A recently published interview on the M1 CPA network's YouTube channel featured Leonid, the owner of the RPT affiliate marketing team. Leonid and the interviewer talked about various topics such as media buying tactics, fighting against bans, family businesses in affiliate marketing, the lifespan of affiliate campaigns, the procedures of farming and selling ad accounts plus so much more. In this article, we are highlighting the most interesting bits of the interview.
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Getting into Affiliate Marketing
After graduating high school approximately 5 years ago, Leonid and his friend Yasha secured a job at a store called MTC, which sold equipment. However, soon after, Yasha introduced Leonid to the concept of affiliate marketing, but Leonid was hesitant to get involved as he had already secured a job at Sberbank and did not have the time to pursue the online business.
Despite this, Yasha showed Leonid some impressive numbers of the profits he had made through traffic arbitrage, which eventually piqued Leonid's interest.
Four years ago, Leonid had a daughter and decided to take maternity leave from his job at Sberbank to focus on affiliate marketing. However, for the first year and a half, the partners were unable to achieve significant results in this field.
"For the first year and a half, our results were unstable - zero, a small plus, a big minus," said the team leader.
In 2019, through connections, the duo landed a job as buyers for the Belgorod arbitration team. The first month was highly successful and brought them a profit of $1 000, which inspired and boosted their confidence in the field. As a result, Leonid moved his family from the Moscow region to Belgorod and rented a separate apartment. Unfortunately, their success was short-lived as their earnings decreased in the subsequent months.
With the experience they gained in Belgorod, the partners decided to return to Orekhovo-Zuevo to create their team and work independently.
Creating a Team
Upon returning to their hometown, Leonid and his friends started generating 30 - 100 leads per month by working with nutra offers for their clients. As they achieved a stable income, they decided to expand the team by including their friends and relatives. The team worked together efficiently for a while, but in early 2020, a technical issue arose when the 302 redirects, which were used to cloak their links, broke down. This resulted in a loss of profits, and the team was unable to find a new cloaking method, leading to its disbandment.
Leonid attempted to run ads individually and tried several options until he found a profitable strategy. He then approached his friend Yasha and suggested forming the team again, to which Yasha agreed. The two spent two weeks testing various approaches and found around 15 working connections. Upon reassembling the team, they structured their work differently, with Leonid and Yasha testing new methods and the rest of the team scaling them up.
This new approach was successful, and the team was able to maintain a steady profit.
In 2020, Leonid and his team participated in a St. Petersburg Affiliate Marketing conference, where they were impressed by both the city and the communication format with the community. As a result, they decided to move to St. Petersburg with the rest of their team. Today, the team, now known as RPT, has 32 employees, with a daily turnover of 4,500-5,500 leads and a focus on Latin American countries.
According to Leonid, the team's primary source of traffic is Facebook, which is owned by Zuckerberg. However, at the time of the interview in mid-August 2022, the team was facing major traffic problems with this source. In contrast, June and July were smooth sailings as Facebook allowed for casting any budgets.
Recently, Leonid noticed a significant drop in leads from 200 to 1,800, due to Facebook's increased storming compared to the 2020 US elections. Additionally, the team leader also mentioned the problem with FunPage, which has been affected by both the ZRD (prohibition of advertising activities) and without it.
Regarding payments, Leonid stated that the team was not affected by the payment issues in Russia that occurred in March 2022. He found a solution through his friends from the West and claims that this is not a secret among affiliate marketing teams. However, he refused to reveal the solution to the public.
Regarding campaigns and converting Nutra offers, Leonid mentioned that the affiliate offer links in the team have been alive for several years, although they may be rested at times.
The team constantly checks old campaigns and if they become active again, they put them to work for media buyers. The team does not have a preference for nutra offers only as all offers convert well. Out of the most profitable offers, Leonid singled out the offers for medicine to solve vision problems as the most extreme and profitable.
Approaches to Promotion
The team's approach to promotion is highly focused on a medical theme, which is evident in 99% of their creatives. They use images of doctors, pills, ointments, and other related elements to attract their target audience. The same approach is also used in their weight loss offers.
Traffic Flow
According to the team's owner, their process of generating traffic involves the following steps:
- Buying good farm accounts, also known as "mothers."
- Binding each "mother" account with the other nine accounts from their own production.
- Launching each account with the same offer.
- However, the owner noted that almost immediately after launch, the account gets banned and removed from the ZRD. The team has a strategy to unban the account and cast a normal span only after it has been unbanned. The owner recommends using lightweight creatives to increase the chances of a successful exit from the ZRD.
Offer Link Search
The team makes sure to stay updated on the best offers available in the market by checking all affiliate programs they collaborate with. They research and select the offers that are currently at the top. They negotiate the best conditions for the selected offer in each affiliate program where it is available and pour the traffic into the CPA network that provides the most favorable conditions.
The process of selecting the most converting creative involves split-testing all available creatives in the affiliate program and researching interesting creatives in spy services. Based on the results, they choose the most converting creative and distribute it through the affiliate programs.
The team can determine a profitable link within a day by uploading 30-40 accounts for one offer. According to the owner, each link search costs approximately $1 500.
Farming Accounts
The RPT organization has established a pharmaceutical department with two employees. Leonid, one of the employees, explains that the team creates and farms their own high-quality accounts for internal use and for selling to colleagues in the affiliate marketing business.
In addition to their pharmaceutical department, Leonid and Yasha have successfully mastered Facebook as a traffic source. It has become not just a business venture but a family business with Leonid's brother and father working with the team. Despite their success with Facebook, the team is still trying to expand and develop new traffic sources, particularly on Google and TikTok. However, the lack of qualified team leaders with expertise in these areas has been a hindrance to their development.
ConclusionUltimately, as stated by Iosif Vissarionovich, "Personnel decides everything," and this holds in the case of RPT. The team's experience highlights that it may be easier to train a trusted relative to drive traffic, but the absence of expertise can pose a challenge in the growth and scaling of a business.
