iAmAttila is Here to Tell You that Affiliate Marketing is a Dog Eat Dog World! [Video]

AWE 2017 Interview Series: iAmAttila

Ready for another installment of our Affiliate World Europe Interview Series?

This time, we’ll let you check an amazing interview with iAmAttila, an affiliate marketing blogger.

iAmAttila started as a media buyer and he’s ascended the ladder, reaching the highest heights in the business.

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iAmAttila Interview at AWE 2017

1. Tell us About Yourself

I’m 34 years old this year, which is incredible, right?

I mean:

People usually think that I’m like 23, 24.

When they find out I’m 34 they’re like:

“No way!”

So that’s one of the big things.

I’ve been an affiliate marketer for ten years now.

Before being an affiliate marketer, I was doing rave and EDM parties for four years.

I have a pretty interesting set of skills to build on.

Before that, I worked in the Yellow Pages in Canada, selling advertising.

I have experience with ads, in the old fashioned way.

In the Yellow Pages, we used to do split testing, A/B testing.

The methods that we used were that we would put different ads into the category in Yellow Pages and change the phone number in the ads and then the customers would have different phone lines in their office and they would measure – their secretaries – which phone line got how many calls and then, next year, when it was time to renew the ad, we would do more ads based on the winning ad set.

So this was old school.

I learned split testing a long time ago, like almost 15/16 years ago.

I was super young when I was at Yellow Pages.

I started at age 17 and I was there until almost 20.

Two and a half years, something like that.

When I was doing rave parties, I learned a lot about logistics and handling lots of staff because my biggest party had 7.000 people and our number of staff was 400.

We had a crazy, crazy organizational system in place, not only for the staff but for all the supplies and all the different materials and DJs…everything.

You have to think…when you do a big event, you have to think about the napkins all the way to the speakers.

There’s everything from A to Z.

An insane amount of stuff.

The reason why this was – I believe – awesome in my history and my career is because I learned early on that you need to delegate.

One of the secrets to my success and being pretty good in this affiliate marketing world was the fact that – when I started – 10 years ago, I would always start with the stwith aff.

I’d rather start with rolling expenses because I knew that – if I wanted to be successful – I needed to approach it like a business.

I started with a designer and an assistant right away because I was the guy that was always coming up with the vision and the idea and then I would give it to my staff to make it real.

I would spend my time where it mattered the most:

Networking with other affiliates, learning new skills.

Because affiliate marketing changes so fast, you need to always brush up on skills, learning new stuff.

That’s how it all came to be.

And today we’re doing awesome:

We have over 7 employees in my companies and we have media buyers who are assigned to different traffic sources.

If we find winners – because we’re continuously testing – we just give it to our teams and it blows up really fast.

I don’t have to worry about…okay I need to do this, I just say to one of my guys:

“You do this, you do this, you just get it up.”

And tomorrow it’s up!

Really fast!

In a long shell, that’s it!

2. Verticals and Strategies to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

I would probably choose a White Hat Vertical because one of the biggest problems is losing accounts, getting banned and getting your business killed overnight…so definitely a White Hat vertical.

There are many White Hat verticals:

There’s lead generation for finance, mortgage.

There’s also Ecommerce, Shopify being the most popular right now but there’s also BigCommerce, WooCommerce…there’s many different platforms.

And these are pretty safe and they’re blowing up like crazy so I’d definitely invest in that.

Another thing is before I go into anything, like let’s say I start a Shopify store, I would think outside the box on what makes me different; how can I stand out from the competition.

Because a lot of guys that are new they start – for example – a Shopify store, what happens is:

They just copy someone else; they think that they can throw up some ads and make money.

And the problem is that Ecommerce is slowly maturing.

People are getting used to seeing ads about the same stuff over and over again.

It’s not gonna sell.

So if you’re a newbie and you do what everybody else does you’re gonna lose your money fast and you’ll have to go back to working for someone 9 to 5, right?

I definitely recommend thinking about how to stand out!

3. What is Affiliate Marketing?

To someone that never heard about affiliate marketing, it’s extremely difficult to describe.

When you start talking about it and you start saying:

“Oh you became very successful, like a millionaire overnight!”

They say:

“Oh please! Don’t start with the scam! I heard enough about MLM and all this crap!”

And then I tell them:

“No, no, no! This is not like that at all. This is pure marketing. What you’re doing is arbitrage. You’re paying X for ads and you’re getting paid Y for a sale and the in-between is your profit and it’s up to your skill on how big you can make the gap between the X and the Y so that you get the maximum profit.”

When I start talking about it, I usually lose them at web design.

Most people understand computers, website…done!

So that’s how it goes!

4. Favorite Thing About Affiliate Marketing

My favorite thing with affiliate marketing is that I’m 100% free.

I can come and go whenever I want, wherever I want.

I can work from a laptop anywhere, you know?

So what we do with my family, because I have a 1-year old daughter and a 7-year old son and an awesome wife is that we usually come up with different places that we wanna visit, we pack the family and off we go, you know?

My team’s in the office.

They’re doing their work and I keep in touch with them through the phone and also laptop and stuff gets done.

It totally gives me the freedom to enjoy life now.

One of the biggest benefits that comes from affiliate marketing is that you can live your life now:

You don’t have to “save” and wait for retirement.

The typical American dream-style life is history with affiliate marketing.

When you turn 70, you’re not gonna want to go bungee jumping.

You’re not gonna go running around with bulls in Spain and all this other stuff.

Even though people have this myth that you gotta save for retirement and then you start living.

No.

You start living now because – when I’m 70 – I’m gonna want to watch movies and TV and sit at home.

It’s not gonna be like:

“Oh my God, now I’m gonna go bungee jumping! I’ll break my neck!”

5. Least Favorite Thing About Affiliate Marketing

It’s that it’s extremely dynamic.

That means that you could be making 10, 20, 30.000 dollars in profit in one day and then you get banned or a server crashes or the offer dies, and you’re broke.

You’re making zero.

The guy at the public toilets who’s cleaning the toilets is making more money than you at that time.

That feeling sucks.

Sometimes, when you have a really bad streak – because everybody does…I just wanna say that – a lot of the times – when you go to affiliate conferences, a lot of guys say they’re always killing it and these guys you need to watch out for.

That’s total BS.

And all the veteran guys, all the guys who have been doing this for many years say that there’s always downtimes and it’s normal.

If they say there are no downtimes and that they’re always killing it, they’re bullshit!

They say:

“Oh, I’m making this many thousand or that many thousand.”

And – in reality – they’re struggling to make 20 bucks.

6. “Affiliate Marketing is A Dog Eat Dog World.” Why Do You Say That?

I say that because there’s a lot of people in affiliate marketing that are 100% selfish.

They walk around flashing their watches and all this stuff and then they go home to a shitty apartment but they wanna show the world that they are loaded.

It’s this fake impression, this perception…and it’s not true.

All the material stuff that you have doesn’t make you rich.

It’s who you are.

And the problem with these guys – and why I say it’s a dog eat dog world – is because these guys do not share anything.

They don’t want you to do good – they want themselves to do good.

They are so selfish and I hate these guys with passion.

These guys are so bad that they don’t wanna help anybody.

And I believe that there’s karma:

You help others and you’ll see that goodness returned two times.

I totally believe in that thing.

I’m the proof that it works.

I started writing my blog because why the hell shouldn’t I help people?

What do I lose?

The internet marketing world is so big.

There’s so much traffic, right?

Mobile is growing…like insane so there’s always more and more!

What does it matter if two guys who’ve read my blog make 2.000$ each a day?

I’m so happy that I’ve helped them.

That’s why it’s a dog eat dog world, because these guys ruin it.

7. Why is it Essential to Read, Evolve, and Stay on Top of the Game?

Because – most of the times – no one is gonna come and say:

“This is how you run this! Go!”

You can’t just go to a conference and be like:

“Oh my God! How do I make money?”

No one’s gonna give it to you on a silver platter because most of the guys keep it to themselves.

I’m not saying that everybody is this way because there are some guys who are really nice.

I’m in a mastermind with a few of them where we exchange actual stuff:

“You can take this, run it and make money instantly.”

But that’s few and far in between.

That’s very rare.

That’s why it’s super duper important to stay on top of new technologies, keep reading forums like STM and just stay on top of bloggers, and listen to what they’re saying and where the industry is going, attend conferences like this Affiliate World conference and hear what the buzz is.

Because when you go to these and you just talk to people you’ll overhear and you keep your eyes open, you can see what’s hot right now and just follow the direction and get your piece of the pie.

8. Affiliate Marketing Trends

2017?

Ecommerce definitely.

And Lead Generation.

These two things.

I believe these areas are gonna continue to grow because people all over the world are getting more comfortable on the internet and they’re getting more comfortable using their card online and shopping.

They like the convenience, you know?

They love the ability to select a bunch of stuff without having to leave their home and wait in line and all that stuff.

They just press “order” and have it shipped in a couple of days to their house.

Ecommerce is gonna be big and I believe Lead Generation, especially for B2B…to generate leads for different businesses is gonna continue to grow because companies – small and large – need customers, right?

It’s up to us internet marketers to get them those customers and we can charge them for our knowledge.

We can charge them for CPA or whatever and make a ton of money.

We can charge them 20 bucks and get the lead for 10 and then they’ll make 10 bucks on everything and they’ll be super happy.

9. Future Opportunities in Affiliate Marketing

It’s hard to say but definitely when it comes to Ecommerce don’t try and do everything.

I recommend you use zoom-in, go niche specific, because you’re gonna be able to see success faster than if you try and do everything.

One of the reasons why I’m successful is because I stick to one or two things and we do them super well.

We stick to AdWords and Google and we don’t jump around.

Everyone always says:

“Why don’t you do Pops, why don’t you do Native, why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that.”

And it’s because you cannot be good at everything.

I really suck at sports but I’m really good at helping people and I’m very good at explaining stuff, and I’m very good at tech stuff because I’m a natural nerd and I love that stuff.

It’s like my hobby so I’m never gonna be good at sports.

I’m not gonna try and be good at it.

Same thing for Ecommerce:

Don’t try to do everything and then you’ll be successful.

Persistence, you know?

10. How Do You See Mobidea?

You guys can definitely help newbies coming into the market by providing them a great place to get started; by offering them different offers in various verticals and different countries.

You also have people who know what they’re talking about among your staff.

When someone new comes in, you can make offer recommendations.

You can tell them:

“Hey, you’re running this offer but maybe your should try this one because it’s doing well. It’s worth the split test because you might be making more money.”

You can really provide that guiding hand and that helping hand that someone needs when they enter because they cannot talk to their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, you know?

Because – as I said earlier – most people when they ask me what I do and I start talking about it from the beginning, they lose me at web design.

Most people don’t have a clue of what web hosting is…like for a website you need web hosting and usually they lose you at web design because they don’t even know web hosting.

“What the heck is that?”

11. What Do You Think of Mobidea’s New Tracker Capabilities?

Okay here’s the thing:

I believe that the more stuff you can give to affiliates for free the better.

The reason for that is that usually when people wanna start affiliate marketing they don’t have a lot of money saved up.

They can’t afford a 1000$ tracker.

They can’t afford Amazon, Rackspace, or whatever crazy hosting servers.

They need to run a tight ship so they can spend 80% of their saved money on actual media buying traffic.

Because if you don’t buy traffic you can have the best servers and the best landers, it’s not gonna do nothing.

If you guys offer people a free tracker, you right away save them 100, 200, or 500 bucks a month.

And they can spend that money on something else; maybe to hire a part-time designer to make them some good banners or maybe spend it on a server or a membership to STM…so that they can stay on top and learn new stuff.

12. Future Plans

We’re actually launching something awesome for Ecommerce right now.

It’s the exact same way than when I started my company Banners and Landers which provides banner ads for 10 bucks a piece, animated or static and landing pages starting at 40$ for affiliates…so basically what I’m saying is when I started Banners and Landers I saw that there was a need.

There was no company that understood what affiliate marketing is and that could right away provide a solution.

Everybody when they start in affiliate marketing, they go:

“Oh yeah, I can go on Upwork, on Freelancer, hire freelancers.”

But if you go that way first you have to screen them, right?

The second thing is you have to explain to them what you’re doing and why you need it done this way.

And a lot of the times – when I used to do that – a long time ago, when Banners and Landers didn’t exist, what happened was freelancers like:

“I don’t know why you need to make a banner look like that. It’s ugly!”

And I’m like:

“Just do it how I say!”

And they were like:

“No! It has to look good! I’m a designer.”

And all this ego came into play.

I was like:

“Fuck that! It’s such a waste of time. They’re wasting my time and money.”

Let me create a company that affiliates can come and be like:

“I need a banner like this, this, this. Do it for me. I need a landing page ripped or cleaned or this thing added or that.”

And it gets done.

Because they know it like this.

You order and you get it in one day.

That’s why I created Banners and Landers.

Because there was this need for time and quick service, and reliable service.

Now with Ecommerce on the rise, there’s another need:

There’s the need for customer service, okay?

When you start a store, having great customer service is a requirement.

If you don’t, you’re gonna get chargebacks.

You’re gonna get your PayPal account limited – that means that you cannot take out money for 30 days or whatever.

And you’re gonna lose your payment method after a while, because too many chargebacks…like Stripe is gonna shut you down.

You need to have customer service right away.

The company I’m starting is going to address this need.

It’s called eComReps and it’s gonna provide everything that someone that’s starting in Ecommerce needs.

From the customer service segment, to the product description writing, to creating video ads for the products…basically everything.

And this is coming soon.

This is the next big startup that I’m working on.

And it’s in development.

Right now, we have a few clients but it’s not public.

It’s coming soon and it’s gonna change the way people get started in Ecommerce by making it way easier.

You get everything in one spot!

Thank you, iAmAttila!

This interview was dope! It was a real honor to be able to chat with you at Affiliate World Europe!

Keep on reading some awesome Mobidea Academy content and stay tuned for more cool interviews with inspiring industry experts!