In affiliate marketing, success stories come in all shapes and sizes. But few are as impressive as Harnur Virk – a 27-year-old affiliate marketer from India who won the Best Affiliate Marketer Award at the 2024 Affiliate World Conference in Dubai.
Even though has made a ton of money, Harnur stays humble and focused on his work. He doesn't care about fancy stuff that a lot of people think comes with being super successful.
In this exclusive interview, we really dig into Harnur's story. We find out about his strategies, mindset, and the important choices that have made him one of the best in the industry.
So without a lot of introductions, let’s get straight to it.
Q: Harnur, a lot of people in the affiliate marketing world know you from your famous "My Journey" post on the Blackhat World Forum and for winning the "Best Affiliate Marketer" Award at the Affiliate World Conference in Dubai this year. But let's go back to the start. What year did you first get into affiliate marketing, and how old were you then?
I started affiliate marketing, probably back when I was in college when I was 18 or 19 years of age, with Bing Ads, so back then, we used to get $100 Coupons from Bing Ads and the only condition was we had to link a credit card with the Bing Ads account and once will link your credit card, you can get $100 coupon, so, I took credit cards from all my family members and linked 10 credit cards and had gathered at least 30 to 40 $100 coupons from Bing Ads. So it cost me 0 money so anything that I made was pure profit so that's how I started my affiliate marketing journey.
Q: What kind of work were you doing before you found out about affiliate marketing, and what made you want to give it a shot?
So when I started affiliate marketing, I was in college. So before starting affiliate marketing, I was doing blogging on blogspot.com, and I was making money through AdSense.
There was very little money to be made through Adsense because blogging has a very slow process, where u have to rank your website, write articles daily, etc and I didn't have time to do all this. So that's why I got into paid traffic to earn more money fast.
Q: Great. So when you got free coupon traffic from Bing Ads, what kind of offers did you choose to promote at that time?
The first affiliate network that I signed up for was ClickBank, and my first offer was an online dog training program called Doggy Dan. I think it's still there on ClickBank. I was bidding on dog training keywords on Bing Ads.
Q: How long did it take you to get your first winning campaign? Can you tell us about your experience and the challenges you faced before you got that first big win?
My first winning campaign took me around 6 to 7 months. The only challenge that I faced was money because when I started affiliate marketing, I was still in college, and being from India, I didn't have a lot of money to start with.
I had only $500 in my mother's credit card that I could use to start affiliate marketing. So, I had to make things work with those $500. Eventually, things worked out for me and today I am doing affiliate marketing full-time.
Q: After your first successful campaign, were you able to grow that offer to its full potential, or did you have to keep testing more offers and hustling to find your major breakthrough?
It took me a couple of months to make my first Bing Ads campaign work. However, after some time, the Bing Ads strategy wasn't profitable anymore. So I moved into push traffic and I tested dating offers, app-install offers, and then antivirus offers.
Antivirus worked well for me and performed consistently but it died after 6 months. So first few months of testing were very difficult for me. But I didn't give up and stayed persistent and eventually became successful.
Q: Your "My Journey" thread on Blackhat World Forum shows that your biggest successes came from push notification campaigns and later, search arbitrage. Take us back to those key moments. How did you build and grow these campaigns over time?
The reason I started with push notifications was because it was the cheapest traffic source and required very little testing budget. I went to spy tools and started following what was working. That's how I made push notifications profitable.
To answer, how did I get into search arbitrage – I saw one of my friends was making very good money in search arbitrage and that friend of mine was not that smart. So I thought that if he could make almost $10,000 per day, then I could definitely do 10 times better than him.
So my friend was the reason why I got into search arbitrage and eventually, it became profitable for me.
Q: Did you test a bunch of offers to get to these winning offers, or did an affiliate manager or someone in the industry give you advice on which offers to run?
I used to search a lot on spy tools and I would see which offers are currently working and try to get those offers. And, I started my journey with ClickDealer, my ClickDealer manager (his name is Ruslan) was very good, so he used to often recommend me good offers.
Q: What was your biggest month in terms of money earned, and which offers were you promoting then?
My biggest month was $250,000 with $65,000 in profit. It came from search arbitrage campaigns and push traffic campaigns.
Q: Every online entrepreneur dreams of going from being broke to suddenly having a lot of money in the bank. After your big wins, was there a moment when you thought, "Wow, I'm rich now"? How did that feel?
To be honest, I was very excited when I hit my first $100,000 month and $10,000 day revenue-wise. After that it didn't excite me any more. Money doesn't excites me much, because I am not a flashy person.
I invest 99% of my money and in real estate or other places. And I was living the same lifestyle that I was living when I was in college. I enjoy my work and money is just a by product of you being good at your work.
Q: Did you make any wild, non-business purchases after hitting it big? Some affiliates buy Lamborghinis, Ferraris, or splurge on crazy things. What did you end up doing?
Even after hitting big numbers, I still haven't bought anything yet. I am 27 years old and I still don't know how to drive a car. I still live in a rented house and don't spend more than $1000 per month.
I would often treat myself to good vacations or take care of my family with money I earned. Happiness from material things don't last longer, rather spend money on building good memories.
Q: Diversification seems to be a big part of your strategy, both in terms of traffic sources and offers. What's your approach to finding and testing new opportunities while managing risk?
Yes, if you want to survive in affiliate marketing, you have to diversify. If you are not diversifying, a point will come where you will have no campaigns to run.
So what I usually do is I learn a skill, for example, I'll learn search arbitrage, I'll do it myself for 2-3 months and then I'll delegate it to someone else. Then, I'll again learn new skills (traffic source or niche), make it profitable, and then I'll delegate it to someone.
So that's how the approach should be.
You keep learning new skills and after you learn it, you do it yourself for 2-3 months and then delegate. If you're not doing this, then a point will come when campaigns will stop working and you will go into depression.
Q: So it seems like you test a lot. Have you ever lost a lot of money at once while testing a new traffic source or offer? If so, can you share what happened and how much you lost?
Yes, I had just recently had lost around $15,000 because one of my media buyer was running and un-compliant ads, so we got caught and eventually the network didn't pay us. I didn't sleep for couple of nights but eventually recovered from it.
Q: A lot of people think push notifications are just for beginners and can't be scaled to make 5 figures per month or more. How did you manage to scale your push notification campaigns to prove them wrong?
That's not true. I have friends who are making $100k/day on push notifications. Push notification is definitely scalable. It may not be as scalable as Facebook Ads or TikTok Ads. But making 5 figures per day is definitely possible.
Q: When it comes to search arbitrage, some people say it's hard to get approved by the top feed providers, especially when you're just starting out. How did you get approved early on?
I started with System1. It's easy to get approval in System1. After I got approved, I made around $1 million with system1. Then it became easier for me to get approval in any network I could share my revenue screenshots with any feed provider and I could get access to any feed I wanted.
You can also meet managers of search arbitrage networks in Affiliate World Conferences, show them your initial success, and get immediate approval from them.
Q: Which verticals, traffic sources, and geos worked best for you when promoting search arbitrage feeds?
I made lot of money in Nordic countries Norway, Sweden, Finland and Netherlands. Even European geos like Germany, Italy and France worked very well for me. Everyone targets USA but it's very competitive. European countries have very good EPCs and payouts. Plus they have very low competition.
Q: We know that you use TikTok Ads for promoting search feeds. However, all affiliates fear this ad network because its a ban-machine. How do you avoid getting banned all the time when running affiliate campaigns on TikTok Ads?
To be honest, there is no way to avoid getting banned, especially on TikTok. The only way is you have to make very compliant and whitehat videos. But if you are promoting something like finance, you will keep getting banned on TikTok and there is no way to avoid it.
Only thing is you should have good supply of ad accounts so that even if one account gets banned, you have enough accounts to promote your ads on.
Q: In your speech at Affiliate World Conference in Bangkok, you made creating video ads for affiliate campaigns seem pretty easy. Can you walk us through your process for making video ads for your campaigns?
To be honest, I don't make videos myself, making videos is very time consuming. I have a freelancer Video Editor who makes videos for me.
Apart from that, I can also use AI tools. In AI tools, you can input your script and the AI actor will eventually create UGC videos for me. So I either use a freelancer Video Editor or I'll use AI tools.
Q: As we look forward to 2024, are there any other exciting opportunities in the affiliate marketing industry that have caught your eye, besides search arbitrage? People are talking about Pay Per Call, lead generation, blackhat sweepstakes, and gambling. Have any of these grabbed your attention to try out?
Yes, apart from search arbitrage and push traffic, I'm also running crypto.
I am also doing Pay Per Call and testing VSL ads because I cannot be dependent on only one thing. If I want to survive in this industry, I have to diversify and learn as many things as possible.
So, I do keep learning new things and trying new things every now and then.
Q: We see that a lot of affiliates now work in teams, but there's a big debate about whether teams should work fully remotely or in the same office. What's your take on this, considering how your business currently operates? Or are you still grinding it out as a solo affiliate?
I feel that the benefit of remote working is that you can hire the best talent(from entire world) because when you are working from one particular physical office, then you have to hire people around that area. The problem with remote working is if we give fixed salary to people then people become lazy.
People will cheat you and not work. That is why it is always important to give people fix salary plus bonus. Also, u need to motivate your employees regularly or they don't work.
My team is very small. I am still building it.
Q: You share a lot of affiliate marketing case studies openly on Blackhat World and have been speaking at big industry events. How has this sharing and putting yourself out there helped your business grow?
Networking is very important in our industry and it is very important to meet like-minded people. So by sharing my journey on forums, people get motivated and it has helped me connect with like-minded people. It also helps me get access/entry to several private affiliate networks.
Q: If you had to start over in affiliate marketing in 2024 with a budget of around $2,000 to $3,000, which verticals, offers, and traffic sources would you go for?
To be honest, if I had $2-3k, I would rather work for someone else and learn media buying through his money and do this job for 1-2 years as a media buyer. And after that, only when I am 100% sure of my skills then I'll start doing media buying of my own because right now, it is very difficult to succeed in affiliate marketing.
Even with $2-3k, there is no guarantee that you’ll be successful. So first you should perfect your skills, and then play with your own money.
Q: Looking at everything you've achieved so far, do you feel satisfied, or do you think there's still a lot more for you to accomplish in the future?
I am never satisfied and always feel that others are doing better than me and I always feel like I should keep doing more and more. The day I get satisfied, that is the day I will stop growing. So I'm never satisfied.
I always want to keep learning and try new things.
Q: How do you picture your life at 60 years old?
I will not be working at 60. I will be enjoying my wealth that I created over the years and just travel around the world while enjoying every bit of my life.
Conclusion
Harnur Virk's story shows what can happen when you don't give up, when you adapt, and when you work really hard to be the best. He started out as a college kid messing around with Bing Ads coupons. Now he's a multi-millionaire affiliate marketer. Harnur's journey proves that hard work, smart strategies, and always being ready to learn and change can take you far.
What's really cool is how Harnur stays grounded even though he's so successful. He chooses to invest his money wisely and live a pretty normal life. This shows that real happiness comes from being great at what you do and building a business that lasts, not from buying a bunch of stuff.
As we think about the future of affiliate marketing, Harnur's insights and experiences are like a treasure map for marketers who want to make it big. He really focuses on not putting all your eggs in one basket, managing risk, and always learning. This reminds us that to be successful in this industry, you need more than just one winning campaign or traffic source.
Harnur Virk is always looking for new challenges and opportunities. There's no doubt he'll keep being a big deal in affiliate marketing for a long time. For people who want to follow in his footsteps, the lessons he shares in this interview are a great starting point for building their own success stories.
