Vili Väre has been an affiliate marketer since 2008, he was just 16 years old. Now his name is a well-known in the Affiliate marketing industry in Finland. His special skills are SEM and SEO. As an Affiliate, he has worked in the financial, retail and travel verticals with content sites and paid search engine marketing. And recently he founded his own network – W-Affiliate.com. Read the interview and find out more about Vili.

1. Vili, please tell us about your background. What was your first experience of making money online?

I am a self-taught professional affiliate. I have been an affiliate publisher since 2008. I have also worked for 4,5 years for one of the leading affiliate networks in Europe.

My first experience of making money from online business was when I got my first cheque from Google AdSense. A bit later, I was with my family on vacation in Crete, Greece. There, I came up with the idea of making a travel guide website for Crete. I also created a last-minute travel search engine, which ranked well in Google and was profitable.

2. What businesses are you running at the moment? As I know, you were planning to  launch your own affiliate network in January 2016. Could you tell us more about this project?

During the last two years, I have worked for my good friend’s digital business consultancy, Omni Partners. I help our clients increase sales using affiliate and search engine marketing. In addition, I have kept myself busy with my affiliate publisher activities and my own affiliate network project.

Creating my own affiliate network has been my long-standing dream, so launching W-Affiliate.com is really a dream come true. Our main verticals are finance, retail/shopping and travel. We will first launch W-Affiliate.com in Finland in January, and a bit later in the rest of Europe.

3. You were an Affiliate Manager at TradeTracker network as far as I know. What are your secrets of managing affiliate programs for top brands around the world?

TradeTracker was a good school for me to learn more about the affiliate industry. It was great to follow the network’s journey as it grew to be the market leader in Finland.

The most important thing is to understand the advertiser’s business and goals. The secret of my success is probably the fact that I have also acted as a publisher, and I personally know many other publishers very well.

4. What offers did you promote as a publisher? What are the great areas (niches) for affiliate marketers to make money nowadays?

I’ve mainly been a SEM publisher. I have bought traffic from Google to my websites or directly to the advertisers’ website. I have a lot of travel-related websites, but my most profitable ones have been those related to payday loans. Currently, casino affiliate programs seem to be popular.

5. What do you think makes a great affiliate program (rates, network, managers)?

Here are my best pieces of advice for affiliate programs and affiliate program managers:

– Be active and try to build good relationships with your publishers

– Commissions and landing page’s conversion rate need to be competitive

– Plan and write your program’s rules clearly and accurately

– Be honest: don’t try to cheat or mislead publishers

6. What online marketing tools do you use to grow your business?

I don’t use a lot of tools as affiliate publisher. Among the most important ones have been Google Search Console, Analytics and SEMrush. One of my favorite tools worth mentioning is LuckyOrange.com, which I use for example for ad placement.

7. How do you see the future of the affiliate industry?

Mobile has grown and will keep on growing enormously, so it will definitely create new opportunities for marketers, publishers and advertisers alike. In the future, the affiliate market will surely continue to grow and expand, particularly in Asia.

8. What do you like to do in your leisure time?

It is difficult to distinguish between work and leisure time, because my best friends all work in the industry. In the summer, I try to find time to play golf 3–4 times a week.

Alexander Tsatkin has over 10 years of experience in performance marketing from all sides of the industry, starting from Market Research Analyst, SEO expert, affiliate, advertiser, CEO, and now, as an Investor and Co-Founder of Leadtopia.

Alexander Tsatkin is intelligent, sensible, stubborn, and has a desire to help others. He is always ready to move forward as well as investing 100% of his energy towards any project he is working on.

When I asked him to answer several questions about affiliate marketing, he gladly accepted. I’m happy to post his interview on my blog. Please continue reading, and you will dip into the fascinating history of his life.

1. I know you as an affiliate marketing expert, and I’m sure many people know about your business success. I would like you to share the full story of your career growth with my readers. Please tell us about your industry background. Also, why are you referred to as “The Angry Russian”?

I started in marketing as a Market Research Analyst for a large multi national company. While there, I realized that the internet would let you track behavior like never before. I switched to digital marketing and moved to San Francisco as an SEO expert. In SF I discovered affiliate marketing and left full time employment to try and make it as an entrepreneur.  Through networking and Tracking202 Meetups I was introduced to paid traffic. Once I got the hang of the business I started to travel and live the typical affiliate lifestyle. I met many other affiliates including Mr Green who came up with the nickname Angry Russian when I asked to guest blog on his site. After a few years there was something missing. I wanted to build something tangible instead of simply doing arbitrage. Smart phones were just starting to explode and I knew there had to be away to make money from their adoption using affiliate marketing. I build Mobaff with a simple goal of cracking mobile for affiliates. We built training, tracking, and affiliate network from this work. We were acquired in 2013 by Matomy Media group. Since then I’ve worked on a few projects.

2. Why did you decide to quit your job and become an affiliate marketer? Why didn’t you combine the 2 jobs in order for you to earn more money?

I’m just a stubborn person who doesn’t like to be told what to do, so working for someone else never suited me. I was always looking for a way to make a living without having to answer to someone else. Affiliate marketing was something I discovered that allowed me to do that, so it was a clear choice.

3. Your affiliate network, MobAff, was acquired by Matomy Media Group in 2013. Is there any reason why you decided to sell it? Did you have assumptions that all your employees could be fired, including you?

I decided to sell because I wanted to go through the process of an acquisition. Through selling I learned a lot about my business and what others look for when buying. Most of my employees, myself included, were affiliates at one point so the fear of losing a job didn’t worry us.

4. When you received the offer from Matomy, what was your first reaction or thought? Why did they choose your company among other mobile trackers?

I was actively trying to sell the company. At the time I had big ambitions and believed being part of a larger entity would allow me to carve out a larger position in the market. The selling process is not as simple as receiving an offer. There are many steps involved from term sheets, letter of intent, due diligence, negotiations, contract reviews, etc. When I received the final contract signed and payment I was simply relieved that a six month arduous process was over. At the time there were not as many mobile focused performance companies so I think Matomy wanted to really push hard into mobile and this was part of their strategy.

5. Now that you do not work at MobAff anymore. Do you still monitor its development on a regular basis? Do they still ask for your expert advice?

No. Once the acquisition happened we worked to integrate into Matomy. Once that process was complete there wasn’t much left for me to do.

6. If you had a chance to repeat your business path, would you have changed something? 

I try not to live in the world of “what if” as the only true choice we have is in the present. At the time I made the best choice with all the information I had.

7. What motivates you to create new businesses, to invest in different companies, and to grow personally?

I’m a student of life who enjoys new challenges and frontiers.

8. To my knowledge, you have invested in 2 companies: AdWill and HyperTarget Marketing. Why did you choose them and what influenced your decision?

Adwill had a very interesting challenge in trying to use machine learning to automate media buying in the mobile RTB space. HyperTarget Marketing was one of the early Pay Per Call networks and it was clear that there was room to grow.

9. Can you please tell us about your current company – Leadtopia? What is the main purpose of creating it? Leadtopia is currently 10 months old, what success have you achieved through it? Have you been able to get enough clients?

I started Leadtopia with my business partner when we decided to get into solar lead generation. We had to learn how lead generation worked including the technical side, the demand and supply, and marketing. Our biggest achievement was to figure out how to drive volume without hurting quality of the leads. Another accomplishment was closing the biggest buyer and solar installer in the US.

10. You’ve been on both sides of affiliate marketing: as an affiliate, and as an affiliate manager. How should they be combined in order to achieve a huge profit? Do you have any success story to share with my readers?

The key to being a good affiliate manager is to understand what kind of affiliate you’re working with. There are the beginners who need more hands on and the more advanced affiliates who know what they want. In both cases listen to your affiliates and their needs and push them offers accordingly. Over time you will develop loyal affiliates as long as they feel like you’re in their corner instead of just another AM pushing whatever the latest fad is. I’ve always invested in my affiliate base at MobAff and there was nothing more gratifying then seeing affiliates grow their business over time. My favorite thing to hear was “thanks to you I quit my job”.

Zac Johnson is one of the well-known leaders in the blogging and internet marketing sphere. A self taught entrepreneur, Zac’s been making money online for nearly 20 years and has been fully involved in affiliate and online marketing.

Zac continues to focus on his blog where he provides readers with his experiences, ups and downs. Through his popular blogs, bloggingtips.com and zacjohnson.com, he has helped thousands of readers grow their brands and make money online.

Read Zac’s interview below and find out how to grow your own online brand because a blog can open many doorways to some great opportunities!

1. You are a self-taught entrepreneur and have been making money online for over 15 years. Tell us please about your first business experience and how it grew into earning money online.

It’s been a fun ride and roughly 20 years in the making. You can see some of my first affiliates checks and read up on my full story at my blog, but in short, it was all about a having a business and entrepreneur mindset from an early age. Fortunately the internet started to get big while I was in high school and it became my main focus. From there I just kept figuring out new ways to make money and found the most success with affiliate marketing, which I still focus on today.

2. Why did you decide to become affiliate manager instead of being just an affiliate?

Affiliate marketing is one of the best businesses in the world because you don’t need to hold any inventory, deal with customers or process orders. Instead you can build out web sites or high traffic ad campaigns and send users to sites where they can purchase something or complete a specific task. As an affiliate you are then paid for each specified task that takes place. This worked out especially well when I was still in high school, as I was only around 15 years old.

3. Why didn’t you set up your in-house affiliate program than advertised in Commission Junction, WebSponsors, ShareaSale, DirectLeads, FineClicks and others?

I actually did setup my own affiliate network, but I quickly shut it down because I realized I didn’t want to deal with affiliates, merchants, lead management and payment process. I was one of the first individuals to get setup with the DirectTrack system back in the day. Still glad with the decision I made to stick with my own brand and be a one-man operation.

4. You were a Speaker at Affiliate Summit. What was your topic there? Why is it important to take part at Affiliate Summit? Do you make a lot of contacts after every Affiliate Summit Conference?

Yes, I just got back from Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas. It was another great event and probably my 15th+ time attending the event. I’ve been attending and speaking at them since they first started back in 2004 (some history of affiliate summit). I definitely recommend everyone try to attend Affiliate Summit or any type of marketing conference in their area, as it’s one of the best ways to grow your business, put your name out there and create some new opportunities for yourself.

5. You have a lot of experience in blogging that helped you to built up your “business name”. And in 2012 you released your first book on Amazon.com called “Blogging Tips: Confessions of a Six Figure Blogger“. Are you planning to write a book about affiliate marketing or making money online? I guess you already have some ideas or notes, actually your blogs are great sources to start writing a book.

The main focus now is on blogging.org, which is a complete resource for helping others get started with a blog, brand and business online. Books are fun, but I personally don’t like to read that much, so I might come out with another… but it’s not a big thing on my list to accomplish. Through blogging.org, bloggingtips.com and zacjohnson.com I have over 4,000 written articles, resources and guides — that is where my information gets shared the most and actually helps people out. Books are more of a branding play.

6. What do you think the key features should affiliate managers know to set the bases for a successful affiliate strategy?

Affiliate managers need to build personal relationships and do better than the competition (support, pay, offers etc). Bottom line… it’s that easy and effective. Networks need to stop saying “best payouts, best offers”… because its way too overplayed.

7. What changes in online marketing, especially in affiliate marketing, do you observe over the years?

Every once in a while there is a wave of affiliate products or methods being used to get people to sign up for offers that is a bit shady. I like to stick with real offers, products and customers — this way you can stand the test of time. There are a lot of ways to make quick money, but if you want to make real money, find a legitimate business solution.

8. How do you see the future of affiliate marketing?

For the most part, it will remain the same. However, what will change is the way content and customers are delivered/acquired. For example… first it was all websites. Then social media. Now it’s all about mobile. Keep an eye on industry trends to see what is working, then apply it to your business.

9. Would you change something in your life if you have a chance? Maybe you would choose another direction in the business.

You learn from all of your mistakes, but an easy answer to this would be to have purchased a ton of domain names back in the 90s when I was first getting started. I’m sure I could have purchased numerous domains that would have sold for six to seven figures today.

10. What is your favourite activity you love do in your free time?

I love playing basketball. I get to play a few hours every other day in the mornings with a bunch of friends at the local gym. Another wonderful perk of working for yourself!

Christmas brings family and friends together, it helps us appreciate the love in our lives. During this season of giving, let us take time to slow down and enjoy the simple things. May all of your wishes and dreams come true, and may you feel this happiness all year round.
Hope your Christmas is warm and sweet! I’m pretty sure, you’ve worked hard this year, so enjoy this time to relax and recover.

Merry Christmas!