Today, we are sharing an interview with Peter Day, the CEO of Optimize to Convert and a super affiliate with over 13 years of experience in the industry. Along with his brother Tyler, Peter has seen the ups and downs of affiliate marketing, learning valuable lessons and achieving great success.
In this interview, he shares their journey, from starting with a rent-to-own lead generation campaign on Facebook while still living in his university dorm room to now having a diverse portfolio that includes health, insurance, auto insurance, lead generation, pay-per-call, and e-commerce.
Tyler and Peter Day
Q: So how did you get started in lead generation and pay-per-call affiliate marketing?
Yeah, so it all started when I was about 19 or 20 years old and my brother was probably 16 at the time because he's a bit younger. So my brother and I have been in this industry at this point for a long time. I mean, I'm 33 years old, and even though we're young, we have about 13 years of experience.
This all started with my brother and I dabbling in some ads. We always had this kind of relationship where my brother was running the ads and I was working on getting the deals. That's kind of how our business got started.
Our biggest success started with a campaign we ran about 8 years ago with this rent-to-own campaign. It was a lead gen campaign we were running on Facebook and that campaign was working really well for about a year or two.
And then what happened was we kind of fell into this newbie trap a little bit. You guys watching have probably experienced this type of thing – you have this one winning campaign and then what happens? You know why it falls apart.
This experience was kind of like the worst thing at the time, but the best thing for us, because what happened was it taught us a lot of lessons. We were totally new to the industry and we probably fell into the same trap as a lot of you guys, right? We were running a campaign, we're making all this money, it just wasn't even crossing our mind that it could stop, that it could fall apart. It just wasn't even a thought. And looking back at it, like, how did we let it happen - it's ridiculous. I guess we were just newer to the industry and we just, it just wasn't crossing our mind that something would fall.
And then the perfect storm happened.
So a couple of years later, the buyers stopped buying, the traffic on Facebook got more expensive, and we started getting bans more regularly.
Facebook was banning our campaigns., and then we were kind of stupid too at the time like we thought the money was never gonna end.
So I ran out and bought a car in cash, and then literally two months later it just all falls apart and you're making no money.
And I had just spent $70,000 grand, full cash. Looking back on it, I could have just financed the car and kept the 70 grand. It was just a brand new Ford Explorer Limited with all the features, but they're still not the cheapest cars. I mean, for a Ford Explorer, it's still like $65,000.
Q: So what happened next?
Then what happened was we went through kind of this scary period of making no money. I mean, we went from being these up-and-coming successful affiliates to just basically making nothing. We had about $100,000 left in the bank, and for the next year, Tyler and I basically just lived on the money in the business bank account. You know, the bank account just went from like $100k to $90k to $70k, and we basically just paid our bills out of it.
Tyler and Peter Day
Q: Were you testing other offers?
We were trying everything we possibly could to make money. I mean, we were trying e-commerce…even for a period of time we worked as a media buyer for another company, like a little job, but we were trying everything.
And then what happened was we finally found another good campaign. It took about a year and we started promoting this campaign called Stickr. The offer is still around. It's just not just not working as well these days, but you might have seen it. It's this offer called Stickr.Co and it's this offer where basically it's a car decal, and you can put the decal on your car and it's like a biz op. So the person puts the sticker on their car and then they get paid to drive.
And this thing really took off for us because we met with the guy who owned the offer. And at the time he was doing like $1,000 or $2,000 per day on Facebook, but he was really not the best Facebook marketer. He was just kind of making it work. And what was running through my brother and I in our heads is like, man, if this guy is actually making a couple grand a day on Facebook with this thing and he really doesn't know what he's doing, it's like, this shows how good the offer is. It's what we saw with this thing. It's like this offer is hot.
So my brother and I cut a really good deal with this guy. We cut a deal to where basically we would take over all of his traffic and almost form like an informal business partnership. It's not like we became 50/50 on his business, but we signed an advertising agreement to where we would handle like everything and then we would split the net profits 50/50.
So we signed a really good deal with this guy and it was a pretty serious deal. So we paid like thousands of dollars to have a lawyer draft up this thing, because this was no joke of a deal.
And basically this became like our next big campaign. Tyler crushed it on the advertising. So what Tyler did was - he was living in South Carolina at the time and he was leasing a Porsche.
We crushed it with this get paid to drive campaign because what Tyler did was - we started making video shoots of the Porsche and stuff, like him driving around with the Porsche, and you know, we got like good looking girls and had them like putting the stickers on the car, like "get paid". It literally crushed it. It crushed it. It was like the best campaign.
And we just absolutely crushed it. In a very short period of time, we took it from $1,000 or $2,000 a day to a $20,000 to $30,000 a day revenue campaign. The profit margin was fat on it.
Q: How much was the profit on that offer?
It was like $10,000 to $15,000 days of profit.
This is kind of the secret of the affiliate business - finding a unicorn offer. No one cares how good your copywriting skills are or how good your video ads are - it’s all about the offer.
Because if you have a really good offer, you don't have to be the best media buyer. You can just put together stuff and just present it.
If it's a really good offer, you can even just direct link it on Facebook too, you maybe don't even need to make a landing page. Just focus on the ad copy, and it sells itself.
So then we finally saturated this offer. And no one else was marketing it because he didn't have any other affiliates. We also signed an exclusive agreement, so he couldn't bring on other affiliates. So we had exclusive rights to something that was advertised, something that no one else had and it was a good offer. It was also super unique. There are no other offers out there where you can just get paid to drive your car. I mean, there's there's Uber but this was very special. Like why wouldn't you do it? Like why would someone not do it?
Q: Do you ever plan to revisit that offer?
Yeah, because we saturated it so hard to the point where we couldn't make it work anymore.
The offer was just so attractive in general. The monetization was tricky on the offer, so it was a very strategic partnership though, because we worked with the client not only on the ads, but this was a very involved relationship since it was 50/50 of the profits.
We were like real partners - not just media buyers or affiliates. It was a media partner or agency. The owner of the offer even gave us access to the CRM and we were able to see how many people were converting in the backend.
And here's how we took this offer to the next level. So the offer was doing pretty well, but then I had this genius idea of promoting Lyft on the thank you page.
Basically his offer was about selling the sticker. The money was really made in selling the sticker. He sold people the sticker and then people got paid to drive. But then his thank you page was just like saying thank you. It was like "Thank you for signing up, check your email".
And then at the very same time, I had an affiliate network that was pitching me Lyft, a lead gen version of Lyft. It was the "Become a Lyft driver" lead gen version. And the payout was ridiculous. It was like $45 for this first-page submit.
And I was able to get this offer because I had a really good relationship with this affiliate network. So then I actually got this fully approved with the network. I went to the network to say "Listen, we got this paid-to-drive offer. Here's the offer, full transparency, here's the funnel, here's the thank you page, and here's the exact vocabulary that's going to be on the thank you page." We got this approved with Lyft through the network.
The second we did the Lyft thing, it just took to a whole nother level. It was free money. Doing his free money. And we started making like $5,000 to $10,000 per day of extra free profit.
Q: How did you integrate the Lyft offer into the Stickr offer? Did you use Email or SMS marketing?
So the SMS and email were very oriented towards selling the stickers still. We didn't want to like sabotage that. But so what we did was we pitched the Lyft right there on the thank you page. It was a great pitch.
At the time, the compliance was a little bit more relaxed too on Lyft. I think the rules have changed these days, you can't really promise too much. But at the time, we actually got approved to literally use vocabulary with dollar amounts, like "earn up to". So we had a Thank you page saying. “Thank you for signing up. Check your email for Stickr. And by the way, you can earn up to X amount for becoming a Lyft driver. Click here to apply."
They clicked this big green button, it took them to a form-submit page. The form-submit paid $45 dollars for like 6 fields. And the EPC was $10 bucks.
But then the offer Lyft offer eventually died too. However, this was a real catapult to our success though, because we were able to build up a strong like savings account. I mean, like in this industry, it's really important to have like cash reserves and like just in case you have to weather a storm. It's like, let's say you have a big winning campaign and it falls apart, you have to have those cash reserves to keep testing.
Q: So what did you learn from this initial success that took you to the next level?
So going back to the original story too about how the - you know, the thing fell apart, that first campaign we did. We learned from that lesson. And when we had success with the get-paid-to-drive offer, our mindset at that time was very, very different. Our mindset was like, "What if this does fall apart? These thoughts were not running through our minds when we first got started in affiliate marketing.
At first, it was like this naiveness of, "Oh my goodness, we're making more money than everyone around us," or "It's going to last forever," or "We can now afford to buy a car every month," or whatever. It's like, it was this just ridiculous naiveness. And the mindset this time around was so different. It was like, it was like, "What if this just breaks like tomorrow?" - we’re mentally prepared for it to fall apart?
It kind of taught us a different mindset. And this new - I have to admit, this new mindset has been sometimes a little bit stressful, but I think it's a very good mindset. My mindset now is - it's been looking for what could possibly go wrong. And then but then making sure that it doesn't go wrong. And this has been a game changer for my business. Again, it's been kind of a stressful kind of mindset, because it's like if you're thinking all day like, "What could go wrong?" it's like you're like, "Oh no, what if this breaks?" Your focus is in the wrong place. It's like, it's almost like a little negative thinking maybe.
So when we're running the get-paid-to-drive offer, we have this new mindset. So while we were succeeding on that offer, we were working our butts off - what is going to be the third winning campaign, the fourth winning campaign? How can we diversify outside of this campaign? How can we get another deal going? Our mindset was so different because it wasn't just about this campaign. The focus was about like, "Okay, we're thankful for this campaign, but like, you know, what's the next 10 campaigns? What's the next 20?"
And that's really one of the big reasons why our business has succeeded so much over the last 3 to 5 years. We've learned the hard way. It was the worst thing at the time, but I'm so thankful.
Q: So fast forward to this year, what have you guys been promoting recently? What have you guys been doing? You and obviously your media team?
So now, all our business is so diversified. I mean, we run traffic in health, insurance, auto insurance, lead gen, pay-per-calls, e-commerce. We literally work with over 500 clients or advertisers that we work with on a monthly basis. We're literally invoicing and billing hundreds of hundreds of advertisers and clients on a monthly basis. And we want to grow that.
So it all stemmed from those early failures and and learning from those mistakes. And then taking the opposite approach, like, what's the opposite of just running one campaign? "Well, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands." It's now about, "How many campaigns can you run?".
Q: So the question is - I want you to talk to two types of people, okay? Because you have years of experience, you've had a ton of success, and you've had failures and challenges along the way.
So someone that's thinking of getting into affiliate marketing, lead generation, pay-per-call. What's something you would advise them? And then someone that's been in the space for a while as an affiliate, someone that runs traffic - what advice do you have for someone that wants to take their game to the next level?
Yeah, so I'll talk to the newbies first, the new people. Okay, my biggest advice to the new people is to not give up. I either made up this quote or I heard this quote, but there's a quote out there that says "the only way to fail is by giving up". And what I've seen in the affiliate space is that the affiliates who have really been persistent have eventually made it work. And the affiliates that haven't made it work have been these guys that have tried it for like a year or two and then just threw in the towel.
But looking back on it, all these affiliates that I can name, a handful of these guys, were just struggling for like 2 to 6 years. But when I look at these affiliates now, they're all actually making it work. So I think you have to not give up. And then I think it is important to be in a position where you don't have to give it up.
So if you don't have a wife, girlfriend, or parent - if you don't have someone to support you financially while you're figuring it out, you might have to get that job. And then you might have to do your affiliate marketing at night or off hours. But it is important to be in a position where you're at least paying your rent and covering your bills so that you're not under that much pressure. Getting the pressure's bad. It just depends on the person. You just don't want to be under the pressure, because you don't want to be in a position where you have to make this affiliate stuff work, and if you don't in like six months - you just want to be in a position where you're able to make it work. Whether it's six months or four months or even if it takes you five years.
Even if you have to work a 9-to-5 job and then you have to do your affiliate marketing from 6 p.m. until one in the morning, you can still get in a lot of hours. And that's kind of what I did with school. I graduated from University of Connecticut. Yes, I met my wife towards the tail end of school. Yes, she was supporting me financially. But still, I was in school when I was doing affiliate marketing too. And I had to go to class, I had to pass the class, I still had to study.
And I grinded it out. Sometimes I would finish my school stuff at 6 pm and then I was up until 3 a.m. doing my business stuff.
So for the newbies, just don't give up. Have a mindset where you're just not going to give up. You're just gonna keep persisting until it succeeds.
And then for the advanced affiliates, I would probably follow this principle we've been talking about - diversity. Because even at these conferences, I'm not going to name names, but half the people I talk to, they're only doing one or two things. They're either succeeding on auto insurance or this or that. There's still a huge lack of diversity.
So that's what I recommend for the advanced people - make it so that this is not just a one-vertical or two-vertical kind of unicorn type of thing. Think outside of the box. What do you have to do to be doing, let's say, 10 verticals simultaneously? And that's still a really big mistake I see with even the best of the best super affiliates. They're doing 100 grand a day, 50 grand a day on one or two things. But there's still a risk there possibly. What if that one vertical falls apart? What if it becomes a little harder? Regulation changes? Changes in the courts, and so much more.
Even there are a lot of affiliates doing this ACA thing right now. Right now it's pretty lenient, but I wouldn't be surprised if, in a couple of years from now, there's serious regulation about this, because Medicare/ACA is a government-funded program. If the government is involved, maybe there could be a giant - but that's risky. If you're an affiliate and you're doing 50 grand a day on ACA and that's all you do, you've spent years only focusing on that. And then if some crazy regulation happens - anything could happen. You could lose your ACA buyer. You could lose one or two buyers, then next thing you know, instead of 50 grand a day, it's 5,000 bucks of ACA. And then what if you built a big team around it too? What if you have all this overhead, you built a media buyer staff, and it's just stress.
So if you're advanced, focus on diversity, in my opinion. You can never have too much diversity. If you have 20 verticals, it's probably better than 10 verticals. And 10 is better than two. Just focus on the diversity. Don't get comfortable. If you're advanced, don't get comfortable. Don't think to yourself, "I'm making a hundred grand a month, now I can sit back and buy all these cars and just blow money." Don't get comfortable, because anything could happen at any time.
Q: Where do you see the industry going?
Well, I see it maybe getting more regulated in some verticals that are more regulatory. But I don't know, it's a really good question. I mean, I see the - it depends on who you're talking to and what kind of sector of the industry they're in, right? Because it's kind of different, like if you're a black hat affiliate doing nutra or something, that's going to be a very different industry than somebody doing insurance or -
But where I see the industry at least going for us and our company is working with more professional companies, right? Like instead of working with one-off small buyers, aggregators, it's like we're literally landing deals with, you know, Liberty Mutual auto insurance and Geico. And we've literally - we're prospecting State Farm. And it's like, where the industry is going for us is working with these Fortune 500, like publicly traded - that I mean, I know that's the direction it's heading for us, is working with companies that are just your mainstream company. I mean, we believe some of the biggest money is just working with the companies that are really making America work, you know. Like the - yeah, the Aetnas and the Cignas and whatever. Yeah, they're not going anywhere. And their marketing budgets are huge.
But again, it takes quite a relationship to tap into those kinds of things. It takes expertise, it takes professionalism. Even myself, maybe I'm a little bit more professional. I dress up because I just feel like that's maybe where things are heading for our company.
But again, it depends on what you're doing though, because let's say you're really into e-commerce, that could look so different for you. Like, maybe - maybe if you're e-com, where the business is going for you is like really developing your own e-com brand that's going to sell for like 50 million dollars. It's like, it's just - exit - it's different, right?
Q: How do you stay on top of the affiliate marketing game?
It's all about attending conferences. It's like, one of the main reasons I'm here is to stay current, and up to speed. Affiliates who are just sitting in their rooms or apartments or something, you might be missing - you're not growing too, you're not connecting, you're not networking. You're gonna miss opportunities. You're not gonna know what are the hottest things right now. What are the next best things? What are the things we should be getting into?
And if you're just like in your room or something behind the computer all the time, it's like, you can go for years and you could just not know what even exists. So it's like, stay current, and everything.
Q: Great. So how can everyone find you?
Yeah, so our company is Optimize2Convert. To find us, it’s very simple: you can go to our website, where there’s a button that says "Free Community." If you sign up there, you’ll receive our training newsletter, which includes a lot of valuable training resources.
We also have the Optimize2Convert YouTube channel, where we focus on providing value. When Tyler and I started as affiliates, there weren’t many people sharing this kind of advice. If someone had just told us back then, "Hey, just a heads up, this campaign could fall apart," it could have saved us a year of making no money.
We’re really passionate about sharing these lessons with the community now—lessons we wish we had learned earlier. Our goal is to build out this value without any strings attached. We provide this information to help our reputation and offer goodwill. We’re not trying to sell an info product at the end; it’s just free value.
