schedule our campaigns.
The campaign objective I suggest starting with is a “Clicks” campaign (CTW,

clicks to website, whatever name you are familiar with, as long as it’s not a
conversion campaign). We are not launching a conversions campaign straight
away simply because there is no data yet to rely on to launch this type of
campaign. Of course some veterans might argue with my statement, however
this is the most “by-the-book” approach. Because you don’t have the data to
rely on, you look at what brings you the best results in a clicks campaign - ads
that work well on such a campaign objective (meaning bring you conversions!)
indicates that they are good convertors. This is exactly what you want to find
out with this test.
It’s VERY IMPORTANT to schedule the campaigns for 00:00 (or 12:00AM) the next
day as you want the daily budget to be spent equally over the whole 24 hour
cycle. If you launch your test ads at 6 pm, Facebook will rush to spend your
money in the next 6 hours and you won’t have a balanced picture of the data
you gather over the 3 day testing period.
The daily budget you have to set is $10 per adset. I create 1 campaign with 9
different adsets, with 1 ad per ad set – NOT 1 campaign with 9 ads in 1 adset
- as we don’t want Facebook to determine which variant performs the best,

this is why we isolate the variants from each other to have a fair test without
Facebook’s A.I. meddling with it.
You want to set the testing period for 3 full days. We are throwing the test at
a 100K+ (500K+ preferably) audience that you have gathered through your
targeting research.
DON’T touch the placements (veterans might argue here as well but this is what
works best for me.)
IMPORTANT: Make sure Facebook’s conversion pixel is placed on your funnel/

landing page, and that each page is segmented with a different conversion!
Eventually you will spend close to $270 during the 3 day period to test which ads
perform the best.
Here is a cheat-sheet of the variations that you need to test. I put each
variation as the ad-set name to have a clear picture on what performs best
(the ad name should be the same):
Copy 1 | Image 1
Copy 1 | Image 2
Copy 1 | Image 3
Copy 2 | Image 1
Copy 2 | Image 2
Copy 2 | Image 3
Copy 3 | Image 1
Copy 3 | Image 2
Copy 3 | Image 3
Conclusion:
When the 3 testing days are over, you should choose the 30% that have the
most conversions, highest CTR and lowest CPC. Pause the rest.
In our example, you should leave 3 best performing ads so pause the other 6.
BONUS (not for beginners):

Duplicate the campaign and change the campaign’s objective to “website
conversions” and launch the 3 winning ads with the help of Facebook’s A.I.
Go to the original “Clicks” test campaign, activate the “budget optimization”
option at the campaign level for $30 (3 ads for $10 each).
Do the same with the new conversions campaign (i.e. activate budget
optimization) after 3 days. Scale accordingly.
6. Conclusion - Stay liquid.
First of all, thank you for reading all of this. If you took notes it’s even better. I
have put a lot of effort in this section to bring you what works best for me on
all of the advertising I run. Make sure you have enough money to support the
scaling as it will be a big shame that you have an amazing campaign and you
don’t have enough liquid cash to feed the advertising platform.
I wish you the best of luck running your campaigns, I hope I spared you a lot of
money and headache.
I would say that in order for the customer to stay and keep coming back to buy
more, you have to constantly keep them engaged with your brand with relevant
and exciting content that’s interesting and relevant for them. You have to
make them want more of your brand without constantly pushing them to buy
anything. Your goal is to turn your first time customers to raging fans of your
brand.
First of all, keep the social media of your brand alive and kicking with interesting
content. Second, use e-mail marketing not only to push more sales, but also
to send them interesting e-mails with tips, ideas, stories, etc. so they will look
forward to your next email. Once you have that “raging-fans” customer base,
even if you don’t push promotions and upsell aggressively, they will be on the
lookout for new products from you and jump at the opportunity to purchase
them. Definitely use email marketing for sending them more offers to buy
more products, however some brands overdo it and lose the effect of having a
“raging-fan” client base.
I would say that the main factors responsible for my success not only in ecomm,
but in the digital sphere, are the following:
1. TEST TEST TEST! Everybody says “you have to keep testing to reach your
success”, that’s true, but I went the extra mile by testing many variables against
each other to craft and polish the conversion-maximization blueprint for my
marketing endeavors. Some people may tell you to stop at some point but the
truth of the matter is you have to test as you progress in your digital career,
as seasons change and what’s working for you today may not work tomorrow,
so don’t get too comfortable on what’s working now. When you wake up to a
drastic decline in your revenue, it may be too stressful and too late to resume
testing, and then you’d spend more money on testing to find out something
that works again, compared to if you had done the testing when yoru ads were
converting well.
2. Spend your money with a smile. Don’t go cheap on anything, i.e: hire a
designer before you launch the first ads for your offer, don’t say “oh once I
will make some money then I will invest in a designer”. WRONG. You want
everything to appear visually amazing before you even launch anything. Get
the apps you need and don’t look for cheaper but crappy alternatives. Get all
the professionals in your team before you are crushed under the pressure from
an increasing workload once your offer converts. The inability to handle all
the work that comes in through your digital gates may become your downfall.
Basically ditch the notion that “I’m not yet profitable so it’s ok to have everything
half a$$ed before I’m making money”. Your competition is already investing
in all that and now you want to compete with them with an offer that looks
like you have crafted it by yourself in your mom’s basement. Make your offer
competitive enough and trustworthy enough before you launch it, whatever the
costs will be. It will make your offer lift off the ground faster and you will not only
recover the invested money but you will be much more profitable compared to
if you hadn’t made that investment from the beginning.
3. DON’T STOP until you make it work! Something I have noticed a lot during my
digital marketing career is how many people have failed because they weren’t
consistent with their efforts. As soon as something turned out not to be working
as predicted, they’d jump on another offer that seems to be easier or more
profitable. The neighbor’s grass always looks greener when you are in your
launching stages. Don’t go bankrupt from jumping from opportunity to
opportunity. EVERYTHING that’s worth your while will take time and persistence,
you will fail and get stuck a lot, and you will lose your pants if each time it
happens you jump to something “simpler” or “more profitable” (in your opinion).
Nothing that makes a lot of money is simple or smooth in the beginning. Don’t
throw your efforts down the drain because you have reached some obstacle.
PUSH it until it works - there is always a solution.
1. Don’t open another jewelry store! Just stay away from watches, general
accessories, whatever your potential customer can go to a nearby mall and
purchase. Focus on audiences that don’t have an abundance of physical
products to satisfy their love or passion for in the specific niche and focus on
that.
2. Look for unique niches that have demand for physical products that they
cannot easily acquire! Then look for products that you can sell to them. If not
Aliexpress dropshipped products, you can always go for print on demand.
3. Do POD! A lot of dropshippers dismiss the POD aspect of ecommerce and

this way lose a lot of potential clients. POD can differentiate you from others
even in the most competitive niches.
4. Don’t go for cheap products that people won’t really buy. No, they won’t
buy that ridiculous dog ring just because they have a dog. Make sure that the
products you promote are appropriate to use and are not some cheap stuff
that you think “it’s only $1.5 on AliEx - I can sell it for $15 and make a fortune!”
Just…don’t.
5. Make sure you can find demand for the products you’re considering on
promoting, AND it’s not overly competitive for you to penetrate that niche. A lot
of people invest their time and money on building a store, to later on discover
that no matter how much they put on ads nobody would buy their stuff.
Insights From SEO Experts
Brent Dunn, Affiliate and SEO Expert
Website: PPCMode.com
1)Self-intro
My name is Brent Dunn. Some of you may know me from my blog: PPCMode.
com - I’ve been in the internet marketing scene since 2004. Since then I’ve
worked in several large lead generation companies, affiliate networks, etc.
Since 2015 affiliate marketing has been my primary income.
2)Easier/harder to rank in Google?
Google is becoming harder in the sense that their organic listings are getting
thinner and thinner. They will continue to flood the results with more of their
own properties and ads as CTRs continue to decline. Another metric to pay
attention to is the rise of voice search. Unlike Google search results through
text, voice search has one result.
3)How to choose niches?
I like to find niches where the audience is very passionate and will consume a
lot of information in the space. This also makes it a lot easier to acquire links
if you create high quality content and don’t have the resources to build your
own PBN.
A great example of a low competition / high passion niche is “Energy Healing”
(freebie for ya).
4)On-page SEO tips?
Don’t regurgitate the same crap you see on almost every SEO blog. Make your
site as clean and fast as possible. Nothing is worse than trying to find answers
and land on a slow or non-user friendly site.
5)Best backlink strategies?
This really depends on the niche, but one of the easiest ways is to actually link
to blogs/sites in your niche when you make content. Then once you publish
let them know that you’ve linked to them. Linking out to other authority sites
is a powerful indicator in itself, but also getting your site on the radar of
other bloggers / influencers in the space is by far the easiest links I’ve ever
generated.
6)How to avoid Google penalties?
In all honesty I don’t even think Google knows the answer to this question.
My mindset in SEO is that it’s a bonus traffic channel. I’ve had competently
white hat sites where everything was done by the book and got canned.
I’ve also had blatant black hat sites that still rank to this day. With that said,
Google is in love with strong brands. The more people that search directly
for your site is a huge indicator. The only way to make sure this happens –
ironically - is to generate traffic from as many other methods as possible.
Greg Morrison (‘GregMorrison’ on STM),
SEO Expert and Coach
Website: OMGMachines.com
1)Self-intro
I am 34 years old and live in Landenberg PA (right outside Philadelphia area)

with my wife, son, step son, and soon to be newborn!
I got my start back in 2006 when I came across The Rich Jerk product. Made
money online a lot of different ways back then, did pretty well. Eventually in
about 2010-2011 I started really focusing on SEO.
I was able to quickly build an SEO presence after doing SEO for a large drug
rehab call center that was nationwide - generating thousands of calls for
them and ranking for some of the toughest terms in the market.
That was when Mike Long and David Mills asked me to team up and do OMG
Machines. Since then I have mainly continued doing SEO and working with
students to help teach them SEO.
2)Easier/harder to rank in Google?
Nothing major has changed in quite a while for ranking sites on Google. It
has gotten harder in the sense that it takes longer to rank now.
That is the major issue that most people have with SEO these days - the time
needed to get to the top of the search engines.
I personally love that this is going on because it has pushed a lot of people
out of search engine optimization, and that’s the part that has made it
easier. Although it takes longer to rank, if you have patience and know what
works in SEO today, you are going to make a whole lot of money!
This depends on two things: Experience and budget.
For a new person with a lower budget, they are really going to want to
niche down. A good example of a niched down site is my example site
bestlatindatingsites.com which makes a couple hundred dollars a month.
Because it is so niche-specific it ranked pretty quickly with little resources (but
ranks for limited keywords and has limited potential).
For a person with experience and a larger budget, you’re going to want to
attack at a broader niche level. For example something like datingadvice.com

- which would cover ALL different areas of the dating niche.
The thing is, the broader you are, the more resources you are going to need to
rank (and the longer it takes). So a site about general dating is going to need
more budget to build up the authority. But once you get it going, you can get
more bang for your buck (and this ranks for a lot more keywords and has a
ton of potential).
As far as picking a niche, always do research for the types of keywords you’re
planning on going after. What types of sites are ranking? How are they
monetizing? Are there other affiliate sites? Are they selling affiliate products
(if so what type of commission)?
These are all important questions to ask when choosing a niche.
4)On-page SEO tips?
Focus on the basics.
Get your most important keywords in the domain\URL.
Get your most important keywords in the title.
Get your most important keywords and variations of those keywords in H tags.
Do NOT overuse keyword in the text on the page, if anything underdo it.
The actual content plays a very small role in telling Google what your site is
about. They mainly grab this info from domain\URL, title, H tags & backlink
information. So trying to use keywords more in the actual content is going to
do very little to help you, and will most likely just hurt you.
Man, this depends on so many factors. I could write a whole book on it. I’ll try
to keep it as simple as I can.
For local sites, the most effective backlink strategy is citations, especially for
any sites that are exact match domains (EMDs) or have a niche keyword in
the name of the domain. I won’t take the time to explain why, but it’s huge
having a keyword in the domain name. But citations are my favorite links for
local sites because they’re safe and effective - always start a local site with
citations.
Outside of local sites, the most effective strategy is really going to depend
on the goal of the site. There’s different strategies for small affiliate sites, big
affiliate sites, those trying to establish a brand, etc. etc.
For larger affiliate sites and people trying to build a brand, the most effective
strategy is probably going to be great content with outreach. Part of
outreach would be reaching out to sites in your niche and writing for them to
get links back to your site. You can build your contribution portfolio and work
your way up even writing for huge sites like Huffington Post, Forbes, etc.
Guest posts are also still very effective, especially if you have good guest
posting resources.
And PBNs are still the most effective single link when you know how to do
it correctly. The problem with PBNs is that they are more complex and you
need to know what you are doing. So there is more risk with them, but they
are the most powerful “single link” tool there is (when done correctly).
Follow the on page rules I listed above.
Outside of that, most penalties are going to come down to your linking.
The most important part of linking is the beginning stages. If you send low
quality links in the beginning stages of your site, you’re screwed.
So especially in the beginning, focus on getting higher quality links going to
your site to build trust.
The reason for this is because Google is probability based and they need to
consider negative SEO.
If your website is not ranking anywhere, no one cares about your site. So no
one is going to negative-SEO a site that isn’t ranking - it’s not a threat.
So this is why sending low quality links or links from penalized sites will totally
screw a site in the beginning.
But as your site gains trust and moves up the rankings, the probability of your
site being negative SEO’ed increases. So low quality links are less likely to hurt
you as your site gains more trust\authority\rankings.
Even with this said, you should always focus on high quality and RELEVANT
links.
Relevancy is very important in today’s SEO.
Matthew Woodward, SEO Expert
Website: MatthewWoodward.co.uk
1)Self-intro
Do you want to increase your

search traffic?
Well pay attention because my

name is Matthew Woodward
and I’ve helped thousands of
people just like you to increase
their search traffic.
And I would love nothing more

than to help you do the same.
So pay attention and most

importantly, take action!
2)Easier/harder to rank in
Google?
I think that ranking sites on

Google has only gotten harder.
There are more and more

people joining the SEO
world, which has led to more
competition across the board.
Therefore people have been
forced to grow and develop to
keep on top!
There haven’t been many huge

changes to Google’s algorithm -
building backlinks is still the best
ranking tactic supported by a
strong on-site foundation.
The only major change is the latest update of Penguin where you don’t need
to disavow links anymore. Before Penguin, links were either positive or just
ignored but after Penguin, links were then either positive or negative which
was the start of negative SEO.
Google finally folded with the latest update and we have gone back to links
being either positive or ignored, which means you can now go heavier on link
building with much less risk than in recent years.
There are three things to consider first when you are deciding what niche to
choose.
1. Do you have a passion for it?

2. Are you knowledgeable about it?
3. Do you want to learn about it?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then you can start exploring whether
there’s an opportunity for you in that niche.
I have 2 spreadsheets that you can use to find vulnerable niches and
steal your competitors’ SEO strategy. For example, by using one of the
spreadsheets you can automatically build a keyword strategy based on your
competitor’s current rankings.
You can use these spreadsheets to review niches in less than 5 minutes
based on intelligent data and have a clear strategy in place in the time it
takes to make a cup of coffee.
4)On-page SEO tips?
I would recommend paying close attention to copywriting for SEO.
Why?
Copywriting rich content keeps visitors hooked, increases your conversion

and turns those visitors into fans or more importantly, subscribers.
I have a ton of copywriting SEO hacks including:
-Writing awesome introductions that attract people to your content and

actually gets them to read it! One tip you can use here is to always ask a
question as people have a subconscious need to find out the answer! (Like I
did at the start of this section)
-Structuring your article to include the most important information first!

This is because no matter how hard you try, a huge percentage of your
visitors won’t actually read the full article. So it’s important to give them the
information they were looking for as soon as possible.
-Create emotional and unique meta descriptions and title tags to stand out
in the SERPs. These are the first thing your potential visitors will see when
browsing on the search engines, and will be the difference between clicking
on your website and your competitors. Adding emotion to these will make
them much more interesting, appealing and well… emotional.
I mentioned earlier that I had 2 spreadsheets that will automate your SEO
strategy. We looked at one spreadsheet that creates an intelligent keyword
strategy, well the other automates the perfect backlink strategy by stealing
your competitor’s backlinks.
The spreadsheet works by analyzing the data from your competitors’ backlinks
and then providing you with a list of the best backlinks for you to steal. It
eliminates spammy links, low authority links and gives you a strategy to follow
depending on the type of link.
In other words, this intelligent backlink stealing spreadsheet does all the hard
work for you!
Let’s take a look at another couple of methods which can be used effectively
to build backlinks.
Testimonial Link Building:
By reaching out and offering to leave testimonials for products or services you
have used, this can often turn into a valuable homepage link being placed
when the testimonial is featured.
Here is an example of a homepage link back to my blog after giving

MyThemeShop my testimonial.
Link Roundups
People who publish link roundup posts are always on the lookout for content
to feature in their roundups. Reaching out to them with your awesome
content and exactly why they should feature it helps them out too.
It’s simple and easy to do:
1. Find blogs in your niche that regularly post roundups.

2. Find an email address or contact form.
3. Pitch your content.
To find out more about testimonial link building and link roundups head
over to my Link Building Strategies Guide and learn another 10 awesome link
building tactics.
As I mentioned above, you can be significantly less worried about links now
with the latest Penguin update.
I recommend you stay focused on creating top quality unique content that
solves people’s problems and deserves to rank.
Use the power of observation by reviewing search results and see what type
of results Google is returning. Then compare these results with your pages.
Get a copy of the search engine evaluator guidelines and read them
thoroughly. Then critique your site and run a full site audit, and fix any issues.
Keep on top of this by doing it annually.
Insights From Traffic Networks
Adcash, Antoine Padavani, Head of Demand
Website: Adcash.com
1)Self-intro
Adcash has been in the digital advertising industry since 2007 with over
12+ years’ of ad tech experience. The Adcash online advertising platform
unifies direct and programmatic media buying through one interface. Our
advertisers get access to web & mobile-web traffic from our exclusive
publishers and over 200+ trusted programmatic partners.
We have advanced in-house optimization technology that automatically

removes manual work and optimizes ROI. Plus, our transparent and easy-
to-use platform offers advertisers full self-service campaign management
experience to run, manage and optimize all ad campaigns in one place. At
the same time, we also offer account management for both advertisers and
publishers to help them reach their online advertising goals.
When talking about traffic volumes, we receive around 200 million ad

requests every day. The combination of our direct and programmatic
supply gives us a “sky is the limit” reach and we have extra strong demand
and supply in the US and Europe. In terms of ad formats, we work with all the
main industry standards like Native, Display, Interstitial, Pop-Under and Push
Notifications - so we have something for everyone.
We also have zero tolerance to ad fraud and we filter out a lot of traffic to
ensure that we provide only clean traffic to our advertisers. Our in-house
fraud team fights very hard against it and last year saved advertisers over
$11.8M thanks to our advanced fraud filters.
2)Expanding/shrinking ad formats? Traffic prices going up/down?
Prices are constantly evolving - we could consider that global prices are
going down, but targeted prices are definitely going up. We are providing
more and more tools and data to our customers so they can segment their
acquisition. It brings more accurate buying, better user experiences and
definitely better monetization. The market has become quite mature and
both advertisers and publishers know the value of what they buy or sell.
3)Did Google’s better ads initiative affect you?
The “better ads initiative” is definitely a good thing and our aim is also to
provide a good user experience by showing relevant ads that match with
user interests and needs. This initiative hasn’t had a lot of effect on us but
the whole industry is always a bit worried about Google’s next steps and
decisions.
4)Changes in verticals? Most-promoted verticals?
The main verticals remain similar, only products within these verticals are
changing: e-commerce, gaming, finance, gambling, adult/dating, nutra/
beauty, and utilities/services.
The changes come also from the type of campaigns, following updates in
formats and the evolution of devices and the way they are used.
Gaming, for instance, used to be client gaming, then browser gaming
and now it is applications. Native shares the same placements with the
banners environment, push notifications is the new format that’s a bit more
“intrusive”, but verticals remain the same.
Our target is to welcome more and more e-commerce, insurance, banking,

travel offers that are currently performing well on social media.
5)Views on push traffic?
Push Notifications has been creating quite a buzz during the past year and is
definitely the hottest ad format in the industry. We also offer this ad format
to our clients and they are seeing some great results with it. This new
format is the perfect way for advertisers to reach their target audience by
delivering notifications straight to users’ devices.
Affiliates and marketers across the globe have started to adopt push
notifications and we see the volumes growing day by day. However,
many players in the industry are still learning how to make the most of this
powerful ad format to drive engagement and ROI.
The key is to not overuse this ad format to ensure that users are not
receiving too many messages too often.
Therefore, the use of frequency caps is a must when adopting this ad

format.
6)Changes for current year? Tips?

All the main historical verticals are still very valid, but the methods of
advertising have changed since users cannot be aggressively flooded with
ads anymore. User experience and data will become the norm.
In terms of formats, native is definitely leading the way because it gives new
chances to promote a wide range of verticals that were not performing as
well with other formats.
We highly recommend to focus on creativity and trying to imagine yourself

as the user seeing the ads. That will help create more attractive offers
and most importantly convert more users. Data and metrics are media
buyers’ best friends. It’s absolutely crucial to constantly test and optimize
campaigns to improve performance and find new ways to lower your
acquisition cost.
Look out for what’s hot and what people are interested in. For example,
mobile app stores give good insight into the tastes of users in particular
geos - find what’s trending and make it work for you!
Of course, find a partner to rely on and who’s willing to put time and
resources into proprietary technology! Machine learning and data science
are key components to competing at high scales. At Adcash we use this
tech to increase advertisers’ ROI, to increase the revenue of our publishers
and to keep our platform clean.
Adskeeper, Sergii Chalap, Native
Advertising Expert
Website: Adskeeper.co.uk
1)Self-intro
AdsKeeper is one of the first ad networks that adapted native traffic for the
needs of affiliate marketers. Introduced to open market in 2013, AdsKeeper
has proven to be a solid network with scalable volumes and up-to-date
technology.
At current stage we serve native ad and push notification traffic worldwide.

What really defines us in the market is the internal quality assurance system
created by our in-house team, which filters the traffic in several dimensions.
Essentially, AdsKeeper remains a mainstream-oriented network with strong

presence in English speaking Tier1 countries, India, APAC, Latam and Europe,
reaching up to 11 billion impressions daily.
However in 2018 we decided to respond to increasing adult demand among

our advertisers and initiated the complete adult expansion.
We muscled up pretty fast and by the end of 2018 were ready to offer 1-1.5
million adult clicks daily.
We don’t see much volatility. CPC rates are pretty stable as we managed to
ensure simultaneous growth in demand and supply numbers.
We also released a price-recommendation engine to help our advertisers

set up accurate bids. The algorithm takes into account several factors and
represents real-time demand vs supply ratio in the specific geo correlated
with ad CTR.
One mistake advertisers may still make is ignore recommendations, setting up

the minimal bids, and expecting to climb out.
This would be a road to nowhere. Bidding 100-200% less than average market
value, they risk ending up with remnant traffic.
Well, actually we have never done anything to harm our publishers by

serving distracting ads. Fewer ads are covering our native units now and
we get more CTR and volumes. At the end of the day, it leads to higher CPMs
for publishers/websites. Advertisers are refocusing their budgets towards
Native and Push so we get more quality advertisers and publishers which is
great.
In terms of the entire affiliate marketing space - I’m sure it will affect
volumes and quality and now you know what to do to catch up with it all.
We did not see any significant changes over the past few months. Since we
serve several types of traffic, I’d like to break down the top performing stuff
as follows:
Mainstream Native:
1. Trading
2. Dating
3. Nutra and ED
4. Casino and Betting
5. Video Games
Push:
1. Dating
2. Casino and Betting
3. Gaming
4. Trading
Adult:
1. Adult Games
2. ED/ME
3. Adult Dating
4. VOD
5. Live Cams
Push-notifications is already a big thing and many networks in the

industry at least doubled their inventory and earnings. I believe that some
regulations should be applied within the next 12 month but overall this
segment will be developing and AdsKeeper will stay sharp on any updates.
The verticals will remain the same but according to the Better Ads
Organisation and Google Chrome updates, there will be some changes
which will affect advertisers.
Basically the old way of serving ads will be less available, and everyone will
be finding another way out.
AdsKeeper is on it already and we are thinking about the development of

our native to have it more interactive, relevant and catchy as well as new ad
formats for us like video ads and few more.
Stay tuned with AdsKeeper.

Exoclick, Evan Zirdelis, Sales and Ad
Operations Director
Website: Exoclick.com
1)Self-intro
ExoClick began in 2006. We have huge volumes of high quality traffic and we
serve over 7 billion daily ad impressions globally. Traffic can be purchased
via our ad network or programmatically via our ad exchange. We have an
excellent range of display traffic from a range of different verticals and our
exclusive members’ area dating display and email traffic.
Targeting features include language, GEO and regional. Additionally site,

contextual, keyword targeting are great for reaching users that are interested
in a specific vertical. Our IP range targeting allows an affiliate to use ExoClick’s
own IP range database or use his own IP range list or a combination of the two.
Additionally we offer retargeting, frequency capping and day parting.
Nothing is shrinking - in fact ExoClick is growing, serving 7 billion daily

impressions helped by the large range of ad formats that we offer and our
publisher network of 65,000 websites. The CPM/CPC does fluctuate which is
because more of our advertisers are using our Bidder tool which is adjusting
the CPM/CPC, in fact the Bidder is proving highly successful and is now being
used on over 3,000 campaigns, an increase of 375% over the last 2 quarters.
We ensured that our publishers stayed compliant with all Google regulations
so we introduced new labels that publishers can action in one click in their
admin panel to block non-compliant ads. We also educated advertisers/
affiliates about Google’s advertising restrictions labelled as “Abusive
Experiences,” with examples of acceptable & non-compliant ad creatives
which can be found on our blog.
Additionally we introduced several new Google compliant ad formats for

desktop and mobile including: full page interstitial, native interstitial, native
exit, rich media billboard banner and two additional in-video banner sizes
728×90 and 486×60.
The offers and verticals are more or less the same, here are the top verticals
that our advertisers are targeting: Paysite/VoD, Nutra, Dating, Games,

Gambling:Casino, Free Content Sites, Broadcasting. During 2019 we have seen
an increase in the Dating sector due to our exclusive traffic sources and email
clicks ad format, and Nutra is growing in APAC.
We introduced push notifications in October 2018 and we are seeing rapid

adoption of this format. The CTR rate is very high compared to other ad
formats. For example, here are some verticals with average CTRs on our
network: Gambling:Sports (CTR 2.47%), Dating (CTR 2.17%), Games (CTR 2.13%),
Utilities:Movies/Music (CTR 1.85%), Sweepstakes (CTR 1.82%), Broadcasting (CTR
2.68%), Paysite/VoD (CTR 1.32%), Nutra (CTR 0.80%). To drive further engagement,
emojis can also be added to our push notification ad format. We cap the
frequency of sending messages up to 4 messages per day so as to not annoy
users. Currently we are seeing an average growth of 500k new subscribers to
push notifications daily. We will have to wait to see what the long term effect
will be but right now it’s a strong ad format.
Automation is getting more and more important for affiliates and advertisers
because it really allows them to scale up their campaigns. As previously
mentioned, our Bidder features allow advertisers/affiliates to automate the
optimization of their campaigns by adjusting their bids by ad zone and/or by
blocking non-converting ad zones. We are seeing more and more advertisers
becoming creative when it comes to automatic optimization with ExoClick’s
bidder. Advertisers are now using a wide set of rules combining automatic
bidding adjustment and additional rules from blocking zones based on CTR,
Clicks, Conversions, ROI.
With our new platform API which launched in March 2019 advertisers can now
use the API to automate all platform features that are inside our admin panel.
That means advertisers can now create their very own dashboard or even
their proper Bidder algorithm based on their needs.
Of course, even when advertisers opt in to use the API, they can still take
advantage of the advanced algorithms within ExoClick’s platform, such as
the automatic offer and landing page distribution, and then combine them
with their in-house rules.
EZMob, Shai Weinreb, Head of Push Marketing
Website: EZMob.com
1)Self-intro
EZmob was founded in early 2013 primarily to facilitate acquisition of affiliate

networks through innovative creation of ad formats. We have since then
embraced RTB and XML as our main tech drivers for display and native
marketing (RTB) and pop and push notification ads (XML). EZmob also employs
a dedicated team that focuses on performance marketing thus able to scale
any campaign.
Although none of us believe 15 years ago pop will be around today, it is still
alive and kicking and converting as well. We do see a decrease in the native
demand compared to the surge happening with push notification ads at
EZmob. We currently serve over 3 billion daily ad requests so are certain we
can provide coverage at any country and operating system or platform. CPMs
have been fluctuating as usual in 2019 but no dramatic increase or decrease
has been noticed.
Google means regulation in our industry, and although the random and
sometimes surprising guidelines Google puts out force us to think creatively
(and quickly), we appreciate the fact that Google does enforce its rules on
rule-breaking companies, which allow companies that focus on cleaner
marketing to compete.
Mobile content demand has been increasing with the introduction of push
notification. The fact that push is billed on CPC and not CPM helps more
advertisers tap into this inventory and the fact that it converts very well for
various type offers helps much more to motivate advertisers to keep their
campaigns open and converting. Affiliate offers have always worked well with
pop, and app marketing campaigns show great results with display and native
marketing.
We believe push is here to stay. The gold rush for more users and more
direct push supply shows results already in early 2019. The quality of the
users and the delivery strategy of the inventory owners is key to be able
to serve successful campaigns. While some companies take a more
aggressive approach with their user base, we believe in a slow trickle
instead of a huge steam when it comes to communicating with our

direct users. With that reason in mind we expect this not to be affected
dramatically over 2019 - although it’s anyone’s guess what / when / how
Google will deal with push notification marketing.
We never expect a year of the same old. We were one of the first companies
to launch push notification very early in 2018 expecting it to explode and
it did. We plan to do what we did last year, stay in touch with the great
community at STM to understand what users want and attempt to supply it
first.
Megapush, Sergey Konrad, Marketing Manager
Website: Megapu.sh
1)Self-intro
We’ve been in the traffic business for more than 10 years, but Megapu.sh is the
first public project that has run for more than a year.
The market of online advertising is growing constantly. As for the prices of the
push-traffic specifically, they periodically rise and fall. At the end of the day,
the traffic may get more expensive.
Yes, it affected us as well, but more in a positive way. Some of the traffic
sources generating new push-notifications have become cheaper. In our
mind, this did not affect Affiliate Marketing in any way. The only influence
was that on some traffic sources the competition became bigger, on others
smaller.
It seems like binary options have been pushed to second and crypto offers
have become more popular, despite the fact that interest towards crypto
currency has decreased. Additionally, offers such as casino and dating show
stable results.
The format of push-notifications will run for a long time, but it will definitely
change. In the end, only big and honest ones in this market will stay in
business. This will happen, as over time it will get more difficult to obtain new
users, and unsubscribing will become much easier. However, as we have
mentioned above, the big players that will follow the rules and etiquette of the
game will not be affected by these changes.
We expect new ad formats and, of course, market broadening. The main

recommendation is to keep things clean in general. The more products
there are that can be promoted without any troubles, the better the quality
of affiliate marketing will be.
Plugrush, Jørgen Bogetveit, CEO
Website: Plugrush.com
1)Self-intro
Proud to say, we are one of the pioneers in this business, starting way back
in 2007 with two traffic types - plugs and pops. Plugs were our invention
- a simple static picture with text underneath it linked to an offer. Sounds
familiar? Today, you call them native ads.
As our publisher base grew, due to traffic trading, so did our portfolio and
we soon expanded to banner and redirect adult traffic. In July of 2018, we’ve
incorporated mainstream pop traffic. And in December 2018 we’ve introduced
push notification traffic for both adult and mainstream.
Starting 2019 strong, our main focus is the record speed growth of push
notification publishers and advertisers. Our advertisers that use their landing
pages to collect subscribers is becoming fruitful to them in ways we couldn’t
even predict. We have big plans for 2019, so stay tuned for the news!
Ad formats we see expanding currently are push, banners and native ads. In
our opinion, this indicates a shift in focus from sheer traffic volume (as seen
with pops) to quality (from clicked traffic generated by display ad units).
On pops, we have seen a decline in overall volume, while rates are increasing.
We attribute this trend to two things:
1. Google’s recent changes have made more website owners fearful of using
pops on their websites.
2. Fraudulent traffic rouse due to Google’s recent changes. In 2018 we’ve
created a plan to attack that even better and made vast improvements in
recent months in the way we detect fraudulent traffic, which often plagues
pop traffic in particular.
These quality filter advancements have led to a positive outcome: lower

amount of traffic volume with a higher quality standard, which made our
media buyers pleased.
In order to provide more transparent and useful information for publishers, we

are now updating on a weekly basis the average CPCs for publishers in 20 top
performing GEOs. This goes for push notification traffic, banner and native
ads.
It benefits advertisers as well, since the higher CPCs for publishers give them
insight into what’s hot right now.
In conclusion:
- Pops are shrinking in volume but have a higher quality standard due to our
advanced fraudulent traffic detection system and thus have a higher average
CPC since advertisers are bidding to buy quality traffic.
- Banner and natives have pretty stable average CPC prices looking back
6 months, but if you take shorter periods of time, the average CPC goes up
during holiday seasons, drops in the beginning of the year and now it’s picking
up a slow growth and will go up again at spring time.
- Push notification traffic is really hot right now and we’re seeing growth in
average CPCs in Tier 1 GEOs and, surprisingly, in Tier 3 GEOs! Tier 2 GEOs are
remaining more or less steady. We’re expecting more growth in the upcoming
months.
Yes, it certainly affected us. We’ve updated our creatives approval policy
accordingly. In the beginning, the time to approve the creatives was longer
due to everybody’s confusion with regards to the clarity of the new ‘rules’ -
publishers didn’t want a potential penalty, advertisers wanted their creatives
to be slightly modified and we were stuck in the middle trying to do the right
thing.
For example, we no longer accept certain ad creatives that may be deemed

as “misleading” or “abusive” by the powers that be (Google). We’ve picked up
the pace and communicated clearly to our advertisers what can and what
cannot be approved. Now, the approval times of creatives is shorter and we’re
happy there were no more changes in that area.
The evergreen vertical continues to be dating, casual and otherwise, which still
dominates. In recent months, we’ve also noticed a larger focus on finance and
crypto-currency offers compared to previously.
Yes, we do offer push notification traffic and we’re very excited to see its
potential. It’s a unique way to reach end users that have opted in to receive
push notifications, which primes them for stronger engagement with the
advertisements they are served.
In our opinion, a conservative approach should be taken with this ad format.
Push subscribers should not be messaged to the point where it annoys them
and they have to unsubscribe. If this is how it’s utilized by some, then we do
believe that regulation of the way push notifications work could occur in some
manner.
Oh, it can never be the ‘same old’ in this business. Diversity is the keyword
for 2019 - for advertisers, publishers or traffic network. In 2019 you cannot
expect to focus solely on one thing and expect great results. Those who do so,
forfeit the game and scream that affiliate marketing and online marketing, in
general, is dead.
For us, as a traffic network, simultaneously focusing on various pieces of the

puzzle: Having a great anti-fraud system that will produce more quality traffic
for our advertisers; offering great payout terms and plenty of options for our
publishers; having a referral program that rewards you in pretty $ (for referring
advertisers and publishers alike); working on including more exclusive RTB
and DSP partners as well as publishers and advertisers; constantly upgrading
our stats system; introducing new and advanced features in our interface;
expanding our portfolio of traffic types...
With regards to the latest, the way push ads can reach an end user in a
more direct way than virtually any other ad format is ground-breaking in
our opinion. In addition, you can promote your offers say on display traffic
and by using your own landing pages and collecting subscribers - you can
monetize those with us as well. Or buy pop traffic to collect subscribers and
then monetize them - and this is a completely new ‘business model’ that did
not exist a few years back. It’s the evolution of buying traffic for impressions in
various GEOs for the sake of the traffic itself and then selling it.
We recommend to focus on diversifying your advertising or publishing
portfolio to include more display traffic for 2019: Be it push ads, banners or
native ads. A mix is likely to give you the best results. This applies in general
to both webmasters looking to monetize their sites and also media buyers
making traffic purchases.
PopCash, Radu Burcheci, CEO
Website: PopCash.net
1)Self-intro
The people within our team have been active in this industry for more than
ten years and since 2012 we’ve been united under the PopCash brand, working
continuously to satisfy our clients. We were focused exclusively on pops until
recently, when we started to work with push ads as well.
Taking into consideration that our area of expertise is pop traffic, we will share
the results of the analysis of that segment - the volume slightly decreased in
comparison with last year’s, but it’s a small decrease, so nothing worrying for
now. Also the CPMs are stable with a small increasing trend.
We like to think about PopCash as a binder for publishers and advertisers - in

order for them to cohere, we need to ensure performance for both parties
involved, so we always had rules in place. The guidelines’ objective resides
in obtaining politically correct behavior both from publishers’ side (no fake/
bot traffic, respected frequency capping, good quality traffic, etc.), but also
from the advertisers’ standpoint (no scary ads, no tech support, or any other
forbidden type of ads). So until now we didn’t have any encounter with the
Google’s “better ads initiative” or its consequences.
Well, in terms of expansion, we can confirm the increase of popularity for lead
generation campaigns that are willing to get push subscribers. All the other
verticals remain stable with no significant fluctuations.
At this very moment we’re running tests for push notifications ourselves in
order to be able to make this model available for our advertisers as soon as
possible. We consider this to have the potential of being a long-term trend,
but in order to be so, regulations must be applied, because there are many
opportunists that are abusing the subscribers with multiple ads (even 10+)
delivered during one day and this phenomenon must not be perpetuated.

Back in 2018 we’ve noticed more and more companies that didn’t have a
strong and healthy business model, have closed their doors. The problem is
that some of them let unpaid debts destabilized other businesses as well.
We believe that 2019 will be a relatively tough year for many other
companies in this industry and some of them may also stop their activity.
The businesses that will continue operating will be the ones with serious
minds behind the brands, those who really bring added value to their clients’
tables - both for advertisers and publishers.
In terms of ‘tips and tricks’ we can only reveal what we consider to be the
‘evergreen secret recipe for success: Focus on very few offers at once,
fructify everything you can from others’ experiences, but perform your own
tests at the same time and once you find the ‘four-leaf clover’, do your best
to scale it up and make it stable. Then repeat the process.

Revcontent, Sharon Lyon, VP of Sales
and Operations
Website: Revcontent.com
1)Self-intro
Revcontent has been around since late 2013 with a strong focus on creating
direct partnerships with publishers to monetize their web traffic.
While placements directly below article content continue to be top revenue

generators, I see a trend of publishers moving away from feeds and towards
less intrusive formats that take up less real estate and improve user
experience.
As advertisers become smarter at managing their data, I anticipate CPM’s &

CPC’s to stabilize as bids better align with quality.
As a member of the Coalition for Better Ads, Revcontent has always prided
itself on being at the forefront of positive change within the advertising
industry. We will continue to align our policies with initiatives to improve user
experience on the open web, as we have done in the past.
I believe that these stricter rules have had a positive impact on affiliate
marketing overall. Not only do consumers benefit as the industry moves
towards a user-friendly, more personalized environment, but improved ad
formats allow advertisers to feel more comfortable buying traffic without the
risk of accidental clicks eating away their ROI.
Given the high budgets of Q4, Q1 always tends to be more DR (direct-

response) heavy; that trend upheld over the past few months. So far in 2019,
we’re seeing the highest volume coming from finance, business, and health
and lifestyle.
Push has proven itself to be a valuable traffic source within the Revcontent
network, but only when it’s done right. Because Revcontent offers both bid
by placement and fractional bidding, advertisers buying within our platform
only pay what the traffic is worth to them. Push traffic comes in high
volumes and performance can vary widely in terms of EPC. To succeed with
push, it is imperative to isolate pockets of positive ROI based on what your
data tells you.
Given its high volume and susceptibility for abuse, I think push will inevitably
get regulated in some way. Finding trusted partners that can provide
advertisers with quality traffic is key.
I don’t think we’ve ever seen a year of the “same old” when it comes to the
business of traffic acquisition, especially with technology developing faster-
than-ever. One thing I don’t see changing, however, is the importance of
testing and data collection in overall strategy. Advertisers need to spend
their time testing and familiarizing themselves with every traffic source
available. What may not perform on one platform might excel on another;
testing is the only way advertisers can ensure they are capitalizing on as
much traffic as possible. In addition to testing, advertisers in 2019 should
continue to diversify outside of Facebook, take advantage of the high
volume push traffic has to offer, use advancements in technology to their
advantage, and, of course, stay informed about the ever-changing trends in
the space.
RichPush, Igor Pavlov, Head of Marketing
Website: RichPush.co
1)Self-intro
We started selling traffic from about year 2010. Our DSP AdMachine.co is for
Pop-traffic, Native, Display and Video. That was it until 2018 when Push-traffic
emerged. Here is when RichPush.co appeared. Push are our focus right now
and probably will be in the near future.
Push traffic is definitely expanding a lot, since it’s a growing market, we see
about x2 growth each month. That’s perfectly predictable, since last year only
affiliate marketers even knew about the format and started testing it. Now it’s
becoming more popular in other industries, more companies test it, more ad
networks appear. Other formats are not shrinking, although growing much
slower.
Better ads initiative can’t affect us since we also work on ads quality ourselves
and we think every ad network should. Better ads deliver better results and
lowers unsubscription rate, which is extremely important in push advertising.
We have our own strict policy, and our account management team constantly
share best practices with our advertisers. Everyone profits from this.
There was a sudden boom of ICO ads, because of that industry’s development.
Push ads’ most popular verticals are now nutrition, gambling, sweepstakes,
betting, finance. Nothing too unusual, they perform better at least on our
platform - they became popular.
Yes, that’s what we do. We offer push format and we’re growing our subscribers
base each month. It has chances to last long and to be banned totally as on
iOS. Push ads are screwed if Google decides to wipe it from existence.
But banning it will require some push licensing for trusted websites, a lot
of regulations for what you’re allowed to send to your subscribers. Google
usually does only things they can profit from and push regulation seems like a
lot of work for nothing.

We think there will be some changes in push traffic. We can speak for
ourselves at least. More granular targeting, advanced optimization, premium
publishers, much more subscribers and much more advertisers - that’s what’s
going to happen for sure.
We strongly recommend affiliates to work more with push traffic for 2 reasons:
1. It’s really profitable right now if you take it seriously and let our managers
help you.
2. The more you use it and the more feedback you share with us, the better we
can make your experience and results.
And who knows - maybe a new ad format will emerge this year, something AR
or VR related. So stay tuned!
Toro Advertising, Beatriz González,
Business Developer
Website: ToroAdvertising.com
1)Self-intro
TORO Advertising has been in business for 7 years. Our core business is
divided into two areas: An affiliate platform, which operates on a cost-per-
action performance; and ads.cafe, a transparent ad network specializing in
entertainment traffic.
We are currently seeing a decrease in popunder traffic and an increase

in native traffic, push notifications, voice search and video advertising.
Regarding CPM, we see price increases from sources such as search or social,
due to higher demand. But not such big increases in newer formats like push
and native.
Google reinforced its rules sufficiently in advance so that we had the time to
prepare for the new regulations. In this way we were able to advise our clients
on the best way to comply, so it was a process of adaptation, and it hasn’t had
a negative effect on our business.
Last year one of the biggest verticals for us were finance campaigns.
However, this vertical is now starting to slightly decrease in 2019. Big verticals
for us continue to be binary, sweepstakes, e-commerce, dating and add-ons.
Push notification traffic is giving us great results so far. It’s being offered
on our affiliate platform to our advertisers and to our publishers on our ad
network ads.cafe. Indeed some affiliates are adding emojis which is driving
better performance. Push traffic has been the lifeline of many affiliates in 2018
and will continue to be so throughout 2019. Chat bot traffic has great potential
but it still has to be perfected.
Here at TORO Advertising we are working on offering new technologies for

advertisers and new formats for affiliates. We do not expect the ‘same old’,
because sources of traffic continue to reinvent themselves. Regarding what
to focus on, we believe that e-commerce will continue to grow. This sector has
been undergoing major changes since it first began and buying from mobile
devices is the new normal, surpassing desktop. Its consolidation is undeniable.
Furthermore, there is the change in user behavior: We consume 24/7, the

proliferation of super sales days (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles Day, etc),
new tools such as Shopify or cashback and sales through devices such as
Amazon Echo and Google Home make this vertical one of the most lucrative.
Traffic Factory, Deborah Ferren,
Project Manager
Website: TrafficFactory.com
1)Self-intro
Traffic Factory was founded more than 10 years ago and is one of
the market leaders specializing in adult traffic. We are the exclusive
representative of xvideos & Xnxx. We pride ourselves on over 6 billion daily
worldwide ad impressions and an estimated daily network traffic of over 205
million visitors.
Globally, our level of traffic is forever increasing with no actual drop in

traffic encountered on any of our ad spots. Generally speaking, the ad
spot that generates the greatest amount of traffic would currently be the
mobile header banner. On both desktop and tablet traffic, the principal
outstanding spot would be the footer banner.
Both the prices for CPC and CPM campaigns run in accordance with the law
of supply and demand; hence they can fluctuate depending on the exact
demand for a particular ad spot. Individual prices have evolved from the
early days of Traffic Factory, due to the success and demand for our traffic.
It should also be noted that even if there has been a slight increase in the
evolution of our prices, these prices remain considerably lower than that
of mainstream advertising spots. Let’s face it and not lie to ourselves; the
mainstream user is also the very same adult user that we cater to!
Yes, prices have increased but so has the quality and quantity of the traffic
that we serve!
The “Better Ad Standards”, recently introduced by Google, has undoubtedly

had an affect both on our network and that of other traffic suppliers, with
changes having to be implemented rapidly to keep in accordance with the
demands.
We were able to adapt and integrate these rules onto our network whilst
being helping our clients to adapt accordingly as well. We noted that many
of our affiliates had to swiftly adapt to these new demands, with many having
to wait for fresh new creatives to be made available from their affiliate
platforms. In some cases, this gave rise to additional costs to be invested on
their behalf or a loss of time which in turn had a slight effect on their potential
earnings.
Since the implementation of the new digital ad rules of 2018, it is fair to say
that we have noticed “cleaner” offers with greater transparency to the user.
But this has not been noted as a “major” change as of yet. Recent trends
have shown a large increase in the number of dating offers being proposed.
At Traffic Factory, we take a strict stance on these types of offers with each
individual campaign being manually verified prior to being distributed on our
publishers’ websites.
Since the very beginning of Traffic Factory, our aim has always been about
creating the ultimate user experience on our publishers’ websites. It is due to
this ethic that we have been able to establish ourselves as a market leader
with a very high quality of traffic being delivered. Push notification ad spots
appear to be the most talked about placement currently, being implemented
by several peers across our community but, in keeping in alignment with
our ethos and the type of ad placements that we deem correct, the P\push
notification is not a spot that we are currently investigating and shall not be
for the foreseeable future.
All principal changes that are expected within the realm of the traffic
business will ultimately be implemented on our platform in order to bring an
even greater customer experience to our clients.
The main tip that we always share with all our clients is to test different ad
spots and then evaluate which ad spots, under which parameters, best fit
their promotion and their target audience.
An example of this would be our recent launch of Native Banners! These ad
spots have a high CTR due to their implementation amongst our publishers’
content. They respect our ethos of a high quality user experience as
they are not deemed intrusive and having been recently launched - the
competition amongst these spots is still building so a great opportunity to
secure a premium spot at an affordable price!
It is paramount that each affiliate gains knowledge regarding our multiple

features that we offer! These have been created in order to maximize their
campaigns by being able to setup certain parameters which could be key
to the success needed in targeting their particular audience.
The importance of patience is also key as results do not appear overnight so

testing different “strong” creatives that target particular audiences will be of
great importance.
Finally, communication is our final tip. We ask all our clients to remain in
contact with their designated Account Managers as they may hold the
information that can be the difference between a successful and a dead
campaign!
Traffic Junky, Steve F., Marketing Coordinator
Website: TrafficJunky.com
1)Self-intro
We’ve been selling adult traffic since 2008. Traffic Junky focuses on selling our
premium adult publishers such as Pornhub Youporn and Redtube, all of which
we own.
Interest in pre-rolls has risen over the past few months. Thanks to the quality
of our premium publishers and the demand for our traffic (super affiliates
have seen success with our network and continue to run and grow on Traffic
Junky), Traffic Junky has seen healthy growth in CPM over the last year. Rates
of Traffic Junky’s traffic still remains below those found on Google, Facebook
and other native networks.
Yes and substantially. In response to Google’s Better Ads Standards and

Abusive Ad Experiences, Traffic Junky implemented rules and regulations
specific to advertising on Chrome browsers. The immediate effect was that
affiliates who were running creatives that broke the new rules had to scrap
proven methods. However, affiliates have since adapted, and Traffic Junky
allows affiliates to run the old creative styles on non-Chrome browsers.
Nutra, Dating & Gaming still remain some the most popular verticals being
advertised. Gambling and casino offers have also picked up in European
markets, we are also starting to see new interest for it in USA. A new trend
everyone should keep an eye on - and look into running offers for - is Cannabis
and CBD which we allow on the Traffic Junky network.
We do not offer push notifications but we make sure to keep an eye on it and
other new trending ad formats. That being said, it looks as if the excessive
nature of the format could potentially lead to stricter regulations.
As we mentioned above, Cannabis and CBD is definitely a space they’ll want

to explore. Being leaders in adult traffic, we keep an eye on what’s trending
while embracing what is trending and focusing on innovation. Whether that
be features or new verticals. Traffic Junky gives you access to a dedicated
account manager. Speak to them and help them help you grow your affiliate
marketing profits.
Traffic Stars, Peter Rabenseifner, CEO
Website: TrafficStars.com
1)Self-intro
Traffic Stars was founded in December 2014 by industry veterans, and has
been around for just over 4 years now, focusing on premium adult site traffic
across various ad formats such as banners, native ads, popunders, video-ads,
postitials and recently also push notifications.
These days a lot of things change within the online advertising sphere. After
the first big google guidelines updates we saw a for example a decrease
in popunder impressions, since the user actions triggering a popunder got
restricted. At the same time this restriction has led to an increase in CPM
prices of pops. Another result of these updates was that working with banner
ads got more and more complicated. Traffic Stars came up just in time with
the right solution which is switching more and more banner spots to native ad
spots. The results speak for themselves. In most cases publishers see higher
ecpms and advertisers see better conversion rates due to the high CTR that
comes with this format.
Another solution to compensate the shrinking volumes of popunders is to

move your business to video ads, which is a big part of Traffic Stars business.
For mobile we offer the mobile postitial format which is a powerful full page
ad, following better ads standards and probably at one point even replacing
the mobile popunder in the case that it gets penalized by google.
This goes directly hand in hand with the previous question. It had a huge
impact on the whole advertising space. We at Traffic Stars try not only to
follow, but even be ahead of these changes in order to provide the best
possible solution to both advertisers and publishers.
Cams, dating, games and nutra offers are the most promoted on our network.
Mobile carrier offers nearly disappeared but this is not a very recent trend
- we all saw this coming over the past year(s). One trend we do see is that
livecam providers are probably the most creative ones at the moment,
constantly working on new ways of serving the most relevant ads to their
audience. Dating and nutra offers perform extremely well on our native ads
and therefore a lot of native traffic goes this way.
Gaming, both adult and mainstream have started entering the competition
more, and we see them being able to utilize formats such as video, native and
postitial (newer formats) in a very effective way. We will start to see more of
these players coming into the adult industry to take advantage of the same
users but in a different format / source (i.e. adult traffic).
Push notifications is not the next big thing - it is already THE big thing. Traffic
Stars has been working with this format for a few months now. Since we focus
on premium publishers that care very much about their user experience, we
are sensitive with this format and try to not overload the users with tons of
messages. We let our publishers decide.
Our prediction is that it will get regulated very soon and it probably should be.
Still, it is a good way for browsers to bring users back a lot so it might remain
an accepted format for the long term.
What we’ve seen so far from google will not be the end. They will keep pushing
publishers to follow even tighter rules and guidelines. For this reason a
professional partner for ad-serving - like us - will be key for publishers. It will
get harder and harder for small brokers to serve ads in the near future.
In terms of advertising we strongly recommend to get your offers ready for

native ads since this is overall the part of traffic that grows the most whilst
volumes for classic banner ads will keep shrinking. Anyone who is in doubt of
how to get started in native advertising is welcome to reach out to us. We are
here to help.
If you have the resources to produce effective video ads, this is a format to
focus on as well since it is still young and there is not yet much competition
for it.
Zeropark, Neill David Burton, Head of Account
Management
Website: Zeropark.com
1)Self-intro
Zeropark has been around since 2012, I joined in 2013 when we only had
domain traffic.
With the efforts to improve traffic quality (an ongoing process since 2017)
we have actually seen CPM, Pop and Domain traffic costs rise, but also the
conversion rate along with it. CPC for push in general is much higher but you
are paying for clicks and quality.
The rules that google set in 2018 actually have served to benefit our network,
as they have stripped out a lot of the suspicious and low quality traffic from
our bidding.
Push has seen the resurgence of high payout verticals, Gambling, Casino,
Finance, and Crypto have all seen growth in the last few months.
We are the biggest push network, with our blend or aggregated and unique
traffic sources we can offer volume in any geo. They are very fresh now and
have high conversion rates. I would suggest jumping on this bandwagon
before the market becomes oversaturated.
2019 is the year of push. It will be the hottest traffic source for at least the
next 10 months. My advice would be to work on your creative skills - nothing
improves CTR on push then good copy.
Insights from Affiliate Networks
Adcombo, Constantine Gor, CEO

Website: Adcombo.com
1)Self-intro
AdCombo is a CPA network that works on the international market. Using

our platform people can have a sustainable income online. More than
45000 affiliates work with AdCombo right now. We help them grow and
increase their profit. Also, our network has more than 4500 offers and we are
a direct advertiser for some of them. Our most popular COD verticals are
Health, Beauty, Diet, Adult, and Ecommerce. But we have such verticals as
sweepstakes, mobile, bizop and dating as well.
2)Are carrier-billing offers dead?
The era of mobile apps and subscriptions is over. Governments around the
world have started regulating this market too tightly, so it is unlikely that
mobile offers will become popular in CPA.
3)Best verticals for mobile? Performance on 3G vs. Wifi?
One of the most popular mobile verticals is definitely sweepstakes. The

Internet is full of people that want to get some extra money, a new iPhone,
MacBook or something like that. And this race for a freebie is the key to high
CR. Both 3g and Wi-Fi are absolutely ok with it.
Some really good 3G offers will remain but there will likely appear new direct
offers that will ration 3G and Wifi ones. Moreover, such payment methods
as Applepay, SamsungPay, and AndroidPay are getting more popular with
every passing day and that may cause the increase of the conversion rates
from mobile devices. So we expect a rapid growth of mobile sweepstakes,
ecommerce and mobile apps that use some smart tricks for the traffic
involvement in such niches as gambling, dating, forex, nutra, etc.
4)Rising and declining verticals?
The CC submit offers are definitely growing. They appeared a few years ago
as a sweepstake DCB payments replacement and now they are on the top.
The forex/crypto vertical is dying, US nutra will get through some rough
times this year and the global trend of ‘whitehat’ internet will affect all other
verticals more or less.
Carrier billings will be stable in the third world countries and will be limited in
other ones because network operators won’t deny such a great opportunity.
A select group of people (that includes top and trustful webmasters) will
keep access to good landings and good flow seldom available to the
general public.
5)Stable and lucrative verticals?
Ecommerce and all of its sub-verticals (nutraceuticals, dropshipping,

electronics, health & beauty offers) will continue existing and, moreover,
their quality will increase in the nearest future.
Financial offers like insurance, loans, and personal consultants will remain
the same as well as education and digital educational/recreational
products.
Actually, popular verticals are not as interesting as emerging and

developing traffic sources. 2018 was the year of push traffic. And who knows
what 2019 is going to bring?
6)Blackhat vs. whitehat?
We strongly recommend white hat promotion instead of a black hat. As

we said before, ecommerce is the future of affiliate marketing, at least for
the next 2-3 years. And ecommerce implies white hat promotion strategy.
However, there will definitely be big black hat players in the niche that can
adapt to the changes in the market.
Addiliate, Christoph Brughmans, Co-Founder
Website: Addiliate.com
1)Self-intro
We are Addiliate, a global affiliate network founded in 2010 with more than
1,500 direct and exclusive campaigns across the globe. Our main verticals
are Sweepstakes, Dating, Gaming, Gambling, Apps and Browser Extension
offers.
Yes, absolutely. Mobile content brings less than 5% of our total revenues.
This is not a vertical where we see a lot of potential in the short term.
Apps and gaming offers are definitely very strong verticals for mobile traffic.
They perform very well across 3G and Wifi.
We don’t see any particular verticals that are on their way out in 2019. On
a positive note, we strongly feel that casino and sports betting offers are
gaining a lot of traction.
Finance offers (binary, forex, payday loans) have been around for a very
long time and is a very stable and lucrative vertical to be in. We predict that
in 2019 this vertical will keep on performing strongly for us.
We recommend white hat as it’s more stable, more long-term and will lead
the publisher to build a structural win-win relationship with both the network
and the traffic source. It’s also a lot easier to optimize white hat offers.
Affiliaxe, Oran Furman, Senior Affiliate Manager
Website: Affiliaxe.com
1)Self-intro
Affiliaxe had been around for 8 years, working globally and in various niches
but the main focus is eCommerce, Health, Software and Finance.
We stopped running mobile subscription offers a long time ago to be

honest. Much longer than a year as we saw that this niche was dying.
I wouldn’t say there are verticals that are working best with mobile. I say
that, unless the offer is specifically designed for desktop, all our main
verticals are performing on mobile. Fast Wifi, fast carrier traffic and big
mobile devices with excellent screens mean that mobile traffic is great for
health, finance, sweeps, and even eCommerce. Of course advertisers are
now fully aware that their offers should be fully optimized for mobile users.
I don’t feel like there is a vertical that is clearly on its way out. I do think the
industry is shifting more and more towards clean offers. Of course crypto
and such are still making a lot of money, but offers that offer real value to
the users/customers are getting bigger and bigger pieces of the pie.
I don’t think I’m surprising anyone when I say that eCommerce is big! And it
will only get bigger.
There are pros and cons to each, and although I can understand why some
will opt to run black hat, I personally prefer WH. If we consider ourselves to
be professionals, career marketers that are looking to build real assets and
businesses, then I believe WH is the way to go.
Aragon Advertising, Brian Schwartz, Director
of Network Distribution
Website: Aragon-Advertising.com
1)Self-intro
Aragon Advertising has been in business since 2012. Our core verticals
include Pay Per Call (Finance, Insurance, Home Services, Legal), Desktop
Browser Extensions, Lead Generation & Mobile Content.
We’ve experienced a downward trend in mobile subscription offers the last

couple years but there is still business to be had in certain categories and
geos. Some of our global partners in that space have pivoted into more
transparent business models including CC Submit and Mobile App installs.
Entertainment & Streaming offers tend to do well with mobile traffic sources
as of late, particularly with Android devices. Not seeing a clear winner when
comparing 3G vs. Wifi.
Aside from carrier billing on the downward trend, “Sweepstakes” seems to

have plateaued. Majority of people would prefer not to take their chances
at a reward (they never win) but signup to receive something tangible and
guaranteed such as Free Samples. According to conversations with our
network partners and affiliates, crypto is still getting traction as well as nutra
sales (non-rebill), including the up and coming, controversial CBD Oil. Also
- now that the U.S. supreme court ruled sports gambling legal in select U.S.
states, we’re starting to put some more focus into the gambling vertical.
A lot of our focus have gone into pay per call as our primary vertical. For the
second year in a row (2018 & 2019), we were rated #1 Pay Per Call Network by
mThink. There is still a lot of room for growth across many sub-categories to
help drive calls for small to larger companies.
Black hat may be used to earn a quick buck, but ad platforms are becoming
smarter causing users to lose their accounts. White Hat is the more
sustainable & preferred approach.
Brokerbabe & Glize, Stefan Muelbaur, Co-Founder
Website: Brokerbabe.com, Glize.com
1)Self-intro
I manage 2 networks. The better-known one is Glize, that started in 2016 with
the focus of mobile offers and developed in the last years more and more into
Leadgen, Nutra, COD, Sweeps and Gambling. But mobile content still remains
a very strong vertical.
The other network is the adult network Brokerbabe. This program has been
around as an advertiser since 2010. Since 2015 we also use Brokerbabe as a
network with a focus on Adult Dating, VOD, Cams and Male Enhancement.
Like others, I was calling it a declining vertical as well, and indeed the numbers
dropped in 2018. Some countries stayed strong, and new ones have opened
up. Others dropped big time. With the high margins the carriers are having
here, it is predictable that there will be always attractive mobile billing markets
open.
The biggest increase in mobile we had is Dating promoted on Push. If you

have not tried Push yet, don’t hesitate – it’s an amazing source and a lot of
our pubs use it in the meantime as a traffic source. Another vertical that
increased in mobile was Gambling. It’s actually a bit surprising for me, but the
majority of the FTDs were made over mobile devices.
For sure the crypto offers have declined. It was never a strong market for
us, but we had nearly daily requests. Now nobody is asking for those, but
the advertisers in this vertical became super pushy. Also CC subs that were
booming in 2018 have declined a bit because advertisers have lost MIDs or
gone bankrupt.
COD is extremely stable for us, the offers last forever and we have there
tons of pubs that put them up on their websites. The biggest growth we’ve
had in 2019 so far is VR in Brokerbabe. We took over the entire affiliation of
Reality Lovers - one of the leading adult VR portals. In the meantime VR is
kind of mainstream so I see there an increase, not only in adult but also in
mainstream.
There was definitively a time when it was easier to do blackhat. There will be
always a market for it with bigger earnings in a given time. In the long run it
makes sense to build a business model on WH too. Looking into something
from both worlds can also make sense, such as Dating and Gambling offers
that are whitelisted on FB for example. We see for example also the first
successful affiliates promoting our exclusive adult VR Portal Reality Lovers
on Adwords with family-friendly landers.
Clickdealer, Henry Whitfield, Global Head of Supply
Website: Clickdealer.com
1)Self-intro
ClickDealer launched in 2012 when a small team of ambitious marketers

decided to combine efforts - the result has been an evolution from a startup
network to a global marketing agency that aims to make performance
marketing accessible, convenient, and human. Last month we celebrated
the one year anniversary of launching our in-house platform - an all-in one
solution with new features launched monthly to help our partners meet their
goals, including Custom Affiliate Domains, Rotations and SmartLinks.
While mobile subscription offers are not completely dead and buried, it is
obvious that the market has declined drastically amid the many issues that
we saw between carriers and operators - you just will not see the same
volumes and campaigns being run to the same level of success with the
strategies of the past. A 2019 report from Fortumo shows expected growth
to come, however it identifies segments such as transportation, ticketing,
marketplaces and financial services versus wallpapers, emojis and games
as the areas to see that expansion. Adjust accordingly.
The simple truth is that mobile continues and will continue to dominate
when it comes to the argument of desktop versus mobile. Because of this
you see more and more verticals picking up on mobile that we have not
seen in the past - with many opting for simple, straightforward landing
pages to increase their performance on mobile versus the more detailed
and expansive pages on desktop.
Instead of focusing on one vertical, I think the biggest trend we’ve seen
gaining traction near the end of 2018 and early in 2019 has been the massive
swing towards push notifications. Its simple and straight-forward approach
means that affiliates of all sizes can utilize its volume, even if we’ve seen
a slight decrease in the quality of leads coming from this traffic. Like any
other traffic source that takes off, the masses have flocked to it like moths
to a flame. Expect browsers to try to stem the tide and make changes that
will regulate it similar to Native traffic a few years ago. Those who adapt will
reap the rewards.
We mentioned this last year and it has not changed: Dating continues to
be our most stable and evergreen vertical. We’ve got a team of experts
who continue to grow and expand our offerings in the market and results
continue to impress. In addition, we launched our first in-house SmartLink
this spring and we chose Dating as the first vertical for its debut because of
our relationships and history in that market. It’s not like humanity is going to
stop dating anytime soon, so this vertical is as evergreen as you can hope
for.
The simple truth is that black hat promotional strategy is about short-term
gain, not long-term growth and stability. We all know that Facebook, Google
and others are doing more and more to combat more aggressive strategies
and those who adjust to the “new normal” are the ones that will see success
continue. Compliancy and transparency are not just buzzwords, it’s the
future of digital marketing whether you accept it or not.
Jumbleberry, Fred Jean-Bart,
Affiliate Manager Team Lead
Website: Jumbleberry.com
1)Self-intro
Jumbleberry has been in the industry for over 10 years, where we’ve
consistently been one of the market leaders in the Nutra and health/beauty
verticals. Our expertise in online customer acquisition has led us to make
a natural transition into ecomm, where we are partnering with established
brands to help grow their CPA campaigns.
We’ve never really been big in the carrier-billing vertical, but we have definitely
seen an uptick in network applications from affiliates who used to run mobile
subscription offers.
Currently 80% of our traffic comes from mobile, so I can confidently say the
majority of our nutra/ecomm offers are optimized for mobile conversions. In
terms of traffic quality, we always suggest our affiliates to target 3G over wifi.
Wifi typically generates lower quality traffic for our partners, so we try to avoid
it as much as possible.
With the market crash in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the crypto
vertical has definitely seen a huge decline from some of its peaks in 2017/2018.
There’s a lot of interest surrounding any offer that can be promoted

compliant/WH on a traffic source. Our ecomm offers have exploded in the
past 6 months and affiliates really want to run unique offers that haven’t
already been saturated in the market.
Last year we had our biggest year on Straight Sale offers and this year, we’re
on pace to double our revenue numbers in that vertical. As trial cap
decreases, affiliates are looking for offers with bigger caps that allow them to
scale without any limitation or interruptions. Many of our Straight Sale offers
are uncapped and are a more lucrative option for our affiliates.

I honestly believe that it all depends on the business goals and risk tolerance
of the individual affiliate. If you’re looking to run campaigns with high ROI, then
I would definitely suggest black hat, but if you’re tired of fighting against the
compliance teams of your traffic sources, then white hat is a better solution. I
know of some affiliates that aren’t happy unless they’re making 150%+ ROI and
I have others that have built multi-million dollar business off of 25% margins.
There’s no right or wrong answer, but I can say confidently that many affiliates
are looking to build long-term businesses and white hat provides the best
solution for this goal.
Leadbit, Egor Bruskin, Founder
Website: Leadbit.com, DatsPush.com
1)Self-intro
We`ve been in business since 2005. Among other online marketing projects
we became really successful with different verticals: Push network -
DatsPush.com & CoD network - Leadbit.com.
Completely did, so we`ve stopped this direction. Mobile subscriptions still

generate income but the vertical has become low-profit in absolute numbers,
and at the same time has turned into a niche for black hat affiliates mostly.
All the mobile traffic is taken by push subscription so I think this is going
to be a trend for this year as long as Google Chrome doesn’t change their
regulations/policies. Regarding 3G traffic, it is still expensive and is used by
affiliates to promote mobile subscription offers mostly.
Each vertical can provide an income. Some of them became massive as

push notifications did for example, and that is why we divided this into a
separate DatsPush project. Some verticals may be less appealing to general
audiences, as has happened to mobile subscription offers or some niches in
the CPI vertical.
There is a main vertical which has long-term stability and covers the entire
Tier 2 – the CoD vertical.
We prefer 2 strategies: The first is a strategy where we can’t avoid cloaking

and a constant creation of mass accounts. And the second strategy – where
we use both those methods. Anyway, the affiliate marketing is black hat
always, with some little exceptions look-a-like gray hat. Very often we
believe mistakenly that if Facebook accepts the creative, it means we’re
running white hat – but no, we aren’t. Anyway both of these ways/strategies
are successful, but you should constantly change your approach and tools
in changing conditions. Increase volumes, expand and improve your team
as the main force, and move your business up.
Magic Hygeia, Kay Chiu, PM Director &
Operation Manager
Website: MagicHygeia.com
1)Self-intro
Magic Hygeia is a COD direct advertiser and affiliate network. We were

established in August 2017, with a team of a couple of professional pioneers
with 10+ years of experience in affiliate marketing and product development,
beginning with Asian geos. We mainly do nutra, such as male enhancement,
skin care, diet, weight loss and health & beauty, as well as a few daily
necessities.
Affiliate marketing breeds and supports a variety of business models, such

as CPI, CPL, CPE, trials as well as COD as a branch model of CPA. Every model
is generated by users’ needs and diversified states of markets, and has its
individual booming period. However, none of them dies when its booming
times have passed. It is the same case with COD. With our competitive AR
reaching up to 85% ROI gain for affiliates, rich resources on Asian factories and
deep cooperation relationships with suppliers, we do have confidence and
enough primitive accumulation to boost another high in COD. Meanwhile, we
dedicate ourselves to seizing every opportunity and resource to bring more
profits and possibilities to our partners/affiliates.
[Not related to COD which is Magic Hygeia’s main vertical.]
-Push+COD/Sweepstakes/Casino/Nutra (Push or Native)
As we know, some big ad networks had tremendous push traffic in reserve in

2018 and are beginning to sell in 2019.
-Adult+COD/Dating
Adult offers are never too outmoded to be forgotten. For COD, we strongly
suggest that affiliates choose high-potential geos in Asia, as well as
advertisers who have steady and high approval rates. That is also the
reason why we only devoted ourselves to a couple of SEA countries.

Answered above.
As saturation of traffic and product conception division grows, the profit

gap between black hat and white hat is getting narrower. For healthy
competition and long-term development, we recommend white hat as a
better choice currently.
Maxbounty, Brody Curtis, Senior Affiliate Manager
Website: Maxbounty.com
1)Self-intro
MaxBounty is celebrating 15 years as a CPA network (this exact month

actually). Within that decade and a half, we’ve built a reputation of being
trustworthy, accommodating, and knowledgeable while not being afraid
to evolve to improve the network experience for both our affiliates and
advertisers. The affiliate marketing industry changes often and quickly and
we’ve always strived to play a role in shaping its identity.
The most popular verticals at our network right now are primarily: Market
Research, Financial, Insurance, Travel, E-Comm, Biz Opp.
Although we have several mobile subscriptions offers in our network, they’re

not a staple of MaxBounty like some of our other verticals. However, the
campaigns we do offer in that vertical have not seen any significant drop off
in performance.
The idea that the demise of carrier billing offers is imminent may be a pre-
mature prediction or we’re just not seeing anything on our end that supports
that notion because it’s on a small scale.
Our affiliates using mobile traffic find the most success with sweepstakes and
market research campaigns.
It’s important to keep in mind that these are also some of our highest
converting verticals in our network across all traffic. Most of it is indeed
mobile, but I think this is a testament that lucrative verticals and great
campaigns tend to perform well on both mobile and desktop.
One vertical that has seen a decline in performance is credit reporting. “On
its way out” is perhaps an overstatement but government restrictions are
surely impacting what can be offered and how it can be communicated. New
laws quickly and unexpectedly affecting verticals, traffic, and/or promotional
strategies is nothing new in this industry, however.
Mobile app installs that offer highly trackable KPI’s will continue to become
more popular. They give advertisers a lot of control over the type of traffic
they receive and that’s something we’re likely to see an increased demand
for over time.
Financial and Market Research campaigns will always fill a valuable role for
those respective industries. Companies will always want consumer data and
banks will always want to make money.
While we don’t see as many free trial offers, straight sale diet and health
campaigns remain popular and likely always will. People’s inherent desire to
improve themselves will always exist, so there will always be a strong demand
for those products which means affiliates will continue to make money by
including them in their campaign promotions.
We value few things more than transparency between us and our affiliates
and advertisers.
We encourage affiliates to try new promotional strategies but not at the cost
of breaking our advertisers’ term and conditions. It is expected that if the
promotional strategies they want to use are not commonly accepted in the
industry, that they have their ideas approved by the network and advertiser
beforehand.
MaxBounty values relationships with advertisers and sending them traffic that
meets their quality standards. Making sure advertisers are happy with their
traffic ensures affiliates continue to have access to the best offers at the best
payouts.
Monetizer.com and Advertizer.com,
Vincent Shilberg, MD Germany
Website: Monetizer.com, Advertizer.com
1)Self-intro
We have two platforms, Monetizer.com is for Publishers and Advertizer.com

is for Advertisers. Have been in business 5-6 years now and focus on mobile
CPA and CPL offers.
I would not call it death, but more a steady decline everybody working in
mobile subscriptions had to cope with. This made it for sure much harder to
make money compared to the years before, but there is still a lot of money
to be made.
Sweepstakes work great, both for 3G and for Wifi. For mobile content, since
a lot of 1-click flows disappeared, I would say it really depends on the offer
and the geo if 3G or Wifi works best.
I would not want to make a prediction about a vertical going down so to

say, since if someone is dedicated enough and puts his/her mind to it, any
vertical can still bring great revenue. Compared to the last years I see
more CPL offers, which could be easily explained by the decline of mobile
subscriptions and therefore more people focusing on lead-gen.
Sweepstakes/CPL is an evergreen and I don’t see a reason this should

change in the near future.
Definitely white hat. There is a lot of monitoring going on and the industry
has seen a lot of abuse in the past with shady promotions, which in turn
played a big part in the decline of mobile subscription.
Mundo Media, Mike Semira, VP Supply Sales
Website: Mundomedia.com
1)Self-intro
We were established in 2009. We have been successful in a number of

verticals and traffic types – apps (CPI/CPE), lead-gen, dating, credit card
submits (straight sales / trials), browser extensions, pay per aall, mobile
content and a growing number of CPC offers.
There’s been a steady decline in mobile subscription offers, but a few geos
and carriers remain profitable for our partners.
‘Performing the best’ will have a direct correlation to your ability to target and
your cost to acquire mobile traffic. I subscribe to the notion that successful
publishers need to rely on themselves to bring something different to the
table, so that secret sauce is going to help you find a positive return where
others may fail.
Apps are in no way on their way out, but they will continue to become
increasingly difficult to promote given specific advertiser KPIs and evolving
technology. It’s already resulted in a changing landscape and has flushed out
countless companies.
The first mover’s advantage on push traffic has come and gone, so fine tuning
that inventory (what I consider Pop Traffic 2.0) is the current step most people
are tackling now.
Anything you can run on tier 1 search or premium native inventory can
become rock solid, but you need to buy-in to the adjusted metrics and set
your expectations accordingly.
It really depends on your business philosophy. Our role as a network partner

is to identify your objectives and align our resources based on your needs.
But being in the game since 2009 obviously speaks towards our longevity, so
you can tell which way we lean.
Topoffers, Evgeny Fedorchenko, COO
Website: TopOffers.com
1)Self-intro
TopOffers is a premium CPA Network which proposes more than 1,500

exclusive offers from industry leaders in dating, gaming, crypto, and
sweepstakes verticals. Coverage of more than 50 countries, based on PPL
and extremely high traffic quality from best publishers combined with high
EPC, allows us to maximize our partners’ profit.
One of the biggest advantages of the company is our advanced in-

house Smart Link platform – ProfitSocial, which allows us to use Smart Link
technology for the maximum convenience of our partners. Our hard work has
been noticed and recognized by our affiliates and partners, and TopOffers
was named the Best CPA Network by 2 different selections: YNOT Awards and
BusinessofApps in 2018. Our main mission is to ensure the constant profit
growth of our partners and help them become Super Affiliates.
Yes, mobile subscription offers (Pin Submit, 1-click, and 2-click flow) are very
likely going to disappear in the near future, because they are connected with
a large number of dangerous fraud incidents and also due a lot of problems
for users and complaints for carriers.
Marketing comes in many forms, but dating is one of the evergreen verticals.
It keeps on converting year after year. Of course, it is harder to make money
now compared to a couple of years ago, but that’s not due to a lack of
interest in dating, it’s because of the increased competition.
It’s necessary to understand that that Wi-Fi, 4G, LTE etc. traffic convert
differently. Affiliates should keep this difference in mind when they are
buying traffic. Mobile traffic usually converts easier and better than Wi-Fi
because of the 3G connection billing solutions. Wi-Fi, however, doesn’t have
the user billing data.
Crypto offers will gain popularity - despite a downturn in the past year, crypto
currency has shown a 56 per cent increase in its share of the digital money
market. At the same time, capitalization saw a 5-fold decrease during 2018,
yet the technology is developing and is increasingly being used as a means
of payment and investment. Traditional mainstream and adult dating show

stable growth. Binary options and Forex as well as utilities (mobile offers for
mobile phones, photo editors etc.) show a decrease tendency.
We think that business verticals such as dating, e-commerce, and gambling

are evergreen and will by far remain the most lucrative in the near future.
Let’s take dating for example. It still converting.
E-commerce has increased its popularity lately as a really large vertical. This
business model involves the selling of various goods. And there’s actually an
enormous variation in what can be sold via the Internet. So, this vertical is
very attractive for affiliate promotion.
Gambling offers can boast pretty high commission rates for attracted
paying customers, and some gambling advertisers also accept adult traffic.
However, it’s not a good option for newcomers to the affiliate industry
because gambling offers usually require larger budgets for testing.
We would recommend a white hat promotion strategy. We want to enhance

the user experience. Besides, white hat technologies allow fair competition
and to lead with dignity. Black Hat can only be useful as a quick and short-
term strategy since it involves many risks.
Yeahmobi, Katherine Su, Director of
Aggregated Traffic
Website: Yeahmobi.com
1)Self-intro
Yeahmobi is aiming to providing the best solutions to both supply and

demand sides. Our business model spans from CPI, CPR, CPE to CPS,
consisting of the following verticals: Entertainment, utility, ecommerce,
games, health, dating, etc. We were established in 2012.
Yes they are. We had already paused subscription offers. The one who
made the prediction is correct.
We could see very good performance on games and ecommerce, and

also short video apps like tiktok. For the moment we have not found much
difference between 3G and wifi.
We can see an obvious increase in loan products in SEA geos.
Payday loan products.
White hat ones will go more stable and further, and is good to the
advertising arena. Black hat can make money in a very short time, but will
be more harmful to users.
Summary
When we finished compiling the “What’s Working in Affiliate Marketing
in 2018” report last year, we were blown away by the sheer amount of
information that was collected. So writing a summary naturally felt like
a necessary addition to making the report complete - and this year is no
different. This year’s report is actually even longer and more complex than
last year’s, so again we decided to end it with a summary.
Be warned though - those of you who decided to read just this part, are
missing out on a lot of valuable details in the actual replies. As usual, those
who are diligent will benefit the most.
The Game-Over Zone

Last year, the imminent deaths of 2 segments seemed inevitable. Carrier
Billing offers and POP traffic. We specifically asked our respondents about
carrier billing and the responses were quite clear – the vast majority of them
confirmed the demise of the carrier billing vertical. However, there is a “BUT”.
While some affiliate networks completely delisted these offers from their
offerings, there are still some who managed to survive and continue to push
decent volumes and profits.
According to them, there are 2 ways to earn $$$ in carrier billing these days.
First one would be to build relationships based on high levels of trust, which
can grant you access to special flows that can still convert well. This is very
sensitive territory though, as one misstep on behalf of the affiliate will ruin
the party for all.
The other option is to focus on offers that actually provide value to the end
user. Where such offers can be found remains partially unclear, but may
suggest the future of the segment. Possible niches include the purchase
of tickets, credits for games or streaming apps, and transportation, just to
name a few.
The second segment that was predicted to die was POP traffic - which, as
we all know, did not happen. The big G (a.k.a. Google) threatened to kill POPs
for good with one of their recent Chrome updates. But as it turned out, POP
networks still found ways to bypass the blockers and continue to serve POPs
in the millions/billions of impressions.
It’s not business as usual for all the networks though, some damage was
sustained and the overall volumes for POP traffic has gone down. As a
result, POP networks report higher CPM prices and some affiliates have left
the space for greener pastures – mainly PUSH traffic which has become
hugely popular in recent months. (More on that later.)
An interesting statement has been made by some POP sellers, who claim
that traffic quality has gone up due to the decrease of fraudulent traffic. On
the other hand, some affiliates are complaining about decreasing quality.
This discrepancy can be attributed to different views from buyers and
sellers.
The Zone of Decliners
This year, there are significant differences in opinions on verticals that are
on the decline. Many replies contradict one another.
Two examples are Nutra and Crypto. While some affiliates and networks
report significant growth in both areas, others mentioned a steep decline.
But some trends are still quite clear.
In case of Nutra, there was a clear shift from Trial offers to the Straight Sale
model. This has to do with the recent “trial and rebill” regulations created
by credit card companies. And when it comes to crypto, those who report
good results also confirm another trend - the slow death of binary and forex
offers. Networks that report a decline in crypto offers, tend to blame it on
the market cap crash in the crypto world. So in case of a rebound, these
offers should regain traction.
Another area with a more or less clear trend would be drop-shipping. After
the rampant growth this area has seen in 2017 and 2018, it has started to
decline this year. The market seems to be saturated with cheap products
that take ages to deliver. Ecommerce as a whole is still booming, but more
focus is put on quality, usability and customer satisfaction.
Drop-shipping is not dead though, at least not yet. Those who manage to
build their brand, and find unique products and keep their customers happy,
should still do well. The importance of brand-building is stressed by quite a
few experts.
The last vertical worth mentioning would be survival-style offers. These

were still doing well last year - remember the tactical flashlight or various
“survival kit” offers? According to our respondents, there is not much future
for them anymore.
When it comes to traffic types, no candidates have been nominated for

imminent extinction. But there are some that are declining and they’re
mostly the older ad formats. One would be the already-mentioned POP
format, followed by standard display ads (banners), which are slowly losing
ground to the newer and more user friendly Native ad formats.
Although it’s not like these will be gone anytime soon, the decline has begun.
This is partially caused by regulations (such as the Better Ads Initiative from
Google). Another cause is changing user habits, for example the continuing
shift from desktop to mobile formats.
Ever-increasing banner blindness, ever-improving ad-blockers and

decreasing CTRs are also forcing those in the traffic business to look for
other opportunities. So if you were planning to build your business around
standard 300x250 desktop banners, it may be time to re-think this strategy.
The Zone of Returners

There is one VERY clear trend in not just the affiliate industry, but the online
marketing space as a whole. Email list building is coming back on a massive
scale. Ten years ago, many skilled marketers have sworn that email would
be gone by now, replaced by more “modern” and innovative means of
communicating with customers.
Even though there are many other communication channels available these
days, email is still running strong and even gaining importance in many
marketing strategies. This is especially prevalent in ecommerce, where
communication with customers is of paramount importance. A properly-
managed email list can dramatically increase customer LTV – which, with
rising traffic costs, is becoming increasing crucial in achieving profits.
Another segment that is coming back into the focus of affiliate marketers is
SEO. Not that it ever died, but during the last few years many affiliates have
left SEO to focus on paid traffic channels.
Whereas recently, it’s looking like many of the same affiliates are either
returning to SEO, or are expanding their portfolio to include free traffic to
complement paid traffic campaigns. There are several very good entries from
SEO experts in this report, including advice on how to choose a niche and how
to go about building links effectively these days. Definitely worth a read.
The Safe Harbor Zone

Some segments see growth, some see a decline, but many are remaining
stable year after year. In 2019, there seems to be a lot of stability when it
comes to the various verticals we can promote. Not many seem to be going
down and if they are, it’s often just a shift to a slightly different model.
Here are a few examples from one of the respondents: Gaming shifted from
software downloads to client gaming and now to app/browser gaming.
Sweepstakes used to work well with carrier billing, now they are mostly email
or CC submits. Nutra used to kill it with trials, now it’s a straight sale game.
But in the end, it’s still the same vertical, just a different approach.
The most frequently mentioned offer verticals labeled as stable would be (in
no particular order): Nutra, Dating, Casino/Gambling/Betting, Sweepstakes,
E-Commerce, Finance/Loans, Education/Courses, and Leadgen of all kinds.
As for traffic types: Except for POPs and traditional banners, which are on
slight decline, the rest seem to be either running stable or trending up. Let’s
take a look at the most important ones.
Facebook: Stable traffic volumes, but increasing prices and as always, stricter
regulations. Random bans seem to be happening even with legit offers and
whitehat marketing approaches. Still, it remains the key traffic source for
many verticals, especially ecommerce. Whitehat offers are gaining lots of
traction.
Native Ads: Both traditional native networks such as Outbrain, Taboola,

Revcontent, MGID, as well as networks that have just added the native format
to their inventory, are doing well with it, providing stable or growing volumes
and still remaining relatively affiliate friendly. Regulations are becoming
more stringent though.
Adult: Stable or growing traffic volumes, but the whole market has been rather
stale for quite some time. Native formats are starting to gain importance too.
The only relatively-new trend is growing interest in adult games and VR.
Google Search and GDN: Running strong, with bids higher than ever, but
showing signs of slightly decreasing volumes as users are moving more and
more to social media platforms.

DSPs (Demand Side Platforms): These used to run strong with standard banner
inventory, and have recently shifted more towards native formats. From what
we can see happening, these platforms are losing market share and some key
players have disappeared. On the other hand, there are newcomers such as
VoluumDSP, that seem to be gaining ground.
Next, let’s move to segments that are showing signs of growth!
The Growth Zone

Affiliate marketing, or online marketing in general, always operates in cycles.
When there are segments on decline, there are bound to be others that are
rising. And it’s the same situation in 2019.
So far the BIGGEST hit this year (and 2018 too) has been PUSH notifications,
which has taken the affiliate industry by storm, like POPs once did. Pretty much
everyone has at least experimented with this “resurrected” format and many
have found success.
Several large Push traffic networks have emerged lately, and the good thing is
that they’re still running on very lenient rules, which is what every affiliate loves
most. That is why PUSH is the most-recommended format for new affiliates in
2019.
A word of warning though: Some push list operators are literally pushing the
limits by spamming users with dozens of messages a day. This is the main
reason why most of the respondents in this survey are expecting some kind
of regulation to be introduced, likely by Google via the Chrome browser, in the
near future – may even be some time this year.
The sky is not falling though for push notifications, as it can be a useful tool
when not abused. A positive change would be the implementation of some
kind of limit on the number of messages allowed per day/week/month, and/
or easier push permissions management. For now, Push traffic is an excellent
opportunity, so jump on while you can.
But push traffic is not the only traffic segment that is growing. More and more
sources are gaining importance. Social media platforms such as SnapChat,
Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter and now Pinterest - all of them are
claiming pieces of the advertising pie.
Some of these platforms are in their infancy still, which means more
forgiving rules than FB or Google, for example. These platforms offer a lot of
opportunities for first-movers.
Another platform to watch is Amazon. They got into the ad-selling business
quite recently as well and certainly have a ton of traffic. This is a gold mine
for ecommerce affiliates and entrepreneurs.
SMS traffic has also been mentioned a couple of times in this report. This
channel is no doubt an effective one, but it’s not for everyone. A more
complex setup is required to run this.
As for Offers or Verticals, 2019 is set to be the year of WhiteHat affiliates - at

least that’s what many respondents believe to be the case. Ecommerce is
booming, people want to buy quality products and now we finally have a few
affiliate networks that offer white hat ecom products.
Generally speaking, there is a large demand for WH products, as many

affiliates are seeking to get access to the huge inventories on quality traffic
sources such as FB and Google - but they need the right offers as not
everyone likes to run an e-store themselves.
Another growing trend is Lead-Gen. There are so many ways to work with
leadgen and let’s face it, all businesses need leads, so this business is as
evergreen as it gets.
There seems to be a newcomer on the market, driven by the popularity of

movie streaming services like Netflix. We’ve seen Netflix-like offers in several
affiliate networks and based on the info we got, these are growing as well.
A new vertical has emerged lately. Due to the legalization of marijuana in
some parts of the US and Canada, cannabis and CBD oil offers have been
popping up left and right and the reported performance has been very good.
So far the traffic’s been limited, as not every network allows its promotion, but
you can try promoting these types of offers on adult traffic for example.
Trends in 2019
We are slowly coming to the end of this summary, so let’s wrap it up with
some trends that we have spotted when reading the report.
Most favor WhiteHat over BlackHat.
Pretty much all respondents favor the whitehat approach.
Some highlighted the stability and longevity. For some, especially the
networks, the trust between them and their partners is top priority. But the
clearest trend is the need to provide value to the end customer. The general
consensus is to focus more on making the customers happy and not just
seeking ways to screw them over.
However, we have to face the truth! BlackHat can provide faster results and
way higher ROI, so it will always remain attractive for many. It’s getting way
harder to go this route though. All the major platforms are getting better at
detecting cloaking, so staying on top of the blackhat game is more resource-
heavy than ever before.
Community-building and maximizing customer LTV is more important than

ever.
Build lists, build your audience, understand the needs of your user base,
learn how to solve their problems and provide valuable solutions. The key to
success is to gain the trust of your customers and sell to them over and over.
Repeat purchases are the name of the game. Aim for longevity, not just the
initial sale.
Place emphasis on data analysis, intelligence, automation and retargeting.
The amount of tools we have available cannot be matched by anything we

have experienced in the past. Spytools, automatic optimization tools, trackers,
tracking pixels, AI, and more - never before were affiliates armed with such
powerful tools. Use them to your advantage – because if you don’t, you’d be
up against competitors that ARE.
Study your audience, follow their habits, analyze competition - it’s never been
easier to target exactly the people you want and offer them exactly what they
want.
The importance of personal networking and having the right social contacts
can’t be overstated.
Even in the digital world, we are still humans who prefer to work with people
we’ve met face to face. Attend the best affiliate conferences, such as Affiliate
World Conferences.
Communicate with the people you work with, keep a friendly relationship with
your affiliate managers, traffic source reps / account managers, and other
business partners.
Be active on industry forums, such as the STM forum. Keep your mind open
and accept advice from the more experienced affiliates. The right contacts
and the right advice can literally take you to the next level. Doing so has
become even more important than before, as competition can only continue
to rise.
And That’s a Wrap!

On behalf of STM and all the contributors, we would like to thank you for
reading this report.
Many of the contributors are members of STMForum.com. To access more of

their wisdom, which they’ve kindly shared on the forum, please join STM now
(use coupon code STMWW2019 for 20% off the 1st month).
Next Step
Now that you have a good idea on “what’s working”, take advantage of this
insight and capitalize on the best verticals and traffic right now - while they’re
still hot!
Easier said than done, you say? Don’t worry, we got your back.
If you have questions on how to take advantage of the intel presented in this
report, we at STMForum.com would be happy to help! The following are just
some of what you will find on the forums:
• Over 40k threads consisting of close to 350k posts.
• A “Success Stories” section containing reports of major successes posted

by forum members.
• A “Newbie Zone” section dedicated to helping complete newbies get up

and running. Contains lots of guides, including a step-by-step 40-day
beginner’s tutorial that teaches everything from setting up tracking, to
choosing offers, to preparing landing pages, to creating campaigns, to
analyzing data, to tweaking campaigns to profitability.
• Other comprehensive guides and tutorials including the eCommerce

Cookbook and the Facebook Scaling Mastery Tutorial.
• Forum sections with discussions on different traffic types including:

Facebook, Mobile, Native, Adult, Search (Adwords/Bing), Email, etc.
• Discounts and coupons from various tools and services. (Please click
here to see some of the discounts available.)
• “Follow-Along” sections where you can create a thread to document your

campaigns to receive feedback from moderators and the rest of the
community, and to ask any questions when you’re stuck. This is the next
best thing to having a coach or mentor, and as a member you’ll get that
at a small fraction of the price.
• Forum sections on various Technical & Creative Skills, including

campaign tracking, programming, banner and landing page design, and
copywriting.
• A “Masterminds” section for members to form groups to work towards
success together.
• Lots of case studies documenting how profitable campaigns are made.

You can preview some of our forum content here:

https://stmforum.com/preview/
Our forum moderators and members jointly possess expertise in many areas
of affiliate marketing, and many traffic networks and affiliate networks have a
presence on our forums as well.
You can read about members of our moderation team here:

https://stmforum.com/join/
In fact, most of the individuals and networks included in this report are
members of STMForum.com! Check out our forum for more valuable content
contributed by some of these members.
Click Here to Join the STM Forum Now! (Use coupon code STMWW2019 for 20%
off the 1st month.)
We’ll see you on the inside!
Respectfully,
STMForum.com
Affiliate Marketing Acronyms
6WAMC - 6-Week Affiliate Mastery Course
ADX - Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Aff – Affiliate
AI - Artificial Intelligence
Algo - Algorithm
AM - Affiliate Marketing or Affiliate Manager
AOV - Average Order Value
APAC - Asian Pacific Countries
AR - Alternate Reality
Autosub - Auto Subscription
B2B - Business-to-Business
BH - Blackhat
Biz Dev - Business Development
Biz Op / Bizopp - Business Opportunities (e.g. Work From Home)
BOFU – Bottom of the Funnel
CA - Cambridge Analytica
CBD - Cannabidiol
CC - Credit Card
COD - Cash On Delivery
CPA - Cost Per Action
CPC - Cost Per Click
CPE - Cost Per Engagement
CPI - Cost Per Install

CPL - Cost Per Lead
CPM - Cost Per Mille (cost per thousand impressions)
CPR - Cost Per Result
CPS - Cost Per Sale
CR - Conversion Rate
CS - Customer Service
CTR - Click Through Rate
CTW – Click-to-Website
DCB - Direct Carrier Billing - offers that allow users to subscribe to by

charging payments to their mobile phone bill
DIY - Do-It-Yourself
DSP - Demand-Side Platform - platform that allows an advertiser to

buy traffic from ad exchanges
Ecom - Ecommerce (typically refers to physical goods being sold

online)
ED - Erectile Dysfunction
EMD - Exact-Match Domain
EU - European Union
FB – Facebook
FTC - Federal Trade Commission
FX - Forex
GDN - Google Display Network

GDPR - General Data Protection Regulation
Geo - Country
HQ - High Quality
ICO - Initial Coin Offering
InApp - Anything within mobile apps (e.g. advertising banners)
IoT - Internet of Things
IVR - Interactive Voice Response
JV - Joint Venture
KOL - Key Opinion Leaders
KPI - Key Performance Indicator
LAA - Look-alike audience (on Facebook)
LATAM - Latin America
Leadgen - Lead Generation
LQ - Low Quality
LTV - Life-time Value
ME - Male Enhancement
MID - Merchant Identification Number - a unique code given to

a business by payment processors before a merchants begin
processing credit cards
Monetizer - Traffic monetization service, Monetizer.com
Nutra - Nutraceutical Products - such as diet pills and male enhancement

pills
OG - Original Gangster - something that’s been around for a long time

and is dominating the space
PBN - Private Blog Network
Pins - Pin Submit Offers
POD - Print-On-Demand
POF - Plenty of Fish
Pop - popunder and popup/popover traffic
PPE - Page Post Engagement (Facebook)
PPL - Pay Per Lead
PPV - Pay Per View (pop traffic, domain redirect traffic)
Push - Push Notification
ROAS - Return on Ad Spend
ROI - Return On Investment (=Profit/Cost)
RPM - Revenue Per Mille (revenue per thousand impressions)
RTB - Real-Time Bidding
SaaS - Software as a Service
SDK - Software Developer Kit
SEA - South-East Asia
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SMM - Social media Marketing
SOI - Single Opt-In

STM - STMForum.com - #1 Affiliate Marketing Online Forum, founded in 2011
(use coupon code STMWW2019 for 20% off the 1st month)
Sweeps - Sweepstakes Offers
TA - Teaching Assistant
TOS - Terms of Service
TS - Traffic Source
UA - User Acquisition
VoD - Video On Demand
VPN - Virtual Private Network
VSL - Video Sales Letter
VR - Virtual Reality
WH - Whitehat

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Disclaimer

No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

without written permission from STMForum.com or iStack Holdings

The insights provided by each individual affiliate or company

STMForum.com or iStack Holdings Inc. do not assume and hereby

Introduction & Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Before Reading This Report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Bird’s Eye View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Intel From Spy Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Adplexity, Alex Om, CMO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Jason Akatiff (‘Smaxor’ on STM), Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Andrew Payne (‘Mr Payne’ on STM), Affiliate and Agency Owner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Dee Deng, CEO of Right Hook Digital. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Brent Dunn, Affiliate and SEO Expert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Adcash, Antoine Padavani, Head of Demand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Revcontent, Sharon Lyon, VP of Sales and Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Adcombo, Constantine Gor, CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

The Game-Over Zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

And That’s a Wrap!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Affiliate Marketing Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Moreover, instead of just making a post in the forum, we made it bigger

We interviewed the top experts in the affiliate marketing industry to

We distributed the report free-of-charge to everyone.

The report received close to 10k downloads in 6 months!

Due to the massive popularity, we’ve decided to publish another report

In Memory of Caurmen - Tribute by Lorenzo (MrGreen), STM Co-Founder

Machinima founder and VR developer Hugh Hancock has passed away

In Memoriam: Hugh Hancock

We know Hugh would be proud and appreciative of everyone that has

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has

Enjoy the rest of this report!

With Much Appreciation,

Amy and Matej,

This report is organized into 6 main sections:

a)Intel from Spy Tools

#2)Long vs. Short Questions

We sent out a different set of questions to each group of experts. Because

Will be replaced by just:

Questions for Ecommerce Experts:

Questions for SEO Experts:

you been doing SEO? (Short: Self-intro)

6)How to avoid being penalized by Google? (Short: How to avoid Google

Questions for Traffic Sources:

2. On your network, do you see certain ad formats with expanding/shrinking

6. For 2019, do you foresee any ground-breaking changes in the traffic

Questions for Affiliate Networks:

However, we thought it would help to provide an overview first, in graphical

form, on what - according to parties we’ve interviewed - are the best

Every positive comment we see in their replies, directed at a specific traffic

(Disclaimer: What qualifies as a “positive comment” is subject to our

Note 1: Input from traffic networks is excluded to keep this graph as

Note 1: Input from affiliate networks is excluded to keep this graph as

Note 3: “Dating” includes mainstream and adult dating. “Finance” includes

Adplexity Native, Adplexity Mobile, Adplexity Desktop, Adplexity Adult

Push notification proved itself to be a straightforward format, suitable

Pop and Display

Evergreen verticals like dating, gambling, sweepstakes, nutra and

Whitehat and eCommerce

There is an increasing number of ecommerce and whitehat offers that we