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.