Until recently, the life goals for many men were simple: "Build a house, plant a tree, and raise a son." However, in today's world, things are becoming a bit different. Today's article features Andrey Sidorupolo, a young Russian man who has achieved significant milestones at a very young age, all through the affiliate marketing industry. This has left some questions in the Russian affiliate space. He is the founder of the Traffic Deals team; he has sold affiliate marketing courses for over $1 000 000, wrecked his BMW supercar for fun, and faced multiple lawsuits. The biggest questions asked are whether he is a fake guru or a successful entrepreneur, and what is the reason behind all those lawsuits. Today's article will address all of these questions.
The authors of the YouTube channel Web Space interviewed Andrey Sidorupolo and attempted to understand the reasons behind his students filing a class action lawsuit against him. This article compiles all the most interesting information from the more than one-hour-long video. Among all the controversial personalities of modern info business in the Russian online marketing space, Andrey Sidorupolo, also known as Andrey SD, holds a "special" and "honorable" place.
Andrey claimed that he was able to sell a single PDF file to more than 1 000 people who were interested in learning about affiliate marketing and making money online. However, their hopes of earning quick money online did not materialize as expected, and they filed a complaint against Andrey with the prosecutor's office.
This news about Andrey SD has become well-spread as many bloggers have exposed him over the past year. They even created a channel on VK, Russia's biggest local social media platform, to discuss and expose his scams and court proceedings.
On the other hand, the team at Web Space provided Andrey with the opportunity to express his point of view through an interview. They wanted to hear what he thinks about the accusations against him and to learn about his life journey and experience of working in the affiliate marketing space. And it’s this side of the story that we believe is more interesting to learn of and we are addressing it in this article.
Background Story
Andrew shared a story about his past. He was recruited by the Russian army at a young age but his online marketing journey started after he left the army when he decided to leave and pursue a career online. He believed that the real money was on the internet and didn't want to work any other job.
He started building his audience on Instagram as a top affiliate marketer, and within a year of doing this, he was earning anywhere from $120 to $250 a day.
During this time, he learned how to run Facebook Ads after connecting with a friend who was part of an affiliate marketing team and they together started running affiliate campaigns on Facebook. As they began to see success, more friends joined them, and they eventually rented an office to work together.
"At the beginning, we didn't have enough money to scale our campaigns after testing, so I had to pawn two TVs at a pawnshop," — Andrey said.
The team found a successful campaign, but there was no money to scale it up. The first profit they made was $380, which they raised by pawning the TVs.
Andrey claimed that they consistently doubled their earnings with their first successful campaigns. After a short time, their earnings amounted to slightly over $7 500 a month. He says that this campaign was so good that money flowed to the young affiliates easily, just like in the fairy tale stories made by affiliate marketing gurus.
"We were very careless with money; we could go to the beach and spend all $7 500. When we got back to the office, we only had $65 left in our pockets. We extended our Indigo Browser account and used the rest of that cash to buy additional traffic. By the end of the month, we would once again make a profit of $7 500." Andrey recalled the story of his good days.
After spending several months in this mode of work and rest, the partners decided to make up their minds. While the campaign was working, they decided to scale it up furthermore. They attracted new employees to the team, and with the earnings made from that campaign, they began to look for and test new offers.
Andrey revealed that the team's income started to grow significantly, reaching up to an average of $26 000 per month. They earned this money through Nutra offers, which they promoted on Facebook. However, after the major Zuckerberg social media scandal preceding the 2020 US election, Andrey SD and his team decided to stop using Facebook as their main traffic source. Instead, the team hired a specialist in Google Ads and shifted their focus toward learning from him and transitioning to Google.
Unfortunately, this transition didn't go smoothly. Andrey says that there was a sharp decline in ROIs and earnings dropping up to $4 000 per month. Also, the workload had tripled, which added to their frustration.
The team decided to return to Facebook as their main traffic source, and things started to go well again. According to Andrey, the money was flowing like a river, but after a while, he stopped getting the same level of excitement from it.
In an effort to overcome his depression, Andrey saw a new mission for himself in "bringing light to the masses." He decided to start blogging and monetizing the blog by selling affiliate marketing courses.
"At some point, selling affiliate marketing courses seemed to be more profitable for me than affiliate marketing itself," — says Andrey SD.
Course Reviews
Andrey claimed to have created three affiliate marketing courses. To obtain objective feedback on the quality of Sidoropulo's courses, the Web Space team reached out to some of his former students.
One of them, Roman Olkhovsky, shared his experience:
"I purchased Andrey Sidoropulo's course in June 2021 for $450. For this price, I got access to a Telegram chat where Word document files containing theoretical information about affiliate marketing were shared time after time."
The second student who was interviewed said:
"It was evident that all the material was gathered randomly from what was available on the internet on the topic of affiliate marketing."
The third student, Igor, pointed out that the technical aspects, such as how to work with trackers, were also shared in the form of text files in the Telegram chat. However, as they delved into the material, the entire group had many questions that nobody could answer in the chat.
In response to Igor's requests for help with technical issues, Andrey SD stated in private messages that the topic was complex and suggested hiring a separate programmer to resolve the issue and help them set up their tracking.
All 3 students who were interviewed expressed their disappointment as the training ended abruptly due to multiple complaints from the participants in the Telegram Chat group. Access to the materials was blocked, and Andrey himself repeatedly claimed that the students didn't want to learn, they just wanted to make quick money.
"A Horseback-Riding Guru"
During an interview, Sidoropoulo was asked how to differentiate between a "fake guru" and an "expert." He responded that it's quite simple to do so. One needs to know the history of the person selling the training courses.
If the person has never been heard of anywhere before in the affiliate marketing space and suddenly comes up as an expert in affiliate marketing, it's a clear indication that they are not an expert.
"The credibility of an expert's history draws people to them," — says Andrey.
One of the students who spoke negatively about SD gave a good reason for buying training from him. According to him, the guy was captivated by videos in which Andrey helped his relatives with money, and they genuinely thanked him for this.
This is now a standard trick of many affiliate marketing gurus in the CIS, such as Vitaly Tuchkin, Sunat Makhkamboev, and others. As the "godfather of the game," Andrey SD attracted a lot of traffic to his courses from videos featuring a noble son and grandson distributing money.
About Andrey’s Courses
Andrey says that all the materials of his affiliate marketing training courses were created by his team, with only a small part of the theory taken from the internet.
"I was shown that all the information in the course was taken from the internet. No — not all information is from the internet," — Andrey argued.
He says that only the definitions of terms such as "proxies," "models of CPA networks", and others were taken from the internet.
The First Course
All of the students in the first release of the Andrey SD course came from ads whereby he told his come-up story. According to Andrey, each video was viewed by an average of 800 people, so it was not difficult for him to gather 25 students for the first stream.
Andrey claimed that all graduates of the first course were satisfied with the training. However, the reviews cited by Andrey are only from the first group of students, which indicates that the statement about everyone's satisfaction is not entirely accurate. Because what about those from the 2nd and 3rd-course releases?
Andrey was confident that money could be easily made from the courses from the first release. Without hesitation, he launched a large-scale campaign to promote the second release.
The Second and Third-Course Releases
To promote the second training to a new audience, Andrey paid for advertising spots from bloggers and shared promotional videos on his social media pages. This strategy brought in results, as more than 200 students signed up for the second release.
The second stream of the course was just a slight upgrade from the first one. The theoretical parts remained the same while the technical elements were updated to meet the Facebook Ads updates at that time.
The success of the second stream impressed Andrey, and he even decided to pay Mikhail Litvin, a popular Russian Youtuber to promote his third release of the course.
When asked about the cost of Litvin's advertising, Andrey did not give a direct answer but stated that it cost him tens of thousands of dollars. He also clarified that Litvin was not a part of his projects but acted only as an advertiser for the course. Also, Litvin thoroughly evaluated the course and ensured that he (Andrey) was a legitimate affiliate before agreeing to advertise his course.
Many accused Litvin of being a part of the scam, but Andrey tried to justify his partner's involvement.
Money Earned from the Third Release
Andrey confirmed that the total sales from the third release amounted to over $1 050 000, with half of it going to Litvin for the advertisements. Of the remaining amount, $300 000 went towards testing campaigns for the students, renting an office, purchasing work equipment, and other expenses and the rest was pure profit for him.
"I knew that the students would incur losses at the initial testing stage as they start out, so I included these losses in the cost of training, and I refunded them to compensate for their losses" — Andrey SD shared his strategy.
Course Instructors
The criticisms aimed at Andrey SD on the network can be divided into two parts. The first concerns the quality of the training materials, specifically that they are copied and pasted from the internet. The second concerns focus on the qualifications of the course instructors. Dissatisfied students claim that the course instructors were unqualified and unresponsive. When asked about this by an interviewer, Andrey simply responded, "No."
One of the students who was interviewed commented on the number of instructors in the third release, saying that there were less than 10 instructors for approximately 1 000 students. With such a ratio, even those who purchased the most expensive package did not have an individual mentor to rely on.
"Even though the most expensive package promised individual VIP instructors, they were not provided," — the student shared.
Andrey SD countered by saying that the basic package, which was purchased by the majority of dissatisfied customers, was not supposed to have an instructor at all.
In a question-answer format, Andrey addressed the questions about the instructors.
Q: Who were these people?
They were my friends and former students from the first two releases who were experts in their fields.
Q: What can you say about the fact that your students created a separate VKontakte group where all the participants spoke about the incompetence of the instructors? In addition, people stated that they did not respond on time or to everyone.
It's not true. It might have happened once or twice, but we are all humans, and we can make mistakes. Perhaps there were 5-10% of cases where an instructor didn't see a message.
Q: What can you say about the fact that your students created a separate VKontakte group where all the participants spoke about the incompetence of the instructors? In addition, people stated that they did not answer on time or to everyone.
It is not true. It happened, but maybe 1-2 times. But we are all humans, and we can all make mistakes. Maybe there were 5–10% of cases where the instructor didn't see the message.
Refunds
In the course agreement offer that the students accepted when purchasing, it was specified that they could request a refund within seven days from the date of purchase.
Andrey disclosed that he had issued 30 to 40 refunds, which means that this number of individuals had successfully requested their money back. This accounts for approximately 3% to 4% of all students. When asked why he could not refund others, Andrey explained that they applied for refunds after the seven-day window had passed. As much as he wanted to help, he had already spent the money on course creation, and he had nothing left after seven days.
During a video call interview, one student stated that over 300 people wrote a collective letter seeking a course refund. Among them was a disabled person from the first group who provided all the necessary documents, but SD (Andrey) declined to refund them.
The student also revealed that the actual number of dissatisfied students who want a refund is close to 100% — which means all of the students. However, many decided to let it go because they did not believe they could get their money back.
"I, too, was a victim of the refund scam", — the student said.
The interviewer inquired whether it was accurate that refunds were processed with a deduction for the covered course material. According to the students, after they received the first module of the third release of the course, they requested a refund. They received the second module in response, and the refund amount was calculated minus both modules. Some packages priced the first basic module with a theoretical portion at $90, while others priced it at $650.
"Well, that could be possible, but I wasn't involved in refunds, to be honest," — Andrey replied.
The Legal Aspects
One of the prominent Russian lawyers managing a class-action lawsuit against Andrey SD said Andrey was not a fool and consulted on possible consequences before launching the course. He contends that his actions do not constitute fraud, and his objective was not to deceive people out of their money but to educate them.
Andrey SD stated that the students were warned about the potential risks of affiliate marketing. He also emphasized that he did not guarantee a 100% success rate but merely aimed to share his expertise in this field.
Asking Andrey’s Friends
At the conclusion of the video, the team from Web Space interviewed, Andryukha, a man who introduced himself as a friend of Andrey. As expected, he spoke highly of him, describing Andrey as a dependable and excellent media buyer. The friend also mentioned that Andrey had also once taught him how to effectively run Facebook Ads.
"Andrey explained everything so clearly that I was able to grasp how to use Facebook in just one day", — Andrey’s friend said.
We present several questions below for the interviewer and the "friend," of Andrey:
Q: What are your thoughts on the recent controversy surrounding dissatisfied students of Andrey's course?
People are always dissatisfied with something. For example, I am dissatisfied with the fact that ice cream isn't as delicious as it used to be. So what?
Q: What do you think is the source of the animosity towards Andrey? What did he do wrong that caused people to be dissatisfied?
The reason for this is that people had unrealistic expectations of Andrey's course. Additionally, perhaps some of these individuals lacked financial literacy and took the course with the hope of quickly doubling their earnings.
Q: Why doesn't Andrey refund money to students who are dissatisfied with the course?
If Andrey refunds money to everyone who demands it, then other students will undoubtedly follow suit.
Q: Do you believe it is possible to start from scratch and become a fully-fledged affiliate marketer after taking the course?
Yes, it is possible. I plan to recruit qualified individuals who have completed Andrey's course to my team.
The last word from Andrey SD
The interview concluded with Andrey stating that he was hesitant to continue conducting training due to unappreciative students discouraging him from engaging in educational activities. He added that the money he earned from selling his courses was very small compared to what he could make as an affiliate marketer.
Conclusion
During the video recording process, the interviewer requested access to Andrey's course so that the Web Space team could review it and provide their opinion. Andrey responded that the course was worthless without an instructor and promised to grant access and secure an instructor for them. The team contacted the instructor and arranged for training. However, the instructor later on deleted all the messages he sent in the Telegram chat with the Web Space team and did not keep in touch anymore.
