In affiliate marketing, it's common to criticize dishonest managers, complain about affiliate programs, and their approaches to working with webmasters. Often, this happens because the affiliate marketer doesn't see the whole picture: they don't know how the affiliate program works from the inside, how managers are trained, what volume of bonuses they offer, and what they can actually offer to the webmaster.
That's why we decided to talk to representatives of the Traffic Cake affiliate program, which operates in the gambling niche and offers offers in sports, casinos, and esports. We interviewed Egor, the Team Lead of Affiliates, and asked him everything that interests a regular affiliate marketer.
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Hi! Please tell us more about Traffic Cake and the tasks you perform there. What interesting things can you share about the team and its internal structure?
Hi! I'm the Team Lead of Affiliates in the Traffic Cake affiliate program. We acquire traffic for our products. Our team isn't too large because we focus on the competence of employees rather than their quantity. In addition to affiliate managers, we have a design department, project managers, a PR department, and an analytics department. We all work on one big thing together.
What challenges do you face in your work? Perhaps you can recall an unusual case related to your team or affiliate program.
The main challenge for any manager is waking up in the morning and suddenly realizing that one of your webmasters has taken traffic without explaining the reasons. Then you immediately ask yourself, "What happened?" It turns out that somewhere else, they were offered 'better' conditions. In such cases, I always try to explain to the partner that we need to discuss the situation with our manager first. Maybe in this case, we can offer something new or even match the conditions. After all, long-term work will always be productive and profitable. That's the foundation of affiliate relationships.
As for the most unusual case, we recently attended a conference in Brazil. We rented a booth, and organizational matters had to be solved remotely. Our design department created a stand layout that the contractor had to print and stick. We arrived a day before the conference and were very concerned about the quality of the stand since there was no time for corrections in case of errors. What we feared happened — on the evening before the conference, we arrived at the booth and saw a mistake in the inscription.
The contractor, of course, said that reprinting at night was impossible. Luckily, we found the right people, and at 6 in the morning, the sleepy contractor was already pasting the ready inscriptions on the stand. The story ended with a happy ending. You can see how happy we are standing next to the booth.
You actively work with affiliate marketers in the gambling and betting vertical. What trends do you notice and implement in your work? You've been in the market for over 5 years; you probably have your secrets.
During our work, many traffic sources have gained and lost momentum. Currently, doorway traffic in the international market is gaining popularity. Previously, this type of traffic was very popular in the CIS market, but now there's a trend towards international geos.
I'm sure new interesting traffic sources will continue to emerge. For example, we pay attention to Twitter and Reddit. But so far, we haven't come across webmasters with such traffic sources. If you're out there, get in touch. We're looking for you!
What problems do affiliate marketers in your affiliate program often encounter, and how do you solve them?
Speaking of affiliate marketers, the main problem that arises is account blocks, issues with consumables, and the search for converting landing pages. We have a large base of webmasters, and among them, there are often those who have their own stores with such consumables. Such requests are common, and there hasn't been a case where we couldn't find the right contact for an important webmaster.
We also frequently get webmasters with experience in specific geos and successful cases with other products. For example, a landing page with a specific game converts exceptionally well. We always try to accommodate and give a task to create a similar landing page. If it helps with conversion and increases ROI, we're always for it!
We also try to share up-to-date data on the requested geo. For example, top slots on the product, peak activity times, recommended targets based on the player base on the product. This usually helps during the testing phase and reduces costs for these tests.
How does training and development for employees in your team happen to make them more effective in working with affiliate marketers? We often hear stories that affiliate programs provide managers, and managers can't even properly answer questions about traffic.
Yes, we sometimes encounter this when working with some new CPA networks. Indeed, finding a good affiliate manager is very difficult these days. We go through a lot of candidates to find the 'right' one. That's why we don't have turnover in the team. The guys have been working for many years in this field, and each year they show better results.
We take training seriously, and it's divided into several stages:
- Training in communication with partners. We enhance the communication skills of our employees, invite coaches specializing in online communication.
- Training in traffic sources and their in-depth understanding. Once a quarter, we try to invite specialists who work with specific traffic sources. We gather all the managers and conduct a small briefing where they can ask all their questions and learn about the 'nuances' and secrets of working with that source. This is necessary to understand sources deeply and have the ability to help webmasters with advice when needed.
- Collective intelligence is always better. We have a planned meeting every morning where we discuss the challenges of the previous day and ways to address them.
This is the principle we follow when selecting managers for our team so that they can communicate effectively with affiliate marketers.
How do you establish working relationships with webmasters? Have there been cases where you simply refused to collaborate with someone?
Yes, it happens, especially in cases involving fraudulent activities. There are also instances of outright rudeness from webmasters. While we respect all our partners, we expect a similar level of respect in return.
I believe this is the right approach. I think one of the most important skills for an affiliate manager is their communication skills. Professionalism is good, but without friendly relations with the partner, your collaboration won't go far. That's why I believe that AI will never replace the profession of a manager. You can't simply meet AI at a conference and have a heart-to-heart talk about your challenges.
How do you motivate affiliate marketers for long-term cooperation, and what conditions do you offer them for work? Usually, affiliate programs have a standard set, such as a slightly higher percentage and some contests. What do you have?
If we start listing all the 'bonuses' we can offer to a partner, we won't have enough fingers. Let me describe the basics:
- We provide applications for Android/iOS, PWA for work, and yes, we do it absolutely for free. We cover the costs of service payments.
- For our products, we provide customized push notifications tailored to the product's bonus policy, increasing CTR and, of course, final ROI.
- Upon request, our design department can create creatives for you or write review texts.
- For partners with whom we have been working for several months and are confident in, we can help with key queries where there is traffic, and it will convert. This option is not available to everyone.
And, of course, we often have various promotions for webmasters for a specific volume of deposited traffic. Participate and win!
What key performance indicators (KPIs) do you set, and how do you monitor the results of affiliate marketers' work in your affiliate program?
Unlike many competing affiliate programs, we don't have hard KPIs. However, we have a powerful analytics department that helps us every day. Thanks to them, we can distinguish quality traffic from non-quality at early stages. We know the behavior of players in the markets where we operate, and this helps us a lot.
We also have specific profitability targets for each geo that we aim for and try to adhere to. The main indicators that a webmaster might pay attention to in their daily traffic analysis are the actual profitability of traffic (% In-OUT from the payout amount), Repeat Rate, average FD amount, and average player check. All these indicators can be viewed in the personal account.
I know that you work with ASO. Tell us how long you've been doing this and how popular this direction is among affiliate marketers?
ASO is organic traffic from mobile app stores. We call such webmasters 'ASO-ers.' I wouldn't categorize this as affiliate marketing. We classify FB/UAC traffic as affiliate traffic. But this is purely our distribution.
The number of ASO-ers is growing every year, it's a rapidly developing direction, although five years ago, you could count the webmasters using this traffic source on your fingers. Perhaps the new Google Play Market policy will filter out some, but time will tell.
You've probably heard about updates related to Google Play. What can you say about this? Some affiliate marketers believe that now affiliate programs won't allow working with their apps. What is your opinion on this matter?
We rent applications from third-party developers and pay them from our earnings. As long as developers are involved in applications on an industrial scale, we will continue to provide them to our partners. Additionally, iOS applications are gaining popularity. The quality of traffic from them is higher, but the cost is higher too. I believe iOS will gradually take this market share.
In 2022, as an alternative, we started developing the PWA direction, and now many affiliate marketers actively promote them. The storm with Google Play Market didn't affect them.
What are the plans for the development of the Traffic Cake affiliate program, and what new features and opportunities do you plan to implement in the near future?
A: I'm excited to make an announcement. We've been working towards this for a long time, and very soon, we will have our own product. We invite all partners to come and test the new offer in the Italian market.
I believe that after such a paragraph, the rest of the words will be superfluous.
Provide examples of successful cases from your team when working with an affiliate marketer was particularly successful. Or stories you are proud of.
We started providing PWAs before they became popular this fall. Actively drove traffic on them in Canada, they worked very well there about a year and a half ago. And now these same PWAs, on request, we can provide to any of our geos. When the massive storm hit Play Market in October, and apps disappeared overnight, many teams came to us for our offers and started using PWAs. I remember that on one of those days, we issued more than 40 PWAs.
We have many good stories, but not all partners are public, and we respect their decision to stay in the shadows. For this reason, we don't bring loud stories into the public space.
Conclusion:
Yes, some affiliate programs don't engage with affiliate marketers, set hard KPIs, don't allow webmasters to profit, and don't help with traffic sources. Nevertheless, major affiliate programs are ready to consistently interact with webmasters, assist them with landing pages, materials, texts, and applications without demanding anything impossible in return.
The only condition is to provide quality traffic and be open to cooperation. For this, you can receive many bonuses, as is the case in the Traffic Cake affiliate program. Join, get the most 'delicious' offers, and enjoy the cream of the traffic!"
