40,000 FD, $1,000,000 in a Day, and a Broken Nose — the First Interview with Roma CPA Kill

Roma CPA Kill is one of the most famous and, at the same time, most mysterious figures in the affiliate marketing community. People used to know him as “The Bald Guy from Traffic Devils,” though it turns out he has no connection to Traffic Devils and hasn’t been bald for quite a while either. He went from selling gaming accounts on VK and Chinese luxury replicas to running TikTok stream traffic with a 2000% ROI and building his own team, The Gods. His story is a chain of schemes (🌚), major highs, and brutal crashes, including a visit from the Security Service of Ukraine and a “disciplinary conversation” with a casino’s security department.

In his very first public interview for the fifth episode of The Riddick Level, Roma opened up and told his full story. This material is a written version of his most interesting answers, condensed for the affiliate audience.

Roma, where did it all begin? What were your first steps, your first projects?

I’m from Myrhorod. That's a really small town. Back in the 2000s, I used to sell all kinds of stuff at the local market. Every week, my mom would travel to Barabashova market in Kharkiv, bring back duffel bags full of clothes, and I’d help her at our stall. There were always money changers hanging around nearby. They could tell, just by looking at someone, what exchange rate they could push. That’s when I first understood what purchasing power meant: the same product could be sold for a different price if you could read a person and spark their interest.

Then came the era of computer clubs. That was a whole different world: nights spent in Lineage 2, character leveling, gold farming. At some point, I realized I could turn that into a mini business. I paid other guys for gaming hours; they farmed items and accounts, and I sold all that, first to friends, then through VK groups and forums. For a school kid, it was decent money — a couple of thousand a month, steady. And that’s when I first got the taste for what this really was: working with people’s attention, interests, and emotions.

“You know, even though my mom was trying hard to earn money, we sold a lot of stuff, but I wouldn’t say there was any kind of wow ROI. By the way, I already kind of understood what profit was back then, thanks to my mom.”

Then came Kyiv? How’d you end up there?

I went to college. My mom and stepfather insisted I had to get a profession, something stable. Honestly, I had no idea why I needed it, but there wasn’t much of a choice.

Kyiv, of course, was a whole new chapter. A totally different scale: movement, people with money, a new kind of energy. One day, my friend said, “Let’s hit a club, just chill for a bit.” I had no idea where he was taking me. We arrived at SkyBar, and everyone’s in branded clothes. And there I was, standing in my tracksuit.

I looked around and realized: everything I’m earning isn’t even close to that level. That’s when it hit me: if you want to live differently, you’ve got to earn differently.

That’s when your first real business story started, right?

Exactly. One day, I was in a fitting room trying on jeans and noticed something on the shop assistant’s screen: a tab open in Chinese. I memorized the name. That was Taobao. I got home and started digging. Through Google Translate, through a bunch of Chinese forums where I barely understood anything, but I got the main point: you could buy the same stuff ten times cheaper. I found middlemen who could order and deliver, calculated the price gap, and decided to give it a shot.

I made a VK group, uploaded pics, added some fake positive reviews, created a little hype, and it blew up.

Sounds like a great start. What came next?

That’s when the first affiliate story began. My buddy was working as a hookah guy at one of Kyiv’s nightclubs, the kind of place where all the “golden youth” hung out. One day, he showed up at my place like, “Dude, I got this casino player base. One client sold it to me... for a pack of pills.” At first, I was like, “What the hell do we need that for?” Then I said, “Alright, let’s see what we can do.”

We googled the first affiliate program we could find, hooked up some call software, wrote a simple promo script, and started calling the numbers. I pretended to be the casino’s promo department, offering bonuses: free spins, extra deposits, whatever. For the first two weeks, there was dead silence. We thought it was all a waste of time.

Then one call changed everything. One guy picked up, he had a confident voice, sounded like he was somewhere hunting in the woods: “Alright, send me your bonus, I’ll activate it tomorrow.”

The next morning, we logged in and saw the first 15,000. And not hryvnias. After that, we just couldn’t stop. Expanded the base, brought in more guys, started working the players through scripts, and the money started rolling in for real.

But with money came problems. One day, casino security showed up at my door. First at my buddy’s, then mine. The talk was short: they took our PCs and “fixed” my nose a bit. After that, I told myself: enough gambling for now.

After that whole casino story and the broken nose, you decided to switch directions. So how did Adwise come into your life?

Adwise was kind of a turning point for me. I stumbled across the article by Kyrylo Sigeda: it was about Adwise, iGaming, ads, pre-rolls, and branding. I was reading it and thinking, “I don’t understand half of this, but damn, it sounds cool.”

So I start googling: who they are, what they do. Found a job opening for Junior Media Buyer. I opened the description, and it was full of stuff like CPC, CPM, VAST... a whole bunch of letters that meant absolutely nothing to me. But I decided to give it a try. I threw together a resume from everything I knew and everything I didn’t and sent it off. The next day they called me and asked whether I could come in tomorrow.

At that point, I had a choice: stay in Odesa and work as a barber, or take a risk and go to Kyiv for an interview with Adwise. I made the decision at the very last minute, just went with my gut. I wanted something bigger.

I remember that night so clearly: I was sitting on the bus, memorizing what CPC, CPM, pre-roll, post-roll mean, not even sure if any of it would come up. In the morning, I walked into the business center, and the interview went on for an hour. Then they called another HR, and then the CEO joined in. I was mixing up all the terms, but I kept saving myself by answering every tricky question with: “Sorry, NDA.” And I guess that somehow worked: they called me the next day and offered the job. 

So that’s how I ended up at Adwise. At first, I worked with pirate movie sites like HDRezka, then with teaser networks like Kadam and Teasernet, and finally with adult traffic. But when they moved me to the influence direction. That’s when I saw real payouts. Streamers were making $150–300K a month. And right then, I realized: that’s what I’d been looking for all along.

“I remember just sitting there, completely lost, like, dude, I had no idea what I was doing there.”

Okay, so tell me how the whole influencer story began?

Well, back then, esports was really blowing up, YouTube was on top, and one day I thought: why not try running traffic through bloggers? I found a few streamers who did match reviews and predictions, and I pitched them an idea: add a bonus link right under the video. Then it started evolving: we began writing short betting predictions on their VK pages, posting before big matches, heating up the audience’s interest in the games. And that started bringing in a steady flow: around 100–150 FDs from just one video release.

The real peak happened during The International finals. Everything just clicked: the hype, the tournament, the perfectly warmed-up audience. In one single day, we brought in about 40,000 FDs. The average deposit was around $50–55, and that added up to my first $1,000,000 in a day.

After that, I started thinking about diversification. I plugged in TikTok, and during the first hour of streaming, we got around 400 FDs, just because the platform itself was pushing the reach. And that’s where my favorite insight was born. I noticed that the average watch time was about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, but the guys mentioned the promo only once every 10 minutes. So I made a new rule: mention the offer every 30 seconds. That changed everything: the conversion from streams went through the roof. Instead of 40–50 deposits an hour, we started consistently hitting 100–150 FDs.

Do you remember how Sasha Slobozhenko showed up in your story, and where the whole Traffic Devils legend even came from?

That actually happened totally by accident. At the time, I was in Odesa, at an Artbat concert. We were sitting at neighboring tables, and a mutual friend introduced us. The vibe just clicked instantly: same energy, same drive, same ambitions. At first, it was nothing work-related: we were hanging out, talking about life, having a good time.

Over time, we started crossing paths on projects. I helped with some traffic runs, sometimes, we rebrokered offers together. But officially, I never had any business with TD. And then there was that one episode everyone keeps remembering. One morning, Sasha filmed a story at my place and said, “Roman Olegovich, thanks for the morning corona. Maybe we could raise my rate for Cosmo?” And I couldn’t help but answer: “Sasha, what rate are you talking about? We already paid you enough to buy a McLaren. How about you at least work off what you’ve got?”

A couple of days later, the infamous search happened. The weirdest part is I wasn’t even home. Literally the day before, I got this little wave of paranoia. It just felt like there were too many eyes around, and at home, I had ledgers, tech, and important files. So I said, “Let’s move everything out.” Turned out that decision saved me. When the Security Service of Ukraine came with the search warrant, there was nothing to find.

Sasha’s name was mentioned in the papers, and that’s how the whole mess started. People assumed I was “the bald guy from TD” just because we were hanging out together. Everyone got the impression I was part of the team. But in reality, it was friendship, respect, and a few mutual work stories. Nothing more.

So, how did the idea of starting a joint influencer agency come about, and how did you grow it so fast?

You know, it wasn’t even some big plan. We both knew the market, saw where things could be done better, where others were dropping the ball. And one day, we just said, “Why not try?”

We launched at the start of 2023. Picked one specific GEO and nailed it. The team came together fast; everyone was fired up, full of energy. It really felt like everything lined up perfectly. By the third month, we were already making over $250K net, starting from an investment of around $20K. At that moment, it felt like we could move mountains.

But the market shifted fast: new regulations, tougher bans, scaling got harder. We sat down and looked at the situation honestly. We decided to shut it down, not because it wasn’t working, but because we didn’t want to break something that only worked under its own rules.

Interesting. And later on, how did The Gods and your new team come to life?

It all started in the spring of 2025. I just sat down and began doing research: who was still active in the market, who was actually making moves. I started calling people, talking, building the foundation. Took some guys I’d already worked with, added a couple of strong team leads from outside. Then we brought in a Head of Media Buying. Now there are around seventy of us.

The biggest thing I realized: you shouldn’t chase headcount. Quality always comes first. Before, I used to push hard, thinking, “If I can do it, you can too.” But later I understood: everyone’s got their own motivation, their own pace. Some people are on fire, some just clock in.

So now I’m trying to build things differently: less emotion, more structure, more logic. The main thing is that everyone understands why they’re here and what they’re responsible for.

“Maybe it’s my perfectionism, but since I did the interviews myself, I turned a lot of people down. I was really looking for those diamonds, you know?”

The Gods is already a known name now. What verticals are you focusing on, and what are your goals for the next year or two?

We’re fully focused on iGaming. That’s my thing. Our main traffic sources are Facebook and influencer marketing; they give us both scale and control. PPC’s trickier right now, but we’re keeping an eye on it.

As for goals, we’re growing at a good pace, but I want more. The minimum plan is to grow x5 from where we are now and lock in the results. What I really want is to build a system that runs smoothly: stable, consistent, without chaos and panic. That, to me, is what real growth looks like.

Today, The Gods is the result of everything Roma’s been through: from his first traffic runs to a structured, high-performing iGaming system. He’s gone through burnout, experiments, pauses, and comebacks, and ended up building a team that delivers stable, top-tier results.

How crisis moments turn into real businesses, and why true strength lies in stability — Roma CPA Kill tells it all in his signature style in the full fifth episode of The Riddick Level podcast.