On December 11, an exciting free meetup unfolded in Bali, and aside from the stunning photos we brought back, we've uploaded recordings of the speakers on YouTube. We've curated a series of articles with the transcripts of these enlightening talks.
Taking the stage as the second speaker of the meetup was Vladislav Bochkarev, the Head of Account at UFFILIATES. Vladislav delved into scientific studies and backed his insights with real numbers, revealing how affiliate marketers can elevate their efficiency by an astounding 175%.
Vladislav's presentation was focused on "Unlocking a 175% Boost in Efficiency for Affiliate Marketers."
The UFFILIATES team conducted an independent study spanning four years, analyzing 173 webmasters whose combined earnings exceeded 1 billion rubles. They supplemented this analysis with scientifically proven data to compare their findings with established research.
From this extensive study, Vladislav highlighted two key metrics:
- How much a webmaster earns;
- The lifespan of a webmaster in the business.
He then proceeded to dissect the primary actions that significantly influence these two metrics.
The “Leverage Principle”: Do Less, Gain More
Vladislav's presentation was built on the Leverage Principle — a foundation for acquiring power, resources, and wealth. This principle revolves around small actions that exert disproportionately large influence on various aspects of life, making them simpler.
For instance, an affiliate marketer might test 20 offers in a month, exhausting all available resources. However, a more successful affiliate marketer understands the reality that testing more than 20 offers is unattainable. Instead of persisting in testing as many as possible, they invent a lever.
The affiliate marketer contemplates in advance how to create a system that would allow testing several times more offers. In affiliate marketing activities, there are always such levers — using which can amplify efficiency and multiply affiliate marketing power.
What one thing can I do to make everything else easier or unnecessary?
For our example, building an affiliate marketing team is the lever. Yes, it involves taking risks, investing time, and additional resources. Yet, by inviting just one person to the team, this affiliate marketer will apply the same amount of effort and time. However, two affiliate marketers can now test 40 offers a month instead of 20, providing a double boost — a crucial lever.
The team owner can continue hiring employees to increase the lever's force. Eventually, they might hire a manager who oversees the entire team. The owner, with a small action — impacting the manager — wields the most powerful lever, as their small action yields disproportionately significant results. This is how all affiliate marketing teams are structured.
What if you're not keen on creating a team? Execute one small action: join an existing team. Hundreds of teams are seeking affiliate marketers, willing to train and bring them up to speed.
UFFILIATES' research reveals that when an affiliate marketer becomes part of any team, their annual earnings increase by 29%, and the duration of their affiliate marketing activity extends by 5 months.
Therefore, the presentation aims to free up resources and introduce the audience to the most effective levers:
- Scientifically proven effectiveness;
- Statistics that would be challenging to gather independently;
- Levers ready for implementation today.
The Most Powerful Lever: Strength Training and Sleep
If you've watched the movie "Limitless," you likely remember the impact of NZT on productivity and quality of life. In reality, such drugs don't exist. However, something tangible and scientifically proven to be a substitute for NZT is strength training.
Scientific data supports the effectiveness of strength training:
- Workouts influence sleep quality. Good sleep alone is a powerful lever. When a person starts training, all sleep parameters increase. There's a solid meta-analysis of numerous studies on this subject.
By examining graphs from these studies, one can understand that white columns, representing more frequent and intense workouts, contribute to improved sleep quality. Compared to less frequent and less intense exercises, sleep improves by one and a half times.
When comparing indicators without training, differences would be more significant. Quality encompasses various parameters:
- Enhanced and prolonged sleep phase;
- Reduced nighttime awakenings;
- Increased sleep onset speed;
- Improved waking well-being.
The speaker noted that there is no longer any single intervention that significantly improves sleep quality in healthy adults.
Gathered analytics suggests that quality sleep increases earnings in affiliate marketing by 23%. Webmasters who control their sleep earned 23% more, and the duration of their affiliate marketing activity increased from 3 to 10 months.
Unfortunately, the sample monitoring sleep quality had fewer participants. Nevertheless, the data obtained complements the research the speaker presented next.
Training and Sports: Even minor gym visits, for example, once a week, lead to a significant increase in intellectual abilities. Specifically, brain reaction speed increases and brain reaction time decreases.
On graphs, it can be observed that the brain's problem-solving speed after exercise starts 60 MS faster. Additionally, the speed at which it solves these problems increases by 50 MS.
While a millisecond may seem minuscule, taking the example of creating creative content, the brain needs to solve a dozen tasks: come up with a hypothesis, find sources, select sources, figure out how to cut them, choose the right text, and decide on the emphasis.
And if intelligence and productivity increase, incomes should grow too, right? That's also what our research shows. Affiliate marketers who visit the gym at least once a week, on average, earn 37% more than those who don't go to the gym at all. Furthermore, their affiliate marketing activity duration increases by 9 months.
It can be concluded that weekly intensive workouts at the gym and improved sleep allow for earning 60% more and staying in this business for 16 months longer.
These are not all the benefits of systematic gym workouts. However, they are the most significant and are additionally confirmed by our research.
Obvious, Unobvious, and Ignored Facts
Next, the speaker presented the results of studies conducted with the team. The team analyzed affiliate marketers working with different payment models. As a result, they concluded that in the long term, RevShare will bring you 33% more income than CPA offers. Moreover, the average duration of affiliate marketing life will be significantly longer.
In this statistics, the team made adjustments for different sources, traffic, and experience to avoid inflating the RevShare figure. Plus, a significant portion of the market operates on CPA and hybrid models, making statistics for these payment models more relevant. However, there's no doubt that over time, RevShare will bring you a higher percentage.
To make RevShare more effective, you can:
- Negotiate with the affiliate network that if you stop driving traffic and, as a result, the advertiser wants to take away your RevShare, the network will help and use its resources. For example, internal media buying, to keep your RevShare for as long as possible.
- Diversify between two different brands so that the closure of one brand does not significantly impact your income.
The next points are focusing on one source and focusing on one vertical. According to UFFILIATES data, if a webmaster works with only one traffic source, they lose an average of 18% of potential income, and the duration of their affiliate marketing activity decreases by 3 months.
How to deal with it? Start testing new traffic sources. Especially since there is a lot of information available to understand the basic principles of any traffic source.
The same applies to focusing on one vertical and the results of webmasters working with multiple verticals. In terms of revenue, their profit is 27% higher, but the average duration of affiliate marketing activity is practically the same.
Foreign Forums as a Way to Gain Knowledge and Connections
The next point the speaker highlighted in the presentation is what can replace such meetups, conferences, affiliate marketing videos on YouTube, and paid affiliate marketing training. These are forums. More precisely, foreign forums:
These are the best options recommended by the speaker:
Analytics confirms that forums provide a growth boost. After all, the earnings of those who study foreign forums are 11% higher, and the duration of affiliate marketing activity is 3 months longer.
Why does this happen? On forums, you can find information that is impossible to buy. Also, you can always ask a question on any topic and get an answer that will save you tens of thousands of dollars.
If you want to study the foreign market and replicate the best approaches, I recommend using local forums. For example, for LATAM, the best option would be Forobeta.
Further, the speaker discussed the importance of the environment. An affiliate marketer who communicates with colleagues working with different sources and verticals earns 26% more than an affiliate marketer who doesn't engage with colleagues.
But why do many hesitate to connect with colleagues from other verticals? It's because people tend to communicate and form communities only with those who are most similar to them. This is called homophily. Or, as they say, a fisherman sees a fisherman from afar.
For example, some SEO specialists often separate themselves from affiliate marketers. This fosters distrust toward others who differ in some way, even in terms of traffic sources. Hence, most affiliate marketers don't build connections with those who run a different vertical or work with an unfamiliar traffic source.
But what happens if you break this system? Right, networking — creating weak ties. Weak they are, as you simply communicate with a person; you are not friends. Nevertheless, weak ties yield the most robust results.
Researchers analyzed tens of millions of scientific articles and found that scientists who read publications from other scientific fields and engage with scientists in different fields end up having several times more patents. They also publish the most crucial research for humanity. In other words, it's not about how smart you are but whether you can unite those who don't naturally come together. Because that's the nature of creativity: connecting the isolated and bringing the distant closer.
The speaker's team's research confirms this. An affiliate marketer who communicates with colleagues from their and other verticals earns 26% more annually and stays in the field for an average of 2 years instead of 5 months.
But why does this happen? Vladislav answered this question using the most common responses from affiliate marketers in our study:
- "I get invited to different teams more often, and I gain new knowledge there."
- "I get new ideas that I apply to my traffic source."
- "I realized that other sources are not as complicated and started working with them, using the knowledge gained."
In the concluding part, the speaker shared a life hack to effectively work with different traffic sources.
TikTok Hacks
Interests on TikTok work great, but not everything is available in the Russian version. Therefore, the affiliate marketer's task is to use only the English version. And when searching by interests, use only English words. This way, you can access a vast number of interests.
For the CIS and non-U.S. tests without an upgraded pixel, Android works best. Therefore, during tests, the team always disables iOS and only connects it after the pixel has gained at least 50 leads per GEO.
Instead of an image suitable for the offer, use the "Buy Now" button on the ad page. Why is it needed? Because it increases the click-to-conversion rate by 5-10%.
The speaker explained this using a specific TikTok creative. When a user watches a video, a button appears at the bottom, urging them to go to the site. But this button is inactive in the first few seconds. Therefore, the user needs to wait for the button to become active.
But if you click on the page's avatar, the user will immediately go to the site. That's why, instead of some image, it's better to use a button that says "Press." Then the conversion will increase by 5-10%. Because people who see the creative for the second time won't wait for the button to work; they'll immediately click on the image.
Facebook Hacks
Next, the speaker covered Facebook hacks. The same creative can be skipped in one account and blocked in another. This happens because the network also tests different approaches. And it has its checkers on different accounts. So, if a creative is skipped for an affiliate marketer, it's entirely possible that it just landed on a robot utterly uninterested in everything written there. And it missed all triggers.
It's better not to rejoice. The affiliate marketer probably didn't do something perfect; they were just lucky. It's not so noticeable on volumes, but newcomers can feel it strongly. And if your creative soared on one account, don't upload it to all accounts. Test it on 5-7 more accounts to eliminate the luck factor.
If you use the White blog format, Facebook thinks you need readers, not buyers. If you want the traffic quality on Facebook to be much higher, use Whites so that the algorithm understands it's a store. And if it's a store, it needs buyers to target.
Additionally, the speaker tested adding keywords to whites, and it worked well. This way, even with whites alone, you can tell Facebook which target audience you need.
If you post a creative ad link before the test and artificially boost likes, you'll make your creative link much more trustworthy. What else:
- 10-15 likes for the FP itself will help extend its life. You can change the group's budget. But it's better to do it every 4 hours and not more than 30% plus or minus.
- To increase trust to tie to the BM, on each account, create a draft with one item on the marketplace. You can take any name for the item. The main thing is that there's no trash that Facebook will react to.
- Additionally, you can create an app. Ideally, when the FP has more than 1,000 subscribers and has been around for more than a year.
If you start running on a budget and spend $2 per day for three weeks, half of the annoying bot algorithms will stop checking your account.
Bigo Hacks
Moving on, the speaker delved into Bigo. He explained that while direct pouring is possible, a more effective method is to channel traffic into a Telegram channel or streams. This way, you can acquire inexpensive traffic in large volumes, and, thanks to the warming up in the channel/stream, leads become of higher quality.
To bypass an account lock, add screenshots from other official sources. More precisely, from sources that Bigo considers official, such as Yandex Direct. You don't need to pour from there.
A screenshot from an advertising campaign showing the creative and text is needed. This can be drawn, ensuring that the screenshot precisely reflects the creatives you use in Bigo. By sending this screenshot, Bigo will unblock you and leave you alone for at least a month.
In Bigo, you can't show bare shoulders and a naked stomach in creatives. However, these restrictions can be circumvented by using animated characters.
The speaker also didn't notice any impact on the success of the test, the quantity, or the quality of traffic when using only one tag for different verticals, reflecting the essence of the offer. Even if you use multiple tags, the result won't be better; in fact, it might become worse. Therefore, it's better to use only one tag.
Perspectives Opening in 2024
The speaker highlighted the trend of applications in Telegram. They have several advantages:
- Redirect users to external sites;
- Enable in-app payments using Telegram's built-in wallet;
- Use Telegram's own targeting to attract an audience to a prepared, whitened warm-up channel and convert them into leads using the application.
Recommended channels in Telegram are also considered a trend. Any recommendation algorithm has its drawbacks. Once you understand the algorithm by which channels end up in the recommended list, you can adapt to it, boost metrics, and get free quality traffic to your channels.
Another micro-trend that Vladislav noted is ASO in Huawei. This is a promising direction, as their app store is available in 220 countries and pre-installed on Huawei and Honor devices.
Huawei has 44% of users aged over 30, and those aged 25 to 29 make up 29-30%. Meanwhile, 66% of the entire audience is male.
Also, Huawei has over 700 million active users, and the number is increasing daily, with competition much lower than Google Play or the App Store. In UFFILIATES, some webmasters are currently very successfully pouring into Huawei.
Networking — a Timeless Trend
But the main trend to adhere to is networking. It offers many advantages and opens new doors. However, if networking provides so many benefits, why do many people not use it? Even if they attend events, they often interact there with a limited circle of already familiar faces.
Studies from 2014 indicate that networking evokes a feeling of dirtiness in people. This is because networking for profit goes against human nature. People want genuine, selfless relationships, and "human capital," as sociologists call it, is met with disapproval. Therefore, effective networking relies on two pillars:
- Genuine interest in the other person.
- A desire to be helpful to others.
Networking is not a clever scheme to exploit people. Primarily, it's an open question of life, requiring fundamental change. This is how you begin to improve your networking skills, which will change your life for the better.
Conclusion
In his presentation, Vladislav Bochkarev shared powerful levers that significantly increase the profits of affiliate marketers and the duration of their work in the niche. The speaker explained that training, networking, and communication with individuals from different fields help improve personal metrics.
Vladislav also discussed trends in 2024 and hacks in working with various traffic sources that affiliate marketers can apply right now. If you leverage all these levers, you'll become smarter, stronger, more attractive, more productive, and richer than most people who don't apply these levers.
