Senior STM Moderator: “Keep working even if you spend $10,000 each day”
At the Moscow Affiliate Conference in Moscow, I also had a chance to talk with Reuben Mallalieu, the Senior STM Moderator.
A quick note: STM Forum was launched in January 2011. The goal of the forum is to provide case studies, guides and high-quality information on a variety of topics for affiliate marketers all over the world. They also organize affiliate conferences and educational courses.
Watch the video, or read the interview below.
Tell me about your background in affiliate marketing. What traffic sources did you work with? How long have you been in the business?
I started affiliate marketing around 2010. My good friend, Lorenzo (Mr. Green), gave me some campaigns to try out. I started making some money on while selling e-books there. At that time I was also studying at university so, I did it on the side. After that I ran some Facebook ads for a while. After that I ran pops and redirects for quite a while. And then most recently I’ve been doing native ads.
You have quite brought knowledge about different offers and traffic sources. Do you remember the day you have launched your first campaign?
Yeah. I remember talking to Lorenzo; he was on my soccer team. I didn’t quite know what he did, so I tried figuring it out by reading his blog. I then realized that he was a celebrity in the industry, but I still did not know what industry it was. He was just a normal guy. He was not a celebrity! He showed me some stuff, and the first campaign was a ClickBank product which was an e-book. I got my first paycheck from ClickBank and I made 50 dollars that week. I was excited.
It is quite exciting to get your first paycheck. It’s great when you see someone who earns money doing quite the usual job, and you realize that you can do the same.
He was quite an inspiration, and I thought, “How can I do this as well?”
Yeah. What do you know about Russian affiliates? What do you think of them?
Russian affiliates seem to be very quiet. They hide in the background a little bit. Maybe the reason is the language; English isn’t their first language. I think Russia is a very interesting market because there are so many affiliates, traffic sources, and networks here.
Do you have a lot of Russian affiliates on the STM?
I’m not quite sure. But I think we have quite a few. We do have a Russian blog as well. So, I guess there are quite a lot. In fact, I think it was you who told me that there had been a lot of Russian affiliates at our conferences.
Yeah, it is true. We also have several affiliate marketing forums in Russia for local guys. Is performance marketing like a business for you, or just a hobby?
It started off as a hobby, and then, later on, I discovered that it was something that I wanted to do. I started treating it as a business. Over time it has become more competitive. If you wanted to do well, you had to put a lot of energy into it. It used to be so simple when I was at the university — you could throw any ad campaign, and it would make money. But now you have to treat it as a business if you want to succeed.
Is it a long-term project for you?
Yes, almost a stepping stone as well. I want to be able to build a cash flow and to work on bigger and longer term businesses afterward.
What is your focus for this year and the next? Is it native ads or something else?
Yeah, native ads. Facebook ads really interest me as well. So many people are still doing so well on there. But for me personally, I’m putting a lot of my time into affiliate conferences. I’m really trying to build and bring the affiliate community together — from all around the world.
From my point of view, your affiliate conferences are very successful. The last one in Bangkok was very nice; there were a lot of people, networking, parties. What are the plans for the next two years?
At the first conference in Bangkok, we had around 1,400 people. At the last one, we had around 2,500 people. We’re getting so much attention from big Chinese companies as well as from Indian companies. It brings the world to us. It shows that it’s really going to keep growing. We are going to scale to make it more useful trying give a bit of opportunity for affiliates to meet other affiliates. We also have some pretty big plans for taking over the world.
Are you still going to do it only in Europe and Asia or maybe in Latin America, or in the USA?
There are talks of expanding, but we’ll leave it there.
Which of your qualities help you to be successful at affiliate marketing? Is it analytical or creative skills, or something else?
I think that networking has made my career in the marketing industry. I got the advantage right from the very start when I met Lorenzo, and he introduced me to the other biggest affiliates in the industry.
I guess I have the skill of networking — meeting people, getting information out of them and working with them.
What skill could you teach somebody if you had only two hours?
I don’t know, maybe networking. The most important thing that I can teach in two hours would probably be getting on the STM forum and finding the guides. I would also show the basics of everything because it could be so confusing when you jumped into affiliate marketing. You will need to learn about offers and how to set up tracking. I’m not an expert in this, but I would probably show the basics.
Could you name three top educational resources, or blogs?
Yeah, of course, it is STM. We’ve got a lot of guides on STM, and the community helps each other. I like following Charles Ngo. He’s inspirational; there are good thoughts there. Sometimes I watch their Snapchats. This gets me motivated for the day. And I think being motivated is really important.
What do you think about 6 Week AMC (6 Week Affiliate Masters Challenge)?
Yeah,we have these training programs — 6 Week AMC. That’s a real investment, and you should be serious about affiliate marketing. You will need to spend a lot to get into it, but you get a lot of value back.
Are there any controversial and non-obvious things about affiliate marketing which you believe and support, but the majority of the market probably would not agree with you?
I think the whole industry is a bit controversial to outsiders. A lot of people from the outside may think it’s quite scammy but there is so much clean white hat stuff. Affiliate marketing is a skill that other companies should adopt to their performance marketing strategy.
I agree with you. How do you feel about failures in affiliate business? Obviously, there are not only successful campaigns in the business. I think it’s 10% of success and 90% of failures.
Motivation is important. There will be days when you lose a lot of money. There are ups and downs. There was a day a couple of months ago when we have lost 10,000 dollars over night. I woke up and saw it on the stats. I could see that and easily say, “No, stop, cut it, I’m not doing that anymore.” But you know, the next day I have made 10,000 dollars back.
If you stop, you will never find out what’s out there. It’s like statistical gambling. If you do right, you will win. You’ve got to be ready to spend a lot of money and fail a lot to win even more.
What do you do to keep motivated when such failures happen?
I look around at other people. I see other people doing well, and I think, “Ok, failure happens, but this guy has made 50,000 dollars today. I want to be him”. So, you have to keep trying.
You have presented a case study about native ads today. It was a definite trend last year and still has been a trend this year? What other trends do you foresee?
I think native ads are going to keep getting more popular, but there is a real barrier for small affiliates because it is expensive. I think Facebook ads will also be popular. E-commerce is a huge one, I see e-commerce growing and growing. I believe a lot of people would go there. It’s also another clean and white hat solution. I think e-commerce is probably going be the one for the next year.
There are e-commerce, Nutra (Health & Beauty), and different cash on delivery in Facebook. Which trend will win?
I think both will keep going. Everyone wants Nutra products, so there will always be people making money with it. I don’t think you can pick a winner.
Did you work with pop-under and pin-submits? What do you think?
I think it’s a really good starting place for new affiliates. It’s maybe not as good as it was. Now you have guys with these monetizing platforms. You’re competing with those guys with algorithms, and it does make it a lot harder. You either have to build technology in there or you have to evolve, but I do think it’s the best place to get your feet wet.
Did you try to work with such platforms like traffic aggregators and monetization platforms?
It’s definitely a trend. For example, Lorenzo has a monetization platform. I worked a lot with him on that and made some really good money because sometimes with these monetizers you don’t know what you’re advertising. But they are also good for monetizing waste traffic.
And what about pin-submits (mobile content offers)? Is it still a good niche?
I think so. It’s becoming trickier for advertisers, there are so many regulations coming in.
What do you think about Google Adwords? Is it still a very secret source? I’ve heard some top affiliates making five figure profits, daily, on AdWords. But all the guys I know, they failed. I also tested it, it’s very difficult. Have you tried it yourself?
We tried a little bit. And we saw a little bit of success. But it’s obviously a huge source. I haven’t played too much with it though.
But in terms of farming Facebook or Google Adwords accounts (to create a lot of accounts for launching campaigns) — what is easier now?
What’s easier? I think there are more people doing Facebook. So maybe that means there is more opportunity in Google. I don’t actually know which one is easier. I didn’t really try it.
I just have a few questions, to sum up; perhaps some advice for newbies. Tell three best traffic sources you recommend for starters.
If you want to do e-commerce, it would be Facebook, obviously. And I think that’s a really good one to learn. You can use it for any business. If your parents have some kind of shop you can run Facebook ads for them. I think it’s a really good skill to learn.
If you’re doing pops, the easiest platform is probably an aggregator. So like a DSP (Demand Side Platform) where you can access a lot of different traffic sources.
But it’s not for pops but banners?
You can get some pops on these as well. They’re integrating more of those.
I think regarding ease, maybe Zeropark. Otherwise going for something like a monetizing platform where you don’t have to worry about it; you can just look at stats and learn how to manipulate the stats.
Is it a good place for newbies?
I think so. Because it optimizes a lot of the stuff for you and you get the experience with playing with the bets and looking at the stats and optimizing placements and that sort of thing.
Name three top affiliates in the industry.
I sometimes look at people slightly outside the industry as well. Guys like Neil Patel; he’s such a knowledgeable guy and I think he’s got a lot to teach.
Obviously, Charles Ngo, is a good one to follow especially for the newbies audience.
Gary Vaynerchuk maybe?
He is popular on Facebook now.
Yeah, I think he’s awesome to watch and quite inspirational as well.
Yeah, he’s very inspirational. Thank you so much for the chat. It was very helpful and useful.
Awesome. Good to talk to you.
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